Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

February 25, 2013

Here is how cloud computing, big data, and some innovation can reinvent healthcare
The rise of big data as a set of new technologies provides new options for both the storage and analysis of information. This leads to better patient care and cost reductions. The use of cloud computing provides the elastic capacity requirements at costs that almost all healthcare provider organizations can afford. When combined, you have something that is clearly a game changer.

The One Question to Ask in an Exit Interview
Generally, HR pros open an exit interview by asking “Why are you leaving?” While useful to a point, HR could be asking a far more revealing question: “What made you start looking for another job in the first place?” says Sharlyn Lauby, who blogs at www.hrbartender.com and is president of HR consulting firm ITM Group, Inc.

Driving Innovation with Total Rewards

You don't have to resort to providing wacky toys or jeopardizing the bottom line with monster R&D labs. Believe it or not, your compensation mix, recognition and rewards programs, and development opportunities can go a long way in creating that next great idea. Here are three ways you can drive innovation with your total rewards strategy:

BYOD Boosts Macs vs. PCs
"When we were having BYOD discussions employees said they wanted a choice. At the time, we wanted to be a single-platform shop so we could get scale pricing. But with the Mac, we could buy a whole bunch or just a few, so that didn't matter. We had two PC vendors and Apple ticked up in part because the form factor was attractive even to PC users," he says.

Setting Up A Sound Risk Management Framework
The main driver of a positive risk culture lies in individual accountability. If a risk or set of risks is assigned to a group, its management will be hazily diluted amongst its members without a clear understanding and accountability. Individual accountability maintains individual awareness at every level of an organisation. A risk or set of risks should fall into one's duties, and individuals' performance should be assessed according to their effectiveness in managing them.

Serve stored data on the cloud to mobile apps using visual search engines
Visual search engines have created a new paradigm of mobile applications. However, to use this technology effectively, a large, publicly accessible data set must be established and maintained. Cloud-based storage is a great solution to use when deploying an app with a visual search engine. Learn how an organization can use a visual search engine and cloud-based storage to automate business processes.

WebOS lives! LG to resurrect it for smart TVs
LG said today it was acquiring WebOS from Hewlett-Packard, with the intention to use the operating system not for its mobile phones, but in its smart televisions. With the deal, LG obtains the source code for WebOS, related documtreentation, engineering talent, and related WebOS Web sites. LG also gets HP licenses for use with its WebOS products, and patents HP obtained from Palm. The financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

MasterCard launches MasterPass: Will this digital wallet fly?
MasterPass will launch at the end of March in Australia and Canada followed by the U.S. and U.K. MasterCard also said that MasterPass will roll out in Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain and Sweden in 2013. ... The big question remains whether MasterPass will manage to gain traction among shoppers, who know of digital wallets but aren't exactly clamoring for them.

Microsoft's own code should prevent an Azure SSL fail: So what went wrong?
That leaves me with two remaining possibilities. The first: Microsoft isn't using its own rather excellent technology to handle these certs. I'm not fully sure of the underpinnings of Azure; does it run on Server 2012? Bing.com does. Even if Azure isn't using off-the-shelf Windows Server, there would be a delicious irony to Microsoft – enthusiastic player of the constant, cacophonous drumbeat of "upgrade for your own good" – had failed to take advantage of technology they themselves invented to solve this exact problem.

Are SIs Meeting CIO Expectations?
Increasing business complexities and adaption of newer technologies along with forever-rising employee demands, the CIO's challenges are only increasing day by day. Hence they have started looking beyond IT when engaging systems integrators (SIs) with the objective of driving business results through innovative business solutions. But, are these SIs delivering on their promise? A Forrester survey of over 30 CIOs yielded some grim findings

Quote for the day:

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." -- Harry S Truman

February 24, 2013

Keeping Up With the Future: Risk Management for Rapid Technology Adoption
That rumbling you hear? It's the pace of change quickening for organizations thanks to advances in technology. That pace is having an impact on risk profiles; companies no longer have the luxury of time to adapt to new paradigms or threats. Fortunately there are ways to mitigate the changes so that organizations don't have to feel like they're being steamrolled by the future.

How to Create a Company Culture That People Will Be Excited to Join

It takes a certain type of person to join a startup. The ideal candidates can demonstrate risk tolerance and flexibility, as their roles are bound to evolve with the changing needs of the business. Those that combine talent with the ability to roll up their sleeves to get the job done, even if it isn't technically theirs, are the ones you’ll want with you in the trenches. These people are out there, but it can be a challenge to not only find them but also make the case for them to join your business instead of another one.

