Thornton May: The one thing we know about the future is that it's coming

This is how I roll. For the past 25 years, I have marked the end of summer not by devouring the closing page of the latest beach read or squeezing a lime into the final gin and tonic of the season, but by asking IT leaders, "What are you doing to prepare for the future?" Two responses have typically predominated. Over the years, CIOs have said that they were either "fixing" IT or "focusing" IT on delivering what the business needs. Here's some good news: This year's data indicates that "fixing IT" has all but disappeared from line-of-sight preparations for the future. I am pleased to report that in 78% of the Global 2000, IT does not suck. The various IT modernization efforts launched slowly and with limited funding in the shadow of the financial trauma of 2007-11 appear to have taken hold. Most of the "turnaround" CIOs who were airlifted into troubled IT shops have stabilized computational resources and succeeded in rendering enterprise IT nontoxic to key stakeholders. The IT community is to be commended for this. We are talking about rendering a massively heterogeneous, mind-bogglingly complex array of technologies and methodologies that border on being unmanageable into a stable and value-producing asset. That was accomplished in the face of ridiculously low budgets, a vendor marketing approach in which more money is spent on golf outings and sporting events than on R&D or thought leadership, and a tragically tech-illiterate corps of executives. Kudos all around for the IT tribe. Having gotten IT somewhere that was well worth going to, we still have to wonder what more the future holds. (It's a question that will expire only when we have no more future to look forward to.) Well, it would be nice if IT budgets went up, but we can't expect that anytime soon. I seriously envision a day when boards of directors will fire CIOs for not spending enough money on IT, but you don't need me to tell you that that day has not yet arrived. And it isn't just our own budgets that matter. All IT practitioners wish that our suppliers spent less on the swag (pens, flash drives, T-shirts) they distribute at those out-of-date, pipe-and-drape trade shows, and more on investments in understanding. I'm a futurist first, but I'm also a realist. Vendors appear doomed to always overspend on the trivial and leave the hard work of figuring out how to use technology to make money and create mission value to the folks in the trenches. Bear in mind, though, that while IT may not suck at long last, that won't last for long. Change is upon us. Is your organization prepared for the disruptions associated with the "SMAC stack" -- the mix of social, mobile, analytics and cloud? Have you adjusted your talent pipeline? Have you put in place the appropriate risk-adjusted "experimentation sandboxes" to gain experience with these technologies ahead of deploying them at scale? Have you created a network of smart people doing smart things on the edges? Of course, in the history of computing, enterprise IT has rarely ever been prepared for the future. Think about it. Were we ready for the PC, client/server or the Web? Decidedly not. But we can't go on that way. H.G. Wells planted the seed for modern futurism with a series of essays called "Anticipations," in which he advocated that thinkers/actors in the present should devote substantive cognitive resources to shaping the future. I think he was right. download plume for android apk download aero snap for windows vista download youtube videos in hd chrome download delivery installer magazine moment reader zinio download multi password recovery 1.2.8 download talking tom cat 2 completo apk download facebook messenger for windows cnet download 1channel ch pitch perfect download fruit ninja for ipad 2 download skype for android 4 0 tablet

