Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

January 26, 2013

Two hours in the cloud: The year's best cloud computing Q&As
SearchCloudComputing.com had the opportunity in 2012 to speak with experts from all walks of cloud -- CEOs, cloud security directors and open source pros, among others. These eight best cloud computing Q&As put industry authorities in the hot seat for their takes on the cloud market.

'Andyhave3cats' is a better password than 'Shehave3cats,' study finds
Ashwini Rao, a Carnegie Mellon software engineering doctoral student and the lead researcher on the project, said that while phrases and sentences can make passwords easier to remember, their grammatical structure significantly narrows the possible word combinations and sequences that hackers -- and their tools -- need to guess. "We should not blindly rely on the number of words or characters in a password as a measure of its security," said Rao

CIO's cloud solutions meet collaboration needs and speed up innovation
The road to that goal, Patterson told SearchCIO.com, includes aggressive consolidation of the IT infrastructure that's spread across the university's 19 schools and colleges. The aim is to build an IT infrastructure flexible enough to support both shared services and mission-unique services. The goal is faster innovation.

Multi Process Architecture with C#
The Multi-Process Architecture has been used lately by internet browsers that use tabs, like Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome. The display rendering functionality is isolated by using child process for each tab. It protects the browser application from misbehavior. Read more in Google Chrome Multi-process Architecture.

Cloud Security Moves from Enterprise Apprehension to Allegiance
Security has long been a top enterprise worry with cloud computing. However, increases in deployments and cuts in budgets will propel the cloud as a top security infrastructure option over the next four years, according to a new assessment from Gartner Research.

How to Select the Right MDM and BYOD Security Solution for eGRC
Attend this webcast for insights on: Determining what Features/Benefits Are Important To Your Business; Evaluating the products for security/performance features that fit your market and security policy; Assessing how well the product will integrate with your existing infrastructure; Creating a shortlist of vendors that meet the unique needs of your organization; and Identifying vendors that best meet requirements and accelerate the selection process.

Do the CIO and CFO Disagree on Technology Value?
Download this CIO Search survey results to learn: What the CFO wants to see from investments; Which top technologies the CIO and CFO agree will be most important for business success in the next three years; Why CIOs take issue with the CFO's definition of ROI when applied to technology investments and much more.

Popeye, Spinach, and Data Quality
“Ultimately, the reason these errors spread,” Arbesman concluded, “is because it’s a lot easier to spread the first thing you find, or the fact that sounds correct, than to delve deeply into the literature in search of the correct fact.” What “spinach” has your organization been falsely consuming because of a data quality issue that was not immediately obvious, and which may have led to a long, and perhaps ongoing, history of data-driven decisions based on poor quality data?

Do You Need Big Data Governance? Maybe.

Sunil, a widely known figure and authority in the field of data governance, in his third book, “Big Data Governance, an Emerging Imperative,” is the first comprehensive volume on the new data phenomenon from a governance perspective. He recently spoke about the purpose and timing of this work with Information ManagementEditorial Director Jim Ericson.

Take the Long View on Value of Leadership Training
If you look at why IT projects fail, it is inevitably a combination of governance, communication, management of expectations, change management, team management, and time and budget management. So the question may be how best to develop leadership skills among project managers that will put them in a position to succeed, and to help their teams succeed.

Quote for the day:

"In youth we learn; in age we understand." -- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian writer

January 25, 2013

Toward a Science of Security
The past few years have seen a growing push within the research community to develop a science of security. Leading funding agencies, such as the US National Science Foundation and the US Department of Defense, have initiated research programs specifically promoting the study of security as a science. The motivation behind these programs is to develop a systematic body of knowledge with strong theoretical and empirical underpinnings

Screening lean: Getting to the bottom of that resume pile
Carolyn Thompson, author of Ten Easy Steps to a Perfect Resume (BookSurge), Ten Steps to Finding the Perfect Job (BookSurge) and Ten Secrets to Getting Promoted (CreateSpace), not only counsels job seekers on how to land a position, she is also heavily involved in recruiting. In a recent conversation with tEDmag.com, she offered this advice.

