Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

January 20, 2013

The secret to making risk management a profit maximizer
Bank Leumi has implemented four separate new systems specifically to manage risk. However, perhaps the most important change in our institution is cultural – recognizing and responding to the nature of risk. For example, traditionally, many banks have defined their risk exposure in terms of the upper limit of loan volume – how much money did they give to that group or that sector or that geography?

The Year Ahead in Enterprise Software, Services M&A
Amidst steady revenues and innovation, the enterprise software and services sector is also privy to regular buyouts and mergers. In its recent annual review of industry mergers and acquisitions, advisory Berkery Noyes noted a drop in transaction values, though with an asterisk of bustling growth in certain areas.Information-Management.com asked for a view of the year ahead in vendor consolidation and buyout from Berkery’s CIO Jim Berkery and Managing Director Mary Jo Zandy.

The all new 2013 overview of CEMMethod
In this presentation, Steve Towers, BP Group walks you through the main features of CEMMethod an evolution in BPM thinking and practice leading to Outside In. You may regard this as the WHAT of the method. Accessing the HOW and associated resources is also discussed at the end of this overview.

Make A Point or A Difference – It’s Your Decision
Your goal is to influence. Not make a point. Your actions will speak much louder than your words (points). You can take a stand or find a common cause to unify behind. Great leaders and organizations find a common cause or greater purpose. People will get behind and rally for a greater purpose. They don’t need another point!

YouTube Dynamic AJAX / JSON Search API Demo
YouTube offers various APIs to allow websites to do pretty much anything they could otherwise do on the YouTube site. You can search for videos on YouTube from your site, upload videos, get a user's favorites, the "featured videos", and the list goes on. This article shows how to search dynamically for YouTube videos (by levereging the JSONP technique), parse the JSON response metadata to get attributes such as play count, rating of a video, etc. This site has a live demo of dynamic search and embedded player.

Tech hotshots: The rise of the UX expert
In a mobile application, it is better to cleanly provide the 20 most important pieces of information than force people to navigate through 100 that they might never use. "We learned that you have to drop completeness in the name of usefulness." ... Developers with user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) expertise are hot these days, according to Shane Bernstein, managing director of QConnects, a Culver City, Calif.-based digital recruitment firm.

Do you need to uninstall Java to be safe from its vulnerabilities?
The vast majority of Java's security problems revolve around the use of the Java plug-in. While the vulnerabilities ultimately exist in the runtime, the plug-in is the avenue that malware developers use to exploit these remotely. You are somehow tricked into loading a Web page that contains a malicious Java applet, which exploits the fault and loads malware on to your system. If you close this off or otherwise manage it, then you will vastly improve the security of your system, and can continue to use Java for other purposes without needing to remove it completely.

Identity Management on a Shoestring
It is neither a conceptual treatment of Identity (for which we would refer the reader to Kim Cameron's excellent work on the Laws of Identity) nor a detailed technical manual on a particular product. It describes a pragmatic and cost-effective architectural approach to implementing IAM within an organisation, based on the experience of the authors. Don't miss to download the free pdf mini book.

The Consequences of Stupid Management Concepts
Many commonly-held management concepts in use today have their roots in what is actually asset management, and are the theoretical children of the old axiom that the ultimate purpose of all management is to “maximize shareholder wealth.” Slavish adherence to the family of management concepts that are derived from this axiom lead to policies and tactics that are monumentally stupid, and do a lot more damage than just to an organization’s bottom line.

How to Define, Build, and Obtain Cloud Skills for Your Enterprise
The core problem is that we’ve yet to define what “cloud-related jobs” are, and most hiring managers have no clue how to write the job descriptions as of yet. This is due largely to the fact that most enterprises do not yet have cloud computing strategies in place. Thus, if you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t plan on how you’re going to get there.

Quotes for the day:

"The twin killers of success are impatience & greed." -- Jim Rohn

"Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

January 19, 2013

ETL to ELT Conversion Testing in Data Warehouse Engagements
The concept of ELT data warehouse technology came into existence because of the high business demand for error-free, high-quality input data in data warehouse systems. Here the approach is bottom-up. The data is initially extracted to a staging area, where the business rule and integrity checks are performed. With ELT, the load and transformation processes are decoupled from each other.

Get a free IT or corporate compliance plan template for assessing risk
SearchCompliance.com has scoured the Web for free IT and corporate compliance plan templates and downloads for organizations looking to shore up their compliance strategies.While not all specifically aimed at the IT organization, they provide sound guidelines for building a targeted corporate compliance plan, as well as ensuring regulatory compliance at all levels of the enterprise.

