Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

December 10, 2013

To Execution profile or to Memory Profile? That is the question.
Profilers work by either sampling top of stack or instrumenting the code with probes, or a combination of both. These techniques are very good at finding computations that happen frequently or take a long time. As my group experienced, the information gathered by execution profilers often correlates well with the source of the memory inefficiency. However it points to an execution problem which can sometimes be confusing.

Despite cloud computing security risks, infosec pros know their role
"If all of us by default have this level of trust in the cloud, why are we so uncomfortable when the business units come to us and say, 'I'm going to put this data out in the cloud'?" asked LaRosa. As he sees it, even though society has already come to trust the cloud tacitly, security pros still "push back" against enterprise cloud computing initiatives. "The problem isn't with the cloud," LaRosa added, it's with security practitioners' ability to evolve and accept it.

Other browser makers follow Google's lead, revoke rogue certificates
Google revoked the certificates for users of its Chrome browser on Saturday after a four-day investigation. Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera Software followed suit on Monday. In a security advisory, Microsoft said it had released an update to most versions of Windows -- including Windows Phone 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 -- that revoked the pertinent certificates. Unlike other browser makers, Microsoft records trusted digital certificates in Windows, not in its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

Report: Risk of an Uncertain Security Strategy
In spite of high-profile data breaches and the potential business impact of cyber attacks and data loss, small and midsize organizations are still not making cyber security a priority. Sophos and the Ponemon Institute recently released a report, Risk of an Uncertain Security Strategy, that highlights the need to make security a key priority.

Enterprise mobile management demands rethinking of work, play and productivity
To share his insights on how to better prepare for a mobile-enablement future that quickly complements other IT imperatives such as cloud, big data, and even more efficient data centers, we’re joined by Tom Kendra, Vice President and General Manager, Systems Management at Dell Software. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

Tomorrow's Data Center Will Be Mobile, Flexible, Highly Efficient and Secure
"This year, we're seeing organizations really start to examine how 'software-defined' everything impacts the data center," Cappuccio says. "Software-defined networking, software defined storage, that's all part of the conversation; how to move away from the physical and into the conceptual, but is there a way to take that concept and apply that to data centers as a whole."

Building Innovative Organizations with Lean Thinking
Since Peter Drucker first introduced the concept of "innovative organization”, it has become a buzzword amongst corporate managers. Particularly in IT, companies strive to create innovative teams. But whilst there has been a lot of theoretical discussion on how to build innovative organizations, there have been few practical experiments and analysis. Innovative organizations are like the moon: beautiful to look at, but seemingly impossible to grasp.

Do two-factor authentication vulnerabilities outweigh the benefits?
Most two-factor authentication technologies used with online services generate a one-time password (OTP) when users logs in with their username and password. A user receives the OTP via an SMS on their registered mobile device and enters it on the website to complete the login procedure. While two-factor authentication is a definite improvement on plain password authentication, it is not infallible.

Information Governance: Why It's Becoming a Boardroom Imperative
The rapid growth of data across the enterprise has resulted in increasing risk, liability and cost to organizations. At the same time, there is a significant opportunity to tap into this data to deliver increased productivity and greater strategic insight. In this slide show, with input from a Hewlett-Packard Autonomy study, eWEEK looks at the key reasons information governance is fast becoming a boardroom imperative.

Meg Whitman: Moonshot servers will solve datacenter power and cost crisis
"If the cloud were an independent county, it would rate number five in energy use. China is number one, the US is number two, Russia is number three, India is number four and the cloud is number five, and Japan is sixth," she said. Datacentres consume about two percent of the world's electricity, Whitman told the conference audience. "By the end of the decade datacentre demand will rise to over three percent unless we find a more efficient technology. This is not sustainable. We have to make better use of the electricity that we've got," she said.

Quote for the day:

"Education is more than a luxury; it is a responsibility that society owes to itself." -- Robin Cook

December 09, 2013

Orchestrated offline VM Patching using Service Management Automation
So the goal is to ensure images stored in the Virtual Machine Manager library are updated as soon as Microsoft Security Updates become available on Patch Tuesday. In this post I’ll present you a way to achieve that goal, while leveraging the entire CLOUD OS stack including Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2 and Windows Azure Pack. The solution itself is provided by a SMA (Service Management Automation) Runbook. If you have not looked into SMA I highly recommend you to do so.

Surfing a digital wave, or drowning?
One reason for worry is that IT bosses are conservative by habit and with good reason. Above all they must keep essential systems running—and safe. Those systems are under continual attack. If they are breached, the head of IT carries the can. More broadly, IT departments like to know who is up to what. Many of them gave up one battle long ago, by letting staff choose their own smartphones (a trend known as “bring your own device”). When the chief executive insists on an iPhone rather than a fogeyish BlackBerry, it is hard to refuse.

Don’t be held hostage by the IT expert
“We changed our IT culture significantly to one of service, and we realigned departments within our organization several years ago,” said one financial services CIO. “The process was necessary, but in reorganizing, I also knew that I was risking losing key technical contributors who didn’t want to be part of a cross-disciplinary service culture, but who instead preferred to operate in their traditional technical expertise silos.”