Why Are There No True Cross-platform Filesystems?
Yulian Kuncheff has this valid question: Over the last few months I have made it so that my PC desktop runs Windows 8, Linux Mint 14, and OSX Mountain Lion. ... everything works nicely and I have the development environments I need on all 3 platforms ... So that no matter which platform I am on, I just work as normal. But there is one massive thorn in my entire setup. Filesystems. After so many years of multiple OSes, I am surprised that there isn’t a single filesystem that is truely cross-platform and modern.

The Three Pillars of High Performance Teams
“The more decisions a leader makes, the further he or she is from leading a high-performance team. … Make too many command decisions, and you’ll doom yourself and your team to mediocrity,” Mark Miller in, “The Secret of Teams.” Everyone serious about success is serious about teams. Great teams lift organizations. Lousy teams drain everyone. Mark Miller explains three pillars of successful teams.

The 9 most popular arguments for targets deconstructed
Hundreds of researchers, academics, bloggers, psychologists, managers, more bloggers, statisticians authors have written about the damage caused by targets. It isn’t an abstract problem, targets can kill. But politicians, civil servants, managers, HR people, consultants and pundits all over the world think they know better. People continue to argue targets have their place. What are their arguments?

Google Fixes 22 Flaws in Chrome, Slams Silent Add-ons
Google yesterday released Chrome 25, patching 22 vulnerabilities and debuting a new security feature that blocks silent installations of add-ons. The latter is Chrome 25's most noticeable change to users. It automatically disables third-party add-ons that are installed on the sly by other software. Add-ons -- Google calls them "extensions" -- that were previously installed by third-party software will also be barred from running.

Modern.ie Helps Developers Test Code for Browsers
modern.ie, developed by Microsoft consists of free tools and resources used for testing code and sites using various versions of Internet Explorer. It includes a code detection wizard which addresses common coding problems that result from supporting older versions of IE. The engine scans the requested website for HTML5 compatibility problems and also provides the hints and tips to enable your site to work properly across various browsers and mobile devices.

Google's Chromebook Pixel: An even worse idea than Windows 8
Windows 8 may have gotten poor reviews for its tablet-based interface forced onto traditional PCs and laptops, but Google's Chromebook Pixel makes that look like a design of genius. Who would want to spend top-dollar for a laptop that lacks serious storage, runs Web-based apps rather than client apps, and isn't much use when not connected to the Web?

Can Microsoft bring BI to the masses if the Excel 2013 masses can't get BI?
Excel has become a cornerstone of Microsoft's business-intelligence strategy. With Excel 2010, Microsoft made PowerPivot -- one of its prime data-analytics technologies -- available for use by anyone with any edition of Excel 2010 by installing the PowerPivot for Excel add-in. But with Excel 2013, the latest version of Microsoft's spreadsheet program, only those with the Office Professional Plus version of the new Office will have full access to Excel 2013's BI capabilities.

Engage or die: Five lessons from a CIO innovation workshop

Despite the complexity of achieving CIO value, relevance, and influence IT is a service function and success demands that we adopt a spirit of genuine humility and helpfulness toward users. In the innovation report mentioned earlier, Erich Matola, now CIO of Colorado State University at Pueblo, summarizes this perspective: "we also have to be a service organization and … really humble in a sense that everybody, all your customers are important… I instill that in my staff…"

Quote for the day:

"Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. " -- Lou Holtz

February 23 2013

CIO's mastery of M&A puts her at center of Dell's turnaround strategy
In an interview with SearchCIO.com following Dell's big announcement, Karaboutis revealed she occupies a prime spot at the table for the many acquisitions critical to Dell's turnaround -- eight and counting, just on her watch as CIO. The Michigan native is no stranger to business strategy shakeups. Before becoming CIO, she led a transformation of Dell's manufacturing operations.

Security on the street with SearchFinancialSecurity.com: Risk management
In the listed podcast you will learn more on the intersection of technology and risk management, including: Risk assessments, including how they should be conducted, what business processes should be included and what to do with the results; and Risk management policies, including who should create them, what should be included and what kind of training and education they should include.

Spyware, viruses, & security forum: How can I be sure software updates are legit?
Check out CNET's forum to find the answers for this question. The most voted response to this question is "... From emails that look like they are coming from a friend to fake warnings from Banks and other financial institutions, it is getting that you cannot trust anything or anyone. Unfortunately, you cannot count on security software to catch these especially if you initiate the install by agreeing to it or by allowing it when the User Account Control pops up. Unfortunately, the bad guys always seem to be a step ahead of the security software. ..."

VMware Bundles Apps Into BYOD Management Suite
The Horizon Suite will allow employees to access work applications from any device they use, whether it is a laptop, tablet or even smartphone, said Erik Frieberg, VMware senior director for end user computing. VMware's approach is "to transform the silo apps, such as operation systems, into services that can be delivered to end users in any device, with policy-based management," Frieberg said.

