Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

October 20, 2013

ATDD From the Trenches
In summary: Pretend that you have an awesome framework encapsulated behind a really convenient helper class; Write a very simple acceptance test for something that already works today; Write the acceptance test for your new feature. Make it run but fail; Make it green. While coding, write unit tests for any non-trival stuff; and Refactor. And maybe write some more unit tests for good measure, or remove redundant ones. Keep the code sqeaky clean!

Iceland and the Data Center Industry
It’s been five years since Verne Global announced plans to build a data center business in Iceland, which offers nearly ideal scenarios for power and cooling servers. The company’s facility on a former NATO base is now filling with customers, with a boost from cloud hosting provider Datapipe. The latest arrival is RMS, which specializes in modeling catastrophe risk for the insurance industry.

Adidas Runner's Watch Puts Diverse World of Wearables in the Spotlight
One of the big challenges in developing the watch was leaving out features and streamlining it for the task of running, Gaudio said. Synchronizing with a mobile phone was one capability the company determined many runners could do without. "At a certain level, they get to a point where they don't want to be bothered with carrying a phone," Gaudio said. It can be a matter of both reducing carried weight and escaping from the world of alerts and calls.

Common File Elimination Demystified
Common File Elimination ensures that the same data is never transmitted offsite more than twice, thereby saving the bandwidth to transmit only new, unique data. Customers often wonder why files are transmitted twice and not only once. Simply said, the system needs to see the file three times before it classifies it as common and moves it to the appropriate folder - common file library.

Data Discrimination Means the Poor May Experience a Different Internet
As Crawford and Jason Schultz, a professor at New York University Law School, wrote in their paper: “When these data sets are cross-referenced with traditional health information, as big data is designed to do, it is possible to generate a detailed picture about a person’s health, including information a person may never have disclosed to a health provider.”

Integrating Cloud and In-house Storage
Cloud storage makes disaster recovery significantly easier, and your data is backed-up offsite in a secure location. But there is also the additional security that most cloud storage providers can ensure. Many small businesses or remote offices use out-of-the-box solutions for data storage, which are typically much easier for hackers to gain access to. You can rest assured that these larger providers have a greater level of expertise protecting data than a local IT professional you have set up your system.

Learn From Your Failures and Build Something Great
What happens when engineers become leaders? That’s the question at the core of “Cultivate,” a new conference from O’Reilly focused on entrepreneurial leadership for technology companies. In this morning’s keynote, Tim O’Reilly examined the topic using an approach familiar to data center managers: the failure analysis. O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, discussed the failures he experienced in building one of the industry’s leading brands for publishing and events, and what he learned from them.

5G Will have to Do More Than Send Speed Up Your Phone, Ericsson Says
More so than any previous generation of cellular gear, 5G will have to serve two masters, Nandlall said. Between wireless sensors, industrial equipment and an array of consumer gadgets, in a few years there are likely to be 10 mobile connections per person. If 5 billion humans join the mobile world, that's 50 billion connections that 5G networks will need to serve.

What Puzzles You Most About Functional Programming?
With so much diversity, it’s hard to define the exact scope of what exactly functional programming is. Is it a question of how to design your program, that is, using functions as the primary abstraction? Or is it about programming with mathematical functions, meaning pure functions that do not have side effects? And what are those monads again? In this InfoQ research, we ask you: what puzzles you most about functional programming? The following is an incomprehensive list of things that might puzzle you about functional programming.

Li-Fi Turns Every Lightbulb Into an Ultra-Fast Wireless Network
First, data are transmitted to an LED light bulb — it could be the one illuminating the room in which you’re sitting now. Then the lightbulb is flicked on and off very quickly, up to billions of times per second. That flicker is so fast that the human eye cannot perceive it. Then a receiver on a computer or mobile device — basically, a little camera that can see visible light — decodes that flickering into data.

Quote for the day:

"We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal and then leap in the dark to our success." -- Henry David Thoreau

October 19, 2013

ODBC Rocks!
Both OLE DB and ODBC are true native APIs for SQL Server in that they map API calls directly into SQL Server’s network protocol, Tabular Data Stream (TDS). When Microsoft recommended best practices are followed, ODBC is a very thin wrapper over TDS with no intermediate buffering between network packet buffers and the application. It therefore has excellent performance and scalability characteristics.

Portability challenges for government agencies moving to hybrid clouds
A key report finding is that while overall cloud spending will accelerate, federal agencies in the near-term will continue to leverage different cloud types (private, hybrid, public) based on their specific agency needs and concerns. The leading category of government cloud service is private, but public clouds and hybrid clouds continue to gain traction. As a result, many federal agencies will be employing a multi-cloud architecture.

Graphics Chips Help Process Big Data Sets in Milliseconds
Known as MapD, or massively parallel database, the new technology achieves big speed gains by storing the data in the onboard memory of graphics processing units (GPUs) instead of in central processing units (CPUs), as is conventional. Using a single high-performance GPU card can make data processing up to 70 times faster.

