Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

April 01, 2013

KPMG Study on Government Cloud Use Urges Faster Adoption
KPMG conducted a global study on government cloud adoption. They found out that many government agencies from across the globe are now adopting cloud technology for their respective operations, which allows them to start new venues of interaction with other government agencies as well as the private sector and the citizens. Another big reason for embracing the technology is that it has allowed many of them to focus more on the effectiveness of their programs instead of being distracted by the management of IT.

Veterans Affairs BYOD Plans On Hold
Legal concerns are just the latest in a series of questions that have arisen throughout government as a growing number of federal agencies tackle bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. The Federal Chief Information Officers Council drew up a 43-page document last year in an effort to help agencies navigate the challenges of moving toward BYOD.

What Losing My Job Taught Me About Leading
Personally acknowledging their work sets you apart as a candidate — and later on, as a leader. If you cultivate a relationship in a genuine, thoughtful way, people will be more inclined to want to help you even though they don't have to help you. When you're connecting with people, honoring them, and thanking them for their contributions, you'll naturally find yourself with a larger network — something you need not only to find a job, but to lead effectively once you have a new job.

How to secure data on private cloud
"In-house private cloud computing implementations are often a triumph of hope over experience unless the in-house team truly has the funding and skills to implement a world-class quality of service offering. Few, for example, can ever hope to have the economies of scale and investments in technology, process and people excellence of a market leading enterprise-grade cloud services provider."

Mobile Computing and BYOD Challenges the Data Center
Responses to the question on budgets for mobile device management clearly indicate that the majority of the sample base is casually involved, and/or not directly involved in mobile device management. Nonetheless the responses to question sequences are consistent; however, caution should be applied when extrapolating business opportunities from this data set.

'A CIO's role in BFSI is increasing in importance'
With banking and finance regulations occupying center stage, a CIO has become a member in strategy planning. Today, regulators want to see the sector following the rules and aren't lenient in their terms. This is a move to introduce transparency, audibility and credibility. Regulations have brought CIOs back in limelight. It has shifted his role from a backend executive to a strategy planning role. His/her position has been elevated and is more involved in decision-making blueprint of technology and information backbone.

Windows Intune Wave D: Tooled up for BYOD
What's most important about this release of Intune is that it's a pointer to a more modern way of managing users and devices — one that's more in tune with the growing popularity of bring your own device (BYOD) schemes. Intune isn't about making devices part of a controlled environment — it's about understanding what rights users have, and what tools they need to support their tasks.

With new lab, IBM puts the CIO on notice
The lab's mission dovetails perfectly with IBM's core mission to use data to help businesses make better decisions; that's not the news here. The notable aspect of this announcement is that the chief information officer is -- at least in name -- a waning part of that vision. It's all about transforming the front office: technology touches everything now; it's not a departmental specialty anymore.

How Microsoft lost the future of gesture control

The rise of Apple as a consumer electronics company, Google's emergence as an everything company, and the advent of Web 2.0, the cloud and the social Internet have left Microsoft struggling to find a way to succeed in the markets of the future. There was one shining exception to this trend in the consumer market: Xbox in general and Kinect for Xbox 360 in particular.

5 strategic tips for avoiding a big data bust
Following are five strategic tips for avoiding big data failure. In many cases, the advice pertains to any data management project, regardless of the size of the data set. But the advent of massive data stores has brought with it a particular set of pitfalls. Here's how to increase the chances that your organization's urge to mix large data pools from disparate sources is a success.

Quote for the day:

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop." –-- Confucius

March 31, 2013

Next hurdle for mobile lifecycle teams: User experience skills
Commercial mobile developers generally understand the importance of getting that experience right. But for most enterprise development teams, it's a whole new ball game. Mobile ALM teams typically lack user experience (UX) skills, said Rege. "It's rare for [enterprise software teams] to have UX experts on staff. Until now, the user experience role didn't exist."

Critical denial-of-service flaw in BIND software puts DNS servers at risk
The flaw stems from the way regular expressions are processed by the libdns library that's part of the BIND software distribution. BIND versions 9.7.x, 9.8.0 up to 9.8.5b1 and 9.9.0 up to 9.9.3b1 for UNIX-like systems are vulnerable, according to a security advisory published Tuesday by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), a nonprofit corporation that develops and maintains the software. The Windows versions of BIND are not affected

Risk management strategy must be in place before moving data to the cloud
Any migration of company data to the cloud should be preceded by a thorough assessment of the nature of the data, including the relative impact a loss or theft of that data would have on internal operations, business partnerships and client/customer relations, plus the capabilities, security protocols and interdependencies of potential cloud service providers, the experts said last week during a panel discussion at Business Insurance's 2013 Risk Management Summit in New York.