Microsoft Exec Hints at Separate Windows Release Trains for Consumers, Business
At a technology symposium hosted by financial services giant Credit Suisse, Tony Myerson acknowledged the operating system adoption chasm between consumers and more conservative corporations. Myerson, who formerly led the Windows Phone team, was promoted in July to head all client-based OS development, including that for smartphones, tablets, PCs and the Xbox game console.

Core wars redux: Intel to ship 15-core Ivytown chip
Intel confirmed Thursday that it will release a 15-core server chip code-named Ivytown, which will be based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. Intel until now had topped off at 12 cores with the Xeon E5 v2 chips that shipped in the third quarter of this year. The 15-core chip is destined for high-end servers. It will likely go into four- to eight-socket servers, which typically handle high-end computing for databases and enterprise resource planning systems.

The Status of Finance and Cloud
After several years of first inhibiting and prohibiting Cloud use, then a brief period of Cloud uncertainty, Finance leaders overall, and Finance as a corporate entity, have embraced Cloud as a means of enabling, increasing, and delivering the value required of Finance by enterprises in an increasingly-fast-changing business environment. As a result, Cloud has become the first choice of Finance leaders and buyers for Finance management solutions – and is increasingly encouraged by Finance leadership and policy as a first choice for broader enterprise business IT.

6 Storage & Management Predictions for 2014
IDC forecasts that the volume of digital data will grow 40 - 50 percent per year clearly indicating that Information Storage and Management will remain in vogue and a big focus area for CIOs across sectors. With new buzzwords emerging such as Software Defined Datacenters, integrated backup appliances etc. we believe that 2014, will continue to see these new trends gaining momentum. As cloud based storage, backup and disaster recovery become commonplace, managing and protecting data will also be a focus area for enterprises and SMBs.

US tech companies ask governments to reform surveillance practices
The latest move appears to be one of a number by the Internet companies to highlight that they are on the side of the user, and to bring pressure on governments, particularly of the U.S. Facebook, AOL, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo wrote in October to the chairman and members of a U.S. Committee on the Judiciary, demanding that the surveillance practices of the U.S. should be reformed to enhance privacy protections and provide "appropriate oversight and accountability mechanisms."

Enterprise software 2014: Three themes to ponder
There are very few greenfield opportunities in Enterprise Software any more. While there are a number of vibrant, high-growth SaaS companies, the vast majority of them are selling replacement products. We believe there is an enormous secular growth opportunity in automating processes at the very low end of the market. The Cloud has ushered in a new era of software where, for less than $50 a month in most instances, the smallest of small businesses can get enterprise-class software to automate core functions like Finance and Sales & Marketing.

DARPA makes games of finding software vulnerabilities
The games are designed in such a way that when users solve puzzles in order to advance to the next level of game play, they are actually generating program annotations and mathematical proofs that can identify or prove the absence of flaws in software written in either C or Java. DARPA funded the games and the portal through its Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) program. Formal software verification typically relies on engineers reviewing code for possible errors and omissions that could be used by an attacker to compromise a system.

Quote for the day:

"Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim." -- John D. Rockefeller

December 08, 2013

Beyond Data Mining
This article compares and contrasts the four kinds of miners: Algorithm miners explore tuning parameters in data mining algorithms; Landscape miners reveal the shape of the decision space; Decision miners comment on how best to change a project; and Discussion miners help the community debate trade-offs regarding the different decisions. Note that algorithm and landscape mining are more research-focused activities that explore the miners' internal details.

The Discipline of Digital Disruption
As an enterprise architect, I’ve been helping design businesses for over 20 years, and I can attest that companies haven’t mastered the basics of dealing with the existing daily disruptions that arise. Throwing emerging technology into the mix of disruption is one more complicating factor that many organizations simply aren’t equipped to handle. Companies want technology to disrupt to their advantage, but they don’t have the discipline to avert disaster or misdirection.

Intel CIO Kimberly Stevenson is working to deliver products faster and drive revenue
Kimberly Stevenson, a corporate vice president and CIO at Intel, has spent her professional career immersed in technology, working for some of the world's most recognized technology companies. Not surprisingly, she's a vocal champion for IT and how it will transform business and society. "I love to see all this disruption coming in all different industries, and it's all coming from IT," says Stevenson, one of four finalists for the 2013 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award.

Vulnerability Counts, Remediation and Risk
Every year there are thousands of new vulnerabilities published. It’s important to understand that this isn’t the same as the number of vulnerabilities that exist, nor is it the same as the number of vulnerabilities you have in your environment. In fact, there are probably thousands more vulnerabilities that exist that haven’t been published. Those would fall into the category of zero-days; conditions that are not publicly known.

Trends: Seven Priorities In The Shift From CMO to Chief Digital Officer
Unfortunately the shift to digital requires a greater reliance on technology. Historically, CMOs relied on IT for help on the database or CRM system or even the website. However consumerization of technology and the cloud have now given marketers more control on their technology destiny. In fact, a recent post by fellow analyst Gavin Heaton on “CMO to CIO, It’s time we talked” highlights many of these new challenges.

