Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

February 23, 2016

5G may be the future of mobile: But a couple of things have to happen first

The trouble is this next-gen mobile technology is still not ready for use, even though it may well be by 2020. In the meantime, operators and developers have to maintain a high level of expectation about what 5G will bring. ... Ping also pointed out the need to shift from a supply-driven business model to a demand-driven one, and the necessity to support a software-defined architecture, spawned from software-defined networking and introducing a certain level of virtualization between software producers and consumers. "Before 5G, we need to better understand the needs of verticals, support them during their integration, thus driving forward a digital revolution," he said. "It's important to act rather than wait for a new technology."

U.S. sees robots taking well-paying jobs

"Business dynamism -- the so-called churn or birth and death rate of firms -- has been in persistent decline in the United States since the 1970s," the report said. Young firms that survive "grow faster than older, established firms," the report says. But "there are fewer young firms in the economy today than in the 1980s." The reason for the decline in startups is not clear, but it may stem from a decline in innovation and productivity. This could be due to the increases in government regulation, and a consolidation of market power by mergers and acquisitions. Lower rates of job creation and destruction may be reducing the labor churn in the marketplace, "by which workers find jobs best matched to their skills and vice versa, lowering overall productivity for all firms -- young and old."

Docker announces Container-as-a-Service to bridge the DevOps gap

The portability of Docker means that Dockerized apps can run on any infrastructure. The only dependency is a Linux kernel, and that is a big part of the CaaS play that Docker wants to make with DDC. "You can deploy these workloads on bare metal," Johnston said. "You can deploy them to VMs in the data center, or deploy them to cloud nodes—all without breaking the application or forcing a [rewritten] application." The flexibility extends to cloud environments as well, with providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. The idea with containers is that you are able to write an application once and move it wherever you want, giving users the flexibility to drive workload placement based on business requirements instead of tech lock-in.

Countless computers vulnerable to MouseJack attack through wireless mice and keyboards

Attackers could write scripts that fire off malware to be uploaded to the target that allows any number of further attacks, Newlin says, or to access resources the user’s login authorizes. These devices use chips made by Nordic Semiconductor, some that support encryption and some that don’t. Newlin says those that do can be patched to implement the encryption. The others would have to be removed from the host machine when the keyboard and mouse are not in use and the machine is turned on and unattended. In response to an email about the vulnerability Microsoft sent this statement via its PR firm: “Microsoft has a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues, and will proactively update impacted devices as soon as possible.”

The UNIX® Evolution: An Innovative History

What started out as a communal programing environment or even an early word processor, the UNIX system turned out to be a more durable technology than Thomson and Ritchie could have imagined. It’s not only a durable operating system, but it is adaptable, reliable, flexible, portable and scalable. Ultimately, the UNIX OS would end up being supported across multiple systems, architectures, platform vendors, etc. and also spawn a number of look-alike compatibles. Lastly, UNIX technology would be the engine that drove innovation even beyond programming and data processing to markets and technologies beyond the realm of computer science. The academic and commercial take-up of UNIX systems would help germinate the growth of many existing and new technologies.

Platform business model picks up steam -- what's the CIO role?

The CIO's role in the early phases of a developing platform may be minimal, as the business focuses on cultivating the community the platform hopes to attract. John Hagel III, co-chairman of Deloitte LLP's Center for the Edge and author of the recent report, The Power of Platforms, points to the example of Li & Fung, whose platform orchestrates supply networks in the apparel industry. In its early days, the Li & Fung platform relied mainly on the telephone and fax to get off the ground. "Some of the most sophisticated platforms we see, particularly around orchestration, are actually being done today with limited technology," he said. Instead, emerging platforms tend to focus much more on defining a governance structure, Hagel explained.

The future of mobility

There’s no mystery about why we pay such close attention to the ups and downs of the auto industry—its extended value chain is an essential engine of global economic growth. ... There are two profoundly different visions of the future of mobility. Fundamental differences center around whether today’s system of private ownership of driver-controlled vehicles remains relatively unchanged or whether we eventually migrate to a driverless system of predominantly shared mobility. There is also a critical difference about the pathway forward. The “insider” view believes that today’s system can progress in an orderly, linear fashion, in which the current industry assets and fundamental structure remain essentially intact. The “disrupter” view envisions a tipping-point approach to a very different future, one that offers great promise and potential societal benefits

The Demise of Passwords and the Rise of Authentication Technologies

Cyberattacks dominated the news in 2015, and it’s likely that 2016 will be no different. Cyber criminals are relentless in their efforts to find and take advantage of security weaknesses, which often include privileged user credentials. As computing processing power continues to increase, it’s becoming possible to break even the most complex passwords, putting every organization at risk of devastating breaches. Rather than requiring customers and employees to memorize 20-character, non-dictionary passwords, security and risk professionals need to start plotting the demise of the password and improving the security of privileged accounts. This webcast will highlight the technologies, such as privileged access and account management tools, best suited for securing your most sensitive systems and data.

4 Ways Good Project Leaders Create Cultures of Success

Who has the greatest impact on projects as a whole? The simple answer is everyone (executives/sponsors, vendors, customers, consultants and especially employees). If any one of these individuals is dissatisfied, the project suffers a loss in terms of participation, productivity and buy-in. These losses can be tangible or intangible, and are not always easily or successfully quantified. The one thing that’s certain is that dissatisfaction will imprint itself on project success or failure in one way or another. This can be through low morale, decreased productivity, conflict, absenteeism, an increase in turnover and so on. The end result is project teams and companies as a whole operating at greatly reduced competence due to various forms of dysfunction.

Can large companies adopt the agility of startups?

The slang term that is going around for this phenomenon is uberization. It is a derivative from ride sharing service Uber, which revolutionized the taxi and chauffeur industries instantly and now threatens their existence. The idea of bullet-proofing your organization from uberization by becoming fleet of foot with innovation is tantalizing in whiteboard discussions—but how easy is it to do for large companies with layers of product and idea vetting processes, regulatory and political constraints? In a LinkedIn post, entrepreneur and investor Yann Girard, wrote that corporations are too riddled with red tape, regulations, protocol, politics, CYA and fear of risk for their employees to take on the unknowns associated with the practices of startups, where immense rewards loom on the distant seashore but the waters that must be traversed to get there are laden with sharks.

Quote for the day:

"Not being able to quit your job shouldn’t mean you have to quit your dreams" -- Richard Branson

February 22, 2016

IT's New Nightmare: Will Ransomware Hold Your Data Hostage?

The new ransomware threat on healthcare is worrisome because hospitals are not designed to fight cyber risks, says Rahul Kashyap, chief security architect at Bromium, which monitors treat data and analyzes threats. “IT security in hospitals is not architected to ward off these threats—hospital attacks will rise.” At Hollywood Presbyterian, the ransomware attack started on February 5, crippling access to electronic health records and interrupting the flow of clinical information. The facility resolved the situation by paying the equivalent of $17,000 in ransom to obtain a decryption key and put its information systems back online, said Allen Stefanek, its CEO. Access to data in the electronic record was restored on Monday, February 15, he said.

