Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

November 20, 2013

Data centers run warmer in China, Hong Kong
According to a survey conducted by energy management vendor Enlogic Systems, over 85 percent of data center administrators in Greater China were comfortable running their site at 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Farenheit) and higher. This went against a common belief that lower temperatures were necessary to keep systems cool and running more efficiently, with less risks of downtime.

CIO tip: Learn how to present a risk-management plan to the board
Prima facie, it should be understood that the board does not manage risk, Caldwell said. "The board's role in risk management is to ensure there is an effective risk-management plan in place and that the management of the company is effectively implementing it," he said. "They have an oversight role." Any regulator who comes to meet with board members -- which is happening with increasing frequency in large enterprises, particularly in the financial services industry -- will ask questions targeted at figuring out whether the board is really involved in overseeing the risk-management plan.

How To Use Connectivity To Drive Product Innovation
In the world of product innovation, the buzzword of the day is “connected.” But there’s one place where products have yet to realize the full potential of connectivity: the home. We’re not talking about consumer electronics like phones, computers, tablets, and video games. We’re talking about the humble appliances that make our lives easier and our homes more comfortable, like coffee makers, toasters, and space heaters.

Cyber-Security Training a Top Priority for Industry, Government
Cyber-security professionals continue to enjoy strong demand and low unemployment, especially in the United States. The International Information Security System Certification Consortium, or (ISC)2, predicts that the rolls of U.S. cyber-security professionals will grow by 11 percent each year through 2020. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates the growth to be twice that.

Carriers reject kill switch for stolen smartphones
District Attorney George Gascon said Monday that AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless, United States Cellular Corp., Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile US Inc. rebuffed Samsung's proposal to preload its phones with Absolute LoJack anti-theft software as a standard feature. The wireless industry says a kill switch isn't the answer because it could allow a hacker to disable someone's phone.

Hackers exploit JBoss vulnerability to compromise servers
Researchers from security firm Imperva have recently detected an increase in attacks against JBoss servers that used Micalizzi's exploit to install the original pwn.jsp shell, but also a more complex Web shell called JspSpy. Over 200 sites running on JBoss servers, including some that belong to governments and universities have been hacked and infected with these Web shell applications, said Barry Shteiman, director of security strategy at Imperva.

Yahoo CEO Mayer talks mobile strategy, design approach
The experience of actually working with the product is just as important as how it looks, Mayer said. "Companies can fall, quite frankly, too in love with design," she said. Mayer related a story about a friend whose startup failed in the dot-com boom. The company's employees wrote post-mortem white papers analyzing why the company had failed. Her friend's was titled, "Usable versus useful," she said.

Customer selects Cloudmeter to conduct Data Forensics
"Using Cloudmeter, I check all my custom conversion variables: the rate of views to a product detail page, the proportion of products being added to the cart from different areas of the site, and all my micro-cart conversions. I quickly see that there were no significant changes on cart additions, but that something seemed to go wrong for many customers on Cart Step 2, where they enter billing information."

What is endpoint security, and how do you shore up the weakest links?
What is endpoint security, and why should today's CIOs be taking note of their organization's weakest links? In this three-part webcast, SearchCIO-Midmarket editorial director Christina Torode speaks with Jack Gold, president and principal analyst at J. Gold Associates LLC, about the importance of mobile security. Here, in part one, Gold examines the various risk points that organizations small and large face.

What’s Next in Software Analytics
Software analytics (SA) brings the notion of business intelligence to the software industry through fact-based decision support systems. Today, SA primarily focuses on helping individual developers with mundane coding and bug-fixing decisions by mining developer-oriented repositories such as version control systems and bug trackers. For instance, we can automatically determine the risk-the "bugginess" - of a code change by mining the actual risk caused by prior changes

Quote for the day:

"Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act." -- Jack Welch

November 19, 2013

The True Story of a Disrupted Industry, Talent Retained, and Beer Pong
Keith Mueller: We are disrupting one of the oldest professions--bookkeeping--and therefore need to bring new thinking, technology, and processes to help our clients. I believe Silicon Valley has this culture that starts with the questions of what and how can we do things better, faster, and at a lower cost? How we can effect change? That’s the culture we need at BookKeeping Express, and we are developing that here by a constant flow of questions, internal communication, and desire to drive value to our clients. Plus we work hard--so I just feel fun has to be part of the equation.

Exploring LXC Networking
Docker is still very young, though dotCloud, who have apparently pivoted to Docker, have been using it to power their PaaS offering. After playing with Docker for a while I must admit it is awesome. There is no doubt about it. I personally haven’t seen as much excitement about any IT technology in past several years I’ve been in this industry as I’m seeing now surrounding Docker. LXC is the technology which is used by Docker and which has been around for much longer.

Seven ways identity, access management will change in the enterprise
"In the past, efficiency was a key driver [for identity management roll-outs]," said Gregg Kreizman, research vice president at Gartner. "Compliance came along, but business enablement is the Holy Grail." Protected resources in the enterprise aren't where they use to be and the move to the cloud has stressed and fractured identity and access management (IAM) to the point where it needs to be re-architected, according to Gartner.With those observations and others, Gartner laid out the future framed by seven predictions for the way IAM in the future will be unlike IAM now.

