Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

December 09, 2012

Data Center Operations And Its 10 Biggest Mistakes
For better advantage, companies must ensure their data center operation programs are fully successful and functional. This should be done by using clearly articulated operational requirements and by using design maps that can provide benefits, depending upon the profile of the data center.

Pushing Nginx to its limit with Lua
Lua is a scripting language. Specifically, it is a full-featured multi-paradigm language with a simple syntax and semantics that resemble JavaScript or Scheme. Lua also has an interesting story to it, as it is one of the only languages from an emerging country that has had worldwide impact.

Calculating Metrics and Searching with a CodeDOM (Part 8)

This article is about basic analysis of code in a codeDOM, such as calculating metrics on it and searching it. Sources are included. This is Part 8 of a series on codeDOMs. In the previous parts, Ken has discussed “CodeDOMs”, provided a C# codeDOM, a WPF UI and IDE, a C# parser, solution/project codeDOM classes, covered loading type metadata, and handled resolving symbolic references in a codeDOM.

Futuristic handcuffs would administer shocks, drugs
A patent for next-generation handcuffs offers a future in which the detained can be zapped directly from their restraints, and even injected with a medication, sedative, irritant, paralytic, or other fine substance.

Measuring Performance of Enterprise Architecture
Going by the premise, what is not measured does not get managed, it is important to identify the measurable objectives for the Architecture function itself, so that it is well managed and its contribution to the success of the organization is established. While measurement of Architectural activities is difficult, COBIT suggests a set of measurable outcomes and performance measures

Architectural Decisions
For those aspiring to achieve the VCDX certification, the information in this section should help you fully understand & justify your decisions. Being able to justify your decisions is a critical component of creating solid architecture, and an important thing to remember for your VCDX preparation, and especially your defense!

'Eurograbber' Online Banking Scam Netted $47 Million
Over the past year, about 30,000 European banking customers were robbed of about 36 million euros -- that's about $47 million -- in an online banking scam that worked by exploiting mobile devices, according to security firms that stumbled into the operation.

Google Prepares To Bring Its Smart Assistant "Google Now" To Any Device
The move would make Googe Now, which is currently only available on Android phones using the Jelly Bean version of the operating system, more widely available, and could eventually succeed in changing the way people use Google.

Cloud Fabric From GreenButton, A Multi-Cloud Management Platform
The platform features multi-cloud management with a single tool set, known as Mission Control, and an easy to use software developer kit (SDK), including a development emulator for easy enablement of workloads. Mission Control includes commercial features around billing, reporting with organizational control and chargeback.

Try Meditation to Strengthen Your Resilience
Unless you find solid footing in your consistent, unshakable Self, you'll be thrown off balance and lose your way. You'll change your mind at the first resistance. You'll become overconfident when praise abounds. And you'll make poor decisions, just to feel better.

Quote for the day:

"Success is the result of good judgement, which is the result of experience & experience is often the result of bad judgement" --@tonyrobbins

December 08, 2012

Designing for High Availability in the Cloud
The topic of availability is typically broached only in discussions regarding DDOS attacks or Hackvitism. But more and more of the security professionals I have been talking to lately have been interested in topics related to reliability and availability; as their organizations adopt cloud services, more people seem to be interested in these topics.

What Leaders Must Do, Know & “Be”
One way to look at leadership is through a three-part frame: What leaders must Do, Know and Be. At the intersection of these three components, the shaded area, is excellence. It’s where action, feeling and thinking are aligned and integrated into a consistent whole.

The most practical, creative ways to use NFC with your Android device
If you think NFC (Near Field Communication) is only good for Google Wallet or MasterCard PayPass, think again. With the growing number of NFC-equipped phones, NFC tags are becoming an increasingly popular way to take advantage of this sprouting technology. Thing is, Android users aren't quite sure what to do with them.

Answer to six questions on Enterprise Disorders (videos)
Interestingly, “Enterprises” have existed much before the discovery of the framework. Zachman Framework of Enterprise Architecture, is bringing much-needed predictability in the creation, evolution and life cycle management of the “Enterprise.” That’s reason why Zachman Framework is also known as “Periodic Table for the Enterprise.”

Big Data, EHR Driving Healthcare IT Innovation
Gartner says that EHR adoption is a "trigger" for data analytics, improved care management and other innovations. However, these initiatives will take time, the analyst firm notes in a recent report, "Hype Cycle for Healthcare Provider Applications and Systems."

