Daily Tech Digest by Kannan Subbiah

August 17, 2013

Big Data Security: 5 Questions You Need to Ask
"Big data provides an important opportunity to deliver value from information, but an enterprise will be more successful in the long run if policies and frameworks, such as Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT), are put into place first." To guide CIOs, ISACA identified 16 important questions enterprises must answer to assess their environments. In particular, these key five questions, if left unanswered, could expose their companies to greater risk and damage:

Understanding Predictive Analytics: A Spotlight Q&A with Eric Siegel
You need to predict significantly better than guessing, and that’s what makes it valuable. So if there’s a needle in the haystack issue for law enforcement, for fraud, for customers who are going to be extremely valuable or for a rare disease in healthcare, what you’re doing is you’re making the haystack much smaller. Business is a numbers game, and you play that numbers game much more effectively by tipping the odds in your favor by saying, “This customer is three times more likely than average to be an extremely poor credit risk.”

3 Key Skills Of Successful Data Scientists
According to Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs, three of these characteristics are most important, and every organization in the market for a data scientist should know what they are. In a phone interview with InformationWeek, Jennings revealed this holy trio.

12 hard truths about cloud computing
This isn't to say there's no truth to what the cloud companies proclaim, but there are plenty of tricky details that aren't immediately obvious. At their core, the machines aren't miracle workers, just the next generation of what we've been using for years. The improvements are incremental, not revolutionary. If we dial back our hopes and approach the machines with moderated expectations, they're quite nice. To keep our expectations in check, here is a list of what to really expect from the cloud.

New Tweets per second record, and how!
We took Gizzard, our framework to create sharded and fault-tolerant distributed databases, and applied it to tweets. We created T-Bird. In this case, Gizzard was fronting a series of MySQL databases –– every time a tweet comes into the system, Gizzard hashes it, and then chooses an appropriate database. Of course, this means we lose the ability to rely on MySQL for unique ID generation. Snowflake was born to solve that problem.

Agents for Agility: The Just-In-Time Enterprise Has Arrived
Hear Analysts Krish Krishnan of Sixth Sense, and Dr. Robin Bloor of The Bloor Group, as they outline their competing visions for the architecture of a real-time enterprise in this episode of Hot Technologies. He'll discuss how EnterpriseWeb leverages the best ideas of service orientation, combined with intelligent agents that act as virtual hubs for the sharing of data, analytics, and mission-critical business processes

Cybercriminals add exploit for patched Java flaw to their arsenal
Two days after its release, the CVE-2013-2465 exploit was already integrated into so-called exploit kits, attack tools that infect computers with malware by exploiting vulnerabilities in outdated software when users visit compromised websites. An independent malware researcher who uses the online alias Kafeine found a live installation of the Styx exploit kit, previously known as Kein, that is using the exploit.

CIO 2.x: Champion for SaaS, advocate for business
So what does CIO 2.x look like? A few patterns have surfaced from the recent SaaS roundtable discussions I hosted with IBM client executives. One observation is that IT leadership is becoming a true advocate for business transformation versus an inhibitor to change. IT-driven initiatives such as “Cloud First” are a great example of what this type of bold transformation looks like.

Big Data Analytics Will Never Fully Replace Crative Thought
As technology improves, the power of big data analytics should only grow - but according to skeptics, this development may have its limits. By focusing on data quality and analytical philosophies, business leaders can certainly improve, but only to a certain point. Data can be tremendously useful, but it will never fully replace human thought. The data craze is reaching its apex in 2013, but there are two major areas where people run the risk of getting carried away.

Quote for the day:

"A goal should scare you a little, and excite you a lot." -- Dr. Joe Vitale

August 16, 2013

NewSQL Startup Keeps Java Devs from 'Throwing the Baby out with the Bathwater'
The emphasis here, and increasingly everywhere, is on scaling out, Morris said, not scaling up. "It's all about commodity data centers," he said. "It's much cheaper to buy a hundred thousand-dollar machines than it is to buy one gigantic, steam-belching machine. A single database running on a hundred commodity servers -- and we can scale out to that kind of number -- it can run on the order ten million transactions per second, so it's an extremely fast database system running on cheap machine, and dynamically."

Google to encrypt Cloud Storage data by default
"If you require encryption for your data, this functionality frees you from the hassle and risk of managing your own encryption and decryption keys," Barth wrote. "We manage the cryptographic keys on your behalf using the same hardened key management systems that Google uses for our own encrypted data, including strict key access controls and auditing."

The Value Architect and Data Scientist: Are They Really New Roles?
As the world becomes consumed by topics and themes on Big Data, the roles of the data scientist and the value architect become ever more paramount. With social media and text data being readily accessible, the ability to understand context and what business insights might be meaningful will remain the purview of the value architect. Meanwhile, the ability to “work” the data in order to create the information necessary for these insights is the responsibility of the data scientist.

Five Arguments Against Virtualization - And Why They Are Wrong
There are many misconceptions about virtualization and its effect on applications and the existing infrastructure. Most of these misconceptions are the result of bad information, not enough information, or simply preconceived notions that are not founded in reality. This post will separate some of the fact from fiction on five of the biggest arguments against virtualization.

Defining the New Data Center Operating System
So, how does the data center operating system really different from other DC management platforms? DCOS really means connecting the logical with the physical. As the modern data center continues to become the “data center of everything” we need to evolve the way we control these vital platforms. New types of threats against the data center environment are continuing to grow. So, to combat new security needs, an ever-scaling environment, and a lot more cloud computing; we must take the next leap in data center control and management.

Researchers create battery-free wireless communication 'out of thin air'
This new wireless communication system seems like "magic," since it "provides connectivity between computers out of what is essentially thin air." It takes us a step closer to an Internet of Things reality as it lets devices talk to each other without relying on batteries or wires for power. Instead, it taps into already existing ambient Wi-Fi, TV or cellular signals to exchange information.

Innovation Opportunity: The Future is Co-Created
The right idea at the wrong time is still wrong. It’s entirely possible to see the future now, but to be unable to capitalise on this vision because the world isn’t ready for it yet. People often have difficulty in telling you what they need – but you can experiment together to figure out what will work. ... We build these new opportunities together with the people that will benefit from our new ideas. It’s co-creation. Nilofer Merchant coined the phrase “the future is co-created” and she’s right

The consumerization of IT: Everything new is old again
"Please don't misunderstand. I am not saying that the challenges posed by consumerization are not real, because they are. I would like to encourage you to recognize that dealing with obstacles and overcoming challenges are your table stakes. Don't earn yourself the title of Chief Impediment Officer (CIO). Instead, focus on the opportunity value of what some call a sea change and what I call the natural evolution of the complex relationship between people and their machines."

