Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

August 20, 2013

Full calendar – A complete web diary system for jQuery and C# MVC
This article describes using the very fine open source JQuery plugin “FullCalendar” by Adam Shaw to develop an appointment booking system. ... The aim of this article is give you almost everything you need, that you can tweak immediately, to bring diary/appointment functionality to your MVC application. This is a complete walk-through including setup of a linked EF database in SQL. I am going to use the Twitter Bootstrap framework to help speed things along.

Blaster worm: Lessons learned a decade later
Worms like Blaster are bad for their business, and I think thats why we havent seen similarly-sized incidents since. The underlying technology problems have not been solved. The root cause of Blaster was a vulnerability in Microsofts operating systems. But the contributing factor which exponentially increased the impact of the worm was the fact that Microsoft's customers were not properly managing their technology infrastructures.

'Brain in a Box' Gets Us One Step Closer to the Borg

Those would be "neurosynaptic chips" stemming from IBM's SyNAPSE project headed by Dharmendra S. Modha, unveiled in August 2011. In a video, Modha called the new system a "brain in a box." Now IBM is sharing with the world its vision of a new programming language and surrounding software ecosystem to take advantage of the chips, partially in response to the Big Data phenomenon.

5 Points to Consider before choosing a Security SaaS Solution
Most large enterprises have not quite adopted cloud all the way yet because of this very reason and also because not all enterprise applications are available through the cloud but are trending that way. The optimal way to look at this situation is to do a total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI) analysis, factoring in the risk of remote employees not keeping their systems up to date with security.

3 Major Trends in New Discovery Analytics
Conversations about visual discovery are beginning to include data discovery, and vendors are developing and delivering such tool sets today. It is well-known that while big data profiling and the ability to visualize data give us a broader capacity for understanding, there are limitations that can be addressed only through data mining and techniques such as clustering and anomaly detection. In this context, we see a number of tools with different architectural approaches tackling this obstacle.

Database administration best practice: Balance DBA team skills
DBA direction comes from the implicit business needs of the company, said Michelle Malcher, DBA team lead at DRW Holdings, a Chicago-based trading organization. If the business is looking for more production support from the database administration system, the group should probably be categorized under operations. If there is a need to pursue more new programming projects, then the team needs to work under the aegis of a development group, Malcher said.

Set the right Linux extended attributes, enjoy better file security
Linux extended attributes are a useful security addition to complement or counteract default functionality in the file system. To continue the example above, applying "i" extended attributes as an extra layer of protection to files in a user's home directory will prevent the user from removing all files from their home directory, even if the user has permission to delete these files by default.

What wearable computing is really all about
We'll see a wide variety of wearable devices that clip onto clothing. Sony, as an early example, will soon ship its Sony Smart Bluetooth Handset SBH52, a clip-on device that relays audio to and from any Bluetooth device. You can use it like a phone (as in hold it up to your ear and talk). It also has an FM radio. Think of this device as a halfway technology between a Bluetooth headset and a clip-on wearable device.

NPulse adds full indexing to 10g packet capture appliance
At high data rates like 10 Gbps, writing all packets to disk is only the first challenge, Frey said. Retrieving those packets and recreating sessions is just as difficult. "Finding the right data requires fast access if you want to get an answer to your problem in the next 15 minutes." The amount of packets a CPX appliance captures and writes to disk -- typically on a NetApp storage array -- grows quickly for some organizations.

Quote for the day:

"Be clear about your goal but be flexible about the process of achieving it." -- Brian Tracy

August 19, 2013

Facebook to test new mobile payment service
"We continue to have a great relationship with our payment processing partners, and this product is simply to test how we can help apps provide a simpler commerce experience," Randall said. But if Facebook scales out the program, it could become competitive with PayPal and other e-commerce businesses from an end user perspective, said Greg Sterling, senior analyst with Opus Research.

Why Are There No Jobs for Hadoop in the Federal Government?
A more likely reason is that government agencies have not fully embraced “big data” because government leaders still do not fully understand what it can do or how it can help them operate more efficiently. For example, text mining can be applied to financial fraud detection, research paper classification, student sentiment analysis and smarter search engines for all manner of government records, and machine learning can be used for decision support systems for healthcare,model generation for climate science, speech recognition for security and mobile data entry across agencies.