Drive More Value from Your IT Assets
White Paper sponsored by ServiceNow - You can make your life simpler when you automate your entire IT Asset Management (ITAM) lifecycle and Software Asset Management (SAM) in one system of record. You'll also reduce costs, eliminate wasted resources, improve compliance, mitigate security risks, and drive standardization.

To Change the Culture, Stop Trying to "Change the Culture"
We've found that managers get better results when they start with a few smaller successes, which then provide a basis for expanding. Start with one problem — or a few. Get some people to plan a couple of modest experiments to make progress on that issue, with guidance on the kinds of innovation you'd like to see.

Integrate information governance policy for corporate strategy success
The further into the future an organization extends its strategic planning, the more unanticipated risks it's likely to encounter. That's why strategic planning and execution must be an exercise steeped in risk management, rather than tightly focused on activities: The more competence the organization builds in tracking assumptions and managing risk, the better it will execute its overarching strategy without unexpected speed bumps.

True Quality Assurance in an Agile World
Quality Assurance is not just about testing a system. The role of QA on an agile team is much greater than that, elevating the QA engineer to a god among men.

CIOs As Rainmakers: The New Meme, Deconstructed
Pundits called that practice "aligning IT with the business" until, starved for new material, they decided that this was no longer enough. Trust me: The "new rainmaker" will also fall out of fashion. But moving in concert with the business and helping sales, marketing and other departments achieve objectives like making money -- also known as helping the organization achieve critical goals -- will never fall out of fashion.

Quote for the day:

"Truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking." -- Malcolm Gladwell

December 07, 2012

Enterprise Data Governance: A Practical Approach to Information Quality Management
It becomes difficult to maintain and manage data without policies, strategies and dedicated efforts by the team across business functions. Data governance seeks to solve these problems, through information policies, data rules, guidelines for managing key data elements and assigning roles for accountabilities and responsibilities.

Finding The Right Blend: Sometimes Pure Agile Isn’t The Way To Go
Agile project managers need to be prepared to work in cooperation with non-Agile project managers, teams that employ traditional methods, and organizations that have resources scattered around the globe. ... Agile adoption doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing, either-or scenario. The very incremental, iterative concepts that Agile project managers (PMs) apply to their projects can also be applied to Agile adoption.

Gary Hamel On Innovating Innovation

Any innovation effort that doesn’t start by acknowledging that innovation itself is deeply counter-cultural. We’re never going to build a truly innovative company without a gene-replacement therapy. Without that you’re going fail.

SwiftKey Flow review: The Android keyboard you've been waiting for
The new beta version of the popular SwiftKey keyboard released this morning. SwiftKey Flow adds support for gesture-based typing, which means you can type by sliding your finger from one key to another without lifting it off the screen.

Three Examples of New Process Strategy
There are three fundamental ways that companies can improve their processes in the coming decade: (1) expand the scope of work managed by a company to include customers, suppliers, and partners; (2) target the increasing amount of knowledge work; and (3) reduce cycle times to durations previously considered impossible

Telecom NZ trials 4G services
The company announced yesterday that there will be a trial of 4G in the 2.6GHz spectrum band with Huawei in the North Shore, Auckland, while Alcatel-Lucent will run a trial in Lower Hutt, Wellington, on the same spectrum band. In Hawke's Bay, Alcatel-Lucent will also conduct a trial of LTE in the 700MHz spectrum, and in Rotorua, Huawei will trial LTE in the 1800MHz and 2.6GHz spectrum bands.

Don’t Let BYOD Backfire on Your Business
BYOD policies could easily backfire on businesses, unless closely monitored to maintain benefits for employees and the company. Jeff Jones recently wrote a 3-part series on the Microsoft Security Blog called Motivations, Risks and Rewards of the BYOD Trend that examined what the BYOD trend is and then looked at it from the perspective of employees and the perspective of organizations.

.NET 4.5 TypeInfo Reflection
The .NET 4.5 Framework includes some changes to the typical reflection use cases. Most importantly, the Type object has been split into two separate classes: Type and TypeInfo. A TypeInfo instance contains the definition for a Type, and a Type now contains only reference data.