A Programmer's Guide to Data Mining
"This guide follows a learn-by-doing approach. Instead of passively reading the book, I encourage you to work through the exercises and experiment with the Python code I provide. I hope you will be actively involved in trying out and programming data mining techniques. The textbook is laid out as a series of small steps that build on each other until, by the time you complete the book, you have laid the foundation for understanding data mining techniques. This book is available for download for free under a Creative Commons license"

What's Your Relationship with the Cloud?
Word on the street is the accounting profession might be ready to embrace the cloud — in a full on relationship — and vice versa. Like any meaningful relationship, there are different stages: the joy of new love, the longstanding relationship, and sometimes the dismal state of separation. Not sure where your relationship with the cloud stands? Read on

Writing Automated Tests with Jazz Automation
Jazz Automation differs from other automated testing frameworks by allowing test writers to describe how software features work in plain and understandable English. Most automated testing frameworks, such as Selenium and Cucumber, require programming in languages like Java and Ruby before tests are executed. Jazz Automation provides an abstraction layer, removing programming requirements from test writers and configurators.

Lean & Enterprise Architecture: The seven deadly wastes of Enterprise Architects
We believe EA is a powerful and often indispensible aid for organizations. However, not all EA initiatives are a great success. We see many EA practitioners struggle to keep EA on the agenda. It is then a common reflex to say: “They don’t understand us; they only want quick fixes instead of doing the right thing for the long term”. But let’s take a closer look at our own behavior as Enterprise Architects, from a Lean perspective. A truly Lean Enterprise Architect ensures that all EA activities create value. In practice, however, we see a lot of behavior that does the opposite.

VITA: Application Framework
VITA is a framework for creating .NET applications that work with databases. It is a powerful implementation of pure .NET ORM. Supports modular construction of complex applications, query and data caching. It supports data models distributed over multiple databases. Provides built-in Authorization framework. Works with MS SQL Server 2008/2012, MS SQL Compact Edition, MySQL.

Quote for the day:

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.” -- Charles Baudelaire

December 07, 2013

5 Things You Should Do Better with Each Passing Project
Project management is a great blend of the old and the new. Each new project sees you have to learn new processes and systems as well as deal with new people, which keeps it fresh and interesting. However, a lot of the tasks remain the same each time, which stops you from feeling overwhelmed with each new piece of work. This also means that you can expect to progress in your skill levels on certain tasks with each passing project.

The Year in Tech Quotes
"I just figured two's better than one. Seriously, it's a large company. We have a separation of responsibilities." ... With 2013 coming to an end, IDG News Service took an annual look back at quotes from news stories over the last 12 months. Here are a handful that stuck with us through the year

Thousands delayed after flights grounded at UK airports
Problems began when the control centre’s computer systems failed to automatically switch from night to day operations, forcing flight controllers to carry out the procedure manually. ... "We experienced a technical problem in the early hours of this morning, which means that it hasn't been possible to reconfigure the voice communications system to split out the sectors for the busier daytime traffic in some areas of the UK enroute airspace.

Never Stop Expecting More from Your Unstructured Data
Keyword technologies use probabilistic algorithms that focus on matching and are not able to make sense of the exact meaning of each word in search. Today’s businesses are dealing not only with traditional structured data, but more and more with the unstructured data (text, email and documents and more) that fill our databanks, file sharing systems and CRMs. Analysts rightly wonder how they can effectively relate the structured with the ever growing volume of unstructured data for something meaningful.

Three Ways to Say No to a Reference Request
If you find yourself in the unenviable position of being asked for a reference letter you have no interest in, or ability to write, there is a way out. In fact, there are three ways out — three excuses that are perfectly suitable. They include: 1. Not being willing or able to spend the time; 2. Not knowing someone well enough; and 3. Not being able to provide a glowing review

International Rescue - Recovering a Failing Project
Communication is key – across the team, with the external suppliers engaged to assist and most importantly with the impacted business areas. We had some tense conference calls throughout the recovery but being able to demonstrate a risk based plan to address the issues and clearly communicating it, and progress against it, bought us the time we need to succeed.

How can you adapt ITIL to be used in the Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is here and being used by organizations to allow them to be more fleet footed in time to market, and nimble in aligning to changing business needs when it comes to delivering the services to the business and its customers. From a service management perspective it makes no difference wether the service is delivered from the “Cloud”, an in house hosted infrastructure or a combination of both. You still need a framework for managing service delivery and ensuring services.

Study: Data Center Downtime Costs $7,900 Per Minute
The study reveals that even more significant costs are incurred by organizations with revenue models that depend on the data center’s ability to deliver IT and networking services to customers. The highest cost of a single event in the study was more than $1.7 million. These industries saw a slight decrease compared to 2010 costs, while organizations that traditionally have been less dependent saw a significant increase.

Is Poor Quality the Antihero of Data?
Perhaps poor quality is data’s antihero — a central character lacking some of the conventional heroic attributes but nonetheless benefits the greater good, albeit not always by the most noble means possible. After all, without poor quality there would not be, according to Gartner research, a market for data quality technology projected to produce $2 billion in constant-dollar revenue by 2017. Which is not to say that all you have to do is throw technology at poor quality data, but it is one of many essential aspects of data quality best practices.