What will we do when machines do all the work?
“I do not expect this to happen in the very near future, but I do believe that by 2045, machines will be able to do if not any work that humans can do, then a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do.” said Moshe Vardi, the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University who also directs the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology there.

Hadoop will be in most advanced analytics products by 2015, Gartner says
The Hadoop open source programming framework for large-scale data analysis is already one of the highest-profile technologies in the "big data" market, but users can expect it to become even more prevalent over the next couple of years, according to Gartner.

Project management lessons learned shouldn't be limited to postmortems
The majority of the items that come up in a lessons-learned session relate only to the project just completed. The same team, however, will not be on the next project; the issues related to a specific project will not be the same on the next project; and the technology will be different on the next project. As a result, any team-, project- or technology-specific items are not useful in a lessons-learned context.

How to Align Your New Solution with Business Needs
More choices and more users often result in a solution design that provides less – as in less-than-satisfactory – alignment with business needs and goals. But by systematically assessing the key drivers of solution design, you can determine the solution that will truly align with your business needs, in spite of more choices and more users.

Tape Storage Finds New Life in the Enterprise and Beyond
Long considered slow and outdated, tape is holding on in many enterprises that need cost-effective, long-term storage, and it's even finding new applications in the virtualized and increasingly video-centric world of IT. Despite declining shipments of equipment over the past several years, tape is increasingly important in some environments, especially large organizations that deal with mountains of information. The relic isn't as obsolete as it seemed.

New molecules could bring super-dense, solid-state hard disk alternatives
An international team of researchers led by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist has discovered a new way of making molecular memory, which stores data in individual molecules. That breakthrough could help the technology graduate from labs to data centers and drive down its manufacturing costs.

Why HR Can't Innovate
The worst part about effectively useless corporate recruiting is the notion that the best-qualified candidate for a job is the one willing to climb over the most piles of broken glass to get the job. No wonder hiring managers take a person who is more likely to be the most-compliant—rather than the most-talented—candidate. We could call this person the Last Candidate Standing.

Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
MGI studied big data in five domains—healthcare in the United States, the public sector in Europe, retail in the United States, and manufacturing and personal-location data globally. Big data can generate value in each. For example, a retailer using big data to the full could increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. If US healthcare were to use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, the sector could create more than $300 billion in value every year.

Quote for the day:

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." -- Auguste Rodin

January 24, 2013

Biggest myth – “Enterprise Architecture is a discipline aimed at creating models”
Unfortunately, most of the Enterprise Architecture practitioners and several branded consulting organizations are caught in this trap. The situation has worsened as several architects & business process experts are building “composite models” (multi variable model) and calling it “architecture” model. This ignorance has serious ramification, as several Enterprises are making considerable investments in this area without significant gain.

Three key factors to provide security in virtualization
A security solution in the cloud should at least contain three key features to make itself attractive to customers. It should have heterogeneous hypervisor support, be agentless and have automatic deployment. Let’s take a deeper look at these three features: Heterogeneous hypervisor support; Agentless; and Automatic deployment

Cloud Orchestration: What It Is, Why You Need It
Orchestration is at the heart of the private cloud. It's the tool that you will use to automate repetitive tasks that you do daily or weekly. When designing your private cloud, orchestrators are what you will need to tie in with your ticketing system so that you can automate user requests.

Three Schools of Thought on Enterprise Architecture
The belief systems underlying these schools of thought are at the heart of several challenges, such as fragmentation and misunderstanding, in the enterprise architecture community, because the beliefs are often implicitly held by people but not explicitly discussed. ... This article tries to shed some light on the situation by sharing a new taxonomy of enterprise architecture schools of thought to foster understanding and awareness to help establish enterprise architecture as a discipline and profession.

The Need to Care for Character
To be successful as an advanced change practitioner, it is important to deeply explore your character so you can understand and accept who you are ... In this series, Daryl Conner explores step one in this sequence by addressing the question, “As professional change facilitators, how can we cultivate our character to increase the impact our presence has with clients?”