Commbank promises more tech innovation
"With the project now completed, we are focused on continuous innovation for the benefit of our customers," Narev said in the bank's 2013 financial report. "We believe we are still only at the start of our long-term effort to apply world-leading technology for the benefit of our customers." As proof of this claim, Narev pointed to the bank's real-time settlement and banking, mobile banking app Kaching — which has handled more than AU$9 billion in transaction to date — and its point-of-sale platform Pi, and devices Albert and Leo.

How to Support Mobile App Development in Your Organization
"I view this as the yin and the yang of mobile apps," says Roger Baker, chief strategy officer at Agilex, an IT solutions provider with an enterprise mobility specialization. "As a CIO, you really want to say to users, 'Yes, you can develop mobile apps.' But at the same time, you have a responsibility to control security, data access and data integrity—all the way up through the brand.

Research: What CEOs Really Want from Coaching
Blind spots are less obvious when things are going well. It is very easy for executives to become almost strictly inward looking, especially when they have been very successful. But these blind spots can become devastating when performance moves in the other direction. A good, neutral third party assessment is a clear reality check for executives.

4 Time Management Tips For The Chronically Overworked
These days, "overworked" is the new normal, and learning to manage your time wisely is the key to getting ahead in today's 24/7 work environment. The truth is, you won't ever have more hours in a day, or fewer tasks to fulfill, but if you master your time and use it efficiently, you'll feel less pressure and less overwhelmed. Suzana Simic, manager of career services at Computer Systems Institute, provides these four key time-management tips to help you tackle the daily grind.

UK Serious Fraud Office suffers biggest ever data breach
Similarly, this was also the case with the UK’s Serious Fraud Office, a government body roughly equivalent to the US Department of Justice. This week they admitted to sending a staggering 32,000 documents and hundreds of multimedia files related to a criminal investigation of the defense contractor BAE to the wrong people. The files came from over 50 different sources and even though the breach occurred last year, the SFO still hasn’t recovered all of the information.

New Technologies Map Human and Machines Relationships
"In making the overriding theme of this year's Hype Cycle the evolving relationship between humans and machines, we encourage enterprises to look beyond the narrow perspective that only sees a future in which machines and computers replace humans. In fact, by observing how emerging technologies are being used by early adopters, there are actually three main trends at work. These are augmenting humans with technology

Companies Neglect Physical Threat in Cyberattacks
"People will put their finger on a biometric fingerprint reader, but they're still willing to hold the door open for the guy behind them," says Dan Berger, president and chief executive of Redspin Inc., a cybersecurity firm. Physical intrusion is a threat companies have to guard against as U.S. regulators step up efforts to make companies guard against and possibly disclose attacks on their computer systems.

CIOs Rise Again on the Coattails of Cloud Computing, SaaS
When the chief marketing officer, the human resources manager, the vice president of sales and the chief finance officer all tore off chunks of the technology budget, the obituaries for the chief information officer position were many and morbid. A corporate executive without budget is soon a corporate executive without a job went the thinking. And for a while as organizations, including Gartner, proclaimed that the marketing department would soon wield a bigger tech budget than the CIO, the predictions of the demise of the CIO’s role appeared prescient.

Quote for the day:

"They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself." -- Andy Warhol

August 18, 2013

Dependency Principles for SOA
Ganesh believes that an organisation which follows the rules will end up "achieving SOA". Of course we have many other examples over the years of where SOA has failed or succeeded, with corresponding attempts at principles and rules to follow to make SOA successful. The principles that Ganesh outlines can be classified into the four layers on which they operate:

IBM And Big Data Disruption: Insider's View
What's IBM's take on Hadoop as the new enterprise data warehouse and disruptor of data-integration and mainframe workloads? Bob Picciano, appointed in February as general manager of IBM's Information Management Software Division, says there's no doubt that Hadoop will displace certain workloads, but he's more dismissive about NoSQL and upstart databases including SAP Hana.

There's no free lunch when it comes to Google's Gmail
"I think the real issue here is naive users thinking that they can get something for nothing," said Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. "Providers don't do anything for free. There's always an angle they're playing to either increase their revenue or profitability. And Google takes a back seat to no one when it comes to figuring out and exploiting all the angles. One of the best angles is using email contents to aim specific ads at users."

Do stakeholders fear EA taking over? They do.
The reality is that few EAs are able to come with that integrated and navigable architecture of the enterprise that would serve all stakeholders since most EA frameworks help little. This leaves a lot of space for pretenders that come with a few loose diagrams, plans and plenty of grand strategic talk. To compensate, the architects talk about EA as a strategy, operating model, business model

Ahead Of Their Time: Noble Flops
Ironically, the best flop of the period was Steve Jobs’ NeXT “Cube” (1989). This powerful personal computer, designed for the academic research market, bombed for two reasons: It cost $6,500 (close to $13,000 in today’s dollars), and it had a novel but painfully slow optical hard drive–a flop within a flop.