AppSense Redefines BYOD As BYOX. What Is X?
AppSense, which develops people-centric solutions recently released MobileNow, a SaaS based mobile device, application and data managements solution designed for Enterprise and Mid-Market organizations that bridges application/data access, corporate compliance and strong security to personal devices in work environments. BYOD is just about your own device. MobileNow supports BYOX where X can be anything from apps, data to the latest mobile device.

Microsoft hacked by same attackers as Facebook, Apple

According to IGN, the tech giant has been attacked by the same hackers that accessed Apple and Facebook's internal computer network, stealing company data as they went. The tech giant said the attack used "techniques similar to those documented by other organizations." The security breach was discovered on a small number of internal computers and said that customer data was unaffected.

Can Big Data + Big Dating = True Love?
The system compares the users extensive list of answers to the site’s 20 million other users – a process that requires a billion calculations for each bachelor or bachelorette. After comparing information using a sophisticated algorithm, the site provides the user with matches. eHarmony’s dataset alone exceeds 4 terabytes of total data, not including photos and other information. These fine-tuned formulas and powerful datacenters are the trade secret of these online dating services.

Leading from the Driver’s Seat
Let’s think about what Laing said, especially “we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.” Picture that. It’s like driving your car but instead of looking at the road right in front of you, you only look through the rear view mirror. So you only see things after you have already passed them! Fortunately nobody drives a car this way – but many people do drive organizations this way.

Is it Now Crazy to Offshore IT to China?
Ten years ago, there was wide expectation that China would emerge as India's top threat in the IT services outsourcing business. Those expectations have been thwarted largely due to language issues and ongoing security concerns, say analysts. China's job building an IT and BPO outsourcing industry may have just gotten harder. The blow-by-blow details of Chinese government espionage that arrived this week in a report by security firm Mandiant, lay bare, in ways never seen before, the extent of the security risks of working with China.

Interview and Book Review: Enterprise Software Delivery
Enterprise software delivery is primary to the organization’s success. It provides the infrastructure that the organization relies on for smooth operation of its key business processes, provides key information- focused services that differentiate the organization’s business offerings, and supports a wide variety of stakeholders who communicate through a common set of information managed by the group.

Quote for the day:

"It is through cooperation, rather than conflict, that your greatest successes will be derived." -- Ralph Charell

February 22, 2013

Dear Oracle: Cloud Multitenancy DOES Matter
Meg Bear of Oracle, who manages their Cloud Social Platform, hammered multitenancy in her post “Multitenancy and Other Useless Discussions,” on Oracle’s blog. She says “multitenancy doesn’t matter … in the same way that your VHS player having progressive scan doesn’t matter.” Alok Misra casually responded to the post but the Oracle moderators didn’t approve his response (seems like they only allow their own marketing people to comment on their blogs), so here is his more cogent argument.

Providing XACML Fine Grained Authorization to WebApps
XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language) is a XML schema based policy language used to check the authorization of requests for particular resources in a fine grained manner. To check the authorization of a request, a set of attributes of the request are checked against XACML policies. In order to obtain the authorization for a resource all the various attributes have to be matched. For an example there can be a XACML policy such as: “Only members of the WSO2 Application Server team have read access to this document within WSO2 premises”.

No, it isn't faster to do it yourself
You're feeling overwhelmed. You'd like to get some tasks off your schedule. But you think about the time it would take to train someone else -- who then wouldn't do the task as well as you do, so you'd have to supervise anyway -- and you sigh. "It's faster just to do it myself." Sound familiar? I hope not, because this approach to time amounts to being penny wise but pound foolish.

Security Enhancements in Jelly Bean
Android 4.2, Jelly Bean, introduced quite a few new features, and under the covers it also added a number of security enhancements to ensure a more secure environment for users and developers. This post highlights a few of the security enhancements in Android 4.2 that are especially important for developers to be aware of and understand. Regardless whether you are targeting your app to devices running Jelly Bean or to earlier versions of Android, it's a good idea to validate these areas in order to make your app more secure and robust.

A Smart Card Framework for .NET

This article demonstrates how to use the interoperability features of .NET and use them to write a simple framework to use a Smart Card in your applications. A Smart Card is a small embedded device that receives commands through a card reader using the PC/SC Win32 API. If you want to use this API, you will need a Smart Card reader to use a Smart Card such as a SIM card.

U.K. Public Sector's Top Security Worries
Survey results suggest that most companies do think about the importance of security when partnering with other organizations but aren't doing enough to make it happen. Ninety percent of respondents said information security was an important issue that needs to be clarified when selecting business partners and third parties. The majority (93%) said they regularly exchange information with third parties, and of this data 84% is likely to contain sensitive material.