Azure-based Microsoft video streaming service goes live
The service, released Tuesday, can be used to deliver training videos to employees; stream video content from a website; or build video-on-demand service similar to Hulu or Netflix, Microsoft's Scott Guthrie said in a blog post.

Exposure of files on unsecured wireless no excuse to search, judge rules
The ruling involves John Henry Ahrndt, a previously convicted sex offender who was sentenced to 120 months in prison for possession of child pornography on his computer. Ahrndt had argued that some of the evidence that was used against him in court had been gathered illegally. He had filed an appeal asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon in Portland to suppress the evidence on the grounds that his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search had been violated.

5 New Ways to Recruit & Hire Using Twitter’s Improved Platform
Twitter’s new Advanced Search has become increasingly popular amount recruiters who are working feverishly at filing spots via Twitter recruiting. Even on the most basic level, Twitter’s Advanced Search is a powerful tool that can pull together any type of data that you’re wanting. To look at current trends, happening right now, Twitter’s new search allows you to do just that.

Expectations and Roadblocks as BYOD Matures
The first-time survey, “BYOD: Managing the User is the Key to Big Gains and Fewer Setbacks,” was conducted by tech market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of Dell and its Quest Software division. It included responses to questions on enterprise BYOD policies, maturity and concerns from 1,485 IT and executive respondents.

"One size fits all" solution for freezing a Grid's header rows, why not?
Table structure in HTML and GridView in ASP.NET has brought about various smart ways of rendering data. But there is a big question I've been looking for the answer for quite some time ago; that is how to freeze header rows to track data easily when scrolling page. Unfortunately, the GridView control doesn't provide such a feature. Truong Pham Has come up with a solution for this.

Quote for the day:

"I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through - then follow through." -- Edward Rickenbacker

January 23, 2013

For most companies, NoSQL & Big Data are misunderstood at best, or hype at worst
As you know, Big Data is so large that it's difficult to process using traditional databases and software techniques. Of course, the relational model and SQL dominate today's database landscape. But on the other side there are databases built without relations, made for higher scalability. So, we asked the expert in the database area, Monty, about the current and future state of SQL, NoSQL and Big Data. And his answers were somewhat surprising:

Large companies run with BYOD as workers cover costs
Seventy-six percent of companies supporting bring your own device policies have more than 2,000 employees and there's a good reason for that. Half of employees under BYOD policies have to foot the device and wireless costs, according to a report from Good Technology.

Micron introduces its highest-endurance MLC SSD for servers
The P400m SSD's endurance is the equivalent to writing every picture posted to Facebook daily to the drive for 311 days straight (about 78 billion photos total), Micron said. By comparison, Micron's entry-level SSDs offer one to three full drive writes per day and a midrange SSD offers about five full drive writes, according to Matt Shaine, Micron's product marketing manager for enterprise SSDs.

Download: Information Governance Research Report
Discover what smart IT leaders are doing to make sure business exectuives are fully grasping the wide range of strategic advantages information governance can bring.

Windows Workflow and Timeouts
Workflows make it easy to do something that's very hard to do in any other development environment: Take action when something doesn't happen. Here's how to protect yourself when something's isn't happening in your Windows Workflows.

Big Data for Development: From Information - to Knowledge Societies
The article uses an established three-dimensional conceptual framework to systematically review literature and empirical evidence related to the prerequisites, opportunities, and threats of Big Data Analysis for international development. The opportunities and threats around big data has potential to result in a new kind of digital divide: a divide in data-based knowledge to inform intelligent decision-making. This shows that the exploration of data-based knowledge to improve development is not automatic and requires tailor-made policy choices that help to foster this emerging paradigm.

Has Ayasdi turned machine learning into a magic bullet?

At its core, Ayasdi’s product, a cloud-based service called the Insight Discovery Platform, is a mix of distributed computing, machine learning and user experience technologies. It processes data, discovers the correlations between data points, and then displays the results in a stunning visualization that’s essentially a map of the dataset and the connections between every point within it.

