Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

January 15, 2015

2015 Top Five Data Center Trends
As the conversations continue to circulate between IT companies and Datacenter Providers, it appears we have some differing opinions on what is to emerge in the New Year. Although there are many predictions on what will increase and what will decrease in popularity, some areas of the industry have brought about an increased chatter among the experts. In this article, we walk though the top five up-and-coming themes predicted to take place in 2015. They include trends in cloud, virtualization, internet of things (IoT), and the size of the industry.

Mobile users encountered malware 75% more often in 2014 compared to 2013
"We've seen a significant increase in both the frequency and sophistication of attacks that would truly represent a concern for the enterprise, like exploits that would let the bad guys get access to corporate networks," he said. "We also saw a greater prevalence and sophistication of applications that enable rooting or jail breaking the device." For enterprises in particular, the top security threats associated with mobile devices are loss of sensitive data and illicit access to corporate networks. "The threats that we found targeted both of these issues," Cockerill said.

Bruns-Pak: Datacenters vs. collocation vs. cloud computing
Owning and operating one's own data center might actually be the lowest cost option if the overall cost is considered. This approach, however, is not without its challenges. This approach requires the largest up-front investment as well as the need for the largest staff. Using this approach makes it possible, however, for an enterprise to take advantage of the reduced costs produced by purchasing systems, storage, software, power and networking in bulk. It also offers the opportunity of potential tax advantages of owning real estate, buildings and the like.

Intel-backed OIC advances in fast-moving IoT standards race
Though it seems too soon to be pushing out specifications and code, given that the industry isn’t expected to settle on standards until next year or later, this may be the best time to capture the hearts and minds of product developers. The International CES show last week in Las Vegas was rife with emerging (and some half-baked) IoT devices, especially for smart homes. Those that make it to market will eventually need to lock into some platform for working with other connected products. The OIC is developing its own standard for IoT connectivity but turned to the Linux Foundation to organize the project that is developing IoTivity. That project is open to anyone who wants to participate, whether they belong to OIC or not.

Nine CIO tips for surviving and thriving in 2015
In part one of Harvey's 2015 predictions column for CIOs, he singles out three trends that will continue to have big ramifications for the CIO role and enterprise IT next year. Here, he offers readers nine CIO tips for surviving and thriving in 2015, plus a cautionary compilation of quotes illustrating the danger of making technology predictions:

How to make applications resilient on AWS
Amazon provides different services to decouple systems and make them more reliable. One of the first services was Simple Queuing Services (SQS). Amazon describes SQS as a distributed queue system that enables service applications to quickly and reliably queue messages that one component in the application generates to be consumed by another component. Later, other services such as Simple Notification Service (SNS) or Simple Workflow Service (SWF) followed. One of the main characteristics of the cloud is elasticity, which means not making any assumptions about the health, availability or fixed location of other components.

Keeping Big Data Secure: Should You Consider Data Masking?
As Girard points out, one of the problems associated with traditional data masking is that, “every request by users for new or refreshed data sets must go through the manual masking process each time.” This, he explains, “is a cumbersome and time-consuming process that promotes ‘cutting corners’– skipping the process altogether and using old, previously masked data sets or delivering teams unmasked versions.” As a result, new agile data masking solutions have been developed to meet the new demands associated with protecting larger volumes of information.

5 Agile Ways to Achieve your New Year’s Resolutions
Perhaps we can use recent advances in software project management to get that success rate higher. Traditional software development efforts last one to two years and are managed by planning everything up front with what are called “waterfall” management practices. According to the Standish Group, the failure rate for waterfall projects from 2002 to 2011 was 29%. The costs for these failures can be measured in billions of dollars wasted. Agile management practices, which introduce frequent inspection and adaptation, have succeeded in reducing project failures to about 9%.

New report: DHS is a mess of cybersecurity incompetence
The report cautions about DHS's limited strategies, noting: "While patch management and cyber hygiene are clearly important, they are only basic security precautions, and are unlikely to stop a determined adversary, such as a nation state seeking to penetrate federal networks to steal sensitive information." The section on cybersecurity is titled: "The Department of Homeland Security is struggling to execute its responsibilities for cybersecurity, and its strategy and programs are unlikely to protect us from the adversaries that pose the greatest cybersecurity threat." One example in that section shows DHS departments effectively lying about performing critical and well-known security updates -- updates that DHS warned the public about via US-CERT.

New service wants to rent out your hard drive's extra space
The service works by first uploading a file-sharing application onto a user’s computer then breaking file data into small 8MB or 32MB blocks, or “shards,” as Storj calls them. Each block of data is encrypted with a unique hash, and then the pieces are distributed throughout the cloud network, according to a white paper the company published on its peer-to-peer storage technology. The file blocks get distributed throughout the network on nodes called “DriveShares” located all over the world. Storj uses hash chains or Merkle Trees, as they are sometimes called, to verify the contents of a file after it has been broken up into blocks or “leaves” off of a master or root hash.

Quote for the day:

"A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it." -- William Feather

January 14, 2015

Obama Cybersecurity Plan Seen Needing More Company Incentives
Most of what Obama will propose isn’t new. He’ll renew calls for Congress to pass stalled proposals, such as a federal data-breach notification law and legislation giving companies legal protections for sharing information about hacking threats with each other and the government. However, the concerted push has given industry officials who support the proposals reasons to be optimistic that they will finally be implemented, potentially setting the stage for even more progress this year.

Is banning encryption a crazy plan or an absolute necessity?
Comments this week by UK prime minister David Cameron have re-ignited the debate about how to weigh individuals' online privacy against the needs of law enforcement to be able to detect and prevent crime. "In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people, which even in extremis, with a signed warrant from the home secretary personally, that we cannot read?" said Cameron in a speech. "Up until now, governments of this country have said no, we must not have such a means of communication."

The Cultural Impedance Mismatch Between Data Professionals and Application Developers
It is well known that there is a technical impedance mismatch between object-oriented technology and relational database technology. It is also well known, although not as well recognized, that there is a cultural impedance mismatch which refers to the politics between the developer community and the data community. Specifically, these politics are the difficulties of developers and data professionals experience when working together, and generally to the dysfunctional politics between the two communities that occurs within IT organizations and even the IT industry itself. Worse yet, this impedance mismatch has become even more pronounced between the agile and data communities.

