Tech Bytes - Daily Digest: May 2013

May 31, 2013

The Decorator Pattern in .NET
The components of the decorator pattern are the component interface, concrete component, decorator interface and the concrete decorator. The component interface defines the operations and properties for the component. The concrete component is the primary class you want to extend that implements the component interface. The decorator interface defines the contract for the functionality that will be added to the concrete component.

6 Practical Predictive Analytics Tools
Many tools promise to make predictions but, in reality, tend to do more of a historical analysis of data. The following six tools have a tighter focus: They use predictive technology in a tangible, practical way and, compared to other analytics tools, possess a "wow" factor that puts them over the edge.

Start menu isn't back in Win 8.1, but some key features are
The OS update also will allow users to boot directly to the traditional desktop interface, whereas before the Modern interface was the default and primary one. It will also be possible for users to have the same background image or pattern both on the Start screen of the Modern UI and on the traditional desktop interface in order to smooth the interplay of the two interfaces.

Pauseless Java Virtual Machine Integrates with WebSphere
The Zing JVM is optimized for Linux and x86-based servers, and the company bills it as the most scalable JVM for enterprise Java workloads. Zing can support very high memory allocation rates, and the company also claims that it's the only JVM that supports application instances exceeding 512 gigabytes of memory with pauseless operation.

The Clock Is Ticking For The Ad Cookie--With No Sure Alternative In Sight
The hard work is really to figure out the alternative to the cookie, said Tawakol. It will need to have a functioning opt-out that works over multiple devices. There also has to be transparency as to who is placing the cookie and what data is being tracked. And they need to be more closely connected to privacy policies.

Disruptions: At Odds Over Privacy Challenges of Wearable Computing
Deal with it, wearable computer advocates say. “When you’re in public, you’re in public. What happens in public, is the very definition of it,” said Jeff Jarvis, the author of the book “Public Parts” and a journalism professor at the City University of New York. “I don’t want you telling me that I can’t take pictures in public without your permission.”

Rackspace floats virty router and firewall into its clouds
"With Vyatta, customers can now get industrial-strength firewall, routing, and VPN into the cloud," says Engates, and in such a way that integrates with the Cloud Networks multi-tiered virtual Layer 2 networking service that is part of the public cloud as well as the RackConnect service. The Cloud Networks service is based on VMware's NVP OpenFlow controller and Open vSwitch virtual switch, which plugs into the XenServer commercial-grade hypervisor from Citrix Systems that Rackspace uses to underpin its OpenStack-based public cloud.

CFOs Open to Improving Tech Literacy
The technology-related responsibilities of CFOs are for the most part still focused on more passive activities, respondents reported, such as measuring returns on IT investment or scrutinizing IT-infrastructure purchasing decisions. Fewer claim responsibility for aspects of technology that are more suited to driving business change, such as data analytics and the purchase of IT services.

Federal CIOs Must Embrace Hybrid IT in Shift to Cloud
"Make no mistake. It's not cloud in isolation. It's cloud in the mix of a series of disruptive trends that you really have to address," Cearley says. ... He argues that cloud computing, in the non-diluted sense of the term, must entail a layer of abstraction that casts whatever the function at issue -- software, business process applications, infrastructure, etc. -- as a service.

Cloud computing SLA failures: Preparing for the aftermath
When an SLA violation occurs, it's safe to say that providers will be dealing with unhappy customers. If a provider breaks one of the promises in a cloud computing SLA, the consequences can threaten the profitability of the customer's company. Luckily, there are ways to make the post-violation process less dire for all involved.

Quote for the day:

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable." -- Charles Darwin

May 30, 2013

Beyond privacy policies: Practical privacy for websites and mobile apps
In this environment of growing attention to the risks of data security breaches, and in the midst of an explosion of mobile applications that make data storage an increasingly far-flung proposition, many organizations assume that the first line of defense for a company with a website or a mobile app is a good privacy policy.

Evernote beefs up security with two-step verification and access controls
Evernote also states they will give you a set of one-time backup codes in case you are traveling or do not have access to your phone and need to enter a verification code. Two-step verification is optional and before you enable it make sure you have access to your selected secondary verification method or you could be locked out of your account. This security level is available to Evernote Premium and Evernote Business user only. As they refine and establish the process, they will open it up to free account users.

Hackers exploit Ruby on Rails vulnerability to compromise servers, create botnet
"It's pretty surprising that it's taken this long [for an exploit] to surface in the wild, but less surprising that people are still running vulnerable installations of Rails," said Jeff Jarmoc, a security consultant with security research firm Matasano Security, Tuesday in a blog post. The exploit that's currently being used by attackers adds a custom cron job -- a scheduled task on Linux machines -- that executes a sequence of commands.

BSNL launches enterprise cloud services in India
BSNL will be leveraging the relationship it struck three years ago with Datacraft – which later became consolidated under the Dimension Data brand – to set up six new internet data centres (IDCs) in 2010. BSNL is providing connectivity and Datacraft is managing the cloud service and data centres. According to COAI, India’s GSM industry body, the carrier is currently the fourth largest in the country in terms of mobile subscribers, but has struggled to grow its user base in an increasingly competitive market.

How to successfully implement the principle of least privilege
The key is to give employees access only to what they need and when they need it, so that they can best perform their job in a safe manner. ... IT security has no chance of fully enforcing least privilege without complete buy-in from their non-IT colleagues (yes, this is true for all security initiatives). To maximize your chances of successfully implementing least privilege access, I suggest incorporating these critical steps:

Infographic: Mobile Payments Going Mainstream for Meals
According to the latest industry projections, mobile payment transactions are projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2017. Not surprisingly, the food service industry will claim a large portion of this burgeoning market as worldwide physical goods sales from mobile devices will account for 30% of all retail within four years.

Great CEOs Roll With the Punches
According to the Board’s study, dismissals were on the rise because of increased accountability of directors and a greater scrutiny from shareholders and activists. The Conference Board suggests that the pressure of serving as the CEO of a large company in an increasingly competitive global marketplace has resulted in more voluntarily shorter tenures, implying that CEOs are leaving on their own terms after fewer years on the job. This is a case of “jump” before you are “pushed.”

Tech Career Advice From Google’s Women
“It’s a disruptive industry,” Ms. Wright said. “You, too, might someday be unemployed on your father-in-law’s couch. What matters is the energy and tenacity with which you pick up your next job.” Another piece of advice Ms. Wright gave, which helps explain her rise at Google, is that employees should seize opportunities, and managers should ask employees about their desires and believe they can achieve them.

Open source: Its true cost and where it's going awry by Monty Widenius
"Now the problem is that you have companies that are heavily using open source but refuse to pay anything back because they don't have to," Widenius said. "The whole problem with not having to is kind of new because the open-source movement doesn't go forward if nobody is prepared to pay. You actually make it harder for new companies to form around open source," he said.