Mark Zuckerberg Outlines The Future of Facebook

"VR is the next platform, where anyone can create and experience anything they want," said Zuckerberg. "Pretty soon, we’re going to live in a world where everyone has the power to share and experience whole scenes as if you’re just right there in person." Virtual reality relies on 360-degree videos that capture a scene from all angles. It requires a camera with two or more lenses and software that stitches the video or still images together. That's what Samsung's Gear 360 does. Earlier in the day, LG Electronics announced a similar 360-degree camera. For viewers, similar software is required to make sense of the video and play it either on a conventional screen, where viewers can move the video to look around, or on a virtual reality headset, where they move their heads to look around.

Cisco next-generation firewall marks improvements

Cisco next-generation firewall is being retooled, with a unified management console, the 4100 series of appliances for "high-performance applications" and a newly minted Security Segmentation Service -- a consulting and advisory arrangement that guides organizations on security protocols. "Attackers are getting bolder and coordinating their efforts. The Cisco next-generation firewall acts as a unifying platform, integrating Cisco and third-party security solutions for increased correlation and context," David Goeckeler, senior vice president and general manager for Cisco's security business group, said in a statement. "The result is better protection, and faster detection and response to advanced threats."

Artificial intelligence needs your data, all of it

Smartphone photos can be tagged with time and location. By harvesting thousands of photos a day from major cities, the AirTick app can train A.I.-software to learn how to estimate the amount of smog from the photos. Over time, the A.I. plus the smartphone photo information should enable the system to maintain real-time, neighborhood-by-neighborhood estimates of air quality. That could allow timely alerts for people to go inside when the air quality gets really bad and also provide evidence for citizens to demand cleaner air, say, in factory towns where the air may be especially unhealthful. Another research project out of the University of California at Berkeley last week published a free app called MyShake that can detect earthquakes.

Hacker explains how he put "backdoor" in hundreds of Linux Mint downloads

The hacker responsible, who goes by the name "Peace," told me in an encrypted chat on Sunday that a "few hundred" Linux Mint installs were under their control -- a significant portion of the thousand-plus downloads during the day. But that's only half of the story. Peace also claimed to have stolen an entire copy of the site's forum twice -- one from January 28, and most recently February 18, two days before the hack was confirmed. The hacker shared a portion of the forum dump, which we verified contains some personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, birthdates, profile pictures, as well as scrambled passwords. Those passwords might not stay that way for much longer. The hacker said that some passwords have already been cracked, with more on the way.

Inside the New Microsoft, Where Lie Detection Is a Killer App

Though Microsoft has been working on machine learning for at least 20 years, divisions like Office and Windows once harnessed its predictive qualities only sparingly. "The reaction of many people there was 'We know how to do things, why are you questioning my views with your data,'" says Pedro Domingos, a University of Washington computer science professor who wrote a book on machine learning called The Master Algorithm. Microsoft truly embraced the technology when it started Bing in an attempt to catch up with Google. Satya Nadella ran engineering and technical strategy for the search division before becoming chief executive officer two years ago and has been sprinkling machine learning like fairy dust on everything his company touches.

Deleting Data Vs. Destroying Data: The Difference Can Be Damning

Attempting to repent for its ‘sins’ – so to speak – and make good with distraught customers – Ashley Madison rolled out a new “discreet photo” security tool that lets users hide their identity on their profile page by choosing from two different masks, a black bar that covers their eyes or four different degrees of blurring. While this new feature is somewhat interesting, it’s not really what I would deem to be the best corrective action to take after they failed so miserably to remove customer data. Rather than address the big issue - the failure to remove user data completely and permanently - they’re just putting a very ineffective and flimsy Band-aid over the injury. Rather than let users put a mask over their profile photos, I’d caution the dating site to take stock of the cause of the breach and focus on changing things seriously so that cause doesn’t and can’t ever happen again.

What’s Next in Computing?

It’s tempting to dismiss deep learning as another Silicon Valley buzzword. The excitement, however, is supported by impressive theoretical and real-world results. For example, the error rates for the winners of the ImageNet challenge — a popular machine vision contest — were in the 20–30% range prior to the use of deep learning. Using deep learning, the accuracy of the winning algorithms has steadily improved, and in 2015 surpassed human performance. Many of the papers, data sets, and software tools related to deep learning have been open sourced. This has had a democratizing effect, allowing individuals and small organizations to build powerful applications.

What Happens To Older Programmers and Developers?

The key is that you have to stay up with technology. If you think that you’re going to develop one skill set, if you think you’re going to come out of college and never learn on your own and never learn anything new and not stay up to date well then yeah, you’re going to become a dinosaur. By the time you’re 35 those young programmers, Mark Zuckerbergs, young programmers who are superior, they are going to be superior because they’re eager, the want it. They’re learning new things. They have the latest technology, but there’s no reason why—in fact, by the time you’re 35 or 40 you should be able to become a better developer, right? You should be better than all those young 20 year olds because you should have experience with a lot of different programming languages and technologies as well as the knowledge of the new ones.

Why De-Escalation Management is Crucial to IT Infrastructure Health

The most obvious distinction that needs to be made is whether you are more of a reports or an alerts kind of person. Reports and alerts both help account for the health of a system. Yet reports are primarily used to document the overall state of a system. Say for instance you are a web hosting provider and you want to demonstrate the quality of your service to your clients, a report will serve this purpose just fine. Assuming that everything is as it should be. But then again, it is obvious that a report will not come out right automatically. Too many issues will certainly affect your overall service quality and bring it down to a level where it definitely should not be. So what you need to do is get active as soon as you get the first indication that something goes wrong.

Quote for the day:

"Failures only triumph if we don't have the courage to try again." -- Gordon Tredgold

February 21, 2016

There is no way around Enterprise Architecture

If you acknowledge principles and patters do exist in your enterprise you have to ask yourself if you’re in control of them? Have you defined a structure of principles which guide your organization by performing their tasks and making business decisions? Have you engineered the patterns so you know why they’re there and what their purpose is? Imagine your market is changing, your customers demand other services. Do you know which patterns and principles to change? More specifically, which strategies, processes, responsibilities, artefacts, applications, timelines or locations are involved? Unfortunately, I’ve seen to many enterprises that are not in control. If this article made you aware, why don’t you initiate a way to get in control of your enterprises principles and patterns?

Take-Up of Anti-Phishing Standard DMARC Jumps 24%

Legacy IT infrastructure, convoluted email ecosystems, and risk-aversion were all cited as reasons contributing to the continued slow adoption rates in some industries. That said, 2.5 billion inboxes are now protected by DMARC and most major webmail providers including Yahoo and AOL support the standard. Google is switching DMARC on in June. Although, the report added the following note of caution: “However, it is important to note that enterprise-messaging gateways are in the early stages of rolling out DMARC, and reporting capabilities are still a big hurdle. 2016 will see an increased focus on providing enhanced reporting capabilities that threat intelligence platforms can leverage to identify malicious activity faster.”