Facebook Unveils Facebook At Work, Lets Businesses Create Their Own Social Networks
The product puts Facebook head-to-head with the likes of Microsoft’s Yammer, Slack, Convo, Socialcast, and a huge number of others who are trying to tackle the “enterprise social network” space. Even LinkedIn conveniently let drop last night that it too was looking at building a product for coworkers to communicate and share content (but not chat, as a LinkedIn spokesperson tells me). Not all of these have been a hit: Lars Rasmussen, the engineering director at Facebook who is heading up the project, had in his past once headed up one of the failed efforts at an enterprise social network, Google Wave.

Use the Windows 8 registry to reduce CPU cycle waste
The Windows 8 registry is a big repository for the operating system to store its volatile and nonvolatile information. A Microsoft OS cannot operate without the registry database. Several actions are performed in Windows, depending on what is configured in the registry. In addition to using Registry Editor for desktop configuration, you can tweak two types of registry settings to improve the overall performance of Windows PCs. Let's start by looking at how to disable the background checks and other OS activities through the Windows 8 registry.

4 ways for IT to connect better with customers
IT workers who truly understand the business are better able to design systems to support and advance the organization's mission. And what better way to help IT workers gain that understanding than by bringing them together with the users they serve? In fact, according to Computerworld's 2015 Careers Survey, IT professionals report that the ability to interact with business colleagues is the top skill outside of technical expertise that will make them more valuable. Here's how leading IT shops model their workflows and business processes to incorporate communication and interaction between IT and its customers, and how that setup benefits the company — and the careers of IT professionals.

3 Common SQL Mistakes You are Probably Making as a Java Developer
Java developers also need to understand project requirements, design and develop a prototype for the assigned project, keep themselves updated with the latest changes happening in the programming industry and also have basic knowledge of other languages like HTML, SQL and many more! Professional life for Java developers is not a bed of roses and they have to try and meet each and every challenge head on. Even the best Java developers, at times, fall prey to some mistakes that could be avoided. Take for example the mistakes they make while writing SQL. These can definitely be avoided.

Keeping Skynet at bay: How humans can keep AI in check
"Perhaps the most salient difference between verification of traditional software and verification of AI systems is that the correctness of traditional software is defined with respect to a fixed and known machine model, whereas AI systems - especially robots and other embodied systems - operate in environments that are at best partially known by the system designer. "In these cases, it may be practical to verify that the system acts correctly given the knowledge that it has, avoiding the problem of modelling the real environment," the research states. The FLI suggests it should be possible to build AI systems from components, each of which has been verified.

A Manager’s Guide to Executive Coaching: 10 Questions and Answers
At some point in a manager’s career there may be an opportunity to consider hiring an executive coach. I’ve been coached, coached others, and managed executive coaching programs for a number of companies. Based on that experience, along with the advice of others, here are 10 questions and answers that managers may have about executive coaching.

Learning Fast in Design, Development and DevOps
User testing is of course another key element in the product manager's tool box. We don’t do it systematically but month after month we test our assumptions better, by observing users interacting with our products in conditions as close as possible to the real situations. Those practices and tools may seem pretty obvious now but it still a big cultural shift from 'thinking we know best what our users want and are willing to pay for' to relying more on discovery and user testing. This movement is still ongoing, but we had really impressive improvements recently! We also favor practices that maximize learning for all the actors whether they are fromproduct, devs, or ops:

Quote for the day:

"The one quality that can be developed by studious reflection and practice is the leadership of men." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

January 13, 2015

Using COBIT 5 to Deliver Information and Data Governance
Part of doing this successfully involves ensuring the availability of reliable and useful information for decision making. This clearly involves keeping the ratio of erroneous or unavailable information to a minimum. Limiting erroneous decision making also involves ensuring that reporting is complete, timely and accurate.2 Measuring performance here involves looking at the percent of reports that are not delivered on time and the percent of reports containing inaccuracies. These obviously need to be kept to a minimum. Clearly, this function is enabled by backup systems, applications, data and documentation. These should be worked according to a defined schedule that meets business requirements.

Computers may soon know you better than your spouse
To judge the effectiveness of the computer algorithms, researchers gave questionnaires to friends and relatives of some participants. The survey results and computerized assessments were then compared with the self-assessments from the subjects. With just 10 likes, the computer would know someone as well as a work colleague. With more than 70, it would get to the level of a friend or roommate, and with more than 300 to the level of a spouse or close relative. The study is notable because of its large sample size, said Jennifer Golbeck a computer scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and the director of the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab.

New Form of Memory Could Advance Brain-Inspired Computers
Phase-change memory is expected to hit the market in the next few years. It can write information more quickly, and pack it more densely, than the memory used in computers today (see “A Preview of Future Disk Drives”). A phase-change memory chip consists of a grid of “cells” that can each switch between two states to represent a digital bit of information—a 1 or a 0. In IBM’s experimental system, each “synapse” is represented by a pair of memory cells working together. Computer scientists have been working for some time on chips that crudely mimic neurons and synapses. Such “neuromorphic” designs are radically different from the chips we use today.

5 ways to give IT recognition
We all like to know that our efforts are appreciated. For people working in IT, recognition is too often neglected, simply because so much of what IT workers do is behind the scenes and goes unnoticed by the majority of employees. Click through to see five things that Paul Ingevaldson, author of The 9 ½ Secrets of a Great IT Organization, did when he was the CIO at Ace Hardware that cost little to nothing and that you can implement today.

Google Launches Cloud Application Performance Tool
Google Cloud Trace can perform a sort of "replay" analysis of a process stream to identify which users experienced slow request response times and then compose a report that identifies where the time is being spent in the system. Some slowdowns affect only a handful of users but nevertheless produce urgent complaints. Developers often have trouble identifying what's different about the response they obtained from the application versus other users. Cloud Trace is intended to speed the process up. Cloud Trace can break the steps of a single request down into the number of milliseconds that each part takes, pinpointing for developers the likely location of the slowdown.

Samsung, SmartThings and the open door to the smart home (Q&A)
In effect, Samsung is readying for the Internet of Things (IoT), the term for the concept of using sensors and other technologies to hook just about anything you can think of into the Internet. Analyst firm Gartner predicts the number of networked devices will surge to 26 billion units by 2020 from about 900 million in 2009, turning formerly "dumb" objects into smart ones that can communicate with each other. IDC reckons the IoT market will hit $3.04 trillion that same year. Samsung acquired smart-home startup SmartThings in August to help with its push. SmartThings' technology helps consumers to control their appliances with their smartphones, smartwatches and other devices, and SmartThings has been viewed as key to Samsung's smart-home and Internet of Things efforts.

