Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

October 06, 2013

BYOD As We Know It Is Dead
If BYOD 1.0 has been responding to the needs of the employee, BYOD 2.0 efforts will focus more on the needs of where the enterprise and the employee intersect. Perhaps the most valuable key attribute of BYOD 2.0 will be to provide right- time experience (user interface + user experience) to the systems, solutions and points of collaboration that are mutually relevant to the company and to the employee.

How to Improve Database Performance by Measuring User Experience
Rather than watching server health statistics and making guesses about their performance impact, wait and response time methods measure the time taken to complete a desired operation. The best implementations break down the time into discrete and individually measurable steps, and identify exactly which steps in which operations cause application delays. Since the database primary mission is to respond with a result, response time is the most important criteria in making database performance decisions.

Leadership Character and Corporate Governance
Competencies matter. ... Commitment is critical. ... But above all, character counts. It determines how leaders perceive and analyze the contexts in which they operate. Character determines how they use the competencies they have. It shapes the decisions they make, and how these decisions are implemented and evaluated.

The future is: Polyglot Persistence
The “cloud” is exactly this kind of cluster, which means relational databases don’t play well with the cloud. The rise of web services provides an effective alternative to shared databases for application integration, making it easier for different applications to choose their own data storage. ... Searching 300 Million voters information for 1 person with addresses, emails, phones is tough with a relational data store. MongoDB was used to store the documents about the person.

Data Is Not the New Oil, It's the New Soil
Oil is valuable. If you find, collect and store oil it will remain valuable. Data is a very different thing. Data is generated when people do something. It is a record of an event. That means it starts losing value almost as soon as it is generated because it ages. We can see trends and obtain insights but to get real value from data it must be used in real time. Simply gathering and storing data is a pointless exercise.

Five More Key Considerations for MDM Projects
While the above recommendations are certainly valid and important guidelines to follow, we have observed a number of other key considerations that our experience shows also have a significant impact on the success of an MDM implementation project. These additional points can take an MDM project from a mere milestone to a lasting and impactful cornerstone of an organization’s information technology and business process infrastructure.

Overcoming Security Challenges to Virtualize Internet-Facing Applications
This architecture also maintains existing secure administration policy by separating network and server administrative duties. In addition, we segregate virtualization host servers into landing zones analogous to those in the physical environment, and we harden and isolate virtualization management systems. Over time, we plan to further enhance our secure virtualization capabilities by taking advantage of hardware-assisted security with Intel® Trusted Execution Technology and Intel® Advanced Encryption Standard.

Planning and Controlling Complex Projects
One of the most important insights of beyond budgeting is in my opinion to differentiate between target and forecast. The rationale is that every goal should be ambitious whereas the forecast (or estimation) is a way to close the gap to the goal. Now if both –target and forecast- are forced into one number the result is that either the target isn’t ambitious anymore or the estimation is a deception.

How Strategic Planning relates to Enterprise Architecture
The selected strategy is implemented by means of programs, projects, budgets, processes and procedures. The way in which the strategy is implemented can have a significant impact on whether it will be successful, and this is where Enterprise Architecture may have a significant role to play. Often, the people formulating the strategy are different from those implementing it. The way the strategy is communicated is a key element of the success and should be clearly explained to the different layers of management including the Enterprise Architecture team.

“Designing Webs – Information Architecture as a Creative Practice” – Paul Rissen
Paul says that unlike the people looking at designs and site maps, the user isn’t interested in “the page” as an artefact. They are interested in “the things” that are contained within“the page”. And he went even further than that, saying that actually, people aren’t interested in “the things” themselves, they are interested in “the relationship between the things”. To put it in TV terms, nobody watches EastEnders because of Pat Butcher. They watch because Pat Butcher and Peggy Mitchell are going to fight.

Quote for the day:

"No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." -- Calvin Coolidge

October 05, 2013

Business Architects: Do Not Start With Strategy
Business architects add no value if they bring analysis methods that are no more valuable than the poorly described “consulting methods” that management consultants use today. (If those methods worked, why would “alignment” be a problem?) Simple methods like SWOT and Five Forces and even Balanced Scorecards can fail catastrophically if there is no recognition of the fact that these methods are only useful within the clear and well described boundaries of a business model.

5 takeaways from Predictive Analytics World
"I often learn as much by talking to people in between sessions at a conference as I do when listening to the presentations, and this week's Predictive Analytics World event has been no exception. I had the opportunity to see and chat with some very smart people Monday, and here, in no particular order, are five interesting takeaways from those conversations. The conference continues Tuesday at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston."

How Disruption Happens
Take the concept a little further and it becomes obvious that influence is a function of groups rather than individuals. That, in essence, is what the threshold model of collective behavior predicts. An idea usually takes hold among people who are most receptive to it and, as they increase in numbers, more people join in. It builds on itself. This makes a lot more sense than the notion that a select class of people with magical powers of influence tells the rest of us what to do.

