Digital transformation boosts captive offshore center growth

Global in-house centers — wholly owned captive offshore operations that deliver offshore IT services to their parent companies — today provide a quarter of the offshore and nearshore digital services market, according to outsourcing research firm Everest Group. And that percentage is likely to grow as enterprise demand for digital transformation continues.[ Related: Digital transformation will shape 2016 ]“Global in-house centers (GICs) are typically more strongly integrated with the core business as they are perceived as an extended team of the parent or onshore organizations,” says Aditya Verma, co-director of Everest Group’s global sourcing practice. “They typically have specialized knowledge of the business as they cater to only one customer (the parent organization) as compared to a multi-tenant service provider.” Enterprises are typically more comfortable sharing core business knowledge or intellectual property with the company’s own employees than with a third-party service provider who works with other customers or even competitors.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Intune to support Android for Work

Microsoft announced late Tuesday that it has joined Google's Android for Work program and will support Google's container technology for mobile application management in a future release of Intune, Microsoft's own enterprise mobility management (EMM) server. The Microsoft blog post gave no timeline.Android for Work, initially released in winter 2015 as part of an Android 5.0 Lollipop update, brought to Android the same level of enterprise-grade protection for mobile apps that had previously been available only to Apple's iOS devices or Samsung's Android devices running Samsung's own Knox technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Microsoft Intune to support Android for Work

Microsoft announced late Tuesday that it has joined Google's Android for Work program and will support Google's container technology for mobile application management in a future release of Intune, Microsoft's own enterprise mobility management (EMM) server. The Microsoft blog post gave no timeline.Android for Work, initially released in winter 2015 as part of an Android 5.0 Lollipop update, brought to Android the same level of enterprise-grade protection for mobile apps that had previously been available only to Apple's iOS devices or Samsung's Android devices running Samsung's own Knox technology.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Project management: To debrief or not to debrief

Many project managers may view the end of a project as a perfect opportunity to debrief, while others are onto their next project with very little time dedicated to debriefing. Some swear by the debriefing process and others simply bypass it altogether. Let's take a look at the process, its purpose, the benefits and, yes, the drawbacks.The debriefing process is conducted once the project activities have come to a close and the project is complete. It allows for transparent feedback by any/all participants in a non-stressful environment.Reasons for team debriefing sessions The purpose behind project debriefing is to allow the project team an opportunity to share thoughts, experiences and ideas in a more relaxed environment. It offers a means to evaluate whether the project has met all the requirements and stayed within scope. It helps in identifying issues that may have occurred as well as aids in determining possible root causes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A single ransomware network has pulled in $121 million

A single ransomware author and distributor was able to collect $121 million in ransomware payments during the first half of this year, netting $94 million after expenses, according to a report released today."Ransomware has grown over the years, and in 2015 and 2016 we really saw a serious spike," said Vincent Weafer, vice president of Intel Security's McAfee Labs.Weafer estimated that total ransomware revenues could be in the hundreds of millions."And that's on the conservative side," he said.WHAT SHOULD YOU DO: How to respond to ransomware threats Total ransomware increased by 128 percent during the first half of 2016 compared to the same period last year. There were 1.3 million new ransomware samples recorded, the highest number since McAfee began tracking it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

A single ransomware network has pulled in $121 million

A single ransomware author and distributor was able to collect $121 million in ransomware payments during the first half of this year, netting $94 million after expenses, according to a report released today."Ransomware has grown over the years, and in 2015 and 2016 we really saw a serious spike," said Vincent Weafer, vice president of Intel Security's McAfee Labs.Weafer estimated that total ransomware revenues could be in the hundreds of millions."And that's on the conservative side," he said.WHAT SHOULD YOU DO: How to respond to ransomware threats Total ransomware increased by 128 percent during the first half of 2016 compared to the same period last year. There were 1.3 million new ransomware samples recorded, the highest number since McAfee began tracking it.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tips for keeping Gen-Z and millennial workers happy

Forget everything you think you know about millennials and their successors, Generation Z, because your notions are probably false. What do these generations really want at work? Flexibility, in-person communication, a stable "home base" corporate office and the ability to travel, according to new research from Future Workplace, an HR executive network and research firm, and HR services and staffing company Randstad U.S.A.The research, the Gen Z & Millennials Collide @ Work report, was conducted by Morar Consulting across 10 global markets (U.S., UK, Germany, Mexico, Poland, Argentina, India, China, Canada and South Africa) between June 22 and July 11, 2016, and asked 4,066 respondents in two separate age groups (1,965 Gen Z members; 22 years of age and 2,101 millennials; aged 23 to 34) about their preparation for work, as well as expectations and experiences of their workplaces.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Meet Flock, a Slack rival that claims big productivity gains

Numerous Slack contenders have already thrown their hats into the enterprise-messaging ring, but Flock is hoping to win with hard numbers. According to Flock, not only does its software load 2.5 times faster than Slack on both desktop and mobile, but it also helps teams achieve productivity gains of at least 30 percent.Originally launched in India roughly two years ago, the company announced its expansion into the U.S. market on Wednesday and revealed a customer list that includes big-name brands such as Whirlpool, Ricoh, Victorinox and Tim Horton’s.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