Renesas Hopes to Put Powerful ARM Processor in Cars
The system-on-a-chip will be able to handle four streams of 1080p video, including Blu-Ray support at 60 frames per second, image and voice recognition and high-resolution 3D graphics with almost no CPU load, according to Renesas. The graphics performance is helped by the use of Imagination Technologies' PowerVR Series6 G6400 GPU.

10 portable battery chargers keep your device powered
Who among us hasn’t found ourselves silently cursing smartphone developers when our batteries run out of juice just when we need them most? These small but powerful portable battery chargers can help you out in a pinch; some can even charge your tablet, too. Just throw one of these handy little gadgets in your bag or pocket and you'll never find yourself without a power source when you are on the go. Arranged from largest capacity to lowest, here are 10 mobile battery chargers that can help keep you in power.

Malware-Detecting 'Sandboxing' Technology No Silver Bullet
The security technology called "sandboxing" aims at detecting malware code by subjecting it to run in a computer-based system of one type of another to analyze it for behavior and traits indicative of malware. Sandboxing -- one alternative to traditional signature-based malware defense -- is seen as a way to spot zero-day malware and stealthy attacks in particular. While this technique often effective, it's hardly foolproof, warns a security researcher who helped establish the sandboxing technology used by startup Lastline.

Software Complexity - an IT Risk perspective
Complexity as the above definition goes, requires more resources to be expended than normal and thus is counter productive. We have numerous best practices, standards and frameworks that advocate for eliminating complexity, but somehow it creeps in and pose as a challenge in most cases. The consequence of software complexity as we have put it above clearly is risk, and it could be even be a business risk, when we look at it in the end user perspective.

High Performance Messaging for Web-Based Trading Systems
This presentation by Frank D. Greco, Director of Technology for Kaazing Corporation will investigate WebSocket and how trading systems can be designed to leverage this new web protocol for reliability, security and performance for desktop, mobile, datacenter and cloud environments.

Pentaho Instaview Templates Improves Big Data Access And Analysis
To accelerate the big data analytics cycle, Pentaho Corporation has new templates for its Instaview big data discovery application. These new templates analyses big data in 3 easy steps and enable data analysts and IT professionals to discover, visualize and explore large volumes of diverse data.

Emerging Expectations of a CIO
CIO’s are witnessing significant change. Gone are the days of simply keeping IT running efficiently, reducing costs and mitigating risks. Today’s CIOs must also balance a broader role on the executive team and new responsibilities that directly influence business strategy. Carl Wilson, former Marriott CIO and executive consultant, and Craig Ledo, Director of Product Marketing, FrontRange discusses emerging expectations of a CIO and how to leverage IT to meet business demands

Quote for the day:

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

March 30, 2013

IT Concerns About Targeted Malware Rising
"The whole thing with targeted malware is that targeted threats are aimed at you," says Goddess. "They are the most difficult to defend against because it's like a virus that only affects you. And the attackers are not stopping. They'll persist until they get in whether it takes months or years. Antivirus isn't going to work because people haven't seen the signatures before."

Building a Web Security Architecture – Deciding on the right form factor
The solution you choose should align to your business objectives. Beyond risk mitigation, you may need to support your business’ expansion; perhaps you are opening up new offices to accommodate your rapid growth or have to quickly absorb new offices coming into your network as the result of mergers and acquisitions. It may be that you are being asked to drive operational efficiencies; perhaps you need to consolidate IT resources, standardize your architecture or support virtualization and cloud initiatives.

Does completing a PCI compliance checklist ensure security?
The PCI DSS is not without value, but, ultimately, it is insufficient on its own to act as a basis for an effective software security program. One notable aspect of the PCI DSS is that it was the first major commercial standard to mandate specific application security measures. This had great potential to help organizations improve the security of the software they were producing and deploying, but, in practice, the PCI compliance checklist is pretty limited in its scope.

Windows Blue under the hood: MinKernel and BaseFS
Villinger found mention of something called "BaseFS" buried in the Windows Blue code. This doesn't seem to be a new name for ReFS, the new file system for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Instead, according to one of my contacts, BaseFS is more of an internal concept that has to do with shared functionality between the different file systems

Top 10 consumerization definitions IT pros should know
It's important for IT professionals to stay ahead in this rapidly changing technological world. This list counts down our top tech terms related to the consumerization of IT, and explains how they affect IT. The rankings are based on our most popular terms, and the 10 definitions that made the cut say a lot about where IT has come from, where it is now and where it's headed.

Expert Advice on Co-Working Spaces for Small Businesses
Before you start a co-working space, it’s a good idea to build a community of people who would be the potential users. You can do this without even having a physical location. You can host a “jelly” — a regular meet-up of freelancers in a location such as a library or cafe. You can host other meetings in the evenings. This way you’ll get to know how much demand there is for your idea.