The Cloud and Business Innovation: The Implications of SMAC
Here is an edited down / extracted version of the Information Management weekly Research Alert. Key topics explored include: the evolution toward, and implications of, the “SMAC” stack (as in social, mobile, analytics and Cloud); the changing nature of ITs contribution to the business; and how SMAC is helping to change the value proposition to the customer (across a variety of industry use cases), as well as in the creation of “smart products.”

Infrastructure 2.0: As a matter of fact that isn't what it means
The biggest confusion out there seems to be that dynamic infrastructure is being viewed as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Dynamic infrastructure is not the same thing as IaaS. IaaS is a deployment model in which application infrastructure resides elsewhere, in the cloud, and is leveraged by organizations desiring an affordable option for scalability that reduces operating and capital expenses by sharing compute resources "out there" somewhere, at a provider.

What are you doing to prepare your company for the new style of IT convergence?
All this requires a new style of IT so that you, as a data center leader, can turn on a dime, flex capacity on demand, meet your company SLAs, and serve up information to the right audience in whichever device they desire. But the question remains: How do enterprises not only accommodate all these tectonic shifts, but also remain nimble enough to stay competitive? A new style of IT is where HP’s priorities lay and where convergence comes in

Test Driven Development
Bottom line is that nobody can teach you a programming approach like this by writing or making videos about it. They can only get you started and they can tell you why you should do it. The real power comes by you actually digging into it. The more you do it the more you master it and the more you can actually feel the benefits of it. I didn’t believe when people said it was addictive, in matter of fact I opposed to the whole idea.

Quote for the day:

"Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

August 17, 2013

Big Data Security: 5 Questions You Need to Ask
"Big data provides an important opportunity to deliver value from information, but an enterprise will be more successful in the long run if policies and frameworks, such as Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), are put into place first." To guide CIOs, ISACA identified 16 important questions enterprises must answer to assess their environments. In particular, these key five questions, if left unanswered, could expose their companies to greater risk and damage:

Understanding Predictive Analytics: A Spotlight Q&A with Eric Siegel
You need to predict significantly better than guessing, and that’s what makes it valuable. So if there’s a needle in the haystack issue for law enforcement, for fraud, for customers who are going to be extremely valuable or for a rare disease in healthcare, what you’re doing is you’re making the haystack much smaller. Business is a numbers game, and you play that numbers game much more effectively by tipping the odds in your favor by saying, “This customer is three times more likely than average to be an extremely poor credit risk.”

3 Key Skills Of Successful Data Scientists
According to Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs, three of these characteristics are most important, and every organization in the market for a data scientist should know what they are. In a phone interview with InformationWeek, Jennings revealed this holy trio.

12 hard truths about cloud computing
This isn't to say there's no truth to what the cloud companies proclaim, but there are plenty of tricky details that aren't immediately obvious. At their core, the machines aren't miracle workers, just the next generation of what we've been using for years. The improvements are incremental, not revolutionary. If we dial back our hopes and approach the machines with moderated expectations, they're quite nice. To keep our expectations in check, here is a list of what to really expect from the cloud.

New Tweets per second record, and how!
We took Gizzard, our framework to create sharded and fault-tolerant distributed databases, and applied it to tweets. We created T-Bird. In this case, Gizzard was fronting a series of MySQL databases –– every time a tweet comes into the system, Gizzard hashes it, and then chooses an appropriate database. Of course, this means we lose the ability to rely on MySQL for unique ID generation. Snowflake was born to solve that problem.

Agents for Agility: The Just-In-Time Enterprise Has Arrived
Hear Analysts Krish Krishnan of Sixth Sense, and Dr. Robin Bloor of The Bloor Group, as they outline their competing visions for the architecture of a real-time enterprise in this episode of Hot Technologies. He'll discuss how EnterpriseWeb leverages the best ideas of service orientation, combined with intelligent agents that act as virtual hubs for the sharing of data, analytics, and mission-critical business processes

Cybercriminals add exploit for patched Java flaw to their arsenal
Two days after its release, the CVE-2013-2465 exploit was already integrated into so-called exploit kits, attack tools that infect computers with malware by exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated software when users visit compromised websites. An independent malware researcher who uses the online alias Kafeine found a live installation of the Styx exploit kit, previously known as Kein, that is using the exploit.