IBM unveils computer fed by 'electronic blood'
But for IBM to truly match the marvels of the brain, there is a third evolutionary step it must achieve - simultaneous liquid fuelling and cooling. Just as blood gives sugar in one hand and takes heat with another, IBM is looking for a fluid that can multitask. Vanadium is the best performer in their current laboratory test system - a type of redox flow unit - similar to a simple battery. First a liquid - the electrolyte - is charged via electrodes, then pumped into the computer, where it discharges energy to the chip.

The Challenges of Cloud Security Deployments
The complexity of the security landscape doesn't make this easier. A quick glance at network security reveals a diverse array of often-siloed solutions, some software, some hardware. These solutions frequently add even more data to the pile of Big Data demanding analysis, and that's just if they integrate well into the cloud security architecture in the first place. In many cases, these solutions are simply confusing and problematic to deploy in cloud environments.

Cloud To Dominate Data Center Traffic Within The Year, Cisco Study Predicts
Approximately 17 percent of data center traffic will be fueled by end users accessing clouds for web surfing, video streaming, collaboration and connected devices. Another seven percent will be traffic generated between data centers, primarily driven by data replication and software/system updates. An additional 76 percent of data center traffic will stay within the data center and will be largely generated by storage, production and development data in a virtualized environment.

Watch out, PayPal: Amazon's following the money
"Login and Pay with Amazon," which allows you to pay on other Web sites using your Amazon account, builds upon the web retailer's earlier Amazon Payments effort from a few years ago. If Amazon can get third-party merchants to integrate its log-in feature into their checkouts, Amazon's payment system would technically have more users than PayPal.

Mobile middleware: Data movement and application design best practices
A critical question with your mobile middleware application framework is the exposure of APIs. If you expect to support browser access (which likely you should), the basic application must present a RESTful front end. It's also expected that most mobile device applications use RESTful APIs. If you also intend to use RESTful APIs, design all your applications for Representational State Transfer (REST). Doing so means you can't presume the application will maintain state. That will be important when you look at your application-to-resource

The Shift to I/O Optimization to Boost Virtualization Performance
While hardware price per performance costs continue to come down, performance improvements are not keeping up with the rate of data growth and the need to extract value from that data. This performance chasm forces enterprises to purchase ever-increasing amounts of hardware to handle the increased I/O. As IT buys more storage, not for capacity but to spread I/O demand across a greater number of interfaces, organizations cannot fully capitalize on the promise of virtualization and other important technology trends.

What Does Next-Generation MDM Look Like?
The MDM Institute's 12 strategic planning assumptions for 2013-14 present an experience-based view of the key trends and issues facing IT organizations by highlighting master data management, data governance and related areas Master data management is quickly broadening its attractiveness both as a key enabler of strategic business initiatives as well tactical P&L initiatives. As of 2013, MDM is no longer "fast follower" technology strategy but is clearly a business strategy for the masses.

Quote for the day:

“The day you realize that your efforts and rewards are not related, it really frees up your calendar.” -- Scott Adams

October 18, 2013

Using NFC, IBM brings dual-factor authentication to mobile
Here's how IBM's approach works, using an app for using your bank as an example: First, you load up the bank's app. It sends a special challenge number to your phone. Next, the app asks you for your password. But here's the catch: after you enter it, you tap your phone against the NFC-enabled card your bank gave you. Third, the phone transfers the challenge number to the card using NFC, the card transforms it through a calculation based on its own key, then sends it back to the phone, which sends it to the bank.

More about Microsoft’s plans to consolidate around ODBC and deprecate OLE DB
Though this is an older post, thought that these facts might be useful to read again. Microsoft's recent announcement that they would focus more on ODBC and deprecate OLE DB has raised a lot of questions. Amina Saify at Microsoft recently posted some questions and answers. Some interesting points were:

Is application virtualization the answer for users of XP?
Suppliers of application virtualization technology, such as AppZero, Citrix, Moka5, Spoon, VMware, and even Microsoft, have long been talking about the day that Windows XP would die and suggesting that their application virtualization products could make the transition easier. To a company, they suggest that Windows XP applications can be easily and smoothly moved over to a new operating environment without requiring changes to the applications themselves.

How the Walking Dead Uses Big Data to Make Life-Or-Death Decisions
The game operates as a type of choose-your-own-adventure story, asking the player to make quick decisions about what to say from the provided dialogue options. One of The Walking Dead’s greatest successes is that every choice is a new dilemma, eschewing “good” and “bad” options in favor of choices that are all a matter of perspective. Early on in the game, you have to choose between saving one character over another, and there’s no right answer.

15 Inspiring Videos for Web Designers
We believe it is absolutely fundamental to dedicate time to listening to the great visionaries of your chosen field who can help you see things from a different, innovative, and enriching viewpoint. These forward thinkers can help you attack projects with a renewed determination and encourage you to step out of your comfort zone - dive in head first to an unfamiliar sector, or experiment with the latest technology or programing language!