Top 10 Ways to Blow Up an Agile Project
Everyone knows agile is better. But if you do it just right, agile can be fragile, too. Follow these 10 'tips' and your project is bound to come off the rails. In the spirit of David Letterman's "Top 10 Lists," it's time again for a list of worst practices that can make even the best agile team melt down. Here's David Taber-man's newest Top 10 List of things you can do to make that a reality.

Quote for the day:

"A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail." -- John Foster Dulles

May 29, 2013

3 CIO Strategies for Going Global
When these companies went global, they leveraged IT to unify, localize and lay the foundation for future growth ... The CIO Executive Council talks to CIOs about the role IT played when their companies went global. Here are three lessons you can learn about unifying, localizing and laying a foundation for growth.

Taiwan faces resistance over SOPA-like anti-piracy proposal
Taiwan's intellectual property office only wants to go after major offenders, said Li Mei, vice director for the government body, on Tuesday. These piracy sites would include those that "specialize in copyright infringement activities," like Megaupload, a file hosting service that was known to provide links to bootleg movies and software. Last year, U.S. authorities shut down the popular site.

Software Development: How the Traditional Contract Model Increases the Risk of Failure
... the Contract Model compounds the effects of poor management, and that poor management is often based on the flawed thinking underlying the Contract Model. We have found that even if an IT project is resourced internally, the organisation tends to apply quasi-contractual relationships between its internal departments for the purchase of IT services. And we find the principles of the Contract Model in evidence here too.

A Great Product Will Fail Unless You Price it Right
The revenue model you select is basically the implementation of your business strategy, and the key to attaining your financial objectives. Obviously, it must be grounded by the characteristics of the market and customers you choose to serve, the pricing model of existing competitors, and a strategy you believe is consistent with your future products and direction. Here is a summary, with some of the pros and cons or special considerations for each:

Becoming a World-Class Innovator
A common misconception today is that innovators are innately creative people. Specifically, many people think that innovators are born with intuitive skills and views of the world that differsfrom the rest of the population. This is simply not true. Innovators aren’t born, they’re made. But we can learn from a few key attributes that leading innovators share.

Evolving Business Intelligence Ecosystems
While these trends and the associated models of engaging in business are becoming clear, we have two significant problems that need to be understood: There are a lot of different types of data available for consumption by business today; and Today, much of the data cannot be derived from the business layers directly and needs processing. This leads us to the critical question – “Big Data and Innovation – Why Bother?”

100 Top Tools for Graphic Designers
While the Adobe Creative Suite of tools is pretty much the industry standard software for graphic designers, there are plenty of other tools available online, as web apps, mobile apps, or even desktop software, to meet the specific needs of artists and designers working in any niche. The sites listed here aren’t ranked in order of quality, they are all amazing! They’re categorized and numbered for ease of use. Happy designing!

At SAP, the Other Shoe Drops
SAP will consolidate all innovation under Vishal Sikka; effective June 1, all SAP development and custom development leaders will report directly to Sikka. “By creating one single development organization under Vishal’s leadership, we will dramatically accelerate the speed of these innovations,” said Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEOs of SAP AG.

BYOD, for Buy-your-own-device policies, dampens corporate PC purchases
The expansion of BYOD -- whether approved by the business or not -- and the resulting consumerization of traditional IT practices, where the company decides what employees will use, buys that hardware, and preps it with approved software, may have begun because workers pushed for the tools they wanted, but it's also been a benefit to employers, O'Donnell argued.

A HIPAA compliance checklist for corporate mergers and acquisitions
A common problem among companies merging two HIPAA compliance programs is lack of enforcement: All of the controls have been documented and responsibilities delegated, but there's no follow-through and no internal penalties for those who ignore regulations. ... The road to HIPAA compliance is filled with potholes, but by implementing the best practices below as soon as M&A activity is underway, the combined health care organization can steer clear of most of them.

Quote for the day:

"Never give an order that can't be obeyed." -- General Douglas

May 28, 2013

CIOs Bullish on Cloud Benefits, But Worry About SaaS Data Silos
CIOs continue to grow more and more bullish about cloud solutions, with a whopping 92% saying that cloud provides business benefits, according to a recent survey. Nonetheless, IT execs remain concerned over how to avoid SaaS-based data silos. The survey was conducted by Dimensional Research and commissioned by Host Analytics.

Security Regulations: Being Compliant Doesn’t Mean You’re Secure
The problem with regulatory compliance is that, despite the best intentions they are written with, they often don’t meet the goals they were originally intended for. That said, following security standards and regulations doesn’t make your business secure.

4 To-Dos for the 'Someday' Entrepreneur
Most would-be entrepreneurs get scared off by the “business” side of things. They overestimate the skills and knowledge that are needed to run a business and assume that there are huge mountains to be climbed and learning curves to overcome before even getting started. But it’s important to confront the monster under the bed—it’s not as hard as you might think, and you certainly don’t have to have an MBA to do it.

PDF File Writer C# Class Library
The PDF File Writer C# class library PdfFileWriter allows you to create PDF files directly from your .net application. The library shields you from the details of the PDF file structure. To use the library you need to: add a reference to the attached PdfFileWriter.dll class library, add a using PdfFileWriter statement in every source file that is using the library and include the PdfFileWriter.dll with your distribution.

9 Tips for Mentoring Next-Generation Leaders
It's a low-cost and extremely effective way to prepare future leaders early on. Mentoring is as simple as a gentle push in the right direction. It's also an easy way to preserve the intangible assets of your company—the minds and capabilities of the key young people who are the future face of your brand. Mentoring increases retention of your best and brightest, builds your reservoir of talent, speeds employee growth and shortens the learning cycle. It also engenders loyalty.

Chinese hackers expose US weapon designs: report
The Defense Science Board did not formally accuse China of involvement, but governmental sources with knowledge of the breach say that the vast majority of U.S. infrastructure cyberattacks originate from the country. However, the Post does not indicate whether the data breach took place on a governmental or third-party contractor network, nor does it indicate the timeframe in which cyberattacks took place.

Do You Really Need Real-Time Data?
Big data is getting corporate executives excited. They see opportunities to gain more insight to help support better decision making, and that’s good reason to be excited. All the more reasons that data warehouse managers need to provide good guidance regarding the value of things like real-time data in the context of the cost and the value achieved.

Peter Kuper on hacktivism, the evolution of hacking and mobile threats
In this video interview, Peter Kuper, partner at In-Q-Tel, explains how hacking as evolved as malicious hackers seek to use their skills not only to make money for themselves, but also to cause financial harm to their victims. He also discusses mobile security threats and how the increasing use of mobile devices impacts enterprise security.

