Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

December 14, 2015

Why high IT talent turnover is your fault

Just 32 percent of IT leaders and 41 percent of IT professionals say their organization has a clearly articulated employee value proposition (EVP), which goes beyond compensation to take into account all of the elements a company has to offer its employees-not just compensation, but also opportunities for career development, career path progressing and succession planning, work-life balance, culture and other company differentiators, Hayman says, but many don't look beyond compensation and vacation time. It is surprising that a higher level of IT professionals feel an EVP has been articulated - leading to the possible conclusion that IT professionals limit their definition of an EVP to compensation and benefits while discounting other factors.

The advent of the citizen developer

The inability of the average business user to somehow mold software into solutions that meet their unique needs in the moment has become a 'holy grail' of several generations of companies attempting to solve the problem -- rapid application development (RAD) two decades ago and then model-driven development and enterprise mashups about decade ago. Lack of ability to directly shape applications to meet users ongoing needs has thus been long-standing, even pernicious, issue that actively holds back the tech enablement. I'd even argue this is impeding the strategic progress of enterprise-wide digital transformation, which IDC says will be a top goal of the majority of organizations in 2016, as existing IT departments are insufficiently sized and resourced to fully digitize the contemporary organization.

BFF @ SoundCloud

One of BFF characteristics is that it eliminates any direct calls outside of the perimeter to the downstream services. Implementation of this pattern also enabled a minimal invasive migration towards microservice-based architecture, as the BFF hid any underlying changes from the application itself. New features went through the BFF, which then called either the new microservice or the monolith. Whenever further functionality got extracted out of the monolith, the BFF was changed, while the app code remained the same. One can see a similarity to the strangler pattern, where the BFF is strangling the public API offered by the monolith.

Use DeployImage Module and PowerShell to Build a Nano Server: Part 1

Nano Server jumps to a whole new level of server management. There is no GUI on the server. All management is done 100% via Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) and Windows PowerShell remoting. Here’s the tricky part…Nano Server is really new. It’s still in testing along with Windows Server 2016. In fact, it’s so that new the installer is a couple of PowerShell scripts and instructions on TechNet with a very long and detailed article about how to set up and deploy it. With all this in mind, I went about writing a sample script to deploy it to a partition structure in a virtual machine. It worked quite well, but a little bird tapped me on the shoulder and suggested flipping it into a module to allow for easy consumption in the PowerShell Gallery.

Digital Transformation is Different for Every Business

The goal of a digital transformation is to bring everyone, from the consumer to the account manager, up to speed with relevant, technology-driven solutions that facilitate business processes. If you think about whothe transformation will primarily affect, it makes sense that those are the areas a business should look to for inspiration. However, businesses tend to look to outside consultants, media reports, and other 3rdparty sources first. The resulting information provided may be helpful to a company, but it may not address the problems their employees and customers face on a daily basis. Businesses can overcome these obstacles by approaching the digital transformation from a place of innovation and openness. The process should highlight the culture of a company and strengthen business teams with a common goal.

Effective IT service brokers look beyond the data center

Cloud computing should be used for new workloads -- and in most IT shops, it is. A Gartner survey of enterprises has found that 70-80% of platform-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service is "net new," Bittman said. Cloud often enters the equation as part of data center modernization plans. "Not everything traditional will be modernized," he said, but when it is modernized it is often called private cloud with automatic provisioning and self-service functions. IT shops should use cloud services for things their team doesn't manage well, so they can focus on providing IT services to their customers. In this scenario, IT becomes an intermediary -- or broker -- between the customer, the data center and the cloud service providers, Bittman said. Some IT pros here said they foresee a shift toward IT broker roles, and others already play the part.

Cyberfraud: a not so silent threat

Protecting against fraudulent online transactions on the side of financial institutions is saving both their own reputation along with other people’s money. Previous studies have shown that customers sometimes take little care in the security of their own online payments, expecting the banks to provide such protection as well as reimburse them their losses. About 28% of users of payment services do not bother to check if the site of a bank is real or fake, 34% of the users connect to public wireless networks on devices that do not have security solutions installed at all. The most typical situation is when a person needs to make an urgent online transaction – not having time to think about what type of connection is being used and how to make it more secure.

Open-source security: Can OpenStack really protect your cloud data?

OpenStack is relatively new code. Therefore is likely to contain numerous software vulnerabilities and implementation issues, which continue to be uncovered by the OpenStack community. However with specific portals and projects devised to tackle emerging security issues head on, it the OpenStack community appears to be taking security concerns quite seriously. At the highest-level, general implementation-based vulnerabilities do exist such as clear text RPC communications and the use of plaintext passwords in some of the authentication files. In addition to this, the reliance of OpenStack on other components can pose an issue. For example, if your team were to use an old version of OpenSSL that suffers from Heartbleed, your organisation’s OpenStack implementation may be affected as well.

How Cloud, APIs Are Transforming Outsourcing

Upwork provides a platform for coordinating labor, but it doesn't offer much in the way of oversight capabilities. That's where Teamed.io comes in. "The way we manage this work is very different," said Bugayenko. "We are micro-task managers. We break down the big problem, which we're solving for the customer, into small pieces. And they we give these small tasks to a large number of people, sometimes 20 or 25 of them. Then our managers and our software enable the management of these micro-tasks, to make sure quality is high and the milestones are in place." Bugayenko is not a disinterested party here, but he claims his distributed approach produces better results than traditional outsourcing. "We have clients who are working with us and with traditional outsourcing as well, and they tell us that the difference is huge," he said.

Data Lake-as-a-Service: Big Data Processing and Analytics in the Cloud

A "Data Lake-as-a-Service" provides a pre-built cloud service that abstracts the complexity of the underlying platform and infrastructure layers, so a company can use a data lake without having to install or maintain the technology themselves. This category is emerging, so the specific software and services provided by vendors varies greatly. Common capabilities generally include automated provisioning, scalable data storage, varying levels of analytic functions and a simplified interface for management. Beyond those, Data Lake-as-a-Service providers can differ greatly, with different features catered to different use cases. For example, Cazena's Data Lake-as-a-Service includes end-to-end security, with data movers that make it simple to encrypt, move and load data into the cloud.

Quote for the day:

"Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed." -- Vincent van Gogh

December 13, 2015

Cyberattacks will compromise 1-in-3 healthcare records next year

"Frankly, healthcare data is really valuable from a cyber criminal standpoint. It could be 5, 10 or even 50 times more valuable than other forms of data," said Lynne Dunbrack, research vice president for IDC's Health Insights. Not only do healthcare records often have Social Security and credit card numbers, but they are also used by criminals to file fraudulent medical claims and to get medications to resell. Healthcare fraud costs the industry from $74 billion to $247 billion a year in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. Fraudulent billing represents between 3% and 10% of healthcare expenditures in the U.S. each year, Dunbrack said.

