My ITIL Experience In An Org Chart

Some time back, someone challenged me to explain how ITIL impacted my workflow.

ITIL Blows

The diagram is largely inspired by my time working for a Top 5 IT Consultancy which was utterly convinced that more managers and project managers would improve the efficiency of the work performed because we could improve the process. In the end there were twelve project managers plus three manager-managers to schedule the work for just three engineers.

I pointed out that hiring another another engineer would improve work output by 33% but none of the ITIL project managers could understand this. It wasn’t about productivity, the customer, or address the need, the only focus was about hitting the deadlines, planned work hours and budgets.

ITIL is a disease. Kill it with fire.

The post My ITIL Experience In An Org Chart appeared first on EtherealMind.

Cybersecurity and National Elections

The European Union today faces a number of serious challenges including growing levels of populism and the threat of foreign intervention through cyber-attacks. Last year’s alleged Russian-led cyberattacks on US Democratic Party servers as well as Chinese government cyber espionage against other governments and companies have provided worrying precedents. Although it is hard to measure the actual impact these attacks had on the election results in the US, concerns are growing amongst European leaders that their electoral procedures are vulnerable to manipulation.

Frédéric Donck

CA to acquire security testing firm Veracode for $614M

CA Technologies is acquiring application security testing company Veracode for US$614 million in cash, in a bid to broaden its development and testing offering for enterprises and app developers.The acquisition is expected to be completed by the second quarter of this year.Privately-held Veracode has offices in Burlington, Massachusetts and London, and employs over 500 people worldwide. The company has around 1,400 small and large customers.Offering a software-as-a-service platform, Veracode is focused on technologies that let developers improve the security of applications right from inception through production.“Embedding security into the software development lifecycle and making it an automated part of the continuous delivery process means that developers can write code without the hassles of a manual and fragmented approach to security,” CA’s President and Chief Product Officer Ayman Sayed wrote in a blog post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IBM-Salesforce deal will bring Watson data into applications

Watson and Einstein are teaming up, and IBM and Salesforce hope the pairing proves as smart as it sounds. The two companies are working together to bring information from IBM systems into Salesforce’s products through a series of integrations announced Monday.As part of the partnership, joint customers will be able to combine Watson's insights from their unstructured data with Einstein's insights about information stored with Salesforce. That comes alongside other integrations that bring weather and application data into Salesforce.Both Salesforce and IBM have massive customer bases that could be reached by this partnership. It's an interesting deal given IBM's historic strength in on-premises computing and Salesforce's cloud focus. Each tech titan has been focused on machine intelligence, so collaborating makes sense. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Linux Migration: Creating Presentations

Long-time readers of my site know that I’m a fan of Markdown, and I use it extensively. (This blog, in fact, is written entirely in Markdown and converted to HTML using Jekyll on GitHub Pages.) Since migrating to Linux as my primary desktop OS, I’ve also made the transition to doing almost all my presentations in Markdown as well. Here are the details on how I’m using Markdown for creating presentations on Linux.

There are a number of tools involved in my workflow for creating Markdown-based presentations on Linux:

  • Sublime Text 3 (with the Markdown Extended and Monokai Extended packages) is used for editing the “source” files for a presentation. Three “source” files are involved: a Markdown file, a HTML file, and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file.
  • Remarkjs takes the Markdown-formatted content and converts it into a dynamic HTML-based presentation, formatting it according to the styles defined in the CSS file. This gives tremendous flexibility in formatting the presentation. (Check it out on GitHub.)
  • I use a web browser to display the HTML output generated by Remarkjs (in my case, I’m using Firefox on my Fedora laptop).
  • To help with creating a PDF version of Continue reading

Consumers are wary of smart homes that know too much

Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday.Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns are just one hurdle smart homes still have to overcome, according to the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Consumers are wary of smart homes that know too much

Nearly two-thirds of consumers are worried about home IoT devices listening in on their conversations, according to a Gartner survey released Monday.Those jitters aren’t too surprising after recent news items about TV announcers inadvertently activating viewers’ Amazon Echos, or about data from digital assistants being used as evidence in criminal trials. But privacy concerns are just one hurdle smart homes still have to overcome, according to the survey.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GE favors SaaS for non-differentiated apps, moves away from MPLS, has big plans for IoT

GE is rethinking many aspects of IT, including its internal reporting structure, where and how it supports apps, and how it networks its 4,500 offices.  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix got an update from Chris Drumgoole, Chief Technology Officer of IT. GE  Chris Drumgoole, GE Chief Technology Officer of IT As Chief Technology Officer for GE IT (GE also has a CTO on the product side), how do you work with the IT teams in the business units?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

GE favors SaaS for non-differentiated apps, moves away from MPLS, has big plans for IoT

GE is rethinking many aspects of IT, including its internal reporting structure, where and how it supports apps, and how it networks its 4,500 offices.  Network World Editor in Chief John Dix got an update from Chris Drumgoole, Chief Technology Officer of IT. GE  Chris Drumgoole, GE Chief Technology Officer of IT As Chief Technology Officer for GE IT (GE also has a CTO on the product side), how do you work with the IT teams in the business units?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open Networking Summit 2017: Harmonize, Harness, and Consume!