Q&A: Design Thinking and Its Role in Industry and Education
The notion of "design thinking" has emerged as a topic of great discussion in recent years among design practitioners, educators across disciplines, and organizations of all kinds. Whether you’re a student, graduate, or seasoned veteran you’ll find value in the following dialogue which explores some of its many interpretations and applications. This interview was conducted by Dianne Hardin, at The University of Cincinnati, as part of her research for the DMI FutureED project. Hardin wanted to get perspectives on design thinking from practitioners responsible for providing it to clients and teaching it to students.

Landscapes in Mobile Application Security
One key requirement for any single sign on scenario is - we should be able to establish direct trust or brokered trust between applications and their users. In most of the cases this is established through IdPs. The first example we took was based on direct trust - while the second is on brokered trust. To accomplish this use case we need to build a trust relationship between all the authorization servers - taking part in - and also a middle man to mediate SSO. This use case is also highlighted in the Native SSO draft specification by OpenID Foundation - but no much details as of now.

Thornton May: Caught between mobility's rock and hard place
A high-potential millennial told the CIO at a big-name pharmaceutical company during her exit interview that she found the work environment toxic. Her main complaint was that the enterprise did not allow use of the modern consumer technologies and applications that she perceives as comprising her personal and professional identity. This is mobility's rock: People want the interface, the ease of use, the "cool" factor, the freedom and the functionality of consumer technology in the workplace.

CSA to create cloud security controls for BYOD
The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) announced Wednesday the launch of its Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) initiative -- a project tasked with designing a better way to secure personal devices on corporate networks, a trend known as bring your own device (BYOD). The goal of the SDP initiative is to produce a framework of cloud security controls that "mitigates network-based attacks on Internet-accessible applications by eliminating connectivity to them until devices and users are authenticated and authorized," according to a CSA press release.

Cisco suggests new economic metric: Gross Domestic P0wnage
The Index notes the many upsides that flow from technology, asserting that “governments and businesses that embrace the Internet and ICTs recognize it will enhance their long-term competitiveness and societal wellbeing, and potentially contribute up to eight percent of gross domestic product”. But the document says it can find only occasional assessment or quantification of negative economic impacts brought on by technology, citing data on the cost in money and jobs of intellectual property theft.

Building an Advanced Managed Services Practice
With many managed services providers admitting that their technology skills are far deeper than their business acumen, the processes required to create those critical organizational development plans may be quite unfamiliar. The talents essential to build and sustain these IT companies can be quite diverse, so MSPs either have to undergo training to acquire those capabilities or hire new employees with those specific proficiencies. Regardless of the method they adopt, those consistent investments can significantly boost an organization’s chances of achieving numerous goals over time.

Secret TPP agreement, SOPA on steroids, may be the end of the Internet as we know it
The EFF warned that “the TPP would let corporations monitor our online activities, cut off our Internet access, delete content and impose fines.” It gives “legal teeth to Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools” and “calls for criminal liability for violations of these anti-circumvention provisions.” In fact, “this criminal liability could apply to people circumventing these restrictions even where the underlying work is not covered by copyright.”

Quote for the day:

"A good test of a platform’s importance is to find out what happens if the platform shuts down for 5 minutes – how much panic and revenue drop does that create in various parts of the world? Another measure of the platform is the value it creates by launching new companies and ideas." -- Chetan Sharma, Chetan Sharma Consulting

November 18, 2013

Is DaaS the Next Step to Simplifying Enterprise IT?
"As we centralise end-user computing environment in data centres and make it accessible to end-users over a private cloud, we are actually paving the way for adoption of desktop as a service to end users,” emphasises Handa. Handa reiterates that fact that several IT services organisations are focusing on this domain of provisioning and supporting desktops as a service by assuring Application Delivery as a Service (AdaaS) model on a variety of end-user devices.

25 tips and tools to make Google Drive better
Google Drive is a lot of things. It's a cloud-based storage service, it's an online office suite, and it's the connective tissue that ties numerous Google services together. Don't be fooled, though, there's even more to Drive than meets the eye. With the right combination of tools, settings and know-how, you can turn Drive into a lean, mean, productivity machine -- one that's jam-packed with time-saving functionality and fine-tuned to work for you. Here are 25 ways to crank up the power and send Google Drive into overdrive.

Australian media companies survive digital threat, says Brightcove chief David Mendels
Australian media companies are becoming one of the world’s fast adapters of video services in response to digital disruption, says the chief executive of Brightcove, David Mendels. ... “We’ve got years of video being the most powerful communication medium for humans,” he says. “Everyone understands the power of video to tell a story is clear, and the opportunity is clear. People now expect news and entertainment content to be available on devices any time and anywhere, and companies to directly control engagement through the digital world.”

Free eBook with SQL Server performance tips and nuggets
The 45 Database Performance Tips eBook covers different tips to help you avoid code that saps performance, whether that’s the ‘gotchas’ to be aware of when using Object to Relational Mapping (ORM) tools, or what to be aware of for indexes, database design, and T-SQL. The eBook is also available to download with SQL Prompt from Red Gate. We often hear that it’s the productivity-boosting side of SQL Prompt that makes it useful for everyday coding.