DiversityMediocrityIllusion
When interviewing, we make a point of ensuring there are women involved. This gives women candidates someone to relate to, and someone to ask questions which are often difficult to ask men. It's also vital to have women interview men, since we've found that women often spot problematic behaviors that men miss as we just don't have the experiences of subtle discriminations. Getting a diverse group of people inside the company isn't just a matter of recruiting, it also means paying a lot of attention to the environment we have, to try to ensure we don't have the same Alienating Atmosphere that much of the industry exhibits. One argument I've heard against this approach is that if everyone did this, then we would run out of pink, sparkly marbles.

EU countries that set data retention rules must ensure they comply with e-Privacy Directive
In its opinion, the European Parliament's Legal Services unit said EU countries, since the CJEU's judgment, have had the option of either repealing their own laws on data retention or maintaining them. However, it said that should countries choose to maintain the rules then those rules must adhere to the e-Privacy Directive. ... The e-Privacy Directive sets out rules that generally protect the privacy of electronic communications and data associated with those messages, 'traffic data'. One specific provision places a general prohibition on the unauthorised storage of communications and traffic data.

The Future of Scaling and Strategy
One way that scaling strategies work is by distributing products and services through existing platforms. An existing network or platform may be able to replicate a product or service. This is especially helpful for non-profit programs who are already limited in regard to resources, but want to reach as many of those who would benefit from the program as possible. A small non-profit may be able to piggyback on an existing network, especially with the availability of cloud computing to get their message to a wider audience than they could otherwise.

Data Acceleration: Turning Technology Into Solutions
The landscape of solutions that foster data acceleration and enable a successful data supply chain has grown more complex than ever. Executives need to fully understand the technology components available on the market, because each supports data acceleration in unique ways. They also need to recognize that these components deliver maximum value only when they are combined in ways that capitalize on their complementary advantages. Only then can they decide which configurations may be best for their organization’s needs and discuss prospective solutions with vendors – and ultimately achieve returns from their analytics and big data investment.

Quote for the day:

"A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible." --Polybius

January 12, 2015

Obama to propose new laws to protect consumer data, privacy
Obama will propose a new national standard that would require companies to tell consumers within 30 days from the discovery of a data breach that their personal information has been compromised, the White House said. The standard would need approval from Congress, where lawmakers have struggled to come up with a way to replace a patchwork of differing state regulations. As part of the law, Obama will also propose to criminalize overseas trade in stolen identities, the White House said. Obama will also resurrect a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" that the White House created in 2012. He will ask lawmakers to codify the bill into law.

Uptime Simplifies System and Server Monitoring
With its agents, Uptime also has the ability to automate some common self-healing tasks. You can set up profiles, for example, to detect when a Web server is down and can then automatically restart it without any need for operator intervention. This is a very powerful feature. You can also build scripts that can restart certain Windows services: these can run on the central monitoring station rather than as part of the agent code. Like other systems management tools, there is a wide collection of user roles that can be set up in a very granular way. These roles can be applied to specific elements or action profiles, with the ability to view, add new ones, or change existing ones

Wearables go niche and narrow in the search for consumer relevance
Thanks to Fitbit, Jawbone and a slew of new smartwatches, we tend to think of wearable tech as living on the wrist. But at CES, some wearable makers tried to distinguish themselves by moving their hardware to other parts of the body. In doing so, they stand less chance of being rendered obsolete by increasingly sophisticated smartwatches and fitness bands. The most oddball example is Belty, a smart belt that aims to track users’ waistlines and provide extra comfort. The belt’s mechanical strap automatically loosens and tightens as you sit and stand, and uses tension sensors to figure out your ideal level of comfort over time.

2015 Enterprise Dev Predictions, Part 2: Convergence, Security, Automation and Analytics
What this means for enterprise developers, Gardner said, is that they must contribute to the decision making process at the architectural level to ensure that developer requirements don't get short shrift. "They will have to advocate for themselves in a wider environment of decision making," he said, "so that concerns about things like security and deployment flexibility in the hybrid cloud don't obviate the needs and concerns of developers. They need to learn to explain their past decisions and current needs in such a way that they are respected in the larger picture." Which is not to say that you should go charging into the CIO's office with a list of demands.

Why Apple Pay won't be the death of Google Wallet
According to Jordan McKee, an analyst at 451 Research, Google's primary challenge is its name. The search giant is just that, a search giant, so most of its revenue comes from advertising. McKee said this can make merchants wary of Google's intentions. "Google is after data, and merchants remain hesitant to give that up," McKee said. "Many view working with Google as making a deal with the devil, fearing their data may be used against them for things like competitive offers." Both Apple and Google said that they do not share your credit card number with merchants who accept their respective payment systems.

Using Agile Retrospectives for Organizational Change
In agile, retrospectives are used for a team that works together and wants to learn from their joint past. For example it is a Scrum team wanting to learn from the last Sprint. Participants of a retrospective for organizational change are typically not members of the same team and do not share necessarily a joint past. Yet the retrospective for organizational change still allows them to bring different perspectives together, learn from one another’s past, and define experiments that allow dealing with complex change. Thus, a retrospective for organizational change is more about preparing for the future by enabling change than reflecting on the past.

Manjaro Linux: A few of my favorite things
Similar to the Gnome3 settings utility, but smaller and simpler, just a handy place where you can take care of things like administering user accounts, selecting the Linux kernel (more on this in the next point), checking hardware and configuring the keyboard type and language, and selecting what kind of notifications you want to get. This handy little utility is even customized with different content for the KDE and Xfce versions. I realize that this one might seem kind of trivial at first glance, but it has grown on me very quickly as I have been going through the initial setup and configuration of Manjaro on a number of different systems.

Peer into the Analytics Crystal Ball for 2015
We had a very good discussion on the call about how a CAO differs from a CDO and why an organization might look into putting both in place. We at IIA expect these roles to continue to proliferate in 2015. However, I have personally seen a lot of confusion with respect to these two roles. Many people seem to consider them interchangeable or accidentally mix and match the requirements of the two roles together so that it is hard to tell what exactly they are looking for.

