October 05, 2013

Business Architects: Do Not Start With Strategy
Business architects add no value if they bring analysis methods that are no more valuable than the poorly described “consulting methods” that management consultants use today. (If those methods worked, why would “alignment” be a problem?) Simple methods like SWOT and Five Forces and even Balanced Scorecards can fail catastrophically if there is no recognition of the fact that these methods are only useful within the clear and well described boundaries of a business model.


5 takeaways from Predictive Analytics World
"I often learn as much by talking to people in between sessions at a conference as I do when listening to the presentations, and this week's Predictive Analytics World event has been no exception. I had the opportunity to see and chat with some very smart people Monday, and here, in no particular order, are five interesting takeaways from those conversations. The conference continues Tuesday at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston."


How Disruption Happens
Take the concept a little further and it becomes obvious that influence is a function of groups rather than individuals. That, in essence, is what the threshold model of collective behavior predicts. An idea usually takes hold among people who are most receptive to it and, as they increase in numbers, more people join in. It builds on itself. This makes a lot more sense than the notion that a select class of people with magical powers of influence tells the rest of us what to do.


Data’s Ethical Landmines
There has been a lot of hype around the introduction of social media data and big data to the worlds of data integration and master data management. After all, isn’t more data – capable of helping us identify and understand our customers better – invaluable to the business? Perhaps, but along with its infinite value could come some highly unexpected, extensive costs and liabilities if not handled appropriately.


The Dirty (Not so Secret) Secret of IT Budgets
Cloud computing infrastructures, platforms and applications often allow users to try before they buy with very little risk. Users can test applications, explore new application functions and features, experiment with data, and stand up analytic capabilities with much less fuss than traditional IT routes. Best of all, much of this “experimentation” can be funded with operating budgets instead of going through the painful process of asking the CFO for a CAPEX check.


Delivering business applications to mobile devices puts focus on users
On the flip side, protecting the integrity of company data and ensuring compliance can be difficult. Though Columbia doesn't have an official bring your own device (BYOD) policy, it does have terms of use that employees must agree to. When a device is lost or stolen, Pickett's team remotely wipes it, which can be distressing for both the user and the administrator who has to delete the worker's personal information.


Shutdown affects government sites, but Weather.gov remains up as storm looms
The website for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.gov, also was operating at a limited capacity on Friday. FEMA is the main agency that responds to disasters such as hurricanes. "Due to the lapse in federal funding, portions of this website may not be updated and some non-disaster assistance transactions submitted via the website may not be processed or responded to until after appropriations are enacted," FEMA.gov said.


Financial-architecture and enterprise-architecture
The reason why we couldn’t do anything about it was because of that darn stupid notion that enterprise-architecture was ‘just an IT-thing’. ... To get the necessary changes to happen to either the organisation’s business-case processes or, preferably, the accounts-structures as well, we would have had to have the ear of the entire executive - which is the level at which enterprise-architecture actually belongs, and why it belongs there, too.


In-Memory OLTP Common Design Pattern – High Data Input Rate/Shock Absorber
As In-memory OLTP is integrated into SQL Server and you can have both memory-optimized tables and disk-based tables in the same database, separating the data storage and retrieval mechanisms between these table structures is also a common pattern. Typically a user created “background” process can execute, for example, on a timed basis, to move data from the memory-optimized table to the disk based table and remove that data from the current memory-optimized table


Keeping Your Secrets
There are still ways to protect your secrets, especially if you have some control over both ends of the exchange. In this article you'll learn how you can secure application data exchanges in ways that block exposure both now and in the foreseeable future, and see examples of applying the security techniques in Java code. Along the way you'll also get some pointers on how you can protect your own online access.



Quote for the day:

"Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come." -- Perry Paxton

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