How to Mobilize Your C-Suite for Big Data Analytics
The often-transformative nature of that change places serious demands on the top team. There’s no substitute for experienced hands who can apply institutional knowledge, navigate organizational hazards, make tough trade-offs, provide authority when decision rights conflict, and signal that the leadership is committed to a new analytics culture. In our experience, the concerted action that’s required falls into six categories. Leaders should take full measure of them before assigning responsibilities or creating roles.

Stratus asks if continuous availability possible in the cloud?
Some customers were hurt because they didn't consider where and how their workloads would failover to use other resources when a failure occurs. The key point LeClair wanted to get across is that customers should really thinking about the business requirements for each of their cloud workloads and where redundant hardware and software must be deployed to address potential outages.

IBM and Amazon are battling for an 'explosive' fed cloud market
"Agencies are moving much more aggressively to the cloud," said Alex Rossino, principal research analyst at Deltek, who called 2013 "the tipping point." He expects many agencies to use cloud-based infrastructure services, in particular. ... IBM this week said it had received a federal key security certification for its cloud offerings, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, better known as FedRAMP. Amazon has also achieved that designation.

Bob Pittman of Clear Channel, on the Value of Dissent

Nobody’s in an ivory tower, and let’s figure this out together. Often in meetings, I will ask people when we’re discussing an idea, “What did the dissenter say?” The first time you do that, somebody might say, “Well, everybody’s on board.” Then I’ll say, “Well, you guys aren’t listening very well, because there’s always another point of view somewhere and you need to go back and find out what the dissenting point of view is.”

CISOs Need to Keep a Vigilant Eye on Eight Security Predictions in 2014
“Bypassing traditional defenses was raised to an art form by cybercriminals in 2013," said Charles Renert, vice president of security research for Websense. "In 2014, cyberattacks will be even more complex and diverse. While the general volume of advanced malware will decrease—we predict the volume of targeted attacks and data destruction incidents will increase. Organizations must up their security game as attackers continue to seek new ways to penetrate traditional defenses at every stage of the threat lifecycle."

SATA Express marries PCI-e, SATA for faster direct-attached storage
The SATA Express specification now recognizes PCI-e as a suitable storage interface for fast storage devices. Conventional drives will continue to use the server's standard SAS and SATA interface operated through the motherboard's South Bridge chip, while new, fast disk drives like SSD use SATA Express through the PCI-e interface. While this new option helps meet the performance and capacity demands of varied workloads, servers will need SATA Express capabilities and SFF-8639 multifunctional connectors to take advantage.

Quote for the day:

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

November 17, 2013

What to Use on the Microsoft Stack
Recently there has been a lot of flux in the Microsoft stack, leaving developers and leads wondering which technologies they should focus on. Microsoft's unwillingness to officially deprecate technologies such as Silverlight, instead allowing them to slowly fade away, only compounds the confusion. One way to find out is to review a little known document called the ".NET Technology Guide for Business Applications". Released earlier this year, the Guide offers insight into where Microsoft intends to put its efforts and what technologies should be avoided.

How to Create an Effective Business Continuity Plan
Because restoring IT is critical for most companies, numerous disaster recovery solutions are available. You can rely on IT to implement those solutions. But what about the rest of your business functions? Your company's future depends on your people and processes. Being able to handle any incident effectively can have a positive effect on your company's reputation and market value, and it can increase customer confidence.

Steve Jobs On Android Founder Andy Rubin: 'Big, Arrogant ..."
Steve Jobs did not like Android, or the guy that ran it, Andy Rubin, according to a new book on the Google-Apple smartphone wars. ... "It got incredibly personal," says one Apple executive who was briefed by Jobs on the meeting. "Jobs said that Rubin was steamed, telling him his position was anti-innovation. And this is where Steve was demeaning to Andy, saying Andy was trying to be like him, look like him, have the same haircut, the same glasses, the same style."

HTML5 & CSS: Animated Opening Type
"In this tutorial I’m going to explain how to achieve an interesting 3D opening type effect with CSS based on the one I previously created. My experiment was actually inspired by Edenspiekermann’s Open Type project for the Kröller-Müller Museum, a dynamic concept that plays with light and shadow in a simple but incredibly creative way. The aim of this tutorial is to show how we can bring some life to letters using CSS transforms and transitions on pseudo-elements with a technique that will allow to open a letter from all four sides."

It's Too Late for Data Governance
Get buy-in across the organization on definitions so the element that is quantified here is actually the same thing as the one quantified there. That way, individuals who create local models can be assured they are comparing apples to apples and benchmarks are meaningful instead of confusing. Attention to detail and cross-department accord are necessary. Be prepared to spend a fair amount of time here.

The interplay between data management and data governance
Inevitably, firms will need the right tools for this practice, and effective data management solutions are the essential foundation on which to build data governance. These systems have already delivered exemplary levels of transparency, visibility and highly granular control over data consumption and distribution, and enable organizations to embed data management disciplines into formal technology practice. Usage and change management functions ensure that data governance benefits the organization by enabling cost control, cost allocation and contractual compliance.