China Wants to Replace Millions of Workers with Robots

A more comprehensive effort to upgrade China’s manufacturing base is already underway, under a program announced in May known as Made in China 2025, which aims to make China an innovative and green “world manufacturing power” by that year. The effort involves adding connectivity and intelligence to manufacturing equipment and factories, to improve overall flexibility and efficiency. It was inspired by Germany’s Industry 4.0 effort, launched in 2011, and by similar efforts to promote more advanced manufacturing in the U.S. The robotic component of this overhaul will be about more than just installing more robots in manufacturing plants, however.

Pixel C deep-dive review: A terrific tablet that tries to be more

At its core, the Pixel C is a 10.2-in. tablet -- and in that regard, it's a pleasure to use. The metal casing feels smooth and luxurious under your fingers. At 1.1 lb., it isn't the lightest tablet around, but it seems strong and sturdy and is quite comfortable to hold (using two hands, which is pretty much par for the course with a device of this size). The slate is relatively thin, too, at 0.28 in. -- a touch slimmer than Apple's original iPad Air and just four-hundredths of an inch thicker than the newer iPad Air 2. Staying true to the Pixel name, the Pixel C's display is gorgeous -- a 2560 x 1800 LCD panel that's impossibly crisp and detailed. It's super bright, too, to the point that I've actually found myself using it at the lowest possible brightness setting most of the time.

Prioritize your optimization ideas and build a roadmap

Your prioritization criteria should be customized to your company’s unique business goals and your access to resources. Our suggested framework for evaluating test ideas breaks them down into two key components: impact and effort. By analyzing experiments by impact and effort, you methodically weigh the potential return on investment (ROI) of each test and campaign. ... Ultimately, the criteria you use to prioritize your ideas will depend on your particular program’s goals and resources. If your team is technically savvy but low on design resources, you might set up tests easily but have trouble getting mockups.

5 Tips to Get Stakeholders to Like—Even Love—Your Product Roadmap

Evidence is far more compelling than your opinion. Your stakeholders are less interested to hear about what you think than about what you’ve proven. So one of the first steps in making sure all of your teams, including executives, are in agreement with your product strategy is to bring them evidence of why the strategy makes sense. That could be a video of your customers discussing or using your product, user analytics, direct customer quotes or requests, etc.—but it needs to be evidence, not speculation. It also needs to align with your product vision and goals. ... You can quantify many of the ways your product helps your customers—more money your customers can make, time it can save them each day or month or year, etc.

Why SaaS Is the Key to Maintaining a Bimodal Approach to IT

"Bimodal IT is not two-speed," he said. "It's about Samurais and ninjas. You don't want an army of ninjas because it would be too chaotic, and you don't want your innovation done by Samurais because it would be too boring. "The end game is to recognize who your Samurais are and who are your ninjas and have them working together." ... Despite its homonymity, SaaS isn’t about snappy fingers and fierce attitudes. It stands for ‘Software as a Service,’ and as Gartner defines it, is “software that is owned, delivered and managed remotely by one or more providers. “The provider delivers software based on one set of common code and data definitions that is consumed in a one-to-many model by all contracted customers at any time on a pay-for-use basis or as a subscription based on use metrics.”

Here’s What Developers Are Doing with Google’s AI Brain

Most recently, the Google Brain helped develop Smart Reply, a system that automatically recommends a quick response to messages in Gmail after it scans the text of an incoming message. The neural network technique used to develop Smart Reply was presented by Google researchers at the NIPS conference last year. Dean expects deep learning and machine learning to have a similar impact on many other companies. “There is a vast array of ways in which machine learning is influencing lots of different products and industries,” he said. For example, the technique is being tested in many industries that try to make predictions from large amounts of data, ranging from retail to insurance.

How to Monetize Your Customer Data

Companies need to start treating information as a corporate asset that generates tangible future benefits by applying infonomics principles. A term coined by Gartner, infonomics is an emerging theory and practice focused on quantifying information’s value and defining how to manage information as an enterprise asset. Although there’s increasing innovation, issues emerge in the areas of data ownership and data privacy. Regulations are fragmented across different industries and geographic regions and often fall behind technology changes. The public perception and threat of bad press from privacy breaches will most likely have more impact on companies than regulations.

Data Centers on the Edge: Streaming and IoT Reshape the Network

The demand for edge-centric content distribution represents a disruption to the geography of the data center business, which has historically been focused on major business markets, home to lots of customers, network exchanges and established business models. That’s all beginning to change, according to Compass’ Crosby, who says the data center industry must also rethink some of its common assumptions. “I think that in the very near future, the location of customers and the latency needs of the applications they need to support will determine where they want their data center(s) to be located,” said Crosby.

Secure Authentication for Public Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi networks, by their very nature, are a hotbed for silent cyber attacks, as a business's sophisticated security systems won't have any affect on them to protect users. Some may even say that breaching them is child's play, following reports of a seven-year-old successfully attacking one in less than 11 minutes.[2] Hotspots are more often than not left unencrypted, so information is openly presented, and without warning can be collected by hackers. By simply entering an email address - and some hotspots don't even ask for any user information to log on - millions of people can access the same networks. This giveaway of such a personal piece of information to a network that is so easy to access is terrifying and users need to consider where their data is being collected before handing it over.

Quote for the day:

"When data disproves a theory, a good scientist discards the theory and a poor one discards the data." -- Will Spencer

December 12, 2015

When it comes to cloud security which is better? Heavy hand or gentle policing?

Gentle policing based on very strong knowledge of how their organization is using cloud is very important. This way, they look at what people are trying to accomplish with cloud, and can step in and consult. Gentle policing isn’t meant to inhibit cloud usage as much as help to guide the organization to the more secure options that are available, if users chose an option that wasn’t secure. ... Enterprises can gather all of their different data points across their infrastructure and cloud systems and see that certain data indicators probably increases their confidence level that a breach occurred, and then those data will help them to figure out what to do there.

How to deal with the aftermath of a data breach

Jay Abbot, managing director of Just Advanced Security Consulting, said that most companies could not detect a breach if it occurred, and the ones they do notice are the ones where the attackers go public with the outcome. “The biggest part of preparedness is the ability to actually detect a breach,” Abbot says. “In security, we typically think defensively and layer up controls that place defences at different locations, but we rarely actually put in place a dedicated monitoring solution that can look at everything and identify anomalous activity.” The Sans Institute recommends a six-point plan when dealing with incident response, including preparation, identification, containment, eradication, recovery and lessons learned.