The 5 Common Characteristics of Ideas That Spread
Your success as a creative depends not only on coming up with great ideas and making them happen, but also with getting those ideas adopted by your target audience. Whether it’s the buying public, an art dealer, or just your direct supervisor, getting your work off of your hard drive and into the world is perhaps the most important (and scariest) part of creative work.

NuoDB Takes the Wraps Off Blackbirds Database
If version 1.0 was about getting the database off the ground, version 2.0 is about making it fly farther and faster. NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor recently explained the significance of Blackbirds in a telephone interview with Datanami. “We've worked very hard in this release to make it be something that feel like something very familiar, that has increased number of data types, functions, language features, and management capabilities… to really get the type of maturity that people want from a relational database,” he says.

Jokes aside, some IT managers say there's no option other than BlackBerry for security
"As for alternatives to BlackBerry, there aren't any," wrote Sandra Smith, an enterprise IT manager, in an email to Computerworld, although she didn't identify her organization. "Due to the Snowden revelations, we now realize that if you are running Microsoft/Google/Apple, you need to protect yourself from your OS and not use your OS to protect you." IT managers and analysts note that the strength of BlackBerry's security comes from the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) server software that is still used by thousands of government and enterprise customers globally.

Security: The genesis of SDN
The problem with all this rampant implicit trusting now is that "hackers take advantage of it routinely. SDN allows you to do trust consolidation and have a few trusted entities; everything else is untrusted," said Casado. SDN provides more control of the architecture and the distribution model of the control plane, which makes it possible to consolidate trust into fewer elements.

An Innovation Disconnect
So when a senior leader proudly proclaims, “We will achieve high performance through innovation … ” most of us, at least momentarily, suspend our disbelief. We let our enthusiasm for change overpower any cynicism left over from previous efforts to change the world. (“Reengineering,” anyone?) With our platitude filters temporarily disabled, we follow leadership’s directives down a path that is likely to fail.

Quote for the day:

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude." -- M. Angelou

October 17, 2013

Pushing the Boundaries of In-Memory Performance
Challenging those assumptions, Microsoft engineered for dramatically changing latencies and throughput for so-called “hot” transactional tables in the database. Lock-free, row-versioning data structures and compiling T-SQL and queries into native code, combined with making the programming semantics consistent with SQL Server means our customers can apply the performance benefits of extreme transaction processing without application rewrites or the adoption of entirely new products.

SDN Adoption Puts DevOps Pros in High Demand
This push toward automation is a crucial element of SDN technology and one of the main reasons DevOps experience will be in high demand, says Shah. "The kind of expertise you'll look for is no longer a hard-core, specialized programmer who focuses on individual devices and pieces of the network, but someone who can write code or scripts to automate processes and actions," Shah says.

Hackers attack PR Newswire, get user data
PR Newswire, a company owned by marketing and communications services firm UBM, confirmed the breach Wednesday. "We recently learned that a database, which primarily houses access credentials and business contact information for some of our customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, was compromised," Ninan Chacko, PR Newswire's CEO, said in a blog post.

An iPad wish list for the enterprise
While new iPads would definitely focus on consumer features, Apple could also continue its efforts in the business and enterprise sectors with new features for business users and enterprise IT. With that thought in mind, here's my next generation iPad enterprise wish list. While some of these features are all but certain, there are some that are also a bit unlikely.

Does SSL decryption deserve a place in the enterprise data center?
While this practice might seem underhanded at first glance, there are valid reasons why SSL decryption has been implemented in numerous enterprise networks. The first reason pertains to protecting proprietary or sensitive information from being stolen from an enterprise network. However, a report by analyst and research firm NSS Labs Inc. states that the primary reason for implementing SSL decryption has to do with SSL-encrypted malware.

Oracle plugs critical security holes that are putting systems at risk
Out of 51 vulnerabilities patched in this Java security update, 40 affect only client deployments which include the frequently targeted Java Web browser plug-in and 8 affect both client and server deployments. These vulnerabilities can be exploited through Java Web Start applications or Java applets, and, in the case of flaws that also affect server deployments, by sending data to application program interfaces (APIs) in the vulnerable components.

Best practices for combatting integration problems
"When you go to IBM, you get an integrated IBM solution. When you go to HP, they lead with an HP solution. But when you say, 'I already have Dell servers, and I'd like to add HP storage,' that can become problematic, and that's where the integration challenge comes from," said Roger Channing, chief technology officer at MicroTech. "That's where customers are coming from. They don't want to buy bits and pieces and integrate it themselves. They want one belly button they can press to say, 'Here is the solution.' It's our job to make sure the integration is done correctly."

5 ‘Unsolved Problems’ That Have Now Been Solved and the Stories Behind Them
What connects being late to class, computer games, and being a recluse in your mum’s house? No, it’s not the latest Grand Theft Auto game. These are, in fact, the approaches to successfully solving some of the longest standing ‘unsolved problems’ – those which have puzzled the world’s brightest for centuries, until a new approach sparked a breakthrough. Each has its own interesting story behind it…

An API for Simple HTTP Requests
URLDownloadToCacheFile is one such API and comes courtesy of Internet Explorer. This function is ideally suited to console applications because it doesn't imply any particular threading model. It blocks while the file is downloaded and provides progress reporting using a callback. I'm going to show you how to use it to write a console application to download a given HTTP resource, present progress and download the file.