Data’s Ethical Landmines
There has been a lot of hype around the introduction of social media data and big data to the worlds of data integration and master data management. After all, isn’t more data – capable of helping us identify and understand our customers better – invaluable to the business? Perhaps, but along with its infinite value could come some highly unexpected, extensive costs and liabilities if not handled appropriately.

The Dirty (Not so Secret) Secret of IT Budgets
Cloud computing infrastructures, platforms and applications often allow users to try before they buy with very little risk. Users can test applications, explore new application functions and features, experiment with data, and stand up analytic capabilities with much less fuss than traditional IT routes. Best of all, much of this “experimentation” can be funded with operating budgets instead of going through the painful process of asking the CFO for a CAPEX check.

Delivering business applications to mobile devices puts focus on users
On the flip side, protecting the integrity of company data and ensuring compliance can be difficult. Though Columbia doesn't have an official bring your own device (BYOD) policy, it does have terms of use that employees must agree to. When a device is lost or stolen, Pickett's team remotely wipes it, which can be distressing for both the user and the administrator who has to delete the worker's personal information.

Shutdown affects government sites, but Weather.gov remains up as storm looms
The website for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.gov, also was operating at a limited capacity on Friday. FEMA is the main agency that responds to disasters such as hurricanes. "Due to the lapse in federal funding, portions of this website may not be updated and some non-disaster assistance transactions submitted via the website may not be processed or responded to until after appropriations are enacted," FEMA.gov said.

Financial-architecture and enterprise-architecture
The reason why we couldn’t do anything about it was because of that darn stupid notion that enterprise-architecture was ‘just an IT-thing’. ... To get the necessary changes to happen to either the organisation’s business-case processes or, preferably, the accounts-structures as well, we would have had to have the ear of the entire executive - which is the level at which enterprise-architecture actually belongs, and why it belongs there, too.

In-Memory OLTP Common Design Pattern – High Data Input Rate/Shock Absorber
As In-memory OLTP is integrated into SQL Server and you can have both memory-optimized tables and disk-based tables in the same database, separating the data storage and retrieval mechanisms between these table structures is also a common pattern. Typically a user created “background” process can execute, for example, on a timed basis, to move data from the memory-optimized table to the disk based table and remove that data from the current memory-optimized table

Keeping Your Secrets
There are still ways to protect your secrets, especially if you have some control over both ends of the exchange. In this article you'll learn how you can secure application data exchanges in ways that block exposure both now and in the foreseeable future, and see examples of applying the security techniques in Java code. Along the way you'll also get some pointers on how you can protect your own online access.

Quote for the day:

"Excellence is in the details. Give attention to the details and excellence will come." -- Perry Paxton

October 04, 2013

Do You Have an Information Governance Policy Framework?
"Healthcare has a lot of compliance-related activities," Kloss said. "And there are pockets of good governance, but they may be siloed and not looked at as part of a mosaic of activities. I look for ways to leverage activities already underway, such as a new rollout of analytics, to see if there are lessons learned about information governance that can be ported to other areas."

How to align your IT Strategy skillfully
Kumar recommends keeping entry and exit aspects very clear; and if the project is big, setting success criteria and jointly agreeing to it is even more critical. “When the requirement is specific to a domain, set the qualifying criteria; bring a score card concept for selecting the right vendor and sign SLAs with those who have realistic terms to make it a win-win situation,” reiterates Kumar.

Building the Anytime, Anywhere Network
For corporate IT, capitalizing on mobility’s potential means exchanging ironfisted control over access and devices for a more flexible approach. IT must balance firm administrative oversight with the freedom today’s knowledge workers need to innovate in the anytime, anywhere economy. And making that demanding transition without compromising. security in the process means nothing less than embracing a totally new approach to building and managing networks

Pushback against 'big data' begins
A future in which such "intuitive knowledge" about how to deploy resources is overruled by algorithms that can work only with hard data and can't, of course, account for the data they don't have ... While it might seem obvious that data, no matter how "big", cannot perfectly represent life in all its complexity, information technology produces so much information that it is easy to forget just how much is missing.

Drag-and-Drop Functionality of JavaScript UI Components Library Webix
Not so long ago, the drag-and-drop functionality was used in web apps quite rarely. With HTML5 coming on the scene, native drag-and-drop has become easily accessible and popular. The functionality that required lots of coding efforts before, now can be added with a few lines of HTML code. While developing the Webix library, we tried to keep all features and advantages of native drag-and-drop. At the same time, we’ve added new capabilities that might be useful in web app development.

Microsoft Surface: What it tells us about devices, services and the future of Microsoft
It's clear that where in the past Microsoft would have tuned its hardware for its software, with Surface it's tuned it for services. That tuning makes Surface just a surface, where both local Windows and cloud services are rendered. It's just one screen in those "three screens plus cloud" that Microsoft talked about a few years back, albeit a highly-optimised screen (and with some of the additional hardware announced in New York it can move to being any one of those three screens).