Google to Fund, Develop Wireless Networks in Emerging Markets
Google plans to team up with local telecommunications firms and equipment providers in the emerging markets to develop the networks, as well as create business models to support them, these people said. It is unclear whether Google already has lined up such deals or alliances. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

Documentation Guide for Teams Doing Domain-Driven Design
The most important thing is to get a shared understanding of the domain between everyone involved in developing the software, Paul Rayner, a consultant and coach, explains as a reaction to a question what kind of documentation teams doing Domain-Driven Design, DDD, should produce.

Quote for the day:

"So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work" -- Peter Drucker

May 27, 2013

Pattern-powered cloudlets (Part 2)
For the pattern-powered cloudlet environment to be complete, two more requirements need to be met: The cloudlet needs to be able to accept requests from mobile devices to find out which application to deploy on demand; and Mobile applications need to be location aware, so that latency-sensitive functions are enabled only when served from a local cloudlet.

Carr refuses to confirm China hack claims
Senator Bob Carr said that the government is "very alive" to cyber security threats, but refused to confirm the ABC's specific claims on Tuesday."I won't comment on whether the Chinese have done what is being alleged or not," he told Sky News. "I won't comment on matters of intelligence and security for the obvious reason: We don't want to share with the world and potential aggressors what we know about what they might be doing, and how they might be doing it."

Messaging Application Line Flags Sensitive Phrases in China
China exerts vast control over content transmitted on the Internet and employs sophisticated filters to monitor communications within applications, as well as requiring developers employ certain censorship capabilities. NHN could not be immediately reached for comment. However a man identifying himself as a vice president for Line based in Taiwan wrote on Facebook that the warning was required to comply with China's Internet regulations.

IBM Cloud Computing Reference Architecture 3.0 – Why does it matter?
"We have now a consistent story and asset alignment from sales to delivery. We started with the marketing and sales messages, which are structured in the well known four adoption patterns, which are: Cloud Enabled Data Center, Platform Services, Cloud Service Provider pattern and finally the SaaS pattern" -- Dr. Stefan Pappe, IBM Fellow, CCRA Overall Co-Lead and the leader of the Specialty Service Area (SSA) for Cloud Services in IBM’s Global Technology Services

Structuring Your IT Service Delivery for Maximum Profits
It is easy to see why and how the backwards structure came into existence. As a small IT shop grows and brings in its first engineer, the company is usually not drowning in profit. Money is tight and the founder knows they need help because the 80 hours of weekly work is killing the founder. So they hire what they can afford, which is generally a desktop technician or an equivalent lower-level technical position.

Technology Revolution And Risk
With all new technology comes a litany of opinions about the product, from a customer perspective, a financial perspective and a marketing perspective. And, we are seeing now that it generates a risk perspective as well. To highlight this point, here are just a few of the new stories on Google Glass that have generated a risk response.

Conversation with John Swainson, President of Dell's Software Group
President of Dell's Software Group joined us on DellShares to discuss the importance of Quest to Dell's Software strategy. We invite you to listen to John as he provides perspective on the following: Quest fit within Dell's Software strategy; Synergies between Quest portfolio and existing Dell solutions; and Platform nature of Quest acquisition and what that means

Amazon Adds More Analytics Features For Its App Developers
Following Google's footsteps, Amazon today announced new features that allow developers to keep a check on app engagements, usage and revenue. The company has added App Engagement Reports to its Mobile App Distribution Portal. These reports will be available as free usage reports. Earlier during I/O 2013, Google's annual developer event, Google had announced a host of new features for Android app developers which included some extensive analytics management tools to check app usage.

The Top 9 Things That Ultimately Motivate Employees to Achieve
To help you get the most from your employee relationships, here are the nine (9) things that ultimately motivate employees to achieve. As you read this, think of how you associate with each of them. Share your story and perspectives – and comment about it. This is a hot topic and the more we can discuss it, we can help one another become better leaders.

Quote for the day:

"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it." -- Walt Disney

May 26, 2013

Android Studio: An IDE built for Android
Android Studio uses a new build system based on Gradle that provides flexibility, customized build flavors, dependency resolution, and much more. This new build system allows you to build your projects in the IDE as well as on your continuous integrations servers. The combination lets you easily manage complex build configurations natively, throughout your workflow, across all of your tools. Check out the preview documentation to get a better idea of what the new build system can do
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What Are The Drawbacks Of REST?
Ganesh wrote a response, which he repeated in his blog: I wouldn't say REST has "drawbacks" as such. It does what it says on the tin, and does that very well. But remember that the only implementation of the REST architecture uses the HTTP protocol. We can surely think of a future RESTian implementation that uses another transport protocol, and that is where some improvements could be made. He then goes on to talk about four areas for possible improvement and it is worth noting that as with many people, Ganesh equates REST to REST/HTTP, i.e., REST over HTTP:

No niche for iPad: A cautionary tale on 'needing a purpose'
Don't discount the PC yet. Latest market figures suggest that there is a massive consumer decline in PC shipments. But enterprise and business figures are still widely unknown. Anecdotal reports suggest that PCs are still core to desk-work productivity, which makes sense as tablets can suit one industry and not another. Also, people love using tablets for sitting on the sofa and winding down.

Jim Goodnight on SAS in-memory analytics and the data scientist
In the 12-minute podcast, listeners will: Hear Goodnight's take on the potential benefits of SAS in-memory analytics and other in-memory tools; Get advice on the responsibilities that data scientists can take on in organizations; and Find out how SAS judges which new technologies deserve the most attention.

Logitech Alert review: video surveillance over power lines
Quality video over internal power is surprisingly solid, regardless of whether or not appliances like dishwashers or clothes dryers are running. ... That's not to say there aren't some issues. There are, but nothing that can't be mended in subsequent software updates. The core of the system just simply works — and that's a darned rare thing to say about any networking product, let alone one that mixes video, power distribution, and the Internet.

Newbie leadership mistakes and the important lessons learned
Here are eight important lessons learnt by newbie leaders around which are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization composed of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs.

5 Kinds of Business Analysis Techniques Every Executive Should Know
If you’re a business user thinking about analytics, the options can be dizzying. Where do you begin? Here is a list of 5 business analysis techniques to get you started. ... Once you have these 5 business analysis techniques in your toolbox, you’ll be able to cover a lot of analytical ground—and have the information you need to make more informed decisions as a result.

Leadership: A Thriving or Surviving State of Mind?
Many would say they understand the fundamental difference between thriving, and surviving. Most leaders would easily choose thriving over surviving at any given moment in time. Then, why is it that I see so much hype around teaching business leaders and others how to “survive”? How can any justice come from teaching businesses to perspire as a reaction to the economy and endorse protectionism and stagnation as a tool for growth?