CIO 2.x: Champion for SaaS, advocate for business
So what does CIO 2.x look like? A few patterns have surfaced from the recent SaaS roundtable discussions I hosted with IBM client executives. One observation is that IT leadership is becoming a true advocate for business transformation versus an inhibitor to change. IT-driven initiatives such as “Cloud First” are a great example of what this type of bold transformation looks like.

Big Data Analytics Will Never Fully Replace Crative Thought
As technology improves, the power of big data analytics should only grow - but according to skeptics, this development may have its limits. By focusing on data quality and analytical philosophies, business leaders can certainly improve, but only to a certain point. Data can be tremendously useful, but it will never fully replace human thought. The data craze is reaching its apex in 2013, but there are two major areas where people run the risk of getting carried away.

Quote for the day:

"A goal should scare you a little, and excite you a lot." -- Dr. Joe Vitale

August 16, 2013

NewSQL Startup Keeps Java Devs from 'Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater'
The emphasis here, and increasingly everywhere, is on scaling out, Morris said, not scaling up. "It's all about commodity data centers," he said. "It's much cheaper to buy a hundred thousand-dollar machines than it is to buy one gigantic, steam-belching machine. A single database running on a hundred commodity servers -- and we can scale out to that kind of number -- it can run on the order ten million transactions per second, so it's an extremely fast database system running on cheap machine, and dynamically."

Google to encrypt Cloud Storage data by default
"If you require encryption for your data, this functionality frees you from the hassle and risk of managing your own encryption and decryption keys," Barth wrote. "We manage the cryptographic keys on your behalf using the same hardened key management systems that Google uses for our own encrypted data, including strict key access controls and auditing."

The Value Architect and Data Scientist: Are They Really New Roles?
As the world becomes consumed by topics and themes on Big Data, the roles of the data scientist and the value architect become ever more paramount. With social media and text data being readily accessible, the ability to understand context and what business insights might be meaningful will remain the purview of the value architect. Meanwhile, the ability to “work” the data in order to create the information necessary for these insights is the responsibility of the data scientist.

Five Arguments Against Virtualization - And Why They Are Wrong
There are many misconceptions about virtualization and its effect on applications and the existing infrastructure. Most of these misconceptions are the result of bad information, not enough information, or simply preconceived notions that are not founded in reality. This post will separate some of the fact from fiction on five of the biggest arguments against virtualization.

Defining the New Data Center Operating System
So, how does the data center operating system really different from other DC management platforms? DCOS really means connecting the logical with the physical. As the modern data center continues to become the “data center of everything” we need to evolve the way we control these vital platforms. New types of threats against the data center environment are continuing to grow. So, to combat new security needs, an ever-scaling environment, and a lot more cloud computing; we must take the next leap in data center control and management.

Researchers create battery-free wireless communication 'out of thin air'
This new wireless communication system seems like "magic," since it "provides connectivity between computers out of what is essentially thin air." It takes us a step closer to an Internet of Things reality as it lets devices talk to each other without relying on batteries or wires for power. Instead, it taps into already existing ambient Wi-Fi, TV or cellular signals to exchange information.

Innovation Opportunity: The Future is Co-Created
The right idea at the wrong time is still wrong. It’s entirely possible to see the future now, but to be unable to capitalise on this vision because the world isn’t ready for it yet. People often have difficulty in telling you what they need – but you can experiment together to figure out what will work. ... We build these new opportunities together with the people that will benefit from our new ideas. It’s co-creation. Nilofer Merchant coined the phrase “the future is co-created” and she’s right

The consumerization of IT: Everything new is old again
"Please don't misunderstand. I am not saying that the challenges posed by consumerization are not real, because they are. I would like to encourage you to recognize that dealing with obstacles and overcoming challenges are your table stakes. Don't earn yourself the title of Chief Impediment Officer (CIO). Instead, focus on the opportunity value of what some call a sea change and what I call the natural evolution of the complex relationship between people and their machines."

The first 4G car, the Audi S3, debuts in Europe; U.S. must wait until spring
Audi is going fully integrated from the get go. The S3 and forthcoming A3 will use their LTE chips to link its on-board nav system to the cloud with access to Google Earth and Streetview. Drivers can access social media networks Facebook and Twitter with voice commands, though its Audi Connect platform is still light on other apps. And the LTE connection can also be redistributed to other devices in the car through Wi-Fi.