Going Mobile with C++
Even with the boost in C++ usage, it's important to note that it has positives and negatives in this new computing era. In addition to the aforementioned power advantages, it also delivers superior efficiency without compromising its inherent object-oriented abstraction power. The latest C++ standard, C++11, is simpler and more concise, thanks to features such as smart pointers and lambda expressions.

PCI DSS cloud computing guidelines strike discord among would-be adopters
"Cloud computing is a form of distributed computing that has yet to be standardized," the report states in its executive summary. One expert said the report sets a dark tone from the start. "There is no standard yet, and you're basically led to believe that going to the cloud is fraught with danger," said Chris Steffen, principal technical architect at Kroll Factual Data and a Microsoft MVP on cloud and data center management.

Is Cloud Computing a Threat to Older Tech Companies?
In 2012, the Informational Data Corporation (IDC) made some pretty bold predictions regarding the development of a new high-tech industry in the convergence of social networking, -- cloud-based computing and data storage. The IDC suggested that many industry giants may scramble to maintain relevance, while some startups would gain leadership positions in what some anticipate will be the technology industry's fastest transition ever.

Visa introduces 'Visa Ready' partner programme
The Visa Ready Partner Program is designed to provide innovators a path to ensure that devices, software and solutions used to initiate or accept Visa payments are compatible with Visa's requirements, which may vary by country. It also provides a framework for the collaboration with Visa, as well as guidance and best practices to access the power of the Visa network.

Quote for the day:

"Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed." -- Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educator

February 21, 2013

Chief Data Officer role is a work in progress
The only argument against creating this role that I've run across is that if CIOs and CTOs did their jobs right, we wouldn't need this new role. That's pretty feeble since we're not just talking about IT's history of relative ineffectiveness in managing information outside of application silos (and don't get me started about content management) -- we're adding to that a significant increase in the value of information and a significant increase in the amount of available information.

The Practitioner’s Journey: Departure

In the first post of this series, Daryl Conner offere a high-level overview of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, using The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien as a point of reference. Going forward, he hopes to draw out some specific implications of the hero archetype and relate them to the path many seasoned change practitioners (my intended audience) follow as they come to terms with how they work with clients.

AMD docking technology adjusts tablet, laptop performance in hybrids
The company's Turbo Dock technology will adapt system performance when a hybrid laptop is in tablet mode, and vice versa, said Steve Belt, corporate vice president at AMD. The underlying technology behind Turbo Dock cranks up the clock speed of a processor when the tablet is connected to the dock, turning the hybrid device into a high-performance laptop.

Maybe Management Isn’t Your Style
A bad boss is born each time someone goes into management without knowing whether he or she is truly suited to the role. When people are offered a managerial job, they may become intoxicated by the idea of more power and a bigger salary. Refusing such an offer can seem out of the question. “It’s hard to stop and think rationally when you’re being offered a promotion,” said Phil.

Data destruction: Top Ten Tips for avoiding fines and reputational risk
In April 2013, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will detail it plans for data protection practices of the private sector, with particular attention to SMEs. Companies risk massive fines, reputations and even their business if they ignore the guidelines on secure storage and disposal of confidential information. In order to secure your business and comply with ICO regulations, Simon Brailsford of Advanced Digital Dynamics Ltd offers these necessary steps to avoid any costly mistakes:

Sound waves used to increase disk drive capacity
The breakthrough could allow greater amounts of data to be stored on both hard disk drives and NAND flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs). "We're near the peak of what we can do with the technology we now use for magnetic storage," said Pallavi Dhagat, an associate professor in the OSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "There's always a need for approaches that could store even more information in a smaller space, cost less and use less power."

The free GRC tools every compliance professional should know about
Compliance professionals know that governance, risk and compliance (GRC) tends to get short shrift when it comes to securing investment dollars for software tools and new funding for process improvements. This puts compliance professionals in a precarious position, considering the number and complexity of regulations on the rise. You can do nothing, or you can look for ways to "short circuit" the spending cycle and gain efficiencies despite minimal investment dollars. One way to do this is to leverage free and open source toolsto automate some aspects of GRC.

When things go right
No matter how much our head tells us that we can’t change others we seem to have a hard time taking this into our hearts. We mean well, as we all want things around us to be perfect, including the people. But when was the last time you changed when you received a criticism? It’s generally not a great strategy to help others improve without some attention to what’s going right.

What Does EIM Look Like?
Across the many definitions of EIM, a thread emerges that unifies EIM as a legitimate discipline. It takes the concept of information as an asset and attempts to make it real. IT can turn the asset management philosophy into a program that adds significant value to an enterprise or organization through improved ability to analyze and exploit all types of data assets and, ultimately, leads to increased business success.