Tokyo Has Plans to Be Asia’s Tech HQ – But Are They Enough?
“Tokyo’s high status in Asia is threatened as we face a situation where foreign companies increasingly move to other Asian cities,” project director Noriko Adachi told the newspaper. To encourage more to come back to Tokyo, the initiative will offer free Accenture consulting and advisory services; up to 5 million yen (about $50,000) in subsidies; the use of a Business Development Center peopled by bilingual staff to provide extra support;

Quote for the day:

"There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience." -- Archibald McLeish

December 06, 2013

5 Ways To Turbocharge Innovation
How can companies avoid falling into the groupthink trap? It starts with fostering "creative conflict," whereby organizations bring cognitive confrontation to the forefront when discussing ideas and innovation opportunities. We've identified five ways to foster an environment -- and mindset -- to turn ordinary ideas into extraordinary innovations through creative conflict.

Using metro storage clusters to manage data growth, add value to IaaS
Service providers may gain significant business value by implementing metro storage clusters as well. They can use the technology to create multilayer data storage packages for customers, depending on which metro storage cluster design they chose to deploy. Requirements would dictate the design, architecture and services to be offered. Cloud providers could offer every layer of service within the data storage package at a premium service charge.

Asus 2 in 1 Device Pulls Off Hat Trick
But this is no ordinary 2 in 1 device. It requires a double take. “There are two (dual core) processors, two operating systems, two drives, two WiFi modules and more,” points out Paine. The Trio can also switch from Android to Windows 8 operating systems with a click of a button. “The tablet experience is optimized with an Intel Atom processor to run Android and the laptop experience is optimized with an 4th generation Intel Core processor that runs Windows 8 and Android,” said Jon Falker, global partner marketing manager at Intel. “It’s a trend-setter and something we’ll likely see more of in 2014,” he said.

Researchers compete to bring humanoid robots to life
"Robots right now, for the most part, are either on stationary bases working on repetitive tasks or working in a lab," said Gill Pratt, a DARPA program manager. "We're trying to move to task-level autonomy. Instead of saying, 'Move ahead a tenth of an inch,' we'd say, 'Move forward and open that door.' During a disaster, communications could be very poor. The robot needs more smarts to be able to do things on its own." Robots have yet to reach that level of development. In fact, to date they are far from it.

RedHat Takes On VMware For PaaS Crown
PaaS typically provides tools, a code check-in and check-out repository, and the ability to roll back a recent build to a more reliable version. It provides team processes and collaborative development tools in a cloud environment. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is already a favored operating system for running workloads in public cloud services. Now Red Hat needs to find its follow-up success, and it's looking to its PaaS offering.

Speedy storage: Pros and cons of SSDs and flash
Enterprise storage architects have developed many ways to increase application performance by implementing flash memory. This has raised the bar for IT professionals, who need to be able to understand the differences in order to evaluate their options. So here’s a handy guide, including use-cases and caveats for typical applications.

IT security pros often seen as 'innovation killers,' says ADP's IT security chief
IT security managers are fascinated with technology, worry a great deal about risks and are often the last to know about some IT projects, especially those involving cloud-based services, because business people tend to want to avoid the IT security department as much as they can, LaRosa suggested. ... Being a savvy technologist is great in and of itself, but talking tech to business people usually backfires because they don't want to hear "geekspeak," they want to find out how to try new things to grow the business, LaRosa said.

Sen. Markey wants to know: Can your car be hacked?
Few controls exist to prevent hackers from breaking into automobiles wirelessly and taking control of systems, McClure said. But because hackers are unlikely to gain much by breaking into individual automobiles, he said they're unlikely to spend much time hacking vehicles. The only scenario where such a threat would be likely is if someone wanted to carry out a targeted attack against a specific individual.

CIO's focus on people, innovative thinking leads to revenue-generating idea
Organizations that really value innovation, Pasik said, have to be willing to fully invest in making it work for the people who generate ideas. In January, for example, Griffin was relieved of his former duties and took the title director of innovation. To easily keep in touch, Pasik moved Griffin next door to his office. They have two officially scheduled meetings every week, but Pasik's famous pop-ins, to discuss progress on projects and new ideas, are frequent.

Steps to Address the Aging IT Workforce
Novarica identifies the impact on IT and the business, including newer systems that were built with aging client/server or Web-oriented technologies that carry great risk of adverse impact on daily operations and IT staffs that are on average less tenured than their business unit counterparts, leading to knowledge management issues. To mitigate the impact of this change, the report lists steps in three areas: processes, people and structure, that carriers can take today to preserve intellectual property, maintain or improve competitive positioning and minimize organizational and operational risk associated with the aging IT workforce.

Quote for the day:

“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.” -- Robert F. Kennedy

December 05, 2013

How to Get More Value Out of Your Data Analysts
There is widespread recognition of the shortage of analytical professionals. Lesser appreciated is the fact that most organizations are also way short on analytical amateurs. A May 2011 McKinsey Global Institute study on big data analytics predicted a coming shortfall of around 150,000 people with deep analytical skills – and a shortfall of 1.5 million business people with the know-how to put big data analytics to use.