Amazon Data Center Construction Fire Linked to Welding Mishap
The workers on site were welding roof components from inside the structure, “which ignited nearby combustibles,” the official statement read. The combustibles were construction materials stored on the roof. An AWS spokesperson confirmed this morning that the fire happened at the site where a third party contractor was building a data center for the cloud services company. The data center was not in production, so the fire did not affect any AWS users, she said. The contractor’s name was not disclosed.

3 Warning Signs to Watch for When Evaluating Vendors
Vendors become disingenuous for several reasons. The first is that circumstances change, they intended to do what they promised but conditions they had no control over caused them to change their minds. That is going to happen to everyone from time to time, change is a part of this industry. However, you want to look closely at how they deal with change because it typically goes one of two ways. ... The second reason is that often the folks you are talking to are out of the loop. In this instance, no one is being untruthful, but it does showcase a command and control problem inside the firm consistent with failure. If the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing the company won’t execute well.

Quote for the day:

"It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." -- Aristotle Onassis

January 11, 2015

Ranking the disruption potential of industry forces
We’re applying some Gigaom Research resources to mapping out the dynamics of industry disruption to create a framework for our readers and clients for identifying and characterizing disruptive forces so that they can drive them for their own success, or defend against being overwhelmed by them. ... We received over 100 responses, and we’ll be using that input as one of the drivers for our research. Overall, over 80 percent of respondents agreed “the economy as a whole was in a disruptive state with multiple strands of change.”

Breaking new ground for supporting the software-defined infrastructure (SDI)
To enable a unified view across software stacks, as well as support greater choice, HP experts plan, design and architect open SDI solutions based on open architectures such as HP Helion OpenStack across physical and virtual infrastructures. ... HP takes Datacenter Care to new heights by including capabilities for Helion OpenStack, DevOps, SAP HANA and multivendor systems, as well as additional support within Flexible Capacity. With HP, your IT infrastructure and application development teams benefit from faster access to infrastructure resources and global expertise, as well as increased IT stability.

9 Must-Have Skills to Land Top Big Data Jobs in 2015
The secret is out, and the mad rush is on to leverage big data analytics tools and techniques for competitive advantage before they become commoditized. If you’re in the market for a big data job in 2015, these are the nine skills that will garner you a job offer.

Will Enhanced Servers Do Away With Need For Switches?
“We’re getting rid of layers: layers of switches, layers of links between switches,” says MH Raza, Fiber Mountain founder and CEO. “Switching as a function moves from being inside a box called a switch to a function that co-resides inside a box we call a server. If we put the switching function inside a server, it’s the same logic as a rack front-ending a number of servers; it’s the housing of a server with a switch in it front-ending a bunch of VMs. Why can’t that decision be made at the server? It can be made at the server.” Raza says he knows of a vendor – whom he wouldn’t name – offering an Intel multicore server motherboard with a Broadcom Trident II switch chip and a high capacity fiber connector.

Cloud Integration Issues? Look to the Enterprise Architects
The core opportunities lie with the enterprise architect, and their ability to drive an understanding of the value of data integration, as well as drive change within their organization. After all, they, or the enterprises CTOs and CIOs (whomever makes decisions about technological approaches), are supposed to drive the organization in the right technical directions that will provide the best support for the business. While most enterprise architects follow the latest hype, such as cloud computing and big data, many have missed the underlying data integration strategies and technologies that will support these changes.

The Inside Story of How Sony Handled the Biggest Hack in History
"People relied on each other and it's a good thing they relied on each other, because there wasn't a lot of assistance coming out of the community, except for the FBI," Lynton said. While most Sony employees already were on the Everbridge emergency notification system, workers recruited the rest to sign up. If he had to do it again, Lynton said he would have made it mandatory to already be on it. Senior managers created text and phone trees to communicate and held twice-daily meetings. Thirty to 40 people worked day and night through the Thanksgiving holiday. When employees arrived to work on Monday, one week after the Nov. 24th hack, a "concierge"-like desk greeted them to help get them signed onto a temporary email system set up by the technology team.

Machine-Learning Maestro Michael Jordan on the Delusions of Big Data
It’s true that with neuroscience, it’s going to require decades or even hundreds of years to understand the deep principles. There is progress at the very lowest levels of neuroscience. But for issues of higher cognition—how we perceive, how we remember, how we act—we have no idea how neurons are storing information, how they are computing, what the rules are, what the algorithms are, what the representations are, and the like. So we are not yet in an era in which we can be using an understanding of the brain to guide us in the construction of intelligent systems.

Top 5 IT Resolutions for 2015
2015 is finally here and as most of the corporate world returns to work this week, it’s time for executives to come up with some New Year’s Resolutions of their own. While you’ve no doubt (I hope) already come up with your IT budget for 2015, there are a few housekeeping items that should be on your New Year’s Resolution list for your business when it comes to your technology. Drawing a blank on how to improve your situation in 2015? Here are our top 5 IT resolutions for 2015.

Apache Spark 1.2.0 Supports Netty-based Implementation, High Availability
Apache Spark 1.2.0 was released with major performance and usability improvements in the Spark core engine. It represents the work of 172 contributors from over 60 institutions and comprises more than 1000 patches. Spark 1.2.0 is fully binary compatible with 1.1 and 1.0 and includes a Netty-based implementation, which significantly improves efficiency. Spark streaming adds support for Python and High Availability via Write Ahead Logs (WALs). In addition there is a set of machine learning APIs called spark.ml.

The debate about good governance
The World Bank’s work on good governance addresses economic institutions and public sector management, including transparency and accountability, regulatory reform, and public sector skills and leadership. The United Nations highlights democratic governance and human rights, aspects avoided by the Bank. The IMF declares that “promoting good governance in all its aspects, including by ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and accountability of the public sector, and tackling corruption, are essential elements of a framework within which economies can prosper.”

Quote for the day:

Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them. -- John C. Maxwell

January 10, 2015

M-Files: A better SharePoint than SharePoint
First, M-Files is very easy to install and configure. That is a refreshing difference compared to some of M-Files' competitors that have very complex requirements and lengthy installation procedures. Second, your information is stored by what it is and where it rather than where it is. Storing information by what it is saves you time and effort in locating a document later on. Think about trying to remember a document name three or six months after you first used it. How many folders will you have to search through to find it when you can't remember its name?

