Simplify the process and cut the cost of data migration and data acceleration

This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  From time to time, companies must undertake a data migration project for one reason or another. Perhaps it's to consolidate data onto a single platform after a merger or acquisition, or to accommodate an application upgrade or consolidation. Migrating away from legacy systems is another popular reason to move data around. Whatever the motivation, a data migration project is no fun.In the years 2000, 2007 and 2011, Bloor Research undertook research studies on the costs and challenges of data migrations. Their 2011 study showed that the average budget for a data migration project is $875,000. Despite spending that kind of money, only 62% of such projects were brought in "on time and on budget." The average cost of budget overruns is $268,000. One of Bloor's recommendations for achieving the greatest chance of success with a project is to have a dedicated internal competency center or team specializing in data migration. Even with that, success is not guaranteed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

WordPress gets patch for critical XSS flaw

Developers of the popular WordPress blogging platform have released a critical security update to fix a vulnerability that can be exploited to take over websites.WordPress 4.2.3, released Thursday, resolves a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that could allow users with the Contributor or Author roles to compromise a website, said Gary Pendergast, a member of the WordPress team, in a blog post.While this is not as critical as a flaw that can be exploited without authentication, it still poses a high risk for many websites because the compromise of a single non-administrator user account can turn into a complete website takeover.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

FCC ruling could finally make telecoms eradicate ‘robocalls’

I don't want to seem cranky or brash, but I really wish "Rachel" would stop calling me. Remember Rachel? That feminine voice on the other end of those "robocalls," telling you she's from cardholder services, a non-existent outfit that tries to scam the unsuspecting? Despite millions of complaints from consumers on the receiving end of unwanted telemarketing calls, the big phone companies are unwilling to use readily available technology to block them. This week, the attorneys general (AGs) of 44 states and Washington D.C. wrote a letter to the CEOs of five major telecommunications companies (AT&T, CenturyLink, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon) to tell them to cut off Rachel and her obnoxious cohorts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Getting serious about portfolio and program management

It's been 10 years since Johanna Rothman co-authored 'Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management’ with Esther Derby. In the time since, Rothman has become known as the Pragmatic Manager, served as Program Chair of the Agile 2009 conference and wrote the Jolt Award-winning "Manage It!," a guide to pragmatic management. Most recently, Rothman has been focused on dealing with management problems in larger organizations, which led to two books, “Manage Your Project Portfolio” in 2009, and, more recently, “Agile and Lean Program Management.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)

IDG Contributor Network: 4 steps to make DevOps safe, secure, and reliable

DevOps is one of the hottest trends in software development. It's all about helping businesses achieve agile service delivery – that is, moving applications from development to test to deployment as quickly as possible.Fast application deployment may seem at odds with robust security practices, which often take a go-slow approach to new or changed applications in order to verify that the applications are safe before letting them touch live data or business networks — or be exposed to the Internet or customers.Fortunately, there's nothing inherently risky or dangerous about DevOps and agile service delivery, as long as the right security policies are created and followed, and if automation eliminates unnecessary delay in ensuring compliance.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Tower 2.2 is Here

We’re happy to announce that Ansible Tower 2.2 is now available.

Ansible Tower is the console and service that builds on the solid foundation of Ansible’s simple automation to bring the control, security, and delegation you need to spread automation across your IT infrastructure. We’ve worked hard to update Tower to bring new capabilities to our users.  I’ve talked about these some when I discussed how Tower 2.2 was coming soon - now I’d like to go into a little more detail.

Refreshed UI with Setup Mode

dashboard.png

We’ve talked to many of our customers who use Tower on an everyday basis. And the continuing refrain is:

“Foreground the stuff we need every day. Background what we don’t.”

We’ve started that process with Tower 2.2.  First, you’ll notice the changes on the dashboard, where we’ve removed extraneous graphs so you can concentrate on the important information - are your hosts OK, and are your jobs succeeding. Plus, you’ll see lists of both recent completed jobs, and recently used playbooks.

We’ve also added sparklines to the display of job templates so that wherever you’re seeing your job templates, you have an easy visual display of how that job Continue reading

ONF Announces SDN Certification Specifications

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced their intent to create an SDN certification program back in September ‘14. The message since that time has been that they’re working on it. In June, at the ONS15 conference, the ONF showed a few more details, and now the ONF web site lists plenty of details about their new certification program. Today’s post kicks off what will likely be a few posts working through what the ONF has posted about their new certification exams.

Big Picture Overview

The official name of the program - ONF Certified Professional Program - begins its history with two certifications:

The two certifications separates the conceptual (the first certification) from the hands-on skills requirements (the second certification).

The Exams

Each certification requires that you pass a single exam, with the exam names being obvious as to which certification they apply.

