July 17, 2013

Agile software development methodologies and how to apply them
This article focus on how technology team work together well to plan, build and deliver software. It does not talk about code or not focus on specific technology or not only about Microsoft tools. Hope this will improve your professional life and the effectiveness of your team. ... The principles and values of agile software development were formed as a way to help teams to break the cycle of process inflation and mainly focus on simple techniques for achieving their goals.


Fix the 3 silent performance killers for IIS / ASP.NET apps
Watching for and fixing these 3 low-hanging issues could make a big difference in the performance of your ASP.NET application, with a minimal amount of work. ... the most direct way to improve performance is to proactively monitor it and periodically load test/profile it to address the actual bottlenecks in your code.


Mobile Leaks Make Banks Wary of 'Bring Your Own Device' Trend
"It's not clear whether the employer has a right to scan your phone; it's less clear whether or not the company can actually move your private records to a repository," says Larry Ponemon "Privacy issues haven't really been worked out or legislated as yet for employees. I can imagine a situation in which you have a whole bunch of photos, videos, and other things you cherish on your device. Now you lose the device, and IT implements a remote-wipe. That's a privacy issue."


Are you neglecting the Basics?
The term FLOW was first coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi In his excellent Book Flow: the psychology of optimal experience he discusses the need for a tension between our level of Skill and Challenge. Too much challenge with not enough skill will lead to anxiety, stress and burn out. Too much skill with not enough challenge leads to boredom, complacency and apathy.


Worldwide IT outsourcing to reach $288 bn in 2013: Gartner
“We continue to see overall market growth being constrained by near-term market factors, such as evolving ITO delivery models, economic, political and labor conditions, and service provider financial performance," said Gartner, Research vice-president, Bryan Britz. Gartner's forecast includes slight upward revisions for both custom application outsourcing and infrastructure utility services (IUS) for 2014 through 2017.


Developing employees who aren’t “born leaders”
There is no better motivation to accomplish great things than loving what you do. Another way to shape employees into leaders is to talk to them about what they are passionate about and where they would like to see themselves, their department or the company. Allowing them to see projects through that will help accomplish that goal demonstrates your interest in their vision and that you value their input.


Seven steps to building an effective incident response program
An incident response program should be one of the strategic initiatives within the enterprise. Yet even after an organization experiences a breach, it doesn't get the attention it deserves. According to our most recent Forrester security survey, investments in incident response programs in 2011 and 2012, after a breach occurred, increased only five percentage points to 23% from 18%. In a shocking trend, 21% of organizations noted no changes resulting from a security breach.


Tips on becoming a transformational leader from CIO of the UN
Transformational leaders have a vision for future success, but paradoxically that vision is formed by being super-attuned to warning signs in the present. They understand that today's success will be tomorrow's failure if their organizations are not continuously innovating. They embrace disruption. "If you are not a risk-taker, and cannot take some calculated risk, you can't do your job," Riazi said.


The Social Banker v2.0
Risk is also a key concern for many organizations embarking on an internal collaboration strategy. And rightfully so: regardless of whether you are a bank dealing with customer data or a KPMG team working on a client’s financial report, caution must always be the default position when it comes to risk. It is critical, therefore, to enlist the legal and risk teams in the planning and development of any internal system from day one.


A CPU, a GPU, and a Data Center walk into a Bar
Fear of change will be a limiting factor to rapid adoption, but not as much as might be true for other layers of IT infrastructure. However, the unfortunate truth is that often we fail to make changes because we elect to accept functioning as the same thing as “working effectively”. As I describe in my “What is a “Working” Data Center” blog, running doesn’t mean efficiently and sustainably delivering appropriate functionality and performance.

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Quote for the day:

"Learn to pause.... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you." -- Doug King

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July 16, 2013

The Virtual Tug of War
The basis of the age-old feud is clear – performance as dictated by the networking camp vs. a protected environment as advocated by the security folks. The uneasy Solomonic decision facing CIOs the world over is whether to skimp on security in order to ensure flawless application delivery or ensure the organization is safe by taking a performance hit in order to avoid becoming a security statistic.

Unusual file-infecting malware steals FTP credentials
Once the new EXPIRO variant runs on a system, it searches for .EXE files on all local, removable and networked drives, and adds its malicious code to them. In addition, it collects information about the system and its users, including Windows log-in credentials, and steals FTP credentials from a popular open-source FTP client called FileZilla.


