Analyst Watch: IT predictions, or parlor tricks?
I think it’s about time that we addressed the elephant in the room: predictions are a bit of a parlor trick! The problem is that we humans are horrible at predicting the future. There are several reasons for this, including challenges such as optimism bias, the curse of knowledge, and distinction bias. As analysts, we’re … continue reading
Industry watch: The little dirty data secret
Our industry has a dirty little secret. Come closer, I’ll whisper it to you. (Much of the data held in organizational databases, warehouses, lakes and stores is not very good.) There, I’ve said it. Data quality remains a persistent problem for enterprises, and there are many reasons as to why. It could be that fields … continue reading
Guest View: Embracing a DevOps culture
DevOps, which refers to the increased communication and collaboration between development and IT operations, is an ever-changing, sometimes complicated term. While “dev” and “ops”were once siloed with separate philosophies, practices, tools, and workflows, they’re merging into one. The result? A more efficient, reliable process and product that is helping organizations create stronger ties between all … continue reading
Analyst Watch: Evaluating the ethics of software
In recent years, technology analysts have devoted much attention to the topic of developers and how the demographics of developers are changing. For starters, the International Data Corporation (IDC) has noted the growth of developer populations in China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia and Turkey, as well as select countries in East Africa. In addition, IDC … continue reading
Guest View: Mainframers versus digital transformation engineers
Contrary to popular belief, the world is not full of start-ups. There’s a reason the world’s top X companies lists exist – these well-established powerhouses have been around for decades. The issue is that in this competitive, start-up environment, even well-established companies are now required to be as nimble as start-ups, and, if they don’t, … continue reading
Analyst Watch: Cloud native means Kubernetes
Attending the Pivotal SpringOne conference last month has hit home how important is the alignment around Kubernetes in the cloud-native technology world. This event is a developer conference for the popular Java web framework Spring — Pivotal was keen to quote from the recent JetBrains survey that the two most popular offerings in this category … continue reading
Industry Watch: Identifying, and winning, with unicorns
You’re working on a project that’s months late and millions over budget. Your developers move at a snail’s pace, being held up by unfilled requests server environments, authorizations to access needed data, and even to the codebase. You’re frustrated, your managers are mad and worried for their job security, and execs are jumping ship — … continue reading
Industry Watch: Why our industry must admit #metoo
Richard Stallman, an industry icon who created the first open-source operating system and has spent his career fighting for free and open software, resigned from his positions at the Free Software Foundation and MIT-CSAIL over remarks he made regarding, of all things, the Jeffrey Epstein case. The blowup occurred in response to a Facebook event … continue reading
Analyst View: The coming mobile disruption
There are three technologies that not only will massively impact Smartphone but they are going to have a major impact on PCs as well. They are 5G, Wi-Fi 6, and foldable screens. Combined, they should expand what we can do with mobile devices, change the performance limitations that currently define them, and do interesting things … continue reading
Guest View: Edge and cloud: A power couple
We’ve all known two great people we were sure belonged together. Their faults and virtues fit as neatly as puzzle pieces. Yet one without the other does not make much sense and will never leverage its true potential. Substitute technologies for people, and you begin to understand the fundamental magnetism between edge and cloud. The … continue reading
Guest View: RPA: Shiny new trend. Same old automation challenge
Place yourself in Jeopardy! mode for a moment. Here’s the answer… Automatically driving an application via the UI or API to make manual work faster, less burdensome, and more accurate. Time to give Alex Trebec your answer. If you say “What is test automation?”, you’re correct. But if you say “What is Robotic Process Automation?” … continue reading
From COBOL to Go: Why we must support legacy security training and beyond
It seems almost comical that in 2019, we should be talking about working with a computer language that was invented in 1959. There aren’t too many seminars or conventions these days devoted to the art of rethreading classic Singer sewing machines, or swapping out the oil pan on a Chevrolet Parkwood or a Triumph Herald. … continue reading
Industry Watch: The winding road to software failures
What began as a conversation about high-profile application failures and outages this summer took a winding road toward the root of what ails software development teams. I was speaking with Mehdi Daoudi, who runs the experience monitoring solution provider Catchpoint, to try to better understand why website and web application failures continue on. He spoke … continue reading
Analyst Watch: Is open source the great equalizer?
If you had told me 25 years ago that open source would be the predominant force in software development, I would’ve laughed. Back then, at my industrial software gig, we were encouraged to patent as much IP as possible, even processes that seemed like common-sense business practices, or generally useful capabilities for any software developer. … continue reading