Intel to customize chips for big data applications
Through hardware and software improvements, the company is trying to figure out how its chips can perform better in areas like predictive analytics, cloud data collection and specific task processing. The company has already released its own distribution of Hadoop, a scalable computing environment that deals with large data sets, and now chip improvements are on tap.

Quote for the day:

"Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger." --Arnold Palmer

August 15, 2013

How Agile Methodology Works in Fixed Bid and Fixed Date Contracts
Most Project Managers think that practicing Agile methodology in FPFS projects is not possible. Watch as agile coach Tushar Somaiya providing interesting tips on Agile methodology for FPFS projects. He believes in a democratic organization & self-organizing teams. He calls himself a servant leader. Through his NueroScience based coaching & consulting, he has helped projects and organizations turn agile and become truly high performing teams.

Breach Detection Systems take aim at targeted persistent attacks
“The BDS, NGIPS, and NGFW products are similar in that all three can contain signatures and heuristics for identifying malware. However, a BDS separates itself from the pack with its ability to analyze the patterns of network traffic, identify malicious domains, and model the behavior/impact of files that are being downloaded and executed on an attack surface.

7 Sleep Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Not sleeping well has implications beyond feeling groggy the next day. Lack of sleep has been shown to increase stress levels and increase the incidence of depression and anxiety. It can also be a major contributor to poor food choices and weight gain. In other words, when you don't get enough sleep, you're not operating at your greatest potential. Poor sleep could even be getting in the way of your success.

Agile in Fixed Price Fixed Scope projects - Hybrid Contracts
The Fixed Price (FP) Fixed Scope (FS) contracts offer very limited opportunity for vendors to practice Agile methodology. Making either FP or FS elastic will give some room for practicing Agile methodology. Let us explore how this can be accomplished in the contracts. Both the above contracting models requires a high level of trust between both the vendors and the clients.

Your Car Can Show You How Agile Estimation Works
When I was done, I could see that I would need 4 tanks of gas for my forecasted trips. So how could we correlate this approach to software project estimation? First, in software development, our “trips” are user stories. And similar to the process we used on trips, we have the team look at each user story and determine its impact to a sprint. In software development, a sprint is our “tank of gas”.

Clouds are backing up clouds, with more choices on tap
The feature is designed to give customers more assurance that they will still be able to get to their data even if their primary cloud platform fails. Nasuni has never experienced a service outage and customers are already covered by service-level agreements, but Cloud Mirroring can give them one more layer of assurance, Nasuni said.

Big Data Security: The Evolution of Hadoop’s Security Model
Since the security redesign, Hadoop’s security model has by and large stayed the same. Over time, some components of the Hadoop ecosystem have applied their own security as a layer over Hadoop – for example, Apache Accumulo provides cell-level authorization, and HBase provides access controls at the column and family level.

Agile Testing is Not about Automation
Regardless of the nature and size of the project, an organization can adopt Agile testing to avail a number of advantages. However, many people still consider the innovative testing is synonymous with automation testing. The automation testing is, no doubt, an important and integral part of each Agile software testing strategy. But the main aim of the strategy is to ensure that Agile testing is seamlessly integrated with the entire application development process.

European Union Check-Up: Malicious Websites Hosted in the EU
Today more and more attackers are using websites to attempt to distribute malware and steal credentials. As I wrote about recently, we see that drive-by downloads are now the top threat detected in enterprise environments. Malicious websites typically appear to be legitimate and often provide no outward indicators of their malicious nature. In many cases, these sites are legitimate websites that have been compromised by malware, SQL injection, or other techniques.

Quote for the day:

"In a crisis if I had only an hour I'd spend the first 50 minutes defining the problem and the last 10 minutes solving it." -- Albert Einstein

August 14, 2013

Neohapsis: IPv4 plus IPv6 enables man-in-the-middle attacks
One aspect of man-in-the-middle attacks that surprises even hardcore hackers is that this issue has been out there for so long. "It was originally discussed in an RFC document,Security implications of IPv6, when hardcore security engineers identified the issue and warned that if you have an IPv4 network it may be possible to set up a rogue IPv6 network on top of it," Behrens said.

My First Words on Oracle’s SPARC T5 Processor — The World’s Fastest Microprocessor?
SPARC T5 outperforms the 2008-era result by about 35%. On the other hand, the Intel two-socket Xeon E5 result delivers 31% better results in this type of performance assessment. Finally, the Intel 8-socket Xeon E7 result outperformed SPARC T5 by 76%. If customers care about both response time and cost these are important data points.