Verizon challenges Amazon with Verizon Cloud
With Verizon Cloud Compute, Verizon says, "users can determine and set virtual machine and network performance, providing predictable performance for mission critical applications, even during peak times." Other services, such as Amazon Web Services, force users to pick a preset virtual machine size. The other big selling point versus the competition is that Verizon Cloud will supposedly eliminate "latency issues that have plagued many traditional storage offerings" in the cloud.

Successful IT professionals are ‘willing to self-train’, says HP head
“You have to self-train, you have to read, you have to study. You can’t expect to be spoon-fed anymore. The world is moving too fast to spoon feed the information. You earn your success in life,” said Brooks. Brooks preferred to take an applied learning route into IT, first doing an ordinary national diploma in technology, electrical and electronics engineering at North Oxon Technical College, before doing a degree in engineering, electrical and electronics engineering at the University of Bradford.

Rebuilding Your Engine at 200 Miles per Hour
Michael Brunton-Spall, who has keynoted and spoken at conferences on a variety of subjects ranging from pragmatic functional programming to scaling large web applications, innovation practices to agile methodologies shares his experience re-architect The Guardian’ Content API from a system based on Solr to a message queue cloud service based upon Elastic Search, without any downtime.

Let maturity and evolution determine where the data science team reports
Data science teams only add more complexity to an already perplexing problem. Should they report to IT, as Mary suggests? Should they report into the lines of business, as I would probably suggest. Or, should they be on their own: perhaps assign a Chief Data Science Officer that reports to the CEO or President ? The right answer depends on whether or not it works for your organization. More specifically, the size and maturity of your organization has a lot to do with how your data science team should be structured.

Quote for the day:

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work" -- Peter Drucker

October 03, 2013

What makes models interesting
George Box said that so much better than I would have. While he was referring to science and statistics, his advice applies to Enterprise Architecture rather well. What it means is this: if you have two models, both that capture the USEFUL elements needed to describe something, and one is simpler than the other, go simple. In other words, I don’t care what is “correct.” I care what is useful.

Depth-Sensing Cameras Head to Mobile Devices
The first mobile depth-sensing technology to hit the market is likely to be the Structure Sensor, an accessory for Apple’s iPad that gives the device capabilities similar to those of Microsoft’s Kinect gaming controller. Occipital, the San Francisco company behind the device, says it will start shipping its product in February 2014. A Kickstarter campaign for the device has raised almost $750,000, with more than a month to run.

Cloud Service Brokerage Expands in Canada with ComputeNext and CACloud.com Partnership
Cloud consumers can now use CA Cloud IaaS through the ComputeNext cloud brokerage platform for discovery and procurement and provisioning of cloud services such as servers, storage, and on-demand software. IT professionals looking for cloud servers and storage will now have access to IaaS locations in Canada that are geographically separated with options for West Coast and East Coast Canadian cloud servers that provide low-latency and performance solidified with a coast-to-coast network backbone.

New Red Hat Enterprise Linux licensing plan designed to unify cloud, physical environments
Socket pairs and virtual nodes are now treated as interchangeable under Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux Server license, allowing for various combinations of physical servers and virtualized machines. RHEL for Virtual Data Centers also got an update, with a purely per-socket option allowing for an unlimited number of VMs on Hyper-V, VMware, or Red Hat’s own Enterprise Virtualization.

How to Manage Big Data with a Data Governance Policy
Big data, when used wisely, can deliver tremendous value to organizations. The importance of data governance in this equation is gaining visibility. A recent report from the Institute for Health Technology Transformation, for example, indicated that a standardized format for data governance is essential for healthcare organizations to leverage the power of big data. The authors indicate that the first and most critical priority is to develop a carefully structured framework for enterprise data governance.

Building A Collaborative Culture
Companies should assess and qualify collaboration opportunities just as they qualify sales leads to decide whether a particular collaboration effort makes sense. Reducing the costs of collaboration improves the chance that a collaboration initiative will have a positive ROI.However, companies can improve their odds even further by following five guidelines for successful collaboration

CA global IT study reveals DevOps driving 20% faster time-to-market for new services
"In today's world of mobile apps and online consumer reviews, companies are under enormous pressure to deliver higher quality applications faster than ever before," says Jaco Greyling, CA Southern Africa, manager, service assurance & application delivery. "Companies which have been around for more than 20-30 years face big challenges as they have legacy systems. Those who are willing to undergo internal transformation can win the competition in fast-changing markets."

Mobile Business Application Testing: Challenges and Strategy
This unlikeness in mobile computing environments presents unique challenges in developing applications, quality assurance, and maintenance, requiring unique testing strategies. Which need to cover different types of testing such as functional, , Performance, network, compatibility, usability, installation & field testing. To address this, we have a range of options of tools and automation processes best suited to testing both mobile web and native mobile apps that can reduce complexity and time to market.

Graphene Could Make Data Centers and Supercomputers More Efficient
Graphene has a number of potential advantages over germanium, says Englund. Because of its exceptional electronic properties, devices made of the material can work at very high frequencies, and could in principle handle more information per second. Also, graphene can absorb a broader range of wavelengths than germanium can. That property could be exploited to transmit more data streams simultaneously in the same beam of light.