Why Once-Successful Companies Fail
In many cases, executives believe that if there is a control system in place, it will do the job for which it was intended. However, in many organizations, systems and policies are constructed for day-to-day transactions but not for analyzing the abundance of raw data – think Big Data – to make sense of what it all means. Long-term sustained performance is based on transforming data into analyzable information for insight and foresight to support decision making. This is where business intelligence, business analytics, and enterprise and corporate performance management systems with embedded analytics fit in. Software technology is no longer the impediment for performing investigation and discovery.

Office fitness trackers: Fun perk or creepy leash?
“Corporate wellness programmes are well-funded, well-respected and well-liked, particularly in the United States, despite the lack of hard evidence on their effectiveness,” said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst for ABI Research. He estimates that around 13m trackers will be brought into corporate programmes in the US alone by 2018, compared with only around 200,000 in 2012. Much of this is driven by the high cost to companies of health insurance in the US. “In the future when you get hired to work at a company they’ll say, ‘you're going to be enrolled in our wellness programme.’

Technology to improve India's shocking health indicators
There is finally some good news though. India is waking up to the fact that something must be done urgently to rectify its healthcare. And the country is taking the right approach. Authorities are looking at various ways in which technology can be used to better the ground realities. The best part of this is that, the initiatives are not just from the government side. Private parties are chipping in too. ... RA Mashelkar, the former Director General of CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) agrees. “We need technology for addressing issues like the high incidence of anemia prevalent among women in rural India, and such others”. He feels technology can definitely play an important role in resolving healthcare issues in rural India.

IoT for Home Automation
The Internet of Things, IoT, is upon us in a huge way and people are rapidly inventing new gadgets that enhance our lives. The price of microcontrollers with the ability to talk over a network keeps dropping and developers can now tinker and build things inexpensively. Developers and hardware enthusiasts no longer need to wait on others to invent or build all the "cool" stuff! The value of IoT is in both data and control. With home automation it is nice to have a log of events to know when a family member did something like got home or when they turned on the fireplace.

The Hacker's Manifesto turns 29 years-old
"Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike." It's been twenty-seven years since I first read those words, twenty-nine since they were written. If encouraging curiosity, accumulating and sharing knowledge, keeping an open mind and judging others on their deeds and not their circumstance or looks, or being a hacker means I'm a criminal – then I'll wear that title proudly for the rest of my days.

Intel's diversity goals face many challenges
It will be incredibly hard to change the status quo, train managers to hire people who aren't from similar backgrounds, and ultimately get people to admit the tech industry isn't the meritocracy it should be, said Ginny Clarke, an executive recruiter for talent firm Knightsbridge who works with tech companies on diversity hiring and retention. "We're really talking about a culture transformation," Clarke said. Change needs to take place at the deep core of a company. "I'm skeptical ... I'm not cynical yet, however, and I want to see it work."

Intel CEO Krzanich unveils wearable processor Curie
Intel noted that it introduced Edison, a computer the size of a postage stamp designed for wearables. Krzanich unveiled Curie, a computer about the size of a suit button. Intel's wearable strategy revolves around partnerships. Curie is just out of the labs and a prototype, but will land in the second half of 2015. "This changes the game on wearables," he said. ... "Everything that was once standalone is now becoming smart and connected," said Krzanich. Intel's CEO highlighted how the company could integrate security and RealSense in ADP security systems. Think authentication to get into your house.

Data Science And Statistics: Colleges Must Evolve
We generally find that specific majors aren't a perfect fit – and are often pleasantly surprised by "non-predictor" candidates who connect the academic/commerce dots in the interview process. Often it's the research and internship work that seals the deal. Computer science and math majors can be great but can also be overly theoretical, while students without pertinent work experience may not have the requisite data and computation skills. Several recent physical/natural science majors with strong research backgrounds have become capable apprentices.

An implementation of a list splicing and traversing library
The goals of this exercise was to write a set of useful list functions while exploring the possibilities of what using a list data structure provided. The basic operations were to be able to add or remove items from a list and to make changes to the list. I looked to the splice() function provided by php as a model for the Splice() method implemented in this package as well as to the C++11 Standard Template Library for a model for applying algorithms to the elements of a list. In order to make the If types of methods - FindIf(), FindIfNext(), ForEachRemoveIf(), etc. - more useful and flexible,

Quote for the day:

"Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

January 09, 2015

2015: The year the Internet crashes. Hard
Finally, let’s not forget good old human error. Logins and passwords are also being swiped by cyber-crooks from companies all the time As former FBI director Robert Mueller said this summer, “There are only two types of companies — those that have been hacked, and those that will be.” Even the tech elite are vulnerable. Earlier in December, ICANN, which oversees DNS, was hacked. The attacker got access to user information, including email and postal addresses. ISC, makers of BIND, the world’s most popular DNS software, also got hit, but we don’t know what, if any, information was taken from the site.

Denmark throws down $75m to build up offensive cybersecurity capabilities
Most of the initiatives outlined in the strategy however discuss better cyber-preparedness by government agencies, their suppliers, and private sector critical infrastructure providers. Danish defence minister Nikolaj Wammen said of the threats facing the country: "there are external actors exploiting the internet to spy on Denmark and to steal trade secrets." If Denmark is building up its cyber-offensive capabilities, it joins a growing list of nations whose intelligence services have used malware to spy on foreign targets or, as in the case of Stuxnet, used it to target other countries' national infrastructure.

3 Practical Tips for Effective BI Dashboard Design and Implementation
According to the preeminent expert on data visualization and analysis, Stephen Few, a dashboard is a “visual display of the most important information needed to achieve one or more objectives; consolidated and arranged on a single screen so the information can be monitored at a glance.” The challenge is not necessarily building the resources to display, it’s to design and present these resources effectively and in a way that makes the processing of the information quickly. That leads us to an overarching and significant dichotomy of sorts in the BI universe. A BI solution has a number of interrelated components, and if you want a BI solution that’s successful and sustainable, all of these components need to be wrapped together harmoniously.

Cloud, Mobility, Big Data Key To Growth In Managed Services Space
“Many managed service providers have backgrounds as technicians, so there is a constant focus on taking advantage of technology innovation. Most solution providers are also starting to look toward moving into that environment, where they have end-to-end control,” he explained. The strongest MSPs are looking at how to enhance their offerings around mobility, cloud computing and big data, he said, but noted that the latter may not yet be ideal for all clients. “I think people use the term ['big data'] but don’t yet know what it means in the managed services provider space. From a solution provider’s perspective, we have to look at our client’s perspective and see if this can actually help them,” he said.