'Team mobile' takes shape
Mobile applications emerging today are true enterprise applications, in that they connect to key company databases and legacy systems, Murphy said. "You have to have an understanding of the back end in order to develop the front end that users see on their mobile devices." Early mobile apps didn't require that skill set, added Nathan Clevenger, chief technology officer for iFactr Inc., a St. Paul, Minn.-based firm that sells mobile tools for Microsoft developers.

Disruptive digital cliques
The core of successes in achieving enduring success with modern digital tools to enhance and simplify business performance is fundamentally about people, not the technology. Alarmingly large numbers of people have no clear idea of how they are expected to use powerful technologies at work and the result is typically very inefficient, with information and collaboration silos being spun up to suit cliques.

John Maeda on creative leadership
Innovating something, be it a stand alone product or a massively interconnected system, involves many more days of getting to the peak than it does scaling the peak. This is because there are so many pitfalls along the way -- so it always feels like you're climbing something. ... It can't be helped; if you're innovating, by definition you're venturing out through the dark unknown, so of course you'll stumble and fall and have to pick yourself up.

Capturing Compliance Requirements: A Pattern-Based Approach
We can considerably reduce the errors and omissions generated in expensive manual process inspections by partially or fully automating assurance tasks, thereby lowering compliance assurance’s overall cost. The degree of this automation is contingent on the ability to capture and formalize compliance requirements. Unfortunately, using formal languages to capture compliance requirements is diffi cult for business users who are unskilled or inexperienced with such languages.

Quote for the day:

"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." -- Frank Clark

March 29, 2013

Straight talk on security gets employees to listen -- and comply
"Compliance is necessary, but it's not sufficient," says Malcolm Harkins, vice president and chief information security officer at Intel. Harkins' goal is to get employees to go beyond compliance toward full commitment to protecting the company's information. "If they're committed to doing the right thing and protecting the company, and if they're provided with the right information, [then] they'll make reasonable risk decisions."

Build Simple Web UIs with the Nancy Framework
According to the github page, the Nancy framework (NancyFx) provides the "super-duper-happy-path" -- a "lightweight, low-ceremony framework for building HTTP-based services." This is exactly what a Windows service needs for exposing a simple configuration UI. Normally, you'd plug NancyFx into ASP.NET and use it instead of Web Forms or Model-View-Controller (MVC). But NancyFx supports other hosts such as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and even supports the concept of "self-hosting."

New Windows 8 hardware specs hint at 7-inch tablets and a Microsoft Reader
The new guidelines relax the minimum resolution for Windows 8 devices to 1024 x 768 at a depth of 32 bits. That’s a significant change from the current guidelines, which require a minimum resolution of 1366 x 768 for a device to be certified with the Windows 8 logo. From the announcement, it appears that the new guidelines are effective immediately, but it’s likely that any new devices that use this form factor will ship along with the forthcoming Windows Blue update.

Microsoft makes good on promise, publishes list of 41K patents
"Transparency around patent ownership will help prevent gamesmanship by companies that seek to lie in wait and 'hold up' companies rather than enable a well-functioning secondary market," said Brad Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, on a blog announcing the searchable list. "[And] transparency is a prerequisite to enforceability of patent licensing pledges. Quite simply, without transparency it is impossible to determine if a company is in fact abiding by those commitments."

Our Security Models Will Never Work — No Matter What We Do

If security won’t work in the end, what is the solution? Resilience — building systems able to survive unexpected and devastating attacks — is the best answer we have right now. We need to recognize that large-scale attacks will happen, that society can survive more than we give it credit for, and that we can design systems to survive these sorts of attacks. Calling terrorism an existential threat is ridiculous in a country where more people die each month in car crashes than died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

8 Reasons Enterprise Architecture Programs Fail
Enterprise architecture was conceived some 25 years ago to address the increasing complexity of IT systems and their poor alignment with business goals. The same problems still exist today, amplified by the accelerating pace of technology change. Why is it that EA programs are more likely to fail than succeed? Here are eight typical failure modes, followed by recommendations on how to avoid them.

Failing. And dealing with it.
You will fail. That's the reality of trying to bring new things to life. You will fail, and may fail over and over and over. You may never succeed, actually. But, some folks are able to take that failure and get to the mantra of Principle 14, which is Failure Sucks, But Instructs. The wonderful article titled "Following Your Bliss, Right Off the Cliff" published on New York Times examines the failures and recoveries of several entrepreneurs

10 Geeky Ways to Celebrate April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day has become increasingly geeky, since the Web, cameras and other high-tech tools make it so much easier to prank people. Here's a roundup of ways to make the most of your April 1.