Organizational Culture: 9 Tips for Entrepreneurs

An employee is an essential asset for a startup, especially a low-budget one. With my first startup, I hired two college students because I thought they would connect with potential clients better than someone older with experience (we were targeting exchange students for ski trips). I was wrong. They were terrible, and I was essentially paying them the little money that I had to not really do much at all. That money could have gone towards a hundred other things, and I didn’t realize how difficult hardworking people are to find. So, in short, my advice is to hire smart. Get people who will not only work hard to better your startup, but also help create a positive atmosphere. The opposite can ruin a startup.

Top 5 CIO tips for working with the C-Suite

CIOs across all industries must have a deep understanding of the technology deployed in their business. They need to understand the limitations of the current network and applications, the multiple contractual relationships with technology vendors, and the best way to manage both the good and bad in any enterprise IT environment. But as a digital revolution rapidly sweeps across all industries, now is the time for CIOs to be making the case for how IT can be of strategic importance to the business, and to start being heard in the C-suite. Here are five ways in which CIOs can make that happen:

Using Predictive Analytics to Identify Cyber Security Risks

Today’s cyber criminals have learned that snatch-and-grab attacks, where they attempt to quickly steal large amounts of data from a network, are easily detected by network defenses such as firewalls and anti-virus, which will effectively shut down or quarantine access. Therefore, criminals have evolved a more patient approach, constructing layered software that is designed to steal small fragments of data over a longer period of time. ... The industry average before a network breach is detected stands at around 200 days. The result for the victim is death by a thousand cuts. Predictive analytics can detect these data anomalies early on, looking for new patterns of data access, including hidden data that is being exfiltrated into another format and/or encrypted to avoid detection.

The Fifth Amendment and Bitcoin: Why the Battle is About to Begin

Translated to bitcoin private keys, that could mean a person would have to transfer his or her bitcoins to where the government wanted them moved (eg, a government controlled bitcoin wallet) but not tell the government the private key used. So far, no US court has ruled, at least publicly, on whether the Fifth Amendment protects a person from government compelled disclosure of his or her bitcoin private key or keys. ... In the not too distant future, there can be no doubt that a US court will tackle the issue of the application of the Fifth Amendment to bitcoin private keys in a case that undoubtedly will be closely watched like the current Apple case. And that court should uphold one of the Fifth Amendment’s most important protections and not compel disclosure, despite prosecutors urging otherwise.

The five key technology trends businesses must embrace to stay ahead

Technology continues to evolve rapidly, so much so it’s impossible to know for certain where the world will be in five years’ time. For example, at the turn of the millennium, who would have thought there would now be more mobile devices than humans? It is therefore more important than ever for businesses to embrace emerging and disruptive technologies before it is too late - ignoring them now will leave businesses falling behind and questioning what might have been as a potential competitive advantage slips through their fingers. For example, in 2009 Blackberry was named by Fortune as the fasted growing company in the world, yet after remaining stagnant for five years it was forced to play catch-up, not only to Apple but also to the whole mobile industry.

Perspective: A woman in tech in Palestine

One of the core issues as she sees it is that jobs are available in the larger cities but it is not an option for a woman to live alone or be out late at night. “As a result, Palestinian women have one of the lowest rates of workforce participation in the world. Despite this challenge, Palestinian women make up a majority of students in many universities in Palestine,” she says. “I was often told growing up that ‘a woman’s future is in her husband’s kitchen,” she adds. “But, I believe as a woman I can help change the world in my own way, even in tough situations. This motivated me to finish school with high grades. Then I earned a bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering and graduated with honors.” Despite this, she describes a period of two years where she was completely unemployed with no job prospects.

The promise of predictive analytics for Web content

“Seismic shifts in both technology and consumer behavior during the past decade have produced a granular, virtually infinite record of every action consumers take online,” Wes Nichols explained in the Harvard Business Review. “Add to that the oceans of data from DVRs and digital set-top boxes, retail checkout, credit card transactions, call center logs and myriad other sources, and you find that marketers now have access to a previously unimaginable trove of information about what consumers see and do. The opportunity is clear.” ... The challenge, of course, being that monetization is much more complicated in media companies. And actionability is not clearly defined for digital publishers: Data has mostly provided a rear-view mirror perspective.

Linux Foundation announces Zephyr Project, an open source IoT operating system

First and foremost, being open source, the Zephyr Project will drive innovation for IoT devices through the roof. Startups will no longer have to consider licensing an operating system or developing one on their own as a hurdle for their product. You want to innovate for IoT? Grab the Zephyr Project source and begin. Working with an open source platform also ensures your innovation isn't capped. By its very nature, you will be able to do what you need with the Zephyr Project. This will be the ideal IoT platform, as it will not work "against" the developers. No matter the function or feature, you can roll it in. Developers around the globe will contribute to the project, so you can bet it will grow fast.

Quote for the day:

“Striving to constantly activate all resources all the time is not a recipe for effective operations." --Goldratt

February 20, 2016

Technical Architects With Dirty Hands

The really good architects I knew received genuine respect, authority, and often affection within the team. You could not imagine operating without their sage advice, and they were ready to pitch in when an especially nasty problem emerged. When I first met some IT architects, who lived outside the development teams, my first thought was, “Why would you ever isolate yourself that way?” The weakness of the architect external to the team are hardly surprising. Rather than earning respect, teams look at these outsiders with suspicion. Rather than wielding authority, architects often struggle to find leverage with teams. And affection? In many organizations, that’s a rare achievement for architects.

Stubbing, Mocking and Service Virtualization Differences

Service virtualization is a technique for decoupling a test suite from environmental dependencies that is growing in popularity. It is part of the broader category of "test doubles" that include mocks and stubs. There are many tools that support either service virtualization or two very similar approaches: stubbing and mocking. This article offers a comparison of the three approaches, their relative strengths and explores a number of real world situations to recommend which technique may offer the most benefit. The intent is to provide an understanding of all three techniques that enables to you to choose the best option between a mock, stub, or virtual service depending upon the specifics of your situation.

There are no Pit Stops In Enterprise Transformations really ?

While all of these sound easy to write about but when faced with the challenge of turning your enterprise around , you need a mindset, culture , appropriate tools, talented people who understand the nuances of the change , tools required and how to go about it. ... Unless people perceive it this way change is difficult to force it down their throats. Fluidity in all process and people boundaries such that people can reach out and interact with folks across their immediate process lines. This needs a mindset change which can happen when their is strong management support towards moving away from silos and encouraging decentralization. ... Usual mindset is look at time, money , resources and progress once you have finished your product or solution.