The first 4G car, the Audi S3, debuts in Europe; U.S. must wait until spring
Audi is going fully integrated from the get go. The S3 and forthcoming A3 will use their LTE chips to link its on-board nav system to the cloud with access to Google Earth and Streetview. Drivers can access social media networks Facebook and Twitter with voice commands, though its Audi Connect platform is still light on other apps. And the LTE connection can also be redistributed to other devices in the car through Wi-Fi.

Intel to customize chips for big data applications
Through hardware and software improvements, the company is trying to figure out how its chips can perform better in areas like predictive analytics, cloud data collection and specific task processing. The company has already released its own distribution of Hadoop, a scalable computing environment that deals with large data sets, and now chip improvements are on tap.

Quote for the day:

"Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger." --Arnold Palmer

August 15, 2013

How Agile Methodology Works in Fixed Bid and Fixed Date Contracts
Most Project Managers think that practicing Agile methodology in FPFS projects is not possible. Watch as agile coach Tushar Somaiya providing interesting tips on Agile methodology for FPFS projects. He believes in a democratic organization & self-organizing teams. He calls himself a servant leader. Through his NueroScience based coaching & consulting, he has helped projects and organizations turn agile and become truly high performing teams.

Breach Detection Systems take aim at targeted persistent attacks
“The BDS, NGIPS, and NGFW products are similar in that all three can contain signatures and heuristics for identifying malware. However, a BDS separates itself from the pack with its ability to analyze the patterns of network traffic, identify malicious domains, and model the behavior/impact of files that are being downloaded and executed on an attack surface.

7 Sleep Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Not sleeping well has implications beyond feeling groggy the next day. Lack of sleep has been shown to increase stress levels and increase the incidence of depression and anxiety. It can also be a major contributor to poor food choices and weight gain. In other words, when you don't get enough sleep, you're not operating at your greatest potential. Poor sleep could even be getting in the way of your success.

Agile in Fixed Price Fixed Scope projects - Hybrid Contracts
The Fixed Price (FP) Fixed Scope (FS) contracts offer very limited opportunity for vendors to practice Agile methodology. Making either FP or FS elastic will give some room for practicing Agile methodology. Let us explore how this can be accomplished in the contracts. Both the above contracting models requires a high level of trust between both the vendors and the clients.

Your Car Can Show You How Agile Estimation Works
When I was done, I could see that I would need 4 tanks of gas for my forecasted trips. So how could we correlate this approach to software project estimation? First, in software development, our “trips” are user stories. And similar to the process we used on trips, we have the team look at each user story and determine its impact to a sprint. In software development, a sprint is our “tank of gas”.

Clouds are backing up clouds, with more choices on tap
The feature is designed to give customers more assurance that they will still be able to get to their data even if their primary cloud platform fails. Nasuni has never experienced a service outage and customers are already covered by service-level agreements, but Cloud Mirroring can give them one more layer of assurance, Nasuni said.

Big Data Security: The Evolution of Hadoop’s Security Model
Since the security redesign, Hadoop’s security model has by and large stayed the same. Over time, some components of the Hadoop ecosystem have applied their own security as a layer over Hadoop – for example, Apache Accumulo provides cell-level authorization, and HBase provides access controls at the column and family level.

Agile Testing is Not about Automation
Regardless of the nature and size of the project, an organization can adopt Agile testing to avail a number of advantages. However, many people still consider the innovative testing is synonymous with automation testing. The automation testing is, no doubt, an important and integral part of each Agile software testing strategy. But the main aim of the strategy is to ensure that Agile testing is seamlessly integrated with the entire application development process.

European Union Check-Up: Malicious Websites Hosted in the EU
Today more and more attackers are using websites to attempt to distribute malware and steal credentials. As I wrote about recently, we see that drive-by downloads are now the top threat detected in enterprise environments. Malicious websites typically appear to be legitimate and often provide no outward indicators of their malicious nature. In many cases, these sites are legitimate websites that have been compromised by malware, SQL injection, or other techniques.

Quote for the day:

"In a crisis if I had only an hour I'd spend the first 50 minutes defining the problem and the last 10 minutes solving it." -- Albert Einstein

August 14, 2013

Neohapsis: IPv4 plus IPv6 enables man-in-the-middle attacks
One aspect of man-in-the-middle attacks that surprises even hardcore hackers is that this issue has been out there for so long. "It was originally discussed in an RFC document,Security implications of IPv6, when hardcore security engineers identified the issue and warned that if you have an IPv4 network it may be possible to set up a rogue IPv6 network on top of it," Behrens said.

My First Words on Oracle’s SPARC T5 Processor — The World’s Fastest Microprocessor?
SPARC T5 outperforms the 2008-era result by about 35%. On the other hand, the Intel two-socket Xeon E5 result delivers 31% better results in this type of performance assessment. Finally, the Intel 8-socket Xeon E7 result outperformed SPARC T5 by 76%. If customers care about both response time and cost these are important data points.

Three Fixes for Common Mobile Banking Performance Problems
In their relatively new role as mobile app and mobile web developers, banks are hitting many speed bumps — glitches, 404 errors, slow response times, and crashes that drive customers to frustration and sometimes to the apps of competitors. Resolving these is important as mobile banking usage continues to rise. Experts identify several typical problems that crop up with mobile banking apps and sites.

No, your data isn't secure in the cloud
Experts say there's simply no way to ever be completely sure your data will remain secure once you've moved it to the cloud. "You have no way of knowing. You can't trust anybody. Everybody is lying to you," said security expert Bruce Schneier. "How do you know which platform to trust? They could even be lying because the U.S. government has forced them to."

Where does OpenStack go from here?
We know that the next release, Havana, won't include that many new features. From where I sit, the two big ones are: Metering: For central collection of metering/monitoring data for use in for billing systems and the like; and Orchestration: Code-named Heat, this is is a template-based orchestration engine It will orchestrate cloud infrastructure resources such as storage, networking, instances, and applications into a repeatable running environment

Open source code management: How to safely use open source libraries
Some may believe the risks posed by the use of open source code in enterprise applications are limited because in many cases open source code use is limited to specific application components. However, components of an application almost always run with the full privilege of the application, so flaws in any single component should be taken seriously.

Don't Just Lead, Coach
"I want team members to be empowered. I want them to own their deliverables. I want them to have creativity." But that comes with coaching, "as I want to make sure we're still going to win the tournament at the end of the day." For Robinson, being a good leader means hiring smart people -- smarter than herself, even. "You want to hire people who are smarter than you and complement your skill sets and then make sure the value your team brings to the table is the complement of all those skill sets."