Cisco claims scuttled by VMware
In criticizing software-only overlays for network virtualization, two points Cisco continually brings up are hypervisor dependency and the need to touch all endpoints when network changes are made. But VMware, the chief target of Cisco's criticism, takes issue with both counts. With the first, VMware's NSX software is installed in many multi-hypervisor hybrid environments and some with non-VMware hypervisors, says Martin Casado

Introducing Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) 4.1
EMET anticipates the most common techniques adversaries might use and shields computer systems against those security threats. EMET uses security mitigation technologies such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Mandatory Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Structured Exception Handler Overwrite Protection (SEHOP), Export Address Table Access Filtering (EAF), Anti-ROP, and SSL/TLS Certificate Trust Pinning, to help protect computer systems from new or undiscovered threats.

Strategic Risk—Five Frequently Asked Questions
Companies that fall behind on the innovation curve may soon find themselves facing innovation’s evil twin: disruption. Those that do not actively manage strategic risk—as well as evolve with new technologies and plug into external sources to gain an “outside-in” perspective—are more likely to be victimized by the future than being a part of shaping it. Strategic risk analysis can help a company control its own destiny by surfacing the pitfalls and the opportunities that lie within their business strategy.

OAuth as Single Sign On
"Today, we're announcing the release of a key part of our authentication infrastructure - id.heroku.com - under the MIT license. This is the service that accepts passwords on login and manages all things OAuth for our API. The repo is now world-readable at https://github.com/heroku/identity . Pull requests welcome. While OAuth was originally designed to allow service providers to delegate some access on behalf of a customer to a third party, and we do use it that way too, Heroku also uses OAuth for SSO. We'd like to take this opportunity to provide a technical overview."

Quote for the day:

"The truth can make people angrier than a lie. Tell it anyway." -- Teresa Carpenter

November 16, 2013

Big Data Has A Trust Problem
One of the report's most interesting findings is that a "trust gap" exists within organizations. According to Kathy Reece, a business analytics leader at IBM Global Business Services, and one of the authors of the study, less than 47 percent of leaders surveyed report a "strong level of trust" between IT and business departments. And when it comes to the C-Suite, the trust gap is even worse: Just 40 percent of respondents feel a strong sense of trust between executives at their firm.

Splunk and Ford Test Drive Open Data Development in Connected Cars
"The Connected Car Dashboards give a glimpse into a promising future in which data could transform vehicle and driver safety as well as design, productivity and other areas of the automotive industry," said Christy Wilson, vice president of product operations, Splunk. "Splunk's mission is to make machine data more accessible, valuable and usable to everyone, and Splunk4Good extends those goals by using data to make a difference. Splunk is thrilled to be working with Ford to help usher in an open data movement in the automotive industry."

Gartner Says the Natural Life Cycle of a Technology-Driven Company Is Under 10 Years
“To compete in this environment business leaders must destroy and rebuild the very businesses they helped create,” said Mr. Prentice. “Nokia’s metamorphosis is an example of embracing the concept of destruction and reinvention, while the current business model still remains successful. The divestiture of IBM Personal Systems Group to Lenovo and subsequent changes of company’s focus is another example. Apple is another company which almost came to extinction several times over its life, and then dominated the next technology wave through significant changes to its operations.”

How to survive in the cloud storage market
The large providers share the same blind spots that plague the component makers of any market: poor end-user support, zero customization, minimum feature sets, minimal to no service-level agreements, or abysmally complex billing and provisioning systems. The opportunities in cloud lie in value-add. There is a rich ecosystem forming above the so-called raw cloud service providers, and there is plenty of opportunity there.

Statistical analysis made easy in Python with SciPy and pandas DataFrames
The majority of data analysis in Python can be performed with the SciPy module. SciPy provides a plethora of statistical functions and tests that will handle the majority of your analytical needs. ... The pandas module provides powerful, efficient, R-like DataFrame objects capable of calculating statistics en masse on the entire DataFrame. DataFrames are useful for when you need to compute statistics over multiple replicate runs.

A Recipe for the Internet of Things
Seemingly every day a new story pops up about the Internet of Things, as new devices and wearables are launched into the market, and large enterprises contemplate the possibilities of a connected world. I’ve spent quite a bit of time discussing the requirements for taking advantage of these capabilities with organizations ranging from automobile manufacturers, to consumer electronics manufacturers, to industrial manufacturers, to city governments.

Open Source: A Platform for Innovation
The beauty of open source is that it’s a huge ecosystem of innovators who are no longer competing for scarce resources but rather sharing knowledge with others to create new resources and opportunities for others to benefit from these resources. The programs that have been developed in the open source software community are enablers for researchers to more effectively analyze the data in their endeavors regardless of their application. The software and hardware developed by open source can have applications beyond the data center.

EMC finally gets into the all-flash game with first XtremIO units
The initial XtremeIO SKUS are 10TB boxes, with capacity to double in the first quarter of next year, according to EMC. Basically this is the technology EMC purchased with XtremIO but with added linkages back into the rest of its product stable with “integration points” to vPlex, PowerPath, vBlocks and Secure Remote Systems and VMware vCenter (via plugins).