Intel Compute Stick (2016) Review

The hardware upgrades are the less noticeable changes, though they extend beyond just a processor change from last year’s Bay Trail Z3735F chip to a Cherry Trail Atom x5-Z8300 running at 1.44GHz. The combo Wi-Fi/Bluetooth wireless card is now an Intel dual-band Wireless-AC 7265 instead of last year’s Realtek RTL8723BS, which adds support for 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2. ... Externally, the Cherry Trail Compute Stick has gotten the much needed addition of a USB 3.0 port, which complements the microSD slot and USB 2.0 port that are carried over from last year. This upgrade alone makes this year’s Compute Stick a vast improvement over last year’s; as you’ll see below, the performance differences between the Bay Trail and Cherry Trail processors are so small you won’t feel them much

The Next Big Questions in Management

So if we want to know where management thinking is going, perhaps it is most useful to look for the questions that people are not quite yet asking. Some of them may be surfacing now, seemingly out of nowhere. They may seem impractical or irrelevant. They may come from out of left field (or distant center or right field, for that matter). But sooner or later, they will likely strike us as the self-evident questions that we should have been asking all along. As editor-in-chief of strategy+business since 2005, it has been my job — and pleasure — to forage for those kinds of inquiries. Here are four significant questions I think may preoccupy the person (or computer) who holds this post 20 years hence:

Will The Real Enterprise Private Cloud Please Stand Up

Survey after survey have reaffirmed that IT security continues to weigh heavily on the minds of global CIOs. As just one recent example, cybersecurity was cited as a top priority for the fourth straight year by respondents of the CSC Global CIO Survey. With innovation and agility as key CIO objectives, it should come as no surprise then that 80% of respondents to the 2014-2015 edition of that survey reported moderate-to-heavy investment in private cloud. All too often, however, private cloud is implemented as a thin layer of automation on top of traditional virtualization technologies and IT practices. And all too often, these projects struggle.

Ramco: IT's First-Aid for the Aviation Industry

For years, the aviation industry has understood that IT offers a way of optimizing operations. Yet, many airlines still suffer from the use of disparate point solutions, each generating a repository of redundant data, which often has no ‘meaning’. Surprisingly some operators even handle a few jobs manually and manage vast maintenance data in hundreds of excel spreadsheets! But with the kind of cut-throat competition that is there in the aviation industry today, using an excel sheet as a process optimization, productivity improvement tool will send you back to the stone ages. Offline models of track maintenance, managing safety and regulatory compliance manually using paper-work or spreadsheets, using disparate point solutions are all tools of the past century.

HSBC banks on biometrics with new voice and touch services

According to the bank, the new services will be available to up to 15 million customers, who will no longer have to go to the trouble of remembering passwords and answers to random security questions. As the sheer number of passwords that have to remembered these days is one of the main issues for consumers, this is certainly a positive step forward. Francesca McDonagh, HSBC UK’s head of retail banking and wealth management, said: “The launch of voice and touch ID makes it even quicker and easier for customers to access their bank account, using the most secure form of password technology – the body” and described the move as “the largest planned rollout of voice biometric security technology in the UK.”

Diagnosing Common Database Performance Hotspots in our Java Code

All too often, developers don’t feel the need to optimize pool size as they typically don’t do the requisite large scale load testing, nor do they know how many users will be expected to use that new feature, or what ramifications it implies, for parallel DB Access. Or perhaps the pool configuration “got lost” along the way from pre-prod to production deployment and then defaulted back to whatever the default is for your app server. Connection pool utilization can easily be monitored through JMX metrics. Every application server (Tomcat, JBoss, WebSphere, …) exposes these metrics, although some require you to explicitly enable this feature. The following shows the pool utilization of four WebLogic servers running in a cluster.

Are You a Transformational CIO?

The transformational IT organization, on the other hand, is very much in demand and there are very few IT leaders that understand it. There also are very few business folks, so folks outside of IT, that have that level of expectation of IT; that transformational expectation, that business-centric expectation. And the best way to think about a transformational IT org is they are a business organization first that happens to have responsibility for IT. So, a CIO that is very business-oriented as opposed to tech-oriented, that also happens to have responsibility for IT. Back to your fundamental question, I would argue that the traditional, not the transformational, but the traditional CIO and the traditional IT organization is very much in decline. The transformational IT organization and the transformational CIO is very much in demand and that trend is something that we are just starting to scratch the surface on.

Quote for the day:

"Leadership requires the courage to make decisions that will benefit the next generation." -- Alan Autry

February 19, 2016

An absolute beginner’s guide to setting up Google Analytics for your website

Google Analytics is a free service that tracks and reports website traffic. Providing insight into the demographics of site visitors, the performance of a specific campaign, and how long people are staying on your site for, are just a few of the many things the program is capable of. This data gives you an all round better view of how your site is doing and allows you to understand what improvements can be made to make sure you’re optimizing different areas for maximum conversion. In the below tutorial, we will walk you through some basics of Google Analytics and what you need to do in order to get started.

VMware aims for thought leadership with new releases

The major new sizzle here though is VMware Horizon Air with Hybrid-Mode, a new cloud-scale architecture which offers a new approach to building, delivering and managing virtual workspaces through giving customers the choice of a full cloud-hosted service or hybrid service. It will consist of two main components – a unified Cloud Control Plane and Horizon Node technology that works with VMware Horizon Air ready infrastructure. “Hybrid Mode lets you run in the desktop, but also spin VMs up and down in a third party cloud, and that’s new here,” Rosemarin said. VMware Horizon Air-enabled hyper-converged appliances will let IT administrators create up to 2,000 virtual desktops in under 20 minutes.

People in CIO positions should stay off this list

The main requirement of CIO positions is to deliver and safeguard the IT systems that keep businesses running; being perceived as untrustworthy is unthinkable for CIOs. Yet, if their IT organizations have a history of failures in delivering bread-and-butter service, the business side is going to have a hard time trusting the CIO to deliver the more advanced capabilities that can provide a competitive advantage, such as big data analytics or cloud computing. A CIO also won't be trusted, Cameron explained in the report, if the IT department doesn't build systems that are "end-to-end" -- integrated into all the other applications a business uses on a daily basis. At Home Depot, Cameron told me, a checkout clerk can ring you up, of course, but he can also let you know about a sale the store is having that day or check on the availability of another item you might need.

Africa’s big banks are betting on fintech startups and bitcoin to beat disruption

There’s good reason for banks to be afraid, says Vinny Lingham, a South African serial entrepreneur whose current blockchain startup, Civic, is based in Silicon Valley. “I think the banking sector in Africa is going to be disrupted faster than anywhere else in the world. What you have with bitcoin and blockchain is a trustless method of operating. You don’t need third parties like banks operating as trust brokers anymore. It’s all built into the code. The way mobile leapfrogged fixed lines communications in Africa, blockchain will leapfrog a lot of the financial infrastructure that exists today.” In order to get ahead of that, Barclays opened the first African branch of Rise, its global network of innovation spaces, in December 2015.

Video Conferencing on Mobile Platforms: Promises, Expectations, Challenges

Technically, if device manufacturers could find common grounds with each other and stop placing frontal cameras in random places, it would not cause major discomfort at such a distance. If only we could count out the view angle from the given equation! Our reflexes tell us to hold the screen at the chest level so we could still be able to see objects in front of us if necessary. Alas, at this angle the camera will capture us from underneath, showing only the beautiful scenery of our chin. We certainly will project an impression of professional directness by looking at our partner face-on. But is it always appropriate? For one thing, it is uncomfortable and dangerous to hold a mobile device at eye level with your hands stretched out for long periods. It would be a different story if we were seated at a table: in this case, the optimal screen position is slightly below the eye level with a slight tilt.