7 Big Data Trends That Will Impact Your Business
We are reaching an inflection point in the market where the level of hype and frequent confusion about “Big Data” will soon be replaced by customer success stories. Already we’re seeing such stories emerge as businesses willingly share their triumphs. As with any paradigm shift in computing where a particular topic draws great attention from the press, investors and innovators, this shift is supported by strong business value proof points.

Internet History: Blast From The Past
Do you know what the biggest websites on the web looked like when they started? Internet has evolved a lot since its early days, and with the technical improvements of both screen resolution and connection speed, so did web design. Websites are more graphically-rich, but that’s not the only point of evolution. More and more effort is put into providing internet users with nice browsing experiences.

Quote for the day:

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone." -- Maxwell Maltz

May 25, 2013

Facebook engineers reveal how Parse fits into Platform, B2B strategies
The last pillar, Application Services, is where Parse comes in. Ilya Sukhar, co-founder and former CEO of Parse, acknowledged that developing for mobile is "really hard" given the sheer amount of devices, mobile operating systems, apps, use cases, and everything else possibly related to the form factor. Prior to the acquisition, Sukhar explained that his startup's biggest competition came from companies choosing to build apps in-house.

Hands-on with Mercedes-Benz's new Google integration
Mercedes-Benz was on the scene at this week's Google I/O conference showcasing its new Google services integration in a new SL convertible. The entire onscreen interface is rendered on an Apple iPhone running Mercedes-Benz's DriveStyle app. The phone is connected to the infotainment system via a Mercedes-Benz Drive Kit Plus HDMI connection and is controlled via the Comand control knob on the center console.

Wearable Tech Market May Grow to US 30-50 Billion Size by 2018: Credit Suisse Report
Parts of the Credit Suisse report that found their way into the blog of the business magazine Barron’s, said smartphones and smartwatches were one of the key driving forces behind the expected growth in wearable tech, and could act as a hub between all our devices. The report said over time, wireless devices would become even more popular as hardware improved, and sensors and batteries got better.

Three Quick Rules: Be In, Be Real and Be Bold
This interview with Brad Garlinghouse, chief executive of YouSendIt, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. ... great cultures encourage risk and are tolerant of failure. If you don’t do that, you’re going to end up with a culture that is stagnant and not thinking about the next generation of products and experiences.

Build your own supercomputer out of Raspberry Pi boards
For his baby-supercomputer, Kiepert elected to use Arch Linux. He explained, "Arch Linux … takes the minimalist approach. The image is tiny at ~150MB. It boots in around 10 seconds. The install image has nothing extra included. The default installation provides a bare bones, minimal environment, that boots to a command line interface (CLI) with network support.

6 Ways To Commit Innovation Suicide
When starting innovation, a lot of the same mistakes are made over and over again. Here is how you can recognize and avoid them. These six ways of committing innovation suicide, and how to avoid these pitfalls in practice are from the book The Innovation Expedition by Gijs van Wulfen

CFOs Recognize Need to Adapt for Mobile, Social, Cloud
"CFOs have a strong interest in cloud and mobile technologies,” John van Decker, Gartner research vice president, said in a statement. “SaaS (and cloud-based delivery) is starting to affect business applications. Many CFOs use mobile devices and would be interested in getting access to key business information using these tools. CIOs should use this interest to show how wider investments in cloud and mobile technology could deliver benefits across the organization."

Two-factor authentication: What you need to know (FAQ)
"Twitter made the decision to use SMS [to deliver its second factor] because it makes sense from their position," said Jon Oberheide, a two-factor authentication expert and co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Duo Security, which uses apps to prove identity. "[SMS is] universal in some respects, all you need is a mobile phone." But Twitter has faced some backlash, he said, because many of the highest-profile Twitter hacks have been against corporate Twitter accounts.

Exploring OpenFlow scalability in cloud provider data centers
The migration to OpenFlow represents a big paradigm shift for most cloud providers. "We tend to think of networking as little pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to assemble any way we want," said Brad McConnell, principal architect at Rackspace. "It takes time to adjust to big changes." Whether OpenFlow will trigger a fundamental shift in networking remains to be seen

The Misunderstanding of Master Data Management
It gets particularly uncomfortable when someone was misinformed about a new technology (and this happens all the time when vendors roll out new products to their sales force). ... A few of my colleagues and I used to call this “bright shiny project syndrome”. While it’s perfectly acceptable to acquire a new technology to solve a problem that it is suited; it can be a very expensive to purchase a technology and force fit a solution that it doesn’t easily address.

Quote for the day:

"The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership." -- Harvey Firestone

May 24, 2013

An Information Architecture Vision: Moving from Data Rich to Information Smart
This free White Paper based upon global best practices in business and government assesses the “big data” problem, proposes business and architecture visions, and develops an Enterprise Information Planning and Architecture Model. The vision and model will assist companies to systematically develop their information holdings and related services to achieve business value.

Analyzing updated man-in-the-browser attack techniques
The updated man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks, referred to as universal man in the browser (uMitB) by Trusteer, allow an attacker to capture any data entered into a Web browser. The new functionality operates much like a general keystroke logger and provides similar data for keystrokes entered into a Web browser.

12 Disruptive Technologies That Are Changing The World
McKinsey's Global Institute discusses this in its latest report, Disruptive Technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy. It came up with a list of 12 technologies that could have a potential economic impact between $14 trillion and $33 trillion a year in 2025. The authors write that "some of this economic potential will end up as consumer surplus

Ten IT-enabled business trends for the decade ahead
Big data and advanced analytics have swiftly moved from the frontier of our trends to a set of capabilities that need to be deeply embedded across functions and operations, enabling managers to have a better basis for understanding markets and making business decisions. Meanwhile, social technologies are becoming a powerful social matrix—a key piece of organizational infrastructure ...

Conducting the Agile Interview
Finding the right people to work in an agile shop takes just as much energy and enthusiasm as it does to actually work there. Our Agile Architect shares some of his thoughts and techniques for a more-than-the-normal interview. ... For developers, the shared problem will take the form of a pair programming exercise. Most interviewees have never done formal pair programming

U.S. urged to let companies 'hack-back' at IP cyber thieves
U.S. companies should be allowed to take aggressive countermeasures against hackers seeking to steal their intellectual property, contends the private Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property. ... "Effective security concepts against targeted attacks must be based on the reality that a perfect defense against intrusion is impossible," the IP commission said.

Western Digital releases its first 1.5TB mobile drive
The HGST three-platter Travelstar 5K1500 offers 50% more capacity than currently shipping 1TB 2.5-in. 9.5mm HDDs and 200% more capacity than single-disk 500GB 7mm or 5mm 2.5-in. HDDs, the company said in a press release. The drives also displayed better performance than HGST's current 5400rpm, two-platter drives, according to tests the company performed with PCMark Vantage and PCMark 7.

