Industry Watch: Planning for the perfect
Estimating the time and cost it takes to deliver a project is the bane of system development and it is an old problem that doesn’t seem to be getting any better. How bad? According to a 2012 McKinsey-Oxford University study of 5,400 large- scale IT projects, 66 percent were over budget, 33 percent came in … continue reading
Analyst View: The climb to quantum supremacy
The story of Moore’s Law describes well how computing hardware has evolved and grown in performance over the life of modern computing and how in the current era the pace of that law has saturated. The switch from single to multi-core CPUs has helped keep the curve from going completely flat, but what is creating … continue reading
Industry Watch: How I came to love tech
Allow some self-indulgence as we celebrate 20 years. Growing up, I always wanted to be a sportscaster, having worshipped at the temple of the great Marv Albert (“kick SAVE and a beauty!). I went to the University of Maryland for journalism to begin the quest, and walked into the radio station, declaring, “I’m here to … continue reading
Analyst Watch: 5 steps to master continuous delivery
Melissa is a technical professional in charge of application development for a large manufacturing organization. In the past few months, she’s had to make some changes to promptly meet the demands of the customer and the business — including regularly updating applications with user feedback and responding to new shifts in the market and changes … continue reading
premium Guest View: The importance of healthy code for your business
Coding creates the backbone of most businesses today, whether it is developing an app for our smartphones or other software meant to ensure smooth technological processes. It is a way we can talk to machines using a logic base and make them do what we want them to do. However, one misplaced figure or apostrophe … continue reading
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