Microsoft's December Azure outage: What went wrong?
Some of the nodes didn't have node protection turned on. The monitoring system for detecting this kind of problem had a defect, resulting in no alarms or escalation. On top of this, a transition to a new primary node triggered a reaction that led to an incorrect formatting of other nodes. Normally, according to the post, Azure should have survived the simultaneous failure of two nodes of data within a stamp, as the system keeps three copies of data spread across three separate fault domains.

The problem with a Lean Startup: the Minimum Viable Product.
When most people hear the concept of Lean Startup, they think bootstrap startup, ya know lean on funding. While this isn’t always true it’s suprisingly still prevelant thinking. Perhaps Eric Ries should have done an MVP of the movement’s name and received some user feedback on it before writing the book.

Are e-visits as good as office appointments?
"All over the country, more and more of these e-visits are taking place," said Dr. James Rohrer, a family medicine doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who has studied online care. Insurance companies believe e-visits will save money, he said. For patients, the biggest benefit is convenience - including that they don't have to schedule the appointment beforehand.

Create sacred space as a way of honoring yourself and others
Consider slowing down enough to honor yourself and those who follow you. Begin this new year with a way to revere and respect others. Observe those times that are calling you to be fully present in order to deepen relationships within the sacred space you’ve created. Take a deep breath (it’s amazing what a little extra oxygen can do), and consider how you can devote some time for yourself or others in ways that make the space you occupy (alone or together with others) sacred.

Cybersecurity to be part of India's college, university curriculum
Cybersecurity is set to be introduced as a subject in universities and technical colleges in keeping with the recommendations of a task force on National Security System. University Grants Commission (UGC) has written to all the vice chancellors in this respect, asking them to introduce the subject both at under-graduate and post-graduate levels, sources said.

Apache Isis: Java Framework for Domain-Driven Design
Apache Isis works using convention-over-configuration where developers write POJO domain objects following a set of conventions and annotations. These are then interpreted by the Isis framework, which then takes care of presentation, security and persistence. Apache Isis can generate a representation of the domain model, at runtime, as a web application or as a RESTful API following the Restful Objects specification.

Security vendors failing to tackle mobile malware, say CISOs
Malware is still the biggest threat to mobile security, but most mobile device management (MDM) strategies tend to focus on securing the physical device in case of loss of theft, rather than protecting from cyber threats, according to Peter Gibbons, head of Information Security at Network Rail.

Korea’s Malware Infection Rate Increases Six-fold in Six Months
Data from the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 13 indicates that Korea’s malware infection rate (Computers Cleaned per Mille or CCM) increased 6.3 times during the first half of 2012. During this period the number of systems cleaned per 1,000 systems scanned by the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) in Korea increased from 11.1 in the fourth quarter of 2011 (4Q11) to 70.4 in the second quarter (2Q12) of 2012.

Quote for the day:

"People are persuaded by reason, but moved by emotion; the leader must both persuade them and move them." -- Richard M. Nixon

January 18, 2013

Business architecture takes the fore in application portfolio analysis
Experts say that a shift to business-focused application portfolio management is currently under way. As part of that shift, business architecture is taking the forefront in application portfolio analysis. Such business architecture techniques as activity and business process models are used to align the strategic objectives and tactical demands of the enterprise.

Building and Sustaining a Continuous Improvement Program
Regardless of technique or methodology, many companies have not identified specific strategies to accomplish their Continuous Improvement goals. In this article from the Shared Services & Outsourcing Network, learn the six steps to success for Continuous Improvement

4 Tests to determine if you are following Agile development
The answer to the following questions is no longer an outright no: Can agile process scale to a large team size?; Can distributed project team claim to be using agile development?; Can off-shored projects work on agile mode?; and Can agile development co-exist with CMMi? Obviously, to be able to answer “yes” to these question we would need to come up with a process which is different from what you would have followed for a ”small”, “co-located” and “cross-functional” team.

C++ Templates: Not a General Case of Generics
Templates have been part of C++ since its creation. The first C++ compilers performed a translation into plain old C code before starting compilation. Consequently, so did C++ generic logic. Today, C++ compilers skip C in their way to object code, but generic logic is still resolved before compilation.

The Business Analyst Role in Agile Software Development
As companies transition to Agile and Scrum to manage their software development projects, how does this affect the work of business analysts? Nancy Nee, VP Global Product Strategy at ESI International, shares her opinion on the role of business analysts in Agile software development projects and how this approach impacts the requirement gathering activity. She also provides some input on how to handle conflict between stakeholders.