US and Germany to Enter No-spying Agreement, German Government Says
The no-spying agreement talks were announced as part of a progress report on an eight-point program proposed by German Chancellor Angela MerkelA in July with measures to better protect the privacy of German citizens. The plan was drafted "due to the current discussions about the work of the intelligence services," the German government said.

Innovation Requires Structure
Highly innovative organizations might have ping pong and Foosball tables, but they also have structure, expectations, and processes. If my other examples weren’t clear or relevant enough for you, we’ll talk in organizational language for a second. Think about it this way – organizations have goals like adding new products, raising profits, improving productivity, reducing cost, (as examples) – and innovation is required to achieve these things.

Quote for the day:

"The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way." -- Henry Miller

August 13, 2013

How compliance professionals can maintain GRC during cloud deployment
The biggest challenge from a regulatory and data risk standpoint comes about when an organization's compliance team encounters a cloud deployment "after the fact." This happens more often than you might think: Most cloud deployments don't happen in a graceful, workmanlike manner where compliance teams are kept in the loop from inception through the final stages of implementation.

C++/CX Performance Pitfalls
Writing applications in C++/CX is not like writing normal C++ applications. The interoperability between pure C++ code and the Windows Runtime (WinRT) can be surprisingly expensive. In this article based on Sridhar Madhugiri’s video, C++/CX Best Practices, we look at some of the ways to avoid performance problems in Windows 8 development.

Strategies to encourage employee risk-taking
In today’s dynamic workplace, there’s plenty that has to change. But in organizations that are committed to building a risk-taking culture, one thing must remain consistent, and that is the leader’s response to risk. Constant, predictable reactions and support — despite the outcomes — is the only way to ensure the significant individual and organizational shifts required to institutionalize innovation and achieve long-term, sustainable growth.

The triumph of Patch Tuesday
One of the great, unappreciated inventions in security came from Microsoft almost 10 years ago in October, 2003: Patch Tuesday. Microsoft invented the process of regularly scheduled security updates. It was somewhat controversial at the time, but it was clearly the right thing to do and has eliminated what was becoming a regular series of crises, thus relieving a great deal of pressure from security admins.

Working Backwards to Unleash Your Creativity
Most people think innovation starts with a well-defined problem, and then you brainstorm a solution. Try the opposite: Work backwards by taking an abstract, conceptual solution and finding a problem it can solve. By constraining and channeling our brains, we can make them work both harder and smarter to find creative solutions —on demand.

How Agile development project leader became Jed Moffitt's IT sideline
Cost didn't clinch the decision. Catalyst IT's development methodology, Agile, did. The Agile approaches of short iterations and soliciting and acting on user feedback fit KCLS well. "No more waiting for new features and fixes, even the simple things, to get done," said Moffitt. "On a weekly basis, we're actually changing the system based on our specifications."

Big Data and the Role of the CIO
Nearly four in 10 CIOs cite overcoming a lack of support from their executive management teams as one of the biggest barriers they face to become more strategic. ... In line with this perception, senior executives often aim to keep discussions with the IT organization centered on budgets or software implementation, with few seeking to engage them in wider discussions about the value of technology as a strategic driver of growth or as a source of operational insight.

The Third Ear: A Powerful Tool To Becoming A Better Listener
Many leaders say they have an open door policy. While they mean well, in reality, often people's perception is that the door is left ajar, and not everyone is welcome through that door. That's because those on lower echelons don't always feel safe walking in to bring forward issues that need airing. In his Leadership Primer, Colin Powell states, "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you don't care."

11 Signs Your IT Project is Doomed
The IT world is no stranger to projects that go down in flames. Anyone who has had the unenviable pleasure of participating in a failed IT effort likely sensed its demise well before the go-live date. That sixth sense is invaluable in a competitive field like IT. Whether you're looking to avoid being saddled to a dud or to steer a doomed rollout out of the ditch, you must recognize the signs of imminent failure well before a project comes apart at the seams. It can be a career-saver.

John Deere plows into agile
The move to agile came "after some serious introspection in our development organization," said Tony Thelen, the director of the Intelligent Solutions Group, part of the company's enterprise IT operation. There are a lot of companies that are moving to agile -- Forrester Research conservatively estimates that 38% of businesses, from small to large, now use the development methodology.

Quote for the day:

"You always pass failure on the way to success."--Mickey Rooney

August 12, 2013

Virtual overlay networks: Tunneling protocols enable multi-tenancy
From a technical point of view, network overlays encapsulate one packet inside of another packet. The encapsulated packet is then forwarded to an endpoint where it is de-encapsulated. Network overlays leverage this "packet in a packet" technique to provide secure multi-tenancy and extend VLANs across Layer 2 networks.

Buried in software licensing
"Oracle works very well, but at the end of the day we pay a huge price for that service," Steinour says. Today, 99% of the fixed-cost increases in the university's IT budget come from software maintenance price hikes. "That's just not sustainable," says Steinour, whose IT department supports 20,000 students and 1,600 faculty members.

Cloud Services Foundation Reference Architecture - Reference Model
Although the term 'Cloud Services Foundation Reference Model' is defined extensively in the Overview article of this article set, the short definition is: "The minimum amount of vendor-agnostic hardware and software technical capabilities and operational processes necessary to provide information technology (IT) services that exhibit cloud characteristics, or simply, cloud services." It’s important to note that although the problem domain is the foundation for providing cloud services, it does not include cloud services.

Which Technology Will Become Extinct Next?
In truth, the next technology term that could be about to become redundant (once again, in a good way) is Agile. We refer to Agile in the sense of the highly iterative people-centric approach to software application development and delivery. Agile computing as decreed in the Agile manifesto back in 2001 focuses of simple programming code with lots of testing and the imperative to deliver any functional parts of a piece of software as soon as they are ready.

Top Athletes Use Coaches. Why Don’t CEOs?
CEOs don’t see as great a need to work on their softer skills. Low on the personal development list: compassion (18 percent), interpersonal and persuasion skills (both 14 percent), and motivation (11 percent). “It’s concerning that so many of them are ‘going it alone,’” says Stephen Miles, chief executive officer of the Miles Group. In an e-mail exchange, Miles explains why so few CEOs have leadership coaches and the best combination of “hard” and “soft” skills:

Obama pledges greater transparency in surveillance programs
"It's not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs. The American people need to have confidence in them, as well," Obama said, adding that he was confident the programs were not being abused. The announcement - made just before Obama heads for summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard - may be greeted as at least a partial victory for supporters of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden who is now in Russia, where he was granted asylum last week.