Don’t Plan for Perfection
we simply let the future unfold without forecasting. On the contrary, as a good manager, you must understand your costs, your revenue model and how you make money. And you’re on the hook for growing and strengthening over time. However, instead of relying on what is most often an unnatural level of precision around an unpredictable set of numbers, build the systems and processes to incorporate learning, constantly refresh forecasts and push the planning

What does a CTO do?
Amr Awadallah summarizes his findings by answering four core questions: (1) what is the CTO Mission? (2) how to measure the CTO? (3) How should the CTO split his/her time internally vs externally? then finally (4) what are the specific responsibilities of the CTO towards the main constituents inside the organization? Note that this role description is focused on pure CTOs, as opposed to CTOs whom still own the operational aspects of the engineering organization, it is also biased towards enterprise CTOs vs other domains.

Quote for the day:

"We all need lots of powerful long-range goals to help us past the short-term obstacles." -- Jim Rohn

March 28, 2013

BYOD is not for everybody, and especially not for executives
As computing devices get more personal and pervasive, people are going to be more confident and competent in their personal use of technology whether they’re on a desktop computer or a mobile device. But if you’re a CEO, director, manager, or your employment status makes you eligible for litigation, then bringing your own device to work can be detrimental to your personal and professional life.

A Serious Question for Serious Practitioners
The question Daryl Conner about to ask is aimed at seasoned practitioners who are at least proficient (preferably highly skilled) in practicing their craft and who relate to this work as an aspect of their life’s mission. Anyone reading this blog is invited to consider the question but that’s who it’s aimed at. Here is the question: Is there something beyond the obvious you are hoping to achieve through your work?

Update: Spamhaus hit by biggest-ever DDoS attacks
Matthew Prince, CEO of CloudFlare, a San Francisco-based firm that has been helping Spamhaus over the past few days, today said that the attacks have been going on since March 19 and have generated up to 300Gbps of DDoS traffic. That's about three times bigger than the biggest DDoS attacks seen so far and several magnitudes greater than the 4Gbps to 10Gbps of traffic generated by typical DDoS attacks.

5 Leadership Lessons: Avoiding the "Mediocre Me" Mindset
Mediocre Me by Brigadier General John Michel is a challenge to think differently about your role in the world. “Instead of the term leader being synonymous with someone who strives to use their influence to build value into their surroundings,” writes Michel, “it is more likely we associate it with someone doing whatever it takes just to keep the routine going.” Here are five more thoughts from Brigadier General John Michel:

iPhones most 'vulnerable' among smartphones
According to SourceFire's "25 Years of Vulnerabilities" study released in early March, which analyzed vulnerabilities from the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) data and National Vulnerability Database (NVD), the majority of mobile phone vulnerabilities have been found in Apple's iPhone. The database provides 25 years of information on vulnerabilities to assess, spanning from 1988.

On Kickstarter: The $99 Android-Powered MiiPC May Be Your Child's Next Computer
It launches this summer with Jellybean 4.2, a 1.2GHz Dual Core processor, 1GB of memory, and 4GB of internal flash storage. The box also packs in 2 USB ports, a speaker and microphone jack, Wifi, Ethernet, Bluetooth, and HDMI out. The developers have made tweaks to both the UI and base Android OS, optimizing it for large-screen displays of up to 1920×1080 resolution and baking in support for unlimited user accounts.

Coursera - Machine Learning
This course provides a broad introduction to machine learning, datamining, and statistical pattern recognition. Topics include: (i) Supervised learning (parametric/non-parametric algorithms, support vector machines, kernels, neural networks). (ii) Unsupervised learning (clustering, dimensionality reduction, recommender systems, deep learning). (iii) Best practices in machine learning (bias/variance theory; innovation process in machine learning and AI).

Global IT Spend Will Rise 4.1% To $3.8T In 2013, With Mobile And Enterprise Leading The Way
Gartner has just released its annual projections on worldwide IT spend over the next two years — arguably the analyst house’s most wide-ranging report covering sales in hardware, software, enterprise and telecoms. The overall trends continue to point up: globally we will see $3.8 trillion spent across all categories, a rise of 4.1% on 2012. That’s a sign of some recovery on a year ago: growth in 2012 was only 2.1%. Mobile and enterprise services are fuelling a lot of the good news, and Gartner further notes that the same trends will largely continue into 2014.

Windows Blue: Why IE 11 is taking a leaf from BlackBerry's book
The version of IE 11 in the leaked build of Windows Blue doesn't do quite that, which is a good thing: browsers trying to interpret prefixes marked for other browsers is not the way to get well-built web pages that take advantage of standards. What is seems to do (remember, this is an unofficial leaked build), is to use a brand new user agent string: IE instead of MSIE. Developers can still target IE specifically, but IE 11 won't be hampered by being sent to versions of pages designed for old builds of IE with bugs long since fixed.