SSDs vs. hard drives vs. hybrids: Which storage tech is right for you?
In times past, choosing the best PC storage option required merely selecting the highest-capacity hard drive one could afford. If only life were still so simple! The fairly recent rise of solid-state drives and hybrid drives (which mix standard hard drives with solid-state memory) have significantly altered the storage landscape, creating a cornucopia of confusing options for the everyday consumer.

2013 Challenges for Developers, Part II: Demand for Multiple Language Skills
By this time last year, the term "polyglot programmer" had entered the IT lexicon, and there was plenty of talk about the strategic advantage of learning to use a wider variety of programming languages, frameworks, databases, interface technologies and other development tools. Last year's strategic advantage may be evolving into this year's survival strategy.

Cloud Computing Users Are Losing Data, Symantec Finds
Cloud computing is a ticket to losing data for two in five companies, a new study finds. "It's really kind of astounding," said Dave Elliott, a cloud marketing manager at storage and security company Symantec (SYMC). The company polled more than 3,200 organizations to gauge hidden costs of the cloud and ways to mitigate problems. "Forty-three percent of respondents have lost data in the cloud and have had to recover from backups," Elliott said.

Global tech giants unite to recruit professionals who can Make IT in Ireland
A number of major tech companies with a base in Ireland have come together to promote Ireland’s booming technology sector and the career opportunities therein through a new website and social media campaign. Despite the country’s economic woes, the tech sector has seen unprecedented growth in recent years, employing 74,000 people directly and some 200,000 people indirectly. This has brought with it increased demand for professionals with skills in tech, business and languages

Cloud security key to BYOD, (ISC)2 study shows
Businesses welcome bring your own device (BYOD) policies for the operational cost savings and user experience, according to the (ISC)2 2013 Global Information Security Workforce Study. At the same time, the study – conducted on behalf of the (ISC)2 Foundation by the analyst firm Frost & Sullivan – shows that information security managers admit companies must do more to understand the security of the technologies behind the trend, particularly cloud-based systems and applications.

Quote for the day:

"It is a simple thing to make things complex, but a complex thing to make things simple" -- Albert Einsteen

January 17, 2013

Integrate information governance policy for corporate strategy success
In short, you need to leverage risk management to build effective policies that ensure data quality. Ask and answer the question, "What could go wrong?" Once you've identified potential snags, explore the probability and impact of such risks, and validate your assumptions to suppress false alarms. Then, look to develop policies to mitigate estimable risks; to support these policies, you need a technical architecture that maintains and promotes accessibility, version control and integration.

RIM gets Visa approval for mobile payments via NFC
The system, called Secure Element Manager (SEM), provides software and server infrastructure in the cloud that is managed full-time globally by RIM, said Geoffrey MacGillivray, senior product manager for NFC services at RIM, in an interview. SEM works with the secure element installed in SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards or the embedded secure element installed in NFC-ready mobile devices.

Malware Fights the Power
A recent report by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (ICS-CERT), a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, announced that both "common and sophisticated malware" had infected the controls of a power generation facility.

Microsoft OEM Windows 8 Device Showcase
Microsoft's U.S. OEM chief Peter Han leads the five-minute walkthrough in a showroom on the Microsoft corporate campus. He runs through some of the best features of some convertibles, tablets and all-in-ones. Models include the Sony VAIO Duo 11, Dell XPS 13, Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13, Toshiba Satellite U945, ASUS VivoBook, ASUS VivoTab RT and HP TouchSmart.

Optimizing “Zero Dark Thirty”
“Anytime you’re trying to simulate dust or water or fire, it hits not only the performance layer but the capacity layer, and both quite hard. It means you’re accumulating terabytes within days because you’re simulating millions or billions of particles every minute,” says Gino Del Rosario, head of technology at Vancouver-based Image Engine.

Forrester survey tries to pinpoint hardest-working CISOs across the world
Do chief information security officers (CISOs) in North America work harder than their security counterparts in Europe? That's the conclusion Forrester Research has reached, saying North American security teams seem to have more responsibilities in terms of what they need to oversee and manage than their peers in the European Union, the research firms stated in its report, "Understand Security and Risk Budgeting for 2013."

Using Microsoft POS for .NET in 2011
This is just a reminder, as this was true back in 2006 too. You’d typically expect to be able to install the peripheral’s driver and then utilize it within your .NET application. However, you also need to install intermediary Common Control Objects. I always end up downloading the CCOs from here.

