November 19, 2013

The True Story of a Disrupted Industry, Talent Retained, and Beer Pong
Keith Mueller: We are disrupting one of the oldest professions--bookkeeping--and therefore need to bring new thinking, technology, and processes to help our clients. I believe Silicon Valley has this culture that starts with the questions of what and how can we do things better, faster, and at a lower cost? How we can effect change? That’s the culture we need at BookKeeping Express, and we are developing that here by a constant flow of questions, internal communication, and desire to drive value to our clients. Plus we work hard--so I just feel fun has to be part of the equation.


Exploring LXC Networking
Docker is still very young, though dotCloud, who have apparently pivoted to Docker, have been using it to power their PaaS offering. After playing with Docker for a while I must admit it is awesome. There is no doubt about it. I personally haven’t seen as much excitement about any IT technology in past several years I’ve been in this industry as I’m seeing now surrounding Docker. LXC is the technology which is used by Docker and which has been around for much longer.


Seven ways identity, access management will change in the enterprise
"In the past, efficiency was a key driver [for identity management roll-outs]," said Gregg Kreizman, research vice president at Gartner. "Compliance came along, but business enablement is the Holy Grail." Protected resources in the enterprise aren't where they use to be and the move to the cloud has stressed and fractured identity and access management (IAM) to the point where it needs to be re-architected, according to Gartner.With those observations and others, Gartner laid out the future framed by seven predictions for the way IAM in the future will be unlike IAM now.


Q&A: Design Thinking and Its Role in Industry and Education
The notion of "design thinking" has emerged as a topic of great discussion in recent years among design practitioners, educators across disciplines, and organizations of all kinds. Whether you’re a student, graduate, or seasoned veteran you’ll find value in the following dialogue which explores some of its many interpretations and applications. This interview was conducted by Dianne Hardin, at The University of Cincinnati, as part of her research for the DMI FutureED project. Hardin wanted to get perspectives on design thinking from practitioners responsible for providing it to clients and teaching it to students.


Landscapes in Mobile Application Security
One key requirement for any single sign on scenario is - we should be able to establish direct trust or brokered trust between applications and their users. In most of the cases this is established through IdPs. The first example we took was based on direct trust - while the second is on brokered trust. To accomplish this use case we need to build a trust relationship between all the authorization servers - taking part in - and also a middle man to mediate SSO. This use case is also highlighted in the Native SSO draft specification by OpenID Foundation - but no much details as of now.


Thornton May: Caught between mobility's rock and hard place
A high-potential millennial told the CIO at a big-name pharmaceutical company during her exit interview that she found the work environment toxic. Her main complaint was that the enterprise did not allow use of the modern consumer technologies and applications that she perceives as comprising her personal and professional identity. This is mobility's rock: People want the interface, the ease of use, the "cool" factor, the freedom and the functionality of consumer technology in the workplace.


CSA to create cloud security controls for BYOD
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) announced Wednesday the launch of its Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) initiative -- a project tasked with designing a better way to secure personal devices on corporate networks, a trend known as bring your own device (BYOD). The goal of the SDP initiative is to produce a framework of cloud security controls that "mitigates network-based attacks on Internet-accessible applications by eliminating connectivity to them until devices and users are authenticated and authorized," according to a CSA press release.


Cisco suggests new economic metric: Gross Domestic P0wnage
The Index notes the many upsides that flow from technology, asserting that “governments and businesses that embrace the Internet and ICTs recognize it will enhance their long-term competitiveness and societal wellbeing, and potentially contribute up to eight percent of gross domestic product”. But the document says it can find only occasional assessment or quantification of negative economic impacts brought on by technology, citing data on the cost in money and jobs of intellectual property theft.


Building an Advanced Managed Services Practice
With many managed services providers admitting that their technology skills are far deeper than their business acumen, the processes required to create those critical organizational development plans may be quite unfamiliar. The talents essential to build and sustain these IT companies can be quite diverse, so MSPs either have to undergo training to acquire those capabilities or hire new employees with those specific proficiencies. Regardless of the method they adopt, those consistent investments can significantly boost an organization’s chances of achieving numerous goals over time.


Secret TPP agreement, SOPA on steroids, may be the end of the Internet as we know it
The EFF warned that “the TPP would let corporations monitor our online activities, cut off our Internet access, delete content and impose fines.” It gives “legal teeth to Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools” and “calls for criminal liability for violations of these anti-circumvention provisions.” In fact, “this criminal liability could apply to people circumventing these restrictions even where the underlying work is not covered by copyright.”



Quote for the day:

"A good test of a platform’s importance is to find out what happens if the platform shuts down for 5 minutes – how much panic and revenue drop does that create in various parts of the world? Another measure of the platform is the value it creates by launching new companies and ideas." -- Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting

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