Security Manager's Journal: Learning to let go and offshore
No security-related activities were sent overseas, though. I always wanted to keep security tightly under my control. But it's impossible to ignore the savings that offshoring makes possible, so after talking with peers at other companies, I learned to let go of some of that direct control.

Perspective Based Architecture Analysis Method
Fifty years ago, today and fifty years from now, IT architects will still need to address these difficult questions.Therefore, The PBA Method focuses on capturing those questions from architects in a community model organized within a meta-model in an easy to use capability complimenting most methodologies and processes to promote more successful architectures..

Ten ‘Take Aways’ from the Reifer “Quantitative Analysis of Agile Methods” Study
Agile cost, as measured in terms of $/unit of ouput, is less than the norms being experienced on plan-driven projects. The gains experienced range from near nominal to 100 percent over the course of ten years, averaging at best a cost avoidance of between 20 to 40 percent in a single year after adoption. Again, these costs vary greatly by application domain and are a function of many factors including those revolving around workforce composition and labor rates.

CIOs are laying SDN plans, but slowly
The typical broad-based enterprise market is busy exploring the potential of SDN, “but there hasn’t been much in the way of vendor outreach to them,” said Casemore. After all, “traditional vendors still have a business model and products installed in those customers’ data centers and throughout their networks. These vendors have next-generation products coming out and aren’t inclined to disrupt that flow.”

Quote for the day:

"Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will." -- Zig Ziglar

August 11, 2013

Integration on the Edge: Data Explosion & Next-Gen Integration
The build vs. buy debate still rages on when it comes to data or application integration, though. I've lost count of the conversations I've had that include phrases such as "it's just a few web services" or "the API is easy to write to" or "it's just a simple point-to-point integration". If you want to hire me to evaluate your situation and make a recommendation on whether you should build your own integration "mechanism" or just buy one, that's great. Be forewarned that 994 times out of 1000, the answer will be: "Go buy one".

Speed of adoption risk
If you get this risk wrong, you may not, as in the past, be looking at a need to change your direction slightly, or even just have to consider embracing the technology, but you may be looking at outright bankruptcy. Let’s all consider the current situation for book retailers in Australia and around the world. There are other ways to adapt, by finding that unique segment, but if you have aspirations for growth across the globe, you may need to think again.

Who needs a smartwatch? This shirt monitors breathing and heart rate
The shirt meant to be worn under everyday clothes or on its own at the gym. The data it collects is sent to a a computer or smartphone app where the user can view instant and long-term exertion, stress and even mood. The app can share data with loved ones, including sending an alert when it detects high stress or a potentially dangerous situation.

Maharashtra chooses VMware for MahaGov Cloud
Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary IT for the government of Maharashtra, said "The Government of Maharashtra is committed to making e-governance a success in the state. We were confident that virtualization and cloud computing would play a critical role in enabling our vision for e-governance in the state of Maharashtra and have partnered with VMware, the industry leader, to help us on our cloud journey and fulfill this vision."

Culture Inhales Strategy for Breakfast… Then Spits it Out!

Culture is defined by the common values, the individual behavior, and the attitude of the people working in the organization. This is where managers often fail – perhaps because they’re simply unaware of the cultural aspect’s importance, perhaps because they don’t feel comfortable with it or because they don’t have a proper road-map at their disposal.

Gartner Says Compliance Is No Longer a Primary Driver of IT Risk and Security Measures
Organisations are relying more on their own risk assessments to guide their implementation of controls rather than the "classic" compliance approach of implementing mandated controls regardless of the anticipated risk severity or impact. “If CIOs are managing their risks effectively, their compliance requirements will be met, and not the other way round,” added Mr Wheeler.

The Best Data Scientists Cluster Around the Biggest Big-Data Challenges
Crowdsourcing data scientist expertise on a moment’s notice is often as easy as engaging the smart people in online communities and, if budgets permit, hiring them for consulting projects. Quite often, the best freelance data scientists already maintain a prominent online presence, promote their best work far and wide, and collaborate on a wide range of challenging projects. They simply crave engagement with their peers and a chance to gain greater recognition for their accomplishments.

Hoya (HBase on YARN) : Application Architecture
The first thing it does is start an HBase Master on the local machine -this is is the sole HBase Master that Hoya currently manages. In parallel with the Master startup, Hoya asks YARN for the number of containers it needs for the number of workers this cluster has. For each of these containers, Hoya provides the commands to start HBase. This is a key point: Hoya does not run any Hoya-specific code on the worker nodes.

Systems that Run Forever Self-heal and Scale
Joe Armstrong is the principal inventor of Erlang and coined the term "Concurrency Oriented Programming". In this presentation, he outlines the architectural principles needed for building scalable fault-tolerant systems built from small isolated parallel components which communicate though well-defined protocols.

Be Invincible with AlwaysOn Availability Groups
The good news was that SQL Server had an abundance of features to help with high availability, such as clustering, mirroring, replication, and log shipping. The bad news was that businesses' needs were usually complex enough that no one feature worked by itself, so you had to duct tape multiple features together. This meant you had to be good at a lot of things, and all of them had to interoperate well. That rarely happened.

Quote for the day:

"You aren't learning anything when you're talking." -- Lyndon B. Johnson

August 10, 2013

Employee engagement is about human relationships not human resources
A recent report said that 40% of the whole workforce in the USA is ‘freelance’. This is a growing trend and will have big implications for how work is done, contracted and delivered by organisations and networks of freelancers in competition or collaboration. This is going to have serious implications for employee engagement too. Money, regardless of what many people say, still matters when it comes to employee engagement and knowledge workers.

Tools To Hack Android Phones Are Getting Easier To Use
Security research firm Symantec recently highlighted a remote access tool (or RAT) known as AndroRAT being exchanged in underground forums, which together with a new tool called a binder, allow attackers to scrape personal information from an Android phone. ... Once a would-be cracker has downloaded the remote access tool, they can use the binder to package AndroRAT into a legitimate-looking app, such as a game like Angry Birds.

NSA 'secret backdoor' paved way to U.S. phone, e-mail snooping
In response to a CNET article at the time, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement saying: "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress." Clapper never elaborated, however, on what "proper" authorization would be.

ebizQ eGuide: Cloud BPM
Moving business processes to cloud environments may sound like a reasonably simple undertaking. But deciding which processes to migrate--and when and how to do so -- involves some complex questions. This guide aims to provide some answers by compiling expert advice from ebizQ and other TechTarget sites. ... Get advice straight from the experts in this collection of podcasts about cloud processes.