Identity and access management market faces identity crisis in cloud
Legacy approaches to IAM, such as Active Directory or Oracle's Identity Manager, are failing organizations because those products can't manage access from consumer endpoints, don't support rapid adoption of cloud services and can't provide secure data exchange across user populations, said Wendy Nather, an analyst with the 451 Research Group.


Apple: Game over or room to grow?
No, the real problem with Apple is that this company, long the arbiter of cool, the corporate trendsetter on all matters from design to marketing to operational excellence, has gone from being insanely great to merely great. ... The criticism that stings Apple the most is that it has lost its edge for innovation. The defensiveness over the frequently repeated criticism shone through during Apple's keynote presentations at its annual conference for developers in June.


5 Ways to Refocus Your Small Business In Tough Times
Successful businesses need to be able to blend a great idea with a well-thought-out and repeatable plan.  Striking that balance has proven to be a big challenge for many small business owners. "This is a tough time to be in business," said Gary Barnes, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Gary Barnes International. "More of us than ever are facing new problems and challenges."


What should you know about Next Generation Firewalls?
NGFW vendors must resist the urge to continue to bundle every security module in a single device since this is not how most enterprise customers deploy their network security. In addition, it is important that NGFWs retain the implicit “deny all” when it comes to application traffic rather than expecting administrators to tune individual applications to prevent tunneling in the manner of IPS signatures.


Toshiba to sell world's fastest SD cards this year
Toshiba said its latest memory is the first to use a controller that is compliant with the UHS-II (Ultra High Speed) specification, which theoretically offers speeds up to 312 MBps. The specification was first announced by the SD Association in January 2011, at the annual CES Electronics show in Las Vegas.


Gigabit-Boosted DSL Internet Standard Could be Ready in 2014, ITU Says
The standard is expected to be deployed by service providers that want to offer Fiber to the Home-like services, the ITU said. G.fast is meant to enable flexible upstream and downstream speeds to support bandwidth-intensive applications such as uploading high-resolution video and photo libraries to cloud-based storage, and communicating via HD video, it said.

The Chain of Responsibility Pattern in .NET
The Chain of Responsibility Pattern consists of three components: the handler interface, at least one concrete handler, and the client application. The handler interface defines the contract for handling a request in the chain. The concrete handler class implements the handler interface and either handles the request or forwards it to its successor handler. The client application sends the request to the initial concrete handler.

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Quote for the day:

"Whatever you do, do it with intelligence, and keep the end in view." -- Thomas à Kempis

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July 15, 2013

Remote replication: Comparing data replication methods
The third option is network-based replication, generally using an appliance that sits at the edge of the network. These tools, such as EMC's RecoverPoint, have the advantage of being able to manage heterogeneous arrays and servers. The other advantage of this data replication method is that it makes it easier to orchestrate replication policies that take multiple arrays and servers into account.


The hot new technology in Big Data is decades old: SQL
Over the past six months, vendors have responded to the demand for more corporate-friendly analytics by announcing a slew of systems that offer full SQL query capabilities with significant performance improvements over existing Hive/Hadoop systems. These systems are designed to allow full SQL queries over warehouse-size data sets, and in most cases they bypass Hadoop entirely (although some are hybrid approaches).


Microsoft Uses SQL Server 2012 5.8-Terabyte SAP ERP Database to Run Its Global Business
AlwaysOn also resolves another problem the Microsoft SAP Support team often encountered. In order to refresh their SAP ERP test system with the most recent data from the production database, they needed to copy the 1.6-terabyte backup over to the DR site that also hosts the SAP ERP test system. This process could take many hours and required monitoring. With AlwaysOn, backups can be taken from the secondary replicas.


When You've Done Enough, Do More
"Overdelivering" makes you stand out in the moment and makes people remember you later. You become locked in as someone who deserves to be listened to, and people don't wonder whether you have ulterior motives or hidden agendas. Doing more isn't just a onetime thing but an ongoing practice. For maximum effect, you'll want to focus on three distinct times when you can do more: before, during, and after an interaction.