Data warehouse performance killers -- and how to avoid them
In the 10-minute podcast, McKnight further discussed the performance issues that can affect data warehouse systems and how to sidestep or mitigate them. Listeners will: Learn about some of the major factors that can slow down a data warehouse environment; Hear McKnight's take on whether the growing focus on big data ratchets up the potential for performance problems in data warehouses.

Moving from Partial Views to AJAX Calls

The biggest issue is that they're a mix of data and presentation -- HTML presentation, to be exact. Now, HTML is quite ubiquitous and is available on a wide range of platforms and devices, but let's be honest -- not all consumers of HTML treat it the same way (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer!). The tools are available to help me generate custom HTML based on the currently connected client, but I like my presentation to be lightweight.

Expanded Hadoop use cases will drive need for new enterprise features
Hadoop performance can be creaky at times. The technology can be hard to program and is by no means crash-proof. Like any relatively new software, it doesn't come with a lot of tools for managing its operations. To top off a quick list of Hadoop limitations: It isn't an out-of-the-box fit for analytics applications, which are becoming perhaps the major use case for Hadoop data.

Quote for the day:

"When handled correctly, genuine innovations are the lifeblood of any company's continued health and success." -- Michael Graber and Jocelyn Atkinso

May 23, 2013

Any Time, Any Place: Citrix CEO Mark Templeton Takes Computing Where Users Need It
Synergy is really where we try to focus on our vision of the new IT that is more and more being described as being a cloud services provider, an IT organization that can use modern infrastructure for running core services as a cloud, an IT that aggregates a wide array of external services in a seamless way to deliver all of those services with a great focus on business value realization.

Integrating asset management as a hosted application: Is it feasible?
If the traditional agent-based approach is implemented, then not all the software and associated data are centrally hosted on the cloud since a SaaS vendor agent is installed on each managed computer. Furthermore, many other SNMP devices like printers and switches remain unreachable. In order to use the agentless approach, the customer is required to open the relevant ports in a firewall between the SaaS vendor application servers and all of the customers’ managed assets, which usually means all LAN segments.

Google updates Drive app with scanner, Analytics with goals templates
The Android version of Drive, in particular, is being updated with improvements for making it easier to create and access documents while on-the-go. This includes being able to "scan" documents by snapping photos of them, which are then automatically saved as PDF files. ... As for Analytics, Google is adding new templates targeted towards retail and marketing professionals looking to keep better track of goals regarding sales and in-store visits.

Popular Ransomware Adds Ability To Steal Victims' Passwords
"Once an exploit kit installs Reveton on a system, the ransomware will start contacting its command and control (C&C) server," wrote Microsoft's Stefan Sellmer in a TechNet blog post. It downloads information about the system's external IP address, for example the Internet provider, city, and country.
While the Trojan goes to work shipping off your information, it's simultaneously installing and running the DLL that locks your screen until payment is received.

Leveraging Tiered Data Analytics Approaches for Better Cloud Utilization
The tiered-data approach became largely impractical, as the cost of DASD-based mass storage systems fell to a point where optical drives and tape drives no longer made economic sense. However, the use of the same tiered approach to storing and managing analytical data within traditional systems, private clouds, and public clouds may, indeed, make sense for a few innovative enterprises.

How do the most successful entrepreneurs come up with their ideas?
How often do you hear people say, “I thought of that idea before they did” or “I came up with that first”? I hate to point out the obvious, but you didn’t think about that idea enough to develop it and actually do something about it. What really matters is that you get moving on your ideas and see what sticks.

One Startup’s Story: The Evolution Of An Outsourcing Strategy
At any startup, the first hurdle is the lack of resources - lack of funds, lack of manpower, lack of time. Outsourcing – or relocating - the work can be a great to overcome those obstacles while controlling costs, increasing efficiency and even making workers happier But it’s not a simple, one-size-fits-all process. In building my company - Dropmysite / Dropmyemail – I found that managing outsourcing was an ever-evolving combination of local and remote capabilities that stays flexible enough to meet changing conditions.

Apple security update: Is it ready for the enterprise?
Apple’s security lags behind Microsoft Corp.’s by as much as 10 years, according to Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky, who expressed concern in April 2012 about growing malware threats, after the company’s slow response to a critical Java update, made customers’ systems vulnerable to the Flashback Trojan. Apple has since been lauded for smart security decisions, such as eliminating the use of vulnerable Java versions on its devices, and adding support for two-step verification on Apple IDs in March 2013

Enterprise Architects and the Inside-Out View on Value
So many EA professionals are expected to deliver cost or risk reduction, reducing the resources required for delivery of that value, or the risk associated with that delivery. They usually take an inside-out view with a primary focus on efficiency; and struggle to engage with the value delivery side of the equation. But if productivity = value/resources, then the challenge is to both reduce resources and deliver enhanced value.

Online learning made easier for India's schoolchildren
In today's day and age, the pace of learning has become much faster and a lot of kids these days are very savvy with computers and online activities. That also makes it easy for them to better adapt and interact with online learning, compared even with conventional forms of learning. This opportunity was realized by Indian portal, Meritnation.com, which is operated by Applect Learning Systems.

Quote for the day:

"High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation." -- Charles Kettering

May 22, 2013

Optimizing Disaster Recovery for the Software Defined Data Center
Zac Streelman, Manager, Information Technology at Leupold and Stevens was looking for a disaster recovery (DR) solution that would extend the flexibility of virtualization to his DR environment. ... The board of directors was specifically asking what the current solution was and what service levels could the infrastructure deliver. Learn how Zac made his decision and how it affected his infrastructure in the way his board of directors wanted.

Hitachi Data Systems launches HCP Anywhere for online file sharing
HCP Anywhere lets users collaborate on files through any device, using the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) as back-end storage. Users see the files through a Windows Explorer-like interface, and file changes and deletions show up in real time. HCP Anywhere comes a week after NetApp launched NetApp Connect, based on its acquisition of ionGrid, and two weeks after EMC extended the file-sharing capability it acquired from Syncplicity.

5 Emerging Technologies That Every Office Will Have In 2020
During a phone conversation, for instance, voice recognition will be constantly running in the background to pick out context — such as the mention of a meeting, which it will then add to your calendar. It could also be used for real-time translations. And, for your computing devices, a password won’t be necessary since front-facing cameras will use facial recognition to keep others out.

Wait continues for wireless energy consumption remedy
"We have a set of technologies and a portfolio of ideas that if we built products based on them we can handle traffic growth and still make energy consumption on networks go down by 90 percent," GreenTouch technical committee chair and head of green research at Bell Labs, Dr. Thierry Klein, said. The consortium itself, however, is not interested in productising the technology — that is left up to individual members, he said.