Legacy software support is no reason to maintain outdated constructs
There's no reason to maintain DOS drive letters anymore. There's no argument good enough. There's no legacy software worth it. It's time to grow up. It's time to leave that part of the past behind us. Drive letters should only be the topic of geeky conversations that I'll walk away from. Sorry drive letter fans, it's time to birth a new legacy: Drive letters.

Reinventing the CIO as Chief Interaction Officer
‘Information' is a commodity, ‘Interaction' is business value. Companies can no longer sustain the 3x investment required to attract new business. Instead, they need to drive more business and higher value deals from existing customers. That's why nearly 90% of CEOs rank customer engagement as their primary initiative.

Using automated analytics in Agile development
One way we've broken the silence is by using Application Lifecycle Intelligence, pulling together the data the team generates while working, writing code and implementing the product. This data is being captured in so many systems. By automating the process of capturing this data, digesting the data and understanding the association between the data, we can use analytics to give us a high level of transparency.

IBM Opens Up Power Design, Partners with Google
Google designs its own servers, and the search company could design its own integrated chip -- also called system-on-chip -- based on the Power architecture, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. That development is tied to one of IBM's goals -- to push Power-based chips into more servers, which could prop up the company's other businesses, McCarron said.

Scaling Dropbox
"Every time we tried to be clever about architecture we failed" muses Eranki. Hopes to use clever data structures like Bloom Filters to manage distributed hash tables never panned out against simple database sharding. Plans to use clever distributed sharding schemes for their MySQL databases proved more complex than a pragmatic master-slave architecture.

Mozilla links Gmail with Persona for email-based single sign-on
Because most internet users haven't registered with a Persona IdP, however – and many don't even know such things exist – Mozilla has developed Identity Bridging as a stopgap measure until Persona is more widely supported. A Persona Identity Bridge authenticates users using either the OpenID or OAuth protocols – most major email providers offer one or the other – and then translates the results into the Persona protocol for use with Persona-enabled websites.

Quote for the day:

"To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart." -- Thomas Watson

August 09, 2013

Making SIAM work
We put a lot of effort into identifying these dependencies, capturing them within our ITIL Framework for service management and our Governance Framework. Many of them came down to information flows. We reasoned that without knowing how the parties were to collaborate effectively in delivering end-to-end service, we could have no assurance that this would be achieved. This could not easily be bolted on after the initial construction. It had to be part of the operating environment before the arrival of the first player.

What is culture and how does it affect the practice of Enterprise Architecture?
Culture is defined in many ways by many scholars, although I find it easiest to define culture as interactions and relationships between members of an organization or unit within that organization. This assumes there is an organizational culture and sub cultures within that organization. With this said, it is important that we as architects focus on the overarching organizational culture to better understand whether our customers are ready for an EA engagement.

9 Qualities Of Truly Confident People
Confidence is quiet: It’s a natural expression of ability, expertise, and self-regard. "I’m fortunate to know a number of truly confident people. Many work with me at HubSpot, others are fellow founders of their own startups some of whom I've met through my angel investment activity. But the majority are people I’ve met through my career and who work in a variety of industries and professions."

It’s all in the Governance
Without a strong architectural voice at the governance table, the EA contribution and value will always be compromised. Unless you have effective EA governance, then you will suffer the following outcomes: Short-term, reactive fixes over proactively building longer-term capability; Inconsistent, ad-hoc and stand-alone solutions over an integrated, coherent set of services; and Unnecessary duplication of functionality or data, over taking advantage of potential sharing, synergies or collaboration.

Dutch banking regulator approves use of AWS public cloud in the financial sector
The approval also includes the storage and management of all levels of data on the AWS cloud, as well as the use of third-party technologies that run on top of it. Every Dutch financial institute is required to follow guidelines outlined by its central bank when choosing banking technology platforms. One of the guidelines requires that the DNB can oversee and confirm that the IT infrastructures used by financial firms are compliant with its regulations.

User Experience Is More Than Design—It’s Strategy
It is about the strategic understanding of users and their behavior. If we are to contribute strategically, UX professionals must be willing and able to take responsibility for their final decisions and accept the corporate accountability that comes with making critical decisions about customers. We must be willing to go outside our design skillset and embrace all corporate functions, including finance, technology, marketing, and sales.

Cloud Service Brokers: What You Need to Know
The fear of losing control over data management is among the reasons for hesitancy about cloud services, but a good broker can help users identify their ideal level of management oversight, and implement a cloud service to meet those needs. The user will still know what the broker is doing, and an administrator can and should set the policies to help alleviate these concerns.

The enterprise information Management Barbell strengthens your information Value
We no longer can depend on a single information source to make key organizational decisions. Many of our decisions depend on and gain strength from a combination of data and content. For example, the development of a patient care plan requires the lab results, patient vitals, any x-ray results, and the doctor’s notes. A complete picture of the patient is a combination of the data stored in the clinical systems and the unstructured information gathered from the x-rays and doctor’s notes.

China's Huawei unveils SDN programmable switch, taking aim at Cisco
"The Agile switch and network products we launched today can truly resolve the problems customers have in network development," said William Xu, CEO of Huawei's enterprise business group in an interview. "It's a revolutionary product." Huawei's Agile switch is designed with its own Ethernet network processor that can handle different software tasks. The company claims its product will offer better performance over rival switches

Microsoft to field a Cloud OS for government: Sources
The private cloud version of Microsoft's Cloud OS offering may be codenamed "Fairfax," according to my contacts. Fairfax, Virg., is the home of the General Services Administration, and close to other U.S. government agencies. I believe Fairfax is meant for U.S. government users. ... it would be a customized variant of Windows Server, with physical servers residing on site at government locations

Quote for the day:

"Your future is created by what you do today, not tomorrow" -- Robert Kiyosaki

August 08, 2013

Fighting the unknown unknowns: Building the network of the future
Of course, it's not just the core of the net that's feeling the pressure. It's also the data centre that's changing, turning into a private cloud that needs to respond flexibly to changes in demand, and to behave as a combination of compute and storage fabrics, all supported by a software defined network. It's a networking future that's fraught with unknown unknowns.

Cloud-based nearline storage adds features to adapt to big data needs
In the second of a two-part interview with TechTarget senior writer Carol Sliwa, Staimer discusses the distinction between nearline and primary data, decision points associated with choosing public, private or hybrid cloud storage for nearline scenarios, and data migration and security issues with large quantities of data.

Cloud computing will kill the IT department. True or false?

Gone are the days of companies needing large data centers, with thousands of servers and an army of people to manage them. Gone are the days of ridiculously complex software customizations, integrations, and teams to manage local applications. There will be no need for most of the IT roles that exist today. The technical experts and developers will mostly work for the companies who make the software or provide the infrastructure.

