As businesses increasingly move their operations to the cloud, they’re recognizing the potential to harness the almost limitless compute power available and tap into artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to deliver insights and value to the business that were previously beyond their reach. Businesses have never been in a better position to create value … continue reading
Cloud native has become one of the biggest trends in the software industry. It has already changed the way we think about developing, deploying and operating software products. The cloud-native paradigm for application development has come to consist of microservices architecture, containerized services, orchestration and distributed management. Organizations across every industry want to remain competitive, … continue reading
New programming languages are created every year, but seldom do they gain the attention of developers like JetBrains’ Kotlin has over the last couple of years. Kotlin is a general-purpose, statically typed programming language designed for the Java Virtual Machine, Android, browsers and native solutions. It was created by JetBrains’ language designer Andrey Breslav and … continue reading
In the past several years, the tech industry seems to have tried to put more effort into promoting and increasing diversity. But are those initiatives actually working? In many aspects, it seems that the answer is no; things aren’t actually getting any better. According to a 2018 report from the National Center for Women & … continue reading
Many Americans seem resigned to not having control over their data profiles on the Internet. As larger and more sophisticated data breaches are reported in growing numbers, and companies such as Facebook and Google engage in mysterious data activities, technology users are left not knowing who’s got their data, or what they’re going to do … continue reading
It’s been one year since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. The regulation completely changes how organizations need to handle the data of European Union citizens. The impact of the GDPR, though, has been minimal to this point. Compliance has been slow, enforcement has been lax, and organizations are finding that learning … continue reading
There’s been a lot of talk lately in security and development circles about the need to shift left in the software development lifecycle—and rightly so. By bringing security into the picture from the beginning, you can catch weak designs and bugs earlier, when they’re cheaper and easier to fix. So far, so good. But does … continue reading
The benefits of microservices are undeniable. Software development companies want to be able to deliver software rapidly, frequently and reliably — and microservices are a means to that end. A recent O’Reilly Media report found that more than 50 percent of software projects are currently using microservices. Of those surveyed, 86 percent have found at … continue reading
We’ve all been part of this debate about whether we should have an open-plan office or not. In general, executives would advocate for the open-plan office, while the individual contributors would say, “Please, no!!!” Executives won’t listen because they feel they are the only ones who can see the full picture clearly enough to make … continue reading
Julia Lindsay was on a successful path in the investment and wholesale banking world, where — for the most part — she enjoyed her time. However, she eventually went through a rough patch where she found herself quite miserable, and that misery seeped into work. “I didn’t have a sense that I was looking forward … continue reading
Founded 10 years ago by a group of MIT scientists, Massachusetts-based biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks has found great success in leveraging a number of open-source technologies to speed up and automate a wide variety of synthetic biology laboratory tasks. The organization’s main focus is the genetic engineering of compound-producing bacteria for a range of industrial … continue reading
If you were to make a list of important programming languages that have appeared in the past decade, Go and Rust would almost certainly be featured on it. Similarly, if you were to sit down and think about which programming languages are best suited to developing secure, microservices-friendly frameworks or applications today, you might find … continue reading
It’s safe to say that microservices architecture is no longer an emerging new trend, but a mainstream software development strategy. Microservices aren’t just ideal for developing new applications, but are also optimal when modernizing legacy applications. Writing functionality into bite-sized, reusable components is more efficient and speeds up development. It delivers code that meshes well … continue reading
Across industries, machine learning is augmenting and in some cases taking the place of human decision-making. In recruiting, legal sentencing, loan approvals and even college admissions, algorithms now play a part in determining candidate selection. The science behind AI provides a more efficient approach to complex decision-making. However, for those without a PhD in mathematics … continue reading
The Cloudera and Hortonworks merger that was first announced in October officially completed this month, paving the way for a new Cloudera. As part of the merger, the former rivals will live under the Cloudera name and offer an enterprise data cloud capable of supporting hybrid and multi-cloud deployments as well as provide machine learning … continue reading
As a football fan, I’ll be the first to admit that Sunday’s Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams offered little in the way of entertainment. As someone who has spent the better part of 20 years directly involved in the development and delivery of software, however, the game was nothing … continue reading
UX design and testing continue to evolve with the emergence of new technologies that enable new types of experiences. Mobile and web apps changed the conversation from UI to UX. Now, UX involves much more than graphical UIs and app performance. Organizations must deliver omnichannel experiences that contemplate voice interfaces, virtual elements and more. “We’re … continue reading
Green IT is nothing new, or so it would appear. Wikipedia, for instance, dates it back to 1992. But Green IT still concentrates very much on the operation and use of applications, with little focus on what goes on during their development. Up in our ivory towers, we software engineers often feel that such matters … continue reading
Did you know Gmail was born from a hackathon project? Same goes for LinkedIn’s “Year in Review.” Companies of all sizes and from all industries embrace hackathons as a way to foster innovation and collaboration — even the NBA does it. Silicon Valley is home to a number of famous projects and startups that were … continue reading
The work on a microservices project is always stressful. Such projects introduce larger data sets, faster update rates, more requests, more failures, more latency challenges, more service interdependencies, more developers, more documentation, more servers, more networks, more databases. Yet, all that doesn’t mean you should avoid microsevices-based projects. The right organization of your team … continue reading
Modern software organizations have two core goals: first, be responsive to customers and preemptively fix issues quickly and second, deliver the capabilities customers want, faster and/or better than the competition. If developers and testers are joined at the hip, it’s easier to achieve these goals. With release cycles getting faster all the time and customer … continue reading
Digital transformation has been a popular buzzword over the last year as businesses try to navigate what the term truly means and how it can be achieved. Research firm Gartner refers to the digital transformation of a business as “the process of exploiting digital technologies and supporting capabilities to create a robust new digital business … continue reading
In the digital age, consumers increasingly expect new services that meet their needs and enhance their experiences. As banking becomes more commoditized, innovation is key to remaining competitive, and banks are beginning to realize that collaboration is the fastest way to innovate. Innovating internally is a slow process, but the rise of low-code development tools … continue reading
Development teams thrive on precision. They need specific requirements to write clean, tight code. They need to write tests that will accurately reveal any flaws in that code. So when development managers are told they need to consider value when developing software, the reaction is, “Well, what do you mean by value?” In 2019, businesses … continue reading
Adoption of integration platform-as-a-service solutions for combining disparate services into a cohesive application has seen a steady but slowing growth among businesses. Gartner Research found in its “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform as a Service” report that more than 50,000 companies globally have implemented some form of iPaaS as of 2017. And, Gartner writes, … continue reading
All throughout our lives we are reminded of events from the past. History teaches us about what happened before us to help us understand how society came to be as it is today. But today we live in a digital age, and while leaders, laws, wars and other parts of our history will always be … continue reading
The software industry keeps expressing it is under immense pressure to keep up with market demand and deliver software faster. Automated testing is an approach that came out to not only help speed up software delivery, but to ensure the software that did come out did what it was supposed to do. For some time … continue reading
Almost exactly one year ago, Forrester confidently predicted that 2018 would be “the year of Enterprise DevOps.” The blog, authored by the late Robert Stroud, began: DevOps has reached “Escape Velocity.” The questions and discussions with clients have shifted from “What is DevOps?” to “How do I implement at scale?” Continuous testing is not far … continue reading