The strange life, death and rebirth of the CIO and what it means for the future of IT
CIOs now face a series of contradictory demands, according to Lee Weldon, research director at analyst Gartner. After years of being asked to increase efficiency and reduce costs thanks to a tough economic climate, they're also being asked to come up with new ways of using technology to create new business opportunities: "The CIO is getting hit with these conflicting expectations. That's a real pressure that they are feeling," says Weldon.

Virtualization security dynamics get old
Frankly, the ability to provide risk-driven and well-adjusted security and compliance capabilities in virtualized environments has a lot to do with a reasoned understanding of the applications and information we need to protect. That entails appropriately factoring in threat models and business impact; adjusting architecture and approach; and aligning operational and technical implications. Virtualization and cloud are simply operational and deployment variables which factor into these equations.

Quote for the day:

"When nobody around you measures up, it's time to check your yardstick." -- Bill Lemly

November 15, 2013

Rackspace: Biggest cloud risk for CIOs is being blind to potential
"I'll bet you, the first thing they wouldn't have thought of is 'wow this gives me lighting, what can I do with lighting?' That's a game changer but they wouldn't have seen it initially." CIOs will need to challenge themselves by constantly asking what they were not seeing today that might be made possible with the technology, noted Perkins, who is also Rackspace's director of technology and products for Asia-Pacific.

The essential value of EA
As the blueprint of the enterprise, the value of EA would be calculated at stakeholders, the users of EA. In fact, the value of any product stems from its usage. Hence, there is no value in EA if there is no proper EA or no stakeholder to employ it. A such beware that the cost of EA could be much greater than the value returned. But there is plenty of value if all stakeholders in the enterprise use the EA to enhance their own work.

The New Best-Practices of a High-Impact Learning Organization
Some key findings of the enduring research,The High-Impact Learning Organization are: First, the research shows very clearly that companies with High-Impact Learning Organizations outperform their peers. ... Second, the research shows a distinct shift away from a pure focus on "training programs" to a focus on "organizational capability development." ... Third, the research shows that the L&D industry needs reskilling itself.

What Optional Services Should you Consider to Support your SaaS Applications? (Part 2)
One of the limits to SaaS adoption is that they are stovepipes in and of themselves. For greater functionality, companies need to integrate Cloud SaaS applications together or with applications deployed in-house. For example, it would be very productive if, when a sales rep in a CRM system marks an opportunity as won, the order administration application automatically gathers the required data, schedules the order for production and alerts the financial systems. This is only possible if the applications have been integrated.

Panelists debate the use of “Big Data” in modern technology
The conversation became heated as the panel and the contributing audience members debated if the use of Big Data can do more harm than good to users. “Big Data gives insight into existing things that we have lying around. So as long as you have a data log of things people are doing on your website, it’s pretty powerful,” Garcia said. “The NSA wiretapping shocked many people, but as a consumer you should be aware that everything you’re doing is being tracked by someone, somewhere. That’s just the age we live in.”

November Update of Power Query Preview is Now Available
This is the most substantial update we’ve had in a while, and we are excited about bringing it to you – the theme on this blog a short while ago was Halloween, and we think of this as Christmas arriving early The new features included in this month’s update range from new data sources to improved experiences and new capabilities for importing, reshaping, combining, managing or sharing your queries. Pretty much every product area has been improved this month, in one way or another. You can find more details below:

Is Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry PaaS viable?
Pivotal’s “secret sauce” is the ability to abstract out the differences within the underlying infrastructure in such a way that once the application is built and deployed, they can move between cloud providers. However, this comes at the price of being dependent upon Cloud Foundry itself, including current support from CenturyLink/Savvis, ActiveState, Tier 3, and other providers.

SQL Server 2014 In-Memory OLTP: Memory Management for Memory-Optimized Tables
It is the responsibility of DBAs/Administrators to make sure resources are provisioned and managed appropriately to avoid such failures. SQL Server provides a rich set of monitoring tools, including DMVs, PerfMon and XEvents to help administrators identify problems earlier so that a corrective action can be taken. Similarly, for memory-optimized tables, SQL Server provides a rich set of monitoring capabilities and configuration options so that you can manage your database/instance well and keep your application running smoothly.

IBM big data portfolio adds operational pieces
While the high-profile Watson cognitive system and Smarter Cities projects help IBM showcase new styles of big data analytics, the company is also rolling out low-profile big data portfolio enhancements to better enable use of new data technologies in the enterprise. Some of these enhancements help data professionals protect the security of their big data assets.

Evaluation Criteria for Data Governance Tools
This list of evaluation criteria for data governance software tools will help you in your technology assessment. Sunil Soares, industry thought leader and founder and managing partner of Information Asset, LLC, compiled a list of 18 evaluation criteria for data governance software tools, which he presented at the recent MDM and Data Governance Summit in New York.

Quote for the day:

"There are winners, there are losers and there are people who have not yet learned how to win." -- Les Brown

November 14, 2013

Five steps to choosing the best hypervisor for your company
Most agree that, up until recently, VMware was the obvious leader in providing advanced virtualization features. However, with the release of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, many believe that Microsoft has stepped up its game, providing features equivalent to the ones VMware is known for. Because of these recent advancements, it's a better time than ever to select a hypervisor for the data center because you have more competitive choices to consider.