Dwolla is Back, But Focused on Blockchain, Not Bitcoin

"Dwolla has a very interesting asset in [its] alternative payment network which they’ve had before bitcoin and Ripple," says Gil Luria, an analyst focusing on bitcoin at Wedbush Securities. Dwolla launched in 2010 and from its meager start in Des Moines, Iowa, with just a few small bank and retailer clients and two employees, it has grown to 15 employees and 20,000 customers processing more than $1m a week. Over the past few years, the company has built relationships with government entities in Iowa, speeding up the payment of cigarette stamp tax, vehicle registration and fuel tax. In October 2014, BBVA Compass partnered with Dwolla for its FiSync real-time payments platform.

Negotiating cloud contracts: A new era for CIOs

Many cloud providers will say, "Our terms and conditions are what's on our website." But providers have been known to revise terms without notice, said Colin Whiteneck, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting, who helps CIOs with cloud contracts. "You need to get them to negotiate so they give you specific Ts and Cs," Whiteneck said. "If they're not willing to negotiate, you tell them you don't even want to see their proposal." Even if a provider insists on sticking to standard terms, it's important for a contract to spell out that those terms should apply through the length of the contract to avoid having to swallow any future changes that might be unfavorable to the business.

Researchers devise method to detect location spoofing by calculating network delays

CPV relies on the strong correlation between geographic distance and network delays. With the widespread use of cloud computing, a given user would likely be connected to a geographically nearby server (particularly in bandwidth-intensive cases such as streaming video). Users cloaking their geographic location with a VPN typically experience slower performance than users in the "correct" location, connecting directly to the service provider. CPV uses a new, custom protocol to verify the forward and reverse one-way delays between two hosts on the internet. To ensure reliability, heuristics are used to improve the accuracy of delay-to-distance mapping., and reduce the impact of variable network performance on this calculation.

What Bendable Screens Mean For The Future Of UI

Called the Reflex, Vertegaal's deforming smartphone features a flexible plastic screen, coupled with some haptic motors for feedback. By bending the screen, the Reflex allows users to do things such as quickly flip through pages in an e-book. The more you bend the Reflex, the faster the pages flip, providing a navigation experience more in tune with a physical book. The same affordance can be used to pull back a slingshot in Angry Birds, allowing you to actually feel the resistance growing as you bend the Reflex. And because the screen is flexible and made of plastic, it's harder to break than your average smartphone, which generally consists of a glass screen, a rigid circuit board, and batteries.

Cybersecurity Whistleblowers: Get Ready For More

And while legal protections may not be explicit for cybersecurity whistleblowers, they exist by implication, experts say. Lance Hayden, managing director at the Berkeley Research Group and a CSO contributor, is one of several who have cited a settlement last September between the SEC and R.T. Jones Capital Equities Management over charges that the firm’s violation of the “safeguards rule” led to a breach that compromised the information of about 100,000 people. While the firm did not have to admit to the charges, it agreed to a censure by the SEC and to pay a $75,000 fine. There was no documented evidence of whistleblower involvement in the case, but Hayden wrote that it became, “a sort of catalyst,” for the SEC to focus on cybersecurity.

Quote for the day:

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat." -- Woodrow Wilson

February 18, 2016

Securing A Mid-Sized Enterprise

Why the confusion? Security is a combination of education with the usual people, process and technology equation. For the medium size enterprise this can be a tough equation to solve given limited resources and budget. With the demand for security engineers increasing by 74% over the last three years and 30%-40% of security projects ending up in failed implementations, demonstrating no value to the enterprise, it is easy to see why. So, how do security managers succeed with the odds seemingly stacked against them? There are two forces crossing in the industry, which if leveraged appropriately, can help enterprises close their security gap. First, from a technology perspective we are at a point where products have matured to the point where consolidation is possible without the loss of protection.

Patch now to eliminate glibc remote access security risk

The glibc flaw could also enable a hacker to compromise apps and gain control of systems that access a hacker-controlled domain name system(DNS) used to translate domain names to actual machine IP addresses, either directly or through a man-in-the-middle attack, according to Patrick Carey of Black Duck, which helps organisations to secure and manage open-source software. Now that the bug has been reported publicly, Carey said the race is on between development teams and those who would try to exploit the vulnerability. “As soon as your operating system distro has a patch, get it,” said Paul Ducklin, senior technologist at Sophos. Red Hat is reportedly one of the first Linux distributions to release a patch for the flaw in glibc 2.9 and later in collaboration with Google. Other Linux distros are expected to follow.

How CIOs Become Invaluable In the Age of SaaS

Whether you agree with the Gartner prediction or not, it’s fair to say it’s stirred up a debate about the viability of the CIO in the age of SaaS and XaaS. There just might be a plus side here: Maybe all this back and forth has started what is actually ahealthy discussion about the role of CIOs in this evolving tech space. Longevity is possible, though, if CIOs can re-hone their focus on leveraging their skills to developing robust infrastructure to support company scale, securing complex networks and creating a tech environment where company employees can thrive in productivity; hardly an easy task.

Cyber-Security: The Best Plan Of Action To Keep Your Data Safe

"What we need is a mechanism for situational awareness," Song said. Once something is spotted that breaks the pattern of normal usage, the IT manager can respond by containing the threat. Here, Song falls back on biology to provide an analogy. The response would be no different than antibodies fighting an infection. ... Cyber-security gets especially tricky when one considers the "insider threat" -- the disgruntled employee who has access to your data. "How do you create a defense in depth and create vigilance without destroying a culture of trust?" Powers said. At Deloitte, the cyber risk team works hand-in-hand with a human capital team, using behavioral psychologists to figure out what constitutes normal corporate behavior, and what does not. The challenge is to spot those workers who are acting

Robot restaurants and sci-fi kitchens: How tech is changing the way we eat

Still in its early stages, the system has three basic inputs users can control: selecting a choice of ingredient, a particular country's cuisine, and a type of dish. Once the parameters are set, the system will offer up tens of potential suggestions for dishes, which can then be narrowed down according to preference — more surprising dishes could be bumped up the list, or dishes that are less surprising, but have a higher chance of tasting good, could be selected. Eventually, the system could one day be packaged up and offered to home cooks as an app, able to take information from the user's Instagram feed or their grocery list, and customise its results accordingly to make meal suggestions. Does every smartphone snap show you're ordering a burrito?

Don't Design For Mobile, Design for Mobility

Technology has been gaining awareness of what we do, where we go and who we relate to. For a while, it seemed like mobile phones would be the single point of contact for technology to learn about our context, for they were the only “smart” device we were carrying with us. This, of course, is no longer true; smartwatches, fitness wristbands and other wearables possess sensors (like heart-rate monitors and pedometers) that wouldn’t make sense for a mobile phone. So in reality, how much of our context an app or platform can capture doesn’t depend on a single device, but rather a combination of several touchpoints—think about how Facebook determines if you are logging in from an “unusual” location. We need to consider how much we can know about a user’s environment given all the devices that they might have available at a given time.