Ready to make your mark as a networking innovator and leader? Interested in learning how today’s open source and open standards initiatives are coming together? Want to know how networking is revolutionizing hot markets such as micro-services and Internet of Things (IoT)? Feeling the need to reach out to executives, technologists, vendors, and investors? If... Read more →

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Japan to Unveil Pascal GPU-Based AI Supercomputer

A shared appetite for high performance computing hardware and frameworks is pushing both supercomputing and deep learning into the same territory. This has been happening in earnest over the last year, and while most efforts have been confined to software and applications research, some supercomputer centers are spinning out new machines dedicated exclusively to deep learning.

When it comes to such supercomputing sites on the bleeding edge, Japan’s RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science is at the top of the list. The center’s Fujitsu-built K Computer is the seventh fastest machine on the planet according to the Top 500 rankings …

Japan to Unveil Pascal GPU-Based AI Supercomputer was written by Nicole Hemsoth at The Next Platform.

Worth Reading: Five jobs robots will take first

Oxford University researchers have estimated that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades. But which white-collar jobs will robots take first? First, we should define “robots” (for this article only) as technologies, such as machine learning algorithms running on purpose-built computer platforms, that have been trained to perform tasks that currently require humans to perform. —Shelly Palmer

The post Worth Reading: Five jobs robots will take first appeared first on 'net work.

Microsoft’s update shrinking reduces Windows 10 Insider betas by 65%

Microsoft last week repeated its assertion that future Windows 10 feature upgrades will shrink in size later this year, and supported the claim with a smattering of data.Those running Windows 10's preview, labeled "Insider," will see the largest reductions in download size, the data showed. Microsoft Windows 10's new update delivery system reduces the size of downloads -- in this case by 65% for an Insider refresh (in green) -- compared to a full-install "canonical" update (in blue), by sending only what has changed since the last update.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

7 tips for managing an IT outsourcing contract

IT organizations put great focus into drawing up their outsourcing contracts, but those agreements alone do not guarantee satisfactory outcomes. Attorney Brad Peterson has seen it time and time again. “Time and money are spent on drafting the contract—often a substantial amount of money. And a tremendous amount of potential value is created in that contract,” says Peterson, partner in Mayer Brown’s Chicago office and leader of its technology transactions practice.But then the engagement is handed over to a well-intentioned supplier management team that wasn’t involved in the contract and often can’t make heads or tails of what’s in it. “It’s understandable. Contracts are complex and confusing, and relationship managers are selected based on their knowledge of technology or their skill in building relationships, not on their knowledge of how to run a contract,” Peterson says.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers link Middle East attacks to new victim in Europe

Kaspersky Labs announced new research this morning that shows some links between the massive Shamoon attack that took down 35,000 computers in Saudi Arabia to a new attack against a target in Europe.The Shamoon attack, which occurred in 2012, was followed by a series of related against against Gulf States earlier this year. The attacks were widely attributed to Iran.The new malware, called StoneDrill, is, like Shamoon, a wiper -- it destroys all the data on a computer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Researchers link Middle East attacks to new victim in Europe

Kaspersky Labs announced new research this morning that shows some links between the massive Shamoon attack that took down 35,000 computers in Saudi Arabia to a new attack against a target in Europe.The Shamoon attack, which occurred in 2012, was followed by a series of related against against Gulf States earlier this year. The attacks were widely attributed to Iran.The new malware, called StoneDrill, is, like Shamoon, a wiper -- it destroys all the data on a computer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 7 ways to improve your Joomla security

Joomla has exploded in popularity as an open-source website creation tool for individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and developers. It has been downloaded 78 million times and currently powers millions of websites.Joomla websites have not been entirely unaffected by the cyber crime problems that have plagued content management systems (CMSs) and the internet in general. A wave of fake jQuery attacks hit Joomla and WordPress sites in 2015 and 2016, affecting over 4.5 million sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: 7 ways to improve your Joomla security

Joomla has exploded in popularity as an open-source website creation tool for individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, and developers. It has been downloaded 78 million times and currently powers millions of websites.Joomla websites have not been entirely unaffected by the cyber crime problems that have plagued content management systems (CMSs) and the internet in general. A wave of fake jQuery attacks hit Joomla and WordPress sites in 2015 and 2016, affecting over 4.5 million sites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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