Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

February 03, 2014

The risks of Agile software development: Overcoming feature creep
It is important not to confuse scope creep with intentional technical debt. In Agile projects, some teams will purposely incur debt because delivering to the market can trump the quality or completeness of the solution. Developers have to get something out there because the competition has some functionality that their product lacks. That said, developers must plan to prevent scope creep even when they incur intentional technical debt.

OpenStack creates innovation for private clouds + competition
Giving large enterprises the power of a large cloud platform isn’t in Kemp’s opinion just about technology. Technology is important in order to make things possible, but “you are dealing with a cultural transformation.” “You are dealing with a different way of thinking about building software and with a lot of existing applications that are not going to run very well in the ideal cloud architecture that we see the Amazon-style cloud companies leveraging,” said Chris Kemp.

Oracle's cloud growth: Will it measure up?
What Goldmacher is trying to solve for with Oracle's cloud growth is going to be a common problem for the industry. Mixed revenue models---licensing, support and cloud subscriptions---ultimately mean less transparency by product line. While Workday, Salesforce and NetSuite are easier to understand regarding cloud growth, tech giants can talk growth with a lot of footnotes and other assumptions. Simply put, cloud washing is an epidemic.

Data classification for cloud readiness
Several types of processes exist for classifying data, including manual processes, location-based processes that classify data based on a user’s or system’s location, application-based processes such as database-specific classification, and automated processes used by various technologies, some of which are described in the ”Protecting confidential data” section later in this paper. This paper introduces two generalized terminology models that are based on well-used and industry-respected models. These terminology models, both of which provide three levels of classification sensitivity, are shown in the following table.

Big Data Goes Legal
Attorneys are fighting back against the seemingly insurmountable onslaught of big data as it relates to their litigation practice. Legal analytics, a term often made interchangeable with technology assisted review or predictive coding, attempts to help an attorney be a “copilot” in the matrix of litigation, with big data guiding the focus and prioritization of data review and categorization. Leaders and innovators in the legal technology space are now in an arms race to create the most defensible, statistically validating tools to sift through data and locate the “smoking gun” as quickly as possible.

New CIOs need at least two years to take charge, research finds
Ninety days is often quoted by management books, such as Michael Watkins’ ‘The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter’, as the critical amount of time an executive needs to succeed in their role. However, Peppard believes that there is a process of learning that all CIOs have to go through until they have mastered the assignment of a new role, which takes much longer.

Hackers use '.enc' trick to deliver Zeus banking malware
Gary Warner, Malcovery's chief technologist, posted on his blog an assortment of spam messages, which spoofed brands and organizations such as the payment processor ADP, the Better Business Bureau and the British tax authority HMRC. The spam messages contain a ".zip" file, which, if opened, contains a small application called UPATRE. That executable file downloads a ".enc" file, which it then decrypts. The decrypted file is GameOver Zeus, a variant of the notorious Zeus malware.

Dell offers bare-metal switches through Cumulus partnership
With the right skills in place, an IT organization can greatly reduce the cost of network operations by exploiting the programmability of these bare-metal Dell switches, he said. The capital costs will also be lower. Dell isn't disclosing how much it will charge for bare-metal switches, but Joshipura said the price will be around 20% lower than switches running Dell's proprietary software, depending on volume and type of customer.

Malicious intent can turn Chrome speech recognition into spying device
Ater first reported his findings privately to Google in September 2013. Ater said Google engineers had a fix within weeks. Then a week ago, with no evidence of Google removing the bug from Chrome, Ater decided to go public: “As of today, almost four months after learning about this issue, Google is still waiting for the standards group to agree on the best course of action, and your browser is still vulnerable.”

Data-driven policy and commerce requires algorithmic transparency
Part of the trouble is that big data has long since become a big buzzword, enabling marketers, vendors, media, academics, and politicians to project whatever they like upon it. That bubble is hard to puncture with criticism, real or otherwise. That reality has been acknowledged by close observers of the phenomenon, like Ken Cukier, The Economist's data editor, who suggests thinking about it in terms of its features:

Quote for the day:

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." -- Ken Blanchard

February 02, 2014

How ISO 31000 standardises risk management
Any organisation’s risk management should be capable of review and evaluation by any risk manager or auditor. ISO 31000 sets a framework for ‘components that provide the foundation and organisational arrangement for designing, implementing, monitoring, reviewing and continually improving risk management processes’. The framework of ISO 31000 follows the Plan, Do, Check, Act model, like other global management system standards.