Researchers find critical vulnerabilities in popular game engines

Security researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferrante from Malta-based security consultancy firm ReVuln found memory corruption and buffer-overflow issues in "CryEngine 3," "Unreal Engine 3," "Hydrogen Engine" and "id Tech 4." These are game engines that are used in video games like "Quake 4," "Crysis 2," "Homefront," "Brink," "Monday Night Combat," "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars", "Sanctum", "Breach," "Nexuiz" and many others.

"Disruption redefined" - why business is ready for the CDO
In line with this fresh new focus on disruptive technologies, we are beginning to see the emergence of a new member of the board: the chief disruption officer (CDO), who can act as a channel and a focus for this bold approach to strategic decision-making. ... So for this vision to become reality in today’s business environment, CIOs and IT directors need to ensure they are feeding disruptive ideas to the board.

We need more glass half-full risk managers
The risk manager needs to stop seeing the negative in everyone they interact with. and everything they perform. Instead, we need to be more focused on finding the positive in those around us, and then working on bringing out these positives to provide better risk management information and decisions. We need to be more engaging with others, and really show how we can work together and help each other to succeed.

HP security chief: How big data can catch hackers red-handed
"If you look at the breaches today, they are typically compromising user credentials. They steal my passwords and then they look like me. So you actually want to be able to find weird behaviour," Gilliland said. "There's a profile I follow and if my behaviour goes outside two standard deviations from that normal behaviour, you should probably investigate that." Tools developed for big-data analysis come into their own in this role, according to Gilliland.

Zalora launches cash-on-collection in Singapore via 7-Eleven
This potentially opens up a new market such as those without credit cards, and provides the round-the-clock accessibility for customers unable to accept deliveries at home during the day. The move follows a similar one by e-tailer Qoo10 in Singapore, which was limited only to facilitating cash payment collection. Last month, Amazon partnered FamilyMart in Shanghai, allowing customers to pay for and pick up their goods.

Telenor cyberespionage attack has Indian origins
During their investigation, the Norman researchers established correlations between that attack's command-and-control infrastructure and other malware and domain names, uncovering what appears to be an ongoing large-scale cyberespionage operation of Indian origin that has been active for almost three years.

Quote for the day:

"A good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow." -- General George S. Patton

May 21, 2013

Enterprise architects: Please leave your framework at the door
There are a lot of valuable ideas in standard EA frameworks, but they need to be customised to be practical. Enterprise architects should use frameworks for inspiration on how to achieve specific outcomes, instead of trying to apply the entire structure to their organisation. What is needed is a "skinny" EA. Leading EA practitioners have refocused on a narrow set of business outcomes to slim down the work effort and maximize the impact of EA.

IT's new concern: 'Bring your own cloud'
"IT has to deal not only with bring-your-own devices but bring-your-own services," Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg says. People will bypass even viable alternatives if they feel that the officially sanctioned professional cloud offering isn't equal to the task -- or if they have a personal cloud app they like better. "If it's digital and it's consumer, it's going to find its way into the office. People will come up with reasons for using it," he says.

4 VDI Success Tips from an Insider
Citrix is most definitely a front-runner, but that doesn't mean you should immediately disqualify solutions from VMware, Microsoft or Dell. Time has taught us that VDI is not an all-or-nothing proposition, it's not for everyone, nor is it right for all of your workloads. Even then, here are some guidelines you can follow when implementing a VDI project.

Five ways financial services firms can fight the biggest IT security threats
Financial institutions are in a race against cybercrime, and today’s cybercriminals are doing all it takes to come in first. For hackers, the ultimate prize is gaining access to data that can be sold to global criminal organizations. ... To get an idea of the scale of this problem, the 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report revealed that cybercrime cost Canadians $1.4 billion within a recent 12-month period, with the average victim losing $169.

JSON Spirit: A C++ JSON Parser/Generator Implemented with Boost Spirit
JSON is a text file format similar to XML, but less verbose. It has been called "XML lite". This article describes JSON Spirit, a C++ library that reads and writes JSON files or streams. It is written using the Boost Spirit parser generator. If you are already using Boost, you can use JSON Spirit without any additional dependencies.

Social Intelligence: The New Frontier for Business Intelligence
The ever expanding use of social media and mobile technologies has dramatically changed how we communicate and how we interact with the companies that sell to us. As channels of communication expand to include social media networks, blogs, forums and chat rooms, digital and physical lives are intersecting more than ever. What people do online provides an increasingly accurate picture of their customer profile, including lifestyle choices, buying preferences and brand perception.

40 years ago, Ethernet's fathers were the startup kids
"Our spec was, we wanted to connect 255 personal computers at a distance of a mile, at some number of hundreds of kilobits per second ... and we wanted to do it with a minimum of cabling, because the predecessor networks all had these rooms full of cables that we called 'rat's nests,'" Metcalfe said.

In Memory: Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
A few pioneer database vendors realized that using memory as the prime storage resource was a good, albeit costly, idea. As the price of RAM has fallen (on average it seems to fall at about 30% per annum) more database vendors have begun to offer in-memory options and capabilities. Indeed it seems that the in-memory database might even become fashionable.

Q&A: Why WLAN test tools should evolve quickly -- but likely won't
As more enterprises shift their wireless LAN infrastructure from being a side feature to their primary access network, testing these environments is becoming increasingly crucial. Network design expert Peter Welcher of Chesapeake NetCraftsmen spoke to SearchNetworking about the impact of wireless LAN growth in the enterprise and what it means for network management tools and troubleshooting tactics.

CIO interview: Colin Rees, IT director, Domino's Pizza
Rees is also not fazed by cloud computing fears and security risks. “Part of the challenge is to separate reality and rumour,” he says. “The reality is that the security risks are high even in an internal data centre if managed poorly. In fact, we have seen a big improvement in reliability and a reduction in downtime with cloud systems. Over time, the distinction between cloud and non-cloud will thin out,” he adds.

Quote for the day:

"Truly strong leaders find a way to be kind even when others aren't." -- Mary Jo Asmus

May 20, 2013

Realizing Efficient Enterprise Security Intelligence
Security intelligence is built on the same concepts that have made business intelligence an essential enterprise technology. It is the critical next step for organizations that recognize the importance of information security to their business health. In this IBM® Redguide™ publication, you see how security intelligence addresses the shortcomings and empowers organizations from Fortune 500 companies, to mid-sized enterprises, to government agencies, to maintain comprehensive and cost-effective information security

Countdown clock begins for Singapore data compliance
The date all data protection compliance project teams in Singapore have been waiting for has been announced. July 2, 2014, is D-Day when Personal Data Protection Act will come into effect and when organizations will need to complete data inventory mapping, process audits, staff training, and publication of various processes.

Financial services and the public cloud: Go or no go?