Women Who Run Tech Startups Are Catching Up
It shows that the average age of women entrepreneurs founding tech companies has dropped, from 41 to 32, since an earlier, smaller study was done in 2009, and the percentage who have had graduate-level education has risen, from 40 percent to 56 percent. The findings about women’s contributions to success bolster previous research from several sources, including a Credit Suisse Research Institute (CS) report and Dow Jones VentureSource (NWS) analysis.

Quote for the day:

"Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain" -- Henry Ford

February 20, 2013

Predicting your unpredictable capacity needs in the data center

There have been many advances in technology in the last few years in the data center - all in an effort to handle the demands of today’s business environment. There’s more data to process and more storage needed to keep it all. When it’s time to figure out how to plan for your future needs, there are numerous variables to juggle and take into account. Chris Crosby, CEO of Compass Data Centers talks about the capacity planning dilemma.

REMux: An Experimental Approach to Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is important in a world of increasingly diverse device sizes and capabilities, but there's no one, correct way to design responsive sites. Dirk Lüth offers one very interesting technique that uses common media queries, but then alters the rendering based on rem units and font-size based proportionally on the viewport. It's a unique approach, and you'll find lots of interesting ideas here.

Mozilla debuts in-browser PDF, patches 13 Firefox bugs
Firefox's PDF viewer came out of a Mozilla Labs project initially dubbed "PDF.js," the "js" for JavaScript, which along with HTML5 APIs (application programming interfaces), was used to build the browser's viewer. With the move, Mozilla follows in Google's footsteps: The search giant baked a PDF viewer into Chrome more than two years ago. But unlike Chrome's PDF viewer, which operates inside the browser's anti-exploit sandbox, Firefox's does not sport similar defenses. And that matters, as PDF documents are often rigged with malicious code.

Wave Outlines Windows 8 Mobile Device Management Alternative
To hear Wave tell it, the Windows 7 or Windows 8 device itself can act as a security token. The Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which is a chip soldered into the device's motherboard, stores user credential information. Mobile device users enter a single PIN to connect to corporate network resources, which avoids having to enter multiple passwords for access. On the back end, Microsoft's Active Directory can be used to manage the security certificates and even disable a device remotely should it get lost.

How we hacked Facebook with OAuth2 and Chrome bugs
Egor Homakov and @isciurus chained several different bugs in Facebook, OAuth2 and Google Chrome to craft an interesting exploit. MalloryPage can obtain your signed_request, code and access token for any client_id you previously authorized on Facebook. The flow is quite complicated so let me explain the bugs we used.

Project Management, Cloud Computing Style
The truly portable office is not only possible, but is quickly becoming the norm for many businesses. Handheld devices were a big step toward the reality of working anywhere, and now cloud computing has removed the final barrier. With project management software hosted in the cloud, you can have everything you need at your fingertips, anywhere you happen to be. Of course, every technology has its advantages and drawbacks. In this article, we'll take a look at how companies can move their project management into the cloud, who can benefit, and what pitfalls still remain for this lofty software solution.

Who’s the best cloud storage provider? Microsoft, says Nasuni; but it still likes Amazon
So here’s an interesting tidbit. Nasuni, which manages cloud storage for small and midsized businesses, ran a set of exhaustive tests to assess the performance, availability and scalability of five major cloud storage providers. And the winner? Microsoft Windows Azure. Yup. Not Amazon S3, but Azure Blob storage.

Silicon Labs and SIGFOX Collaborate to Unleash the Potential of the Internet of Things
“The collaboration between Silicon Labs and SIGFOX provides a solid wireless platform for M2M communication and cloud connectivity,” said Diwakar Vishakhadatta, vice president and general manager of Silicon Labs’ Embedded Systems business. “The integration of SIGFOX’s breakthrough UNB technology further strengthens Silicon Labs’ position as a leading supplier of mixed-signal solutions for smart energy, connected home, and other monitoring and control applications for the Internet of Things.”

Shuttleworth's one device: The smartphone is the tablet and the PC
In a video posted to YouTube this week, a very Bono-like Shuttleworth, channelling his inner Jony Ive and Steve Jobs, spoke at length about the mobile version of the company's open-source and Linux-based operating system, Ubuntu for tablets. The OS will be entering a preview release shortly that will be installable on selected Android hardware, such as Google's Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus phone.

Quote for the day:

"When I've heard all I need to make a decision, I don't take a vote. I make a decision." -- Ronald Reagan

February 19, 2013

Leadership Caffeine-Listen Harder, Please!
In working with leaders at all levels striving to strengthen their performance,listening skills aren’t an issue some of the time, they are an issue nearly 100% of the time. For too many in leadership roles, either the Symphony of Brilliance (as in, “I know the answer” or, “I’m right”), or, the Symphony of Busyness (“I’ve got so much to do, don’t distract me”) playing in their minds, drowns out attempts at communication emanating from those around them.

