CIO image via Shutterstock

This week’s roundup is full of news from the CIO, big data and healthcare industry. Read on to find out the big headlines from these industries!

1. Hauwei security issues are result of ‘rumors’ says Hauwei executive – Valery Marchive (SearchSecurity)

Several months after the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence labeled the Chinese networking vendors, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. as a threat to U.S. national security, Huawei’s Chairman Francois Quentin said the company has become a victim of ‘rumors’.

2. Beyond the hype, CIOs can generate business value from big data tools – Editorial team (SearchCIO)

In this video interview, Sears Holdings CTO Phil Shelley discusses how embracing big data tools can lead to new business and how CIOs can use them to add value to their business.

3. Telecommuting technology a double-edged sword for SMBs – Nicole Laskowski (SearchCIO-Midmarket)

Following the reaction to Yahoo’s ban on telecommunication, Nicole Laskowski says most small business owners continue to rely on telecommuting for day-to-day operations but believe customer interaction will lead to success.

4. Look out, Big Data: In-memory data grids start to go mainstream – Stephanie Mann (SearchSOA)

As in-memory data grids become more popular (Gartner called in-memory computing one of the top 10 strategic technology trends of 2013), Stephanie Mann looks at why it has finally gone mainstream.

5. Podcast: What you missed at HIMSS 2013 – Ed Burns and Don Fluckinger (SearchHealthIT)

SearchHealthIT reporters Ed Burns and Don Fluckinger break down the big stories and hot health IT themes that emerged from HIMSS 2013 in New Orleans.

BYOD image via Shutterstock

CIOs, BYOD and risk management were on the minds of many TechTarget writers this week. Check out the resultant articles in the roundup!

1. A longtime student of IT’s top leader asks, ‘What is a CIO?’ – Scot Petersen (SearchCIO)

What is a CIO? Scot Petersen has searched far and wide, asking numerous CIOs and experts to see if they had the answer to the long-standing question. Well Scot has finally figured out one key aspect…

2. Mobility, risk management on display at ARC World Industry Forum 2013 – Brenda Cole (SearchManufacturingERP)

Brenda Cole discusses this year’s ARC World Industry Forum in Orlando, in which automation, mobility and risk management were the key highlights.

3. Video conferencing software and hardware: Hybrid approach needed  – Gina Narcisi (SearchUnifiedCommunications)

With company employees having the ability to make calls anytime, from their office, tablet or smartphone, Gina Narcisi looks at the different video conferencing software and why the market is shifting from traditional hardware to software.

4. Rapid technology changes make securing BYOD difficult – Alex Barrett (SearchDataCenter)

As more and more smartphone and tablets evolve, Alex Barrett says that while companies are beginning to come to terms with BYOD, it will be difficult for them to keep up.

5. Microsoft patches vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Exchange – Jeremy Stanley (SearchWindowsServer)

Microsoft was busy last Tuesday releasing 12 patch bulletins; mainly fixes for Internet Explorer, Windows Server and also a patch for Oracle’s Outside In library.

IT image via Shutterstock

Looking for the latest news and highlights surrounding the IT industry? Check out 5 stories from across the TechTarget network in this week’s roundup!

1. Leadership qualities of CIOs who do big things – Linda Tucci (SearchCIO)

Linda Tucci goes in-depth on the idea of a ‘Renaissance CIO’ by looking at the traits of industry leaders (selected by a committee) to see what they have in common and how they have impacted their companies.

2. Social media listening pulls direct opinion, focus groups get personal – Sue Hildreth (SearchCRM)

With social media listening becoming the primary way that companies interact with their customers, focus groups and surveys look to be on the way out. However, Sue Hildreth talks to several experts who say these tools still have a role to play.

3. Cisco software business to double with help from Cisco SDN strategy – Shamus McGillicuddy (SearchNetworking)

As part of its goal to become the number one IT company in the world, Cisco said it will double its software business in the next 5 years through acquisitions and emerging technology (especially SDN).

