Features March 2017

Harris County has a lot of people to protect. With 4.3 million residents, it’s the most populous county in Texas and the third most populous county in the U.S. The county seat, Houston, Texas, is the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest city in the U.S. While Bruce High, the county’s chief information officer, […]

More than 200 million people have downloaded The Weather Company’s apps, which include the most downloaded weather app in the world. Hundreds of millions of people use The Weather Company’s API (application programming interface) daily, and thousands of businesses—from airlines to energy trading companies—leverage The Weather Company’s products. Those weather products and technologies require 400 […]

Every day, on her short eight-block commute, Brenna Berman sees the impact of her work. Berman joined the City of Chicago in 2011 as deputy budget director, and in 2012 she was made chief information officer. Today, when a bicycle rides by as she walks to work, Berman knows that data accessible through the city […]

Before the cloud, every huge enterprise had a data center with walls, guards, fences and locks to secure critical data. Now, organizations of any size can use the world-class data centers run by Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. While those providers offer some security measures, organizations operating in the cloud […]

In 2016, the Obama administration invited cities across the U.S. to participate in the Police Data Initiative, a program designed to bring together governments that exemplify transparency in law enforcement. One of those cities was Rancho Cucamonga, California, a midsized bedroom and industrial community nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. For the […]

In the height of the dot-com boom, an e-commerce entrepreneur and the son of a dentist joined forces to create DentalPlans.com. They asked: how can we harness the power of the internet to help people access dental care more efficiently, and, ultimately save them money? Almost 20 years later, DentalPlans.com is the largest online marketplace […]

Long known for football, corn and mouth-watering steaks, Nebraska’s growing technology sector is quickly turning the state into the country’s next Silicon Valley. “One of the misconceptions is that Omaha and Lincoln aren’t IT meccas,” says Ed Toner, CIO for the state of Nebraska. “I remember I even told everyone in the late ’90s to […]

Imagine picking up Las Vegas and moving it to London, all while keeping the Vegas nightlife, retail and hospitality running smoothly. That’s essentially what cruise ships do every day. Now imagine keeping all of the information that flows through Vegas—personal records, credit card info, health records—safe in that metaphorical transit. Cruise ships do that, too. […]

Lower labor costs and a slew of state and local incentives enticed Electrolux into looking at the greater Memphis, Tennessee, area in 2010 as a possible place to relocate its Quebec manufacturing plant, but when the Swedish-owned high-end appliance maker wanted an in-depth look at possible construction sites, it didn’t get far. Seems that Shelby […]

Hampton, Virginia, has been around for more than 400 years, giving it plenty of time to make history. It was the first permanent English settlement in the New World and centuries later became the first city to offer free public education. It was also the first training ground for American astronauts. The city of almost […]