Creating a Culture of Learning and Innovation
A culture of continuous learning is vital to an organization that strives to be innovative. Knowledge is the foundation for new ideas, and the learning that produces knowledge is what keeps brains malleable to create innovative and disruptive solutions. So why build a culture of continuous learning in the workplace?

Quote for the day:

"When change programs fail it is because the attempt was non-systemic. Change in performance requires a change to the system." -- John Seddon

October 02, 2013

Enterprise architecture: The key to cybersecurity
A fundamental axiom of security is that we can never drive risk to zero. In other words, perfect security is infinitely expensive. We must therefore understand our tolerance for risk and our budget for addressing security, and ensure these two factors are in balance across the organization. Fundamentally, it is essential to build threats into your business model, and do so consistently.

Introducing SQL Server 2014's New Clustered Columnstore Indexes
Just like a normal clustered index, a clustered columnstore index defines how the data is physically stored on the disc. A columnstore backed table is initially organized into segments known as row groups. Each rowgroup holds from 102,400 to 1,048,576 rows. Once a rowgroup is identified it is broken up into column segments, which are then compressed and inserted into the actual columnstore.

Future Technologies
Dr. William Lafontaine shared aspects of the company’s Global Technology Outlook 2013, naming the top trends that the company is keeping top of mind, starting with a confluence of social, mobile analytics and cloud. According to Lafontaine and his colleagues, businesses must prepare for not “mobile also” but “mobile first.” In fact, there will be companies that will exist in a mobile-only environment.

Seagate, TDK show off HAMR to jam more data into hard drives
HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) uses heat delivered by a laser to help write data onto the surface of HDDs (hard disk drives). This allows drives to write bits of data closer together so more information can be stored in a given amount of space on a disk platter. At this week's huge electronics show in Tokyo, in partner TDK's booth, Seagate will demonstrate HAMR on a 2.5-inch, 10,000-rpm HDD designed for enterprise blade servers.

Healthcare orgs turn to AWS as a HIPAA cloud provider
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been marketed as a good fit for HIPPA cloud workloads over the last year, but it wasn't until June that it began signing BAAs for select organizations, according to Glenn Grant, CEO of G2 Technology Group Inc., an AWS advanced partner based in Boston. There are some design requirements for customers who want to be HIPAA-compliant while using AWS; IT pros at healthcare organizations say they are required to use dedicated instances

Bank of the West's CIO Is on a Quest for Real-Time Analytics
The bank does have real-time data for all normal banking transactions; brokerage transactions are logged in near real time. "Everything has a slight sub-second lag time," Garen observes. For the small business segment, that real-time, cross-channel data is not fully available yet. Regulation has been a big driver for many of Garen's analytics projects. But she sees this as, at least in part, a good thing. "It's one of these mixed blessings," she says. "Because we're part of a holding company here in the U.S., there are regulatory requirements that require us to do massive investment in CCAR."

Does a lack of diversity among business leaders hinder innovation?
When senior leaders have both inherent and acquired diversity ("two-dimensional" diversity), the entire chain of command tends to be more effective, we find, at both eliciting innovative ideas and securing the support and funding to develop and implement them. The top sets the tone: at companies where executives have two-dimensional diversity, leaders at all levels are 74% more likely to exhibit the inclusive behaviours that foster a speak-up culture, unlocking innovation.

FPC gives banks a year to create cyber attack plan
The FPC stressed that it wants the issue addressed by directors at the very top of the banks, rather then left to IT departments. “It was important that boards of financial firms and infrastructure providers recognised their responsibility for responding to those threats, which required a combination of continuous vigilance and investment to strengthen operational resilience,” the minutes said. Underlining the scale of concern, it stressed that the message was “a priority” and that banks would need to be able to “adapt to evolving threats”.

Gartner tells IT shops that it's 'game over' for BlackBerry
Many large companies, including some U.S. government agencies, have already replaced BlackBerry devices with Apple iPhones and iPads or Android smartphones. The trend toward BlackBerry smartphone alternatives, underway for some four years, has increased steadily in the last year. Though BlackBerry indicated Friday in its second quarter results an uptick of organizations installing or testing the latest BES 10 servers, analysts have noted a large number of organizations are also abandoning earlier versions of BlackBerry management software.

"What if the data tells you something you don't like?" Three potential big data pitfalls
As Rohit Killam, CTO at Masan Group points out: "The real bottleneck is conceptualising a value-driven big data programme with [the] right stakeholders," while Duncan James, infrastructure manager at Clarion Solicitors notes: "Understanding what the business requires is the hardest part, especially if the business can't articulate what it wants in the first place." In many organisations, whenever you want to do any project there has to be a business case before there can be any budget, says Frank Buytendijk, research vice president at Gartner.