Why does my Java process consume more memory than Xmx?
Besides heap there are other regions in memory which your application is using under the hood – namely permgen and stack sizes. So in order to limit those you should also specify the -XX:MaxPermSize and -Xss options respectively. In a short, you can predict your application memory usage with the following formula


IT security spend up, but in the wrong places, Oracle says
Oracle chief security officer Mary Ann Davidson said in prepared remarks: "Organizations can't continue to spend on the wrong risks and secure themselves out of business. When attackers do break through the perimeter, they can take advantage of weak security controls against the core systems by exploiting privileged user access, vulnerable applications, and accounts with excessive access."


'Superman' crystals could store 360TB of data forever
The scientists used a femtosecond laser, which emits pulses of light in femtoseconds (one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth of a second). The 5D read/write laser can record up to an estimated 360 TB/disc data capacity on nanostructured glass capable of thermal stability up to 1000°C -- and a practically unlimited lifetime.


The damaging cult of the hero leader
By all means, let’s have high expectations of leadership, but let’s distribute that leadership throughout the organization to the places where it’s best exercised. If we choose to centralize control with an individual “hero,” we are not building either a capable organization or a sustainable job.


Microsoft boosts HomeOS with a new Lab of Things
The latest new component is the addition of a new framework, called the Lab of Things (LOT), which allows researchers to better study connected device usage in homes and other physical spaces. Microsoft is fielding a first beta of the LOT software development kit (SDK), seemingly in conjunction with the opening day of the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit event in Redmond.


Will In-Chip Processing Supersede In-Memory?
Anyone who is intimately familiar with the x86 chip will know that it includes three layers of cache: L1, L2 and L3, each with its own capacity, and totaling up to roughly 20Mb. Now, no one is suggesting that all data be held in-chip, but we are suggesting that in-chip processing can be considered an additional super fast and entirely beneficial resource.

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Quote for the day:

"Those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." -- Richard M. Nixon

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July 14, 2013

The Software Defined Data Center Meets Disaster Recovery
The typical multi-site SDDR deployment normally takes about an hour to install and configure, is done remotely and includes testing sample failovers and failbacks. The SDDR concept allows for fast recovery – near-continuous data protection combined with non-disruptive DR testing allows for recovery time objectives of minutes instead of hours or days. There’s also no reliance on inefficient storage snapshots, whose associated delays in recovery can cause major performance issues.


Beijing’s Great Leap Forward
Beijing now is not just competent in software and gadgets. It has its own brands that are bound to lead in their own directions. It’s not inconceivable that one day Beijing will sit on top of the innovation pyramid alongside Silicon Valley, each producing global companies and creating new industries. “I’ve seen startup clusters all over the world,” says Steve Blank, an entrepreneur and business school professor who recently returned from a visit to China.


Intel Rolls Out Development Kit for KVM Tools
“This technology represents an evolutionary shift from the traditional KVM hardware-based control and management appliances to a virtual solution,” said Jennifer Koppy, Research Manager, IDC. “With the goal of creating more efficient and agile data centers, IT managers and CIOs are exploring datacenter infrastructure management (DCIM) solutions to manage and control IT infrastructure.


Turning Design Thinking to Design Doing
Written materials alone cannot capture all the nuances of design thinking because the approach involves a structured approach with a lot of unstructured elements. Design thinking, like jazz, requires an appreciation for improvisation; learning how to apply it is an experiential and social activity. Like learning to ride a bicycle, it is experiential. You cannot learn how just by having someone explain it to you—you have to actually try to do it yourself to find your own balance. You also need to practice to get better.


Disruptions: Design Rivals Technology in Importance
“We want to make the product emotional for the person using it, and that happens with the design of it,” said Stefan Olander, Nike’s vice president for digital sport, who worked on the wristband. “You have to create a visceral, emotive experience around the design, which is something everyone cares about.” ... As a result of the technology slipping into the background, Nike has become one of the most advanced companies for wearable computers.


Build Your Own Internet with Mobile Mesh Networking
“We’re trying to dramatically increase the usability and take this out of the geekosphere,” says Sascha Meinrath, the leader of a project called Commotion Wireless, which is developing several software packages that allow people to create mesh networks using low-cost Internet and networking hardware, primarily Wi-Fi routers.