Puppet Labs CEO talks containers, infrastructure, and the implications of an IPO

His opinion stands beside a well-appreciated, but seldom articulated, understanding in the industry - that a significant number of occasions in which an acquisition is heralded as a win for both sides are no more than a soft landing for a business gone mad. Further, the reality is that most technology acquisitions are dismal failures, and that politics, silos, and ulterior motives within large companies mean that success from an acquisition is a relatively rare thing. An acquisition is, in Kanies's mind, a relatively good way to get rich, but the worst way to achieve anything.

Is There a Correlation Between Employee Happiness and Agile?

Startup culture is a quasi-religion for this group, and they strive to protect it. This makes sense: it's naturally iterative, focused on delivering working code in weeks or even days. Agile has focused on managing the work and this may reek of control, which is an anathema to these companies. ... The Tech Titans leadership doesn’t want Agile because Agile isn’t good for their questionable labor behavior. Notice I didn’t say labor practices - that smacks too much of unionization and blaming the execs, which I’m not going to get into. The labor behavior is different. It comes from a tightly wound knot of employee expectations, peer pressure, and management dictate - the social norms of a company, its culture.

The Languages And Frameworks You Should Learn In 2016

In the last few years, there has been a trend towards shifting the business logic of web apps from the backend to the frontend, with the backend being delegated to a simple API. This makes the choice of a frontend framework that much more important. Another significant advancement for the web as a platform in 2015 was the release of the Edge web browser. This is the successor of Internet Explorer which has an updated interface and faster performance. What sets it apart from IE is that it adopts the same quick release schedule that Firefox and Chrome follow. This is going to move the JavaScript community forward as updates to JavaScript and web standards will be available in weeks rather than years everywhere.

Why CIOs need to worry about Chennai

Newspaper reports indicate offshore providers have kicked in with contingency plans and have been flying out associates from Chennai to other locations to try and maintain service levels. But with airports and railway stations shut now, and no way to get in or out of the city, CIOs can only keep their fingers crossed and hope for the best. Indian firms, rightly, are focusing on the safety of their employees. The impact of these floods could go far beyond Chennai, and potentially touch our daily lives in the US and elsewhere. Besides the immediate human costs of this disaster, the impact could go far beyond Chennai, and potentially touch our daily lives in the US and elsewhere.

How to avoid bloatware, the persistent PC security pest

Bloatware, otherwise known as junkware or crapware, is software that comes preinstalled on new PCs and laptops, and some Android devices. And for many consumers it's the bane of their computer's existence. With the holiday season already in full swing and gift giving just around the corner, expect to hear a few stories about the long-expected bloatware resurgence. But did it ever go away? Despite promises that PC and phone makers would ditch the bloatware in the wake of a high-profile privacy controversy involving the unwanted software, it seems as prevalent today as it ever has been. One quick look at a number of laptops in Best Buy shows clearer than ever how prevalent unwanted software can be.

Disaster recovery planning: Where virtualisation can help

Server virtualisation is a great tool to consolidate and simplify the deployment of application workloads. Where hardware was underutilised – typically with a single application per operating system instance – virtualisation has provided the isolation and management benefits of the server while concentrating the physical estate into a much more efficient footprint. Virtual servers are a combination of virtual disk files that represent the physical disk, plus configuration information for processors, memory and other attached devices. This makes the virtual server – or virtual machine (VM) – highly portable, and allows virtualisation to provide capabilities such as high availability and fault tolerance, without lots of additional hardware or complex configurations.

The Paleo Diet: Unstructured Data for the Enterprise CEO

Essentially, while the stream of structured (transactional) data readily explains what is happening at the moment, the stream of unstructured data can yield insights into what’s going tohappen, or why something happened. To date, structured data has been the basis of enterprise analytics because it’s relatively easy to interpret: structured data is primarily numeric, repeatable in type, and predictable in timing and treatment. Unstructured data is far more challenging. Not only is the data volume vastly greater, but unstructured data has (by definition!) no inherent format or repeatability, and brings with it an extremely unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio.

Beyond the Law: A Common Rule for Data Research

No doubt, privacy and data protection laws provide a backstop against abuse of commercial data use with boundaries like consent and avoidance of harms. But in many cases where informed consent is not feasible and where data uses create both benefits and risks, legal boundaries are ambiguous and rest on blurry-edged concepts such as “unfairness” or the “legitimate interests of the controller.” Misgivings over data ethics could diminish collaboration between researchers and private-sector entities, restrict funding opportunities and lock research projects in corporate coffers, contributing to the development of new products without furthering generalizable knowledge.

Quote for the day:

"A positive attitude will let you do everything better than a negative attitude will." -- Zig Ziglar

December 09, 2015

Google Says It Has Proved Its Controversial Quantum Computer Really Works

Google posted a research paper describing its results online last night, but it has not been formally peer-reviewed. Neven said that journal publications would be forthcoming. Google’s results are striking—but even if verified, they would only represent partial vindication for D-Wave. The computer that lost in the contest with the quantum machine was running code that had it solve the problem at hand using an algorithm similar to the one baked into the D-Wave chip. An alternative algorithm is known that could have let the conventional computer be more competitive, or even win, by exploiting what Neven called a “bug” in D-Wave’s design.

PINE A64 is a $15, 'high-performance' take on the Raspberry Pi

"PINE64 set out to create a simple, smart and affordable computer that gives people access toward making their next big idea come to life." says Co-Founder Johnson Jeng. "We provide a powerful 64-bit quad-core single-board computer at an exceptional price and remain compatible with multiple open source software platforms to build a community of creativity and innovation." If you're familiar with other ARM-based boards then you know the drill. It can be set up to operate as a mini computer, a gaming console, control your connected home and let you run your own media center. It'll handle Android 5.1 (Lollipop), Ubuntu Linux, openHAB, OpenWRT and Kodi, which offers 4Kx2K output via the H.265 video standard (1080p60 and 4Kp30) and also supports Miracast.

Despite progress, the future of AI will require human assistance

One of the basic obstacles Horvitz is interested in solving is a classic IT problem: AI technologies were essentially built in silos. For systems to become more powerful, they'll likely need to be knitted together. "When I say we're trying to build systems where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, we sometimes see surprising increases in competency when we combine, for example, language and vision together," said Horvitz, who recently launched (and, along with his wife, is funding) the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University, an interdisciplinary research effort on the effects of AI. Exactly how AI systems should be integrated together is still up for debate, "but I'm pretty sure that the next big leaps in AI will come from these kinds of integrative solutions,"

How to get the most from the Internet of Things

Things (IoT) systems and connectivity solutions that enable customers to more efficiently collect, process and analyze IoT data. Here, we share our vision for IoT. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the most important technological innovations of the past decade. Analytical insights from IoT can lead to valuable business outcomes like automation, improved productivity, reduced downtime and enhanced knowledge of what’s going on at your company. McKinsey estimates that IoT will have a total potential economic impact of $3.9 trillion to $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. IoT is, well, exactly what it sounds like: A network of physical things that are connected to the Internet.