Quote for the day:

"Success is determined by those whom prove the impossible, possible." -- James W. Pence

October 01, 2013

Transactions and SQL Server 2014’s In-Memory OLTP
Transactions in SQL Server’s In-Memory OLTP rely on a timestamp-like construct known as a Transaction ID. A transaction uses two timestamps, one for the beginning of the operation and one that is assigned when the transaction is committed. While multiple transactions can share the same start value. Likewise each version of a row in memory has a starting and ending transaction id. The basic rule is that a transaction can only read data when RowVersion.StartingId <= Transaction.StartingId < RowVersion.EndingId.

Free eBook: Graph Databases
Graph Databases, published by O’Reilly Media, discusses the problems that are well aligned with graph databases, with examples drawn from practical, real-world use cases. This book also looks at the ecosystem of complementary technologies, highlighting what differentiates graph databases from other database technologies, both relational and NOSQL. Graph Databases is written by Ian Robinson, Jim Webber, and Emil Eifrém, graph experts and enthusiasts at Neo Technology, creators of Neo4j.

Govt. Shutdown would hit tech industry
In the last shutdown, in the 1990s, government employees received backpay, but Hettinger said contracting companies aren't expecting to get back lost revenue from a shutdown. Even a short agreement to fund the government would be disruptive, Hettinger said, because companies need to be able to make decisions based on a predictable revenue stream. He urged companies to communicate with their contract employees to prevent "mass confusion" when federal agencies start closing.

Cisco, Intel push 'trusted geolocation in the cloud'
This idea of “trusted geolocation in the cloud” is of growing importance because many countries have laws about how can data about their citizens can be moved outside the country if at all, and businesses have their own reasons to restrict movement of data to certain places. Cisco solutions architect Kenneth Stavinoha and Intel senior enterprise technologist Paul Yates recently spoke on the topic during a panel discussion at the ISC2 Conference in Chicago, along with HyTrust CTO Hemma Prafullchandra.

Nokia Hits Snag in India
Nokia India's assets were frozen on Wednesday, the Finnish company said in a written statement on Monday. The Delhi High Court on Thursday freed up Nokia India's bank accounts, but its immovable assets, including its buildings and facilities in India, remain frozen. "We went to court, and got a ruling in our favor on Thursday—the bank accounts were unfrozen," Nokia spokesman Brett Young said. He declined to elaborate.

Cloud PCI Compliance: The Checklist
If your business stores, processes, or transmits payment cardholder data in the cloud, you are bound by PCI DSS. But unlike “brick and mortar” data centers that must also adhere to PCI DSS, those operating in the cloud have additional needs. For example, 6 of the 12 steps outlined by PCI DSS either require or are assisted by encryption of data. However, to securely encrypt in the cloud and comply with PCI DSS, you must keep control of the encryption keys. But as a cloud operation, can you keep your encryption keys in the cloud and at the same time keep them safe?

MoD plots new ‘laptop army' to combat cybercrime
"In response to the growing cyberthreat, we are developing a full-spectrum military cyber capability, including a strike capability, to enhance the UK's range of military capabilities," he said. "Increasingly, our defence budget is being invested in high-end capabilities such as cyber and intelligence and surveillance assets to ensure we can keep the country safe."

Redefining traceability in Enterprise Architecture
Traceable is an adjective; capable of being traced. Trying to find a definition even from a dictionary is a challenge and the most relevant one I found on Wikipedia which may be used as a reference could be “The formal definition of traceability is the ability to chronologically interrelate uniquely identifiable entities in a way that is verifiable.” In Enterprise Architecture, traceability may mean different things to different people.

7 sneak attacks used by today's most devious hackers
Today's most ingenious malware and hackers are just as stealthy and conniving. Here are some of the latest techniques of note that have piqued my interest as a security researcher and the lessons learned. Some stand on the shoulders of past malicious innovators, but all are very much in vogue today as ways to rip off even the savviest users.

Closing the IT communication gap with enterprise stakeholders
Investors look at rapid returns on investment, and IT looks for systemic changes, particularly for efficiency, but both groups have different expectations for each. David Linthicum and his guest Lisa Noon, vice president of Cloud Technology Partners, discuss how to close this cloud chasm. You'll also hear about announcements from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Joyent.

Quote for the day:

"Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you." -- Denis Waitley

September 30, 2013

TDoS attacks on the rise: Who is at risk and what to do under attack
Carriers are equally helpless in attack prevention and mitigation. In this online forum, a customer blames Comcast, but all the carrier can do is activate anonymous call rejection which does little to nothing. There is no way to block the source because it can be different with each call. Using a hosted provider isn't safe either. An attack on one company could even affect other unrelated firms on the same provider, in the case of shared trunking.

Forget fingerprints: Your iris is your new identity
Symantec's use of iris recognition technology for an access control system in a setting where security requirements are high and cost is no object represents a classic application of the technology. "Cost has perennially been an issue with iris, but this trend is quickly changing," as cameras, recognition algorithms and software have all improved, says Ram Ravi, a research analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Datacentres of the 21st century
"While we own the strategy and overall architecture, we don't mandate a particular type of underlying server," Palmer explained. "We do have in our operational and service-level agreements requirements about power reduction and so on — so it is in both parties' interest to have the smallest footprint possible — but we don't mandate a particular flavour of server. "Having said that, in being virtual by default, where something can't be virtual, it will sit on a blade server inside a chassis. ..."