Stop doing what the vendors tell you, CIOs told
In business, setting priorities is essential: whether you’re a retailer focused on selling at the lowest possible price or a boutique that prizes customer service above all else. The problem with CIOs is they don’t appear to share the singular focus of their organisation. In general corporate IT strategies are largely interchangeable and loaded with generic statements about cost and service levels.

Eich tells how to prevent JavaScript memory leaks
Although JavaScript has automatic memory management, it can have issues with memory "leakage," which can harm program performance. The issue is widely known, but it still is a common failure in JavaScript apps. To help developers, InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill asked JavaScript founder Brendan Eich how to deal with and prevent these memory leaks.

How to Use Big Data to Make Faster and Better Business Decisions
By using new Big Data technologies, organizations can answer questions in seconds rather than days and in days rather than months, Barth says. This acceleration, in turn, allows businesses to answer questions that have resisted analysis, develop test and learn processes that quickly adapt to the market and automate complex workflows.

Quote for the day:
"Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything." --W.Clement Stone

January 16, 2013

Engaging with Infrastructure as a Service providers: Advice for SMBs

SearchCIO-Midmarket.com site editor Wendy Schuchart spoke to Nathan McBride, vice president of IT at AMAG Pharmaceuticals Inc., at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 in Orlando, Fla., about his company's cloud infrastructure strategy. McBride suggests that organizations must perform due diligence and take certain precautions before engaging with Infrastructure as a Service providers.

Java exploit used in Red October cyberespionage attacks, researchers say
The hundreds of government, military and research organizations targeted in a large-scale cyberespionage operation dubbed Red October were not only attacked using malicious Excel and Word documents as previously believed, but also by using Web-based Java exploits, according to researchers from Israeli IT security firm Seculert.

Facebook takes on Google with Graph Search
Graph Search is the social network's newest way for users to make sense of its massive base of 1 billion users, 240 billion photos, and 1 trillion connections. The tool is meant to provide people the answers to their to their questions about people, photos, places, and interests. Zuckerberg said Graph Search is launching to a small number of people today and is available only on the desktop and in English for the time being.

NuoDB launches cloud-friendly database
The CDMS constitutes a "modern superset of a relational database," said NuoDB co-founder and CEO Barry Morris. NuoDB's design principles follow a set of 12 rules for next-generation databases, Morris said. Among them are the ability to run anywhere, elastic scalability, nonstop availability, a single logical database and distributed security, according to the company.

6 tips to make Windows 8 less annoying
Many of the new mouse gestures are particularly irritating if you've got a large desktop display or are trying to use a trackpad. Fortunately, there are ways to tame the OS for use with keyboard and mouse. After a few weeks on a spanking new PC, here are my top tips for making Windows 8 less annoying.

Feds Look to Big Data to Position 'Government as a Platform'
"We are I think at the verge, just at the tipping point of the data economy, both on the big data side ... as well as thinking about government as a platform for value. We're just now starting to see companies founded on government data," US CIO VanRoekel says. "We can greatly impact the lives of every American just by unlocking pieces of data."

Who is influencing IT budgeting and decisions anyway?
Based on the EA survey results from Gartner events in North America and Europe, analysts estimate that in 2012, EA practitioners had a "final decision-making" influence on $331 billion in worldwide enterprise IT spend and a "great deal of influence" on $774 billion in worldwide enterprise IT spending. Overall, EA practitioners had an influence that is either "final decision maker" or "great deal of influence" on $1.1 trillion in worldwide enterprise IT spending.

Data-driven science is a failure of imagination
Data-driven scientists (data miners) such as Rosling believe that data can tell a story, that observation equals information, that the best way towards scientific progress is to collect data, visualize them and analyze them (data miners are not specific about what analyze means exactly). When you listen to Rosling carefully he sometimes makes data equivalent to statistics: a scientist collects statistics.

The 6 pillars when choosing the right mobile application development platform
Adopting a mobile development application platform on an enterprise or any kind of business level isn’t all that different from buying a house or a car on an individual one. ... The ramifications are profound and the decision must be carefully thought out. In virtue of this crucial choice, enterprises and companies who want to adopt a mobile development application platform solution must take into account these fundamental factors:

Microsoft’s Free Security Tools – Microsoft Security Compliance Manager Tool (SCM)

IT Professionals typically leverage Group Policy for a number of reasons but one of its primary benefits is to help manage security for groups of systems and reduce support costs. While the value of Group Policy is clear, maximizing its potential can sometimes be a daunting task. To help ease the management process for Group Policy, Microsoft released a free tool called the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager (SCM).