The era of big data won’t materialise without fast data
Enterprises could spend years, even decades making sense of the information they’re collecting. However, the current business climate requires, above all else, agility, and in order to remain competitive, organisations must be able to make decisions at near-real-time speed. Furthermore, as applications are required to meet increasingly demanding SLAs, this requires the ability to process data as rapidly as it is being generated. With traditional computing, this isn’t possible. The need to process exponentially growing datasets instantaneously will undoubtedly prompt innovations that haven’t even entered the big data discussion yet.

Radware 2014-15 Global Application & Network Security Report
This year’s report illuminates how security attacks are more complex, even as macro-IT trends contribute to the dissolution of security effectiveness. Research confirms that the motives, means, and effectiveness of security attacks are on the rise – and it also highlights the need for greater agility to quickly adapt to evolving threats. In addition to results survey, expert analysis and data visualization, the report also includes a checklist that can be used for evaluating your preparedness for attack detection and mitigation capability. This tool should prove valuable in assessing your attack resiliency.

8 Skills to Look for in IT Project Managers
As the economy continues to climb out of recession, demand for project management professionals has skyrocketed. Finding the right project management talent for mission-critical IT projects can be difficult, as the role requires a unique mix of technical and soft skills. In addition to the usual suspects -- attention to detail, focus on process, time management and capability to multitask, for instance -- there are some less obvious, but equally crucial, skills that separate the good from the great. Here, our experts weigh in on what to look for when hiring IT project managers.

EMC to Leverage Big Data to Target Channel Marketing Dollars
While EMC is among the furthest along in terms of leveraging big data analytics in the channel, it won’t be too long before every major vendor is heading down the same path. While it may be a while before big data analytics can be applied against the entire small-to-medium (SMB) category, it’s clear that as far as large accounts are concerned vendors intend to leverage big data analytics to more tightly align channel partners with their internal sales staffs. In fact, the goal is nothing less than to both uncover and then lock up sales opportunities long before any actual request for proposal actually gets generated.

Apple has a serious problem with software quality
What started out as robust and stable ecosystems have increasingly become buggy and problematic. For me the problems don't appear to be anywhere near as bad as they became on the Windows platform, but they are getting there. If things continue as they are, I can foresee a future where an iOS or OS X release is as buggy as Windows Vista was when it was released. Ironically, Microsoft has been working hard to clean up its act, although the current situation, where patches are being pushed out to fix problems caused by earlier patches is horrendously messy. And while we are on the subject of patches, Apple is slow when it comes to delivering fixes for problems, and far too many never get fixed and end up being rolled forward to the next major release, which is just unacceptable.

Personal Healthcare Data: Patients Will Take Control
It’s a very different look and the doctor is now a partner. Patients have more equal footing because they have the power of their own data and information. They get to choose whether they’re going to share it, who they are going to share it with, and when they are going to share it. In effect, they own the data, which they never owned before. Most consumers do want their data. Every survey suggests that 80 percent want it. Most physicians don’t want to give the data. Seventy percent will not give copies of office notes to patients and almost the same percent won’t even email with patients. So, we have a mismatch of what consumers want and what the dominant proportion of doctors are willing to give and do.

Quote for the day

"Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions. This is a dangerous mistake." -- PeterDrucker

January 08, 2015

Using the Kanban Canvas for Driving Change
Systems Thinking uses the iceberg metaphor, where individual events are what we see above the water line. Below the water, often unobserved, are the patterns of events over time. Below that are the system structures that create those patterns, and even further down are the mental models that lead to those structures. To begin to understand the systemic problems we want to address, we first need to look for the patterns. One way of finding patterns is through narrative. I ask people to tell stories about what has happened in the past, over time.

Corporate officers — security changes for 2015!
CSOs rarely quantify a return on investment, as the rest of your department heads can. Instead, CSOs talk about threats to other companies, and deep down you’re wondering who would have both the inclination and capability to attack your company anyway? You have firewalls, and you’re forced to memorize (okay, write down in your secret place) longer and longer passwords that NOBODY could guess. You’re compliant with your industry standards, such as PCI (for payment cards) and HIPAA (health records), so you must be protected. In short, you need to trust your CSOs to do their jobs, just as you trust your CFOs — in the same way that President Reagan trusted the Soviet Union to disarm: “Trust but verify.”

We Don’t Have Time for Risk Management
Unfortunately, that kind of response is not unusual or unfamiliar to even basic risk management questions, particularly when there is a pressing need for results. Risk management is time consuming and consequently costly but it is often more costly to rush forward without considering risk, because when the unexpected happens, we have to react, which involves delay, rework, and sometimes waste. In Gene’s case, not considering the areas of uncertainty means that important areas of planning might be overlooked; potentially impacting work, schedule, and cost expansion by unknowingly accepting significant liabilities related to property and safety. Part of the problem is that Gene (like many) thinks of risk as interference to his plans and timelines.

Merging Old and New: Embracing the Hybrid Cloud
It requires careful planning to manage a private cloud and a third-party public cloud host. But for companies that want to get the benefit of new technology while still needing to provide bullet-proof continuity of operations, the old and the new need to work together. Many established companies with significant IT infrastructure are making the decision to develop a hybrid cloud. For example, NiSource Inc., one of the largest natural-gas transmission companies in the U.S., recently said that it plans to move to a hybrid cloud.

How to boost creativity in your organization?
“Being creative is going to be associated with a lot of failure,” says Dr. Lynne Vincent, co-author of Outside Advantage: Can Social Rejection Fuel Creative Thought? “You have to have the confidence to persevere and continue on past the hurdles and barriers.” People say they value creativity, but in reality they celebrate the successful outcome of its implementation. I have seen many organizations stuck in a creativity slump as their employees focus too much on what they’re working on and they don’t see the forest for the trees. One question I am asked often times is: how do I boost creativity in my organization?

How To Use BGP Prefix-Independent Convergence
BGP Prefix-Independent Convergence is described in a draft RFC, which initially came out in September 2012 and was updated a couple of times in 2013 but is currently in an expired state with the IETF. Cisco does support PIC on all their routing platforms (IOS, IOS-XE, IOS-XR and NX-OS). The BGP PIC edge and core for the IP and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) function improves convergence after a network failure. This convergence is applicable to both core and edge failures on IP and MPLS networks. Normally, BGP can take several seconds to a few minutes to converge after a network change.