Snapping out of your leadership struggle
There are plenty of reasons for this struggle. It might mean that you’re unhappy in your job, frustrated with all of the things that are out of your control or that you’re lacking a skill set that will help you lead at your best. No matter the reason, there are some things you can do to ease the struggle, clearing your heart and your mind for making decisions and taking action that will send you on your way to greatness

Quote for the day:

"Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." -- St. Francis of Assisi

October 16, 2013

The New HIPAA/HITECH Rules: Compliance vs. Cybersecurity
Whether you are a covered entity or BA, it is imperative you understand the difference between being secure and being compliant. The two are not mutually exclusive. The law requires you to be compliant, and with privacy a huge issue in the news, your customers and your reputation require you be secure. Complying with the HIPAA/HITECH rules does not mean you will be secure. In fact, it’s important to remember that 100% security is nearly impossible.

What the Internet of Things Means for Security
Experts say the security threats of the Internet of Things are broad and potentially even crippling to systems. Since the IoT will have critical infrastructure components, it presents a good target for national and industrial espionage, as well as denial of service and other attacks. Another major area of concern is the personal information that will potentially reside on networks, also a likely target for cyber criminals. One thing to keep in mind when evaluating security needs is that the IoT is still very much a work in progress.

Webservices Security: Potential Threats to Combat
Securing webservices is more complicated than any other end user systems, as the webservices are built as the conduit between systems rather than human users. Most of us are very familiar with the first line of defense, namely authentication, data integrity, confidentiality and non repudiation. These are certainly critical security concerns, but there are well established tools and practices that help address these security issues. But, this it not just be enough to be contempt with solving these concerns, as the services are no longer constrained within the trust boundaries.

Is Radical Business Transformation the Only Way?
In its annual Predicts research on industry trends titled "Top Industries Predicts 2014, it has featured 12 strategic planning assumptions that CIOs, senior business executives and IT leaders should factor into their enterprise planning and strategy-setting initiatives. Harris-Ferrante, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner says, “Transformation remains a critically important phenomenon across all industries. Many industries will face intense challenges in 2014 and beyond, and will have no choice but to radically change their established business models.”

How the Internet of Things will transform our lives forever!
In an interview to Govindraj Ethiraj, Karthikeyan Natrajan, Global head, Integrated Engineering Solutions at Tech Mahindra says, "If you look at what has happened to the products in the last 20 years, it became smart and the real piece of things that is likely to happen in the next 20 years is that there is going to be lot more intelligence and they are going to be helping you lot more than you're supposed to"

Oracle says open source has no place in military apps
It also warns that open source software may not scale. “Commercial software companies have developed highly refined methodologies to perform these tasks,” the document suggests. “Don’t underestimate the difficulties associated with testing open source software and incorporating required changes into the main development stream, especially when it comes to testing for robustness and reliability under load”.

Webcast: Security controls to help confront modern cyberthreats
In this four-part SearchCompliance webcast, Ross joins Theresa M. Grafenstine, inspector general of the U.S. House of Representatives, to discuss cyber-risk and effective security controls companies can implement to protect corporate data. Here in part one, they discuss common cybersecurity threats facing modern organizations.

The next server operating system you buy will be a virtual machine
If you visit VMware's Virtual Appliance Marketplace, you'll get an idea of what you're in for in days to come. There are hundreds of virtual appliances ready for you to download and run in your virtual environments. True, due to licensing, most of them are Linux-based, but it won't be long until you're able to purchase and download Windows-based VMs — VMs tailored and tuned for a variety of purposes and applications. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if application vendors started delivering their applications on VMs too.

Ethernet's 400-Gigabit challenge is a good problem to have
The complexity of the task has only grown since the last standard-setting process, which produced the 802.3ba standard that covers both 40-Gigabit and 100-Gigabit Ethernet, D'Ambrosia and others at the event said. That project started out focused solely on a 100Gbps standard, which service providers wanted, but expanded to include 40Gbps because enterprise servers weren't ready for the higher speed. If the 802.3ba experience is any guide, the next standard -- to be called 802.3bs -- will probably not be ratified until the first half of 2017, D'Ambrosia said.

A lot of data could be stored here one day
It’s not just the power generation features that make Niobrara a good site for a data center: There is also massive network infrastructure already at the site. The Denver area serves as a hub for traffic flowing across the country so the site has 6 long-haul fiber carrier connections nearby, and another 21 fiber connections in close proximity. Sprint, CenturyLink, AT&T, Verizon and Level 3 all run fiber connections by the location. Whoever builds out this data center has plug-and-play network connections that can send data out to the entire world at high speeds.

