ITInnerCircle.com

The economic downturn has caused consumers to keep a closer watch on their money. Much of the technological revolution, especially since the late 1990’s, was predicated on the fact that consumers were willing to shell out large sums for the latest and greatest in IT. For consumers deciding which bills they can allow to slip past due and which they can’t, shelling out large amounts of money for new computers and software seems a less than wise use of money. To stay competitive, IT companies are going to have to learn to deal with a new reality: A society where saving is looked upon more favorably than spending.

The personal computer has always been marketed as a technological marvel that allows people to entertain themselves in myriad ways. Even operating systems, before the downturn, were touting their integration with various forms of multi-media. These features, while oftentimes very innovative, are the type of things that leave frugal consumers flat. After all, if one is facing a possible foreclosure, being able to play Blu-ray on one’s computer seems downright pointless.

Marketing IT products as durable, long lasting and designed to serve for many years may be the new road to success for technology companies. If people are inclined to buy in ways that allow them to save money, technology that is certain to be outdated in 12 months is not likely to persuade them to pull out their credit cards. In the new economy, “gee-whiz” factor runs a serious risk of becoming “so what?” factor.

In the best case scenario, this situation could foster real innovation. Faced with the specter of a consumer base not impressed enough with minor changes in the look, feel or presentation of technology to lay out cash, tech companies will likely have to offer truly better performance and new features to persuade buyers. The same old operating system with a new name and some new widgets is unlikely to send consumers dashing to the local big-box technology store these days.

The free market, however, always creates opportunity, even when the general situation is one of crisis. If there was ever a time where innovation that makes technology more useful and durable, rather than simply entertaining, was in a position to thrive that time is now. Hard times just may have opened the door for someone with a different take on technology.

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Things seem to be getting more and more grim on the economic front. From the perspective of the huge, multi-national tech corporations who have already seen their first bubble go bust, this is another blow.

Hemorrhaging cash and unable to access credit to fuel entrepreneurial efforts, these companies are sure to be engaging in more and more layoffs in the future. As smart people who have lived through hard times know, the only thing they can’t take away is your skills.

Those who work in the IT field may want to start looking somewhere other than job placement agencies, headhunters and temp agencies for work. In fact, it may be a good time to innovate an entirely new model of doing business. Tech did it once already, with the web. It seems that the coffers of the corporations are not a reliable source of pay anymore. Time to innovate again.

Many of the IT sites have been in a constant mode of complaining about the outsourcing of tech jobs overseas and the effect that outsourcing has had on American workers and their wages. The remedy for this situation doesn’t seem to be forthcoming from the companies who stand to profit from that outsourcing.

The remedy is to be found in the creative application of the skills so many people have obtained working in the tech industry. A PHP programmer can still program PHP whether they have a regular job or not.

It used to be a selling point that technology made the home office the new workplace. At one time, this was mostly marketing fluff.

Today, it’s very real. Your blackberry, cell phone, laptop, and broadband connection all constitute the resources offered to employees by most employers. Your apartment is probably bigger than your cubicle.

These technology resources are incredibly cheap these days and easy to come by.

Maybe, instead of lamenting the end of the economy as we know it, it’s time to build something new.

Those who have worked in the trenches of IT, who are veterans of the first fall of the tech market and who have suffered the constant changes in employment characteristic of programmers and IT pros may, if they take the time, see a pattern in this data:

The only thing one can rely on is the skill of the people who build the technology.Skills always have value.

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And the hand never goes up..

No matter how big your IT department is or how big your company,  this classical problem exists. in some form or shape.  The fact is, there are applications that all over the place   but have no documented owners or point of contact. While some users may be using these applications, there is no single point of contact who really cares about the overall health of this application.

As no one really cares for it, its never on a upgrade path either.

Because of its shear existnace there will be integrations(data coming in and going out of this application database).

Now image your are entrusted with the tasks of upgrading one of the upstream applications which will signnifcantly impact this downstream application

You would like to find out the owner of this application but all your efforts have ended in vain.

