June 22, 2016

How Big Data Is Changing The Game For Backup And Recovery

In the world of today's next-generation databases -- where data is distributed across small machines -- it's not quite so simple. "There is no concept of a durable log because there is no master -- each node is working on its own stuff," Thakur explained. "Different nodes could get different rights, and every node has a different view of an operation." That's in part because of a trade-off that's been required to accommodate what's commonly referred to as the "three V's" of big data -- volume, velocity, and variety. Specifically, to offer scalability while accommodating the crazy amounts of diverse data flying at us at ever-more-alarming speeds, today's distributed databases have departed from the "ACID" criteria generally promised by traditional relational databases. Instead, they've adopted what are known as "BASE" principles.


How to hire for the right big data skill set

And before you can even determine what skills you need for data collection, it's important to first consider your audience and customer base. Polich gives the example of a bank, which can't withstand any down time or lag in data retrieval, so companies need to hire accordingly. That might mean hiring people who have worked in similar high-stress environments, where certain aspects of data matter more than in other industries. Alternatively, he also gives the example of a social media network, which can probably withstand a minimal amount of lag or inconsistency in data retrieval, especially if it results in cost-savings. That might mean you can hire someone with other skills that are important to your business or someone more accustomed to working in agile and innovative environments.


New life for residential Wi-Fi

The contrast between this modern approach and older residential Wi-Fi routers shows what happens when a market advances in linear fashion. The main selling features of a home router have for years been lower cost and higher headline speeds. This resulted in standard reference hardware implementations, packaged unimaginatively; the physical design and user-interface were contracted out to the lowest bidders, and we got what we paid for. With the exception of Apple (and Google, with a niche product), these are beastly products that even experts shrink from tinkering with. But the primary technical advance promoted by eero and Luma is, in the vernacular, “Wi-Fi that doesn’t suck.” These startups have seized on the universally recognized coverage issue: A single Wi-Fi router installed at the most convenient spot in the house is unable to provide reliable building-wide coverage in perhaps 10 percent of cases.


Expert panel explores the new reality for cloud security and trusted mobile apps delivery

When we look at mobile, we've had people who would have a mobile device out in the field. They're accustomed to being able to take an email, and that email may have, in our situation, private information -- Social Security numbers, certain client IDs -- on it, things that we really don't want out in the public space. The culture has been, take a picture of the screen and text it to someone else. Now, it’s in another space, and that private information is out there.  You go from working in a home environment, where you text everything back and forth, to having secure information that needs to be containerized, shrink-wrapped, and not go outside a certain control parameter for security. Now, you're having a culture fight [over] utilization. People are accustomed to using their devices in one way and now, they have to learn a different way of using devices with a secure environment and wrapping. That’s what we're running into.


Q&A with Roman Pichler about Strategize

Product strategy and product roadmap are neither agile nor anti-agile; it entirely depends on how we apply them. The challenge for any product is to first find a valid strategy—an approach that is likely to be effective—and then to review and adapt it on a regular basis so that the product becomes and stays successful. It would be a mistake to think of strategy as something static that merely has to be implemented: As the product grows and as the market and technologies change, the strategy and the roadmap have to change too. In some cases, these changes can be drastic—think of YouTube, for instance, which pivoted from a video-dating site to a video-sharing product. In other cases, the changes are incremental. Take the evolution of the iPhone, for example. When the first iPhone was launched in 2007, it did not allow people to take videos. But the latest generation uses video to set the product apart from the competition.


Top website domains are vulnerable to email spoofing

Of those vulnerable, 40 percent were news and media sites, and 16 percent were software-as-a-service sites, Detectify said in an email. A common way these domains are trying to prevent email spoofing is through a validation system called Sender Policy Framework or SPF. It essentially creates a public record, telling the Internet which email servers are allowed to use the domain. Ideally, any messages impersonating the domain will be detected as spam and rejected before delivery. In practice, however, the system can often come up short. The SPF will filter out spam emails best when on the so-called "hardfail" setting, but many website domains decide to implement the SPF at the "softfail" level. Although this will flag any forged emails as suspected spam, the messages will still be sent out to the recipient.


Why I Prefer Merge Over Rebase

Why would anyone be based on your work-in-progress branch? Because it happens. Sometimes tasks are not split that strictly and have dependencies – you write a piece of functionality, which you then realize should be used by your teammates who work on another task within the same story/feature. You aren’t yet finished (e.g. still polishing, testing), but they shouldn’t wait. Even a single person may want to base his next task on the previous one, while waiting for code review comments. The tool shouldn’t block you from doing this from time to time, even though it may not be the default workflow scenario.


Infographic: CIOs reveal IT hiring trends for 2016

On Tuesday, Robert Half Technology released the results of a survey that showed 21% of US CIOs plan on adding more staff to their IT department and 63% plan on only filling open IT roles. The report forecast IT hiring trends in the second half of 2016. The data was collected from 2,500 phone interviews with CIOs. John Reed, senior executive director of Robert Half Technology, said that many organizations are getting the go-ahead on new technology projects, which is leading to more hires, but they are still running into problems. "Technology leaders continue to struggle to find highly skilled talent in a market with low unemployment," Reed said. "They seek IT professionals with specialized skills, especially in the areas of cloud computing, data analytics, mobile strategies and cybersecurity."


IT talent biggest roadblock to digital transformation

When looking at hiring for new and in-demand skills, you might first want to look within your own workforce and see if there is an employee who could be trained in that area, says Holland. Another options, he says, to look to at third-party services "who are selling a full solution without the need to unpack what specific skills are necessary." ... Mark Troester, vice president of Solutions Marketing at software provider Progress, hiring for digital transformation is about striking a balance between skills. "From a leadership perspective, look for individuals that live in the middle of business and technology -- individuals that are entrepreneurial in spirit and have the ability to apply technology in new and creative ways. If that skillset is lacking then you may need to go outside the organization," he says.


Power of Teamwork In Data Science

Data science can be summarized as the interplay of data, statistics, technology and business. So by default, doing data science is about collaboration, teamwork and combining different skill sets. It does include but is not limited to statistics and mathematics. It would also include skills like computer science, machine learning, industry expertise (banking, insurance, retail etc.) and expertise on functional domains like sales, customer service or marketing, communication and presentation skills and last but not least, data visualization. A wide set of skills will not necessarily make it easier for organizations to find and recruit data scientists in the war on talent that has already started. My colleague Bhima Auro recently wrote a blog on how organizations can hire talent.



Quote for the day:


"Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." -- Juliean Smith


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