UK businesses will spend £37bn on failing agile projects
Businesses in the UK will waste £37 billion on failed agile IT projects in the next 12 months, according to a new report from 6point6. The report is based on a poll of 300 UK and US CIOs. They were asked about their experiences with agile, and how its principles are being applied and executed.
More than half of CIOs (53 percent) see agile development as "discredited," and three quarters (75 percent) don’t even want to defend it any more. Seventy-three percent of CIOs think agile IT is its own industry now, and 50 percent consider it an "IT fad."
Advertisers need to keep an eye on gamers to reach new audiences
It’s time to stuff the stereotypes. For too long in the minds of too many, gaming has been thought of as a sub-culture populated by teenage boys sitting indoors and playing shoot ‘em ups on either a console or computer.
The statistics to disprove this have been around for a long time -- the average age of a US games buyer was 36 last year and women make up more than 40 percent of gamers. Nearly two-thirds of US households contain at least one frequent gamer. Staggering stats that make it hard to pinpoint who the "typical" gamer is -- because there isn’t one anymore.
Is a Google-made Chrome ad-blocker the answer to intrusive advertising?
In case you missed it, rumors are rife that Google will soon introduce an ad blocker in Chrome. Understandably, there's concern about the power that would give Google over the advertising industry and its competition. As a member of said competition, I am equal parts concerned and supportive of an ad blocker in Chrome.
It’s certainly an interesting story. On first thought it’s a little ironic, in that a company which makes a large proportion of its money through advertising revenue is not only giving users of its browser the ability to block ads from appearing, but turning it on by default too. If the rumor is true, the addition of an ad blocker in Chrome could limit the reach of ads to over half of the world’s internet users overnight. That’s a big change, and in many instances it’s needed.
Sunvell T95X TV box: a web-focused, cloud-based client for those on a budget [Review]
Businesses often envision the modern desktop computer as being a boring piece of kit, one that not only costs a lot of money but also doesn’t offer much in terms of innovation.
The reality is slightly different; between dongle PCs, mini and micro PCs as well as all-in-ones, there’s plenty of innovation around if you know where to look.
Watching users fail is key to building a good product
Just 40 hours of engineering work to go live with a state-of-the-art smartphone application? It’s only possible if you have the right framework and if you forget perfectionism in favor of real user feedback. At Spreadshirt, we want it to be easy for our users to buy, sell, create and share ideas on over 200 products on our ecommerce platform. Whether they use a desktop, tablet or smartphone, we want our users to have a great experience.
Back in 2014 we had created a t-shirt designer for tablets, to reflect the rise of the touch screen. It worked on smartphones, but that was a rare use case back then. This web app has been perfected through many iterations. But the mobile times changed. And exactly as we had already envisioned in 2016 smartphone traffic was up 22 percent and tablet traffic was down at less than 10 percent. We needed a new design tool to focus on the experience for our visitors from smartphones and find out what their specific needs and issues were. Watching users fail holds the greatest learnings when you develop complex applications, such as our smartphone t-shirt designer.
How to scale a microservices-based app
The promise of microservices is that you can divide and conquer the problem of a large application by breaking it down into its constituent services and what each one actually accomplishes. Each can be supported by an independent team. You get to the point where you can break the limits on productivity that Fred Brooks described in his book, The Mythical Man-month.
Aside from being able to throw more people at the problem and -- unlike what Brooks observed -- actually become more efficient once you get a microservices-based application into production, you can quickly start thinking about how to scale it. Think resiliency and high-availability. And you can easily determine what services don’t need scaling, or high availability.
The future of self-driving cars relies on big data
Autonomous cars depend on information. They’re equipped with technology to gather and communicate a vehicle’s position, speed, direction, and braking status. They also recognize traffic signals, proximity to pedestrians, and hazardous objects on the road. With voluminous data being computed in near real-time, self-driving cars can respond to dangers afoot or notify the car owner of imminent mechanical issues, in which case it might automatically set up an appointment with the nearest auto body shop.