“You have to overcome a lot of resistence from regulated industries before moving their stuff to the public cloud … You’ll have a hard time with your auditors in the short term if you go to public cloud,” Perretta told me recently. But, he’s keeping his eyes open because the cost savings of the public cloud are too good to ignore if these other issues can be resolved.

Linux/Cdorked.A malware: Lighttpd and nginx web servers also affected
Before going any further, one point needs to be clear about Linux/Cdorked.A. We still don’t know for sure how this malicious software was deployed on the web servers. We believe the infection vector is not unique. It cannot be attributed solely to installations of cPanel because only a fraction of the infected servers are using this management software. One thing is clear, this malware does not propagate by itself and it does not exploit a vulnerability in a specific software.

Is the Software-Defined Data Center a Good Fit for Financial Services?
The main concern with using a public cloud is that services are typically provided in multi-tenant environments. ... As a result, financial services, healthcare and insurance companies usually bypass pubic cloud solutions in favor of implementing private clouds within wholly owned or dedicated data centers. The capabilities offered by the software-defined data center (SDDC) are perfect for private clouds, and accordingly, are an appropriate fit for financial services, healthcare and insurance companies ...

How technology is changing the way we think about security
Indeed, the prelude to "destructive" attacks are disruptive attacks, which incidentally appear to be coming from nations that sponsor terror. The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks which the financial sector has experienced in recent months are a good example of disruptive attacks ... So what can we do about it? In a recent security brief, Big Data Fuels Intelligence Driven Security (pdf), experts from RSA, Northeastern University in the US and Booz Allen Hamilton, set out the components for a big data-oriented security management system

Visibility Fabric Architecture
Sitting between the IT infrastructure and the tools that need the access to the traffic traversing the network, the Visibility Fabric architecture is comprised of the GigaVUE® family of fabric nodes and patented, advanced-level intelligence that can aggregate, filter, replicate or modify traffic to centralized management, analysis and security tools. The Visibility Fabric architecture is modular and extensible—suitable for a variety of networks of different size and scale from 1Gb connectivity to 2.4Tb chassis-based solutions.

Collaborative Approach to Smart IT
As the CIO of a large merged entity, Dohsung Yum, CIO, The Attachmate Group, had the tough task of ensuring a smooth IT integration of four businesses. As a veteran of the IT industry, Yum advises senior IT executives on how to plan IT strategy and work out an effective collaborative approach and a smart project plan in a merger scenario

Business Architecture
Business Architecture should be expressed independently of how the business architecture will be mapped to the underlying application architecture and infrastructure architecture, but is more connected to the business/contextual view of the information/data architecture and will include the organisation architecture.

What does done look like? - Project World Collectable Card #6
The reason why your project exists, is because it has to fulfil a goal, create an end result. The organization has a challenge to conquer or an opportunity to take advantage of. The goal of your project is a powerful mechanism for alignment. Everyone is working towards the same result. But first you have to make sure we all have the same understanding of what “done” looks like.

Quote for the day:

"Close scrutiny will show that most "crisis situations" are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are." -- Maxwell Maltz

May 19, 2013

How a Scrum Master Can Handle Impediments with a Team
The expectations and collaboration between the scrum master and the team are important to make impediments work. Impediments are handled in different ways, a look at how some scrum masters do it. In the blog post, Gunther Verheyen discusses the role of the scrum master with respect to impediments. Starting from the scrum guide, he explains that the scrum master is expected to remove impediments, but that doesn't mean that (s)he has to find them:

When was the last time you assessed your coding risk?
Many coding errors that are identified go unreported externally as they are either found very quickly, appear to be an isolated problem for a customer, or do not impact customers in a significant manner. What is most amazing is that many of these events are identified and reported to organisations by customers rather than through internal processes. Therefore, we ask the question.

Enterprise Architecture – Needing Governance and Compliance
Whilst acknowledging that exceptions to strict adherence to Enterprise Principles and Standards may be required, the impact can be managed as part of Governance andCompliance processes. The risks brought to the business by the exceptions, once identified, can be mitigated. A Framework plus Governance plus Compliance are all essential components of an Enterprise Architecture.

How to Lead Great Leaders
As a boss or team leader, you have to lead people every day. It makes life easier when you have established authority and your followers are generally compliant. But someday you may find yourself leading powerful leaders, perhaps for a board meeting, a nonprofit, or even a high-level management team. These focused and dynamic people create completely different challenges for a facilitator.

Don’t be an ‘idea killer’: 10 tips for cultivating creativity
The broader leadership equivalent would be an idea killer, wouldn’t it? An idea killer may be a boss who actively shoots down proposals, or passively lets them languish. It may be be a manager who doesn’t know what it takes to build a culture of effective brainstorming, networking and innovation. So that’s how I danced my way into crafting this list. It’s for leaders who never want to be known as idea killers:

Why Software Product Delivey is not Identical to a Car Delivery?
A well written SoW (Statement of Work) clearly lists down the acceptance criteria, which when met would constitute acceptance of the delivery by the client. For a given requirements, no two vendors would build an identical solution. That's due to the tools, technologies out there for use and the varying intellectual abilities of those involved in building the software.

Azul Systems release Zing Platform Edition for WebSphere Application Server
InfoQ interviewed Azul CEO Scott Sellers about the launch and about Azul Systems. "The Zing PE announcement is special in that we have introduced specific optimizations for WebSphere Application Server (WAS) that make it really easy to deploy Zing in the context of WAS deployments, which are traditionally complex, especially when deployed to multiple instances"

The Postdigital CIO: Transforming Business Through Innovation
Recognizing that businesses can harness these postdigital forces to produce breakthrough innovations that transform the competitive landscape, C-suite executives throughout industry sectors are turning to CIOs to play an increasingly strategic role. What are the possibilities for the CIO’s role in the postdigital era? Two examples illustrate the potential that some organizations have already captured.

JavaScript Design Patterns - The Revealing Module Pattern
Addy Osmani describes the Revealing Module pattern as: "The Revealing Module pattern came about as [Christian] Heilmann was frustrated with the fact that he had to repeat the name of the main object when he wanted to call one public method from another or access public variables. He also disliked the Module pattern's requirement of having to switch to object literal notation for the things he wished to make public"

ESB Persists As Application Integration Tool
ESB has entered yet another transitional phase. Jason Bloomberg, president of ZapThink, a Dovel Technologies company, says there's a lot of noise in the market for and against ESBs. "It's a little hard to cut through and find out what's really going on," Bloomberg says. "Customers are generally confused about the whole thing."

Quote for the day:

"Have no fear of perfection--you'll never reach it." -- Salvador Dali

May 18, 2013

Researchers uncover 'SafeNet,' a new global cyberespionage operation
"While determining the intent and identity of the attackers often remains difficult to ascertain, we determined that the SafeNet campaign is targeted and uses malware developed by a professional software engineer that may be connected to the cybercriminal underground in China," the Trend Micro researchers said in their paper.