Growth in Cloud Computing to Shape 2013 Security Trends
It's the time when predictions for the new year run high, and when it comes to IT security, Gartner analysts are predicting that 2013 is going to be about expansion of cloud computing and the struggle by the enterprise to achieve appropriate security for it.

Google kills off free Google Apps offering
In an announcement on the company's Google Enterprise blog today, Google Director of Product Management for Google Apps Clay Bavor said that businesses were too quickly outgrowing the free version of Google Apps, and asking for or moving to paid premium accounts. Instead of a free, limited-user version of Google Apps and the paid premium-based version, Google will now only offer the subscription version.

Quote for the day:

"Creativity is the greatest expression of liberty." -- Bryant H. McGill

December 06, 2012

CSA Security Guidance for Mobile Devices

"To date, the majority of malicious code distributed for Android has been disseminated through third-party app stores, predominately in Asia," according to the report. "Most of the malware distributed through third-party stores has been designed to steal data from the host device." Check out The CSA's recently released assessment and threat report on the state of mobile computing.

5 things a tech lead can do that a Project Manager cannot
As friends would banter, we started talking about how our different roles give us different flexibilities and constraints in projects. I really enjoyed the perspective and though I’d share the things that we thought a tech lead can get away with that a Project Manager cannot.

Are IT Roles Changing?
Technology companies were no longer marketing to IT folks. Instead, they found a larger crowd that can immediately consume their product using personal credit cards and they did not have to wait for weeks and months for us to make those large purchases. Borne out of that movement was the consumerization of IT.

Make Windows 8 boot straight to the desktop
Would you prefer to have Windows 8 bypass the Start Screen and boot straight to the desktop? If so, you can do so using a technique that takes advantage of a feature that is built right into the operating system - no third-party tools required. All you have to do is create a specially configured task that is scheduled to run at log on.

12 Essential Windows 8 Keyboard Shortcuts
Get over it. Windows 8 is different from Windows 7, which means learning new stuff including keyboard shortcuts that can save valuable time vs accomplishing the same thing using touchscreen commands. Here are a dozen of the most useful ones:

Six step methodology for architecting for public clouds
Cloud computing platforms are different from physical and virtualized computing platforms. It is essential to understand the limitation and opportunities while creating solutions for a cloud environment. It also entails the need to look again at architecting methodology. Here we highlight steps you can follow while architecting for public cloud deployment.

Foxtel wants UK-style block on piracy websites
Foxtel, the pay TV network that is owned by Telstra and News Limited, said in its submission (PDF) to the ALRC's review of copyright law that the film studios should be able to go to court and force internet service providers (ISPs) to block specific websites that host infringing content.

PCI validation: Requirements for merchants covered by PCI DSS
Organizations subject to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) must meet a laundry list of PCI validation requirements on a regular basis to certify its compliance to their merchant banks. These requirements include the need for periodic reports on compliance (ROCs), vulnerability scans, penetration testing and Web application testing.

Understanding Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) 4.5
Mohammed Halabi's aim in this article is to explain the “why” and the “what” rather than the “how”. Once you understand that, the “how” becomes really simple. This article does not assume pre-knowledge of the topics of federation, claims, and WIF so it’s suited for beginners. However, he thinks that also mid-level knowledge audience will also benefit from it.

Leadership Caffeine-Encourage Rethinking to Keep Your Team Sharp
The most effective leaders in today’s ever-changing world cultivate an environment where anything resembling routine reflects an unproductive state of “running in place.” They challenge their team members to constantly “rethink” their assumptions and approaches and to try on new ideas in search of that competitive edge or performance break-through.

Why does a balanced score card matter?
The essence of the balanced scorecard is to translate the vision into goals, communicating and linking the vision with employees and customers, obtaining feedback and learning from the information, evaluating the internal business processes and then conducting business planning to meet the needs of the customer.

Quote for the day:

"Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing." -- Harriet Braiker

December 05, 2012

Amazon Seeks to Disrupt Datacenter Economics

"The economics of what we're doing are extremely disruptive for old guard technology companies," said Andy Jassy, senior VP of Amazon Web Services, in yesterday's opening keynote address. "These are companies that have lived on 60 to 80 percent gross margins for many, many years, and in fact they set expectations that that's what they are doing. This is what they communicate externally."

SMS Vulnerability in Twitter, Facebook and Venmo
Twitter users with SMS enabled are vulnerable to an attack that allows anyone to post to their account. The attacker only needs knowledge of the mobile number associated with a target’s Twitter account. Messages can then be sent to Twitter with the source number spoofed.

