Work on Apache Arrow has been progressing rapidly since its inception earlier this year, and now Arrow is the open-source standard for columnar in-memory execution, enabling fast vectorized data processing and interoperability across the Big Data ecosystem. Background Apache Parquet is now the de facto standard for columnar storage on disk, and building on that … continue reading
Building a collaborative and lightning-quick DevOps organization is a complex (but critical) business mission today. The technology industry is filled with a host of best practices that promise to help companies achieve this objective. Some of it makes a great deal of sense, but much of it guarantees mediocre results and organizations simply can’t afford … continue reading
Almost everyone has been on the mobile app or mobile site of a major brand, entered in a pretty obvious search term, and somehow not had the correct (or even any) results returned. It can be very frustrating, especially in those urgent moments when we really need something, and companies are starting to get serious … continue reading
The 2016 election took place while I was attending a tech conference in Seattle. Looking around and watching my messages and social media, it was clear that many in the tech community were deeply disturbed by the result. It was reported that Canada’s immigration website crashed on the evening of the election. And while Canada … continue reading
In August, the U.S. government released its long-awaited open-source software policy, and on Nov. 3 it unveiled Code.gov, a portal—itself open source—aimed at helping government agencies share code in order to save taxpayer money and make IT projects nimbler. Tony Scott, CIO of the U.S., made the announcement in a White House blog post: “Built … continue reading
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is fast becoming the established way of selling software. Companies as big as Google and Microsoft are focusing on the SaaS model due to the many ways in which it opens up new revenue streams. Many of the biggest software IPOs to have in the last few years have been SaaS-related. However, there … continue reading
Think back just a few years: Social, mobile, cloud and Big Data ruled the emerging technology landscape. Business and technology-management executives wondered what Big Data meant, when the cloud would disrupt their companies, and how to engage effectively on social channels. In 2016, Hadoop turned 10, the cloud has been around even longer, and social … continue reading
You wake up in the morning and check your watch for messages. You go into the kitchen for coffee, and as you reach for milk, you check the display on your refrigerator to find out what you might need. You get into your car and see traffic conditions as your navigation system recalculates the best … continue reading
APIs have been exploding in popularity as a new way to generate enterprise revenue. Huge companies like Salesforce, Expedia and eBay receive at least half of their total revenues through intelligent API utilization. Enterprises with public APIs saw 300% growth from 2014 to 2015. Companies are looking to take advantage of the API economy, and … continue reading
It is getting to be far less stressful to not read the news than to read it. While much of this for me is the very strange election between two largely unelectable folks, there is also the shadow of collapsing markets in tablets, PCs, and even smartphones. Fixing this would require massive changes to Apple, … continue reading
Business today is software. Every company, whether it realizes it or not, is a software company. For online retailers, banks, investment firms, news organizations, insurance companies—just about every business, in fact—applications are their outward face to their clients. But applications today are complex. No longer monolithic in nature, apps today involve API calls to various … continue reading
There’s no denying that the Angular framework is becoming more and more pervasive in today’s programming culture. According to JavaScript, Angular has been used to develop high-traffic websites, including those from NBC, Walgreens, Intel, Sprint, ABC News, and thousands of others. The framework’s popularity not only stems from its Google pedigree, but also because it’s … continue reading
Earlier in my career, when I was a software quality engineer, I led the evaluation, purchase and implementation of software tools. As a tool admin, I helped colleagues analyze a variety of tools and better identify best of breed stacks. The process that I followed lends itself well to evaluating a range of technical solutions … continue reading
There’s no room for uncertainty in the software that responds to a machine’s “Emergency Stop” button. At first sight, software inspired by nature (biomimetic software) delivers more uncertainty than answers. But maybe that’s an illusion. Software development is full of new, reinvented and changing concepts, items and structures. One concept that has always captured the … continue reading