Digital skills a key to the C-Suite: The rise of the Chief Digital Officer
Enter the chief digital officer (CDO). While the CIO labours to keep leading companies abreast of cumbersome, enterprise-wide technology upgrades and efficiencies – virtual servers, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and IT infrastructure of all kinds – and working behind the scenes, the CDO's remit is customer-focused (front end) technologies, investigating the social web, online marketing, data analytics and the impact of the digital revolution on the essence of a company's business strategy.

Quote for the day:

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." -- Abraham Lincoln

March 27, 2013

Microsoft confirms it's shut off Windows 8-Google Apps calendar sync
"This rift impacts both consumers and businesses negatively and needs to be addressed immediately. Impacted users won't change calendar services [just] to work with Windows 8, so it's up to Microsoft to do the right thing and implement CalDAV. [But] Google deserves ridicule for stopping EAS support, too."

Google Compute Engine: interview with NuoDB
Meet engineers from NuoDB: an elastically scalable SQL database built for the cloud. We will learn about their approach to distributed SQL databases and get a live demo. We'll cover the steps they took to get NuoDB running on Google Compute Engine, talk about how they evaluate infrastructure (both physical hardware and cloud), and reveal the results of their evaluation of Compute Engine performance.

The CIO: Facilitator of engaging employee experiences
IT leaders will never be able to expand the conversation about how technology can enable employees or redefine the relationship between IT and employees if the focus is on provisioning and managing technology. The conversations CIOs should be driving is how to design technology experiences which align technology with specific work tasks to drive actions that help employees achieve the outcomes they, and the business, desire.

Data management strategies: Toigo's 5 quick tips for clearing clutter
In this expert video presentation featuring Data Management Institute chairman and Storage Decisions speaker Jon Toigo, storage pros in need of new data management strategies in 2013 can learn five quick and simple ways to get started. View this video or read some of Toigo's comments below to find out how to implement good data hygiene policies without having to make it a year-long initiative.

Softphones provide better communication flexibility for BYOD era
"To be able to have one phone number regardless of the device or where they are physically located is a huge benefit," Myers said. "What company doesn't want their employees reachable or working 24 hours per day?" While organizations will likely never move to a single device that does both computing and telephony, it's not out of the realm of possibilities that a tablet and Bluetooth phone dongle could one day become the only equipment an IT department supplies to employees.

By Paying Employees To Live Near The Office, Imo Cuts Commutes, Ups Happiness
The principal benefits of living near where you work are almost too obvious to mention; the time that would have spent commuting simply goes back to things you love: family, friends, hobbies, sleep. But Imo has found there are secondary benefits, too. A five-mile radius (plus Palo Alto’s climate) makes active commutes, via bike or foot, more likely. Employees find they’re able to pop home during their lunch break to take care of a few quick chores.

Three Steps To Enterprise Cloud Migration
The first stage is co-location or rack hosting, a model in which hardware moves to an offsite data centre. ... The next stage would be managed services, with the hardware continuing to be owned but the services delivered by a third party. ... The final stage is the move to the cloud, a move, Mr Kalla says, that requires a mature and long-term outlook. “It’s a totally hand’s-off environment which might not please technical staff who typically like control".

The problem with the iPad
Everything about the device was built around making it as easy to use as possible. But it's possible to take simplicity too far, especially when enterprise users are concerned, and there's one aspect of the iPad that Apple may need to address to keep enterprise users happy, and that's file system access. Jean-Louis Gassée of The Guardian succinctly summed up the problem facing the iPad.

Performance tradeoffs of TCP Selective Acknowledgment
Selective acknowledgment (SACK) is an optional feature of TCP that is necessary to effectively use all of the available bandwidth of some networks. While SACK is good for throughput, processing this type of acknowledgment has proven to be CPU intensive for the TCP sender. This weakness can be exploited by a malicious peer even under commodity network conditions. This article presents experimental measurements that characterize the extent of the problem within the Linux® TCP stack. SACK is enabled by default on most distributions.

Outdated Java weak spots are widespread, Websense says
A new Websense report suggests that approximately 94 percent of endpoints that run Oracle's Java are vulnerable to at least one exploit, and we are ignoring updates at our own peril. According to security researchers at Websense, it's not just zero-day attacks that remain a persistent threat. Instead, Java exploits are now a popular tool for cybercriminals.

Quote for the day:

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see" -- Arthur Schopenhauer

March 26, 2013

Microsoft services agreement changes: What other enterprises can learn
Google got into trouble with recent changes to its policies regarding the handling of user information, and now Microsoft seems to have caused some concern with similar changes. Should enterprises be concerned with Microsoft's new user information policies? Are there any lessons to be learned for enterprises on how to state exactly what data they collect?