In addition, self-driving vehicles aren’t disposed to human-prone errors resulting from distracted driving, tired driving, or driving while inebriated. They’re constantly alert, vigilant, and have a panoramic view of the road. All of this demonstrates how big data is becoming the cornerstone to the driverless car’s future. What’s more, it’s already making great strides toward self-driving capabilities, driver safety, and enhanced customer experience.
Your clouds don't need to clash
Increasingly, two models for cloud are emerging -- the public or shared cloud and private cloud. While the definitions of these models might still be fluid, that has not stopped the rise of loud, passionate defenders of each who are willing to fight to the death to defend the idea that their cloud model will ultimately reign supreme. Needless to say, this "clash of clouds" can be intimidating for many enterprise IT professionals seeking to develop a cloud strategy where it might seem the wrong choice could result in the end of their business (or at least their careers).
Relax.
Low code/no code development: Is it right for you?
Research carried out by Gartner, which predicted that the demand for mobile applications would outstrip the number of app developers by 2019, still looms large over the mobile app industry. The way CTOs and CIOs cope with the developer shortage could make or break their company’s technological expansion.
To face this shortage, IT departments have two options:
What's next for the IBM mainframe?
The IBM mainframe has been a stalwart platform for enterprise computing for the last 50 years. There are not many technologies you can point to that have survived that long and remain a key component of many companies’ IT infrastructure. Its survival should be lauded, but the question remains: "Is it the only game in town for enterprise computing?"
That answer is a resounding "No." The mainframe is a combination of hardware and software that is arguably unique to all other computing offerings available in the marketplace today. That doesn’t make it a bad platform, but it does limit its opportunities for growth. It is a proprietary platform, only available from a single vendor -- IBM.
Galileo atomic clocks failed: What can we learn from it?
Galileo has been making headlines once again, and this time not for the right reasons. It was reported on January 18, 2017 that several of the atomic clocks responsible for the satellites’ ability to calculate precise time have failed.
Timing is everything in GNSS -- very precise time is required to calculate an accurate value of the delay in receiving signals that have been transmitted from a given satellite. This allows users to determine their position on Earth accurately. Also, many applications today take advantage of the very precise timing that GNSS can provide via the atomic clocks in use on the satellites.
Verizon sells 29 data centers to Equinix for $3.6bn
Global data center company Equinix has bought 29 data centers, along with their operations, from Verizon Communications. Approximately 250 Verizon employees will also become Equinix employees in the process.
The deal, worth $3.6 billion, will be completed in all cash. It includes more than 1,000 customers, 600 of which are net new. Verizon will now, consequently, become a substantially larger customer. It also includes roughly a million square meters of data center space.
Big data will be a $76bn market by 2020
Big Data is now a $57 billion market, according to a new report from SNS Research. Entitled The Big Data Market: 2017 - 2030 -- Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies, Industry Verticals & Forecasts, it says that vendors will be earning from hardware, software, and professional services revenue.
What’s more, the report says the investments are expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 10 percent over the next four years, reaching $76 billion by the end of 2020.
The gig economy has flipped the job market on its head
Today, CISOs are facing a much different set of challenges than they were 20 years ago. From a marked increase in the risk of breach to the growing difficulty in filling security jobs these security leaders are facing an uphill battle. Add to that the pressure to provide security assurance to the board and it’s easy to see why more organizations are harnessing the power of the gig economy.
In the last few years the gig economy has flipped the job market on its head. From ordering groceries to renting a house for a week, the gig economy has opened up new revenue channels for businesses and income opportunities for individuals. But while the issues that have driven this market -- difficulty hiring, a distributed workforce, and people spending less time at companies -- are nothing new, it was the maturity of software that enabled the gig economy to really take off.
Is it time to replace the VPN?
It’s time to replace the traditional VPN and regain trust of your endpoints with a more secure and easier approach to remote access. VPNs have typically been the go-to solution for access to internal applications, with one-third of access requests to corporate networks coming from outside the firewall.
However, VPNs come with security drawbacks, including the increased risk of unauthorized remote access to sensitive data. Typically, they grant access at the network level, meaning every user with VPN rights can access the same applications that any other user can, which is a risky practice.
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