So what do you do..where do you go from here..

1) Try to see who are all the people accessing this application. To find out, send an email to all the employees of the company asking how they use this downstream application. You are lucky if you get any reply.  Next try to find out who originally developed this application and where can you find some more information on this( Wiki’s, Livelinks or CMS).

2) If you don’t get any response for your question, send an email and tell everyone that you will be shutting down the application two days from now and they have to contact you if they have any concerns. With this kind of a time sensitive email the chances are you will get a response.

3) Assuming Step #1 and Step #2 did not work, You can turn application tracking on,  to see who is logging in? If there is a back end database try turning Auditing ON. Also database links will give you some great clues.

As you get closer to upgrading your own application, continue with broadcast emails and other forms of communication. This is to make sure that you have enough documentation just in case the table turns against you later.

Finally just a few days before you go live, shutdown all the intergrations to see if any user complains( this is little dangerous and you got to have your management’s approval to do this, but then again this is very much doable if you show enough proof that you did try finding the owners of this application).

Years ago I was managing an LDAP upgrade which was authenticating/authorizing 1600 employees and numerous applications. Can you imagine the nightmare.

I followed everything i just mentioned above..

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There are many different issues that are coming up with this years election, but one important issue that many people are overlooking is the issue of information technology. With the importance of the internet and other information technology in our everyday world today, you’ll find that this is an important issue that we need to be well informed on. We need to take a good look at the candidates and their positions. Once we take a look at their positions, then it is easier to decide which candidate is better for information technology - Obama or McCain.

John McCain and Technology

John McCain has experience in the past when it comes to technology and the policy surrounding it. He was at one time the chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in the Senate. This committee has much to do with policy surrounding technology, especially when it comes to cable TV and Internet services. It is McCain’s belief that we should make sure that we keep the conditions that allow entrepreneurs in the technology industry to make money.

He has stated that he would do a variety of things in regards to technology policy. He intends to make sure that we invest in new innovation in technology and develop a work force that is very skilled in what they do. He also feels that we should stand for fair and open trade. According to McCain, if he became President, he would make sure that intellectual property protection was reformed and make sure that the entrepreneurs and the entire internet is kept free of regulation that is unnecessary.

One of the strongest points of McCain’s stance on technology is to make sure that the internet is free from regulation by the government. McCain feels that we have been seeing great benefits from the internet as it is, only being lightly regulated and feels that intrusion on the part of the government could actually be harmful; however, if there is need for some regulation, he believes in it, although he does not subscribe to regulation such as net-neutrality.

Barack Obama and Technology

When it comes to the ideas and stance of Barack Obama on technology, you’ll find that his position is quite a bit different from that of John McCain. His main idea is to make sure that open internet is provided and that the exchange of ideas is kept free and full. He believes that the openness of the internet needs to be protected. Because of the open network that the internet already has, he feels it has been successful and that it should stay the same. He also believes that network neutrality is important to making sure that there is competition on the web.

According to Obama, he thinks that there should be rules making sure that the media ownership is diverse. He wants to make sure that there is diversity in the ownership of various forms of media instead of there being the consolidation of these companies. Obama also feels that the right to privacy should be safeguarded as well, making sure that the privacy of citizens is not going to be violated. He also supports the idea of making sure that broadband internet is available in every home, just as electricity and telephone are available in all homes today.

The Bottom Line

So, now that you understand a bit more about the policies on both sides of the 2008 Presidential campaign, you may be wondering what it all means and who is actually better when it comes to information technology. Well, when you take a look at some other countries, you will find that there are some differences between the internet availability here and in countries like Japan. In Japan more people have broadband connections than people in America and their internet pipes are much faster. When we compare the U.S. to France, we find that the internet there is four times faster and only half the price. In this instance, Obama has the great idea of wanting to make sure that broadband internet access is available to everyone.