Three Fixes for Common Mobile Banking Performance Problems
In their relatively new role as mobile app and mobile web developers, banks are hitting many speed bumps — glitches, 404 errors, slow response times, and crashes that drive customers to frustration and sometimes to the apps of competitors. Resolving these is important as mobile banking usage continues to rise. Experts identify several typical problems that crop up with mobile banking apps and sites.

No, your data isn't secure in the cloud
Experts say there's simply no way to ever be completely sure your data will remain secure once you've moved it to the cloud. "You have no way of knowing. You can't trust anybody. Everybody is lying to you," said security expert Bruce Schneier. "How do you know which platform to trust? They could even be lying because the U.S. government has forced them to."

Where does OpenStack go from here?
We know that the next release, Havana, won't include that many new features. From where I sit, the two big ones are: Metering: For central collection of metering/monitoring data for use in for billing systems and the like; and Orchestration: Code-named Heat, this is is a template-based orchestration engine It will orchestrate cloud infrastructure resources such as storage, networking, instances, and applications into a repeatable running environment

Open source code management: How to safely use open source libraries
Some may believe the risks posed by the use of open source code in enterprise applications are limited because in many cases open source code use is limited to specific application components. However, components of an application almost always run with the full privilege of the application, so flaws in any single component should be taken seriously.

Don't Just Lead, Coach
"I want team members to be empowered. I want them to own their deliverables. I want them to have creativity." But that comes with coaching, "as I want to make sure we're still going to win the tournament at the end of the day." For Robinson, being a good leader means hiring smart people -- smarter than herself, even. "You want to hire people who are smarter than you and complement your skill sets and then make sure the value your team brings to the table is the complement of all those skill sets."

US and Germany to Enter No-spying Agreement, German Government Says
The no-spying agreement talks were announced as part of a progress report on an eight-point program proposed by German Chancellor Angela MerkelA in July with measures to better protect the privacy of German citizens. The plan was drafted "due to the current discussions about the work of the intelligence services," the German government said.

Innovation Requires Structure
Highly innovative organizations might have ping pong and Foosball tables, but they also have structure, expectations, and processes. If my other examples weren’t clear or relevant enough for you, we’ll talk in organizational language for a second. Think about it this way – organizations have goals like adding new products, raising profits, improving productivity, reducing cost, (as examples) – and innovation is required to achieve these things.

Quote for the day:

"The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way." -- Henry Miller

August 13, 2013

How compliance professionals can maintain GRC during cloud deployment
The biggest challenge from a regulatory and data risk standpoint comes about when an organization's compliance team encounters a cloud deployment "after the fact." This happens more often than you might think: Most cloud deployments don't happen in a graceful, workmanlike manner where compliance teams are kept in the loop from inception through the final stages of implementation.

C++/CX Performance Pitfalls
Writing applications in C++/CX is not like writing normal C++ applications. The interoperability between pure C++ code and the Windows Runtime (WinRT) can be surprisingly expensive. In this article based on Sridhar Madhugiri’s video, C++/CX Best Practices, we look at some of the ways to avoid performance problems in Windows 8 development.

Strategies to encourage employee risk-taking
In today’s dynamic workplace, there’s plenty that has to change. But in organizations that are committed to building a risk-taking culture, one thing must remain consistent, and that is the leader’s response to risk. Constant, predictable reactions and support — despite the outcomes — is the only way to ensure the significant individual and organizational shifts required to institutionalize innovation and achieve long-term, sustainable growth.

The triumph of Patch Tuesday
One of the great, unappreciated inventions in security came from Microsoft almost 10 years ago in October, 2003: Patch Tuesday. Microsoft invented the process of regularly scheduled security updates. It was somewhat controversial at the time, but it was clearly the right thing to do and has eliminated what was becoming a regular series of crises, thus relieving a great deal of pressure from security admins.

Working Backwards to Unleash Your Creativity
Most people think innovation starts with a well-defined problem, and then you brainstorm a solution. Try the opposite: Work backwards by taking an abstract, conceptual solution and finding a problem it can solve. By constraining and channeling our brains, we can make them work both harder and smarter to find creative solutions —on demand.

How Agile development project leader became Jed Moffitt's IT sideline
Cost didn't clinch the decision. Catalyst IT's development methodology, Agile, did. The Agile approaches of short iterations and soliciting and acting on user feedback fit KCLS well. "No more waiting for new features and fixes, even the simple things, to get done," said Moffitt. "On a weekly basis, we're actually changing the system based on our specifications."