Big Data Industry Predictions for 2016

Companies will continue to seek competitive advantage by adopting new big data technologies and allowing machines to simulate subjective ‘squishy’ data – including human communication cues such as nonverbal behavior, facial expressions, tone of voice. Big data analytics makes this possible by assimilating vast amounts of information, including the types of data that were too slow ... As the machines get better at interpreting a variety of data types and collating it with vast quantities of structured data, they can begin to improve and accelerate both employee-owned business processes and customer-facing experiences. Employees’ work can be recorded and compared with what is considered ideal and can then receive personalized decision support so to execute their tasks faster and more effectively.

Easily Create Java Agents with Byte Buddy

A Java agent is a Java program that executes just prior to the start of another Java application (the “target” application), affording that agent the opportunity to modify the target application, or the environment in which it runs. In this article we will start with the basics, and crescendo to an advanced agent implementation using the bytecode manipulation tool Byte Buddy. In the most basic use case, a Java agent sets application properties or configures a certain environment state, enabling the agent to serve as a reusable and pluggable component. ... a Java agent is defined like any other Java program, except that premain replaces the main method as the entry point. As the name suggests, this method is executed before the main method of the target application.

Cyber Insurance Underwriting Moves from ‘Toddler’ to ‘Teen’

The cyber line is “sustainable, but not if we continue to drive pricing down to the lowest common denominator, and not if we don’t underwrite risks. There definitely was a point in the last few years, where you could get a cyber quote with no information,” Stephens said. “It doesn’t seem sustainable to me to do it that way. Insurers have swung the pendulum a little bit back, to actually asking for detailed information, and really trying to differentiate a good risk from a bad risk. They’ll continue to do that.” Carriers expect this area to grow, said Manny Cho, regional underwriting manager at Axis Pro in San Francisco, but they need to be profitable in order for that to happen.

Here's what open source critics are missing in their Apple-bashing

The source of the sin was Apple's release of Swift as open source. Though the page now humbly acknowledges "open source software is at the heart of Apple platforms and developer tools," it originally touted Apple as "the first major computer company to make Open Source development a key part of its ongoing software strategy." Too much? Perhaps. Or not. Apple has actually had that claim on its site for some time, but it wasn't until Swift was released that people paid attention. Ironically,developers started grousing about it on the eve of Apple living up to the spirit of its claim.

Your Tech Employees Aren't Happy? Here's How to Fix it

Part of the problem might be in the employers' perception of work-life balance. Dice found that there seems to be a significant gap in how employers interpret work-life balance and what employees actually want. For example, 67 percent of HR professionals stated that their employees enjoyed a balanced work life, while 75 percent of employees ranked work-life balance as a top benefit they wish they had. Compare that to the number of employees that feel work-life balance is a myth and those who reported a lack of work-life balance at work, it seems there is a disconnect in how employers view this issue. But fostering a culture that encourages a work-life balance isn't that hard, and it's pretty cheap, according to Dice

The Tech Revolution Is Failing to Deliver

Another way to think about it is that many of the recent innovations only make it easier and more fun to do things we hardly ever noticed were hard and no fun. People use internet messenging apps where they once relied on email, or they pay with their phones where they used to pull out a credit card. There is no perceptible change even in time use -- we're just switching to a new, seemingly more perfect way to conduct the same old transactions. Much of the "Internet of Things" (now often referred to as the Internet of Everything) -- connected light bulbs and faucets, excessive electronics and software in cars -- provides this kind of "quality improvement": Gadgets are wonderful, but rarely essential.

Quote for the day:

"Transparency doesn't mean sharing every detail. Transparency means providing context for the decisions we make." -- @simonsinek

December 08, 2015

Cloud operations and security: A developer's survival guide

When considering ops and security, the best practices in automation are mostly around monitoring. DevOps requires two types of monitoring. Application performance monitoring tools enable code-level analysis and correct performance issues. At the infrastructure level, server monitoring provides visibility into capacity, memory, and CPU consumption so developers can fix issues as soon as they appear. The key is to make sure that developers can see the data so they can make better calls during the development process. Finally, you need version control; not just for your application code, but in your infrastructure, configurations, and databases. The payoff is a single source of truth for both your application code and your platform that you can use to quickly identify where things went wrong, and then automatically fall back to a known state.

Why Teams Don't Learn From Their Mistakes (And How To Change That)

At a Toyota plant, Kaplan had a revelation. In the automaker's well-known production system, if anyone on the production line sees an error, they send an alert that halts production across the plant. Senior executives rush over to see what's gone wrong and address the issue, and afterward the process is adapted to prevent it from happening again. "The system was about cars, which are very different from people," Kaplan says when we meet for an interview. "But the underlying principle is transferable. If a culture is open and honest about mistakes, the entire system can learn from them." When Kaplan took this lesson back to the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, the results were astounding.

Can the cloud really do it all? Tech chiefs aren't convinced

"It will take time for these organisations to adapt to the new opex based funding model for XaaS as traditionally it's been anathema to load support costs onto the taxpayer whereas periodic injections of capital investment haven't been so problematic," he said. Dan Gallivan, director of IT at Payate said that while CIOs will still consider non-cloud options if it makes sense, cloud options are definitely in favour: "It seems to be the trend for most application providers to move to cloud, the benefits are great; scalable, flexible and accessible." There is still room for on-premise options, said Shawn Beighle, CIO of the International Republican Institute, but he said: "It really depends on the results of the needs assessment, but I almost always look for SaaS solutions first before considering an on-prem solution."

Your New Medical Team: Algorithms and Physicians

Patients also may be skeptical that a computer can deliver the best care. A 2010 study published in Health Affairs found that consumers didn’t believe doctors could deliver substandard care. In contrast, they thought that care strictly based on evidence and guidelines — as any system for automating medical care would be — was tailored to the lowest common denominator, meeting only the minimum quality standards. But algorithms can be put to good use in certain areas of medicine, as complements to, not substitutes for, clinicians. A Princeton University economics professor, Janet Currie, and colleagues developed a simple algorithm to improve care for heart attack patients.

Can Europe ever build its own Silicon Valley?