8 key duties of the chief digital officer
Sam Ramji, vice president of strategy at Apigee, has been watching the emergence of this new C-title, and made some observations as to where these individuals should be focusing their efforts. He describes his epiphany coming from listening to digital leaders at the recent Chief Digital Officer Global Forum. (See -- they even have their own forum now...) Here are 8 key roles that should go into the job description of the chief digital officer:

BGP and MPLS-Based VPNs
The multiprotocol extension to BGP4, MBGP, was invented to carry such routing information between peer routers. So once we think in terms of routing 12 byte prefixes, there is a natural way to propagate the information. For security and scalability, MBGP only propagates information about a VPN to other routers that have interfaces with the same route distinguisher value. That reduces the chance of accidentally leaking information about Customer A to Customer B (quite easily done with routing distribute lists in a tunneling approach, or with route maps or distribute lists or prefix lists and ordinary BGP).

Obama says iPhone is insecure; DoD agrees
President Obama has revealed that he's not permitted to carry an iPhone. It's too insecure for the job, he says. Instead, he's stuck with a BlackBerry. Well, someone's got to have one still. However, it turns out that the Pentagon has also outlawed non-BlackBerry smartphones. ... Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.

IT Consultants: Is Full-Time Work For You?
The perks of making the move can be tempting: the promotions, the bonuses, and the guaranteed benefits. So how do you decide? It would be nice to have a crystal ball; there is no sure thing. But you can still make a wise choice. Start by asking yourself why you're considering the change and what is drawing you in. Then, ask these four questions to help you determine whether a full-time position should be your next move.

PaaS system benefits go beyond just freeing up developers' time
Paul Burns, president of the analysis firm Neovise LLC, believes that PaaS has been used as too much of a catch-all. But he sees an increasing focus on moving existing applications to the cloud with a PaaS system. "You take an existing application and you make it run in a cloud environment and take advantage of some of the underlying capabilities like elasticity," he said.

Why Are So Many IT Projects Failing?
"Project managers aren't just project-based, they're supervisors," says Innotas CEO Kevin Kern. "They are managing solutions and applications, as well as managing the software developers, and there aren't enough developers, ever. So, project managers are being asked to take on so many responsibilities that their job descriptions get blurred," Kern says.

Provocative Questions for Analytics to Answer
Consider what young people are learning in school today. Concepts such as mean, mode, range and probability theory, once taught in freshman university statistics courses, are introduced to children in their early elementary school years. Children are taught these methods in a very practical way. For example, if you have x dimes, y quarters and z nickels in your pocket, what is the chance of you pulling a dime from your pocket?

What should a CISO outsource?
Ideally, there should be two parties working in tandem - internal and external (outsourcing agency). A steering committee (including CISO/CIO) should be in command. These days as threats become more complex (mobile malware, APT, organized cybercrimes), some niche services/solutions are best taken in outsourced model/cloud model - rather can implementing all in-house. At the same time, there should be overall visibility available to CIO/CISO (steering committee) at any given time.

Data security laws and penalties: Pay IT now or pay out later
By implementing data security measures already suggested or required, your organization can avoid a host of problems. Whether your organization handles personal information now, or may do so in the future, federal and state laws are likely to set the standard by which unjust enrichment claims will be made and damages calculated. Below are examples of what is expected.

Quote for the day:

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward." -- Thomas A. Edison

December 04, 2013

Making data work: Why hope is not a strategy
There are a few things to consider when implementing a capability like this. Data storage, by the way, is not really one of them. Sure, billions of interactions may have to be captured, but it’s offline storage which is cheap, and it’s only the data that is actually used to make decisions. Therefore, data storage requirements go hand-in-hand with better informed (i.e. higher quality) decisions which means the additional returns will easily pay for more, cheap disk space (on-premise or in the cloud).

Best of unified threat management 2013
SonicWall scored the best ratings across the board from readers, with the highest score for its ease of installation, configuration and administration. Users liked SonicWall's breadth of security functions and features. They also applauded SonicWall's depth of security provided by individual functions, and Dell's service and support. Overall, voters deemed the Dell SonicWall firewall appliances as "excellent" and a "very good solution."

Twitter Hashtag Inventor Explains Why Patenting It Would Have Been The Wrong Thing To Do
Hashtags like #techdirt are not only an indispensable part of Twitter, but are also increasingly to be found elsewhere as a handy way of flagging up key topics in a compact and recognizable way. Given the monopoly-mad world we inhabit, it's something of a miracle that they weren't patented. Business Insider points out that Chris Messina, the former Google employee who came up with the idea in the first place, has explained precisely why he didn't try to patent them.

CIOs to Gain Authority, Better Alignment With Business Leaders
"We seem to be veering back toward the operational type role, and I think that's a bit of an issue," Brubaker said. Brubaker recalled his work as a congressional staffer in the 1990s when he helped draft the Clinger-Cohen Act, a major set of federal IT reforms that, among other things, mandated that large agencies and departments designate a CIO to oversee the technology operations.