Quote for the day:

"You are the only one who can use your ability. It is an awesome responsibility." -- Zig Ziglar

October 15, 2013

A 160 TB disk drive?
Regular readers of Storage Bits know that there are two promising technologies to overcome the current limitation: Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Bit Patterned Media (BPM). Magnetic bits written at higher temperatures are more stable when they cool and bit patterned media enables higher densities by enabling the use of the entire volume of the magnetic pit. But even these heroic and not yet proven feasible for mass production technologies will only take hard drives up to about 20 TB capacity. That's where 3-D magnetic recording could save the day.

ODB: C++ Object-Relational Mapping (ORM)
ODB is an open-source, cross-platform, and cross-database object-relational mapping (ORM) system for C++. It allows you to persist C++ objects to a relational database without having to deal with tables, columns, or SQL and without manually writing any mapping code. ODB supports MySQL, SQLite, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server relational databases as well as C++98/03 and C++11 language standards.

Defining Business Architecture
Business Architecture on it’s own only provides a small subset of a complete solution. For example, only understanding a business model doesn’t get your stakeholders any closer to defining a solution to a problem or opportunity. It’s when you bring in the macro level EA methods combined with the other domains of architecture where you really see the power behind business architecture. From an industry perspective, there is a tendency to try to make business architecture an independent framework.

Ten Predictions for Business Architecture in 2020
Architects of all types like to peer into the future and I am no different. When my Forrester colleague, Gordon Barnett, mentioned he was working on a new report on the state of business architecture in 2020, I thought it was time for me to look into my business architecture crystal ball. For the record, I haven’t read Gordon’s article so I have no idea how we align or misalign. Even though business architecture was born out of enterprise architecture, big changes are coming. The children are leaving home, off to greater success than their parents.

Flossie, the 50-year-old computer, to be resurrected
The National Museum of Computing has taken delivery of what it believes is the last ICT 1301 computer to ever have a chance of working again. The machine - known as Flossie - had originally been used to produce exam results for students at the University of London. The museum hopes to put it on display by 2016. One of its trustees said Flossie was one of the first computers specifically designed for use by UK businesses rather than scientific institutions.

Why Precious Leaders Fail
Precious leaders have precious problems. Simple solutions won’t work. Small steps aren’t sufficient. Nothing helps because no one understands. Precious leaders create their own prisons. Precious leaders grow discouraged and isolated, then defeated. Eventually, they run. You’re frustrated and stuck because you’re precious. You can’t take actions that work for “average” people.

Salesforce launches identity service, eyes Okta
Salesforce.com on Tuesday launched an identity service, Salesforce Identity, in a bid to be the central hub to connect Web, mobile and on-premise applications with things like single sign-on, directory integration and authentication. With the move, Salesforce aims to be the keeper of identity for customers, employees and partners. The service is built on Salesforce's Force.com platform and on the surface looks like it competes with Okta on many fronts.

Researchers create indelible record on mankind for aliens to someday find
The nearly indestructible disks were created by the MESA Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in The Netherlands and The Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies in Freiburg, Germany. The disk consists of a 338-nanometer (nm) thick layer of silicon nitride on top of a silicon wafer. A 50 nm layer of tungsten is patterned into QR (Quick Response) codes using optical etching lithography on top of the silicon nitride wafer.

Five Key Principles of a BI Program
The partner to the data warehouse in most cases is business intelligence. The proper foundation for data storage is critical, but enabling the business to drive value and make good decisions will take your organization to the next level. To achieve this, a business intelligence program has to be put in place. To get started, here are five fundamental principles of an effective business intelligence program.

Culture Hacking: The Prospect of Magnificence
While leading projects at Bell Laboratories, The Whitewater Group, and Microsoft Jim McCarthy saw there was a better way to build products by focusing on the team. He discusses culture hacking, a distinct kind of culture engineering, expressing a particular hacker ethos, an ethos originating in the world of software hacking, promoting freedom, openness, and embodying rationality and design elegance.

Quote for the day:

"For our own success to be real, it must contribute to the success of others." -- Eleanor Roosevelt

October 14, 2013

IBM Wants to Predict Heart Disease Through Big Data Analytics
Sophisticated analysis of EHR data could reveal the unique presentation of these symptoms at earlier stages and allow doctors and patients to work together sooner to do something about it. IBM is applying advanced tools for analyzing medical data, including text, and reviewing a patient’s health records for new insight. IBM utilizes Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) to extract the known signs and symptoms to heart failure from available text.

Sketching a Roadmap for EA in the Age of Digital Disruption
EA’s Enterprise Lifecycles – illustrating the need to co-ordinate product, capability, business model and brand with the enterprise strategy and objectives. This is truly an exciting time for practitioners of enterprise architecture and business model innovation. If you’d like to learn more, please review the Hugh Evans's Webinar recording and the presentation

Don’t get fooled by the false “Open” and get locked-in once again
Today, open source is driving much of the innovation around data whether it be OpenStack for IT infrastructures or Hadoop for Big Data and analytics. This is happening to such an extent that many proprietary vendors are being forced to adopt some components of open source technology, whether they want to or not, which can lead to confusion and the risk of IT getting trapped in a “false Open” and once again locked-in situation which will constrain innovation and introduce hidden costs.

Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?
In the past five years, multiple studies have indicated that there may be an "entrepreneur gene"--or at least that people with certain genetic characteristics and personality traits are more likely to be successful entrepreneurs than others. In his 2010 book Born Entrepreneurs, Born Leaders, Scott Shane, professor of entrepreneurial studies at Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, suggests that genes don't just influence whether a person will start a business; they may even determine how much money a person will earn. In other words, some people are born to be alpha wolves, and the rest will work

Advent of Predictive Analytics in China
It now seems that that the concept is gaining significance among local corporations and managers. More and more companies in China are now putting into practice this idea and ramping up their predictive analytics capabilities. The reasons for such a growing interest are rather obvious:

20X Faster Hadoop Execution Now Possible With ScaleOut hServer V2
ScaleOut hServer V2 adds a full MapReduce self-contained execution engine that runs standard Hadoop MapReduce code to provide real-time performance for continuous live data analysis. It also provides blazingly fast analysis of large, static data sets. Best of all, you don't need to learn anything new – if you know Hadoop MapReduce, you can use ScaleOut hServer right away.

Applying Agile principles to Service Management
Agile teams work with the principle that plans will change; that we will understand more about the work once we near completion and that no amount of planning really prepares us for the road ahead. This is true for software development projects where Agile is accepted but of course it’s also true for IT maintenance and operational projects too. How many of your projects delivered exactly as predicted on day one? Knowing that business requirements will change frequently and that the assumptions made before work begins are normally wrong, Agile teams handle this by working in iterations.

7 Top Wishes of IT Project Managers
"If the IT project manager doesn't know what his employees are working on, he doesn't know if he can assign additional tasks or if the task is moving forward," Nielson explains. "With a cloud tool that keeps the project in one central location, the whole team can see the project details, in real time, eliminating extra emails that flood inboxes every day."

The programmable WAN: Applications are boss and networks bend
A programmable WAN with SDN allows machine-to-machine APIs to respond to autonomous capacity requests so that when an application or cloud orchestration decides it needs more bandwidth, SDN can immediately increase that bandwidth, Auster said. "Programmable WAN using SDN solves challenges by turning the bandwidth up or down on demand based on application prioritizations for transactions that are latency sensitive, so migrations can complete satisfactorily," he said.

Backdoor found in D-Link router firmware code
Craig Heffner, a vulnerability researcher with Tactical Network Solutions who specializes in wireless and embedded systems, found the vulnerability. Heffner wrote on his blog that the web interface for some D-Link routers could be accessed if a browser's user agent string is set to "xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide." Curiously, if the second half of the user agent string is reversed and the number is removed, it reads "edit by joel backdoor," suggesting it was intentionally placed there.

Quote for the day:

"Data mining is the search for new, valuable, and nontrivial information in large volumes of data." -- Mehmed Kantardzic

October 13, 2013

Understanding CouchDB and NoSQL with Jan Lehnardt
In this Hasselminutes podcast, Scott talks to open source developer Jan Lehnardt about the NoSQL movement and CouchDB. Is HTTP too heavy to use for a database? How does NoSQL data modeling differs from classic ER systems? Does Couch matter in the Enterprise?

10 Skills of Effective Data Scientists
The field of data science is a relatively new one, with a growing handful of academic programs making early attempts at setting a rubric. As a result, its definition and the roles it encompasses remains up for debate. There are plenty of broad definitions, but the suite of skills at the disposal of successful practitioners is more oblique. ... A recent post at Data Science Central by Mitchell A. Sanders presents an in-depth survey of the skills shared by effective data scientists in the industry.

AOL Cofounder Frets That the U.S. Could Lose Its Entrepreneurial Edge
“Other nations have figured out that entrepreneurialism and innovation are the secret sauce.” ... In lobbying both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill to ease immigration rules, Case says he tries to lay out the problem in stark terms. He asks them if it would make sense to bring people from China to the U.S. Naval Academy, teach them everything about naval warfare, and then send them home to build the Chinese navy. “They say, ‘Oh, no, we wouldn’t do that.’ “

Leadership and Faith
The truth is, Leadership asks a great deal of us. It often demands that we strike out into the unknown and convince other people it’s a good idea. It asks us to trust that some things do not come complete with scientific or rational explanation. It asks us, too, to believe in our own abilities: the potential and ability of those who work with us; and in the value and viability of our vision, even at times when that vision seems unlikely enough to be unattainable.

Marketing and IT Get Together: The Elephants in the Room
Marketing typically does not understand systems thinking, or the concept of long-term cost of ownership. That quickly calmed the IT leaders down; I made it out of there alive. In fact, there are a number of hard truths – elephants in the room – about how we think and act that Marketing and IT have to realize and come together on. A short list might include:

IBM Hits the Throttle on Big Data Discovery With New Lab
The company says that it will also bring to bear the considerable human talent, with broad domain expertise in such areas as biology, medicine, finance, weather modeling, mathematics, computer science, and information technology. The goal, says IBM, is to provide a nexus of talent and technology to gain leverage on the time to insight in the big data discovery process.