German Government Should Make its Software Available As Open Source, Committee Advises
Germany should change a law to enable public administrations to make their software available as free and open source, a German parliamentary committee has advised. German public administrations currently are not allowed to give away goods, including software, said Jimmy Schulz, a member of Parliament and chairman of the Interoperability, Standards and Free Software Project Group in an email Thursday. The current law prohibits governments from being part of the development process in the free software community, he said.

Indian insurers to spend 101 bn rupees on IT in 2013
Indian insurers are about to go on a spending spree! Market research and advisory firm Gartner predicts that insurance firms in India will spend 101 billion rupees on IT products and services in 2013, an increase of more than 9 per cent over 2012 when they spent an approximate 92.5 billion rupees.

When Big Data Goes Bad
The break between the viability of Big Data and the efficacy of analysis lies not in the actual analysis, but rather in perspective. Ultimately, what we are talking about is not about the value of a data point, but how multiple data points interrelate with one another. How does one determine causation as opposed to allowing causation to validate an analysis?

Quote for the day:

"If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near." -- Jack Welch

January 22, 2013

Incentive-based pricing models for your next IT outsourcing contract
Traditional IT outsourcing contracts are typically based on a fixed price for a set scope of work, or a set price per number of units: Vendors are paid to provide a utility function (for example, managing servers, monitoring network devices, ensuring email is available). Incentive-based pricing, on the other hand, rewards vendors for adding benefit to the service: cutting costs, boosting revenue, improving efficiency, for example. But getting there isn't easy.

Software-Defined Storage: A Buzzword Worth Examining
The adoption and propagation of new market terminology is not some conspiracy by the vendor community to confuse everyone. There is absolute value in the various types and components of SDS. But we need some context and specificity to uncover that value, and even more of that context and specificity to enjoy and benefit from that value in any given user environment.

Experience
It unfolds over the intervals necessary for assimilation and integration; however, the passage of time alone is no guarantee of learning and we shouldn’t confuse grey hairs with experience. ... Experience can’t derive from being a bystander in the classroom or on the assembly line: You have to be in the game. It means diving in, doing work, building stuff, and taking risks.

Businesses finally see ROI for IT security
Almost two-thirds of organisations regard IT security as the responsibility of everyone within the enterprise, not just the IT department, the survey found. Some 38% of respondents said their organisations see investment in IT and systems security as an "insurance policy" to protect company assets.

Who’s on deck? 3 questions for succession planning
The moment after you land the corner office, you need to be thinking about who will replace you. Your legacy lies in the hands of your successor. How you are perceived by others when you are gone relies greatly on the person you select to replace you.

New bill asks companies to notify EU of security breaches
Proposed legislation in the European Union would force tech companies that have access to user data -- such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft -- to report any security breaches to local cybersecurity agencies, the Financial Times reported today. This is the European Commission's effort to make private companies accountable for privacy and security problems, European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes told the Financial Times.

The Best and Worst Methods for Enterprise Architecture
From a strategy basis, Burton recommended the following three-tier approach for enterprise architecture project leaders: Change the way you think: Frame every comment in terms of business outcomes, value and business performance; Show value for money, meaning the right services at the right level of quality and the right price; and Position EA in investment terms, including near- and long-term business performance.

Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation
As we work, we sit more than we do anything else. We're averaging 9.3 hours a day, compared to 7.7 hours of sleeping. Sitting is so prevalent and so pervasive that we don't even question how much we're doing it. And, everyone else is doing it also, so it doesn't even occur to us that it's not okay.

Asia needs regional cybercrime center
Myla Pilao, director of core technology at Trend Micro's TrendLabs, said since most of today's online crimes are becoming borderless, Asia-Pacific will need a centralized agency to help examine the crimes that have taken place and supply necessary threat information across member states. Such a cross-region agency will also provide the impetus for Asian governments to adopt stronger legislations encompassing various crimes committed online so as to deter cybercriminals, Pilao added.