Steps to take in wake of Gmail wiretapping decision

A recent decision by a federal court in California could expose mobile, Web- and cloud-based businesses to class-action lawsuits for doing nothing more than processing user data. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, ruling in a civil lawsuit alleging that Google violated federal and state wiretapping laws when it processed emails through its Gmail service, held that the processing of user data could constitute an illegal interception of electronic communications. Koh's decision reflects a very narrow interpretation of what it means to process user data in the ordinary course of business. Google, for example, routinely machine-scanned Gmail messages to create user profiles and provide targeted advertising. More troubling for the online community, however, is that when paired with the very broad definition of electronic communications under the federal wiretapping statutes, the decision has the potential to expose a host of current data processing activities to costly class-action litigation. Fortunately, there are certain specific steps that an at-risk business may undertake to mitigate or even avoid this liability. An expansive application of the federal wiretapping statute The source of the problem is an anachronistic federal wiretap statute, first enacted in 1968. At that time, the landline telephone system was the predominant communications system, and the voice telephone call was about the only thing that resembled an "electronic communication." In fact, the original wiretap statute did not even refer to electronic communications but rather described only wire and oral communications; the term "electronic communication" was added almost a generation later, in 1986. Today, almost 30 years later, the term "electronic communication" remains largely undefined and is applied (or misapplied) to a wide variety of user-initiated data transfers and related technologies. In application, the wiretap statute prohibits the interception of oral, wire or electronic communications, subject to various exceptions. A significant exception, and the one at issue in the Gmail litigation, excludes liability for interceptions made in the ordinary course of business. That is, any service through which users send and receive data may process that data within the ordinary course of business without running afoul of the wiretap statute. In the Gmail litigation, plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that Google illegally intercepted emails sent to and from Gmail users when it processed those messages to develop user profiles and provide targeted advertising within Gmail. Google argued that the processing was exempted from the statute because it was done in the ordinary course of business and that its users consented to the processing. Koh rejected the "ordinary course of business" argument based on a very narrow definition of what constituted the Gmail "service." Google argued that the Gmail service included all of Gmail's features and, therefore, the processing required to provide those features was necessarily done in the ordinary course of business. The court instead viewed the Gmail service narrowly, limiting it strictly to the transmission and receipt of email. Therefore, the court reasoned, the only processing conducted in the ordinary course of business (exempted from liability under the statute) was processing necessary for the routing, termination or management of the email message. Any additional "processing" was not within the ordinary course of business and was prohibited. download avg internet security latest update download jana gana mana instrumental download safari 6 for windows vista download yahoo messenger for blackberry touch download install antivirus smadav 2011 download the way of the ninja game download flash player windows 7 chip download ps3 xploder cheat system crack download project tv 90210 season 1 download speed meter pro 4.7

COBOL-based system for $160B pension fund is a political football

A COBOL (common business oriented language)-based system used to support New York's $160 billion state pension fund has become the subject of controversy, with some officials claiming it poses a potential security risk and others defending it as "battle-tested," albeit set to be replaced. Dubbed MEBEL (member, employer, benefits, executive and legal), the system dates back more than 25 years, according to an audit released earlier this month by the state Department of Financial Services. It "supports the core business processes of the retirement system including benefits processing, calculating and payment, employer billing and reporting, and enrollment and termination of membership," the audit adds. "Using a system that is more than 25 years old for such a high volume of transactions is dangerous, particularly because the systems and programs MEBEL was intended to interface with are also now very outdated and there are a small and dwindling number of specialists able to use and maintain them," the audit states. The audit also found that MEBEL had been using versions of IBM's z/OS mainframe operating system and Microsoft's SQL Server that were so out of date, they weren't supported by the vendors. While the state has upgraded SQL Server it won't do the same for z/OS until later this year, according to the audit. "Software vendors do not create security patches or fixes for recently identified problems for software that is past their formal support end dates," it adds. "This lack of security and functionality protection leaves the retirement system's data vulnerable to bugs and to security breaches, including attacks by hackers." The Department of Financial Services falls under the auspices of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration, but the pension system is overseen by New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who is elected separately and also serves as the state's auditor. The two have sparred politically over various issues in recent years, including DiNapoli's handling of the pension fund and Cuomo's budget proposals. DiNapoli's office responded to the DFS audit on Friday, saying it contained "numerous inaccuracies, misleading statements and errors." MEBEL is a "secure and battle-tested system" and COBOL is a "very stable language used extensively throughout state government as well as financial institutions around the world," the statement added. A "reliable work horse," MEBEL has been "constantly maintained and updated," DiNapoli's office said. "None of the hardware or software used by the System is old. The mainframe was purchased in 2009 and the software is current. A stable computer system has a low risk of sudden and arbitrary failure." Although COBOL dates back more than five decades, its time of invention is "irrelevant" in light of this ongoing maintenance, he added. download microsoft net framework 3.0 gezginler download aplikasi sms banking bri blackberry download euro truck simulator full version crack download forever 21 promo code download victoria secret 59th street download kamus besar bahasa indonesia untuk android download power soccer 3d game download k lite mega codec pack para download video splitter for mac download world of warcraft stress test beta