Optimizing SQL Server Memory Configuration
Configuring a maximum value for the buffer pool is the more important of the two settings and will prevent SQL Server from taking too much memory. This is particularly significant on 64-bit systems, where a lack of free physical memory can cause Windows to trim SQL Server’s working set. See the section “Lock Pages in Memory” for a full description of this issue. There are several different ways to calculate an appropriate value for configuring Max Server Memory

Where Agile and enterprise architecture collide
Incorporating architecture into software development "is definitely a struggle," said Fred Albert, senior director of enterprise architecture at Mitchell, a San Diego, Calif.-based provider of property and casualty claims management solutions. "But it's not a new problem that has occurred because of the introduction of Agile. The role of architects historically can be interpreted as being disruptive or slowing down the progress of engineering teams because they're driving toward a bigger vision. I don't believe that has changed."

Template Method Design Pattern
Template Method is used prominently in frameworks. Each framework implements the invariant pieces of a domain’s architecture, and defines “placeholders” for all necessary or interesting client customization options. In so doing, the framework becomes the “center of the universe”, and the client customizations are simply “the third rock from the sun”. This inverted control structure has been affectionately labelled “the Hollywood principle” - “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.

Mission Control and Flight Recorder on HotSpot JVM
Mission Control is the starting place for monitoring, management and troubleshooting, while Flight Recorder is the facility to collect and evaluate profiling data. Both tools have been available for JRockit and are now finally ported to HotSpot after being hinted at by Mark Reinhold in a webcast in 2010 and already announced by Mission Control Team Lead Marcus Hirt at JavaOne 2011.

Quote for the day:

"Your success will be the degree to which you build up others who work with you. While building up others, you build up yourself." -- James Casey

October 12, 2013

Avoiding too many user stories in software development
Too often project teams use only the user's perspective to rank the value of all product requirements. In this scenario, the team forgets to consider other product partners such as the business, compliance and technology perspective when prioritizing. The user may want to have the story realized in the next release, but it may not be the best option when weighting the value considerations of all the partners.

Microsoft Thinks DRM Can Solve the Privacy Problem
Mundie, who until late last year was in charge of Microsoft’s research wing as its chief research and strategy officer, thinks a system of DRM technology, accompanied by laws and regulations to enforce it, could provide the answer. “I think we’re going to have to have a usage-based way of controlling this now,” he said. “One way to do that is to put cryptographic wrappers around these things that control uses of this data.”

Leveraging HBase and Hive
In short, think of Hive as an append-only SQL database and HBase as a more typical read-write NoSQL data store. Hive is useful for SQL integration if you want to store long-term data to be processed and summarized and loaded back. Hive's major limitation is query speed. When dealing with billions of rows, there is no live querying of the data that would be fast enough for any interactive interface to the data.

HP leads war against Microsoft; will other PC makers follow?
When it comes to Microsoft what she's talking about, of course, is Microsoft's line of Surface tablets. And what's really got her really riled is that Microsoft isn't content to sell just to consumers. It's also using the same strategy that HP and other business-oriented OEMs pursue, of authorizing distributors and resellers to sell to businesses as well. That's HP's bread and butter, and in Whitman's view, Microsoft is trying to take it away, especially because the Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 are being marketed not just as tablets, but as ultralight notebooks.

How Microsoft’s server offerings blur the boundary between on-premises and the cloud
Microsoft is using the release of its R2 wave of server and management tools to bring on-premises infrastructure and cloud closer together, while leaving you the option of running your network the way you always have. That’s a smart move — you can upgrade and gain the performance benefits of an updated kernel, as well as many new features across many of the server roles, and when you’re ready, you can start to take advantage of its private cloud features in your networks.

Chucky’s top BI Dashboard design and delivery worst practices (Part One)
Unfortunately, a careless approach to BI dashboards is far too common, and has the potential to derail and devalue your entire analytics project. To avoid becoming an unwitting victim of cavalier dashboard cowboys – and ensure that your BI dashboards deliver accurate, timely, relevant and actionable insights at-a-glance – avoid these design and delivery mistakes. ... Check out part two of this series as well.

New NIST cybersecurity standards could pose liability risks
The framework was developed with input from industry stakeholders. It is not designed to mandate specific security controls. Rather, it offers broad standards for identifying and protecting critical data, services and assets against cyber threats. It offers a set of best practices for detecting and responding to an attack, mitigating the fallout from cyber incidents and for managing risks overall.

Providers see revenue opportunity with cloud load balancer technology
As providers show more interest in buying cloud load balancers, there is an opportunity for ADC vendors like Array to partner with providers. "Providers are becoming customers/partners/resellers," Anderson said. "Providers can buy our ADCs for their environment, or if their customers want to purchase dedicated load balancing or physical appliances as a part of a private cloud offering, they are buying our ADC technology through the provider."

