Microsoft’s PC accessories group recently did a survey in 10 markets around the world to determine common modern computing habits of workers and the implications of those habits, with a particular focus on the health, comfort and productivity impact on workers.
Report is definitely of every individual’s interest. You can grab the full report here.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Features/2013/Aug13/08-13HealthyComputing.aspx
Gartner has released its 2013 MQ for Enterprise Search. Get your complimentary copy here:
Microsoft Asia Pacific is hosting a virtual event on November 21, 2012 to offer participants a unique opportunity to learn about Microsoft vision for Enterprise Social and discuss the implications to their own organization.
Speakers
Register for the event here:
http://www.microsoft.com/enterprise/en-au/events/ms-vision-ent-social.aspx#fbid=AfIkbYtLX2f
Gartner @Gartner_inc
Couldn’t make it to Barcelona for #GartnerSYM? Sign in or Sign up to access free keynotes and 3 session credits: http://gtnr.it/SFs0n3
The S&A Group @thesandagroup
I'm hiring! Global Head of Enterprise Architecture at The Strategy & Architectur - United Kingdom #jobs http://lnkd.in/7rFe9S
Ovum ICT @OvumICT
Mobile and social application integration is different in nature from cloud and enterprise application integration http://bit.ly/TwHVVi
CIO.com @CIOonline
Gartner Upbeat on Big Data Jobs http://trib.al/XDtwXQ
Microsoft Enterprise @MSFTenterprise
Personal branding advice and cautions for executives using Twitter and other social media outlets http://bit.ly/Vqj3Dc
TOGAF(R) @togaf_r
Learn about TOGAF 9 Certification, now aligned with TOGAF 9.1. Practice tests, white papers, templates etc http://ow.ly/bX9TI
Windows 8 is New. Windows 8 is different. Dell.com is distributing free eBook on Windows 8.
Grab it now before it goes away.
Industry and government decision makers are increasingly aware that operational security protections and regulatory compliance are insufficient in protecting global applications and infrastructures. Organizations are realizing the value of Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) practices and seek to accelerate adoption and articulate this value to management.
The inaugural Security Development Conference 2012 (SDC 2012) will bring together industry professionals to network and learn from security experts about Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) practices. SDC 2012 will include information for leaders in software engineering, process and business management who are responsible for accelerating the adoption and effectiveness of SDL practices in their organizations.
Microsoft has released a new SDK and Management called “Microsoft Codename Trust Services SDK and Management Tool” to encrypt the data before storing it in the cloud.
Microsoft Codename Trust Services is an application-level end to end encryption-based framework that can be used to encrypt stored content. Data publishers can use Trust Services to encrypt data before it is stored in Windows Azure storage or SQL Azure, and authorized subscribers of data can decrypt data after it is read from storage. Using Trust Services encrypts the data, and helps reduce concerns about unauthorized access to data by Windows Azure administrators and/or unauthorized third parties. Using Trust Services helps address data security, privacy, and sovereignty issues that might block or limit typical scenarios, such as distributing data to branch offices, making data accessible to mobile employees or customers, sharing data across businesses, and leveraging cloud scale for computation and analytics.
Covers:
If you have a passion for User Experience and in particular Visual Design, this article is one of the best written ones.
Microsoft: Design for the time
Apple: Design for timelessness
http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/16/2640050/on-design-the-philosophies-of-apple-and-microsoft
Recently Microsoft released its Privacy principles based on which it provides privacy protections in software products and Internet services.
Here are they at high level:
Loughborough University’s study on ‘Privacy Impact Assessments’ is an important work in this field.
Here is an interesting free eBook released by Microsoft’s patterns & practices team which covers the topic of claims based identity in detail.
With ever increasing mobility scenarios and focus on user experience, the need for SSO also increases.
It starts with discussing basics of Claims based identity and moves to Claims based architectures.
It also discuss the topic around various Microsoft technologies and mainly around cloud and Windows Azure.
Following industry standards are also discussed :
On Tuesday December 13th Microsoft will be holding a special Windows Azure event for developers. Join us LIVE from the Microsoft Redmond Campus to learn how to get started building applications for the cloud from Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich. All of the sessions will be broadcast live thanks to your friends from Channel9.
The Learn Windows Azure Event will be held from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST on Tuesday December 13th. Add this time to your calendar and come back to Channel9 on December 13th to watch the live stream. We also have a limited number of seats available for the in-person studio audience. Register now if you would like to reserve a seat to attend the Learn Windows Azure event for free at the Microsoft Redmond Campus.
Businesses & CIOs across the world see lot of value in going Agile for Software Development. Development teams also have been quick enough in adopting the Agile methodologies. But in majority of cases, teams have failed to capitalize on the value of Agile development and in fact reduced their efficiencies by going Agile. There is also a trend where teams have started reverting back to the old way of software development.
The primary reason for this failure is that teams have failed to understand what it takes to get value out of Agile. Just by doing SCRUM or hiring a Scrum master doesn’t make you agile. In fact it creates chaos. Going Agile is a multi-dimensional approach and is based on three foundation pillars. If the team is not matured enough in even one of these, they will fail to get value out of going Agile. Higher the maturity in these pillars, more effective the agile approach will be.
The foundation pillars of Agile Development are:
1. Test Driven Development. It is about coding against tests instead of requirements. Requirements are translated into test cases and developers code to satisfy those test cases. This considerably reduces the testing cycle but increases focus on writing right test cases.
2. Agile Project Management. This is about correctly prioritizing the requirements and right sizing the iterations. I am sure everyone must have heard stories about Google having a sprint cycle of 2 days and Facebook having it of less than a day. Start with a sprint size with which the team is comfortable, even if it is 30 days. As you mature in other 2 pillars, you can start reducing your sprint duration.
3. Continuous Integration & Deployment. This is the last leg of an iteration and requires lot of support from tools. It involves building & integrating the code frequently, running automated tests and moving it to production. Some of the tools like Microsoft TFS, Cruise Control and others can help in this.
So, if you are planning to go agile for your development make sure you address it from all sides.
Microsoft has recently released an interesting white paper comparing its private cloud offering with that of VMware. As expected the focus is mainly on cost & licensing.
Apart from comparing its solution with VMware, the whitepaper provides some excellent details into its own offering which can be a nice read for understanding Private Cloud architecture & ecosystem.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/private-cloud/default.aspx
Few days back I blogged about the spirit with which BCP or DR should be planned. Continuing on that here are two recent whitepapers published by Amazon and Microsoft on utilizing cloud as DR environment.
Amazon
This paper talks about how Amazon’s AWS can be used as a DR environment and how various AWS services can play role in that including S3 and EC2.
It also includes backup and restore.
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2011/10/new-whitepaper-use-aws-for-disaster-recovery.html
Microsoft
Microsoft’s paper takes more holistic approach which includes how Windows Phone can participate in an event of DR.