Are Data Quality and Data Science Polar Opposites?

Big data gurus have said that data quality isn’t important for big data. Good enough is good enough. However, business stakeholders still complain about poor data quality. In fact, when Forrester surveyed customer intelligence professionals, the ability to integrate data and manage data quality are the top two factors holding customer intelligence back.

A New Era of Computing Requires a New Way of Programming

The era that Backus and his contemporaries helped create, the programmable computing era, is being superseded by the era of cognitive computing. Increasingly, computers will gather huge quantities of data, reason over the data, and learn from their interactions with information and people. These new capabilities will help us penetrate complexity and make better decisions about everything from how to manage cities to how to solve confounding business problems.

IBM Research unveils new chip architecture inspired by the human brain
In a nutshell, the brain served as the inspiration for the groundwork to eventually support applications by using similar techniques and patterns in regards to human perception, action, and cognition. IBM researchers offered the example of the human eyes, which they posited could sift more than a terabyte of data each day. A system mimicking the cortex could give way to low-power eyeglasses to aide visually impaired users.

Forensic researchers develop undetectable method for tracking cellphones
Although phones are mass-produced, and each model contains the exact same hardware, there are still differences in the radio signal patterns they emit. It is those tiny unchangeable differences, or “inaccuracies” sent to cell towers that are unique enough to be used as identifying digital fingerprints, thereby allowing police to track the phone.

How to Map IT capabilities with Business Capabilities
“To justify their role, future CIOs must be able to relate to the industry they work in and the inputs they provide, the output and resources they bring in to enhance the capabilities of CFO / CSO / CMO or all of them,” says Matta. Pradeep Khanna, Senior IT Manager, Infosys, relates to the theory of cause and effect when he says IT is a ‘Karta’ and it is time we realised that IT exists to facilitate business and not the other way round.

Some Tech Firms Ask: Who Needs Managers?
GitHub says employees can join projects in whatever capacity they feel they are most useful and can switch roles depending on the project. Co-founder Tom Preston-Werner has declared that the company has no managers or organizational chart and says that performance feedback is offered informally by co-workers. But as GitHub has grown—it now employs about 200 people—its leaders are coming to terms with the need for some oversight.

Creative Destruction Of Internet Age: Unstoppable
Andreessen wrote in The Wall Street Journal two years ago. "Many of the winners are Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology companies that are invading and overturning established industry structures. Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more cases than not."

Quote for the day:

"It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference." -- Tom Brokaw

August 07, 2013

The problem with project risk management
If risk management could prevent projects from failing or being adversely affected by external circumstances, all projects would be successful, and, clearly, they aren't. So should we bother expending time and effort planning for predictable risks that are a natural part of most projects? Would it be more effective to simply deal with the problems when they occur.

Prescriptive analytics is coming to a future near you
In prescriptive analytics, algorithms basically run wild. "We use rules, but minimally," Basu said. That's because rules don't scale. They are dependent upon human beings, and in a big data world, human beings cannot keep up. "You end up being as good as the guy making the rules." Instead, the algorithms are allowed to take over but are programmed to adapt automatically based on changes in established parameters.

Why agile isn't enough for many software projects
"It would be nice if we were all collocated in small teams, and we didn’t have to talk to anybody else, but that’s not a reality," Mark Lines continues. "What if you’re in situations where you need to more than what a classic agile project would ask for?" Examples of software projects beyond the scope of agile include applications subject to regulatory mandates, or complex programs such as software for rocket ships or medical devices.

Active/Active Data Center Design - Complexity & Challenges
Not only can it be expensive, but it's also complex. For example, if you share sessions across cells, this means that you're relying on a single database server (or database server and failover server), or trying to replicate data between data centers. As a result, maintenance on the database server(s) of any type results in an outage (or the steps to avoid an outage) across two cells. This adds complexity.

Wirelessly-charged electric buses start public route in South Korea
The power is transmitted wirelessly via Shaped Magnetic Field in Resonance (SMFIR), a technology developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) that essentially runs 100 kilowatts of power through some cables at a very specific frequency (20 kHz in this case), creating a 20 kHz electromagnetic field. The underside of the bus is equipped with a pick-up coil that’s tuned to pick up that frequency, and thus AC electricity is produced via magnetic resonance.

The cloud is a revolution-enabler for SMBs
As cloud computing evolves and as providers bring more and higher-level services to the market, computing resources stop being so much of a constraint to the development of systems and applications, and become simply building blocks that we can employ. Less constraints means more opportunities, especially for small and medium companies who are more agile and quicker to react to market trends than their bigger competitors.

Bank Finds that Active/Active is Better than the End of the Rainbow
The bank realizes that going active/active is not as simple as moving to a sizzling-hot standby. Several problems must be faced when running an application in a distributed environment. For instance, the applications may need to be modified to correctly handle memory-resident data structures that are not replicated. Another problem is data collisions. A data collision occurs if applications at two nodes modify the same data object within the replication latency of the replication engine.

IT services management and best practices: An enterprise CIO guide
In this Essential Guide, get advice and tips from CIOs in the field looking to increase business value by developing cream-of-the-crop IT services management programs. These IT leaders share their dos, don'ts and personal experiences with ITSM implementation. This Essential Guide on ITSM best practices is part of SearchCIO's CIO Briefings series, which is designed to give IT leaders strategic management and decision-making advice on timely topics.

Cisco’s remedy for connected car security: Treat the car like an enterprise
Cisco Systems and auto components maker Continental believe they have an answer to the security threat facing the vehicle of the future: treat it like an enterprise. Each car should have security and access permissions of a self-contained enterprise network, and every incoming and outgoing communication would be monitored and managed the same way an IT department walls off a corporate network from the outside world.

Data Center I/O Bottlenecks Performance Issues and Impacts
The continued need for accessing more storage capacity results in an alarming trend: the expanding gap between server processing power and available I/O performance of disk storage (Figure-2). This server to I/O performance gap has existed for several decades and continues to widen instead of improving.

Quote for the day:

“With good architecture, debugging is a breeze because bugs will be where they should be.” -- David May

August 06, 2013

W3C defines local Web storage API
You won't be able to use the Web storage API for large documents or data sets. The W3C document recommends that each Web site or service limit the Web Storage data to 5MBs. The actual amount of local Web Storage on your device varies from Web browser to Web browser and even from version to version. That's still enough to make HTML5 applications much more useful.

Alternative project management styles are faster than multitasking
The best alternative, if you can manage it, is to commit to just one project for the duration of the iteration. This is called project portfolio management. Some group of decision makers in the organization decides which project is number 1, which project is number 2, which project is number 3, and so on down the line. They assign the projects to the teams and let the teams know the rank order of the projects.