Risks to the 'Internet of Things'
ISACA, an association that develops information systems and security practices and guidance, has issued a new study, Risks and Rewards of the Internet of Things, which shows the shift in perception about risk and privacy as the world becomes increasingly connected through the Internet of Things. "As this Internet of Things starts understanding the inter-relation of things, your data privacy is going to be a real issue in terms of understanding who has it and how they're using it effectively," Stroud says.

Seven Reasons for Agile Software Development : Introduction to Waterfall Model
This series of videos explain seven reasons for moving to Agile Software Development. In this introductory video, we discuss the traditional software development model, Waterfall. The subsequent videos discuss more about reasons for moving to Agile. Speaker: Raja (Rajamanickam), Enterprise Agile Coach, ProXL Consulting

How much ITSM process is too much?
You can’t design a process sitting in isolation at your desk. Not because you are not capable, or smart enough, but because the adoption of a process requires buy-in, and for that you have to get people involved. The trick is balancing consensus building with getting things done. A small core team, with representation from across your organization, is the best way to proceed. Just make sure the team is empowered to make decisions

Forrester: Three competencies CIOs need to embrace digital disruption
It will require clarity in roles, ownership and operations. Your role as CIO will vary, depending on your organization's context. But there are three essential functions and responsibilities of a disruptive CIO: soldier, captain and general. These roles can change based on the type of initiative, culture of the company, and relationships among business and technology leaders. It is plausible that a CIO is a general in one initiative and a soldier in another, but most would default to one of these three roles, which are described below.

3 reasons perimeter security is not enough for the cloud
Again – the potential for bigger breaches or catastrophic datacenter disasters is much higher in virtualized environments. The cloud is built for agility, which means entire applications can be spun up, cloned, paused, or deleted in a matter of seconds. It is crucial that you implement controls and policies to ensure that privileged users – or those who gain their credentials – are prevented from doing damage.

IT pros share blame for 'shadow IT' problem, survey shows
For the IT department, the reaction has often been, “Oh poor IT, if we could only stop the employees from doing this,” says Jennifer Geisler, senior director in McAfee’s network security division. Of the IT pros admitting complicity, 42 percent said they do it because they are “familiar” and “comfortable” using such services. A third said the “IT approval process for new software applications is too slow or cumbersome,” echoing the line-of-business managers. A quarter said the non-approved software “better meets my needs than the IT-approved equivalent.”

Quote for the day:

"Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion." -- Jim Rohn

December 03, 2013

Get started with the Data Format Description Language
In this age of big data, the bulk of the data begging to be analyzed is not XML, but rather it is other structured and semi-structured formats, both text and binary. Until now, no open standard has been developed that is capable of describing a wide variety of such data formats. Learn about the Open Grid Forum (OGF) proposed recommendation for a powerful language that describes many different data formats, the Data Format Description Language (DFDL).

(How To Do) XML Schema Validation
Judging by the popularity of this question on StackOverflow, it seems that a lot of people struggle to check the validity of an XML file against an XML Schema. It’s a shame that what should be a trivial task has wasted hours of developer’s lives. In this article the author try to offer a few alternatives for various platforms and hopefully make things a bit simpler. There are actually a few different options at your disposal. We’ll start by looking at what is probably the fastest and easiest option to get started with validation:

What Inexperienced Leaders Get Wrong
But as any experienced manager should know, IT is a classic illustration of the difference between bold strokes and long marches, one of my favorite managerial frameworks. Bold strokes are decisions that can be made at the top, implemented pretty quickly by command — acquisitions, divestitures, real estate purchases, layoffs. Long marches take time and the involvement of many people who must produce new elements and coordinate their actions before the change can be successful.

If CIOs became Tech company CEOs
There have been rare instances where a CIO transitioned and started selling products or services. These individuals were CIOs representing their past industries or a specific solution set; I remember one instance where the only thing such a CIO wanted to talk about is how her company had implemented a specific technology and she had lead the team towards creating the success story. She was not very successful in her pitch but told her story wherever she went.

Data Mining Reveals the Secret to Getting Good Answers
And they say their work reveals an interesting insight: if you want good answers, ask a decent question. That may sound like a truism, but these guys point out that there has been no evidence to support this insight, until now. “To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to quantitatively validate the correlation between the question quality and its associated answer quality,” say Yuan and co.

Can complex-systems be ‘architected’?
To some people – perhaps especially in the IT-related trades – ‘complexity’ is just a more extreme version of ‘complicated’: a quantitative difference, “complicated that we haven’t as yet quite pinned down the rules and algorithms for”. To me, though, I’d agree with those who argue that there’s a qualitative difference between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’: for example, the kind of complexities that we see in wicked-problems, where even the act of looking at a context can itself change the context.

Meet WISP, the wireless future of Internet service
A WISP is distinct from other wireless services we currently use. Most cell-phone service providers offer wireless Internet service—with 4G LTE being the fastest current technology—but that doesn’t make them WISPs. Cell-phone service providers don’t expect you to use their service 24/7, and most place very low caps on the amount of data you can transfer over their networks each month. Being able to access the Internet while you’re out and about is a distinct advantage, but LTE data rates are relatively slow, and coverage can be spotty—especially away from large metropolitan areas.