Big Data and the Role of the CIO
Nearly four in 10 CIOs cite overcoming a lack of support from their executive management teams as one of the biggest barriers they face to become more strategic. ... In line with this perception, senior executives often aim to keep discussions with the IT organization centered on budgets or software implementation, with few seeking to engage them in wider discussions about the value of technology as a strategic driver of growth or as a source of operational insight.

The Third Ear: A Powerful Tool To Becoming A Better Listener
Many leaders say they have an open door policy. While they mean well, in reality, often people's perception is that the door is left ajar, and not everyone is welcome through that door. That's because those on lower echelons don't always feel safe walking in to bring forward issues that need airing. In his Leadership Primer, Colin Powell states, "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you don't care."

11 Signs Your IT Project is Doomed
The IT world is no stranger to projects that go down in flames. Anyone who has had the unenviable pleasure of participating in a failed IT effort likely sensed its demise well before the go-live date. That sixth sense is invaluable in a competitive field like IT. Whether you're looking to avoid being saddled to a dud or to steer a doomed rollout out of the ditch, you must recognize the signs of imminent failure well before a project comes apart at the seams. It can be a career-saver.

John Deere plows into agile
The move to agile came "after some serious introspection in our development organization," said Tony Thelen, the director of the Intelligent Solutions Group, part of the company's enterprise IT operation. There are a lot of companies that are moving to agile -- Forrester Research conservatively estimates that 38% of businesses, from small to large, now use the development methodology.

Quote for the day:

"You always pass failure on the way to success."--Mickey Rooney

August 12, 2013

Virtual overlay networks: Tunneling protocols enable multi-tenancy
From a technical point of view, network overlays encapsulate one packet inside of another packet. The encapsulated packet is then forwarded to an endpoint where it is de-encapsulated. Network overlays leverage this "packet in a packet" technique to provide secure multi-tenancy and extend VLANs across Layer 2 networks.

Buried in software licensing
"Oracle works very well, but at the end of the day we pay a huge price for that service," Steinour says. Today, 99% of the fixed-cost increases in the university's IT budget come from software maintenance price hikes. "That's just not sustainable," says Steinour, whose IT department supports 20,000 students and 1,600 faculty members.

Cloud Services Foundation Reference Architecture - Reference Model
Although the term 'Cloud Services Foundation Reference Model' is defined extensively in the Overview article of this article set, the short definition is: "The minimum amount of vendor-agnostic hardware and software technical capabilities and operational processes necessary to provide information technology (IT) services that exhibit cloud characteristics, or simply, cloud services." It’s important to note that although the problem domain is the foundation for providing cloud services, it does not include cloud services.

Which Technology Will Become Extinct Next?
In truth, the next technology term that could be about to become redundant (once again, in a good way) is Agile. We refer to Agile in the sense of the highly iterative people-centric approach to software application development and delivery. Agile computing as decreed in the Agile manifesto back in 2001 focuses of simple programming code with lots of testing and the imperative to deliver any functional parts of a piece of software as soon as they are ready.

Top Athletes Use Coaches. Why Don’t CEOs?
CEOs don’t see as great a need to work on their softer skills. Low on the personal development list: compassion (18 percent), interpersonal and persuasion skills (both 14 percent), and motivation (11 percent). “It’s concerning that so many of them are ‘going it alone,’” says Stephen Miles, chief executive officer of the Miles Group. In an e-mail exchange, Miles explains why so few CEOs have leadership coaches and the best combination of “hard” and “soft” skills:

Obama pledges greater transparency in surveillance programs
"It's not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well," Obama said, adding that he was confident the programs were not being abused. The announcement - made just before Obama heads for summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard - may be greeted as at least a partial victory for supporters of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden who is now in Russia, where he was granted asylum last week.

Security Manager's Journal: Learning to let go and offshore
No security-related activities were sent overseas, though. I always wanted to keep security tightly under my control. But it's impossible to ignore the savings that offshoring makes possible, so after talking with peers at other companies, I learned to let go of some of that direct control.

Perspective Based Architecture Analysis Method
Fifty years ago, today and fifty years from now, IT architects will still need to address these difficult questions.Therefore, The PBA Method focuses on capturing those questions from architects in a community model organized within a meta-model in an easy to use capability complimenting most methodologies and processes to promote more successful architectures..