The Journey from Big Data to Big Promise
While much around big data remains hype, many companies are in the fledging stages of drawing value from their big data corpus, and given an army of discussions and opinions around the topic, it’s still hard to find a clear roadmap to arrive at the Big Promise. ... basically analytics can be categorized into three categories functionally, they are Descriptive Analytics, Relationship Analytics, Prescriptive Analytics.

Why an Internet sales tax is such an incomprehensibly bad idea
It will result in further damaging our economy while also causing the loss of jobs while also causing states and the federal government to collect less revenue, not more. It's not just that consumers will buy less online if their purchases are taxed. It's that operating an online store that deals with sales tax accounting is a very non-trivial task.

When Rule Books Block the Road, Throw Them Out
“We’re not going to be governed by a culture that defines a set of rules. We’re going to be governed by a culture in which we hold ourselves accountable for great performance, and for understanding that we trust each other enough that people are going to make good decisions because they’re here for the right reasons.”

10 key questions about software-defined networking
SDN as a network solution is not nearly as far along as virtualization in the server and storage worlds. Nevertheless, SDN is coming — and the more IT decision-makers and business leaders know about it, the better they’ll be able to determine where and when to introduce it to their data centers. Here are 10 of the questions they’re asking about SDN.

9 takeaways from Google I/O that matter to users
Google held its sixth annual I/O developers conference this week. During a nearly four-hour keynote address Google executives outlined some of the more enhanced features they are working on, several of which are available now. While many were geared specifically toward developers, most of them apply directly to consumers. Here are some of the more intriguing announcements.

How the consumerization of the enterprise has affected two firms
The companies' approaches to the consumerization of the enterprise were as different as the size and distribution of their workforces: Slalom has about 2,000 employees spread out across the country, whereas Huber's previous employer had 45,000 global employees. Huber shared his perspectives on how two companies handle consumerization differently, from mobility management to cloud support and more:

Innovation Isn't Working At 4 Out Of 5 Companies
Alon thinks the questions left plenty of wiggle room for execs to give their innovation programs the benefit of the doubt. "We didn't frame it as 'everlasting' competitive advantage," Alon said. Another metric in the study shows that for every one of 15 different innovation areas, execs were less likely than they were three years ago to rate them "very satisfied." "Commercialization and launch" and "consistent innovation performance" fared particularly badly.

Pushdo botnet is evolving, becomes more resilient to takedown attempts
In March, security researchers from Damballa identified new malicious traffic patterns and were able to trace them back to a new variant of the Pushdo malware. "The latest variant of PushDo adds another dimension by using domain fluxing with Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs) as a fallback mechanism to its normal command-and-control (C&C) communication methods," the Damballa researchers said Wednesday in a blog post.

The Immune System is Risk
An effective risk management system is the immune system of the organisation. It is built to identify and mitigate against the “bad” viruses (problems) and to ensure the promotion and proliferation of the benefits. It also provides processes to continuously monitor the effective performance of the organisation in mitigating the “bad” viruses.

Quote for the day:

"Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got." -- Peter Drucker

May 17, 2013

IT performance measurement is critical for strategic business decision making process
Organizations are now beginning to look at how they measure IT performance against fast changing business and organizational needs as IT and the business are expected to work more closely to drive business growth. Dataquest spoke to Amit Chatterjee, country director, HP Software India, to get insights on the HP-Coleman-Parkes Research study conducted in late 2012 across the APacJ region to assess the changing nature of IT performance measurement.

Google issues YouTube ultimatum to Microsoft as Hatfield-McCoy feud heats up
The letter read. "We were surprised and disappointed that Microsoft chose to launch an application that deliberately deprives content creators of their rightful earnings, especially given that Windows Phone 8 users already have access to a fully-functional YouTube application based upon industry-standard HTML5 through the Web browser."

3 Ways Co-location Data Centres Are Helping Your Business
Aside from talking about big data exclusively, Ian shared his view on data storage and suggested that the importance is where the solution is being built: “If the solution is built on a rock rather than on sand, that could be the very difference between that solution being a strategic competitive advantage for a company or failing versus the competition.”

Cross-Platform Development with Portable Class Libraries
Portable Class Libraries (PCLs) allow you to write code that can be targeted at a combination of .NET frameworks. You select the frameworks you want to target when creating a PCL project to gain assembly portability across those frameworks. You do lose some functionality, however -- the feature set available to your library is the intersection set of the features in the selected frameworks

Google rolls out by-the-minute cloud billing, introduces a new NoSQL database
At its developer’s conference today, Google also announced a cloud-hosted database for managing non-relational data. Cloud Datastore includes auto-scaling and replication for high availability, along with the ability to run SQL-like queries, the company says. The database is a natural complement to Google BigQuery, a data analysis application that’s already part of the company’s cloud platform.

Is outsourcing the answer to IT innovation?
Innovation Process Outsourcing is a critical step in embedding innovation habits into an organisation's DNA. An experienced innovation firm will be intimately familiar with the difficulties of involving broad sets of enterprise stakeholders in a collaborative process. Working underneath the innovation leader, outsourced programme managers can be embedded into the organisation as change agents and campaign managers.

Do you Really Need to Embrace Analytics?
If you have not witnessed the deluge of big data and business analytics media coverage to date, then welcome back from the coma you were apparently in for the last couple of years. For the rest of you, perhaps you have the same nagging question that I have: Are big data and business analytics such a big deal that if our organization is late to the party in deploying them, we will never catch up to our competitors?

Who will buy Polaris?

The company has vehemently denied and dismissed this as a mere ‘speculation'. But the fact is Polaris, going by a report in Times of India, it says, "IT majors Wipro, HCL Technologies, and L&T Infotech has evinced keen interest in buying Polaris' service business which constitutes up to 80% of its revenues. The deal size is pegged at anywhere between $300 mn to $350 mn and Axis Capital is facilitating the deal".

DDoS attack trends highlight increasing sophistication, larger size
Morales indicated that attackers are "doing a bit more of their homework" when it comes to understanding the attack surface of a potential target. For example, a bank might serve a lot of SSL-encrypted traffic to its online users, so attackers will employ methods specifically geared toward exploiting that traffic. "That's what the attackers do, is figure out where your least point of resistance is and they use that against you," he said.

Google Wallet makes payments possible through Gmail
To send money through Gmail, the user composing the email has to hover over the attachment paperclip, click a $ icon to attach money to the message, enter the amount, and send the mail, Travis Green, Google Wallet product manager, said in a blog post on Wednesday. The recipient will receive an email confirmation that the money was sent immediately after.

Quote for the day:

"Enterprise Architecture is NOT a project. It is a way of life." -- John A. Zachman

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