SDN vs Virtualisation: Where is the Synergy?
“The major difference is that network virtualisation focuses on combining a few hardware resources (from one vendor) and presenting them to the application and administrators as one common resource, while SDN abstracts the traditional networking hardware layers into software and hardware for efficient management of hardware and data flow,” says Khanna.

U.S. Agencies Revamp Standards for Cybersecurity Program
"Every cybersecurity professional that comes out of college and takes a job is a win for the government, whether they work for John Deere, Boeing, or Target," says Robin (Montana) Williams, branch chief of cybersecurity-education awareness at the Homeland Security Department. The country is at a critical juncture "as to where we go next in a world that is interconnected and in which cybercrime globally costs us $388-billion a year. We are losing intellectual property. We are losing our nation's work and our nation's vision and our nation's ingenuity because we are not able to protect it," he says.

Prepare to be dazzled
If you are familiar with Microsoft software architectures, you will be familiar with the .NET Framework. It has a complex set of hooks into the underlying operating system and provides a wide range of hooks to the applications that developers write to sit on top. By writing relatively simple code, developers can produce immensely powerful software. While they understand to a certain extent the concepts of the system hooks they are calling, they don't have to be able to write code as complex as that underneath. The OpenDaylight framework functions in a similar way.

4G cars are coming, but we won’t have much choice in how we connect them
The car will become a new type of connected device like our smartphones and tablets, and like those gadgets our 4G cars will require data plans. But unlike the smartphone and tablet, we’re not going to have a choice on what carrier we buy those plans from. It might seem absurd, but in the U.S. our 4G cars are going to be linked to a specific carrier, just as the first three generations of iPhones were tied to AT&T.

Cisco NCS enables programmable network functions virtualization
The degree of programmability supplied in this case is "stunning and opens up execution models for services that haven't really been possible before," said Paul Parker-Johnson, practice lead for cloud computing and virtual infrastructure technologies at Gilbert, Ariz.-based ACG Research. "One can easily envision localized instances of M2M or so-called Internet of Things application modules deployed as desired in a given service context at any place in the supported network."

10 best new features in Excel 2013
Almost everyone will find something to appreciate in Excel 2013. It's more functional and easy to use. Everyone's going to love Flash Fill. Experienced number crunchers will appreciate the new data model feature. Inexperienced users forced to get more out of the application than their experience really supports will appreciate Recommended Charts, Recommended PivotTables, and Quick Analysis.

Codenvy’s Architecture, Part 1
The Codenvy Platform is used as an engine to deliver Codenvy.com, Codenvy Enterprise, and Codenvy ISV. It can also be used to create other IDEs with any branding the implementer desires. This SDK is similar in structure to the Eclipse Platform, but engineered for a cloud environment. It also provides support for developing plug-ins for build, run, test, and debugging workflows, which typically operate outside of the IDE itself.

Quote for the day:

"Sometimes the best way to learn is to return to the fundamentals." -- John Maxwell

September 29, 2013

Steve Jobs Left a Legacy on Personalized Medicine
It turns out that Jobs was one of the first people—and certainly the best-known—to try this kind of all-in genetic strategy to beat cancer. As recounted in Walter Isaacson’s biography of the Apple CEO, Jobs spent $100,000 to learn the DNA sequence of his genome and that of the tumors killing him. Jobs was jumping between treatments and hoped DNA would provide clues about where to turn next.

Strategies for Information Governance
Information Governance is a combination of business practices, technology and human capital for meeting the compliance, legal, regulatory, security requirements, and organizational goals of an entity. Information governance provides a means to protect, access, and otherwise manage data and transform it into useful information.

The First Carbon Nanotube Computer
For the first time, researchers have built a computer whose central processor is based entirely on carbon nanotubes, a form of carbon with remarkable material and electronic properties. The computer is slow and simple, but its creators, a group of Stanford University engineers, say it shows that carbon nanotube electronics are a viable potential replacement for silicon when it reaches its limits in ever-smaller electronic circuits.

Privacy and Security by Design: An Enterprise Architecture Approach
The new paper explores the strong synergy that exists between the related disciplines of privacy and security. Privacy seeks to respect and protect personally identifiable information by empowering individuals to maintain control over its collection, use and disclosure. Information security seeks to enable and protect activities and the assets of both people and enterprises. While on the one hand, strong security is essential to meet the objectives of privacy, on the other hand, well-known privacy principles are valuable in guiding the implementation of security systems.