Enterprise software marketing: Sell the value, not the box
The drive to perfect features before achieving a profound understanding of customer needs, pains, and business context comes from the mistaken assumption that technology, like idealized love, can overcome any obstacle. This mindset pushes many startups to believe their core mission is creating a great product. In a blog post and video, entrepreneur and Stanford professor, Steve Blank, challenges startups to rethink the fundamental nature of their challenge and goal. Instead of pushing for better product and technology alone

Holacracy 101: Could This Nontraditional Business Structure Work for You?
Holacracy is a self-governing, purpose-driven business structure that reassigns authority and responsibility based on the task at hand. The model recently made headlines for sparking the interest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. His company reportedly will become a holacracy by the end of 2014. Here’s a brief explanation of how holacracy works and why it could benefit a small business.

2014 Enterprise Architecture: Increasing Business Architecture ROI
BAs need to focus on creating value to drive value realization as the outcome for our annual work plan for the organization. ... This model is comprehensive, fits with the BA role, and is well-accepted type of concept as it covers the value planning, value creation, and value realization process illustrated below. Simply put, BAs must align and drive the business strategy from the C-suite for realization of the expected business goals and mission outcomes.

4 things I learned from a career in tech startups
Umang Gupta is the former CEO of Keynote, which was recently acquired by Thoma Bravo LLC.Nothing in my childhood would have suggested that I’d grow up to be a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. In fact, the opposite was more likely. ... "With Keynote, I made sure from the beginning to recognize that my job, like any parent, was to give the company its roots and wings, and like any parent when the job was done, I would have to separate my own life from the company’s life. Today, Keynote is a solid, stable company that is a leader in its space, but still has a long way to go before it will have fulfilled its potential."

Building Applications With Hadoop
When building applications using Hadoop, it is common to have input data from various sources coming in various formats. In his presentation, “New Tools for Building Applications on Apache Hadoop”, Eli Collins, tech lead for Cloudera’s Platform Team overviews how to build better products with Hadoop and various tools that can help, such as Apache Avro, Apache Crunch, Cloudera ML and the Cloudera Development Kit.

What Dropbox for Business has to offer admins and users
Administrators with security concerns about Dropbox (and its well-publicized security breaches of the past) can sleep a little easier knowing that Dropbox has also taken some steps to secure data. It now encrypts all stored files using 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard protection and uses the Secure Sockets Layer protocol to provide a secure tunnel for transferring data. Administrators can take advantage of third-party tools to provide additional encryption, and Dropbox continues to support a two-step verification process beyond just passwords.

How to Hire a Data Scientist
Given the relative newness of the role, many experienced data scientists and value architects come from an experience-based rather than trained background. Because their skills will be aligned to their experience, it is important to plan for targeted training and development. Someone who is a great culture fit, analytical capabilities, and value measurement knowledge but lacks certain programming skills may need to get skilled up in-house. Being prepared to accept someone that doesn’t have every skill needed (supported by an appropriate training program) is a pragmatic approach.

An Integrated Implementation of ISO 31000
ISO 31000 has left open the problem of implementations. That is, ISO 31000 is in large normative in nature. For instances, ISO 31000 describes a generic process to manage risks, but it does not describe how to establish the organizational devices so that the process can be executed; it describes a risk management framework, but it does not explain the dynamics between the risk management process and the framework; it lists several principles reflected in effective risk management, but it does not describe how to realize the principles in implementations

How to use Workshops to Boost Creativity, Team Commitment and Motivation
To be creative, participants have to feel comfortable both with themselves and with the group. They need to know that their ideas will be accepted in the group, and that everyone's opinions count equally. They need to feel welcome in the group and comfortable with the facilitator. Experienced workshop facilitators make a conscious effort to help the participants feel safe, and set the tone that maximizes motivation and creativity in the group.

Quote for the day:

"Regardless of the changes in technology, the market for well-crafted messages will always have an audience." -- Steve Burnett

February 01, 2014

Development teams at risk for making privacy agreement violations

With regard to protecting your own end-user privacy agreements, the first question to ask is: "Have my developers read our privacy policy and do they even know it exists?" Legal counsel, in consultation with marketing and other business functions, typically drafts privacy agreements. The contents of the agreements are often not explicitly communicated to the teams building the systems that handle data with privacy implications.