Overcoming the fear of risk in Enterprise Collaboration
In the supply chain industry there’s something known as failure mode effects analysis — a complicated term but a rather simple concept. The purpose of the model is to systematically identify, anticipate and mitigate any number of risk factors, as well define follow-up actions should the scenarios present themselves.

Quote for the day:

"Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers." -- Anthony Robbins

January 15, 2013

Application Modernization and the Cloud Connection
Modernizing without a plan delivered via a strong migration methodology can be expensive, time-consuming, laborious and challenging on many fronts -- a combination that may not give organizations the return on investment they're seeking. This often leads organizations to delay their modernization efforts -- adding even more risk and cost to the eventual 'doomsday event' which finally forces modernization.

DDN grabs first slab of 100PB storage cloud
Data Direct Networks (DDN) will provide storage for a node of Australia's Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI), a $AUD50m project aimed at creating a pool of storage the nation's researchers can use to house large quantities of data, the better to feed it into the nation's supercomputers and subject it other forms of analysis.

An Easy Guide For Developing and Publishing Apps in Intel AppUp Store for New Ultrabook Devices
So what is the opportunity there in AppUp? This might just be the first question you may ask if you have never worked with Apps or if you happen to be an existing App developer for Apple or Android market. Let me tell you, AppUp is still in it's early stage and can be considered as a start up. Having said that, there are many good things to start with AppUp

Cloud Computing Services in Russia Offer Huge Growth Potential, Finds Frost & Sullivan
"The continuing adoption of cloud services will have a significant impact on both the public and private sectors in Russia. Implementation of the National Cloud Platform will increase the quality of healthcare and government services due to the unification of services and their higher availability via Internet and public universal access points (terminals)," notes Mr Vyatskikh.

Why We Find it Hard to Change Our Behavior
When we look at our behavior we have to understand that there is a thought going on in our heads that is tripping us up. And we have to change that first. Or we’re working on the wrong thing. The question becomes, “What thoughts do I need to change to make my behavior change?” New behavior will automatically follow a change in thinking. One right thought can correct a lot of bad behavior.

Microsoft keeps calm, issues emergency IE update
"It's as ordinary as only Microsoft could make an [out-of-band] release ordinary," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, in an interview via instant messaging. "While it's rare they go out of band, their idea of emergency is still calm and to the letter of the process." And that, said Storms, is a good thing.

Paving the way to cloud security certification is a two-way street
Security and compliance go hand in hand when cloud computing is involved. As cloud consumers, enterprises are responsible for defining security policies, authorizing end-user use and understanding cloud compliance requirements. But all that responsibility doesn't fall solely on enterprise IT.

'There is a need for better dialogue between industry and government'
"If you look at the relative economic scenario across the world, I would say that the India story is still very strong" says Sanket Akerkar, MD, Microsoft India in an interview with Dataquest. He shares his views on a wide range of subjects-from the state of the economy to India's growth prospects, the changing approach to IT outsourcing and the key areas where industry and government can work together. Excerpts

7 Ways You're Wasting Time and Don't Even Know It
Berry realized she needed to get smarter about managing time and making Provident Insurance Agency in Florissant, Mo., run more smoothly. She hired a productivity coach and saw immediate results. If you feel as overwhelmed as Berry did, you may need to rethink how you use your time. Here are seven ways you may be wasting time without even realizing it.

Offshoring has fuelled IT skills crisis, say UK firms
“We all look dreadfully surprised when five years later we need to find an [enterprise] architect. Where do we grow architects from? We grow them from our analysts. Then we realise ‘Ah, we don’t have many of those any more because we shifted them out’.” Harris was commenting on the findings of a report for the forum which found that 59 per cent, of forum members have been unable to find people with the right technical or business skills for an IT role.

Quote for the day:

"Knowing when to take your losses is an essential part of eventual success." -- Tom Peters

January 14, 2013

The Right-Hand Man Of Steve Jobs Has Broken His Silence
Higa explained that there were "two things" that got him the job: One was an ability to be frank, honest, and able to go toe-to-toe with him on any question. The other was wide peripheral vision. He’s always wanted that in the people around him. The ability to connect dots is really important. A Renaissance perspective on the world. Because it was always about the intersection of technology and liberal arts.