Mobile is eating the world
The world today is focusing on the software that increasingly powers everything thanks to ubiquitous broadband and mobile connectivity, and the barriers to creating applications that leverage the connection to the billions strong digital population of the planet have never been lower.

9 Ways to Sell Your IT Outsourcing Plan to the CFO
"The challenge is that the CIO team often doesn't speak the same language as the CFO team," says Daniel Masur, a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Mayer Brown. "They don't speak in the same terms. They don't use the same concepts. And, as a result, they just talk past each other."

EMC and VMware spin out big data/cloud division
VMware and EMC today confirmed rumors that have been circulating for weeks that it would spin out its big data and platform as a service (PaaS) cloud products into a new division within the company named Pivotal Initiative, which will be led by former VMware chief Paul Maritz (pictured).

Dev Disasters -- Why They Happen, How to Overcome Them
Whatever the reason, mistakes are something everyone makes. What separates the everyday developer from the truly outstanding one is not the mistake -- it's what's learned from the mistake, and whether those lessons are applied to future projects.

Talend Adds Support for NoSQL Databases and Hadoop Profiling
Talend 5.2 adds the capability to profile Hadoop big data, or gauge the quality and condition of various forms of data stored across an enterprise in an effort to reduce costly data duplication, incompleteness and inconsistency.

Choosing the Right Key Performance Indicators for Data Centers
A September survey of 5,000 data center professionals my company conducted highlighted the metrics that these professionals deal with daily. ... The responses to these straightforward questions indicated a lack of clarity into vital data center performance metrics. What are these issues and their associated metrics for optimal performance?

More IT Pros Going Independent by Choice
There are nearly 17 million independent workers in the U.S., according to a recent MBO Partners study. This number is expected to grow to a whopping 50 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020, according to the study. The likely culprit has been the poor economy but OnForce's findings challenge that notion.

IETF vs. ITU: Internet Standards Face-Off
A battle is brewing between two standards bodies - the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) - over which group will be the primary source of the underlying communications protocols that allow the Internet to operate in the future.

How to Create an Innovation Ecosystem
If your organization relies heavily on individual innovation, consider creating your own innovation reef, where creative problem-solving experts develop a network of individuals skilled in bringing new ideas to market. There are three essential elements to creating this in your company:

Quote for the day:

"Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today." -- Benjamin Franklin

December 04, 2012

Hype, “Big Data”, and Towards a More Pragmatic Analytics
Sadly, many such (Big Data) initiatives are doomed to failure. Many companies will task IT with coming up with a big data initiative, but won’t really involve the business at all. Many of these cases will result in IT going out and buying a product, installing it on desktops (or perhaps even tablets), and subsequently declaring victory.

Interview and Book Review: NoSQL Distilled
NoSQL Distilled, authored by Pramod Sadalage and Martin Fowler, covers NoSQL databases as well as the concept of Polyglot Persistence that is becoming popular with the emergence of various NoSQL data stores. They cover the data models supported by NoSQL data stores like Aggregate Data Models including Key Value, Document, and Column-Family Stores. They also discuss the Relationships concept and Graph Databases that support the relationships between data entities.

Clueless officials hamper cybersecurity law-making
Governments need to determine the purpose of any proposed cybersecurity law and what problems it is supposed to address before approving the legislation. Those that fail to do so will experience backlash from their citizens, which is something countries such as the Philippines and India are going through.

Web to Windows 8: Security
Web developers transitioning from the browser to Windows Store apps bring certain habits with them. While Web developers can tap in to their existing knowledge of JavaScript, some capabilities are new and require a shift in thinking. Security is one such fundamental difference.

Attackers can abuse Yahoo developer feature to steal user emails, other data
Attackers can read emails, contacts and other private data from the accounts of Yahoo users who visit a malicious page by abusing a feature present on Yahoo's Developer Network website, says an independent security researcher.

Your Front-Line Employees are Your Brand!
Companies spend a great deal of time and money building advertising campaigns, social media strategies, and other promotional vehicles to build brand equity. For many firms, though, their front-line employees represent the most significant way that customers experience the brand. Those employees become crucial ambassadors for the brand.