How Social Intelligence Can Guide Decisions

This isn’t to suggest that “social” will entirely displace current methods of intelligence gathering. But it should emerge as a strong complement. As it does, social-intelligence literacy will become a critical asset for C-level executives and board members seeking the best possible basis for their decisions.

Five overlooked cost categories for new servers
Acquiring new servers isn't just a matter of cutting a purchase order and paying the bill. Just as any automobile carries additional costs after the initial purchase, IT professionals and business planners need to identify and account for the added costs of new server deployments. Let's consider five general cost categories that can inflate the cost of your next server refresh.

9 Tips for How to Use Operating Level Agreements in Multisourcing
"By establishing OLAs between these groups, the IT function can provide the appearance of seamless service to the business," says Edward Hansen, partner with law firm Baker & McKenzie. Until recently, OLAs were most often internal to an IT organization or a single large service provider, ensuring that the groups within the organization were working together to deliver IT services. But with the rise of multisourcing, OLAs are back in the spotlight.

US Department of Energy: Proving the cloud service broker model
To bring order to this chaos, a new sub-market of the broader cloud-computing market has emerged: the cloud service broker (CSB). Envision some kind of cloud middleman, helping to cut through the plethora of cloud options and services by offering…well, just what a CSB offers isn’t quite clear. And that’s the problem with the whole notion of a CSB. The market has yet to fully define it.

Jacqui Taylor (Global) - Bursting the IT Legacy
In our legacy IT systems, we built to manage the capacity of a peak hour, day or month irrespective of how many of these existed in the business year. This ensured that our IT systems had capability and resources available year round to cope with the relatively few peaks, so unused capacity was the norm and services were therefore expensive. When we build a PaaS we build only the minimum of infrastructure resources (‘provisioned' in Cloud-speak) so that you only pay for what you use at any given time and to meet the peaks we burst additional resources as required, hence the term Cloud Bursting

Hortonworks Sandbox Opens Up Enterprise Apache Hadoop To Newbies
The free, self-contained virtual machine with Hadoop pre-configured has been built using the new Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) 1.2, the industry’s only enterprise-ready, 100 per cent open source platform powered by Apache Hadoop, the release added. Hortonworks is one of the leading commercial vendors of Apache Hadoop, the open source platform for storing, managing and analysing big data. It is now making Hadoop more robust and easier for clients to install, manage and use.

What Data Can’t Do
Commerce depends on trust. Trust is reciprocity coated by emotion. People and companies that behave well in tough times earn affection and self-respect that is extremely valuable, even if it is hard to capture in data. ... Data analysis is pretty bad at narrative and emergent thinking, and it cannot match the explanatory suppleness of even a mediocre novel.

Seven dirty secrets of data visualisation
Data visualisation is a wonderful way of exploring data, finding new insights, and telling a compelling story. But what are the real challenges visualisation developers face - and what don't they want you to know about their work? Here are some of the dirty secrets of the information visualisation (infovis) profession, with an inside look at the process of visualisation development, along with practical tools and approaches for dealing with its inevitable challenges and frustrations.

Google-refine
Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases like Freebase.

European Copyright Society Says Hyperlinks (And Framing) Should Not Be Infringing
Basically, since a hyperlink just points you somewhere it's not transmitting the work, there's no copyright violation. The paper goes into significantly more detail, citing case law around the globe to support its position. It also warns the court that while this may seem like a simple issue, it's vitally important to the health of the internet

Quote for the day:

"Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery." -- Warren Bennis

February 18, 2013

Highly Regulated Companies Tiptoe Into Social Media
Banks are embracing social media despite the fact that the financial services industry may be subject to the strictest compliance requirements and regulatory mandates. In just one example, in January 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) published guidelines for blogs and social networking sites that, among other things, outline specific record-keeping responsibilities and supervision requirements.

Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Significantly Influenced $1.1 Trillion
"Overwhelmingly we find EA practitioners focused on delivering on business value and strategic transformation," said Philip Allega, managing vice president at Gartner. "Gone are the days of just 'doing EA' with little value or impact. Sixty-eight percent of organizations surveyed stated that they are focusing their EA program on aligning business and IT strategies, delivering strategic business and IT value, or enabling major business transformation."

Facing Inconvenient Truths, the Mantle of Leadership?
As a leader you might think suffering at work isn’t applicable to you and your team. If your team is engaged, motivated, with a clear purpose, a great work/life balance and works harmoniously together, you could be in the small majority of leaders who actually help to relieve suffering at work. If you think you are, ask your team. If they confirm your perception, congratulations: If not, would you listen and face an inconvenient truth?

