April 02, 2014

GRC regulations force cloud services providers and customers to adapt
"With increased legislation around data privacy, the rising threat of cybertheft and the simple requirement to be able to access your data when you need it, organizations need to know precisely to what extent they rely on cloud storage and computing," Durbin said. Compliance regulations, for example, often have very specific requirements for what data needs to be stored, and where. Emerging privacy rules require certain data management processes. And of course, rapidly advancing cyberthreats from a variety of sources require cutting-edge information security tools.


Dell's new research division wants computers to detect your mood
The mood experiments are among others underway at Dell Research that stretch across four broad areas: security, data insights, mobility and the Internet of Things, and cloud and modern data centers, according to Jai Menon, a vice president and Dell's chief research officer. Dell's focus on moods and emotions will use a person's brain waves combined with heart rate, pulse or other body functions in hopes of detecting when a person is happy, sad, anxious, fearful or has other feelings, Menon said in an interview.


Microservers: What you need to know
Microservers are a new category of system designed to shine when carrying out these well-defined computing workloads. The need for microservers has in part been fuelled by the growth of the web and online services. That's because the demands that serving this kind of content place on a system — the CPU load and I/O required to deliver static elements for a web page, for example — is predictable. The quantifiable nature of these workloads allows microserver circuitry to be pared back to what's needed to execute these tasks.


CIOs: It’s time to prepare for bring your own smart machine
According to Gartner Inc. analyst Tom Austin, there are three classes of smart machines: The doers, the movers and the sage. It’s that last category CIOs will need to pay attention to, which includes both virtual personal assistants and smart advisors, such as IBM’s Watson. Virtual personal assistants will learn what you do, who you work with and what you’re working on. Smart advisors, on the other hand, are subject-matter experts that will, say, help a doctor recommend medical treatment. Both are poised to push their way into the enterprise in the next two years, according to Austin.


Why CIOs Should Look Outside for Data Expertise
Predictive scores include fraud scores (who is trying to scam us?), churn scores (who is most likely to cancel?), social influencer scores (which customers affect peers' behavior?), wealth scores (what is the predictive buying power of my consumers?), shopper scores (who are discount shoppers vs. full price?), and recommendation scores (which offers should be sent to which consumers?). At the council meeting, Barbara Wixom, an expert in business intelligence at MIT's Center for Information Systems Research, offered other examples of companies getting data and analytics from external providers--either while they build their internal capacity or in lieu of doing so.


SQL Server Execution Plans, Second Edition
An execution plan describes what's going on behind the scenes when SQL Server executes a query. It shows how the query optimizer joined the data from the various tables defined in the query, which indexes it used, if any, how it performed any aggregations or sorting, and much more. It also estimates the cost of all of these operations, in terms of the relative load placed on the system. ... Grant Fritchey is a SQL Server MVP with over 20 years' experience in IT including time spent in support, development, and database administration.


Google seeks Supreme Court review of Wi-Fi packet sniffing ruling
Google in its appeal to the Supreme Court does not, however, accept that the collection of the data was illegal, pointing out that the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission declined to take enforcement action after investigating Google, including for possible violations under the Wiretap Act. The company said in its appeal that an adverse ruling could in fact hurt security professionals who routinely use the same kind of technology as Google's Street View cars did to collect packet data in order to secure company networks.


A CTO reflects on VDI implementation trials and errors
The promise is compelling. As a result, I have experimented with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Sometimes, my experiments succeeded. Other times, they never advanced beyond experimentation. What was the difference? As I reflect back on my VDI implementation successes and failures, this is what I have learned: The business case is exciting but ambiguous. There are hard dollar costs and benefits but those are sometimes dwarfed by the more nebulous costs, benefits and considerations.


CFOs could be technology evangelists, if they took the plunge
There is a weight of expectation on the chief financial officer (CFO) of most organisations, and that they should be in the front line of driving changes in the structure of IT. The problem is that only about a fifth are actually doing it. That's one of the conclusion of a new report into the changing role of the CFO compiled by Oracle and Accenture. The report found that some two thirds (65 percent) of C-suite executives in large organisations believe that CFOs should be "strong evangelists for the transformation potential of technology".


eXtreme Programming The Methodology
The biggest advantage the customer liked about eXtreme Programming in this case was the flexibility to change the prioritization and stories within the Iteration. Scrum for the most is in-flexible on this front. By letting the customer have the flexibility greatly reduced their stress from planning the perfect iteration. From the team’s perspective, the biggest advantage was the reduction of time for planning. Again, in Scrum, the planning meetings can go for an entire day if you are planning a four week iteration. But, since the iterations in Extreme Programming are much shorter and flexible, the planning is fairly quick – less than 45 minutes in this case.



Quote for the day:

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize." -- Robert Hughes

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