The economist says government investment is also key and that is where the US has done well in the past: “Why are all the innovative companies like Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook coming out of the US and not Europe? The answer you will often hear is: Europe has lots of culture but there is too much state and not enough market. As a result, it is not entrepreneurial enough.” She continues: “This view ignores the fact that all the revolutionary technologies that make the iPhone so smart were actually funded by government. Not through narrow market-fixing policies, but through mission-oriented policies that catalysed the creation of entirely new technologies and sectors.”

Artificial Intelligence is Already Remaking Modern Businesses

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) technology should be causing similar unease. But it also heralds an opportunity and a challenge to business to harness this new cognitive power. Today, AI systems are already scoring better than the average high-school senior on the SAT. They are diagnosing disease and keeping up to date in realtime with medical research better than human doctors. And they are handling financial and media buying decisions with mind-boggling speed and intelligence. Today, competitive advantage in business is gained by recognizing where machines can be superior, and leaning in hard. Among the companies doing this are Google, Renaissance Technology with its hedge funds, and my own company, Rocket Fuel.

The Six Decisions To Make Before Establishing an Innovation Outpost

Most CEOs assign the responsibility to establish and manage their innovation outposts (and the outpost’s relationships to startups) to their R&D organizations. While that avoids internal management conflict, it’s the wrong way to make an innovation outpost decision. Instead CEOs and their exec staff should start with a high-level discussion to decide whether their companies should even establish an Innovation Outpost, whether in Silicon Valley or some other innovation ecosystem. Because this is a critical decision that requires broad management buy-in, the conversation should include senior management, particularly the Chief Digital Officer, the Chief Strategy Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, and the Head of R&D, and maybe even their board of directors.

The DevOps Supremacy – How IT Operations Must Become Like Jason Bourne

Like Bourne movies, today's digital business is equally intense. It's a case of working "outside-in", quickly understanding the needs of your customers; working faster than your competitors to deliver a high-quality experience. Now more than ever, it's about anticipating and responding to any impending issues that could compromise this experience versus just being obsessive about finding the cause of problems. Some folks in operations would argue they have great situational awareness since they can monitor all the infrastructure and components underpinning applications. But is this good enough? Does monitoring at a detailed diagnostic level mean you're paying attention to the right things from the perspective of the business and what your customers are experiencing – in this very moment as they engage and interact your business?

Leadership begins between your own two ears

The principles circle back on themselves. If you believe you can do it enough to step off the mountain and open your current state of preparedness to the wider world, you can do it and will figure out what you couldn’t have known at the beginning. Hardly anyone with a job description expects candidates to have every single attribute and experience they are asking for. The best people want challenge, want to stretch. What’s consistently amazing to me is how different men and women can be about these inevitable shortfalls. If there is a job with 10 qualifications, women will tend to see two that they don’t have and disqualify themselves. Men, on the other hand, will tend to see three to give that they have and say, "I can do that!"

Attackers are Building Big Data Warehouses of Stolen Credentials and PII

Indicators of developing attacker data warehouses include the nature of the data offered for sale. “On one of the websites, we saw that you could ask for data and passwords by industry sector,” says Beek. Attackers are also swapping data from different breaches with each other so that they can build up stronger user profiles. “We see discussions in closed forums where one group is exchanging files with another group just to benefit each other’s operations in this way,” he affirms. These warehouse approaches could grow, using the same kinds of analytics on harvested PII data that legitimate businesses do on their big data stores. They could identify patterns and create robust databases that connect information about the person’s place of employment with their personal profile and quickly reach far beyond the data that the criminal started with.

Quote for the day:

"Nothing consoles and comforts like certainty does.” -- Amit Kalantri

December 07, 2015

How Prudential Annuities CIO sparks talent transformation

In addition, the trend toward buying big data, data analytics and data management solutions instead of building them in-house has made certain skills like data stewards, data scientists and integration engineers much more mission-critical and thus, harder to find than they used to be. Finally, he says that insurance companies have a difficult time recruiting younger IT talent, since it doesn't have the flashy allure of Silicon Valley start-ups and mobile app development companies. "We want to be to a leading-edge technology business, and a place where innovative ideas are rewarded; we know retaining our existing talent and attracting new talent is at the center of how we're going to do that. I was looking at a great team who knew how to do their jobs, but they didn't feel they had the agency or the individual buy-in to get their ideas heard.

Mobile App Development: Cost, Time & Process

While thinking of developing a mobile app, the most common question that may pop up in your mind would be about “the development cost”. This is just like a puzzle, especially for those people who never thought about developing a mobile application. For guidance, you can ask about the mobile app development cost to your friends or other people who are experienced in this industry. In most cases, they all will similarly answer you that “it depends”. Of course, the mobile app development cost depends on various factors, including features, complexity, location etc. Apart from cost, there are a lot of other parameters that should be considered in mobile app development.

Big Data and Healthcare

There is an innovative opportunity on the near horizon - the capability to determine potential unfavorable outcomes for patients while they are still in the hospital. By taking the existing data on the patient from as many sources as possible, including lab results, pharmacy history, patient specific data, physician notes, nursing notes, etc. and assembling them into the EMR, then using this data combined with the historical data for this patient and other patients, it is possible to forecast the likelihood of re-admission within 31 days, or of post-discharge infection, or any of several other possible outcomes. Armed with this foreknowledge, the case manager can intervene prior to the discharge of the patient to effectively eliminate or reduce the likelihood of the potentially unfavorable outcome by proper pre-release education or other interventions.

'Cyber Crime Is The Greatest Threat To Every Company In The World'

When speaking at the IBM Security Summit, Rometty was so pumped up on security that she could have been mistaken for a CTO (chief technology officer). She had this to say on IBM’s new security technology: “We announced that more than 1,000 organizations across 16 industries are participating in our X-Force Exchange threat intelligence network. We only launched the network a month ago, so its rapid growth speaks to significant need. And we’re bringing a potent weapon to the fight – a 700 terabyte threat database including two decades of malicious cyberattack data from IBM’s security operations, as well as anonymous threat data from more than 4,000 organizations, which have contributed 300 new collections of data in the last month.”

8 Apps, Gadgets To Keep IT Pros Awake On The Job

Most people think datacenters run on electricity, but, personally, I've found they run on caffeine. Servers and work stations really should dispense coffee, soda, and energy drinks right out of their sides. This is especially an issue during the holidays when vacations leave every IT department short-staffed. IT pros could find themselves doing longer shifts than normal or even covering the night shift for the first time in a long time. To help you stay awake during those long shifts, I've pulled together a list of gadgets, apps, and products to help you stay alert through the days when you wish you were settling in for a long winter's nap.