Why IT is Needed to Simplify Information Governance

In fact, that quick-fix approach has the potential to do more harm than good. Outdated and irrelevant documents take up space and make important documents much harder to find, creating inefficiencies within an organization. Additionally, the more data stored, the greater the potential for damage from an eventual breach. With this data deluge, it’s important for organizations to get IT on board with IG by participating in the implementation of an IG plan. Central to that plan may be automation technology. Currently, IG relies heavily on employees for the most crucial tasks, making it harder for them to focus on their jobs and more difficult to ensure accuracy and compliance. IG needs automation. There are new technologies that can automate key governance activities, enabling organizations to better protect and manage information in all its forms – paper and digital.

White-hat hackers key to securing connected cars

McSweeny says that she is a frequent visitor to security conferences, where researchers often demonstrate tactics for hacking into a vehicle's system. ..."The auto industry, in my view, would be well-served by following the lead of the information technology industry, which has developed ways to work with hackers, rather than against them. For years, technology companies fought a losing battle in security by threatening hackers, and now many firms have established bounty programs and conferences where researchers are invited to find and report flaws in programs and products. They recognize that bringing researchers to the table and crowdsourcing solutions can be an effective way of staying ahead of cyberthreats," she says.

Implementing better compliance programs

One of the biggest challenges facing firms today is how to implement new compliance programs without interrupting normal business functions. As investment in the sector increases, many are looking for ways to measure returns to make sure that compliance efforts are meeting regulatory requirements and enhancing business functions. While it can be challenging to measure ROI on compliance, new technologies and analytics can help officers demonstrate the importance of increasing transparency and offer valuable insights into how businesses are running, said Vincent Walden, partner at Ernst & Young, and the Fraud Investigation and Dispute Services In this third of three series on compliance, panelists discuss the challenges of valuing compliance efforts and the ways firms can help quantify their investments.

When all smartphones are identical and nearly free, only services matter

There will be significant opportunities for third party suppliers for this sort of thing, because this is the crux of where the value add from Apple and Google comes from today and why they continue to be attractive to consumers. All of these services from Apple and Google will have drop-in replacements. True, they might not necessarily be as polished or as mature, or as seamlessly integrated, but for a fraction of the cost, many consumers in many markets will be willing to use them. The key word here is "partnerships". Partnerships between carriers and cloud service providers, partnerships between service providers and SaaS and content providers, partnerships between drop-in OS vendors and all of the above, et cetera.

Quote for the day:

"A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved.He inspires the power and energy to get it done." -- Ralph Nader

February 17, 2016

Data Security – The Trends We Do Not See Coming

It is all about providing Security as a Service (SECaaS), which is essentially an outsourcing model for security management. The irony lies within the fact that SECaaS will use the cloud as a mainstream deployment platform, when part of its own reason of existence is to enhance the protection of…the cloud! SECaaS has evolved from delivery of a security software (such as an anti-virus) on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model to security management provided in-house by an external organization. Generally, large security service providers integrate their products into a corporate infrastructure on a subscription basis, making security more cost effective to large corporations.

Pros and cons of Windows 10 IoT for Raspberry Pi and Arduino builds

Windows 10 isn't open source, and that's not entirely in-line with Dexter Industries' mission of teaching robotics with open source technology. However, because of the popularity of Windows, and the fact that Microsoft has made Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi free for individuals, we were excited to see if we could bring the GoPiGo to even more developers in the world. Hopefully by growing the open source software around the Raspberry Pi and around the Windows environment, we're making robotics more accessible for everyone ... there are a couple of advantages to the new Windows Operating System on the Raspberry Pi. The first is that great interfaces are really possible. Steve took the lead on putting together a really nice looking interface for the GoPiGo example.

Half of UK businesses looking for internet of things lead roles

The report said 68% of UK business leaders expected to reap tangible benefits from their IoT investments this year, and one in five were already seeing the benefits. Overall, 94% of businesses claimed to be making preparations for the IoT ... Commenting on the report’s findings, Maria Hernandez, IoT lead at Cisco UK, said: “The first internet wave was about making information digital, then we moved into making processes digital, particularly with e-commerce. The third wave was about making interactions digital with cloud, mobility social media and video. “Now the fourth is about making everything digital – organisations, cities and even countries. We believe that this wave is going to make more impact than the previous three waves together,” she said.

Tobii eyeX review: The 'eye mouse' is magical, but just not for everyone

Tobii claims that you should buy the eyeX for two reasons: as a general input device for your computer, and as a gaming peripheral. We tried both. A third selling point—to add Windows Hello capabilities to your computer—was added as we began testing, and we can confirm that feature also works. You might think of the eyeX as an “eye mouse,” but there’s more to it than just that. Once calibrated, the eyeX allows you to assign a keyboard key as a mouse button, so that you can look at a spot on the screen, click the key, and—zip!— your cursor teleports there. (You can tell the eyeX to automatically “click” that spot as well, if you want.) You can also “clone” your mouse, warping it back and forth between two points—useful if you're jumping back and forth between two pages of text, perhaps.

Can IBM bring Bitcoin's blockchain technology to mainstream business?

"It is one more indicator that blockchain fever has struck in full force across a wide swath of the banking and financial services industry, but also now expanding the scope to other verticals," Valdes said. The next question becomes what can IBM do for blockchain that hasn't already been done. So far, many of the blockchain initiatives have been vertically focused, but Valdes said that he thinks what IBM and the Hyperledger Project are doing is trying to expand interest in the technology, creating a "horizontal fabric rather than a vertical technology." In terms of the different pieces of the announcement, the Hyperledger Project is the core value. Cuomo said that an open standards approach was critical to wide adoption of blockchain.

These IaaS examples show data centers can share the load

Most IT organizations are a mix of traditional IT and emerging digital business applications. System and application characteristics and requirements differ in this bimodal IT state, where some apps need conservative changes and others benefit from agile, fast fail processes. This second group usually includes multidisciplinary teams and is more apt to rely on cloud services such as IaaS than the first group. Whether or not you agree with the concept of bimodal IT, borrow concepts from mobile app startups by using Agile development methodologies, multidisciplinary specialists and rapid release and update cycles for new applications. Due to the ease and low cost of deployment, along with the ability to rapidly add IaaS capacity and services, new projects should start and likely remain in a public cloud.

The Internet Of Medicine Is Just What The Doctor Ordered

Innovations like these are of vital importance to another segment of healthcare — the $1 trillion-a-year pharmaceutical industry. The reason is simple: The sooner doctors can detect illness, the sooner patients can start taking the drugs they need to manage or cure their conditions. New devices are in the works that will transform the treatment of many chronic ailments that comprise a large portion of recurring revenue for drug companies. For example, Swedish drug maker Novartis is working with Google on a contact lens for diabetics that can measure blood sugar from tears. It’s a significant advancement over the uncomfortable finger pricks millions of diabetics must currently endure several times a day. The lenses will also provide continuous data about blood sugar fluctuations, knowledge that’s essential in helping diabetics avoid life-threatening complications.