Big Data Has Huge Network Implications
Fast-forward to 2013 and Big Data is already starting to shake the foundations of the IT industry, with huge implications for the network market. According to new research from IDC, Big Data technology and services will grow at a 31.7% compound annual growth rate, around seven times the rate of the overall IT market, with revenues reaching $23.8 billion in 2016.

Stop Hyping Big Data and Start Paying Attention to ‘Long Data’
Datasets of long timescales not only help us understand how the world is changing, but how we, as humans, are changing it — without this awareness, we fall victim to shifting baseline syndrome. This is the tendency to shift our “baseline,” or what is considered “normal” — blinding us to shifts that occur across generations (since the generation we are born into is taken to be the norm).

Enterprise Sector Opens Up To Post-PC Era Devices
According to a survey by Forrester Research the enterprise sector loves post-PC era devices. Forrester's annual Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends survey reveals how much information workers in the enterprise sector love Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Windows Phone amongst other platforms. The survey also reveals how much these workers are eyeing tablets and smartphone devices based on Windows platform.

American Express Lets Twitter Users Shop Via Tweet
Cardmembers can sync their eligible cards to Twitter by going to sync.americanexpress.com/twitter and adding a billing and shipping address. Starting Monday, users can tweet #BuyAmexGiftCard25 to purchase a US$25 Amex gift card for $15. The system sends users a confirmation tweet in their @ Connect tab within 15 minutes, and after the user tweets back to confirm the purchase, the product will ship to the address on file via two-day shipping, courtesy of American Express.

Is your PaaS composable orcontextual? (Hint: the answer matters)
Parts of an IT environment should be composable, but there will always be elements where the relative stability of contextual extension makes more sense. And composable systems can leverage API-driven systems that themselves are designed primarily for extensibility via contextual approaches. The key is to think about each system from the perspective of how it will be used, and to target its extensibility mechanism based on needs.

R and Data Mining: Examples and Case Studies

This chapter introduces some basic concepts and techniques for data mining, including a data

mining procedure and popular data mining techniques, such as clustering, classi cation and association

rules. It also presents R and its packages, functions and task views for data mining. At

last, some datasets used in this book are described.

Help Wanted: Defining a Business Intelligence Leader
here are great external resources from TDWI and Robert Half International. Finally, here's a description of a senior BI architect/manager/executive I've used in the past. Would love to hear from everyone on what's missing, what can be added, changed, etc.

Quote for the day:

"The only way to get ahead is to fail early, fail often, and fail forward." -- John Maxwell

February 17, 2013

How to Design an Effective Culture
Jim & Michele discuss designing culture and making really true teams that have collaborative intimacy and solving really hard problems with great teams. Building on their 16 years research, experiments and working with teams they talk about how their approach can build environments of hyper-productivity and joy in work.

Turning Data Into Profit
The unused 95% data could very well be the most significant chunk. If it is used efficiently then it can refine complex business initiatives, identify operational roadblocks and help in developing new services and products. The productivity of Big Data is clear but for extracting those data investment in technologies and updated workforce is desirable. But first of all, a clear idea about Big Data is necessary to start with.

AI Found Better at Diagnosing, Treating Patients, Than Doctors
New research by Indiana University shows using artificial intelligence to understand and predict the outcomes of medical treatment could reduce healthcare costs by more than 50% while also improving patient outcomes by nearly the same amount.

KPMG Report Shows Cloud Implementation Challenges and Higher Costs Than Expected
One of the most important lessons uncovered by this research is that business process redesign needs to be done in tandem with cloud adoption, if organizations hope to achieve the full potential of their cloud investments. Executives have found that simultaneous process redesign is central to addressing the complexities that often arise in the implementation and operational phases of cloud adoption.

Big Data is a solution looking for a problem: Gartner
While businesses are keen to start mining their data stores for useful insights, and many are already experimenting with technologies like Hadoop, the biggest challenge is working out what question you are trying to answer, said Debra Logan, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “Even banks are not doing Big Data in a production sense, because most of what they've got is pretty well organised and in mainframes,” she said.

Entrepreneurs: Do you have a People Strategist?

This would be a consulting role that feels like a partner in the organization – to help achieve business through strategic people management. By serving the entrepreneur and questioning him as an insider, while bringing the perspectives of an outsider. A fundamental pre-condition for Human Capital management is a strong will at the executive management level of the company, combined with the skill of strategic people management. A Human Capital Strategist can provide just that.

Watch out HP, IBM, Teradata, Oracle: Amazon Redshift is here
Redshift, based on technology from ParAccel, claims to offer big-time data warehouse capability for a tenth of the price of legacy suppliers and, as of today, customers can start finding out for themselves if it lives up to the hype. If it does, it will uphold Amazon’s reputation for disrupting tech giants. Redshift availability was announced on the AWS blog.