Data Integration: From Dark Art to Enterprise Architecture
There’s a renewed push across the industry to elevate data integration from being a series of one-off projects shrouded in mystery to the core of a multidisciplinary, enterprise architecture—incorporating new and existing approaches such as master data management, data virtualization, and data integration automation. By introducing enterprise architectural sensibilities to data integration, it can be turned into a process for innovation and delivery of productive change for organizations.

Layered Application Design Pattern
In critical application development, the most important thing is project architecture or project framework which comprises of various modules involved in request processing or business handling. If the framework is clear and robust, and completely designed with proper planning then its very easy to do the code and develop the particular requirement for business. For any application if a developer knows the project framework/architecture then 50% work is done after that we need to focus on functionality only and need not to worry about the inter connected business component involved in the project.

10 Things to Know Before Moving E-Discovery to the Cloud
Cloud computing is attractive because it enables users to do more with less; however, with this great power comes great responsibility and risk. This risk comes in the form of legal, security, business continuity and compliance issues. When e-discovery is involved, the risk considerations become increasingly complex. If your organization is considering moving data to the cloud, or transitioning e-discovery systems to the cloud, follow this checklist of the top 10 things to consider before taking the leap.

Tokenization for De-Identifying APIs
Once the PII has been identified, the data can be de-identified using tokenization or encryption (including format-preserving encryption). Or the data can be anonymized completely via redaction. This policy can be generalized to proxy several APIs and replace any PII that passes through. This works particularly well for credit card or social security numbers, both of which follow a very well-defined and relatively unique pattern.

Developing a Legal Risk Model for Big Volumes of Unstructured Data
Unfortunately, mass-deleting information carries cost as well, including the loss of data that might be important to the business, and the risk of deleting information required for regulatory compliance. But perhaps the biggest cost of unidentified data comes when a company must pay to categorize data as part of a legal electronic discovery process. Opposing attorneys can—and will—force companies to produce every piece of data that might be relevant to the case.

An Enterprise Security Program and Architecture to Support Business Drivers
An understanding of Seccuris’ approach will illustrate the importance of aligning security activities with high-level business objectives while creating increased awareness of the duality of risk. The business-driven approach to enterprise security architecture can help organizations change the perception of IT security, positioning it as a tool to enable and assure business success, rather than an obstacle to be avoided.

Quote for the day:

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make u something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -- Emerson

September 28, 2013

Some Robots Are Starting to Move More Like Humans
Mimicking human movement is ideal for a robot designed to take on human tasks. But such robots can also help researchers explore how biomechanics can give rise to more intelligent behavior, a field known as embodied intelligence or cognition. “Most people know that intelligence requires the body, but they don’t know why,” says Pfeifer. “I think [Roboy] can be a really interesting research platform for learning in systems with many degrees of freedom.”

Microsoft Creating New Office Touch Apps
The new Modern UI app, codenamed Office Reader, was demonstrated Thursday in front of thousands of Microsoft employees during a meeting in Seattle, according to a report in The Verge. Microsoft VP Kirk Koenigsbauer presented the multimedia tool, which supports Web pages, Office documents, PDFs and interactive e-books. The app reportedly will be able to recommend content and include several methods for organizing information.

IT does not know ethics
It is important that IT professionals put more focus on ethics because the business world is finally understanding how much trust and power they give us to run their IT infrastructure. The visibility of Business Ethics is increasing with online magazines by that title becoming popular as Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility continue to get focused attention. And, of course, there are all the horror stories about ethics. As Canadians, we should at least know about Bre-X.

Where Does Security Fit Into Change Management Processes?
If the course of action regarding the change is easy to identify (e.g., x will fix y), then it’s a good idea to have the risk evaluation piece completed after all other vetting for the change process. That is, once you have identified the solution, determined that it is feasible/cost effective/meats requirements, etc., you can present the change for a security evaluation. If it’s the only option, it will be the job of the evaluator to determine what risk the change might introduce to the organization.

How CIOs and IT Teams Can Make IT Matter Again
The shift in responsibilities will demand a shift in capabilities, and many CIOs would be well served by brushing up on some critical skill sets ... CIOs eyeing the future will find golden opportunities to become game-changers for their organizations. If they want to take full advantage of the opportunity, though, they need to reposition themselves within the organization, shifting from technology tactician to strategic technology visionary.

Hefty price premium awaits early DDR4 memory adopters
The adoption of DDR4 has been delayed due to the decline in the PC market and price stabilization this year of DDR3 memory, whose prices had been falling by double digits in previous years. Happy with DDR3 margins, companies like Samsung and SK Hynix shifted manufacturing capacity to make mobile memory for smartphones and tablets, which are growing markets.

RDBMS vs. NoSQL: How do you pick?
The market is abuzz with terms like NoSQL, Big Data, NewSQL, Database Appliance, etc. Often, IT decision makers can get very confused with all the noise. They do not understand why they should consider a newer, alternative database when RDBMSs have been around for 20+ years. However, many leading enterprises are already using alternative databases and are saving money, innovating more quickly, and completing projects they could not pursue before as a result.