European Union plans to offer free Wi-Fi to all

Free Wi-Fi for all: That was one of the proposals to come out of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's annual State of the European Union address on Wednesday.The project, WIFI4EU (Wi-Fi for you), aims to put free Wi-Fi hotspots open to all EU citizens in parks, squares, libraries and other public buildings.The Commission will provide €120 million (US$135 million) through 2019 to subsidize the purchase and installation of Wi-Fi hotspots in 6,000 or more locations, but the provision of bandwidth and ongoing maintenance will be left to the local community.The hotspots will be open to all EU citizens -- although given the budget, it's unlikely many of them will be able to get a signal without a long walk.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

25 CIO pay packages revealed

Deep dive into CIO pay packagesTo find out how much CIOs at giant global companies really earn, we scoured the proxy statements of the 500 largest U.S. companies and found 25 that disclosed CIO pay. Here are the details on their 2015 pay packages, organized from lowest to highest paid.To see all the data in one place, check out our sortable chart of CIO compensation. See the last slide for details about how we compiled the data. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Want to boost your CIO pay? Switch jobs

The four highest-paid CIOs in our tally all have something in common: a major job transition. Three of the four CIOs started new jobs, and one left his CIO position but stayed on as a consultant. Each of these tech leaders negotiated an extremely lucrative transition. Tim Theriault, who stepped down last June from his position as global CIO for Walgreens Boots Alliance, earned the largest of the 25 CIO pay packages we studied. Theriault received a $13.6 million compensation package that included a giant parting payment of $8.5 million, as per his employment agreement with the $103 billion pharmacy giant. (Walgreens merged with Alliance Boots in December 2014 to become the largest retail pharmacy in the U.S. and Europe; the company has a presence in 23 countries.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Case study: How LinkedIn uses containers to run its professional network

When LinkedIn started in 2003 it was a simple Java application with a web server.Today the company that calls itself the world’s largest professional network is a powerhouse network that Microsoft earlier this summer spent $26.2 billion to acquire. LinkedIn Steve Ihde “Growing the site has been a journey,” says LinkedIn’s director of engineering Steve Ihde. And recently, application containers have played a big role.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Source Code Is Not Standards

One of the oft-repeated messages of the Software-Defined Pundits is “Standard bodies are broken, (open) source code is king”… and I’d guess that anyone who was too idealistic before being exposed to how the sausage is being made within IETF has no problems agreeing with them. However…

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IoT keeps pushing analytics closer to the edge

As the internet of things starts to generate data from far-flung sensors and automate remote equipment, it doesn’t always make sense to house all the intelligence for these systems in data centers. The alternative is edge computing, where smaller systems located on site in factories or other facilities can make sense of IoT data and act on it. Edge computing components like gateways can shorten response times or just filter out sensor readings that don’t matter so they won’t burden the network. But how to build edge computing systems and write their software, like so much else in IoT, is still a work in progress. The constraints on things like size and power are unique to this new field.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers smear Olympic athletes with data dump of medical files

Hackers are trying to tarnish the U.S. Olympic team by releasing documents they claim show athletes including gymnast Simone Biles and tennis players Venus and Serena Williams used illegal substances during the Rio Games.The medical files, allegedly from the World Anti-Doping Agency, were posted Tuesday on a site bearing the name of the hacking group Fancy Bears. “Today we'd like to tell you about the U.S. Olympic team and their dirty methods to win,” said a message on the hackers' site.The World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed it had been hacked and blamed Fancy Bears, a Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage team that is also known as APT 28 -- the very same group that may have recently breached the Democratic National Committee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hackers smear Olympic athletes with data dump of medical files

Hackers are trying to tarnish the U.S. Olympic team by releasing documents they claim show athletes including gymnast Simone Biles and tennis players Venus and Serena Williams used illegal substances during the Rio Games.The medical files, allegedly from the World Anti-Doping Agency, were posted Tuesday on a site bearing the name of the hacking group Fancy Bears. “Today we'd like to tell you about the U.S. Olympic team and their dirty methods to win,” said a message on the hackers' site.The World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed it had been hacked and blamed Fancy Bears, a Russian state-sponsored cyber espionage team that is also known as APT 28 -- the very same group that may have recently breached the Democratic National Committee.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

For new characters, it’s Pokémon Wait

People who are hoping to get their hands on some new Pokémon should be prepared to wait a while longer. John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic Labs, told an audience at TechCrunch Disrupt that players should expect to see new creatures arrive in the game at events that bring players together, but only after the company has finished its long global rollout. "The introduction of new Pokémon into the world, and having events where that might be showcased, those concepts go together really well," he said. "So, I think you can expect to see that happen in kind of a synchronized way going forward."  It's a move from the playbook that Niantic has developed running Ingress, the augmented reality game that it launched prior to Pokémon Go while it was a part of Google. Over the past several years, Niantic has hosted events for players of that game, which often host thousands of players. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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