Recruiting Is a People Business
“Technology without people can be pretty worthless,” Hoyt said later. There are a lot of tools we can use, but “if you’ve implemented a solution without adoption, you’ve failed.” Recruiting leaders shouldn’t just pick up the next big thing, they need to work with the people involved to find what really works. When you’re going global, one of the first things you learn is to talk less and listen more because “all of the great ideas don’t come from North America,” said Kent Kirch, Deloitte’s global director of talent acquisition and mobility .

So much data, so little security -- what happens if your city gets hacked?
To date, users have agreed to give away certain discrete pieces of information -- such as a name or email addresses -- in exchange for something -- a product or a service, for instance. That situation is no longer viable, Craig Mundie, senior advisor to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, told attendees at the Emtech conference held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) here today.

Quote for the day:

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." -- Aesop

October 11, 2013

Will cloud services be traded just like stocks and bonds one day?
There are a handful of other companies pursuing this idea too though. Generally, the process would work the same: Blocks of cloud computing resources - for example a month’s worth of virtual machines, or a year’s worth of cloud storage - would be packaged by service providers and sold on a market. In the exchange, investors and traders could buy up these blocks and resell them to end users, or other investors, potentially turning a profit if the value of the resource increases.

Cybersecurity is hot: Here are the biggest backers
There have been nearly 80 sales and IPOs in the past 12 months by cybersecurity startups with an average tenfold return on investment, CB Insights reported. In the same time frame there has been about $1.4 billion invested in 239 deals in the sector by venture firms. The biggest investors in the sector since January 2012 have been Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and Andreessen Horowitz, with 13 deals each.

It’s Not Only About Testing!
Testing is only one of the tools we use (maybe the most powerful tool we possess) in order to gather the data. But as with any tool, you need to use it correctly in order to meet your purpose. If your projects change so should your test plans Fighting project change is like fighting the Sun and the winds, a total waste of time and efforts. In the best case you will seem like a grumpy tester, and in the worst case you will be the team buffoon that no one takes seriously anymore and who is constantly stating that they won’t be able to release the project on time…

What is Cloud Mirroring and Why Does It Matter?
The rationale behind cloud mirroring is similar to that of any redundant security measure – you lock your car doors when you leave your vehicle, which is probably sufficient to protect your car most of the time, but an electronic security system provides an additional layer of protection. Leaving your car in a secure parking garage is safer still. Cloud mirroring offers you the data storage equivalent of multiple layers of preventive measures, helping to guarantee that your data will be there when you need it.

Cold Data Storage: An Answer To The IT Budget Meltdown?
If archival data does not warrant a real-time response time, why not just turn off the storage disks when they are not in use? In fact, this is exactly the approach that has been adopted by Facebook and shared via the Open Compute Project under the new name, Cold Storage. By storing inactive data using disks that are turned off at least 50% of the time, and by accepting a 30 second spin-up delay for retrieval, three good things happen:

Governance over IT Service Management Processes using COBIT 5.0
IT Governance ensures business requirements are linked to IT Services. IT is being measured based on service performance, including performance measures for setting up new or changed services via projects. Services are being organized by defined and accepted processes, functions (organizations, people and technology- All those are leveraged resources or, in COBIT terms, enablers. Services, processes, organization, people and technology are being managed by a set of control objectives -usually structured as an “IT balanced scorecard”.

NoSQL Data Modeling Techniques
To explore data modeling techniques, we have to start with a more or less systematic view of NoSQL data models that preferably reveals trends and interconnections. The following figure depicts imaginary “evolution” of the major NoSQL system families, namely, Key-Value stores, BigTable-style databases, Document databases, Full Text Search Engines, and Graph databases

SQLstream Analyzes Data On the Flow
SQLstream founder and CEO Damian Black calls it big data stream processing. "We're there to feed and enhance your core data systems, and provide continuous analytics, continuous cleaning and validation, continuous alerting and alarming," he says. "We're turning the raw data into streams of data that you may then want to store in some of your other big data systems. Or you may just want to interpret now because you may not need to store all the information."

The Rise of Digital Cities
Vegara says the combination of these technologies and platforms will usher in new opportunities for cities. “Cloud based technologies, for example, can offer a huge advantage for municipalities. Since both cities and municipalities, in general, produce copious amounts of data every day, leveraging cloud technology will help them democratise access to information and intelligence. This will allow municipalities to leapfrog and have the same capacity and intelligence as most advanced cities have.”

Raise the Anticipation Quotient with Mobile BI
Mobile BI creates a powerful opportunity for information managers to raise the anticipation quotient of their organizations. Obviously, your organization’s leaders and managers need to be able to anticipate what the right decision is before it’s made. However, what’s often overlooked is anticipating a decision that will need to be made and being prepared to make it. For example, a colleague told me a story about playing a round of golf with a friend. Halfway through the round, the temperature dropped suddenly.

Quote for the day:

"A good plan today is better than a great plan tomorrow." -- General George S. Patton