Transforming Cyber and Infrastructure Security: An Interview with the DHS Cyber Chief

Cyberthreats are way-of-life threats. They can cause destruction, whether actively in attacks on the electronics that control critical infrastructure such as water and energy or passively in stealing and harvesting legitimate user credentials to use maliciously later while going virtually undetected from a flawless login. Remember this: Almost everything in our world that you can’t eat is either connected or being connected to electronic logic a.k.a. a “computer.” That means it can be controlled from somewhere else, by someone else. That control needs to be protected, and we are currently designing and innovating great new technologies faster than we can secure them. NPPD recently led an awareness campaign about malware known as “Black Energy.”

The future is modular: IoT, Microservices and music gear

Beyond the consumer sphere, it seems modularity will also be an important concept in the future of enterprise IT and software development. This is not just because much of IoT will actually exist in the “Industrial Internet” but also because of the role Microservices will play in how enterprise architectures and applications are built. Matt McLarty, Enterprise Architect & Vice President of the API Academy at CA Technologies, flagged up the importance of modularity in Microservices in a recent API Academy blog post. Modularity could also prove to be an increasingly important concept for business managers taking digital products to market. Think of the enthusiasm leading Silicon Valley figures have for “unbundling” functionality from monolithic products and services.

As phone phishing grows, can bank biometrics screen out the scammers?

Nuance Communications provides biometric authentication technology to Barclays and the ATO. Beranek adds that the industry most recently took steps to fight credit-card fraud within digital channels, but many institutions are now revisiting security on the phone channels at their contact centers. In general, consumers have less technological protection when banking by phone than by app. To access their accounts over the phone, customers most commonly answer a series of verification questions with an agent at the bank's contact center. Criminals are likely to pass this security step by gathering the correct answers through phishing emails, social media, or calling the customer directly in a telephone scam.

Quote for the day:

"If anything is worth trying at all, it's worth trying at least 10 times." -- Art Linkletter,

February 15, 2016

The Power of Location-Based Offers in Banking

The primary benefit of location-based offers is that it allows financial institutions the ability to move beyond traditional, calendar-based promotions to provide more relevant content in real time. This includes the cross-selling of banking products based on need, the offering of outside merchant offers to increase loyalty of current customers and the recommendation of services that can alleviate a potential negative event ... Additional benefits of location-based services include an additional security layer that can validate transactions by comparing the user location with the location of the transaction, and the ability to offload rudimentary inquiries such as the location of the nearest ATM or branch. Other location-based applications are the ability to book appointments at a branch location and the identification of a customer as they enter a branch.

Mobile app security should not be an afterthought

There's definitely a lot more development in mobile happening. The best practices in mobile aren't as well developed as best practices for the web. That's getting a little bit better.Consider HTTPS. What we saw for quite some time was something that on the Web is relatively straightforward, which HTTPS is. People were doing it wrong on mobile for years before anyone really noticed. There's a lot you can get wrong with HTTPS, and they were getting it all wrong. As people move over to mobile they are definitely having to relearn some of the lessons we learned over the years. Password security is another one of those. People began to make passwords on websites a lot more robust. You can't just have a four or five letter password anymore on most websites.

Fight threats to information security: Inform your people

The human element in information security often gets short shrift. For example, many still believe that training programs don’t work and aren’t worth spending time and money on. But the best security defenses in the world won’t be successful if even one employee doesn’t know a phishing email when he sees one. And today, it’s easy for business departments to order a cloud service or download an app to a corporate smartphone. People who don’t know what’s kosher and what isn’t are practically courting disaster. Everyone — from chief executives to business departments to the newest of hires — needs to be keenly aware of the threats out there, how to prevent them and how to counter them if they do occur.

Google's Unconscious Bias Training Yet To Fix Diversity Problem

Biases are shaped by our experiences and by cultural norms, and allow us to filter information and make quick decisions. We've evolved to trust our guts. But sometimes these mental shortcuts can lead us astray, especially when they cause us to misjudge people. In the workplace, for example, the halo effect can cause us to inflate performance ratings or in-group bias can lead us to overlook great talent. Combatting our unconscious biases is hard, because they don't feel wrong; they feel right. But it's necessary to fight against bias in order to create a work environment that supports and encourages diverse perspectives and people.

A Stress Test to Identify and Improve Corporate Culture Problems

The next step is collaborative -- identifying those who can carry the desired culture throughout the organization from the bottom up, not just the top down, and make systemic change to combat entropy. Finally, and this may seem obvious but is not practiced with any robustness, companies must hire people based on the identified values that align with the desired corporate culture. The adage "culture eats strategy for breakfast" is so much more than MBA jargon. Companies fail when they focus the lens too narrowly on profit and loss and allow values and behavior to run amuck. Satisfaction surveys show the extent of the problem. Putting a stress test to a company's culture offers benchmarks to fix the problem.

Dear IT Department, Why Community Management Matters

The primary issue at stake is this: Social business in all its flavors — from social collaboration and social marketing to social customer care and even social supply chain — is not just another communications technology. Instead, it’s focused on engaging people in powerful new ways that requires a new set of digital skills in, yes, an enabling new technology environment. The tools are secondary (though important), how people work in effective new ways is what matters. Most significantly, a new operational entity emerges from this, called an online community, that did not exist before and requires its own cultivation and management. The initiating business sponsors typically, for their part, are interested in connecting together people and their knowledge in more streamlined, dynamic, fluid, and actionable ways that benefits the work they are doing.

Your whole organisation needs to get real about IT security: Here's how to do it

Holman says the first step -- as simple as it sounds -- is for the business to take cybersecurity seriously. "A board must at least acknowledge the risk of a hacking incident or rogue piece of malware is clear and present," he says. Such c-level acknowledgement might include a security awareness exercise or penetration test. Even seemingly straightforward analyses can help, including an awareness of other companies in your sector and an up-to-date check whether they have been in the news lately. Second, says Holman, CIOs should encourage board members to take a few hours out of their busy schedules to conduct a security risk assessment. "The numbers soon add up, especially if we're talking about a business that relies on a critical online presence to bring in revenue."

Don't toss data center best practices when managing cloud services

Among those data center best practices are creating templates to determine how deployments should be carried out, development and test procedures and data governance polices. ... Of course, organizations already use authentication mechanisms like Microsoft Active Directory so users and computers can access systems. If they're using Azure, they can manage users directly in the cloud by having them log in to the cloud version, Azure AD, a separate directory of users that lives in the cloud. They can even add Federation Services so users have single sign-on -- access to multiple systems by entering just one ID and password. "Now you can have the same user credentials that you've always had, but they can extend in the public cloud," Cancila said.

5 myths about the Internet of Things

The true innovation of IoT comes not from simply connecting products, but rather from what we do with the data the “things” create. The companies that really come out on top will leverage this data, developing strategies around what this new connectivity allows them to do, from enhancing customer experiences to optimizing business processes and product development. Why is this so important? Believe it or not, most companies have no idea who their customers are. A garage door manufacturer, for example, might sell product to Lowes or Home Depot and once that product is out the door they have no idea who actually purchases it. IoT will fundamentally change this scenario by providing the manufacturer with the ability to connect directly to the person who uses the product to provide a personalized customer experience, support and service offerings.