Accidental Architectures and the Future of Intelligent Networks
There are, however, certain undeniable trends which drive the practical implementations of information systems. By no means is the challenge of heterogeneity new. Movements like the Service Oriented Architecture were focused on bringing some rhyme and reason to the otherwise scatterplot world of information and application landscapes. Today, SOA is not widely discussed, but that’s because its guiding principles now largely rule the roost.

Five Mistakes You Do Not Want to Make As a Project Manager
There are plenty of other mistakes, just waiting to be made - or avoided. Keep your eyes open and keep these five major mistakes in mind whatever project you are working on. Don’t forget that being a project manager is a constant learning exercise; gaining experience and improving your PM skills to be able to take on bigger and more complex challenges and grow your career as a project manager.

What Amazon should do: Think different. Be more like Apple
In addition to focusing on the device's design and function, Amazon will need to heavily market the Mayday feature, much like Apple did when it first unveiled Siri. Amazon wants to control how a consumer experiences its services through a device, but to achieve that it first needs people to want the gadget. Just look at how Samsung achieved its No. 2 ranking behind Apple. It used the sex appeal of its Galaxy S smartphone line, and extended it to its family of Galaxy tablets.

Quote for the day:

"Man can alter his life by altering his thinking" -- William James

September 27, 2013

Intel invests in Google Glass rival, the 'world's most advanced wearable computer'
On Thursday, Intel announced the investment, saying the "significant investment" in to wearable technology developer Recon will support product development, marketing and global sales expansion. Recon will also "benefit from Intel Capital's expertise in manufacturing, operations and technology," the company says. Intel's specific funding figures were not disclosed.

Using metro storage clusters to manage data growth, add value to IaaS
Service providers may gain significant business value by implementing metro storage clusters as well. They can use the technology to create multilayer data storage packages for customers, depending on which metro storage cluster design they chose to deploy. Requirements would dictate the design, architecture and services to be offered.

CloudPassage Extends Cloud Infrastructure Security To Large Enterprises
Unlike legacy security tools that were built for static environments and fixed perimeters that don't exist with cloud computing, Halo is the only massively scalable, portable security solution that can provide immediate visibility and control over any cloud infrastructure environment, including private cloud, virtualized data centers, public cloud, virtual private or managed clouds, and even bare-metal servers.

How to Overcome the Perils of Caring Deeply
Organizations move toward mediocrity when they silence those who care deeply. Pursue your passion or accept irrelevance. Every initiative, project, department, and product needs a champion who obsessively cares. CEO’s become champions of average when they don’t freakishly care for their organizations. Excellence is a function of caring deeply.

A glimpse into the “Making of IRCTC” apps
Half a million transactions per day, over a million enquiries every day are the facts that prop up when the word ‘IRCTC’ is discussed in the technology world. The numbers are startling and one can imagine the infrastructure that has been put in place to cater to millions of Indians on a daily basis. Be it booking tickets or enquiry on the web (individual users and through agents), IRCTC.CO.IN is a one stop shop for train reservations in India. Users of Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices are the beneficiaries as they now have a native app to look up to for their rail ticket reservation needs

Return on Ignorance: The Highest form of ROI
With each eliminated unknown, the risk-adjusted discount rate fell. Each time that rate fell, the project’s value rose. “Return on ignorance,” quipped Donald Farmer, QlikTech vice president of product management. When the laughter died, he continued, “If you decide in advance what your measure’s going to be, you’re only going to perform to that measure.”

Usage-based auto insurance found to pose privacy risks
With pay-as-you-drive plans, insurance companies typically require drivers to plug in a small telematics device into the vehicle's on-board diagnostic port. The device monitors the vehicle operator's driving behavior and records data like speed, cornering and braking patterns over a specified time period. The information is used to adjust insurance rates and to offer more customized plans for individual drivers. Insurance companies claim that such plans can help substantially lower auto insurance rates, especially for safe and low-mileage drivers.

Smartphones: Transforming society into a sea of stupid
While we can certainly point towards societal detachment with the introduction of radio and television, those were only consumptive technologies rather than interactive ones. The move towards Personal Computing starting in the early 1980s added an element of societal detachment. By comparison, radio and TV could be enjoyed in groups, whereas the PC and online interaction was by nature a single-user activity.

Will the cloud exchange be the next big ecosystem player?
German stock exchange operator Deutsche Börse is set to launch the first vendor-neutral marketplace for cloud services in 2014 when it turns up service on its Deutsche Börse Cloud Exchange (DBCE). The DBCE will offer standardized products allowing accredited sellers to contract with any registered buyer in a unified market and legal framework.

Malicious browser extensions pose a serious threat and defenses are lacking
BrowserProtect, another Firefox extension, claims to protect the browser against "homepage, search provider, extension, add-on, BHO and other hijacks." This extension also fails to protect against malicious extensions, the researcher said. Browser security extensions are not really trying to protect against malicious extensions and they wouldn't be able to because by design they run with the same privileges as those extensions, Balazs said.

Quote for the day:

“We cannot change anything until we accept it.” -- Carl Jung