Q&A: Riverbed CEO sees WANs in the data center and the cloud

If you think wide-area network (WAN) optimization is a niche market, don't bring it up around Jerry Kennelly. The co-founder, chairman and CEO of San Francisco-based Riverbed Technology, Kennelly is a fervent believer that WAN optimization is the foundation for the next generation of IT infrastructure and that Riverbed is poised for a dominant role not only in corporate data centers but in the cloud as well. Since its founding in 2002, Riverbed has become the leader in WAN optimization (according to consultancy Gartner Group, Inc.), and it continues to grow at a rapid clip. The company had 39% year-over-year revenue expansion in its first fiscal quarter ended June 30. In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, Kennelly spoke with IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant and Network World Senior Editor Tim Greene about battling with Cisco Systems, the expansion of Riverbed's product line and big opportunities in the cloud. Where does Riverbed go beyond WAN optimization? You are a dominant player, but the danger is that you become a one-trick pony. How do you expand the scope of this business? What we're really doing is layer-seven application acceleration, and that has much deeper implications than simply making a particular land line faster and cheaper than it was. It's something that changes the nature of global IT infrastructure for every major company in the world. Everyone likes a fast line. It was attractive to people because it saves them bandwidth. It's much cheaper to do optimization and compression across the network than to buy bigger links. But then we saw people doing data center consolidation with it, which is moving all the server and IT infrastructure out of branch offices, out of multiple data centers into just one or two. That trend has driven a lot of our growth in the last three years. Our products make that possible because you can't do data center consolidation unless you can give reasonable performance to the people who no longer have local servers. We woke up one morning about six months ago to discover - wait a minute - what we're doing is creating private clouds, because what data center consolidation does is the creation of a private cloud. So, in fact, we've actually penetrated the cloud market. The further implication is that if you have to have our technology to do private clouds, well, guess what, you can't do public clouds without it either. The biggest companies in the world - the biggest service providers, the biggest systems integrators, the biggest Fortune 100 companies - are coming to Riverbed to ask us 'how do we do our cloud infrastructure into the future?' Cisco started out in the multiprotocol router business and expanded into many other areas, including switching, storage, security and more. Should we expect to see a similar, diverse growth track and expansion plan for Riverbed? Cisco is the layer two and three of networking, but the action now is less at layer two and three and much more layers four through seven. Cisco's the king of two and three and we're the king of four through seven. We just have a huge future for ourselves. We bring the capability customers could only dream about, that no one thought was ever possible, and here we are delivering it. There is a big product future, revenue future, for us. We're a strategic partner. I talk to CIOs all the time now, and the importance of having knowledge workers connect to their applications effectively, cheaply, globally, seamlessly, 24-7, is critical for them. That's what we do. That gives us an incredible position going into the next decade. download angry birds symbian 5th download quicktime for itunes windows download descargar plant vs zombies para pc full download chorus lagu kita forteen download avg internet security 2011 full version for windows 7 download chromium build for mac download videos from youtube mpeg download all your photos from picasa download itunes for windows home premium download london bridge fergie instrumental

Q&A: Sybase CEO John Chen touts a turnaround

Few companies get a chance at a second life. When John Chen signed on as CEO of Sybase 12 years ago, the database software vendor was, in Chen's words, "a very, very dead company." Once a strong competitor to Oracle, Sybase had missed an opportunity to push into the enterprise application market Oracle now leads. Over the next 10 years or so, Chen and his team helped Sybase turned around and reinvent itself as an enabler of the "unwired enterprise." Then, last month, enterprise software bigwig SAP signed a merger agreement with Sybase, citing the compmany's leadership in both mobile and in real-time analytics. The deal was valued at $5.8 billion. Since that deal was announced, Sybase has had little to say. But in March, before rumors about the merger began circulating, John Gallant, Chief Content Officer for IDG Enterprise (IDGE), and Eric Knorr, Editor in Chief of InfoWorld, sat down with Chen for an hour-long chat as part of IDGE's CEO Interview Series. The interview explored how Chen was able to rescue Sybase and establish it as a key mobile enterprise player. The result: A discussion rare in its frankness - one that offers retroactive insight into the real reasons SAP found Sybase so attractive. Excerpts from that interview follow. John Gallant: You've got a pretty interesting and diverse product set. You have the database, analytics, mobile management tools, and mobile tools that are pretty widely deployed among the service providers. Help us understand how those different technologies fit into a cohesive strategy that makes Sybase unique. Sybase traditionally has been an infrastructure software provider to the enterprise. We started as a client-server database company and then moved into development toolsets when we acquired PowerSoft. And after I came on board, we continued to develop our database. Gradually, we positioned ourselves in high-growth areas, like analytics, mobile middleware, and mobile services. And how we envision that it all comes together is that we believe mobile enterprise computing is going to be the next really big thing. If you think that e-commerce was a big sea change in the early 2000s, m-commerce will make e-commerce a very small thing. M-commerce reaches almost the majority of six billion people around the world. Eric Knorr: What characterizes an enterprise mobile service as opposed to a consumer service? Applications must talk to applications; machines must talk to machines. There has to be intelligence gathering, mobile analytics, real-time reporting, all these things. We could be a leader in providing those kinds of infrastructures. It starts with backend infrastructure in a data center to people sitting here with a device. That's a whole stack of a computing path. download color efex pro for capture nx2 download dynamsoft dynamic web twain activex download drudge report liberal equivalent download system tools for xp download sopcast 3 4 0 mien phi download itunes to your pc download aclu 4th amendment zone download facebook app for macbook air download youtube videos add ons chrome download youtube audio to ipad