CYOD: An Alternative To BYOD?
‘Choose Your Own Device’ (CYOD) offers many of the benefits of BYOD without some of the drawbacks. ... Even with the reduced set of options provided by a CYOD approach, the challenges are formidable and help may be required to deal with the increased complexity. “We offer an ‘anytime, anywhere, any platform’ service that provides access to enterprise resources from any device,” said Garewal.

Report shows weaknesses in DHS cybersecurity
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, blasted the department for the findings Monday. “This report shows major gaps in DHS’s own cybersecurity, including some of the most basic protections that would be obvious to a 13-year-old with a laptop,” Coburn said in a statement. “We spend billions of taxpayer dollars on federal information technology every year. It is inexcusable to put the safety and security of our nation and its citizens at risk in this manner.”

Amid security concerns, cloud insurance makes headway in the enterprise
"Cyber insurance policies were designed for premises-based systems," said Doug Weeden, director of program administration at Cyber Risk Partners LLC's CloudInsure. Consequently, some cyber liability policies exclude losses incurred by a third party, such as a cloud provider, but others include clauses that protect the client regardless of where the data is stored. So, businesses need to closely examine their policies to see if cloud coverage is included.

Quote for the day:

"Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art." -- Claude Debussy

December 02, 2013

Here comes a supercomputing app store
Supercomputer-based visualization and simulation tools could allow a company to create, test and prototype products in virtual environments. Couple this virtualization capability with a 3-D printer, and a company would revolutionize its manufacturing. But licensing fees for the software needed to simulate wind tunnels, ovens, welds and other processes are expensive, and the tools require large multicore systems and skilled engineers to use them.

Getting cloud capacity planning right in the face of oncoming growth
The tremendous revenue potential is driving virtually every hosting company and communications and IT solutions provider to invest in building out a cloud portfolio. The catch for providers is how and when to scale cloud infrastructure to meet increasing demand without overbuilding. Part art, part science, cloud capacity planning presents challenges to providers that need to figure in their own and their customers' needs.

Managing People on a Sinking Ship
When your business is facing declining sales, a potential buy-out, or even certain closure, how do you manage people who are likely panicking about their future? Can you keep your team’s motivation and productivity up? The short answer is yes: Even when it’s clear that a company’s in trouble, there are ways to help team members stay focused, deliver results, and weather the storm.

Benefits of a Windows Server 2012 R2 Core installation
"Common answers I get from folks when I ask why they haven’t adopted use of Server Core are: 1. I don’t have time to learn a new product/feature; 2. I don’t know how to use the CLI/Powershell; and 3. I’m not confident I could troubleshoot a Server Core box in an emergency type situation. While these are all valid concerns, they don’t merit the outright boycott of this new server deployment methodology."

BYOD's Achilles heel: Billing and losing group buying power
Employees get to use the device they want and the enterprise doesn't have to hand out smartphones anymore. But the returns on these plans have been sketchy. Why? No one has figured out proper billing arrangements. ... With BYOD plans what used to be a corporate expense winds up in an expense report or a stipend. What would be a large contract is splintered into many little consumer deals. More money could be spent on BYOD plans and tracked less than the good ol' days of corporate issued smartphones.

Why COOs are growing in importance
These objectives are, of course, integrated into the responsibilities of all board members and managers within their own areas, but a COO is able to put a specific emphasis and focus on quality and efficiency. At PGGM, we do that through a “lean” program that has the objective of, step by step, improving the processes within the company; I’m at the center of that. In my case, my targets are set very specifically according to these responsibilities – my most important goals are related to the lean program, and I also have targets relating to service levels, cost control and cost reduction.

High-Performance Transact-SQL with Window Functions
These functions are based on an amazingly profound concept in standard SQL (which is both an ISO and ANSI standard)—the concept of windowing. The idea behind this concept is to allow you to apply various calculations to a set, or window, of rows and return a single value. Window functions can help to solve a wide variety of querying tasks by helping you express set calculations more easily, intuitively, and efficiently than ever before.

Selling SaaS: Operational requirements for consumers vs. businesses
The key to successfully selling Software as a Service (SaaS) across all market segments is recognizing and addressing the different operational requirements among different buyer groups, which often stem from the value propositions that drive SaaS in the consumer, SMB and enterprise market segments. ... The bottom line is that the operations of all cloud services depend on effective management tools and good management visibility.

Google Nexus phones are vulnerable to attack via Flash SMS messages
On Google Nexus phones, when such a message is received, it gets displayed on top of all active windows and is surrounded by a semi-transparent black overlay that has a dimming effect on the rest of the screen. If the message is not saved or dismissed and a second message is received it gets placed on top of the first one and the dimming effect increases. When such messages are received, there is no audio notification, even if one is configured for regular incoming SMS messages.