NServiceBus 4.0 with support for RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ
NServiceBus is based on queued messaging and provides the building blocks for systems based on a service-oriented and event-driven architecture where services are publishing business events and other services are subscribing to these events, utilizing the publish/subscribe pattern and a queue based transport mechanism. NServiceBus is an open source product, available under a commercial license


The Psychology of Kindness in the Workplace
Organizational cultures can be team-oriented, which tend to have people who are aware of one another’s contributions, and cultures can be achievement-oriented. But these things are not opposite ends of the same continuum, so it’s absolutely possible and likely that achievement-oriented cultures that are also respectful and caring are the most successful.


Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture: Programmability for WAN Networks
Cisco ONE Enterprise Networks Architecture enables applications and services to be network-aware by abstracting away the network in the Control Layer and making advanced network analytics available to the applications. Applications and services can now be smart about the network conditions and deliver an optimal user experience, securely, while simplifying IT operations.


CIO as ‘Chief Process Officer’: Process Assessment and Modeling
The challenge that many organizations have is how they move from just managing a few processes to managing a portfolio of processes and change the management approach from function to process. The process assessment evaluates process design, publication, ownership, improvement etc. against each of processes in the architecture, Process management and Enterprise Architecture should always go hand-in-hand.

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Quote for the day:

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." -- Arthur Ashe

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July 13, 2013

Network functions virtualization: Another road to scalable networks
While some providers claim to be deploying one programmable networking concept over the other, SDN and NFV are still in their adolescence, and the terms can be used interchangeably, Bell said. "There is no difference," he said. "Some providers are trying to differentiate themselves by using one of the other, depending on what they have built.


Can Yahoo recycle your username -- and protect your data?
While the use-it-or-lose-it policy may be great for someone who's had to endure a clunky e-mail address like Mary4316594756139@yahoo and wants Mary@yahoo.com instead, it's raising some serious privacy and security concerns since e-mail addresses are linked to log-ins and password recovery on other sites. Casey said Yahoo is implementing a process to safeguard users' information and data that he described as "very, very foolproof."


The Assumption of Quality
“For crowd-sourced data, we’re assessing quality based on the first-order value rather than the immediate downstream usability. We’re not questioning the accuracy of Amazon’s assertion that customers who purchased X also purchased Y. Rather, we’re interested in the relevance of that information. In terms of knowledge management, I would describe this as broadening data quality to embrace information and knowledge quality.”


Ford Drives in the Right Direction with Big Data
For Ford, big data is nothing new; already in the 1990s they began with in-car analytics. In 2004 they created a self-learning neural network system for their Aston Martin DB9. This system was capable of keeping the engine functioning correctly and in optimized condition for the driving behaviour of the driver, adjusting alerts and performance accordingly. Since then, the culture of Ford has become data-driven, although selling the internal big data opportunities was more difficult than selling external big data opportunities.


The Shifting Buying Patterns of Cloud Service Adopters
IDC believes that by 2015, the three most important aspects of IT buying decisions will be the overall cost, internal management of cloud services, and identifying which applications to run on the cloud. Moreover, network latency of service delivery can lead to poor performance for users. Therefore, broader distribution of 1GbE-capable networks and development on new browser protocols – such as HTML5 -- are believed to be significant issues confronting cloud service providers and enterprise users.


5 things not to do when telecommuting
The benefits of having remote workers can be significant for both the employer and telecommuters. ... While a good telecommuting arrangement can be a good thing, it requires a lot of trust that the remote workers are focused on the job, even with personal things often getting in the way. These five things will go a long way toward building and keeping that employer/employee trust.


Leaders, Choose Your Words Wisely
What is a touchpoint? A touchpoint is an interaction with one other person, a couple of people, or a group that can last a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days. Those Touchpoints can be planned or spontaneous, casual or carefully choreographed. Every touchpoint is spring-loaded with possibilities. Each one can build — or break — a relationship.


Software Design Principles

Software design principles are a set of guidelines that helps us to avoid the bad design of a solution. The software designs helps to make a software well designed, well read and best maintainable. The design principles are associated to Robert Martin who gathered all the design principles in his book "Agile Software Development: Principles, patterns and practices ".


The Current and Future Performance of the Mobile Web
The two bottlenecks that Drew describes are CPU and memory. CPU-boundedness has two aspects: the power of your CPU and efficiency of execution. Drew points out that current generation x86 processors are ten times faster than current generation ARM processors which power today's mobile devices such as the iPhone and high-end Android devices.

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Quote for the day:

"Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts" -- Rita Mae Brown

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