4. Cyber-security services: Identify, respond to and evaluate an attack – Gina Narcisi (SearchNetworking)

With enterprises battling constant cyber-security attacks, Gina Narcisi looks at the most important ways companies should protect themselves.

5. Convenience of mobile accounts payable software brings security risks – Emma Snider (SearchFinancialApplications)

As more people are using smartphones for barcodes and checks, Emma Snider explains the pros and cons of accounts payable software for users and companies alike.

Tell us in the comments below what you think Obama’s victory means for the IT industry.

Disclaimer: All videos presented in the “YouTube IT Video of the Week” series are subjectively selected by ITKnowledgeExchange.com community managers and staff for entertainment purposes only. They are not sponsored or influenced by outside sources.

For the first time, Google opened the doors to its data centers, sharing pictures and video of these massive operations. Wired’s Steven Levy was among those who got an exclusive first look at one of the data centers (a behemoth of a building in Lenoir, North Carolina), and his resulting story is a great read.

What makes these images so compelling? For the average person, it’s a chance to unravel some of the mystery behind one of the world’s most powerful companies, and a reminder that for all the talk about cloud this and cloud that, the Internet is a real, physical thing.  Most IT pros have long internalized that truth, but still relish the chance to gawk at a super-sized version of the technologies they oversee on a daily basis. These are the technologies that run much of our lives, and so we can never have too much exposure to them.

Google’s doing plenty of interesting things in its data centers, from custom-built servers to energy-saving innovations (take that, New York Times). But it’s not the only company with an intriguing server story to tell; in the new book, The Art of the Data Center, Douglas Alger showcases 18 other data centers that  demonstrate impressive processing power and creativity, interviewing the people behind these modern landmarks (there are a ton of pictures, too). In looking through the book, I was struck by the range of designs and approaches, which took into account things like geographic location (e.g., ACT’s tornado-resistant building in Iowa City) and history (the Lakeside Technology Center in a former Chicago printing plant).

The entrance to the Bahnhof data center in Stockholm. Courtesy of Bahnhof/InformIT.

All the data centers featured are beautiful in their own way, but for sheer uniqueness, I’d have to give the prize to Bahnhof’s 10,000 square-foot space in a former nuclear bunker in Stockholm, Sweden (which includes a 687-gallon saltwater fish tank and two Maybach diesel submarine engines) and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, built into a gorgeous 1920s chapel. Both are powerful reminders of how the world is constantly evolving, using old spaces to meet new demands. As for what the future looks like…that picture is still a little blurry.

Want to see these data centers for yourself? We’re giving away a copy of The Art of the Data Center in our Halloween costume photo contest.

1. 21st USENIX Security Symposium (August 8-10, Bellevue, Washington)

2. Agile 2012 (August 13-17, Dallas, Texas)

3. Gartner Catalyst Conference (August 20-23, San Diego, California)

4. Gartner Business Process Management Summit (August 20-21, Sydney, Australia)

5. Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration (August 22-23, Sydney, Australia)

6. VMworld 2012 (August 26-30, San Francisco, California)

7. MapReduce for Programmers (August 27-29, Jessup, Maryland)

We’ll be sharing IT events each month here on the Enterprise IT Watch blog. Got an event to add to our list? Let us know via Twitter (@ITKE) or email. Going to one of these events? Share your takeaways (and photos) with us!

Disclaimer: All videos presented in the “YouTube IT Video of the Week” series are subjectively selected by ITKnowledgeExchange.com community managers and staff for entertainment purposes only. They are not sponsored or influenced by outside sources.

The reaction was as swift as it was predictable. Wired’s excellent Tim Carmody blasted the Damning Backstory Behind ‘Homeless Hotspots’ at SXSW, while others took the initiative as another sign of the tech conferences jumping the shark – or worse, how out of touch the digerati are with real world problems.

