Gartner has released two sets of predictions for 2013 – back to back: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013: Technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013 Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2013 and Beyond: Economic risks, opportu...

On Monday, Amazon Web Services — the leading provider of cloud services — suffered an outage, and as a result, a long list of well-known and popular websites went dark. According to Amazon’s Service Health Dashboard, the outage started out as degraded performance of a...

Most folks probably remember the play on "to err is human…" proverb when computers first began to take over, well, everything. The saying was only partially tongue-in-cheek, because as we've long since learned the reality is that computers allow us to make mistakes faster and more of...

It’s interesting as a parent watching your kids grow up and learn how to do things for themselves. I have 2 boys ages 6 and 7 and they often amaze me and confound me. There are times when I think they are absolutely brilliant and other times where I think that significant amounts of re...

It's likely that IT network and security staff would agree that HTML5 WebSockets has the potential for high levels of disruptions (and arguments) across the data center. Developers want to leverage the ability to define their own protocols while reaping the benefits of the HTTP-as-appl...

Too many IT departments take the stance of "I'll worry about it when I have to worry about it." Problem with security issues is, by then it's too late. Often times maintaining the status quo is as dangerous as doing nothing at all. In my experience there are two types of enterprise IT...

Remote display and control technology is nothing new. For decades we've had the ability to remotely access and control our desktops using a variety of technologies and protocols: X11, VNC, RDP, and Terminal Services to name a few of the more well-known. Remote display and control has ...

Mouse gestures are one of those great "add-ons" that enhance browser usability. For those that are not familiar with mouse gestures, they are a browser navigational aid that works via mouse movements. Mouse gestures have been around for some time now and we thought it would be good to ...

One of the dirty little secrets about security: there is simply no way to make your company impervious to a data breach. It's almost a statistical certainty that you will, at some point or another, be hit with a security scenario that you're not prepared for. That's why security today ...

TIBCO is traditionally known for its leadership in integration and is now expanding into a number of new areas through acquisitions as well as building new capabilities. This post is to analyze their products based on attendance to their annual TUCON conference. Making decisions in a...

There is truly a difference in terms of scope, application and business need between security "in" the cloud and security "from" the cloud. No, this isn't 7th grade English...I promise. With all the important decisions IT departments make, what’s the big deal whether cloud security m...

Emergence is good, but… …it takes time, and …under some circumstances it may not happen! If you have been there … done that … then you don’t have to wait for your application architecture to emerge over several iterations. You can use your past experience to nail it down at the begi...

Recently, I’ve been working closely with a number of large enterprise clients who have already gone or will soon go live with Layer 7 solutions at the core of mission-critical infrastructure. I’ve observed that, in the API Management space, proof of concept and initial projects often f...

Is the term “Gamification” a buzzword or is it a real trend which will change the way things are sold … services are delivered? Is it a fad or is it fundamentally life altering trend? Is it something new or is it an old wine in a new bottle? If you are not familiar with the term the...

…is that they're consumer cloud services. While we're all focused heavily on the challenges of managing BYOD in the enterprise, we should not overlook or understate the impact of consumer-grade services within the enterprise. Just as employees bring their own devices to the table, s...

Does analysis lead to synthesis? How do you solve a complex problem? Break the complex problem into sub-task till each task is clearly understood and doable. Assign responsibility and monitor each task till they are complete. Once all tasks are completed the problem is solved! Wel...

Assume that you are trying agile for the first time. If the project succeeds then everybody is happy. But… What happens if the project fails? Did the project fail because your agile implementation was wrong? …or… Did it fail it because agile was not the right methodology for your p...

One of the phrases you hear associated with cloud computing is "architecting for failure." Rather than build in a lot of hardware-level redundancy – power, disk, network, etc… – the idea is that you expect it to fail and can simply replace the application (which is what you care about ...

The ability to conduct effective performance testing has become a highly desired skillset within the IT industry. Unfortunately, these highly sought-after skills are consistently in short supply. "Front-end testers" can work with a tool to create a realistic load and although this is a...

Have you ever encountered a situation where 2 of the 5 members of an agile team decides to move on within a short span of time. What about 3 out of 5? What did you do when that happened? Yes, I know you are saying that the situation should either have been anticipated or prevented. Y...