IBM to offer Watson supercomputer as cloud development platform
IBM is preparing to give third parties access to its Watson supercomputer with the aim of spurring the growth of applications that take advantage of the system's artificial intelligence capabilities. Watson, which is derived from IBM's DeepQA project, drew worldwide attention in 2011 after it soundly defeated human opponents on the Jeopardy! game show. IBM has been applying Watson's machine learning -- or "cognitive computing" -- technology to domains such as health care, but now the company is ready to share Watson with the broader world.

Eight Ways to Stay Calm in the Midst of Chaos
Everyone dreams of a company that runs smoothly and efficiently, but ambitious entrepreneurs, managers and salespeople can’t help but push for speed. Rather than slow down on a product release or turn down a customer or two until processes are ready, decisions are made that tax resources and send teams into a frenzy. Whether you are the chaos creator or just caught in the fray, the best way you can bring sanity back to your team is to be an island of stability. It’s harder than it sounds when people are running and screaming with their hair on fire, so here are eight tips for smooth sailing.

Virtustream Accelerates Hybrid Cloud Security and Compliance with Intel® TXT
“Virtustream's partnership with Intel has been built on our common belief that enterprise class clouds must closely integrate software and hardware to give our clients the most advanced security features and compliance capabilities which reduce risk and costs,” said Kevin Reid, CEO and CTO of Virtustream. “By integrating Intel TXT, Virtustream’s xStream moves several steps ahead of any other hybrid cloud solution. The combination of application-level SLAs and security compliance gives our customers a tremendous advantage and new options for how they can deploy business-critical applications in the cloud.”

Isis NFC mobile wallet goes live across the US
"The redesigned Isis Mobile Wallet features a simplified user interface with a clean, white background and easy-to-navigate toolbars," Isis says. "Integration with American Express Serve makes it convenient for Isis Mobile Wallet users to load funds to their American Express Serve account from a US debit or credit card, bank account, or through direct deposit, as well as pay bills online and send money to friends and family using an American Express Serve account."

Security as a Service enlists one cloud to monitor others
Security as a Service is a ripe market for new approaches from emerging companies. One such company, JumpCloud, hopes to snare customers looking for a one-stop Security as a Service monitoring shop. Its agent-based software handles intrusion detection and prevention, data loss prevention, and identity and access management with integrations into Active Directory.

10 mistakes CIOs should not make
There is probably no more difficult C-level position in any company than that of the CIO. So much can go wrong with technology projects, and also with enterprise acceptance of them. One area CIOs think about, especially when work is not going well, is what they could have done differently. There is natural tendency to “step in” to make everything “right.” But before you do that, think again. Here are ten things CIOs should avoid!

Where Does Your Chief Data Officer Work? Three Organizational Models
Don’t get me wrong. The CIO isn’t going anywhere. Bringing on a CDO or adding new authoritative supporting roles should not be a replacement for a CIO, or any other C-level position for that matter. The CDO should be an enhancement to the existing organizational structure and complement the positions that are already working hard to drive the business forward.

Firms are still unprepared for consumerised IT management
“There’s a conflict here between the 63 per cent of people who said they are going to deploy a self-service, enterprise app store within the next two years and the small number who have a management plan to go with it,” Littleson told IT Pro. “Software is a very expensive asset that needs to be constantly managed, not just to make sure you have enough licenses, but also that you don’t have too many, for example,” he added

Virtualized environments. Real risk
Because virtual machines run on a hypervisor, having access to the virtual infrastructure really gives you the 'master key' to everything in the datacenter. You get a significant concentration of risk, and there is no video camera watching what you're doing. In the virtual world, administrators don't even need access to the VM. It's easy for them to take a snapshot, copy the snapshot elsewhere and spin up a copy of the VM and/or modify the disk image to inject new users and passwords.

Quote for the day:

"The best strategy for building a competitive organization is to help individuals become more of who they are." -- Marcus Buckingham

November 13, 2013

BIAN and The Open Group launch practical guide to enterprise architecture in banking
The Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) and The Open Group (TOGAF) today launch their latest collaborative whitepaper, detailing how banking industry architects can make use of both the BIAN Service Landscape and The Open Group Architecture Framework in order to accelerate their work to drive transformational change across the industry, improving the quality and consistency of the architecture products they deliver.

Chief digital officer: An insider's take – what CDOs do and why they matter
"Chief product officer, CDO, global head of digital products — so most of them equate to my current role and were product-oriented with overall product responsibilities, including technology," Gallagher. However, he sees organisations recruiting CDOs from a wide range of business backgrounds. "It probably splits right down the middle. I see a lot of chief digital officers are from technology or what I call higher technology product roles," Gallagher said.

Microsoft Sees Huge Potential in Fuel Cells
"Fuel cells are very clean, reliable and perfect for small form factor applications," wrote James. "By integrating fuel cells with IT hardware, we can cut much of the power electronics out of the conventional fuel cell system. What we are left with is a very simple and low cost data center and fuel cell system." Technical issues, such as the fuel distribution system, power management and even safety training, remain to be resolved, he notes.