To quote Carmody:

It sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia. But it’s absolutely real — and a completely problematic treatment of a problem that otherwise probably wouldn’t be mentioned in any of the panels at South by Southwest Interactive.

This program and the immediate media backlash reminded me of why so many promising, innovative projects inevitably sputter out, whether its in the world of startups, social work or plain vanilla corporate IT.

The basic idea behind the experiment, conceived of by marketing firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty, is simple and time tested: Give disadvantaged individuals an opportunity at respectful, accessible self-employment. Thousands of programs around the world are based on the same premise in. One popular version is the street newspaper, in which homeless individuals are given free or cheap newspapers to sell, and then keep the profit (I volunteer for one of these in the Boston area), and that’s the model Bartle Bogle Hegarty said they were building on, working with a local Austin shelter.

But what, exactly, made the experiment cause such a visceral reaction? A New York Times blog post dubs it “dystopian” before posing the question: “When the infrastructure fails us… we turn human beings into infrastructure?” Carmody goes even further, focusing on the project’s precursor, which provided mobile and social tools to the homeless to help them directly tell their story – before the project fell apart:

This is my worry: the homeless turned not just into walking, talking hotspots, but walking, talking billboards for a program that doesn’t care anything at all about them or their future, so long as it can score a point or two about digital disruption of old media paradigms. So long as it can prove that the real problem with homelessness is that it doesn’t provide a service.

Unfortunately, the reality is that many, many well meaning projects fizzle out early on for one reason or another, whether old media or new. Awarding supporters of those projects a scarlet letter and expecting everyone to bat 1000 means that tried and true mediocrity becomes the only metric of success.

I think a lot of the gut-level reaction to the initiative stem mostly because BHH is trying something new and untested while raising uncomfortable truths (as a few commenters noted, nobody would otherwise be discussing homelessness amid the excess of SXSW).

The problem isn’t limited to public service or Silicon Valley’s endless chattering classes, the latter of which often feels like an echo chamber of “me too” companies that endlessly cookie cutter each other’s success. The attitude infects IT and technology decisions for understandable reasons – but ultimately ones that put IT in a reactive, defensive position.

One of the first expressions I learned at TechTarget was “Nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco,” a twist on the original (?) “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”, both classic examples of the conservative habits of IT buyers. Because for years, not many people would get fired for following the path of least resistance and going with one of two “safe” vendors. But lately that thinking has left IT blind to the challenges advances like cloud computing, Bring Your Own Device and software-as-a-service everywhere have brought, leaving users to route around their conservatism with riskier, but more practical, tools and methods, or letting their business get swallowed up by a nimbler competitor.

In IT departments, the gut reaction is often, “If the user doesn’t follow our policy, fire them”. But the uncomfortable truth is that, in many areas, IT hasn’t kept up with the consumer world, and it’s easier to attack challenges to the status quo, whatever the topic, than to do the hard work of embracing change.

Michael Morisy is the editorial director for ITKnowledgeExchange. He can be followed on Twitter or you can reach him at Michael@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.

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I have suggested five components of an application documentation set. This configuration provides a structured organization, covers a wide range of clients, and minimizes overlap. Not every application will require all the components.

Now, I will describe the components in more detail.

The Overview component is your marketing pitch. It describes your product in high-level detail, identifies key application elements and tells your prospective customers why this product is the best one for them. I once was responsible for maintaining a large banking application and fortunately, the overview documentation provided me with information which made the task less terrifying. It described the various time dependent functions (daily, weekly, monthly, year-end, backups, etc.), inputs and outputs.

Think of this as the glossy brochure you read before beginning your search for a new automobile. It quickly will identify key features of the automobile which you can then compare with your needs.

The Operational component is your will and testament. It states how the application is to be managed after you (or your team) are gone. The ideal goal is to turn over the day-to-day operation of the application to another group without your close involvement. This information can be enhanced over time. I used this vehicle to document application issues and resolutions. If changes to the system were required, this was also noted. If the application crashed, there should be documentation for attempting a resolution (or only call the on-duty support staff), perhaps manually resetting control items (dates, cycle numbers, cheque numbers, etc.), voiding/deleting output information (such as files, cheques, etc.) or rerunning the application. This last option could entail manual over-rides to input and output files, reports, etc. As issues arise over time, the documented resolutions may help resolve late night issues.