Insights and Trends: Current Project Portfolio Management Adoption Practices
Another interesting fact that came from the survey was that 76 percent of the respondents still use homegrown spreadsheets internally to manage projects in some capacity. Since 55 percent of respondents have more than 1,000 employees, this can easily lead to PPM data integrity issues and ponderously slow feedback loops. Definitely not a path that enables firms to pivot with rapidly changing business conditions. Moreover, from our experience this manual approach significantly impacts project performance.

Getting Real Value from BI Investments
Now things are different. Database technologies, “big data” storage, in-memory analytics, and the ability to leverage multiple types of data expand the value proposition of what business intelligence has to offer. The challenge becomes understanding the options that are available and making sure that the right choices are made within organizations that not only reflect current needs, but that can also support future needs.

After NSA Backdoors, Security Experts Leave RSA for a Conference They Can Trust
The allegation of the $10 million RSA/NSA deal compounded with leaks earlier in the year about NSA’s efforts to sabotage global cryptography has lead some speakers to withdraw from the 2014 RSA Conference in San Francisco, which attracts some 25,000 attendees each year. Nine speakers have canceled their coveted slots and many have chosen to speak instead at TrustyCon, an alternative conference started this year to provide a platform for speakers who protest RSA and NSA's long-standing collaboration.

Transact-SQL Named 'Programming Language of the Year' for 2013
This "award" further emphasizes the importance of competency in SQL. I earlier wrote about how SQL gurus and other database-related programmers enjoyed excellent job security and how SQL Server developers were in high demand. That's the good news. The bad news, according to TIOBE, "It is a bit strange that Transact-SQL wins the award because its major application field, Microsoft's database engine SQL Server, is losing popularity. The general conclusion is that Transact-SQL won because actually not much happened in 2013."

2014 Developer Opportunities and Challenges, Part II: UX Skills Gap, Crowdsourcing
It's an old problem, he said, but a new opportunity. "UX is one of the big things to get your arms around in 2014," he said. "It presents a great opportunity to outpace your competitors if you do, especially if you recognize that it isn't just important for consumers using your mobile app, it's also important to the productivity and satisfaction of your internal employees." Another opportunity Knipp sees ahead for developers comes from what might for many be an unexpected place: crowdsourcing and hackathons.

How developers could have avoided HealthCare.gov technical problems
As we all know, fixing hundreds of bugs right before a release can have a crippling effect on software and is guaranteed to create additional bugs that will not be caught in the final testing phases. That is, unless you have seasoned testers who know how to expand upon the documented test cases during the final integration testing. Unfortunately, the testers for the October release involved 200-300 government and insurance employees who tested only a few days before launch.

Taking Advantage of the Kinder, Gentler Takeover
This Darwinian scenario benefits both rivals and shareholders. In contrast to the widely held argument—which has been cited frequently in opposition to the rumored Sprint–T-Mobile deal—that mergers have collusive, anti-competitive effects on an industry, most of the evidence suggests that competing firms “learn from the productive efficiency driving the merger, possibly putting some rivals in play for a later date,” the author writes.

Tor-enabled malware stole credit card data from dozens of retailers
Most of the affected retailers are based in the U.S., but PoS infections with this malware were also detected in 10 other countries, including Russia, Canada and Australia, the RSA researchers said Thursday in a blog post. "At this time our research indicates that 119 PoS terminals within 45 unique retailers show evidence of being infected with the ChewBacca malware," said Uri Fleyder, manager of the Cybercrime Research Lab at RSA, via email. Thirty-two of the affected retailers are based in the U.S., he said.

What is the Board’s Role in Strategy and Strategy Execution? Post 1 of 3
It’s a pretty simple two-part argument: What’s the spend on Strategy Execution? What if it’s $5M or $55M? Given that failure rates on strategic initiatives range from 44-70% (see “Time to kill the 70% phantom failure rate”), there is $2.2M - $38.5M directly at risk; and Perhaps even more importantly, does realization of those strategies materially affect the future of the organization? In combination, surely these are equivalent to any of the board’s other responsibilities.