Internet of Things demands security by design
"Connected devices are effectively allowing companies to digitally monitor our otherwise private activities," Ramirez says. ... She points to "ubiquitous data collection" and the potential for consumers' information to be used or shared in ways they would not expect as particular areas of concern, along with the worry that manufacturers and service providers aren't adequately securing the data they collect. ... "The small devices are sort of a problem. You have limited capabilities in terms of computation," says Joseph Lorenzo-Hall, CTO at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington digital rights group. "Some of them are meant to be very disposable and lightweight, which is going to be difficult to maintain and make a business case and do security upgrades for."

Why CIOs Should Turn To Cloud Based Data Analysis in 2015
CIOs are under tremendous pressure to quickly deliver big data platforms that can enable enterprises to unlock the potential of big data and better serve their customers, partners and internal stakeholders. Early adopter CIOs of big data report clear advantages of seriously considering and choosing the cloud for data analysis. These CIOs make a clear distinction between business critical and business enabling systems and processes. They understand the value that the cloud brings to data analysis and exploration and how it enables the business arm to innovate, react and grow the businesses.

Introduction to Puppet
unlike procedural scripts, Puppet’s language works across different platforms. By abstracting state away from implementation, Puppet allows you to focus on the parts of the system you care about, leaving implementation details like command names, arguments, and file formats to Puppet itself. For example, you can use Puppet to manage all your users the same way, whether a user is stored in NetInfo or /etc/passwd. This concept of abstraction is key to Puppet’s utility. It allows anyone who’s comfortable with any kind of code to manage systems at a level appropriate for their role. That means teams can collaborate better, and people can manage resources that would normally be outside their ken, promoting shared responsibility amongst teams.

Next Shift: From Big Data to Deep Data
As big data moves beyond hype to realized value, things are beginning to change. As we enter 2015, companies will move toward the "Deep Data" framework– an approach based on the premise that a small number of information-rich data streams, leveraged properly, can yield more value than masses of captured data. By shifting to a deep (rather than big) data approach, businesses are able to better understand their customers and offer actionable, scalable and customized insights while crucially enhancing the value of the economic investment in data to their businesses.

Quote for the day:

"Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish." --Marcus Aurelius

January 07, 2015

Risk Management through people
The Future of Risk Management is not just looking through the windshield; scanning the horizon might just be the most important thing to do, you cannot control or stop what is coming, you have to prepare to respond to it. So many organisations spend large amounts of money to focus and report only on what is happening inside the organization, where they actually have control. Your biggest risks are outside of the organization, where you have no control. Key elements for the future of your risk strategy should include internal networking; you have to talk to the informal groups and their informal leaders just as much as you do talk to the executives and managers, maybe even more.

The CISO Challenge: Articulating Data Worth and Security Economics
If you are an online retailer and your web server goes down because of a major denial of service attack, what does that cost the business? How much revenue is lost every minute that site is offline? Enough to put you out of business? See the figure below that illustrates how to approach this conversation. If the impact of a breach and the risk of losing business is high and the investment in implementing a solution is relatively low, the investment decision is an obvious one (represented by the yellow area in the upper left corner). ... Another dimension Dave described is communicating the economics of a solution that could prevent an attack based on the probability that the attack would occur (see next figure below).

New Years Resolutions
Well, every post on this blog is designed to help with one of the many challenges of enterprise modeling – and so I thought it might be interesting to look at how I could model my New Year’s resolutions in ArchiMate. ... For one thing, a diagram is a lot more of a visual thing to print out and post on my wall – much more so than a simple list. ... Well, resolutions are all about setting goals to achieve desired results, so something from the motivation viewpoint seems right. Realizing my goals…let’s go with the goal realization viewpoint. The goal realization viewpoint permits Goals and Requirements, Principles and Constraints.

I want in! Sentiment analysis gives mobile app users a voice
At its most basic, sentiment analysis is about collecting and analyzing a set of textual data in an effort to extract or characterize the attitudes, opinions and emotions contained within, according to a set of predefined criteria. It does this through a combination of natural language processing techniques and textual data analysis, with a dose of computational linguistics tossed in. Sentiment analysis has been around for a few years now and has been used in a number of applications, often by consumer-focused companies. Today it is being taken to a deeper level as a driver of big data initiatives, as enterprises start to gather and assess customer sentiment on a large scale across multiple input channels.

Data Quality Predictions for 2015
The champagne has been drunk, the mince pies are eaten and we’re packing away the Christmas baubles for another year. After a well-earned rest, thousands of businesses are returning to face the challenges that the New Year will bring to their business, and that means refocusing efforts on quality, usable data. But the world of IT rarely stands still, and 2015 will bring immense change that will intensify our use of data and change our dependence on it.

Heatwave, Cooling Failure Bring iiNet Data Center Down in Perth
An unusually warm day coupled with what iiNet said was multiple air conditioner failure meant that some servers needed to be shut down. It was the hottest January day on record for the area since 1991, and the heatwave is expected to continue into the week.iiNet is the second-largest DSL Internet provider in Australia. Email and corporate websites went down; thousands of customers ended up offline. ... “We have had multiple air conditioners fail on site causing temperatures to rise rapidly,” company representative Christopher Taylor said in a forum post. “We have additional cooling in now. We will begin powering services back up once the room has cooled adequately. If we are premature the room won’t recover and risk the A/C failing again.”

In IoT standards battle, there is no neutral zone for this CTO
IoT capability has tremendous importance to Electrolux, Brockmann said. Take ovens, for instance. The appliance maker will be putting cameras inside ovens so a cook can check on how the roast chicken is progressing. In a true IoT world, the image of a browning roast ought to be viewable on any device, including TVs. But it won't happen if electronics vendors don't agree on protocols. By connecting products, the appliance maker can establish a lifelong relationship with the consumers, send recipes, deliver preventive maintenance, and offer information about new products, Brockmann said.

Evolution of containerization extends its cloud reach
"People are rethinking how they can deploy cloud applications as these distributed containers with loosely coupled data layers. … Docker folks are responding to that by making these things more lightweight and ultimately better-performing," Linthicum said. What does the future of containerization look like? As multi-cloud deployments increase, containers that are able to live-migrate from cloud to cloud -- as well as well-designed applications localized in containers and decoupling databases -- middleware and security creates this orchestration of containers, according to Linthicum.