MapReduce / Map Reduction Strategies Using C#
The C# programming language provides many features and classes that can be used to successfully perform map reduction processing as described in the sections above. In fact, certain forms of parallel map reduction in C# can be performed by individuals having a minimal knowledge of thread pools or hardware specific thread management practices.

John Baldoni on Developing a More Effective Leader
John Baldoni talks about his new book titled "Leader's Pocket Guide 101" in this AMA Edgewise podcast. He explains the importance of critical thinking, self-selection and presence when connecting with your colleagues and shares the mantras he uses to influence others: competence, credibility, and confidence.

An inside look at Internet Explorer 10's mysterious Flash whitelist
For Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8 and Windows RT, Microsoft has tried to walk a delicate balancing act with Flash. The underlying theory is that Flash itself isn't evil. Instead, its bad reputation can be traced to the impact of poorly written Flash programs, which drain batteries and hog CPU resources, or malicious Flash content that exploits weaknesses in the Flash runtime to spread malware.

White Paper: Increasing Marketing RoI with Predictive Response Models
What is surprising, is that while predictive response modelling usually does improve response rates, in many cases it actually increases customer acquisition cost per account ... To overcome these challenges, Integrated Marketing employs an alternative approach, called the Value Adjusted Optimization Model that is changing how many in the industry manage their direct marketing campaigns. - Download requires free subscription.

US judge rules for Texas school district in RFID tracking case
Unlike passive chips that transmit data only when scanned by a reader, these chips have batteries and broadcast a constant signal so they can track students' locations on school property. Andrea Hernandez was one student who took issue with the badge, saying she had religious and privacy concerns and refused to wear it. Since then, her case went to court but now a judge has ruled against her.

Driving Analytic Value From New Data
The use of new information can enable huge leaps in the effectiveness, predictive power, and accuracy of your analytics. Most of the time, effort is spent trying to incrementally improve results by using existing data and information in a more effective manner. This isn’t as much because analytic professionals don’t realize that new data can be powerful as it is because new data only becomes available occasionally.

Implementing RSA asymmetric public-private key encryption in C#: encrypting under the public key
Performing RSA Encryption is not particularly difficult, but neither is it straightforward. Andrew writes in his blog with C# code sample - To make this code more general, we are going to allow users to specify the bit length of the public key, allowing us to easily encrypt under 1024, 2048 and 4096 bit keys.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C
Damien's love with C: I've had intense and torrid love affairs with Java, C++, and Erlang. I've built things I'm proud of with all of them, and yet each has broken my heart. They've made promises they couldn't keep, created cultures that focus on the wrong things, and made devastating tradeoffs that eventually make you suffer painfully. And I keep crawling back to C.

HCL Technologies is Coming of Age in Asia
Revenue-wise, HCL is the fifth largest India centric IT service providers after TCS, Infosys, Cognizant and Wipro. While it only derived about 15% of its global FY12 revenues from markets outside of Europe and the U.S., lightly lower than the four larger Indian firms, HCL has built a strong base in Asia and now boasts more than 300 customers serviced by more than 8,000 employees.

How to Create Governance Policies in InfoSphere Business Glossary 9.1
Business Glossary 9.1 can act as the central nervous system for a Data Governance program. Previous versions of the product allowed the cataloguing and management of technical and business metadata – Categories, Terms, Database tables, BI Fields, ETL Jobs. The new version adds in Policies and Terms so you can document and define a greater range of Governance requirements – with the pay off that Rules can be linked straight to the information assets that must conform to those rules via Glossary linking.

Quote for the day:

‎"The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers." -- Brian Tracy

January 13, 2013

The Soft Underbelly of Technology Services
Shyam Sankar looks into ScanSource's lawsuit and brings out the key lessons to learn. The lawsuite said a software project estimated to cost $17 million and take 11 months instead mushroomed to $37 million over three years, and ScanSource said it still doesn’t have a Dynamics software up and running. Accenture has estimated it will cost $29 million more to complete the ERP project, according to ScanSource’s lawsuit.

Beyond Voice Recognition: It's The Age Of Intelligent Systems
Expect the current generation of virtual personal assistants to evolve into ubiquitous intelligent systems. These will communicate with people through voice, text, vision, touch and gestures and will factor in ambient information like location or motion to understand context, giving greater relevance of every interaction. Here’s a look at some developments to watch in intelligent systems for 2013

Essential Facebook Programming: Building a Windows Client

In this column Dino Esposito builds a Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) client app that uses the Facebook API to authenticate users and post updates with pictures. Because the Web is a different environment from the desktop, this column obviously will be different from what I wrote last month. The Facebook API, however, is the same. You can get the Facebook C# SDK via NuGet (see facebookapi.codeplex.com for more details on the Facebook API for C#/.NET developers).