Mobile's browser usage share jumps 26% in three months
Gains on the part of mobile have come at the expense of what Net Applications defines as "desktop," a category that includes both desktop and notebook PCs, primary powered by Microsoft's Windows, and Macs running Apple's OS X. Desktop browser usage dropped 3.1 percentage points in the last three months, and fell 6.3 points in the last 12.

Resolving Cobb's Paradox?

“We know why projects fail; we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” Speaking at a recent UK conference, the UK Government’s adviser on efficiency Sir Peter Gershon laid down a challenge to the project management profession: “Projects and programmes should be delivered within cost, on time, delivering the anticipated benefits.”

Some practices to write better C#/.NET code
Write code for People First, Computers Second. Readable code doesn't take any longer to write than confusing code does, at least not in the long run. It’s easier to be sure your code works, if you can easily read what you wrote. That should be a sufficient reason to write readable code. But code is also read during reviews. Code is read when you or someone else fixes an error. Code is read when the code is modified.

Bruce Schneier on data privacy and Google's feudal model of security
In this video interview, Schneier, chief technology security officer with BT Counterpane, discusses the ways in which trust -- and, in turn, data privacy -- is threatened on the Internet, and explains how Google, Apple and others have adopted a feudal model of security, in which their customers have little, if any, recourse to ever reclaim data that rightfully belongs to them.

Dell and Object Management Group to launch an SDN standards body
Dell says at least 31 companies, including networking vendors, enterprises and service providers, are interested in working with the OMG on broad architectural SDN standards, particularly around programmatic interfaces, otherwise known as northbound APIs. ... No one has confirmed which consortium is handcuffing companies, but many predict that it's the Daylight project, which reportedly involves IBM, HP, Cisco, Citrix, Big Switch Networks and NEC. HP and IBM are already members of OMG.

Lawmakers introduce bill on warrantless GPS tracking
The legislation was introduced a day after the government argued before a federal appeals court that warrantless GPS tracking is an important part of the law enforcement process. The government's attorneys have argued that GPS devices can be used to "gather information to establish probable cause, which is often the most productive use of such devices." Requiring a warrant means being forced to establish probable cause before that and ultimately limit the value of GPS devices.

How Would You Build Up a City from Components?
To easily reuse components they should be designed with a loose coupling approach. To make this possible, different frameworks typically implement their event models based on the Observer pattern. This allows multiple recipients to subscribe to the same event. The Observer pattern was originally implemented in Smalltalk. Smalltalk is a user interface framework based on MVC and is now a key part of MVC frameworks.

Data Governance at Starbucks
As Starbucks takes in its own continuous streams of purchase data, and attempts to integrate new data sets from recently-acquired tea seller Teavana, data governance is a concern, he said, noting recent hacking occurrences of government data. Data governance is also about ensuring information is uniform enough to be integrated readily, and that remains a challenge.

5 q's to formulate your strategy for a business
Roger L Martin, dean, Rotman School of Business, has co-authored a book, ‘Playing to Win-How Strategy Really Works', with AG Lafley, the legendary CEO of P&G. Roger demystified the holy grail of strategy down to making the right choices. He said, "Strategy is essentially about making a finite number of choices." To win, a company must choose to do some things and not do the others. Choosing to do everything is to spread your resources thin and diffuse management focus which is a sure-shot recipe for disaster.

Quote for the day:

"It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick people whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction." -- Cameron

March 25, 2013

Amazon Web Services ramps up mobile development
Developers typically access AWS from their PCs but smartphones and tablets are quickly supplanting laptops and PCs as devices of choice for more workers so it would make sense for AWS to turn more attention to those form factors. And, the company added Android and iOS(s appl) support to the AWS management console so users can keep an eye on their services from their device of choice.

Top China uni linked to army's cyberspying unit
According to a report Sunday, Reuters found at least three papers--easily accessible online--on computer network security and intrusion detection, co-authored by faculty members of Shanghai Jiaotong University and the PLA Unit 61398. The army unit was identified as an operational unit actively engaged in cyberespionage by U.S.-based security firm Mandiant last month.

Forcing us to educate users on cybersecurity won't work: Telstra
Telstra's director of corporate security and investigation and internet trust and safety, Darren Kane said that users currently have enough information about online risks, but that it sees the current education issue as one similar to "taking a horse to water". "Making it mandatory for us to provide the information would not solve the problem. I think we do that anyway, because we want to ensure they have a greater online experience and keep coming back for more," Kane said, but also clarified that advising users was part of its commercial interests.

Data Maturity in a Social Business and Big Data World
It is critical then, to have both a strong data governance foundation in place, as well as an infrastructure that can quickly consume, integrate, analyze, and distribute this new information. Incompatible standards and formats of data in different sources can prevent the integration of data and the more sophisticated analytics that create value.