Q&A with Vasco Duarte on the #NoEstimates Book

In my own experience estimates are rarely needed, and even when needed they just point to another dysfunction that we should be tackling. In this context, eliminating estimates is indeed the goal. But just like Toyota has devised a multiple-level approach to waste (unnecessary waste, and necessary waste), so must we for estimates. Sometimes we must accept estimates, but endeavor to find ways to eliminate that need for estimates. This is possible, and I have helped many teams and organizations totally eliminate the need for estimates. In the later chapters of the book, we follow Carmen – our hero in the #NoEstimates story – as she discovers some of the ways in which you can eliminate estimation waste, and still be able to answer those critical business questions that customers will ask, such as: “will we be able to release this Feature on time?”

Four Big Data Governance Tasks to Prep for the Internet of Things

Distinguishing between useful investments in IoT capabilities and dead-end technologies, can be a tough job for healthcare organizations not entirely equipped to predict the future course of an explosive marketplace, but providers can start to define the scope and direction of short-term investments that will position them for seamless expansion as new needs arise. ... “We have noticed that when it comes to the access of information, our world is completely different today than what it used to be,” explained Amy Hester, PhD(c), BSN, RN, BC, Director of Clinical Informatics and Innovation at the University of Arkansas Medical Center to HealthITAnalytics.com in January. “Under the old way of doing things, it was possible for a patient’s vital signs to be 8 or 12 hours old by the time they were entered into the record.

Mobile Cloud Computing and its Critical Role in Data Management

The incorporation of mobile technologies is expected to push cloud computing beyond conventional norms. The utility of mobile computing is mostly associated with location, usage, and cost. It will also result in freedom for users to switch between devices with data security in place irrespective of a different device. The aforementioned benefits the computers in our pockets with the increase in number of mobile apps in recent times. Mobile technologies are responsible for growing demands with immediate gratification being the highlight prompting companies to react quickly and strongly.The most pivotal aspect of relationship between mobile and the Cloud is that mobility has increased its boundaries beyond the smartphones and tablets.

Finnish Thingsee builds the future of IOT

“For a short period of time after Nokia began to change, many people were disappointed but it has started to show them a kind of diversity in the hundreds of startups that are being founded,” says Yllasjarvi, noting that his team members are 90% ex-Nokia employees. “It is remarkable how after only a few years from the shift at Nokia, we’ve seen the birth of hundreds of new companies. Lots of foreign companies have come here and set up operations. Instead of one big company employing lots of people, there is increased diversity that is helping to rebuild the economy and make it stronger over the long run. It’s less vulnerable to changes and it brings new growth when the startups succeed and achieve their goal, bringing up the whole of Finland,” he asserts.

Home Automation using Raspberry Pi 2 and Windows 10 IoT

In today's era, technology can enhance human life. Technology is evolving decade by decade. Automation was a science fiction earlier but not today. By combining latest technology with home, we can build an awesome home. With the Raspberry Pi and Windows 10, we can build a home automation system that is capable of operating home devices automatically. ... A Raspberry Pi 2 will serve as a master device. For each room, want to automate, an Arduino UNO is needed. Arduino UNO will act as a secondary controller, which takes command from the Raspberry Pi 2 and operates specific device. Here, Raspberry Pi 2 and all Arduino UNOs are connected together on a I2C bus. All Arduino UNOs act as slaves. Each Arduino UNO have unique I2C slave address on the bus.

Quote for the day:

"Employers are like horses — they require management.” -- P.G. Wodehouse

December 06, 2015

Why the Internet of Things Should Be a Bank Thing

The most obvious IoT application for banks is in payments. In a commonly floated scenario, a customer's refrigerator senses the household has run out of milk and orders a fresh carton from the local grocery store. The payment seamlessly takes place in the background. A good experience would incent the customer to use a bank app for this rather than a built-in payment system. Loyalty programs could flow through such an app, and the bank could collect data that could be used in marketing and customer service. ... "Cars are interesting to think about for any number of reasons, not the least of which is because many people spend an inordinate amount of time in their cars," said Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer at U.S. Bank in Minneapolis.

What Mark Zuckerberg can learn from Elon Musk about changing the world

Facebook says its mission is to make the world more "open and connected," which is fine, but it doesn't quite grab you in the gut like unhooking planet earth from its oil addiction and colonizing the Red Planet. Zuckerberg's stated plans for the philanthropy so far are ambitious because of the sums involved, but not terribly thrilling. He and Chan, a physician, want to cure diseases, improve education, and open up the world to the Internet. The structure of their giving will turbocharge these efforts, by bringing entrepreneurship into the picture in a bigger way.

A New World of Data

The center of data gravity is moving with more apps being delivered via cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). In the past, I might only have to extract Salesforce data with other on-premises app data into a client’s on-premises data warehouse. Today there is a constantly growing list of popular cloud app data sources that analytics pros need to include in decision-making processes. If you neglect the ocean of cloud and IoT data sources that your opponents do include in their analytics, you will lose your competitive edge and may miss a key window of opportunity in the hyper-competitive global economy. Don’t believe me? ... Furthermore, there is a priceless peace of mind that comes with knowing someone else is on the hook along with me to make sure everything works. I guess you could say that I have finally seen the cloud light.

Understanding the Different Kinds of Infrastructure Convergence

They key differentiating point – and the whole premise behind hyper-convergence – is that this model doesn’t actually rely on the underlying hardware. Not entirely at least. This approach truly converges all the aspects of data processing at a single compute layer, dramatically simplifying storage and networking through software-defined approaches. The same compute system now works as a distributed storage system, taking away chunks of complexities in storage provisioning and bringing storage technology in tune with server technology refreshes. Here’s the big piece to remember: since the key aspect of hyper-convergence is software doing the storage controller functionality, it’s completely hardware-agnostic.

Data Protection in a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

Hyper converged infrastructure offer great modern backup methods, including data deduplication, intelligent load balancing, data compression, synthetic backup and rapid snapshots. For example, deduplication is a type of data compression where a single master copy of data is created with subsequent references. It can be seen in virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments that have thousands of users accessing the same applications. Another example is self-healing. In an event that a block storage volume with intensive read/write fails, the system canautomatically rebalance by moving workloads that handle recovery to nodes that are not involved in the event.

Ten practical ideas for organizing and managing your enterprise architecture

When it comes time to implement new technologies or IT-enabled processes, most companies tend to bring all relevant stakeholders to the table. They assemble leaders in the EA department and members of the finance department and the strategy team, as well as the software-development group, to vet options and come to a decision about which changes to make and how. This approach is useful for ensuring that all perspectives are heard and that all system requirements are accounted for. But when disagreements occur, those around the table will tend to deflect blame onto the EA department and absolve themselves of responsibility—particularly when multimillion-dollar IT infrastructure updates and system replacements are at stake.