The 12 Critical Questions You Need to Ask When Choosing an AD Bridge Solution
What do you need to know when evaluating AD bridge solutions? This Quest Software white paper helps you understand the questions to ask when choosing the best solution for your company. Don't waste any more time and money with systems that don't coexist! Downloading this white paper requires free registration.

Configuring your JavaScript loggers with JSNLog
Matt Perdeck shows how to configure your JavaScript loggers with JSNLog, a JavaScript logging library that is well integrated with .Net. It lets you configure loggers in your web.config. And it lets you receive log amessages from the client and store them on the server, without any coding.

NXP on route to automotive future

NXP has made automotive a priority, striving to enable all electronic communication to, from and within the vehicle – reliably, securely, and efficiently. Using in-vehicle networks and RF cryptography.

New Specs Ease Connections by Wire or Wireless
The Wi-Fi Alliance demonstrated the emerging Miracast wireless display technology at International CES here Tuesday by sending live computer game animation from a smartphone to a 27-in. television. The new Miracast wireless display technology has just started emerging in mobile devices, said Kelly Davis-Felner, marketing director for the industry group.

Microsoft Refreshed .NET Framework 4.5 with Updates
Microsoft has released several updates for .NET Framework 4.5 which fixes reliability, compatibility, stability, and performance issues while working with Windows Presentation Foundation, Common Language Runtime, Windows Forms, XML, Network Class Library, ASP.NET, Entity Framework, Windows Workflow Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation.

Circumventing Windows RT’s Code Integrity Mechanism
It’s taken longer than expected but it has finally happened: unsigned desktop applications run on Windows RT. Ironically, a vulnerability in the Windows kernel that has existed for some time and got ported to ARM just like the rest of Windows made this possible. MSFT’s artificial incompatibility does not work because Windows RT is not in any way reduced in functionality.

Jenkins - An Open Source Continuous Integration Server
Jenkins is an award-winning application that monitors executions of repeated jobs, such as building a software project or jobs run by cron. Among those things, current Jenkins focuses on the following two jobs: Building/testing software projects continuously; Monitoring executions of externally-run jobs

Quote for the day:

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you need a team." -- John Wooden

January 12, 2013

3 transformational technology trends that we seem to be missing in 2013
Contrary to what most analysts are predicting, Udayan Banerjee, CTO, NIIT Technologies says that we are unlikely to hear success stories about Big Data in 2013 and that cloud will go down the “trough of disillusionment.” Banerjee details three transformational technology trends to watch out for in 2013

Characteristics of High Maturity SOA Implementation
Benchmarking is a good approach to identify the current state of SOA implementation as compared to an industry recognized maturity model. This also helps to define a target state and then work towards achieving it. Amongst many SOA maturity models the Open Group's OSIMM v2 is quite popular and defines seven levels

Revolution Analytics Uses Open Source R To Compete With SAS, SPSS
Revolution Analytics provides an enterprise distribution of R. The company is looking to battle both SAS ans SPSS on price, performance on distributed and massively parallel computing, and adoption in the cloud, according to Davis Smith, Revolution’s vice president of marketing and community.

Top 20 exciting features of SQL Server 2012 – Part 1
In this article Shivprasad Koirala discusses 20 features of SQL Server 2012 which he personally like (we can agree to disagree on my list) and from these 20 features, 7 are revolution and 13 are evolution. This article is divided in to 4 parts, in every part we will discuss 5 features. So let’s start with the first 5 top features.

Homeland Security warns to disable Java amid zero-day flaw
"We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem," said the DHS' Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) in a post on its Web site on Thursday evening. "This vulnerability is being attacked in the wild, and is reported to be incorporated into exploit kits. Exploit code for this vulnerability is also publicly available."

Firefox adds built-in HTML5-based PDF viewer to improve security
The browser maker described the built-in PDF viewer as more secure and safer than proprietary PDF viewing plug-ins, like those installed by Adobe Reader or Foxit Reader. However, several security experts noted that it probably won't be free of vulnerabilities.

Best practices to navigate the Dodd-Frank/SEC whistleblower program
Whistleblowers, and the broader topic of how companies respond to internal reports of regulatory violations, have always been topics of concern, said R. Todd Cronan, partner at Boston-based law firm Goodwin Procter LLP. Additionally, the SEC whistleblower program has elicited even more upper-management attention.

