Infrastructure Asset Management Quotes

As for relegated/delegated responsibility to ensure organizational software licensing compliance, management is still accountable when intellectual property rights are violated. If the safeguarding responsibility is assigned to an ineffective and/or inefficient unit within an organization, IT audit should recommend an alternative arrangement after the risks are substantiated.

This vision is very much in line with the views of the economist John Kay in his book Other People’s Money (2015). As he says, stock markets, when first started, were the vehicles for raising finance often for large infrastructure projects (typically railways) from many dispersed shareholders. But markets no longer provide this function. Almost no new projects are financed via the stock market. (Indeed, the observation that few early-state companies come to the stock market for financing rather confirms the hypothesis that stock markets have significant problems dealing with them.) Rather, stock market trading is dominated by large asset managers trading with each other. In Kay’s view, they are searching for returns over and above those available to the market as a whole (searching for “alpha”) by trying to anticipate what others are thinking about the value of assets rather than the value of the underlying assets themselves.

Banks were once an extremely valuable part of the economy and did a lot of good in advancing civilization. Banks played a pivotal role in financing big projects like roads, bridges, factories, stadiums, etc. Banks were to the economy what the heart is to the human body. But that has ended. Traditional banks have become extra toxic entities in the economy. It’s partially the fault of excessive government regulations that have made everything dysfunctional and it’s partially the fault of greedy bankers putting profits above customers and shareholders above society... But nonetheless, banks today offer very little benefit to their clients. They pay barely anything in interest. They offer barely anything in growth. They move money too slowly. They’re too restrictive. They’re selling the same boring products and services they did a hundred years ago. And they have too much power over peoples accounts. Soon, the many new companies and applications that emerge on the Ethereum infrastructure will eliminate the need for traditional banks and eliminate their value proposition by providing people with superior value. Everything from growth to asset management to lending can be done even better on the Ethereum infrastructure by anyone.

There are many potential explanations for the less-than-robust performance, but IBM’s current strategy suggests that one component at least is a challenge to the traditional shrink-wrapped software business. As much as any software provider in the industry, IBM’s software business was optimized and built for a traditional enterprise procurement model. This typically involves lengthy evaluations of software, commonly referred to as “bake-offs,” followed by the delivery of a software asset, which is then installed and integrated by some combination of buyer employees, IBM services staff, or third-party consultants. This model, as discussed previously, has increasingly come under assault from open source software, software offered as a pure service or hosted and managed on public cloud infrastructure, or some combination of the two. Following the multi-billion dollar purchase of Softlayer, acquired to beef up IBM’s cloud portfolio, IBM continued to invest heavily in two major cloud-related software projects: OpenStack and Cloud Foundry. The latter, which is what is commonly referred to as a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, may give us both an idea of how IBM’s software group is responding to disruption within the traditional software sales cycle and their level of commitment to it. Specifically, IBM’s implementation of Cloud Foundry, a product called Bluemix, makes a growing portion of IBM’s software portfolio available as a consumable service. Rather than negotiate and purchase software on a standalone basis, then, IBM customers are increasingly able to consume the products in a hosted fashion.

but the truth is that comparing what private equity firms used to be—and where the perception of private equity still sits in many quarters—to what they are now is like comparing a Motorola cellphone from the 1990s to the latest iPhone. There’s a world of differences; it’s not even close. For pension funds and other investors in private equity funds, the firms they back gives them access to investment opportunities they can’t find or execute themselves. What’s more, they get consistent investment returns out of these opportunities, whether they include leveraged buyouts, credit investments, infrastructure assets, essential utilities, real estate transactions, technology deals, natural resources projects, banks, insurance companies, or life science opportunities. They can buy companies, carve out businesses, build up companies through acquisitions and organic growth, spin off businesses, take companies private from the public market, buy businesses from other funds they manage, draw margin loans to finance dividends, and refinance the capital structure pre-exit. And more besides.

Liberal antiracists [...] talk of "hate speech" and "hate crimes", on the assumption that oppresive cruelty is the behavioural expression of a hateful disposition - ignoring the corporate executives, asset managers, lawmakers, government officials, judges, police officers, prison guards, military personnel and immigration officers who, without attitudes of hatred, routinely and calmly operate infrastructures of racist violence, in the name of security and profit. By relocating racism to the unconscious mind, liberal antiracists end up absolving the institutions most responsible for racist practices.

Liberal antiracists [...] talk of "hate speech" and "hate crimes", on the assumption that oppresive cruelty is the behavioural expression of a hateful disposition - ignoring the corporate executives, asset managers, lawmakers, government officials, judges, police officers, prison guards, military personnel and immigration officers who, without attitudes of hatred, routinely and calmly operate infrastructures of racist violence, in the name of security and profit. By relocating racism to the unconscious mind, liberal antiracists end up absolving the institutions most responsible for racist practices.

Service Assets are assets of any type used by the Service Provider in the delivery of the Services to the business customer.  These assets are broken down into Resources and Capabilities.  Combined, they are the basis for value creation. Resources are the direct inputs required for production and are easier to acquire than capabilities

Ask yourself: What assets or capabilities do you need to be successful in this comfort-and-safety-as-a-service proposition? For example, you would need the capability to assemble and distribute the necessary HVAC equipment, security cameras, and other physical infrastructure. This, fortunately, may be a capability you already possess as an equipment manufacturer. But chances are that such a player would lack at least a few other critical capabilities. For instance, you would need the ability to install and maintain that equipment, which may go beyond the scope of your current operation. Perhaps most importantly, you would need an online platform to connect all the devices, sensors, and other equipment—allowing for the creation of digital twins for real-time remote digital monitoring. This online platform would also allow customers to make adjustments, access camera footage, and manage their subscription, all in one place.

The rise of the Rockefeller family was made possible from two angles by the Rothschilds. One was by the large subsidies placed on transports of Rockefeller oil. The documents of the American trade register prove that the Rothschilds, since 1896, have owned ninety-six percent of the American railways. This made it possible to transport oil on rail. When John D. Rockefeller wanted to expand, he received the financial support he needed to do so from the Rothschilds through their National City Bank of Cleveland. In exchange, the Rockefellers had to transport their oil via the Rothschilds railways. An illegal agreement saw to it that the Rockefellers received a bonus for the amount of oil they transported by train. Because of this agreement nobody could compete with the Rothschilds in transporting Rockefeller oil. This was all arranged by Jacob Schiff, of the company Kuhn & Loeb, the brain behind the foundation of the Rockefeller imperium. Under the authority of the Rothchilds, Kuhn, Loeb & Co. continue to manage the Rockefeller capital, which is valued at over 400 billion dollars. In 1950 the New York Times reported L.L. Strauss, a partner with Kuhn, Loeb & Co., as the financial adviser to the Rockefeller estate. Because of this, every investment had to be approved and signed by a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. According to the periodical Fortune in 1985, the wealth of the Rockefellers was spread amongst more than 200 companies. These companies include six of the largest industrial companies in America, six of the largest banks, five of the largest insurance companies and three of the largest companies from different branches (electricity, water, infrastructure, fruits, oil, gold, and others). Not including the remaining 180 other companies, the total assets of these twenty giants amount to 460 billion dollars.