The surprising truth about Facebook's Internet.org

Internet.org and Free Basics operate in countries where data use is often charged by the megabyte or by the minute. So the idea of using the Internet for free can be an attractive idea to many of these users. Facebook chooses which sites are included and which are rejected, and the local carriers may get veto power as well. Facebook has published these criteria, which are focused on the size of the data load, and has thus far not rejected any sites for reasons that are not technical. Facebook claims that any site, including competitors, are allowed to join Facebook's Internet. For example, Facebook does not enforce the "community guidelines" required of companies setting up shop on Facebook.com.

Quote for the day:

"Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority." -- William Arthur Ward

February 14, 2016

5 things we learned from Cisco’s acquisition of Jasper Technologies

From the strategic standpoint, Jasper offers a great solution for Cisco and its customers to manage, scale, and monetize their IoT services. Jasper reportedly has over 3,500 customers and 25 IoT service providers that have been using its platform across 100 countries. While Jasper can be classified as an IoT platform, it doesn’t directly compete with the IoT services provided by cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft, or IBM. Instead, Jasper focuses on managing and automating the lifecycle of IoT services and solutions. From this perspective, Jasper not only provides Cisco with an extremely relevant customer base, but also with a highly developed IoT platform that can be extended with Cisco’s native IoT services such as security, advanced analytics, enterprise Wi-Fi, etc.

Internet of Things (IoT) Predictions

“IoT remains mired in smart light bulbs, net-connected cameras and wireless speakers,” opined Andrew Tarantola at Engadget, “the same sorts of bland, iterative use cases we’ve been seeing since the term was first coined.” Pam Baker atFierceBigData complained that “IoT data products were again in overdrive, many in outright overkill, and the same problems with data deluge still existed,” and Todd Hixon offered this on Forbes: “The fundamental problem is, there is still no killer app for IOT: something a large group of customers really care about and just have to have.” So what’s the state-of-the-IoT and where is it going? Here’s a summary of data and predictions from Forrester, Machina Research, the World Economic Forum (WEF), Gartner, and IDC

Are Employees Entitled to Any Sort of Privacy in the Age of Mobility?

With BYOD and the blurred lines of mobile technology for personal and professional use, how much privacy can a company reasonably offer its employees? One would assume a standard right to discretion; however, the way we share, monitor, and store information means we likely have little real privacy any more. ... Binding contracts are an everyday occurrence in our interconnected world. Staying informed of these obligations is your best defense when it comes to protecting the company’s interest while providing employees some level of personal privacy. Sadly, data agreements are becoming common that they’re easily ignored. Employees may not take the time to read through every policy they come across—but it is important that they do so when it comes to BYOD.

Why Bitcoin Governance is a Competition (And That's a Good Thing)

Bitcoin may have some of the strongest network effects possible because incompatible versions of the software won't recognize each others' blocks, transactions, or mined coins. A miner on the "minority" side of a hard fork will mine bitcoins that are incompatible with the majority side, so those coins will be less useful and naturally worth less. And as more move to the majority side, "minority" coins will rapidly approach zero value, making switching a rational imperative, to be executed quickly. These dynamics make for a "winner-take-all" bitcoin software market, and they make it very unlikely that bitcoin will "split". If a split were to happen, it would be because the cryptocurrency market was big and diverse enough for two coins, fairly seamless exchange among the two coins existed, or both of those things.

The challenges of online payment in Nigeria

There are a number of issues that must be dealt with by the Nigerian e-payment companies which include that fact fraud must be tackled and online security improved. This should go with massive enlightenment campaign that is necessary to build confidence and this is where partnership with the media is key. ... Finally, I believe players in the financial tech ecosystem have to find a way to improve the process of reconciliation. The way things are at the moment, the banks are currently feeding fat in this whole arrangement to the detriment of start-ups. As a start-up, when a client pays you using any debit card in Nigeria; you don’t get it instantly. You must wait for x number of days before the reconciliation is done.

These 3 things are trying to kill Linux containers

The “fauxpen” threat isn’t new — we’ve seen it first with Unix and most recently with cloud computing solutions, particularly platform as a service (PaaS) and OpenStack-based offerings that are ostensibly open but layer proprietary technologies on top of open-source foundations. Linux containers, however, are early in their adoption cycle for enterprise IT; if proprietary hooks are landed into the technology now, it’s almost a sure thing that IT’s mood will sour on what should be an innovation, not a continuation of proprietary legacy systems. From closed stacks to exorbitant licenses to greatly-scaled back innovation, adding “fauxpen” code to the foundational technologies built on the blood, sweat and tears of the community can quickly dampen enthusiasm and breakthroughs around the open base.

The truth about Storage Data efficiency ratios.

We’ve all heard the marketing claims from some storage vendors about how efficient their storage products are. Data efficiency ratios of 40:1 , 60:1 even 100:1 continue to be thrown around as if they are amazing, somehow unique or achieved as a result of proprietary hardware. ... Funnily enough, one vendor even offloads what VAAI/VCAI can do (with almost no overhead I might add) to proprietary hardware. Either way, while VAAI/VCAI clones are fantastic and can add lots of value, claiming high data efficiency ratios as a result is again mis-leading especially if done so in the context of being a unique capability. ... When comparing between vendors, if done in a fair manner, the differences are unlikely to be significant enough to sway a purchasing decision as most modern storage platforms have more than adequate data reduction capabilities.

Why Agile Testing Needs Deprogramming

One of the problems for myself, I was previously a hard-core waterfall disciplinarian. As I worked on avionics, I originally thought “No way will this Agile thing ever work”. Because when I was testing avionics someone would pretty much come along with a forklift truck, drop these massive phone book size requirement documents through and say “That’s what you are going to test guys”. So you’d go through and you’d almost become like a legal eagle on these requirements going, “oh requirement x23 this requirement countermands that requirement” and you would build your testing on mapping all this preplanned complexity. When people said to me that you put together a story which is a small thing, it’s not even a requirement, it’s a slice of a requirement shocked me. How do you go around testing something that isn’t defined, my brain would say? But how? And that to me was the huge challenge.

The Hybrid Cloud and Information Management: A Practical Option for Food Manufacturers

In a hybrid cloud environment, organizations can connect private or public cloud-based solutions with on-premises systems in order to best meet operational needs and compliance requirements. A hybrid cloud can be architected and deployed in any number of ways, and this flexibility is one of many reasons it is so appealing to food manufacturers, particularly for enterprise information management (EIM) initiatives. For example, if there is a need to maintain specific content on-premises for operational or compliances reasons but the organization wants to leverage the cloud for sharing non-confidential information with suppliers, then the hybrid cloud becomes a viable option.

The Holy Grail of EA – Agile Planning

Or if the COO asks how the new mobile devices that were deployed to field personnel is impacting the customer score, you should be able to show where the mobile devices sit in the technology platforms (T-view), which application systems (S-view) are using those platforms, the operational capabilities (O-view) that are enabled by those system, and finally how all these elements are related to products sold to specific customer segments through specific channels in order to meet specific strategies and goals (B-view). The ability to do this is not a pipe dream. The BOST Toolkit is a standard offering from Informatica’s Business Transformation Services (BTS) team.

Quote for the day:

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." -- John Powell