10 of the biggest IT sand traps
Unhelpful users are trickier to work with because they frequently come in the guise of “helpful” individuals who cross a threshold when they become too helpful. They offer reams of tweak suggestions for apps and never want to accept an app as being complete for a given release. Enhancement creep of this nature introduces risk into IT project deadlines. The best way to deal with it is to establish firm cutoffs for app development and enhancement cycles that everyone agrees to.

Where to Find Risks
These risk taxonomies are appropriate for finding product and service delivery risks, but not optimized for finding project delivery risks. For that, PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) is a better source for identifying risks, though it’s cumbersome. Basically, areas where the organization is not mature for project management are opportunities for risk.

Learning from mistakes is overrated
There is a cultural fascination with failure being the source of great lessons to be learned. What did you learn? You learned what didn't work. Now you won’t make the same mistake twice, but you’re just as likely to make a different mistake next time. With that approach you could know what won’t work, but you not gaining any information about what will work.

New storage technologies to deal with the data deluge
With existing hard drive technologies ending their decade-long run of ever-increasing densities, IT shops are waiting for new technologies such as shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and phase-change memory (PCM) to boost storage densities. In the meantime, they are holding down costs -- and boosting data access -- with software that virtualizes, deduplicates and caches data on commodity disk drives, solid-state drives (SSD) and server-side flash memory.

Nokia throws spanner into Google's plans for VP8 codec standard
Mueller notes that Nokia's refusal to license its patents for free or FRAND could make implementing VP8 may be more costly than H.264. Nokia says it took the "unusual step" of withholding licences because VP8 was not an industry-wide effort, but an attempt by one company to force through proprietary technology in a standard.

Efficient code is good but clean code is better

As computing resources continue to grow, efficiency falls further behind another concern when writing code, though. That concern is the cleanness of the code itself. Mostly, this boils down to readability and comprehensibility. Programmers need to be able to read and comprehend your code — programmers that will come along after you have moved on and even when you come back to your own code in six months.

Quote for the day:

"Genius is nothing but a great aptitude for patience." -- Georges Louis Leclerc
"When opportunity comes, it's too late to prepare." -- John Wooden

March 24, 2013

Is IT an Agent of Mass Extinction?
The Maya had a curious habit of not rebuilding their pyramids, but making them bigger and better by building new layers on top of existing pyramids. This is not exactly analogous to what IT has done over various technical generations; IT has not simply added layers of new stuff on top of existing stuff, but has fused the whole lot together into one giant incredibly complex architecture. Loose coupling is a fine architectural principle, but invariably honored in the breach where it really matters.

Big Data Analytics Can Help Banks Stop Cyber Criminals Accessing Secret Data
"It's a bit like 'casing the joint'. If you are a cyber criminal you have to case the joint looking at all the little bits of information that companies expose, trying to find user names or passwords, or the technology that they run so that you can design an attack that will succeed from the outside. So the whole model [of bank security] has gone inside-out."

Adobe and Apple: Allies and rivals through the ages
Apple and Adobe have a long history of both agreement and opposition. They've been closely linked since the early days of desktop publishing, often with complementary product lines and common customers, but they've also often wrestled for the upper hand in their relationship. Among the clearest contrasts in the shifting balance between the two companies are two similar moments nearly a decade apart.

Teleworking requires good information sharing
Taken to its logical conclusion, opposition to teleworking implies that global operating models also don’t work given that the objection to collaborating electronically must apply equally to employees who are in different offices as it does to those who are working from home. ... Whether it is a single employee working remotely or a team operating virtually over the globe, there are five principles that are needed to make them successful. At their core they are about establishing a free flow of information.

Stop Wasting Your Time Solving Problems
Problems shake the confidence of new leaders/managers and make them forget they have what it takes. Instilling confidence in them is more important than solving problems for them. Don’t solve people’s problems give them confidence they can solve them.

Apple buys WiFiSlam, maker of tech for locating phones indoors
Digits notes that Google currently offers indoor mapping in airports, shopping centers, sports stadiums, and other locations. It's not known if WiFiSlam's technology will somehow be incorporated into Apple's Maps app. Apple, of course, tossed Google Maps as the default mapping service in iOS and launched its own mapping app, which, on its debut last September, was lambasted for its shortcomings.

Samsung Looks At Enterprise Users With Galaxy S4 Launch
Samsung Knox is quite similar to BackBerry's Balance system. It allows users to create an encrypted container that stores all the sensitive work related apps and information including e-mail, contacts and documents. All this data is kept separate from the user's personal apps and settings. According to Samsung, this allows secured data to remain intact even if the phone experiences a malware attack.

Queues – the true enemy of flow
In short, queues have a direct economic impact on the business. They increase inventory, stall valuable projects, which increases the risk of loss, delay feedback and impact on motivation and quality. Yet in spite of this, they are rarely tracked or targeted. A company that carefully keeps account of every hour of overtime is quite likely to be blissfully unaware of the cost of delay to a project caused by long queues.