Quote for the day:

"I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it." -- Walt Disney

January 31, 2014

How Geospatial Data Can Enrich Your Customer Experience and Drive Revenue
Geospatial analysis offers many possibilities for organisations. It can be used to show social media activity on a map during an environmental crisis. Mapping tweets, posts or blogs to a certain location can help relief workers know where they have to be. For example, during Hurricane Irene, which struck the American East Coast in 2011, many of such tools where used to gain a better picture of the damage that had been done by the hurricane.

The Future of Personal Entertainment, In Your Face
So what makes the Glyph special? Avegant says it’s the headset’s image projection method, which reflects light onto each retina through a series of lenses and tiny mirrors and makes for sharper, easier-to-watch images than using a screen, as many competing products like Oculus Rift do. Its ability to mimic depth certainly makes it particularly good at showing natural-looking 3-D content.

Rise of Open Source Technologies in Middle East
Open source customization is one of the trendiest technologies, these days in order to bring up the imagination and unique ideas into real action. Open source technology is one such software and IT related technology which has changed the course of business and industry over there in Middle East and the biggest nation getting influenced from this is Dubai. Open source consultants Dubai have become the one of the greatest hub around the world today to look for quality assured yet highly pocket friendly open source services.

Why Line of Business Managers Hate IT (and How ITaaS Can Change That)
To this day, in many companies, there is a rift between IT and LoB departments. It starts with physical separation. When they’re not working from home, LoB employees work in cubicles or (more recently) shared open spaces geared toward collaboration. When they’re not working at home, IT employees are likely to dwell in the basement or other windowless location, behind locked doors. Such physical separation leaves little opportunity for spontaneous cross-departmental discussion.

Winning the Talent Game: How Gamification Is Impacting Business and HR
Gamification applications are most effective when they are customized to various industries and their specific needs. For example, some firms leverage their employee base by creating recruitment “ambassadors” and lead generators by conducting gamified events across campuses. This achieves all the benefits of crowdsourcing as well as creates an effective brand for the organization. Gamified new hire programs are personalized, engaging and often convey a creativity within an organization.

What You Really Need to Know about Artificial Intelligence
For those who started their careers in AI and left in disillusionment (Andrew Ng confessed to this, yet jumped back in) or data scientists today, the consensus is often that artificial intelligence is just a new fancy marketing term for good old predictive analytics. They point to the reality of Apple’s Siri to listen and respond to requests as adequate but more often frustrating. Or, IBM Watson’s win on Jeopardy as data loading and brute force programming. Their perspective, real value is the pragmatic logic of the predictive analytics we have.

The Why, How, and Where of moving to the Cloud
Once you have answered the “Why” and “How” of your Cloud journey you will have a fair idea of where the organization is. For any successful journey, it is important to know the starting point and destination in order to develop a path that considers all factors before embarking on the journey. It also helps you in other important decisions that you will need to make along the way to ensure that you have considered all of the factors and are on track with where the organization is heading. Here are a few pointers to ensure that you are on track to taking the organization in the right direction with the transition to the Cloud.

A Virtual Bill of Rights is Needed to Guard Our Data
Chances are that all such attempts to legislate will be superseded as new forms of information gathering and analysis develop. One only has to look at the number of cameras being installed on next-generation cars, or the fears around utilities using smart grids to switch off energy without the home-owner's consent, to appreciate some of the difficulties which lie ahead. The debate becomes even more complex when metadata (data about data, such as phone call records), data aggregation and anonymising are taken into consideration.

Delegated Authority: An Agile Trust Experiment
For my part, just the act of thinking about what is important to me allows me to let go of some areas of responsibility that I might otherwise have gripped tightly. As issues come up, I am constantly thinking about this contract and my role in the decision-making process. For the team, they recognized that this is a living document. They're already thinking about ways to improve or change it. Before this experiment, we had individuals named as technical leads for our different technologies.

Federal IT Procurement Reform Proposed
Obama administration officials argue that efforts to reform federal IT management, through the administration's "Cloud First" initiative and PortfolioStat IT investment review process have already saved billions of dollars and improved the way agencies acquire and manage commodity hardware and software. They also point to efforts, such as the President's Open Data initiatives, that are making government data more transparent and accessible, and meeting with experts to capitalize on IT innovations.