Async Unit Tests, Part 1: The Wrong Way
If you don't write unit tests - or if you or your manager think writing tests just delays software development - then I refer you to the best computer book ever written, Code Complete. In that book, Steve McConnell presents some very interesting hard facts about testing. I hope we can all agree that unit testing is a fundamental skill in Modern Programming. And this brings me to a sad chapter in async/await support: the "obvious" way to do unit tests is wrong.

SAS and IBM at forefront of growing Big Data predictive analytics market: Forrester
The Forrester Wave: Big Data Predictive Analytics Solutions Q1 2013 report evaluated 10 vendors providing predictive analytics solutions, pointing to SAS and IBM as having the strongest market presence and strategy. According to Forrester, end user customers are increasingly looking to predictive analytics in order to boost profitability and predict business outcomes by analysing correlations and trends in data sets.

SecurEnvoy, PasswordBank Take Tokenless Authentication to Cloud
SecurEnvoy, a provider of tokenless authentication products, has partnered with PasswordBank to take tokenless, two-factor authentication to the cloud and provide it as a service to PasswordBank's customers, complementing PasswordBank's identity management solutions.

Quote for the day:

"Some defeats are only installments to victory" -- Jacob A. Riis

January 11, 2013

10 Project Management Trends that Dominate in 2013
Behind most business and IT projects are the guidelines of basic project management, and these principles can often make the difference in a successful rollout. Here are the top 10 project management issues expected to play out this year, as outlined by training provider ESI International.

The Business/Process/IT Partnership (Your Secret Ingredient for Process Transformation Success)
Successful business process transformation requires an unprecedented level of collaboration among business owners, process teams, and IT, three groups not accustomed to working together.IT usually limits participation to technical topics or doesn't get involved. Process teams lean toward continuous improvement and can be technology phobic. And the business functions? While a small number of visionary execs seek transformation, most are content with incremental improvement that does not lead to transformation while others don’t know how to get started.

The User Interface Design Process
Once you start letting others review your UI, you'll find that everyone has a whole bunch of "UI preconceptions" that have more basis in superstition than fact: "Oh, users don't like that" and "You should always put x near y" are common phrases you hear; but if you ask why you should or shouldn't do something, no one has a good answer (the first statement usually boils down to "I don't like that," for instance) let alone one based on the design of the human body.

Excerpt: The key concepts of Oracle WebLogic server
In order to fully comprehend how WebLogic Server works and to get the best performance out of it, it's important to understand several concepts. The most important concepts are discussed in the following section. This excerpt is from Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Administration Handbook by Sam R. Alapati

An Agile Holiday Open House
One of my great joys of working in an agile environment is being able to show off how we operate. I've been in the software industry for many years (don't ask!) and have worked in just about every environment imaginable, from the utterly stifling to the wonderfully open and innovative. I can say without a doubt that the open, collaborative nature of a truly agile environment is the most enjoyable and most productive workplace I've known.

How-to: Create an Android Support Package
Much has been made about fragmentation of the Android platform. The truth is that the Android platform is not as fragmented as developers think. Google provides a set of libraries that allow older versions of Android to get support for newer APIs. In this article, I'll create a version of the Star Trek navigation application (from my previous column) that runs on Android 2.x to 4.x for handsets and tablets.

Businesses looking to monetize information assets
According to research and consulting firm Gartner, many enterprises are starting to appreciate the real market value that their harvested information assets have within their own industries or beyond. However, the lack of expertise in handling big data and developing information products will create an opportunity for the growth of specialist intermediaries, acting as information brokers or resellers.

Top 25 Best Linux Performance Monitoring and Debugging Tools
Ramesh Natarajan has compiled 25 performance monitoring and debugging tools that will be helpful when you are working on Linux environment. This list is not comprehensive or authoritative by any means. However this list has enough tools for you to play around and pick the one that is suitable your specific debugging and monitoring scenario.

Enterprise Mobility -- Are You Ready for the Ride?
Consumer mobile devices create countless new opportunities to engage your customers, employees, and business partners at a level never before seen. As Melissa points out, this will change nearly every facet of how your business operates. Here are the areas that I’m excited about:

Microsoft launches open source VM image 'Depot' for Windows Azure
The aim is to get more open-source apps running on Linux as a guest on the Windows cloud. Azure already has a store that allows developers to deploy applications to Azure, but VM Depot is closer to what Amazon Web Services is doing with its Amazon Machine Images service.

Quote for the day:

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