Lessons For HealthCare.gov: Former DHS CIO Talks Recovery

Former Homeland Security CIO Richard Spires says the main to running big IT programs — and recovering once they fail — is first-class program management. Few CIOs understand the scope of disciplines had to manage large-scale IT projects quite like Richard Spires. He led probably the most largest business IT modernization efforts ever undertaken by the government. This eventually landing him the pinnacle IT spot on the IRS, and later, a deputy commissioner role accountable for operations. The lessons he learned on the IRS (particularly the significance of program and project management capabilities) were sharpened when he became CIO of the dept of Homeland Security — a position he held for just about four years before leaving this year to begin his own consulting firm. For Spires, the core principles for recovering from an IT project failure are the identical ones he would use for shepherding a major IT project within the first place: having the correct program management talent and talents in place.... Read More »

Java 8 Still Set to Ship in March

[ Developer] As Oracle continues to enhance the Java Development Kit, the corporate has stated that it’ll not be pushing back the discharge of Java SE 8. The update continues to be on schedule for its March 18 release date. The general Java 8 release candidate ought to be available starting on January 23. Despite Oracle crunching to get Java 8 suit for the scheduled deadline, the update will still ship with known bugs that coders will be unable to mend before launch. The corporate is relating them as non-showstopper bugs and says that it’ll be delaying fixes on them to make sure Java 8 hits its March release deadline. Java 8 was originally scheduled to launch during September 2013, but was delayed due to numerous java security vulnerabilities uncovered during the last year. Oracle has since stated that it’s inside the means of fixing decade-old security problems introduced into Java before the corporate even purchased Sun Microsystems. Java 8 will bring numerous features to... Read More »

Google Play Starts Highlighting Tablet Apps, Labeling Others As ‘Designed For Phones’

[ Developer] Google announced today that it’s rolling out changes to Google Play, within which it should better differentiate between apps which are designed for tablets and apps which are designed for phones. Regardless of whether you developed your app for one specific sort of device or the opposite, Google will determine your app’s label according to if it meets the factors for being “designed for tablets”. Essentially, if it doesn’t, it could automatically be labeled “designed for phones”. Google announced that the changes were coming a long time back, but now they’re going live. Users who’re browsing Google Play from a tablet will see the “Designed for Tablets” section because the default view from top lists, though they could still switch views to work out all apps and games. “Every day thousands of Android developers are profiting from the tremendous Android tablet opportunity,” Google said in a Google+ post. “The flood of latest users coupled with the increased screen size means new user experiences,... Read More »

MicroStrategy Tries Free To Win Customers

20 Great Ideas To Steal In 2013 (click image for larger view) Simple, flexible and highly visual products are what’s selling within the business intelligence and analytics arena, and MicroStrategy is hoping to leap on that bandwagon with free cloud and desktop versions of its product designed to be easy to apply. MicroStrategy has established its reputation as one of the crucial innovative business intelligence vendors — early to adopt mobile, in-memory, and cloud. The product is legendary for enterprise scale, but in addition for complex implementations. It is not lots that the product itself was harder to implement than comparable BI platforms, but rather, that it required a clean data model, with conformed dimensions. Customers who did not have an enterprise data warehouse usually sought alternatives from more flexible BI platforms or newer visual-data-discovery vendors. Webcasts More >> White Papers More >> Reports More >> With MicroStrategy’s latest release, the seller has gone far to enhance ease of use and deployment, setting its sights... Read More »

VMware Recruits Amazon Exec For vCloud Hybrid Service

VMware steps up competition with Amazon Web Services by hiring away its international technology evangelist. IT Jobs: Best Paying Titles Of 2014 (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Simone Brunozzi was named chief technologist and senior VP for VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service. He was recruited from Amazon Web Services and said he’ll miss working with “great people like (CTO) Werner Vogels,” but can’t resist going over to the opposite side. VMware has urged its third-party partners to step up and compete more effectively with Amazon for cloud customers. At its Partner World in April, president Carl Eschenbach urged them to bypass being beaten by a would-be technology company “that sells books.” Now VMware is recruiting former booksellers into its own ranks: among his other credits, Brunozzi said he used to be a novelist. VMware announced Friday that Brunozzi has resigned from Amazon as a senior technology evangelist to aid VMware establish the cloud credentials of its vCloud Hybrid Service. Brunozzi grew up in Assisi,... Read More »