July 10, 2013

In Agile, Simple Is Not...
Unfortunately, in the agile world, the phrase "Do the simplest thing possible" has taken on a life of its own and is used to justify poor designs and implementations. When asked to justify their poor design, developers will push back with "Well, this is the simplest thing possible." While it may be true that it is the most straightforward or obvious thing possible, it almost certainly is not the simplest. Agile says that you aren't done at that point. You still have to refactor to a good, simple design.


Microsoft issues partners Windows XP phase-out marching orders
Microsoft and its partners have a lot of work to do between now and then to try to get more businesses off Windows XP. During the first day of the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, officials reminded resellers and systems integrators of their marching orders around the 11-year-old operating system.


Emotional Intelligence and Leadership
If you understand who you are and what your strengths are (self-awareness), and you know how to lead yourself (self-management), then you will be a better leader. You will know how to read others and empathize. A good leader excels at leading himself first. If you can lead yourself first, then you will be better prepared to lead others. Being able to control your own emotions, being aware of your behavior, and being able to manage yourself will allow you to maximize your potential.


Virtual data protection: Seeing is believing
According to a recent Enterprise Strategy Group report on Trends in Protecting Highly Virtualized Environments, virtualization rates as one of the top (or top) challenges in data protection. But digging deeper, one finds that five of the top six challenges in protecting virtual environments are related to visibility. Specifically, the top six challenges are:


Microsoft's MDM solution solves SMB and enterprise needs
Microsoft is late to the market for a comprehensive MDM solution, but has fairly quietly and quickly modified the alignment of their client device management applications, System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM) and Windows Intune. Following a recent upgrade wave to the System Center and Intune products, when it comes to managing client devices like PCs, smart phones, and tablets, organizations of all sizes have a good value and solid MDM solution available from Microsoft.


India to overtake U.S. on number of developers by 2017
India's software development growth rate is attributed, in part, to its population size, 1.2 billion, and relative youth, with about half the population under 25 years of age, and economic growth. India's services firms hire, in many cases, thousands of new employees each quarter. Consequently, IT and software work is seen as clear path to the middle class for many of the nation's young.


Try Collabsuite, an open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange
Collabsuite’s features include: Email, instant messaging, and calendaring; Rich AJAX webclient; Mail and IM archival; Shared rosters and multi-user conference chat; and Active Directory integration / Single Sign-On (SSO). Even if you aren’t especially knowledgeable about Linux or open source, you can get Collabsuite up and running rather quickly.


An "Acentric" Approach to Customer-centricity
Although most organizations would tend to agree with Drucker, they know that it is not practically possible to align all initiatives and actions to build a 100 percent customer-centric organization with products and services tailor-made for each customer. Over the years, organizations have begun to recognize that the customers' requirements need to be heard.


Lasting Legacy: Nelson Mandela's Evolution as a Strategic Leader
Mandela's remarkable story holds valuable lessons for other leaders involved in deep struggles, foremost among which are the importance of holding firm to a morally just vision and the ability to influence a sequence of key strategic decisions over time (decades, in his case) in order to bring about truly remarkable results. Three decisions especially stand out in Mandela's evolution as a strategic leader.


McAfee Security Architectures for the Public Sector
In general, agility is the capability of a system to change in response to a new condition. For resilience, agility is characterised by integration and interoperability. Integration is the ability of the system to rapidly adopt new technology or new security capability. An agile solution has the ability to easily interoperate with other technology through the adoption of open standards or an extensible management framework.



Quote for the day:

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." – Aristotle

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