Don’t Chase Everything That Shines
This interview with Sandra L. Kurtzig, chairwoman and C.E.O.of Kenandy, a software management firm based in Redwood City, Calif., was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Why The Time is Right for MapReduce Design Patterns
At this point users have had time to determine what works well and what does not. I could have come up with a bunch of patterns that nobody has ever used before, but there would be no point to it. With a more mature community of experts that has repeatedly identified and solved problems, the most common solutions have developed into design patterns.

Inside Facebook’s North Carolina Data Center
Facebook has built two enormous data centers here to power its growing Internet infrastructure. The two-story structures each span more than 300,000 square feet. In an area dotted with modest restaurants and stores, the server farms resemble aircraft carriers dropped onto the landscape.

4 Reasons Why You Should Not Use Free Email Hosted Outside India
There could be grave risks involved in taking for granted the use of free email services, especially those hosted outside India. Here PCQuest give four reasons why you should choose a paid email provider

Quote for the day:

"Some people change their ways when they see the light; others when they feel the heat" -- Caroline Schoeder

December 03, 2012

Innovative CIOs Show How to Make Money With IT
A select few CIOs are generating cold hard cash through innovation and collaboration. We rounded up examples of CIOs who generate revenue with IT, either by boosting sales or developing a product or service sold externally.

iiNet: copyright law hampering ISPs
Australia's copyright law and the alleged draft text from the Intellectual Property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement limit the ability of internet service providers (ISPs) to cache content locally, according to iiNet. iiNet estimated that caching can reduce transmission overheads to 1 percent of what they would otherwise be.

Self-healing flash for infinite life
NAND flash is a wearing resource - like tires on a car - which creates many problems for high duty cycle storage. But a Taiwanese manufacturer demonstrates how to overcome that limit. Will it fly in the marketplace?

Enterprise Software is Not Gangnam Style
The entire face of enterprise software now has to look, feel and act differently; the user interface must become more “consumerish.” And that’s where the sex and sizzle will come in. Enterprise software will be forced to look like a game or other smartphone apps. It must be intuitive; there can’t be a boatload of documentation behind it. It must be built so that employees intuitively know how to use it.

Service Locator Pattern
Amy has some pretty strong feelings about the use of the Service Locator pattern in the software we build. They go along the lines of ‘why would you ever use it?’ and possibly (and somewhat mellow dramatically) rocking slowly backwards and forth in the corner of the shower after being exposed to it. So to ease her pain, and perhaps yours, She has compiled an explanation of why she feel so intolerant toward this pattern.

EU countries should adopt UK's business-friendly approach to 'big data' and anonymisation
The UK's privacy watchdog has taken a major step towards enabling businesses to reap greater rewards from 'big data' processing, but conflicting views within the EU threaten that pragmatic approach.

The Best and the Worst of MDM Practices
It’s called “best version of the truth” to reflect the fact you are often picking the best values from individual cells across duplicate records, explained fellow presenter and Informatica representative Ravi Shankar. Shankar is responsible for product and technical marketing activities for master data management (MDM) as part of the data quality business unit at Informatica.

Big Data: A Blessing and A Curse
Big data can also be a curse if the cleaning (deleting) technologies are not considered as part of the Super Software operation. In my previous post, “information pollution”, I have emphasized the danger of uncontrollable growth of information which is the invisible devil in information age.

Mysterious google two step authentication - in debug
I hope you have enabled your google account for two step authentication? If not -I strongly recommend to do so. Do you know the nature of the code generated by Google Authenticator? There are no myth here - this is just implementation of RFC6238. And even more - you can add new level of security to your application very easy without need to use some monstrous security library.

HTTP 2.0 First Draft Published
The editors of the HTTP specification have published an initial draft of v2 which is a straight copy of SPDY and will be used as a base for diffs going forward. Many changes are expected to be done like adding new features, removing existing ones, changing the bytes on the wire, etc. A draft ready for test implementations is expected to be published early next year.

Quotes for the day:

"Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow" -- Robert Kiyosaki

"I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill." -- Edward Appleton

December 02, 2012

Resources for Android App Development
If you develop Android based application design and development you should refer the Android design guidelines authored by the official Android user experience (UX) team. It provides the basic principles to be followed by developers and specific guidelines related to devices and displays, themes, touch interface, metrics and grids, typography, color, iconography including the rules for writing user interface prompts.