This documentation should also describe the relationship of data files and the various application components. As and example, the daily function might consist of enabling the online files by 5:00 AM and initializing the log files. The nightly function could state that the online component is to be stopped by 9:00 PM, the backups to be completed by 11:00 PM and sent off-site, the aging function to be completed by 2:00 AM, the verification function to be completed by 3:00 AM, all client reports/information to be processed and distributed by 6:30 AM. As stated earlier, any operational issues should be documented in this component.

The Programmer component is probably the heart of this documentation. It contains not only the code for the applications, scripts, tables, etc. but also the modification history of the application. It shows approved changes, what components were changed for each revision, and if you’re lucky, it might even provide a backout solution. This is the bible for application support staff.

The Customer component is the ‘how to’ resource for the users of the application, and tells them how to use the application in the most effective manner. It should be created by function (how to create a data record, how to delete a record, how to modify a data record, how to select data for reports, how to manage various control elements, etc.). This document should be written with the client in mind – how will they use the system. There are several formats that can be used, and I am fan of a 3 column tabular version. The 3 columns contain a sequence number, an action column and a results column. The integer sequence number indicates the function (such as the login process is 1.0), The action column indicates what the client must do to achieve the result or what the function is, and the results column describes what will occur.

I personally don’t like the SELECT, CLICK, CLICK, etc. approach, because the client may not fully understand the process, they just follow the rules. Another technique, which initially is nice, is to use screen images to instruct clients. This is valid until a change to the graphical interface is made, thus possibly making the documentation confusing or incorrect. The documentation should be designed to minimize revisions when modifications are made to the application.

The following attempts to illustrate a login scenario:

STEP ACTION RESULT

1.0 LOGIN
1.1 Select APP, Press ENTER Invokes login screen from standard corporate menu
Go to STEP 1.3
1.2 Press: CNTL+ALT+PGDN This invokes the stand alone login screen
1.3 Login screen appears
1.3.1 Enter your account id This is your id for this application
1.3.2 TAB to password field
1.3.3 Enter your account password Field contents not displayed
1.3.4 Press ENTER key Valid account/password invokes APP
1.3.4.1 Invalid password prompts for another attempt
1.3.4.2 Go to 1.3.1 After 5 invalid attempts, account is suspended for 1 hour
1.3.4.3 Contact HELP desk Account activation

The Data Dictionary is the hub that holds these components together. Unfortunately, I have not found a product that works to my satisfaction. This repository should contain the data elements for the all applications, along with definitions, formats, edit/verification rules, etc. There would be links identifying the applications, data files, data bases, etc. using the elements. This would help ensure that the data elements are used correctly. The data elements could have alias names which could be used by different programming languages. Just think how easier application support would be if every program used the same set of data element names?

I have worked on several projects where the data elements were defined before the source code was developed. It took a while to get the data elements correct (you don’t need to be 100% complete), but the programs were developed much faster and with fewer errors. In one project, we developed month-end profit ratios for manufacturing plants. There were over 200 reports and each program used the common data element definitions. It is now relatively easy to trace data elements to programs, files, reports, and data bases. All system clients use the same terminology, know the data element definitions and what they represent – thus avoiding some misunderstandings.

This documentation model is not perfect. I feel it can be used as a basis to develop better documentation. After all, if you have a problem with an application, where do you turn to for help? If the documentation is poor, no matter how wonderful the application, it is bound to fail. Just like the chain, it is as strong as the weakest link.

Mike Malesevich has been an IT professional for over 30 years, working with IBM mainframes and UNIX. From application developer, tech support to operations support analyst and security admin, Malesevich has made his rounds in information technology.