Trojan malware steals sensitive data from SAP client apps

A recently discovered malicious program steals log-in passwords and other sensitive information from SAP client applications and allows cybercriminals to access SAP servers from infected workstations. Researchers from ERPScan, a company that develops SAP security scanning products, revealed at the RSA Europe security conference in October that a new malware program scans infected computers for the presence of SAP applications, possibly in preparation for future attacks. Researchers from Microsoft recently analyzed the same malware, which they named TrojanSpy:Win32/Gamker.A, and found that it does more than just basic reconnaissance. "This is an attempted attack on SAP and not just a harmless data-gathering operation to determine if SAP is installed," Geoff McDonald, a researcher with the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC), said Wednesday in a blog post. "The attackers are using the execution of the SAP component 'saplogon.exe' to trigger recording of the command-line arguments passed into it, combined with a series of 10 screenshots to the C&C server." Gamker has a keylogging component that logs all keystrokes entered into any application running on an infected computer. This component can capture log-in credentials like usernames and passwords, including those entered in SAP client applications. The malware also maintains a large list of specific applications for which it also records command-line parameters and takes screen shots of their active windows. The list includes saplogon.exe, but also finance-related programs, cryptography tools, VPN clients, Bitcoin wallets and more. The complete list is included in the MMPC blog post, but some examples are rclient.exe (remote administration client), translink.exe (a tool by Western Union), truecrypt.exe and bestcrypt.exe (two encryption applications), openvpn-gui (a graphical user interface for the OpenVPN client). Gamker shares some code with Carberp, a Russian online banking Trojan program whose source code was leaked online earlier this year, McDonald said. The common part is the Virtual Network Computing (VNC) remote desktop functionality that can be used to remotely control an infected computer. "It is unclear if there is a larger connection between Gamker and Carberp since the remainder of Gamkers code differs from Carberp's publicly leaked code," the Microsoft researcher said. According to McDonald, the command-line arguments for the saplogon.exe process are unlikely to contain sensitive information, but the screen shots of its active window can reveal the SAP user name, server name and other confidential data. That information, combined with the SAP password captured by the keylogging component and the VNC functionality, gives attackers everything they need to attack SAP servers directly from infected machines. SAP software is used by enterprises to track and manage many business operations including manufacturing, human resources and sales. This means that SAP servers usually contain a lot of sensitive information like customer details, trade secrets, intellectual property or financial data, which can be valuable for attackers. download crept we cameinstrumental beat bone thugs download data recovery software for micro sd card download antivirus smadav versi 8 9 download gta san andreas for mac full version download facebook password hack v2 1 download avast internet security 2012 completo download ie tab multi (enhance) download avast antivirus pro full crack download olympus camera initialization software download big lots 54th division

Cloud security: Symantec CEO shares why it's a game-changer

For Symantec Corp. CEO Enrique Salem, the three critical issues facing IT leaders today -- and the three biggest opportunities for his 'information protection' company -- are cloud, virtualization and the consumerization of technology. In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CEO Interview Series, InfoWorld Editor-in-Chief Eric Knorr and IDGE Chief Content Officer John Gallant caught up with Salem shortly after his RSA Conference keynote describing Symantec's cloud-focused security strategy,dubbed 03. In this discussion, Salem outlines why 03 is such a critical initiative for the company, and discusses how cloud and virtualization change the security threat landscape and the business opportunities for Symantec. He also talks about why Symantec isn't overly concerned about Intel Corp.'s purchase of McAfee, Inc. and what it means for Symantec to be on its own in a market with competitors like Intel, IBM, Cisco and other giants. Salem also outlines what's ahead for Symantec's non-security businesses in storage and systems management, and how collaboration and social networking will change everything for organizations in the years ahead. download tunisia-sat dreambox player&web streamer 6.0.0 download blackberry desktop manager for blackberry curve 8900 download batch convert word to pdf mac lion download spiderman 2 enter electro on demo download handbook of print media download generates validates credit card number generator download microsoft .net framework 4 standalone