Big Data success depends on better risk management practices like FAIR
The panel of experts explores new trends and solutions in the area of risk management and analysis. Learn now how large enterprises are delivering better risk assessments and risk analysis, and discover how big data can be both an area to protect, but also used as a tool for better understanding and mitigating risks.

Projects, errors, the user experience and planning in 2013
As we reflect on the work that was done, projects completed, our operational effectiveness, and hopefully how IT contributed to the successes of the business, and document these achievements using your company's format of choice, don't forget to use business terms and avoid buzzwords and IT jargon. Once completed, make sure you share this record with everyone within IT so that they can see how their hard work contributed not only to the department's success, but to the company's overall goals as well.

Designing the next programming language? Understand how people learn!
If we, for example, look at the "programming" languages created in the Model-Driven Development there, we see quite some focus on involving domain experts in development by creating higher level, domain-specific, or sometimes even visual languages. Although there are much more reasons to do Model-Driven Development, it is the ease of use and the lower entry barrier that captures the imagination.

Quote for the day:

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak - and to sit down and listen" -- Winston Churchill

February 16, 2013

Data Laboratory: Is It For You?
What would the purpose of a data laboratory be? I think that the following ideas are strong candidates: Identify what value can be extracted from existing enterprise data; Identify value that may be present for the enterprise in new data sources that can be acquired externally or internally; Synthesize new "data compounds" through the "chemistry" of data integration and assess them for business value; Distill new information products from the raw data resources; and Figure out how to work around existing data deficiencies.

Hadoop to Be Pervasive By 2015
While IT organizations conduct trials over the next few years, especially with Hadoop-enabled database management system (DBMS) products and appliances, application providers will go one step further and embed purpose-built, Hadoop-based analysis functions within packaged applications. The trend is most noticeable so far with cloud-based packaged application offerings, and this will continue.

Ericsson and Gemalto Work to Simplify M2m with Embedded SIMs
The use of embedded SIMs has several advantages, according to Blockstrand. So-called late binding allows the SIM card to be activated later in the production process of a car, for example, he said. The embedded SIM card can be remotely activated when it arrives in the country where it will be sold, instead of someone locally having to put a card in every car.

How Cisco’s Learning Network Became a Social Hub for the IT Industry
Five years ago, Learning@Cisco, the educational services division of Cisco Systems, built a social network platform it called the Cisco Learning Network to help teach and train people who wanted to learn how to become certified by Cisco. But since then it has grown to become a portal for the entire IT industry with over 2 million users who share information on everything from Cisco certification to job searches. It has allowed Cisco to differentiate its brand, create loyal customers, mine for marketing insights and influence the market.

A ‘Golden Era’ of Insight: Big Data’s Bright Future
Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft and co-director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab sees a future where machines, fueled by large amounts of data, can become “empowering, lifelong digital companions” who know what you want or need (be it pizza or medicine), where you want to go (be it Hawaii or the most traffic-free route to the ball game) and generally work with a passion on your behalf.

Joy at Work: It's Your Right
Achieving joy at work is not only possible; it's a necessity. I've come to appreciate that happiness on the job is a leading indicator of an individual's ability to sustain high levels of passion, performance, and productivity over the long run. If we can uncover our true gifts and find work that makes regular use of them, we've fulfilled our responsibility to use them wisely and we've optimized our chances for claiming our right to enjoy the process.

Google Retail Stores Could Be a Smart Move, Analysts Say
Google is in the process of building its own retail stores and hopes to have the first stores open in time for the holidays in major U.S. metropolitan areas, according to a report Friday in 9to5Google, which cited an unnamed, "extremely reliable" source. "Google feels right now that many potential customers need to get hands-on experience with its products before they are willing to purchase," the website reported.

Actionable analytics top CIO priority

"Solutions architects should work with business analysts, subject matter experts and business managers to develop an understanding of the kinds of business decisions that will be made and let computers make decisions that are structured and repeatable to conserve people's time and attention for the thinking and actions that computers cannot do," concludes the Gartner report.

Is direct current power the silver bullet for data center efficiency?
Direct current or alternating current can be used at high voltages for power transmission, but AC has been the main choice to date. Trying to eliminate the transformation losses for the transmission stage is unlikely to be workable. It's pretty much the same at the distribution level; changing the existing infrastructure from AC to DC is not going to be easy, and there would still be a need to use high-voltage DC, so transformation is still required.

Why Application Performance Management Matters Now
One of the lesser-known APM systems, OpNet, in Bethesda, Md., has a product line that corresponds to several of these steps, including AppResponse Xpert for monitoring the end user experience, network and application; AppTransaction Xpert for "deep transaction performance analysis and prediction," according to its descriptor on the OpNet (now part of Riverbed) website; and AppMapper Xpert for mapping an application's parts and dependencies.

Quote for the day:

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it." -- Henry David Thoreau