U.S. cloud industry stands to lose $35 billion amid PRISM fallout
"The United States has both the most to gain and the most to lose," writes report author Daniel Castro, citing job growth and revenue dependent on the U.S. exporting cloud computing services. The "low end" scenario estimates assumes the U.S. loses about 10 percent of its foreign market to European or Asian competitors, or $21.5 billion over the next three years.

US IT worker files hiring lawsuit against Infosys
The lawsuit, citing comments from former Infosys employees, alleges that more than 90 percent of the company's 15,000 U.S. employees are foreign workers, with most of them from South Asia. The company is using H-1B visas to hire foreign workers "to performA jobs for which there are qualified American workers available," the lawsuit said.

Enterprise Private PaaS Adoption and Differentiation
While Public PaaS only requires a simple, on-demand subscription process and uploading code into the Cloud, Private PaaS requires transforming enterprise IT deployment models, monitoring and management systems, operation processes, funding models, and platform configuration options. Changing internal IT processes, infrastructure, and people skills is not easy, and often, complicated IT initiatives do not obtain the initially promoted lofty goals.

NuoDB 1.2 is Packed with Previews and Fixes
Note that our new "Preview" offerings are just that - a look at what's coming, a.ka. beta features. These will give you the chance to start using them now, knowing they are far enough along in development to try, but not quite 100% of where we expect to take them. Some will require a Beta program sign-up for participation, and some you can go straight to download and use now.

One in every five tablets will be an enterprise device by 2017
Enterprise tablets will make up around 12 percent of the 186 million tablets that Forrester expects to be in use in 2013. However, business adoption for internal and customer-facing purposes will drive tablets to become 18 percent all tablets in use by 2017, according to the company's latest global business and consumer tablet forecast update.

Linda Rising presents more practical advice about the Agile mindset
Rising described the growth mindset as an "Agile mindset" because in Agile environments, we are encouraged to learn from our mistakes. The idea of failing fast and improving, as promoted with Agile teams, is aligned with the growth mindset. Those who practice this Agile way of thinking do indeed continue to grow and learn more readily than those with the fixed mindset. If we think we can grow, we do. If we think we can't, we don't.

Microsoft Going All In with Hadoop and Hortonworks
"It is a bit different for us," Clark admitted, to work on such an open source project in view of its strong brands in the data platform space, such as SQL Server and Excel. But he said the move made sense for Microsoft and Hortonworks was the best partner. "We're putting our shoulder now firmly behind their distribution on Windows," he said.

Wrangling WebRTC: Challenges and Opportunities for Real-time Communication
Gustavo Garcia, Architect at TokBox explores actual use cases for real time communication in verticals ranging from telepresence to healthcare, where WebRTC fits and where it falls short, and what developers can do.

Quote for the day:

"The secret to success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching" -- Dennis Green

August 05, 2013

Disappointing News about SQL Server 2014
What's not fair, however, is to assume that a 16-core server running SQL Server Standard Edition only needs (or can only use) up to 4GB of Memory per core. In fact, that idea is patently ludicrous—given server hardware configurations today. It's also a bit galling to the spirit of SQL Server licensing that has existed in the past where customers paid to license the amount of computing power they were harnessing with SQL Server

PayPal co-founder on 'putting data to work' in healthcare with Glow app
"It turns out to be, as many things are in health, an information problem," Levchin reflected. Thus, Levchin declared Glow, which launched earlier this year, as "the first attempt" in making fertility (and later other medical treatments) more affordable thanks to information being made more readily available and actionable. "The fundamental truism of data-driven companies is you either talk about it or take the principal risk," Levchin remarked.

12 predictive analytics screw-ups
"Data mining is the art of making comparisons," says Dean Abbott, president of Abbott Analytics, which was retained for the project. Because the company had rules in place that always applied the exact same actions, Abbott had no idea which sequence would work better for collecting debts. "You need historical examples," he says. And if you don't have those examples, you need to create them through a series of intentionally planned experiments so that you can gather that data.

The trouble with VDI
there's the eternal network bandwidth problem. When your users are in the office, with Gigabit Ethernet and sufficient 802.11n Wi-Fi, delivering a solid desktop experience is easy. But, when your workers are often on the road with three to five Mbps DSL connections or over-subscribed Wi-Fi access points, it's another story. More often than not, there's insufficient bandwidth to deliver a quality experience.

Password Verification Security Loophole
Leighton Nelson asked an interesting Oracle security question via Twitter yesterday regarding Oracle’s built-in password verification functions and whether or not it can be bypassed by changing the way you create a user. Steve Karam says "Yes" and demonstrates the same through this blog post. As he explains any one with create / alter user privilege can bypass the password verification.

DataStax helps enterprises offload Oracle
“20 of the Fortune 100 have moved from Oracle to Datastax. We are a better fit for modern applications.” According to Ellis, relational database technologies such as Oracle are inadequate for powering modern online line-of-business applications. ... One of the companies using DataStax is eBay, which is running 250 TByte Cassandra and DataStax Enterprise cluster. Other businesses using DataStax include the movie streaming service, Netflix and Thomson Reuters.

Traffic Manager Overview
Although Traffic Manager conceptually routes traffic to a given service, the actual process is slightly different because it uses DNS. No actual service traffic routes through Traffic Manager. The user’s computer calls the cloud service directly when Traffic Manager resolves the DNS entry for the company domain to the IP address of the cloud service.

Three things Oracle has done to become a big cloud player
The moves are not just significant for Oracle; the partnerships that the company has garnered are significant to the partnering with Microsoft and Salesforce, too. And they’ll also reverberate across the industry to competing companies such as Amazon Web Services and SAP, predicts Holger Mueller, vice president at Constellation Research who recently published a report about these developments.

Tech Industry Leaders Appeal for Laxer Intellectual Property Laws
"They use the cost of litigation as a club to extort settlements out of companies that actually do things," Van Lindberg, vice president of intellectual property at the open source cloud provider Rackspace, told members of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on IP and the Internet. "If there is something that you could do to encourage innovation in America, it is to stop the patent troll problem and to really help us with this litigation abuse."

Researchers reveal methods behind car hack at Defcon
"If the only thing that keeps our cars safe is that no one bothers to do this kind of research, then they're not really secure," Miller said. "I think it's better to lay it all out, find the problems and start talking about them." However, fixing the issues won't be easy because most of them are there by design, according to Miller. Car manufacturers won't be able to just issue a patch, the researcher said. "They'll have to change the way these systems are made."