Agile manifesto explicitly states that agile values individual and interactions over process and tool. What does it really mean? Does it mean… …do not be a slave to the process, or …it is not necessary to have a clearly defined way of working, or …every individual can choose to w...

Moving to a model that utilizes the cloud is a huge proposition. You can throw some applications out there without looking back – if they have no ties to the corporate datacenter and light security requirements, for example – but most applications require quite a bit of work to make th...

BYOD remains a topic of interest as organizations grapple not only technologically with the trend but politically, as well. There are dire warnings that refusing to support BYOD will result in an inability to attract and retain up and coming technologists, that ignoring the problems as...

1972: Most commonly used languages (Cobol, Fortran, Algol, PL/1, Basic, APL) all had complicated syntax. The prevailing thought process was to add new language syntax for every new feature. Writing a compiler for such languages was a nightmare. Then came “C”. The syntax was simple and...

Recently, I was involved in a project that was migrating from Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 to Hyper-V Server 2012. Due to architectural changes involved in implementing the new features in Hyper-V Server 2012, a direct in-place upgrade is not possible. However, the across-the-wire migratio...

Do you agree that the agile team may not possess all the specialized skills and technical knowledge required for the project? You may argue that the team should be so constituted that team members among themselves have skills and knowledge required – but is that always feasible? Wha...

Does Agile project require a project manager? Or, is a scrum master, who is a coach cum facilitator, sufficient? If you search the net you will find defenders of both side of the argument but of late the pro “need to have a project manager” view seem to be winning. Even PMI has a ce...

The cyber security market in 2012 is estimated at $60 billion, yet adding more and more layers of perimeter security may lead to a false sense of security and be completely useless against a determined system administrator working on the inside. The end result is that your data might b...

WebRenderer is one of those SDKs that can appear overwhelming on first look. For this reason we always shipped a “bare bones” Test Browser (TestBrowser.java) with the product. The Test Browser has at times baffled people due to it’s lack of features. The Test Browser was “featureless” ...

One of the twelve principles supporting agile manifesto is: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. But, in a real life organization setup just trusting the team to get the job done may not be ...

Recently I've been thinking about what happens to an identity through its life cycle and how the identity data is treated during this process. I think you will also see that the Enterprise itself has differing methods of dealing with it as well. I am considering this to be the beginni...

You would definitely like to deliver the right software without defect on schedule. But in real life… Imagine a situation where your software delivery date is very near and everything is under control. You are almost ready with the tested software. Suddenly you receive a request for c...

The number one IT issue for all enterprises today is delivery - responding to business demand for change in ever faster timescales, at lower cost. But in the typical large enterprise, IT is widely perceived to be incapable of responding in a reasonable timeframe and cost. There are man...

If your .NET application was to run a sprint, would it win the race? To determine whether your application meets its performance objectives (and wins the race) and to help identify bottlenecks, you need to measure your application’s performance and collect metrics. Metrics of particul...

Many software company have embraced some variant of this motto. This is the right thing to do … after all who wants software which has bugs. It is an open and shut case – right? Or is it? … Especially in the context of agile development. Let us start by asking two stupid question: H...

HTML5 is the latest iteration of the standard used by web programmers and developers. When completed in 2014, it will enable developers to write-once-run-anywhere (WORA) for consistent, cross-platform experiences across all operating systems and browsers. For example, a developer could...

With every passing day, Big Data assumes new strength as a significant force in our industry. Someone even said that Big Data is transforming business same way IT did few decades ago. The overall revenue (includes hardware, software, service) for Big Data is said to be around $5.1B ...

Do you know of any organization which does not have an annual budgeting process? Do you know of any organization which does not do an ROI analysis before deciding to fund a project? There may be smaller projects which come out of the discretionary fund of a sponsor but any project of...

I frequently find myself thinking that the dumbest thing we Internet marketers ever did in social networking was to rename it social media. In the early days of Web 2.0, there was no such thing as social media. Everyone was just working to make software more social, whatever that mean...

If you had the chance of working in an organization which has received SEI-CMMi certification then you would definitely be familiar with the concept of: Requirement Baselining Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) If you are not familiar with these terms then the best place to look is ...