Career – The Value Of a Degree

I often get asked for career advice and the value of certifications. We live in a rapid pace world and people often look for the shortest path to success. They are trying to use the Dijkstra algorithm on their careers

This post is not a “People with degrees are better than others” post and is written from my perspective as a network architect. I do believe though that the skills I will describe here are applicable to all networking/IT jobs and will be even more relevant further down the road. Here is some of the value I see in a degree based on that you get a degree in a relevant discipline at a good university and that you have the willingness to learn.

Consume information – Working in IT means you need to consume a lot of information. For topics that you aren’t familiar with you need to be able to know where to look for information, what to do with the information and be able to draw a conclusion based on this information. IT is moving at a more rapid pace than ever and people that can’t consume a lot of information will struggle stay relevant in the Continue reading

Is the smartwatch market tanking or on a long, slow climb?

Analysts disagree drastically over the health of the smartwatch market. Some say the market is tanking. Others say there are favorable signs and predict healthy smartwatch shipments and sales in coming years.In late October, market research firm IDC said smartwatch shipments in the third quarter declined by 51% from the same quarter of 2015. The total shipped in the third quarter was 2.7 million, IDC said.By comparison, research firm Canalys on Thursday said smartwatch shipments were up 60% for the third quarter of 2016 compared with the same quarter a year ago. That resulted in 6.1 million units shipped in the latest quarter, Canalys said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to speed up Windows 7 Update scans—forever

Microsoft has changed the way it deploys patches, adding a new twist to an old problem. For many folks, Windows 7 Update scans still take hours—even days. How do you knock your Win7 machine upside the head, so it will find new patches in less than glacial time? We have a new Microsoft-sanctioned approach that only needs to be tempered a little.Note that, in the new patching paradigm, even those who manually download monthly security patches (“Group B”) still need to use Windows Update, if only for .Net patches, Office patches (for those who don’t have Office Click-to-Run), and other patches that don’t arrive as part of the Security-only Update. See, for example, this month’s KB 3200006 and KB 3199375, for Internet Explorer.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cloud adoption keeps moving ahead, survey says

Companies continue their migration of both applications and computing infrastructure to the cloud at a steady pace. They have moved 45% of their applications and computing infrastructure to the cloud already, and they expect well over half of their IT environment to be cloud-based by 2018, according to a recent IDG Enterprise survey of 925 IT decision makers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

SDN Market: A Slow Burn

How to approach your first day as CSO

The situation often dictates how to approach a new job. Did the company just have a humiliating experience with a data breach? Did they not have a CSO previously and that is why they are looking for security help to lock down their network? If during the job interview, there was a blunt plea for help then most new hires would come in guns a blazin’ to get things under control quickly. But in most scenarios, CSOs interviewed said there is a general time period to examine the culture of the company to help in getting a grasp of what needs to be done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

How to approach your first day as CSO

The situation often dictates how to approach a new job. Did the company just have a humiliating experience with a data breach? Did they not have a CSO previously and that is why they are looking for security help to lock down their network?If during the job interview, there was a blunt plea for help then most new hires would come in guns a blazin’ to get things under control quickly. But in most scenarios, CSOs interviewed said there is a general time period to examine the culture of the company to help in getting a grasp of what needs to be done.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Machine Learning, Cloud, And Big Data: A Perfect Storm

6 machine learning misunderstandings

MisstepsMachine learning isn’t confined to science fiction movie plots anymore; it’s fueled the proliferation of technologies that touch our everyday lives, including voice recognition with Siri or Alexa, Facebook auto-tagging photos and recommendations from Amazon and Spotify. And many enterprises are eager to leverage machine learning algorithms to increase the efficiency of their network. In fact, some are already using it to enhance their threat detection and optimize wide area networks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Optimize Your Data Center: How Far Did We Get?

Our Data Center optimization journey has finished. We virtualized the workload, got rid of legacy technologies, reduced the number of server uplinks, replaced storage arrays with distributed file system and replaced physical firewalls and load balancers with virtual appliances.

Let’s see what’s left: it turns out you really don’t need more than two switches in most data centers.

US government’s Code.gov software sharing website launched

Code.gov, a U.S. government website for promoting the sharing of custom-developed software code, was launched Thursday with listings of nearly 50 open-source projects from various government agencies.The move follows the announcement by the White House in August of a Federal Source Code policy that would promote reuse of new custom source code developed by government agencies across the federal government to prevent replication of work and expense. The agencies are also required to make some of the software available to the public under an open-source license.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Bash Script for Converting Video To MP3 Audio

I like listening to video training on my smartphone while walking to work. To save the space on the memory card I convert videos to MP3 audio in advance. For this purpose I wrote a Bash script video_to_mp3.sh which helps me to manage a conversion job. The script uses ffmpeg for conversion and it creates parallel conversion tasks to speed up the conversion process. The script checks the CPU load and it creates a new background process only if the CPU load is under a particular limit entered by a user.