BPM vs. BPMS: How To Think Big and Act Small
Even with the best-of-breed BPMS, most large businesses struggle to identify current processes and model them towards some desired end-state. Users perceive BPMS to be restrictive and the offered participation in the governance as a smoke screen to hide that the ROI is mostly achieved through manpower reductions.

Amazon-Google cloud price war heats up
The cloud pricing wars are heating up, and today it's Google -- again -- putting on the pressure. The search giant, which has been growing its rentable cloud offerings, today said in a blog post that it's lowering cloud pricing by an additional 10 percent on top of the over 20 percent cut it unveiled earlier this week. In case math is a little tough for any of you, that brings the total price reduction to over 30 percent. Not too shabby.

Play YouTube videos in VLC
As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, there are lots of benefits to watching YouTube videos in VLC. For starters, you can skip any ads that might play before videos without needing to use a browser extension. Second, you can change the playback speed of videos, which can help if you're trying to learn something new, like a dance.

NHook - A .NET debugger API for x86

The problem is that I love my comfortable .NET world, so I thought “Hey, what if all of these great tool were available within a nice and friendly .NET API ?” so the this API is my response to this question. Not everything is implemented yet, but that’s the first bits. For now it only support x86 programs.

No matter which way you slice it, RIM is still toast
It looks as if some savvy investors are betting that RIM is going to fight back next year and improve sales from their painful lows in 2011. It wouldn't be that hard, especially with a new product launching. But if anybody is betting on RIM's long-term prospects, they're clearly not looking at the big picture.

Make a Data Confidence Index Part of your BI Architecture
No large, global, heterogeneous, multi-business- and product-line enterprise can ever hope to clean up all of its data - it's always a continuous journey. The key is knowing what data sources feed your BI applications and how confident you are about the accuracy of data coming from each source.

Big Data Is Not the New Oil
One of the places where we'll have to tread most carefully — another place where our data/oil model can be useful — is in the realm of personal data. A great deal of the profit that is being made right now in the data world is being made through the use of human-generated information.

Lawsuit Possible in NASA Laptop Theft
Some members of the group were part of a lawsuit filed against NASA five years ago over what they claimed were overly intrusive background checks the agency was conducting in connection with a mandatory federal smart card credentialing program.

Instacompute – CentOS – MySQL
Check out Sridhar's blog detailing the installation and setting up MySQL on CentOS, which according to him is already installed and is very easy to install again, if you want to do so.

Quotes for the day:

"Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success." -- Napoleon Hill

"The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success." -- Irving Berlin

December 01, 2012

On Technology, Boards Need to Get More Sophisticated
One way we've found to improve this dialog is to ensure CIOs engage with directors outside the boardroom. One CIO, for example, has monthly conversations with a tech-savvy board member. Their meetings, to which the CIO often brings members of his own team, also benefit IT. The CIO can showcase his or her bench strength, while expanding the IT team's awareness of the business impact and top-management issues.

Get Ready For Gigabit Wi-Fi
To meet our ever-growing need for speed, the IEEE is working on Enhancements for Very High Throughput for operation in bands below 6 GHz, commonly known as the 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. Wi-Fi certified products based on a draft of this standard will likely emerge by mid-2013, boosting maximum data rates above 1 Gbps. By late 2014 or early 2015, products aligned with the final 11ac standard will nudge the Wi-Fi speed limit closer to 7 Gbps.

4 top trends that will shape digital health
This was a big year for digital health transformation, especially for advances in personalized and connected care. Looking back at 2012, these are the four trends that I think will ultimately have the greatest impact on the future.

Mobile browser vulnerability lets hackers steal cloud computing time
A novel technique based on MapReduce could let hackers hijack computing resources used by cloud-based mobile browsers and use them anonymously, according to security researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon.

I.B.M. and Ohio State University to Open Center for Big Data
In an interview, Michael Rhodin, an I.B.M. senior vice president, said the impetus for the new center began with the concerns of local clients, including Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Health, Huntington Bank and The Limited. “They told us they were increasingly spending around business analytics and mathematics, and that those skills were hard to find,” Mr. Rhodin said.

5 Habits of Highly Effective Communicators
It’s no secret that good leaders are also good communicators. And the best leaders have learned that effective communication is as much about authenticity as the words they speak and write. Indeed, communication and leadership are inextricably tied. How can you galvanize, inspire or guide others if you don’t communicate in a clear, credible, authentic way?