You will also find that McCain wants to make sure that there should be free markets when it comes to the delivery of the internet. However, Obama counters that there needs to be intervention because there is not as much competition available.

Both have good points, but if Americans want to see better prices for broadband internet, there may need to be a bit more competition, allowing the little guys to also have a shot at this business without being shut out by the big telecommunications companies. However, in McCain’s defense, too much government regulation can often be a bad thing for technology, which has been proven countless times in the past.

So, for the American people this year, they have to decide which of these issues is going to be more important to them. Do they want lower prices on their internet service and the ability to get broadband internet just about anywhere? On the other hand, do they really want a lot of government regulation when it comes to the internet?

It seems that Americans have much to think about when it comes to deciding who could best the best for information technology. There is no doubt that we need a strong leader to help us continue on throughout this technological revolution that we are experiencing and it is important that we pick the right man for the job.

You Can Read Obama’s Technology Policy By Clicking Here
You Can Read McCain’s Technology Policy By Clicking Here

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Tired of chasing promotions, job opportunities, financial markets and be a Success in Life- here are a few steps for those who rather not…

1. Don’t let your boss dictate your schedule. Let him rearrange his needs around your time. Allow yourself the luxury of staying awake as long as you please. Sleep in until at least the afternoon to insure you are well rested.

2. Never finish any project you have started. If winners never quit, then losers never complete. Everyone expects you will fail anyway. Prove them right-so you can be in the wrong- where you belong. Put off until ‘whenever you feel like it’ what needed to be done yesterday.

3. Better yet- why even start? Tell your boss you plan to, but then just give up. That’s why you should never make project plans. No sense in putting yourself to all that trouble. Leave your work unfinished for the over achievers. Let them come in and clean up behind you.

4. Assume everyone is out to get you. All your problems stem from others trying to sabotage you. Always arrive late to work and for any meeting. If at all you arrive, Leave your job early and do not volunteer to stay after hours with the suckers.

5. Make promises you never intend to keep. Alienate all your co-workers from ever asking you a favor. They are neither as smart as you are or are ever going to amount to anything, so why bother?

6. Forget about saving for a rainy day. Spend as much money as you want. Why strive to get ahead when someone will only knock you back down? Accepting a chance for advancement is only an invitation to fail. Let the bozos climb up the ladder.

7. Forget about quiting the company. If the Boss has to fire you he will give you a severance package anyway. The world is full of fools. Someone, somewhere will hire you and pay you even more than what you are making.

8. Waste as much time as humanly possible. Delivering results on time won’t get you anywhere. While on a project do the bare minimum. Drop out of conference calls as soon as you can and never ask any follow up questions. Any attempt on your part to do a better job of the task on hand will lead to future expectations- so stay the way you are.

9. Blame all the bad luck that follows you on your education, VISA situation,Stock Market, Your Boss, Your Company and of course your spouse..but not yourself. Keep that chip on your shoulder- shiny and polished. Stick with the knowledge that everyone else is wrong and you are right.

10. Borrow money with no intention to pay it back. When anyone lends you anything- keep it- that’s what the fools get for trusting you. Pay your bills only when you are being threatened with foreclosure or disconnect. Rules are meant to be broken- do not worry with silly rules.

Now, get out there and show your Mother proof she was right. Be the best failure you can be! Wait a minute- that would make you good at something. Oh well, you probably failed to read all the rules.

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While Average Performance, Mediocrity & Lack Of Effectiveness Are Deterrents To Success..Do You Appreciate Your Experiences Which Applied Your “Best” Capabilities?

Call it inspiration or determination, the fact remains that when you concentrate on doing your best, you constantly improve yourself, your performance, and over-all effectiveness.

You need to know yourself, to be your constantly-improving best. And you also need to decide if you want to be your “best,” or if you want to improve only your “average performance.” There’s a lot of difference between the two.

If you want to improve “average performance,” all you need do is cut down on mistakes–the safe and traditional way; but it must be obvious that the reduction of mistakes has nothing to do with the improvement of your best work.