CSDNA-110

CSDNE-111

The exams have a few key differences from what you may be used to seeing with vendor-focused exams. The big differences is that the exams will be offered online, with an honor system to prove that it’s you taking the exam. Obviously that’s a Continue reading

Yahoo ramps up tech to compete with daily fantasy sports pioneers

Yahoo, a trailblazer in the world of online fantasy sports, recently released a daily fantasy service, and the company plans to use its experience to compete with pioneers such as DraftKings and FanDuel in the daily fantasy market. It was a natural move for the fantasy sports mainstay, which launched its first offering in the late 90s, but it required technology innovation. "From an industry standpoint, if there was any doubt about the legitimacy of daily fantasy sports, the Yahoo announcement made it very clear that there's a business opportunity in this area," says Ben Shields, a lecturer in managerial communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of The Sports Strategist: Developing Leaders for a High-Performance Industry and The Elusive Fan: Reinventing Sports in a Crowded Marketplace. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Qualcomm to cut thousands of jobs, may split company in two

Qualcomm will lay off about 15 percent of its workforce and may separate its chip and patent businesses in a major realignment of the company.The action is designed to cut annual costs by about $1.4 billion. Qualcomm will cut back its investments in new product areas and focus those efforts on data centers, small cells and the Internet of Things.MORE: Biggest tech industry layoffs of 2015, so farThe mobile technology juggernaut is also shaking up its board of directors as part of an agreement with investment company Jana Partners. Jana, which owns a chunk of Qualcomm's stock, has pressured the company to spin off its chip division from its patent licensing business.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Hacker: ‘Hundreds of thousands’ of vehicles are at risk of attack

A security expert who recently demonstrated he could hack into a Jeep and control its most vital functions said the same could be done with hundreds of thousands of other vehicles on the road today. Security experts Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek collaborated with Wired magazine to demonstrate how they could remotely hack into and control the entertainment system as well as more vital functions of a 2015 Jeep Cherokee. Both hackers are experienced IT security researchers. Miller is a former NAS hacker and security researcher for Twitter and Valasek is the director of security research at IOActive, a consultancy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why the Open Container Project is good news for CIOs

Application container giant Docker and upstart rival CoreOS have ceased hostilities following the announcement of the Open Container Project (OCP). The project will work to develop industry standards for a container format and runtime software.As a starting point, the OCP standards will be based on Docker technology: Docker has donated about 5 percent of its codebase to the project to get it going.The OCP will run under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, and its sponsors include AWS, Google, IBM, HP, Microsoft, VMware, Red Hat and HP as well as Docker and CoreOS. So this can be seen as an industry-wide initiative to ensure that containers meet the following criteria:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

CIOs say AppleCare for Enterprise is lacking

Apple's budding partnership with IBM culminated in the release of AppleCare for Enterprise, the company's business-specific support service, but for the vast majority of organizations that use Apple products the initiative is nothing more than a glorified Genius Bar. CIOs and IT professionals welcome Apple's recent interest in the enterprise, but many are still unclear on the levels of support and services the consumer giant offers — and few are satisfied with Apple's commitment. AppleCare for Enterprise, which is roughly 8-months-old, includes 24/7 phone and email support for all Apple hardware and software, on-site service from IBM, next-day device replacement, a designated account manager and one-hour response times for urgent issues. These services are virtually unattainable for most business customers because many don't have relationships with both Apple and IBM, a requirement for the support services.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco quits set-top box market, sells business to Technicolor

After ten years of making networked set-top boxes, Cisco Systems plans to quit the business, selling its Connected Devices division to French firm Technicolor, the companies said Thursday.Although Cisco will stop making video customer premises equipment for service providers, it will continue to develop software and cloud services to help telcos deliver IPTV and other video services to their customers, Cisco’s business development director Hilton Romanski wrote in a blog post.The companies plan to collaborate on developing video products for service providers, he wrote, and that collaboration will include Romanski taking a seat on Technicolor’s board.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Upload: Your tech news briefing for Thursday, July 23

Qualcomm plans cuts, may spin off assetsQualcomm will lay off about 15 percent of its workforce and may separate its chip and patent businesses in a major realignment of the company that is designed to cut annual costs by about $1.4 billion. The company, a major player in technology that’s used in mobile phones, will cut back the range of its investments in new product areas to focus those efforts on data centers, small cells and the Internet of Things.If Apple Music isn’t already under federal scrutiny, pressure demanding a probe growsTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

golang up and running on CentOS7

I’ve decided recently to get serious about learning golang.  I’ve had a great time playing around with other peoples code (Docker and Kubernetes namely) and it’s time for me to learn the language so I can contribute more than bash scripts.  For better of for worse, I’ve decided to start coding on a CentOS box.  I have a couple of reasons for doing this…

-Its the Linux distro I’m most familiar with currently
-I need to get better at working in Linux.  More stick time on straight CLI can’t hurt.  I feel like jumping into a full blown IDE might be a bit premature for me and possibly allow me to miss some of the basics as well.
-I plan to run the code on Linux servers (I think…?)

Disclaimer: Im just getting started in golang.  If something I suggest below is wrong, please tell me!  Still learning here

Note: I really struggle with the language called ‘go’.  So Im trying to call it golang everywhere I can.  It can seem like a bit much at times…

So let’s get started.  The goal of this post is to end Continue reading

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