Why Bill Gates doesn’t fear internet “balkanization”
“I think there’s a lot of forces that, when anything tries to separate off, bring it back together,” Bill Gates said. “Like in mobile phones, they tried to have their own way of doing things and that became part of one internet…. I’d say the forces of unification are stronger today – you know, video journals, how you socialize – and every device you pick up really is just connecting into the internet.”

UML 2.5: Do You Even Care?
The goal of UML 2.5 is to simplify and clarify a specification document so as to reduce implementation problems and promote interoperability between tools. There was a significant pushback against UML v2.0 due to its complexity, so simplification is a step in the right direction. One of UML's complexities is the addition of diagrams that seem to have little value for most practitioners.

How to Boost Windows 8 Performance
A little-known tool called the Resource Monitor does a very good job of tracking down performance problems and fixing them. Although it's not new -- it's been included in Windows since Vista -- it's still a great way to find out about the resources your system uses and to see what applications and services are making the most use of your system. Based on that, you can decide which apps and services to shut down and which to keep running.

Computing 2113: Five Predictions For The Next Tech Century
The excitement at OpenWorldsurrounding the announcement of Oracle’s new SPARC M6-powered SuperCluster M6-32 got me thinking about just how far computational hardware has come in the past 25 years. This, in turn, got me wondering about the advances that lie ahead. ... Here’s my personal list of predictions, synthesized from the expert technical observations in the Proceedings’ papers

How does Lean process improvement work with Agile project management?
Many organizations pick and choose which Lean practices to keep and which to ignore. They are usually missing some of the practices, and you need them all. When project managers see the full list of Lean process improvement principles and understand what each one means, they tend to see why these practices are useful. These are the core principles of Lean processes:

The Internet of things needs a lot of work
Managing devices is also the biggest worry for Ro McNally, vice president of device technology at Verizon Wireless. It's a challenge both for systems engineering and for the subscriber's experience, she said. Between linking devices, entering passwords, managing home Wi-Fi and dealing with corporate IT departments at work, connected life is already hard for some consumers, Rolston said. "They are network admins, by accident," he said. That's created a business opportunity for someone to take over those tasks as a virtual service, he said.

Discomfort is the key to innovation
What we should be doing instead of creating more comfort about innovation is creating discomfort about the status quo. Nothing generates more energy and enthusiasm for change and new products and services than an impending corporate strategic change, an external threat or a profound market shift. These have the ability to create true discomfort with the status quo. And when the status quo is uncertain, that's the time when innovation can become very appealing.

Quote for the day:

"Always acknowledge a fault. It throws those in authority off their guard and gives you an opportunity to commit more" -- M. Twain

November 12, 2013

Scrum Master: Position or Role?
The Scrum Guide generally describes the Scrum Master role as one of teaching, coaching, facilitating, and removing impediments. And when a Scrum team is new, these things take time. A team new to Scrum tries to follow Scrum by the book and needs someone that can do a lot of teaching, coaching, facilitating and removing impediments. But what happens when the delivery team matures? Teaching lessens. Coaching lessens, though there is still need for coaching around constant improvement.

For information standards in the enterprise, XBRL marks the spot
The value of XBRL lies in its machine-readable reporting format, which details how financial performance and information must be reported to the SEC and investors. XBRL data is highly enriched with standardized mark up, and users can access XBRL information via common desktop applications such as spreadsheets and word processors for competitive comparisons and for internal governance, risk and compliance purposes.

Many IT leaders' top concerns don't jibe with organizations' priorities
“They want to optimize IT but also want to help optimize the business, and sometimes those things are in conflict,” he says. While the results initially troubled Kappelman, upon speaking to IT people and further reflecting, he believes it is natural for the IT leader’s viewpoint to differ from that of the organization in that “IT is an indirect contributor to most corporate objectives – in other words, we don’t directly increase revenue or market share, though we do all these things indirectly by doing great IT.”

How Basic Problem-Solving Skills Can Simplify Complex Tech Issues
Business leaders have categorized the problems confronting them as "complex" since the phrase "business problem" was coined. And those problems are only getting more complex. The pace of technology, new competitive landscapes (e.g. web-based business models), globalization and the general speed at which markets are changing have increased the complexity of business problems and generally reduced the time available to solve them.

The Bridge Pattern in the .NET Framework
The implementor is an interface that defines base functionality for all concrete impelementors. The concrete implementor class or classes implement the implementor interface. The abstraction class provides an interface to the client application independent of the concrete implementor being used. The refined abstraction class extends the abstraction interface.

Security is top concern in 2014 for state CIOs
IT security strategies and tools are at the forefront of discussion around the states Orgeron noted. Not only did security top the list of Priority Strategies, Management Processes and Solutions, but security enhancement tools (such as continuous diagnostic monitoring came in second among Priority Technologies, Applications and Tools. Following closely behind on the top priority list of state CIOs were efforts at consolidation and a continued transition to cloud services, Orgeron said.

Five data recovery utilities
If your hard disk fails and you don't have a valid backup, you will have to resort to a data recovery tool. Brien Posey has five suggestions. "I've lost count of the number of times over the years that I have had friends, family, and even clients contact me because a hard disk failed and no backup of the data exists. In these types of situations the only option is often to use a data recovery utility to try to get back some of the data. This article discusses five such utilities."

