As we face the global pandemic that is among us, businesses and organizations have of course accelerated their remote work and collaboration efforts. One of those ways to communicate, collaborate and connect seamlessly as a team is with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams recently celebrated its third anniversary and in doing so, released some new, innovative … continue reading
Software delivery has come a long way in the last 10 years. Many organizations have scrapped the restrictive waterfall model in favor of collaborative approaches that enable them to build faster, change features midstream and deliver updates continuously. But today’s delivery processes aren’t as efficient as they could be. They’re still fraught with bottlenecks, mistakes … continue reading
The impact that COVID-19 is having on people’s lives and safety cannot be understated. Life as we know it changed dramatically in only a few short weeks. But amidst all these changes, the pandemic has also emerged as a major player in the age of digital disruption. Companies have found themselves relying on technology never … continue reading
New and improved methodologies are always switching up the way software development teams work, but to keep up with the pace of evolution, the team structure is not the only change that needs to happen. Team members need to develop new skills and sometimes even transition to new roles. “The engineering teams definitely have to … continue reading
There is very little difference between an engineering manager and traditional business manager. Both types of managers need to be able to organize, motivate and help teams as well as meet business goals in a cost-effective way. The difference is the work that is being managed. According to Lorenzo Pasqualis, vice president of engineering at … continue reading
Serverless adoption has been growing rapidly as the market begins to mature and as enterprise applications continue to shift in the direction of containers and microservices. The most prominent cloud providers including Amazon — which is at the forefront with its AWS Lambda offering — IBM, Microsoft, Google, and others have already released serverless computing … continue reading
Monitoring your applications comes in many forms. There’s traditional application performance management, which begat AIOps, which begat observability. But are there really any differences? If so, where are they? Some believe these are marketing terms used to differentiate tools. Others point to it as more of an evolution of monitoring. All that said, the performance … continue reading
We’ve all heard the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” It’s trite, but it’s true. An image can cut through the crap and get everyone on the same page in an instant. In the software development world, examples carry the same power. That’s why I, like so many others, am a big … continue reading
I go to conferences on both sides of the Atlantic, and there’s a slightly hilarious thing that happens at morning caffeine break. Someone from the UK will walk up to the hot drink station and register bafflement, because there’s not hot water to make tea. Also our tea bags are pretty substandard, and there might … continue reading
It is common knowledge that the volume of data in existence is increasing exponentially, and many organizations are starting to struggle with the best way to cope with it. This trend will only accelerate with the rapid development of IoT, which according to IDC will generate 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data in 2025 from 41.6 … continue reading
Security is one of the first boxes to tick in the journey to the hybrid cloud, yet it’s still the one giving IT teams the most headaches. The recent 2020 State of Application Services Report, a survey of 2,600 respondents globally across all verticals, backs this up. Respondents listed the top challenges in managing a … continue reading
The 18-month project was approved, funded, and project team members, users and user management attended the project kickoff meeting for the new system. Six months later the project is on schedule and on budget. Yet, unknown to the team, problems are brewing that cannot only sink the on-time and on-budget project, but these problems might … continue reading
The past year witnessed some of the biggest data breaches of all time and the rapid proliferation of APIs have created new challenges in approaching the security landscape as a developer. “The fallout from not integrating security early in the development lifecycle has never been more apparent,” the 2019 State of Software Security report stated. … continue reading
Until recently, data science was a mostly academic pursuit and the subject of papers rather than practice. Over time, data science became an applied science with data scientists being paired with data engineers to develop production systems. We are now entering a new phase where much of the work being performed by data scientists (hyperparameter … continue reading
Integration used to be a lengthy, complicated process, a process that simply would not keep up with companies that are within some stage of their digital transformation. This demand for speed and interconnectivity prompted the growth of full life cycle iPaaS solutions — otherwise known as integration platform as a service — that would provide … continue reading
Open-source software continues to win over developers and enterprises. A recent report found that 92% of applications use open-source components, and open source is the de facto standard for software development. The report, which was conducted by managed open-source company Tidelift, found open source exceeds proprietary software in technology flexibility and extensibility, developer satisfaction, total … continue reading
It shouldn’t be news to you to hear that software needs to be tested rigorously before being pushed to production. Over the years, countless testing methodologies have popped up, each promising to be the best one. From automated testing to continuous testing to test-driven development, there is no shortage of ways to test your software. … continue reading
Did you know there are at least 60 defined software development methodologies that have come out over the past five decades? The various options boggle the mind. Waterfall, lean, and agile are some of the best known, but there are so many more, including Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and Test-Driven Development (TDD), as well … continue reading
We test because something broke in the past, because we care about quality code, and we want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again. Quality Assurance (QA) testing was a response to the realization that we should proactively seek out problems in our software, before any new code is deployed into production, so … continue reading
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that it is ramping up its computing power with two new Cray supercomputers in Virginia and Arizona, each with 12 petaflops of capacity, bringing NOAA’s total power up to 40 petaflops. These computers will unlock new possibilities for better forecast model guidance through higher-resolution and more comprehensive … continue reading
As a roboticist and engineer, one of the growing areas I’m most excited about is the advancement of swarm robotics. I love the idea of taking inspiration from biological systems to enhance what autonomous robots can achieve collectively, and re-contextualizing social animal behaviors like flocking, foraging, and transport to create new possibilities for humanity. From … continue reading
I’ve previously written about the “Three T’s” of shifting security left: training, tools, and teamwork. In this blog, we’re going to delve down a level and look at some of the tools needed to shift left, what they do, and where in the software lifecycle they belong. The lifecycle question is important to think about … continue reading
As organizations wake up to the multitude of ways advanced technologies can augment their businesses, developers with relevant skills are becoming ever more valuable. Data is the key to a whole kingdom of opportunity, and when combined with AI and machine learning tools, the bounds of this kingdom are practically limitless. Even for those without … continue reading
Machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are powerful tools with the potential to transform a wide range of processes for both consumers and companies. Though many of these technologies are still commercially nascent, a number of startups have emerged that provide ML-based software solutions to enterprises. We believe that these “enterprise AI … continue reading
Augmented intelligence is growing as an approach to artificial intelligence, in a way that helps humans complete tasks faster, rather than being replaced by machines entirely. In an IBM report called “AI in 2020: From Experimentation to Adoption,” 45% of respondents from large companies said they have adopted AI, while 29% of small and medium-sized … continue reading
The two major Java releases are often the biggest news for the Java community each year, but this year brings another thing for the Java community to celebrate. This month brings the latest Java release, JDK 14, but in May, the programming language will celebrate its 25th anniversary. The first Java release was on May … continue reading
Open source is arguably the most successful approach to developing and distributing business-critical infrastructure software. By removing all barriers to entry and giving developers absolute freedom, open source allows organizations to take software and implement it across their businesses in a truly seamless and customizable way. This can then lead to exponential adoption growth, which … continue reading
Large legacy enterprises have a data problem. Decades of iterative infrastructure updates via relatively small investments have resulted in information silos scattered across different systems and in different formats. For example, a hospital may have patient records in one location and accounting data in another. All of this data is managed by different teams with … continue reading