Why You Need to Move Your Data Center to a Software-Defined Paradigm
In the new software defined paradigm you can find completely new approach to operating — no RAID related calculation, no SAN setup, no Zones creation, no special cabling or special switch hardware, architectural unlimited space and performance scaling. Standard 10 Gbps Ethernet network is enough. Disks, nodes, and rooms, are all suitable replication locations, which guarantee multiple replication levels and the deepest granularity of the replicated object. For this new storage model, you can easily add new disks to nodes or add rack of nodes to a system without any downtime during the maintenance. Rebalancing, migration, new replication and so on can be just programmed because this storage already a program.

Nvidia Demos a Car Computer Trained with “Deep Learning”
The computer uses Nvidia’s new graphics microprocessor, the Tegra X1. It is capable of processing information from up to 12 cameras simultaneously, and it comes with software designed to assist with safety or autonomous driving systems. Most impressive, it includes a system trained to recognize different objects using a powerful technique known as deep learning (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning”). The computer is also designed to generate realistic 3-D maps and other graphics for dashboard displays. “It’s pretty cool to bring this level of powerful computation into cars,” said John Leonard, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, who works on autonomous-car technology.

Quote for the day:

"The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such." -- Andre Maurois

January 06, 2015

Flexibility in the Cloud: Customer-Defined Computing
What we wanted to do was give something that was analogous to the idea of a virtual data center. Customers could come, benefit from public cloud and its benefits, such as elasticity, the ability to manage equipment in all different geographies of the world from your own location, transparency of cost, those kind of things. But at the same time, keep the things that you like about your private environment: being able to control it, configure it and do so very accurately. That was the genesis of the idea and vision behind CloudSigma. It was to bring this sort of virtual data center approach to the public cloud.

Software-Defined Storage: What's Fact or Fallacy?
The problem is that SANs have traditionally been tightly bound to their own hardware: redundant controllers, shelves of drives and whatever features (such as replication or deduplication) the vendor could pack in. Upgrades can be expensive — or impossible — and when new capabilities are needed, the options to add them might not be available at all. With SDS, storage vendors offer an additional management layer on top of the storage architecture, which provides a set of upgradeable services and makes use of whatever SANs are available, not necessarily ones that run on the same platform or are made by the same manufacturer.

Samsung at CES 2015: Internet-of-Things is not science fiction, but 'science fact'
"It's not science fiction anymore. It's science fact," Yoon insisted. Yoon theorized consumer devices now have what it takes to make science fiction dreams real through the marriage of sensors and wireless connectivity, but also one more important ingredient: purpose. Part of the common rhetoric uttered at CES and even before the show by other Silicon Valley leaders have stressed that connected devices are really about people and solving problems. "We have to show consumers what's in it for them and what IoT can achieve," Yoon asserted, continuing that IoT also has the potential to "transform our economy, society, and how we live our lives."

BitYota Introduces Breakthrough Data Warehouse Technology
Availability of compute and storage groups manageable by end users. Building on BitYota’s unique capability to separate and elastically grow/shrink compute and storage nodes within a cluster, this feature collects BitYota instances running on these nodes into discrete storage or compute groups that can be assigned to individual users or business roles. This eliminates resource contention between long and short running jobs and enables better allocation of resources to improve performance and ability to meet service-level agreements (SLAs).

Is Agile Harder for Agencies?
Successful relationships require trust and honesty, and we shouldn’t be afraid of discussing this aspect of project management. If you do move away from a fixed scope of work, then the other two items (costs and timings) can be fixed – more or less. If you can get your clients to buy into this from a standing start then you are doing well. In fact you probably deserve a promotion. For most of us this is a continual discussion. Anyway, as soon as you’ve made headway on the argument that it makes little or no sense to try and fix the scope of a digital project, you usually run into a related concern, which we’ll look at next.

Benefits of Continuous Integration
This tip is not intended to go into any details about a particular CI tool or technology or to give instructions on setting up and configuring a CI server, but is instead intended to rationalise why a development team should consider spending the time and effort of implementing CI. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and it takes time and effort to introduce CI. You need to select an appropriate tool that fits your existing technology ecosystem, and then you need to set up and configure it for use within your current development environment. All of this takes time and effort that could be utilized elsewhere.

CIO interview: Federico Florez Gutierrez, Ferrovial
Gutierrez says the CIO has to wear multiple hats today as technology changes promise businesses more than just operational efficiency. “I have three roles: as the CIO, I am in charge of IT for the company; as Innovation Officer I coordinate the business innovation function applying our open innovation methodology, and as chairman of the Purchasing Committee I lead the purchasing function for common families within the group,” he says. Gutierrez thinks IT is complex at Ferrovial owing to the variety of businesses in the group. For example, the IT team has to manage local applications and vertical applications and it centrally manages the communications, IT purchasing and IT security, for the entire group.

2015 is make or break for Microsoft
The problem child for Microsoft is mobile. Windows Phone was released in late November 2010, and more than four years later, after billions of dollars spent, including the purchase of Nokia’s phone and tablet business for more than $7 billion, Windows Phone will have only a 2.7% worldwide market share by the end of 2014, according to IDC. And that share is heading in the wrong direction, being down from a 3.3% worldwide market share in 2013. Windows tablets have fared only slightly better, with an expected 4.6% market share by year’s end.

Thick data closes the gaps in big data analytics
"Individual interaction rules can be interpreted in a deterministic way only up to a certain extent, due to the ultimate unpredictability of human reactions. It is the so-called bounded rationality, which makes two individuals react possibly not the same, even if they face the same conditions. In opinion formation problems this issue is of paramount importance, for the volatility of human behaviors can play a major role in causing extreme events with massive impact...." This is exactly the problem confronting many big data and analytics efforts as they probe into the dynamic of customer behaviors and develop predictability models for when particular customers are most likely to purchase, and what they are most likely to purchase.

Ronica Roth on Vision, Visibility and Business Agility
when you start getting into that alignment and that cadence and getting all of those teams doing mid-range planning together, then now you are beginning to look at something that looks a little like the Scaled Agile framework or some form of it; it doesn’t have to, but the pictures I have in my slides, the pictures that I’ve had for a long time and I look at the big picture of SAFe, ... but be performant and the things that getting the way of that I think are, so we could blow up our silos to do some pilot teams but are we really ready to blow up our silos for a hundred people, are we really ready to break out of a project mentality where we are assigning resources to projects and instead get into a product mentality where we were flowing work through teams

Quote for the day:

“Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.” -- Peter F. Drucker