Confused by the glut of new databases? Here’s a map for you
The flurry of database action over the past year rendered the usual discussion around structured or unstructured, SQL, NoSQL, and NewSQL databases even more, um, nuanced than before. Matthew Aslett, research manager at 451 Research took the bull by the horns and updated his previous (one-month-old) database road map to include all sorts of new entries.

Doubt cast on the security of Kim Dotcom's Mega service
The problem is that SSL has long been recognized as a weak point on the web. In 2009, security researcher Moxie Marlinspike created a tool called SSLstrip, which allows an attacker to intercept and stop an SSL connection. The attacker can then spy on whatever data the user sends to the fake website.

Quote for the day:

"We must view young people not as empty bottles to be filled but as candles to be lit." -- Robert Shaffer

January 21, 2013

Practical SOA for the Solution Architect
Most IT practitioners often lose sight of the core principles of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). This article and its extended white paper are a retelling of the SOA philosophy in an easily understandable and practically applicable form, independent of the actual tools used to implement it. It is specially targeted to the Solution Architect, because at the end of the day, SOA is nothing but a way to put components together to build flexible, durable and reusable business solutions, and the solution architect is the person responsible for this outcome.

Why Functional Programming in Java is Dangerous
Elliotte Rusty Harold writes: The problem is that my colleagues and I are not writing code in Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, Clojure, Scala, or even Ruby or Python. We are writing code in Java, and in Java functional programming is dangerously inefficient. Every few months I find myself debugging a production problem that ultimately traces back to a misuse of functional ideas and algorithms in a language and more importantly a virtual machine that just wasn’t built for this style of programming.

Don't SCIM over your Data Model
SCIM used to stand for "Simple Cloud Identity Management" but now stands for "System for Cross-domain Identity Management", which is more generic. This article looks at some aspects of the SCIM protocol as currently published. The three major areas where SCIM’s underlying data model is somewhat inadequate: Tight coupling of identifiers; Inelegant handling of multi-valued attributes; and Clumsy PATCH command syntax

'Rogue Clouds' Giving IT Staffs Nightmares
"Rogue clouds" occur if sales and marketing people, for example, order up Salesforce.com without bothering to consult IT or set up Dropbox with outside vendors to share sensitive information. It's happening to three-quarters of those using cloud, according to the survey, and it occurs more in large enterprises (83%) than in small to midsize ones (70%).

7 CES Announcements IT Pros Need to Know About
The Consumer Electronics Show is not only about consumer gadgets, as enterprise vendors such as Dell and Intel tend to announce major new technology advancements as well. CES 2013 was no different. Here are the top business tech announcements from Las Vegas.

Security is no place for traditionalists
Traditional security professionals adhere to a certain philosophy which can be detrimental to their cause. Traditionalists believe that IT risk is a technical problem, handled by technical people, buried in IT and every problem is solved with a new technology. Also, they view themselves as heroes hired to protect the company at all cost.

A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
An interesting periodic table of visualization methods for management by Lengler R., Eppler M. (2007).

Google looks to ditch passwords for good with NFC-based replacement
Google is currently running a pilot that uses a YubiKey cryptographic card developed by Yubico — a start-up operated out of Sweden and the US, which has produced a two-factor authentication fob that can emit encrypted one-time passwords to NFC-enabled smartphones.

CIOs say cloud computing is really, truly a priority this time
At least CIOs finally get it: Either figure out a way to leverage cloud technology, or get into real estate. Although this technology is still emerging, the value of at least putting together a plan and a few projects has been there for years. The business cases have always existed. Despite those obvious needs, many CIOs have been secretly pushing back on cloud computing.

Microsoft Cloud OS Vision Unfolds With New Products, Services
"with Windows Server and Windows Azure at its core, the Cloud OS provides a consistent platform across customer data centers, service-provider data centers and the Microsoft public cloud," Park said in a statement. "Powerful management and automation capabilities are key elements of the Cloud OS, taking the heavy lifting out of administration and freeing IT organizations to be more innovative as they embrace hybrid cloud computing and the consumerization of IT."

Quote for the day:

"The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed." -- Lloyd Jones

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