The Role of an Enterprise Architect in a Lean Enterprise

A first and important step to promoting consistency is having a long-term vision for the enterprise portfolio. Being able to describe both the current state and future state architectures is essential to bringing projects in line. Start by assessing the current portfolio. Map out what systems exist and what they do. This does not need to be deeply detailed or call out individual servers. Instead, focus on applications and products and how they relate. Multiple layers may be required. If the enterprise is big enough, break the problem down into functional areas and map them out individually. If there is an underlying architectural pattern or strategy, identify it and where it has and has not been followed.

Conducting service provider due diligence is key for FIs in the digital age

Cyber governance of a company is now key. For an FI, this not only means ensuring its own cyber policies and systems are in place, but also that of its service providers. So, a service provider due diligence is a key requirement. Many FIs depend on third party service providers for services such as administrative, trading, custodial, data storage (including cloud solutions), human resources and technology services. Depending on the level of risk, due diligence can range from and include contract reviews, due diligence questionnaires on IT security, staff training, business continuity plans and cyber breach incident response plans and cyber security audits, existence and extent of cyber insurance, to onsite visits.

SQL SERVER – Practical Tips to Reduce SQL Server Database Table Size

The disk space intended for a data file in a database is logically divided into pages numbered contiguously from 0 to n. In SQL Server, the page size is 8 KB. This means SQL Server databases have 128 pages per megabyte. Disk I/O operations are performed at the page level. That is, SQL Server reads or writes whole data pages. The more compact data types is used, the less pages for storing that data are required, and as a result, less I/O operations needed. Introduced in SQL Server, buffer pool significantly improves I/O throughput. The primary purpose of the SQL buffer pool is to reduce database file I/O and improve the response time for data retrieval.

Trend-Setting Products for 2016

In today’s fast-paced digital economy, it is understood that effective data management strategies can have significant impact.CA’s global study of senior IT and business executives on the role of software as a business enabler found that “digital transformation” is underway as a coordinated strategy among more than half of the survey participants. The top 14% of respondents were identified as “digital disruptors” and, according to the survey, have two times higher revenue growth than mainstream organizations and two-and-a-half times higher profit growth than mainstream enterprises.

Quote for the day:

“Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will it result in regret or joy in the future?” -- Rob Liano

December 05, 2015

3 Myths of OpenStack Distros, parts 2 and 3

Although it may seem as though all distros should be equally stable and interoperable, and that they should be released with the corresponding community version, the realities of hardening software mean that that’s simply not possible. Make sure that your vendor is providing you with the best possible version of OpenStack for you, not just hitting the market as quickly as possible. At Mirantis, we’re very proud of the stability of Mirantis OpenStack 7.0. I’d like to invite you to download it now and see for yourself how well-tested and stable the release is. We welcome your feedback about this blog and about our product.

Securing File and Print Servers

Another important security feature of the NFTS file system is the Encrypting File System (EFS) feature. EFS can be used to secure confidential corporate data from unauthorized access, because it enables you to encrypt files and folders to further enhance the security of these files and folders. Even when an unauthorized person manages to access the files and folders because of incorrectly configured NTFS permissions, the files and folders would be encrypted. EFS uses keys to encrypt and decrypt data, and the cryptography application programming interface (CryptoAPI) architecture to provide cryptographic functions. EFS can work on computers that are members of a domain, and on standalone computers. The keys which EFS uses to encrypt and decrypt data, is a public and private key pair, and a per file encryption key.

Microsoft plans to add containers to Windows client, too

What would container support in Windows client mean from a security standpoint? Instead of using a virtual machine to run a browser, a user could use a Hyper-V container to isolate the browser from other apps running on the operating system. That could keep attackers from infiltrating other parts of the Windows OS via a browser attack. Over the past several years, Microsoft Research has investigated ways to make the Windows OS more secure. The ServiceOS project -- formerly known as "Gazelle" and "MashupOS" -- aimed to tighten security by isolating the browser from the OS. There seems to have been little, if any, work to advance ServiceOS for the past few years, however.

Turn the Lights Back on with GIS and Operations Dashboards

Often, too little or too much information slows down analysis and decision-making. Operations dashboards must be configurable to display relevant datasets based on an individual’s role in the utility. For example, a dashboard for emergency operations centre staff might include a live map that plots locations of outages, customers and assets; automated vehicle location data to enable real-time tracking of field crews; and live weather feeds that enable dispatchers to monitor severe weather events that could impact restoration efforts and allow them to redirect crews accordingly. - See more at: http://blogs.esri.com/esri/esri-insider/2015/12/03/turn-the-lights-back-on-with-gis-and-operations-dashboards/#sthash.C53SvaRu.dpuf

Consumer acceptance of in-store location-based tracking on the rise

“In our hyper-connected world, it’s not possible to do this without technology. Consumers today want tech-enabled in-store experiences – in fact, over a quarter would like the shops they visit to know exactly who they are when they walk in through the door, thanks to location-based technologies,” he said. Services such as price comparison sites and in-store Wi-Fi mean customers are now reviewing and comparing products from other stores while shopping. Some 87% of customers will have researched products before entering bricks-and-mortar stores, according to the research, which puts pressure on shop assistants to make the customer’s experience in-store a differentiator.

Why Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Spend on Personalized Learning

“We’re starting to build this technology now, and the results are already promising,” Zuckerberg and Chan wrote in an open letter to their newborn daughter, Max, about the charitable work. “Not only do students perform better on tests, but they gain the skills and confidence to learn anything they want. And this journey is just beginning. The technology and teaching will rapidly improve every year you’re in school,” they wrote. While the general concept of personalized learning isn’t new—teachers have long tried to design lessons to reach individual kids—the explosion of new technology, apps, and the “smart” software has only begun to penetrate classrooms in the last few years. As a result, we don’t know yet how well it works or, really, whether it works at all.

What Is Disruptive Innovation?

Disruptive innovations are made possible because they get started in two types of markets that incumbents overlook. Low-end footholds exist because incumbents typically try to provide their most profitable and demanding customers with ever-improving products and services, and they pay less attention to less-demanding customers. In fact, incumbents’ offerings often overshoot the performance requirements of the latter. This opens the door to a disrupter focused (at first) on providing those low-end customers with a “good enough” product. In the case of new-market footholds, disrupters create a market where none existed. Put simply, they find a way to turn nonconsumers into consumers.