Quote for the day:

"Success is the prize for those who stand true to their ideas!" -- Josh S. Hinds

January 30, 2014

The real measure of Agile success
Another factor spreading Agile practices beyond software development is the movement of millennial generation employees into the work place, said Diana Larsen, a partner at Agile consultancy FutureWorks, in Portland, OR. "They are a lot more comfortable working collaboratively." As a result, many Agile practices come naturally to them. "They want to check in on a daily basis and get feedback early," she said.

Mass e-surveillance project set for launch
The Centre’s highly advanced telecom and Internet surveillance project — the Central Monitoring System (CMS) — is in its final stage of deployment. Yet, there has been no word on the legal and procedural framework under which the country’s security agencies can track phone calls, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and e-mails in real time. In seven of the 11 states covered in the first phase, the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) — a government agency — has already installed the equipment for this massive snooping programme

IBM's suggestions for mid-market cloud security
Since cloud computing is based upon today's complex IT infrastructure it would be very wise to make sure company business and IT decision makers are speaking with one voice and thinking with one mindbefore contracts are signed and the company begins using a cloud computing solution. Decision makers who don't understand this technology should not be making purchasing and implementation decisions without the help of those who do.

IT services firm ITC Infotech on data analytics in retail
One of the biggest challenges that retailers will face in 2014 is the fear of losing their customers, as well as winning new ones, in a very competitive business environment. To address these challenges more and more companies will make aggressive investments in technology to gather intelligence about the buying trends and experiences of their customers. The most exciting area of growth is expected to be the use of data analytics as companies try to understand real time consumer buying patterns and behaviours.

Cyber security quest strong in UK, says Isaca
“It has provided an opportunity for information security professionals to engage with their organisations about the implications of data leaks and how to do proper risk assessments,” he said. It has also raised fresh questions about what the role of chief information security officers (CISOs) should entail, where they should sit in an organisation, and how they should be relevant to an organisation. “One of the interesting things that some UK organisations are already doing is ensuring that the CISO role is not just a senior role, but moving forward from being reactive to being proactive,” said Stroud.

Sync Your Files without Trusting the Cloud
Klinker says Bittorrent Sync shows how popular applications of the Internet can be designed in a way that gives people control of their own data, despite prevailing trends. “Pick any app on the Web today, it could be Twitter, e-mail, search, and it has been developed in a very centralized way—those businesses are built around centralizing information on their servers,” he says. “I’m trying to put more power in the hands of the end user and less in the hands of these companies and other centralizing authorities.”

Data Governance: A Critical Starting Point in Addressing the Challenges of UDI Compliance
Data governance provides a structured approach to managing changes to core, shared business data. Without a governance program in place, the organization runs the risk that the changes initiated during the course of UDI compliance will negatively impact the quality, accuracy, usability or availability of the data used by the rest of the organization. Conversely, a solid governance program can facilitate the data, process and application changes needed to comply with unique device identification. It can also accelerate an existing UDI initiative.

Flash your way to better VMware performance
By consolidating server-side flash into a single shared flash cluster, PernixData FVP leverages many small flash investments into a large I/O improvement. Installation is quick and easy, and it doesn't even require a reboot of the hosts. PernixData FVP comes in SMB and Standard versions. The SMB version is $9,999 for up to four hosts and 100 VMs. The standard edition is $7,500 per host with no restrictions on the number of hosts or virtual machines.

Storage Innovations Bring Unparalleled Capacity Opportunities
Most recently, hard drive manufacturers have turned to helium to help continue to improve storage economics. Until recently, hard drives all had regular, everyday air inside the enclosure. Today, some hard drives are actually filled with helium, which is much lighter than air. As a result, as the disk spins and the heads are dragged through the enclosure, there is much less drag, which can mean better performance.

Software process: Guiding principles in a perfect world
Wilson offered his thoughts on the role of testers in a DevOps-oriented organization. But what emerged from our discussion was a broader, big-picture view of how the software development process should work—or could work if organizations were willing to rethink it and make needed changes. Here are my guiding principles for improving the software development process in 2014, based on ideas shared by Compuware's Wilson.

Quote for the day:

"What gets measured gets done. If you don't measure morale, you wind up taking it for granted." -- Jack Stack