An interview with Vasco Duarte and Jason Little on Lean Change Management
Change agents need a “constant stream of high-quality content to support their work” as Vasco Duarte from Happy Melly states. InfoQ did an interview with him on a new publishing business that aims to connect authors with their audience in a sustainable way, and with Jason Little, an author that will be publishing about Lean Change Management.

Beyond Vision Statements: Three Steps to Successful Post-Merger Culture Integration
Newly-merged companies often shortchange cultural integration efforts by taking the traditional first step—the alignment of mission, vision and values—without doing important additional steps or following through and doing the detailed, gritty work that’s needed to back it up and create real change. Yet, cultural integration is crucial to the success of any merger. Failure to achieve it can threaten the outcome of multibillion-dollar transactions.

Designing an effective vulnerability management program for the cloud
Approaching vulnerability management as a comprehensive program instead of a series of disconnected scans allows providers to maintain accurate and current perspectives on overall enterprise security. They are then able to better execute security decisions with lasting and effective results. Balancing the configuration, coordination and communication needs of the provider's vulnerability management program is a thoughtful and measured process necessary for success.

Quote for the day:

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

November 11, 2013

7 Stages for Effective Data Governance
The data governance structure is formed to ensure that authority to manage data is properly delegated from the senior-most levels, and that parties are held accountable for executing governance policies as required by their respective mandates. This authorization, in turn, is accomplished by instituting processes to understand the cause and effect of poor data in an organization. Then solutions can be developed to correct the problem and a means for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of these solutions can be adopted.

British Spies Reportedly Spoofed Linkedin, Slashdot to Target Network Engineers
Special teams from GCHQ's My Network Operations Centre (MyNOC) division identified key employees doing network maintenance and security at the targeted companies and determined which of them were users of LinkedIn or Slashdot.org. The teams then directed the targeted individuals to fake versions of those sites which contained malicious code designed to install malware on their computers, German magazine Der Spiegel reported based on secret GCHQ documents leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

Emotional Intelligence Is critical to Good Leadership
The term, emotional intelligence was coined around 1995 in the popular book, Emotional Intelligence, Why it Can Matter More Than IQ. A Key take away from the book, was the fact that factors such as empathy, self-awareness and self-discipline determine both professional and personal success. In this study, Emotional Intelligence was measured with the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence Assessment OR SEI.

Portugal Telecom’s High-Concept Green Data Center
The PT facility is built to be sustainable, featuring a rain water collection system (which forms a moat around the data center building), an on-site photovoltaic solar power generation, and a garden with more than 600 trees. Portugal Telecom is seeking Gold LEED certification for the data center building, and LEED Platinum status for the attached office building. Covilhã was chosen for the location because it’s the coldest place in Portugal, with a climate that will allow PT to use fresh air cooling for 99 percent of the year, with chillers expected to be used four days a year.

CryptoLocker is Bad News
For the most part, CryptoLocker is spreading via various phishing campaigns, including some from legitimate businesses, or through phony Federal Express or UPS tracking notifications. Some victims said CryptoLocker has appeared after a separate botnet infection as well. According to Kaspersky’s Costin Raiu, this malware primarily targets users from US and UK, with India, Canada, Australia and France being second-tier targets.

Secure Integration of Convergent Technologies – a Challenge for Open Platform
Open Platform 3.0 is an initiative that will advance The Open Group vision of Boundaryless Information Flow™ by helping enterprises to use them. The survey confirms the value of an open platform to protect users of these technologies from vendor lock-in. It also shows that security is a key concern that must be addressed, that the platform must make the technologies easy to use, and that it must enable them to be used in combination.

Snowden serves up another lesson on insider threats
The latest news sheds a more light on how Snowden managed to lay his hands on what has turned out to be a staggering amount of classified information on the NSA's spying activities around the world and in the U.S. His success in getting access to the documents and spiriting them out of the agency have provoked questions about the NSA's apparent lack of controls for preventing such theft.

Working alone won’t solve our cyber security problems: NICTA’s Dr Jodi Steel
There are no silver bullets. Our adversaries are well organised and well skilled, says Steel. “You can buy malware kits online – and they have 24 hour phone support. You can buy hacking services, botnets by the hour. Yet the organisations that are under attack tend to be disinclined to share information because of embarrassment, reputation or share price – or on the solution side, because of competitive advantage," says Steel.

Embracing the Millennials’ Mind-Set at Work
Millennials are becoming more aware of their rising worth. Coupling their ability to learn quickly with their insistence on having a say, they pack a powerful punch. But rather than complaining, it’s time to embrace millennials for what they can offer, to add experience from older workers to the mix, and to watch innovation explode.

Good Governance: The Role of the Board Chair
In the face of all of these responsibilities today’s board chair has one more important job—prepare the other officers to be a good chair someday. The days of waiting until one is elected chairperson to begin studying the role are over. Board officers should be encouraged to take workshops and study the governance work on the role of board leadership before they decide to accept the chair’s job. Dedicated development of board officers is a missing piece in today’s credit union governance—it may be time to add this to the list.

Quote for the day:

"Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get" -- Ray Kroc