Picture 1 - Script Usage

Below is the output from the conversion process.

Picture 2 - Output From Conversion Process

The script creates a log file displaying info about the result of all conversion tasks. If the conversion fails for a particular video file, the script displays a return value of ffmpeg utility and the name of the file which is not successfully converted.

Picture 2 - Output from Log File

End.

Arista Reports Solid Q3 2016 Earnings

It’s focused on meeting demand for its products.

OpenStack Summit Barcelona 2016: Current State

It’s October in the UK and blimey charlie, it’s a bit chilly. Good news then that the OpenStack Summit is in Barcelona! In comparison to Canada or Japan, it’s on my doorstep! Spain being the home of English holiday makers, the smell of sun cream, sangria and chicken nugget dinners awaits.

It Felt Different

Needless to say, I play investigator at these summits. Whether it’s the SDN congress, OpenStack or other networking events, the cynical grump hat is donned. Before I even managed to investigate anything, I felt something different. The hype lever was set to average and this show felt almost corporate. Good news or bad news? Something I’ve struggled to quantify all week and even now as I sit on the home bound flight to Blighty, I continue to ponder.

Big bang news was lacking like previous shows. Realistic use cases, real commentary and on-stage demos made this feel different. One of the demos made me both cringe and chuckle as Mark Collier played real life chaos monkey, pulling fibres and eventually even cutting through them during an EPC demo which included OPNFV Doctor and Vitrage. This demoed OpenStack’s capability to integrate with monitoring and life cycle tooling. Continue reading

FireEye Stock Climbs After Q3, Defying Security’s Slump

Q3 revenues grew, and losses could have been worse.

Speed to drive CIO agenda in 2017

Think fast, CIOs.It’s time for organizations to move past the “false promise” of a bimodal approach to IT, which results in a divided tech department operating at two different speeds, according to research and advisory firm Forrester. Instead, CIOs need to push for enterprise-wide acceleration – and a comprehensive business technology strategy – to keep up with customers’ appetites for new products and services.“Gone are the days of stability and predictability. The business environment you operate in will change faster than ever in 2017. Many of these changes will be outside of your control, but your ability to anticipate and respond will make or break your success,” Forrester writes in a research document focused on the evolving role of the CIO in 2017.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

13% off Garmin Forerunner 920XT White/Red Watch With Heart Rate Monitor Bundle – Deal Alert

Forerunner 920XT packs a fleet of high-end training features into a sleek watch that is wet suit-friendly and about 15 percent lighter than its predecessor, the Forerunner 910XT. It boasts a high-resolution color display; flexible, hinged bands and a watch mode, so you can wear it all day. The activity tracking feature measures your steps, sleep and calories burned all day, giving you a more complete picture of your daily activity. For swimmers, it captures detailed swim metrics, including distance, pace, stroke count, stroke rate and SWOLF score. For runners, it will report your cadence, vertical oscillation (amount of “bounce” in your step) and ground contact time. The 920XT also has a metronome feature with vibe and audible alerts to guide your cadence training. VO2 max estimate, race predictor and recovery advisor. Smart notifications let you see email, text and other alerts on your watch. And connected features include automatic uploads to Garmin Connect, live tracking, and social media sharing. This deal comes with a heart rate monitor included. The 920XT is currently discounted 13% down to $249.99 for a limited time on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDoS attack from Mirai malware ‘killing business’ in Liberia

The malware behind last month's massive internet disruption in the U.S. is targeting Liberia with financially devastating results.This week, a botnet powered by the Mirai malware has been launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on IP addresses in the African country, according to security researchers.  These attacks are the same kind that briefly disrupted internet access across the U.S. almost two weeks ago. They work by flooding internet connections with too much traffic, effectively forcing the services offline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

DDoS attack from Mirai malware ‘killing business’ in Liberia

The malware behind last month's massive internet disruption in the U.S. is targeting Liberia with financially devastating results.This week, a botnet powered by the Mirai malware has been launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on IP addresses in the African country, according to security researchers.  These attacks are the same kind that briefly disrupted internet access across the U.S. almost two weeks ago. They work by flooding internet connections with too much traffic, effectively forcing the services offline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft will shrink and speed up Windows 10 updates

Microsoft has revealed a Unified Update Platform that's designed to make it easier for devices to upgrade from one version of Windows 10 to another. The UUP encompasses a set of behind-the-scenes changes in Windows 10 that reduce the processing power needed to update, shrink the size of update files, and streamline updates on Windows smartphones.These improvements are designed to help Microsoft address user complaints about the update process. Because the company's vision for Windows 10 includes many updates, streamlining those procedures is important.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here