Cloud Service Brokerage is the new Enterprise Architecture
No longer will architects perform such low level solution designs involving ‘nuts and bolts’ components, but they will leverage a portfolio of services available via the broker; and the IT engineer or system integrator is no better off as they will no longer rack and stack, but will merely configure the Cloud services available through enterprise connected models which can be provided by the CSB.

William Schiemann on Reinventing Talent Management
In this AMA podcast, Dr. William Schiemann’s talks about his book Reinventing Talent Management: How to Maximize Performance in the New Marketplace aims to put a tight process and discipline of measurement behind the annual report cliché that “Our people are our most important asset.” At the heart of Dr. Schiemann’s thesis is a provocative new talent management model he terms People Equity.

Quotes for the day:

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy." -- Norman Schwarzkopf

March 23, 2013

Gartner Recommendations for BlackBerry 10
As BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10 device becomes available in the U.S. this week, Gartner Inc. analysts say enterprises must determine user demand, address BYOD support, forecast the health of the BlackBerry business and decide whether to upgrade the BlackBerry Enterprise Service.

Why the Best CEOs Listen More
Listening is an essential, yet often overlooked aspect of business communication. Entrepreneurs and senior executives are naturally filled with ideas, and it’s our nature to want to share those ideas with others. But great leaders over time learn to talk less and listen more. There are many benefits of listening. Here are four benefits that executives gain by listening

How Digital Behavior Differs Among Millennials, Gen Xers and Boomers
Millennials have the highest social networking penetration of any generation, and the highest Facebook and Twitter use rates to match. Though Twitter started out with a somewhat older audience, millennials now make up more than half of all US users, and will hover around that point for the next several years. They also account for about four in 10 digital video viewers.

Podcast: Hadoop vendors progress toward enterprise-ready solutions

In this SearchStorage.com podcast, associate site editor Ian Crowley speaks with Evaluator Group senior partner John Webster about the progress Hadoop vendors are making toward offering viable enterprise products for managing and processing "big data." Listen to the podcast or read the transcription below to find out more about the state of Hadoop architecture

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Dell Attracting More Buyout Interest
Blackstone’s interest in Dell, the world’s third-largest PC maker, is considered more serious than that of HP or Lenovo, said one of the people familiar with the situation. As of last night, no one had submitted a proposal or letter to the board for consideration, said another person with knowledge of the situation. The board would have to receive something by March 22 and then determine whether the interest would reasonably lead to a higher offer, this person said.

VMware introduces new Unity Touch clients for mobile Windows
In a post on the VMware End-User Computing blog, Pat Lee, director of product management for end-user computing, introduced Unity Touch clients for VMware Horizon View 2.0. The Unity Touch clients will let users of iOS and Android devices browse and search files, open Windows applications and files. It requires VMware Horizon View 5.2 desktop, she wrote.

Big Data Analytics As A Service, With An Ontology For Cross-Platform Analysis At Its Core
“There is a lot of opportunity for partners to develop and extend the ontology into niche areas that set up for the analysis and types of transactions where we don’t have expertise,” Manish Singh says. Rapid deployment of new ontologies by partners is possible, he says, because they can layer on top of what’s already there vs. building from scratch each time. “Our concept of rapidly deployed ontologies is the ability to have an ecosystem of partners,” he says.

Bretford Releases Enterprise Guide for iOS Deployments
A vendor of iOS charging/synching products has released an interactive e-book that offers businesses an approach to configuring and managing iPads, iPhones and iPods. "iOS Deployment: A Guide to Managing iPad, iPhone and iPod touch in Your Organization" is available a free download from Apple's iBookstore. The digital guide was created with iBooks Author, and designed so that it accept updates as the iOS product line changes in the future, according to the vendor, Bretford Manufacturing.

Innovation: Five Keys to Educating the Next Generation of Leaders
What do educators need to provide for the next generation of positive, innovative leaders? If core competencies are assumed (engineers need to engineer, accountants need to account, writers need to write and so on) what will be the key elements of an education that might help students become life-long learners, successful in multiple, varied career paths? Here are five critical elements that every student should be looking for in an educational journey . . . and educators should be looking to deliver.

DHS shifting to cloud, agile development to boost homeland security
At a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Tuesday, a DHS IT official gave lawmakers an overview of agile development methodologies, one of the tools that the department is using to fix its IT project management. Agile came up after U.S. Rep Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), a former staffer in Rep. Gabrielle Gifford's office who won that seat after Giffords resigned, asked what DHS was doing to ensure that its IT systems met user needs.

Quotes for the day:

"If you are afraid of failure you don't deserve to be successful!" -- Charles Barkley
"The consumer is the most important part of the production line." — W. Edwards Deming