The Subject and Discipline of Business Architecture
This article discusses the phenomena of Business Architecture considering both its subject and discipline. Without knowing the subject of Business Architecture, it is very difficult to justify the scope and extension of the role of a Business Architect, i.e. the discipline. Many Managers and Architects can say – “What’s the problem? By identifying stakeholders and collecting their viewpoints, one could essentially define a Business Architecture”. Unfortunately, this approach is the major fault that leads to many contradicting opinions about this subject.

Quote for the day:

"Nothing builds self-esteem and self-confidence like accomplishment." -- Thomas Carlyle

December 01, 2013

Microsoft's Software Licensing: Why I've Had Enough
It gets better, as Microsoft now offers "Licensing Training and Accreditation for Customers." In other words, if we invest even more time and money with Microsoft, it will bestow on us formal credentials saying we've mastered its convoluted licensing. At that point, can we then approve our own price proposal? We would be accredited, after all. No, all it would mean is that our arguments with Microsoft would continue longer than they do now. Much of the wasted time in recycling the same issue is due to a difference in opinion.

Governing the 'Internet of Things'
ISACA, an association that develops information systems and security practices and guidance, has issued a new study, Risks and Rewards of the Internet of Things, which shows that only 16 percent of Americans are familiar with the term Internet of Things. "People should be aware that the Internet of Things is coming into their lives and is going to be something that is an opportunity for them, to do things better, faster and cheaper," says Stroud, chair of ISACA's COBIT Growth Task Force. "And, also, on the converse side, it's going to be an area where they're going to have to watch some things like privacy issues. What's happening with their information and is their identity secure?"

How Green Is Your Network Cabling?
When cabling is being modified, or upgraded, care should be taken not to leave old trunking, and old cabling in place, unless it can be modified and updated. This is due to the fact that legacy cabling can cause obstruction and block airflow. There is also an added danger with leaving old cabling in place; it may not comply with the current “Reduction of Hazardous Substances” policy. Old-style cabling may release halogen if fire breaks out, leaving a company open to possible regulatory enforcement or fines.

Worm Targets Linux PCs and Embedded Devices
According to security researchers from Symantec, the malware spreads by exploiting a vulnerability in php-cgi, a component that allows PHP to run in the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) configuration. The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2012-1823 and was patched in PHP 5.4.3 and PHP 5.3.13 in May 2012. The new worm, which was named Linux.Darlloz, is based on proof-of-concept code released in late October, the Symantec researchers said Wednesday in a blog post.

The death of the database
Many SAP (and other) customers will be running existing RDBMS systems for 20-30 years into the future, just as there are many people running 30-year old systems today. But they will be IT systems that businesses keep alive, whilst they innovate (and spend money) elsewhere. The real question is: will any of the existing incumbents have a place in the future? Hadoop and MongoDB are fast converging into the future, as is SAP, in my opinion, though from a very different direction. SAP has a different challenge, which is how its roots (internally and in its ecosystem) are embedded in the RDMBS market.

Social Network Analysis for Fraud Detection
As traditional techniques often fail to identify fraudulent behavior, social network analytics offers new insights in the propagation of fraud through a network - watch this short overview. This short overview of Social Network Analysis for Fraud Detection is presented by Veronique Van Vlasselaer, a student at KU Leuven, Belgium, working in the DataMiningApps group led by Prof. dr. Bart Baesens.

Increasing Oracle Database Availability with Fast-Start Failover
The key to this feature is a monitoring process appropriately named the Observer. The Observer is a component of the DGMGRL interface that is configured on a system outside the systems actually running the Oracle Data Guard configuration, which monitors the availability of the primary database. Should it detect that the primary database (all instances in an Oracle RAC environment) has become unavailable or a connection with the primary database is not able to be made, it will issue a failover after waiting the number of seconds specified by theFastStartFailoverThreshold property.

How To Achieve Data-Driven Design
Solution is to provide a Design driven methodology that helps businesses avoid severe and expensive design failures and set businesses on trajectory of consistent and sustainable improvements without busting the budget for the project. Solution is to give a rational methodology for figuring out how design is helping the business and learn from every interactions. Interaction could be triggered from manual or automated means. Knowledge gained could be used for iterating and improving upon specific experience related issues, without investing too much into fixing the entire design for small issues, which was how world used to do that.

Directing the Agile Organisation
At all levels, whether a team leader or CEO, an Agile Manager becomes responsible forfacilitating day-to-day operation, managing risk, providing governance oversight, and directing the strategic outcomes of the organisation. The key distinction is the act of facilitation, providing support to and removing impediments from their teams. Ultimately, by embracing and shaping change, an agile manager can position the organisation to quickly take advantage of new opportunities in the market.

A Balanced Score Card for presenting the value of Enterprise Architecture
Measuring the value of Enterprise architecture is not easy. In the presentation we will show an approach for measuring the value of EA by means of a Balanced Score Card (BSC). The BSC is a well-known management instrument for reporting value. We have developed a version of the BSC which is suitable to report the value of EA to management. In this presentation we will explain the EA BSC and show some preliminary results. If you leave your email address, then you will receive a PDF report with a compilation of the results.

Quote for the day:

"Everything's in the mind. That's where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it. " -- Mae West