Microsoft's 'Cloud OS' Era Means a Return to License Land
Microsoft threw another wrench in the effort to define cloud computing when it ushered in its Cloud OS era with Windows Server 2012. But for partners, the new definition means that for once, they won't have to change as much as they thought.

The mystery of the disappearing Android developer
After 17 months of virtual silence, Ander Webbs emerged from the shadows this fall and released a new version of ADWLauncher. He's hoping the newly updated 4.x-level version of his program can reclaim its glory and compete with current-day frontrunners like Nova and Apex Launcher.

Is your datacenter disposable?
Both IT and facilities have to learn a valuable lesson in when to let go. IT groups threatened by the cloud are learning to integrate cloud-based development and services into their planning. Facilities related to IT can no longer be focused strictly on building and infrastructure maintenance and development, and will need to look outside the box (literally) for things that will improve their response time to business changes.

New strategies now needed to simplify data backup and protection
Backup of enterprise information and associated data protection are fragmented, complex, and inefficient. But new approaches are helping to simplify the data-protection process, keep costs in check, and improve recovery speed and confidence.

Quote for the day:

"If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business." -- B. C. Forbes

November 30, 2012

The CIO and CMO: An Integrated Approach
Technology now underpins and shapes the entire customer experience, from the delivery of marketing campaigns to the aggregation of analytics and insights. The amount of raw consumer data now available is a major challenge for today’s CMOs; making sense of it, while trying to justify their marketing spend to guarantee ROI, is even harder – especially without a strong bond to the CIO.

3 steps to HIPAA security in the cloud
The default response for those charged with HIPAA security is to say ‘no’ to cloud computing. There is a clear need, however, to rethink the role of cloud computing by those charged with HIPAA security. The efficiencies that can be gained by leveraging public, private, and hybrid clouds are just too compelling.

Citrix Foresees the Future
After establishing that virtualization has had a big impact on datacenter infrastructures, ... the company gets down with some virtual networking comments i.e. dynamic networks are the way to go as we constantly redefine traffic flow for individual users and VMs. As Citrix puts it, "The stage will be set in 2013 for SDN to become the dominant form of networking."

New Kendo UI Framework for Java Developers
Developer tools and solutions provider Telerik has released a new version of its framework for building applications and Web sites with HTML5 and JavaScript that supports Java. This version, the third release of the framework, introduces Java server-side wrappers, which make it possible for devs to use their existing JavaServer Pages (JSP) coding skills.

10 Hot IT Jobs for 2013
... beyond big data, the demand for IT employees keeps growing as well.According to Robert Half Technology, the pool of available talent continues to shrink, driving average salaries up as much as 9 percent from 2012. Here are 10 hot IT jobs predicted for 2013 and beyond

How Agile solves traditional pitfalls of IT Outsourcing
It is a misconception that agile IT cannot be outsourced. In fact, agile practices solve all the listed arguments against outsourcing. It is important to note that agile is not just about incremental deliveries, agile teams engineer software in a different way as compared to traditional software engineering practices.

Adidas Heads to the Cloud to Control IT Spending
Seeking to improve internal audit compliance and streamline spending, Bader evaluated several spending-management solutions and decided on Coupa for its multinational support, total cost of ownership, integration with the ERP system, and capacity for customization.

Three Mistakes to Avoid in your Business Intelligence Project
A Gartner study in 2005 reported that more than half of BI projects fail. Unfortunately, the situation hasn't improved since that survey was taken. A more recent Kognitio survey shows that two-thirds of businesses still fail to receive value out of the BI system they install.

Directory: Big data vendors in Asia
Data analytics isn't new, but the number of companies offering big data solutions has certainly risen in recent years. To help IT professionals and technology decision-makers navigate the big data landscape, ZDNet editors have compiled a shortlist of vendors in the Asia region. This is not a paid listing, nor is it an exhaustive list.

Big data projects make it to the drawing board, but no further
In a poll of TechRepublic’s exclusive CIO Jury, when asked “Does your organisation have big data as part of your budget and plans for 2013?” the response was no by a margin of eight to four, suggesting that big data still has a way to go to win over CIOs. In particular, CIOs seem reluctant to use the term ‘big data’ even if they have projects planned to look at unstructured data.

Quote for the day:

"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." -- Robert Collier