Lynne Cazaly on Making Sense using Visual Communications

Lynne Cazaly spoke at the recent Agile New Zealand conference on the importance of clarity and sense-making in a world where VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) is the norm. ... Two point communication is what we are doing, you and I are having a conversation and so many meetings and work place settings are these, two point communication, or just people standing around talking and to bring it to a next level to three point communication, let’s have something that we are talking about; it is great to see people gathering around the story walls and project plans etc. but the same happens in any team any conversation any session; get that third point of communication going which is the visual map, maybe the artifact but it’s the thing that helps people make sense so you get to great content a lot quicker.

Quote for the day:

"The person who doesn’t have something to do after the meeting, shouldn’t have attended the meeting." -- Dan Rockwell

December 04, 2015

DBA Skills for developers

In many smaller companies or departments, there is no dedicated DBA. In these cases, it falls on *someone* in the office to get to grips with the blackbox that is the database server, keep it running and dive in when the things go wrong. The objective of this article is to give non data-focused developers a quick roundup of useful information and knowledge that will enable them to both solve some routine issues that come up and also help prepare for some in advance. This is not intended to be a very indepth article, rather its a quick read over coffee break that should give give the reader some useful starting points. I would be delighted if any more experienced DBAs out there would like to comment and help expand the list.

Technology Will Translate Brain Signals into Actions for Brain Injury Patients

While this is a great achievement for the team, the people involved in making it possible consider it just one of the many milestones that they will cover in future. They wish to add more features into this system so there is literally no difference in how a normal person browses on the internet and how a quadriplegic patient will. The coming milestones for the team would be when they are able to add the drag and drop feature to this system. The team will also be working on the multi-touch capability of the system. As of the moment, BrainGate clinical facilities are the only places where this equipment is available. As more programs are introduced and awareness is spread about this system, it will go in every corner of the world.

How CloudFlare is accelerating the web with HTTP/2

The main focus of both SPDY and HTTP/2 is on performance, especially latency as perceived by the end-user while using a browser, with a secondary focus on network and server resource usage. One main benefit is the ability to use a single TCP connection from browsers to a website, or in the case of CloudFlare, a reverse proxy. As such, CloudFlare is in the perfect position to provide the benefits of HTTP/2 to all CloudFlare users by accelerating the web surfing experience between clients' browsers and CloudFlare, without the need to change anything on the origin server.

9 enterprise tech trends for 2016 and beyond

InfoWorld’s David Linthicum recently suggested it was time to retire the phase “cloud computing” and simply say “computing.” That’s how essential cloud has become -- and why for the past couple of years cloud has framed my annual attempt to identify the nine key enterprise tech trends going forward. In 2015, it became a lot clearer what cloud infrastructure in all its scalable, self-service glory will be best for: running applications composed of microservices outfitted with RESTful APIs. Most likely those services will run in containers, which give developers more control than ever in building, testing, and deploying applications. Containers in turn support devops, where ops leverages new automation, instrumentation, and monitoring -- and devs take new responsibility for applications in production.

Using data-driven insights for transformational outcomes

In this environment, it’s entirely possible for an agency to meet or exceed transactional performance metrics while experiencing breakdowns in the system—whether it’s food stamps ending up in the wrong hands, millions of Medicaid dollars channeled to one doctor at multiple addresses, or a child who is seriously injured despite multiple visits by a child welfare agency. And when human service systems experience their worst failures, where it matters the most, it often becomes obvious that traditional performance indicators do not guarantee meaningful, mission-critical outcomes for the people who rely on these services. But this all-too-common pattern is beginning to change, thanks to the rapid proliferation of new technologies and methods, and the introduction of more sophisticated data analytics.

Wearables will be life-changing… but no ingestibles, thanks

“When you look at what the IoT devices need, they’ve got to have some sort of processing, they need connectivity and a lot of security, and our entire portfolio is built around these things,” Goel says. Goel is particularly excited about wearables, pointing me to research that suggests three-quarters of our bodies could end up being connected by various forms of technology. Thus clothed we can better see what’s in front of us and what’s around the corner, understand our bodies, risks and opportunities. Already we see watches, wristbands, heart monitors, eyewear and more and Goel expects a mixture of approaches in different markets. And those different approaches will all require different features, connectivity and power characteristics hence the wide variety of IoT protocols and proposed standards from Zigbee, Thread, Bluetooth variants, WiFi, Z-Wave, WeMo and many more.

Workforce Management for Human Capital Management

Out of necessity, workforce management software is evolving as an integral part of systems for business units and for human resources. Importantly, advanced workforce management systems typically include analytics that help management understand workforce performance; in our previous workforce management research 61 percent of organizations said that analytics is important to workforce management. ... Furthermore, analytics can guide executives and managers to improve decision-making and rectify issues that could be leading to increased costs and be out of compliance with regulations. Many organizations, however, are not prepared to undertake these efforts; they still use an array of spreadsheets or tools that are not synchronized with real-time data from workforce management systems.

The SQL Server 2016 Query Store: Overview and Architecture

The Query Store is a feature that can help us to troubleshoot query performance, as well as capturing query execution information, such as the number of executions or the average duration of a query. The Query Store also captures every Execution Plan that has been generated for a specific query and you can then decide what Execution Plan you want SQL Server to use for that specific query. ... it is important to understand that the Query Store is a complete new feature inside SQL Server 2016, which is only available as a preview version at the time of writing these articles. This means that information inside the articles can change when SQL Server 2016 is officially released. Personally I don’t think this is very likely at the moment, seeing how the Query Store functionality remained stable during the various CTP versions, but I’m obliged to give a warning.

A Multi-Tenant (SaaS) Application With ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Boilerplate

Event Cloud is a free SaaS (multi-tenant) application. We can create a tenant which has it's own events, users, roles... There are some simple business rules applied while creating, canceling and registering to an event. ... Entities are parts of our domain layer and located under EventCloud.Core project. ASP.NET Boilerplate startup template comes with Tenant, User, Role... entities which are common for most applications. We can customize them based on our needs. Surely, we can add our application specific entities. ... Here, we handle these events and send email to related users as a notification (not implemented emailing actually to make the sample application simpler). An event handler should implement IEventHandler<event-type> interface. ABP automatically calls the handler when related events occur.

IT asset management strategy: License compliance and beyond

Discovery tools operate using one of two basic technologies: either agent-based or agentless. With agent-based discovery, software needs to be loaded on every one of the assets. The tool queries the agent, and the agent is going to talk back to the discovery tool. With agentless discovery, there's no agent on the individual component. [Instead, you have] profiles built into the discovery tool that I am looking for a match to. So it detects that this box exists. And it then compares what it sees in the box to the profile list. And when it finds a match, it reports that as a particular asset. That's an Exchange server, that's a file server, that's a straight file server and that's on SQL Server. And then, you as the customer can add profiles over time, so that the tool finds more and more things on its own.

Quote for the day:

"Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features." -- Steve Jobs,