Quote for the day:

"Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities" -- Walter Scott

August 04, 2013

How to build a Roadmap – Sequence
Developing a balanced well-crafted road-map is based on the “best available” ordered set of actions subject to the set of priorities (and constraints) already agreed upon. When you think about this across multiple dimensions it does get a little overwhelming so I think the best thing to do is break the larger components into something we can attack in pieces and merge together later.

Visionary companies are driving next generation enterprise architecture in China – are you ready?
Contributing to more than 60% of total GDP in China, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have always sought to simplify their IT operation as much as possible, and at the same time scale it up when business expands as quickly as possible. IaaS solutions appear to be a perfect match for SMEs; however IT professionals have concerns about the security and data privacy over the operations by other companies.

Virtual Panel: Using Java in Low Latency Environments
The difference in performance between Java and C++ is so close that it's not a black and white decision based solely on speed. Improvements in GC techniques, JIT optimizations, and managed runtimes have made traditional Java weaknesses with respect to performance into some very compelling strengths that are not easy to ignore.

3 Different Approaches to Enterprise Manufacturing Software
While there is usually a need to simplify and consolidate processes where possible, it’s also important to integrate key processes and ensure that the systems that support manufacturing operations are actually helping to improve the business and not just feeding other systems and people in the organization with information that may not be necessary. This takes a tactical approach, and depending on your existing investments, the approach may vary.

IT Management: How do your leadership skills measure up?
Today’s marketplace is in a state of constant change. Successful companies are those that can also respond and quickly adapt to the changes around them. That requires leaders who are able to lead with the head, by focusing on the big-picture goal and business objectives; the heart, by knowing how to engage, coach and motivate people; and with the hands, by providing the tactical tools and skills necessary like a project manager.

A Metric Leading to Agility
With any metric,we need to be clear about what the curve should look like. Is the metric defects? We want them to go down. Is it lines of code? Then, presumably, we want them to go up. Number of tests? Up. RTF should increase essentially linearly from day one through to the end of the project. To accomplish that, the team will have to learn to become agile. From day one, until the project is finished, we want to see smooth, consistent growth in the number of Running, Tested Features.

Securely Managed API Technologies Key to Fostering Market Innovation
API business agility is both a management and security issue. API managers must consider how much API governance can be automated to reduce potential for coding errors. On the flip side, security issues related to governance policies, date protection, compliance adherence all need mitigation to achieve optimal business agility.

An evaluation of four patterns of interaction for integrating disparate ESBs effectively and easily
Keen at al assert that: “Integrating two or more ESBs is subject to some of the same integration patterns as connecting two or more applications; integration déjà vu” (2005, p. 87). They reasonably suggest that one important implication of this assertion is that “it seems logical that integrating ESBs should follow best practices similar to these for enterprise application integration (EAI)”

A Product Management Skills Map For Product Owners
Product manager is a formal job title, particularly at commercial tech companies, for individuals who drive product technology and make market-facing decisions intended to generate revenue. They set product strategy as well as implement it. They are heavily matrixed, often covering aspects of product marketing, sales support, external thought leadership and corporate strategy.

Quote for the day:

"You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want." -- Zig Ziglar

August 03, 2013

Why, when to use messaging middleware
There can be overlap with workflow systems and traditional batch-scheduling systems. These systems' core focus is orchestration and keeping track of where things are in a long running process. The workflow system may not perform any processing itself, but instead will act as the master delegator to the people, integration platforms or general purpose computing platforms that handle the units of work required.

Functional GUI Testing Automation Patterns
Any application at a certain moment of time with specific input data can exist in only one specific state. According to such a definition we can picture the software program as a finite state machine (finite automaton). Considering this fact and the availability of state and transition models (Figure 1 as an example) we can define certain sets of transitions (workflows) between pages that would cover most of the program’s functionality.

SaaS contracts too often lack security specifics
"Contractually, very little security language appears in the body of SaaS contracts," Gartner analysts Jay Heiser and Alexa Bona wrote in the report. "Typically the security section contains little more than platitudes, stating that the provider will use 'commercially reasonable efforts to establish and maintain security safeguards.' These are often declared to be 'in line with industry standards,' which are mostly never defined."

Colocation - Key Considerations for Selection of Service Provider
The benefits of going for colocation service include effective use of capital and having higher quality facilities through power redundancy, cooling, and scalability/growth. Choosing a colocation provider is a strategic business decision that evolves from thoughtful consideration certain key parameters. More over, the partnership with the colocation service provider need a multi-year commitment from both.

Hackers to NSA chief: Read the Constitution
It was a far cry from when Alexander kicked off DefCon 20 with a keynote speech last year. There's a lot of crossover between Black Hat and DefCon attendees, the general spoke on Wednesday in his official uniform. This would be a more serious presentation. Over the ensuing 45 minutes or so, Alexander described in broad terms how Section 702 of the FISA Amendment Act and Section 215 of the Patriot Act affect governmental intelligence gathering in the U.S.

An Extensive Glossary of Big Data Terminology
Big data comes with a lot of new terminology that is sometimes hard to understand. Therefore we have created an ABC of big data that should give some insights. Some of the definitions refer to a corresponding blog post. Of course this big data glossary is not 100% complete, so please let us know if there are missing terminology that you would like to see included.

GM’s plan to turn the car into a smartphone on wheels
GM’s not just talking about letting audio streaming and simple location-based services apps into the dashboard, it’s planning to expose engine and vehicle data and even its OnStar telematics features to its developer community. That means app builders can get access to the inner workings and technologies on an unprecedented scale, much like a smartphone or developer can delve into the core features of an Android or iOS device.

The state of business process execution language (BPEL) in 2013
In the last five years, BPEL hasn't undergone any major changes, but it has received more mature support from vendors. The support hasn't come without a price, but if developers use BPEL for automating technological processes and eschew excessive customization, they can overcome some common problems with the technology, experts say.

Data Center Innovator Ken Brill Dies At 68
Brill is also credited with technical innovations, including the introduction of dual power supplies for servers, which ensures a server keeps running if one power supply fails. He was awarded a patent for the invention in 2000 but never sought to profit from it, according to Kudritzki. "He was motivated by the desire for constant improvement," he said. "That's what drove him." -- RIP

Disrupting What We Think We Know About Disruptive Innovation
The human brain, or more specifically the neo-cortex, is designed to recognize patterns and draw conclusions from them. Experts are able to identify such patterns related to a specific problem relevant to their area of knowledge. But because non-experts lack that base of knowledge, they are forced to rely more on their brain’s ability for abstraction, rather than specificity.

Quote for the day:

“If we did all the things we were capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.” -- Thomas A. Edison