Ten ‘Take Aways’ from the Reifer “Quantitative Analysis of Agile Methods” Study
Agile cost, as measured in terms of $/unit of ouput, is less than the norms being experienced on plan-driven projects. The gains experienced range from near nominal to 100 percent over the course of ten years, averaging at best a cost avoidance of between 20 to 40 percent in a single year after adoption. Again, these costs vary greatly by application domain and are a function of many factors including those revolving around workforce composition and labor rates.

CIOs are laying SDN plans, but slowly
The typical broad-based enterprise market is busy exploring the potential of SDN, “but there hasn’t been much in the way of vendor outreach to them,” said Casemore. After all, “traditional vendors still have a business model and products installed in those customers’ data centers and throughout their networks. These vendors have next-generation products coming out and aren’t inclined to disrupt that flow.”

Quote for the day:

"Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will." -- Zig Ziglar

August 11, 2013

Integration on the Edge: Data Explosion & Next-Gen Integration
The build vs. buy debate still rages on when it comes to data or application integration, though. I've lost count of the conversations I've had that include phrases such as "it's just a few web services" or "the API is easy to write to" or "it's just a simple point-to-point integration". If you want to hire me to evaluate your situation and make a recommendation on whether you should build your own integration "mechanism" or just buy one, that's great. Be forewarned that 994 times out of 1000, the answer will be: "Go buy one".

Speed of adoption risk
If you get this risk wrong, you may not, as in the past, be looking at a need to change your direction slightly, or even just have to consider embracing the technology, but you may be looking at outright bankruptcy. Let’s all consider the current situation for book retailers in Australia and around the world. There are other ways to adapt, by finding that unique segment, but if you have aspirations for growth across the globe, you may need to think again.

Who needs a smartwatch? This shirt monitors breathing and heart rate
The shirt meant to be worn under everyday clothes or on its own at the gym. The data it collects is sent to a a computer or smartphone app where the user can view instant and long-term exertion, stress and even mood. The app can share data with loved ones, including sending an alert when it detects high stress or a potentially dangerous situation.

Maharashtra chooses VMware for MahaGov Cloud
Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary IT for the government of Maharashtra, said "The Government of Maharashtra is committed to making e-governance a success in the state. We were confident that virtualization and cloud computing would play a critical role in enabling our vision for e-governance in the state of Maharashtra and have partnered with VMware, the industry leader, to help us on our cloud journey and fulfill this vision."

Culture Inhales Strategy for Breakfast… Then Spits it Out!

Culture is defined by the common values, the individual behavior, and the attitude of the people working in the organization. This is where managers often fail – perhaps because they’re simply unaware of the cultural aspect’s importance, perhaps because they don’t feel comfortable with it or because they don’t have a proper road-map at their disposal.

Gartner Says Compliance Is No Longer a Primary Driver of IT Risk and Security Measures
Organisations are relying more on their own risk assessments to guide their implementation of controls rather than the "classic" compliance approach of implementing mandated controls regardless of the anticipated risk severity or impact. “If CIOs are managing their risks effectively, their compliance requirements will be met, and not the other way round,” added Mr Wheeler.

The Best Data Scientists Cluster Around the Biggest Big-Data Challenges
Crowdsourcing data scientist expertise on a moment’s notice is often as easy as engaging the smart people in online communities and, if budgets permit, hiring them for consulting projects. Quite often, the best freelance data scientists already maintain a prominent online presence, promote their best work far and wide, and collaborate on a wide range of challenging projects. They simply crave engagement with their peers and a chance to gain greater recognition for their accomplishments.

Hoya (HBase on YARN) : Application Architecture
The first thing it does is start an HBase Master on the local machine -this is is the sole HBase Master that Hoya currently manages. In parallel with the Master startup, Hoya asks YARN for the number of containers it needs for the number of workers this cluster has. For each of these containers, Hoya provides the commands to start HBase. This is a key point: Hoya does not run any Hoya-specific code on the worker nodes.

Systems that Run Forever Self-heal and Scale
Joe Armstrong is the principal inventor of Erlang and coined the term "Concurrency Oriented Programming". In this presentation, he outlines the architectural principles needed for building scalable fault-tolerant systems built from small isolated parallel components which communicate though well-defined protocols.

Be Invincible with AlwaysOn Availability Groups
The good news was that SQL Server had an abundance of features to help with high availability, such as clustering, mirroring, replication, and log shipping. The bad news was that businesses' needs were usually complex enough that no one feature worked by itself, so you had to duct tape multiple features together. This meant you had to be good at a lot of things, and all of them had to interoperate well. That rarely happened.

Quote for the day:

"You aren't learning anything when you're talking." -- Lyndon B. Johnson