The reduction-of-mistakes approach merely raises slightly the level of mediocrity. Besides, if all you want to be is upper-crust mediocre.

You need to understand what your “best” is; so you need to explore and appreciate those experiences which applied your “best” capabilities. You need to appreciate them. My understanding of what I think is your “best,” will surely be different from how you feel about your own experiences.

Only you know how you feel about your experiences. You may have done something that brought you praise and an increase in salary, but if in your own considered opinion it was a stroke of luck, that’s all it was. Or maybe you worked to all hours completing a project that was greeted with apathy or even antipathy; it still is a big achievement if that is the way you feel about it.

Once I was invited to speak to class of engineering students on the subject of self improvement. I was getting ready to start, right then there was a small power failure in the building, while some electricians worked on restoring the power, I asked the professor of the class if he ever conducts any one-on-one’s with his students on the subject of achievements, He sarcastically mentioned:

I am yet to have a few of my own, what do I share with thim? When I insisted he completed his PHD’s from IIT( a premier institute in India) and that is a marvelous achievement in itself…

“No” replied the professor, that was just a fluke. I had nothing to do so I kept on spending time on studies…so in a way it just happened. But he was quick to say “look at what have you done for yourself even though you do not have a PHD you are successful”

Obviously the professor considered as achievements only the successes that contained public recognition as an important factor. Someone else with the same kind of degrees might regard it as an act of perseverance and superior form of achievement

This is very important. To create your own success, consider only those achievements of yours that are important to you, regardless of what the society or your boss or your friends might have to say about them.

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Success

A successful IT career is the holy grail of the job world – it’s stable, it’s secure, and you know companies will always seek good talent. There are a few things you can do to ensure that you develop your IT career into a successful one…

1. Focus on continuous education. Even when your employer doesn’t require it, and especially when you’re between jobs. More than any other career today, the IT career path is changing. From a couple of shelves in the bookstore fifteen years ago to entire rooms, IT books alone have increased in numbers. From running a few key systems to running almost everything a company does, computers have taken over the business world. As long as you can prove yourself valuable, companies will see value in you. You need to be constantly updating your skills on new systems and techniques.

2. Keep your old skills sharp. In 1999, the shortage of IT personnel wasn’t caused so much by a lack of manpower as a lack of software developers who understood Y2K issues in mainframes and could make the crucial changes. Surprisingly to many, that workforce was found in Asia, where most of the systems in use were several years behind those of the US. As a result, many Indian computer engineers found lucrative positions. The lesson is, if you remember your legacy systems while you’re learning your new skills, you may be surprised when they come in handy.

3. Just don’t focus on hot trends. Every new trend of today becomes tomorrow’s overstaffed area. Instead of learning the hot trends, look for surprising trends. Always ask yourself can I find something to learn and master that will become a hot trend in 9 or 12 months.Understand opportunities in global context, focus on technologies that will grow in importance over time.

4. Specialization may be the key to success. Try to find your own niche. A niche that’s so unique that there is less competition yet a greater demand. An example of this would be: you can easiily find an Oracle certified DBA with 10 year experience in the market, yet you will have tough time finiding an Oracle certified DBA who has 10 year experience just with Peformance Tuning,. When you specialize, you make yourself stand out among others. You reduce the pool of applicants who directly compete with you as well, and you give yourself a particular area in which you can excel.

5. Generalization may also be the key to success. No, this is not a contradiction to #4! Generalized, good IT skills are exactly what smaller companies are looking for in an IT guy – they need someone who can run the enterprise applications, the networking system, – and maybe even be able to fix and upgrade desktop PCs as well as maintain the phone system, too. If you prefer smaller companies where you would be the star, then generalization may be a more satisfying career move than specialization. But if you generalize, do it right – learn everything you need to know. Remember “half knowledge is dangerous”

6. Discretion may be the key. As either a consultant or an internal IT professional, your client(s) are almost certain to have trade secrets that they want to be kept internal to the company. It is absolutely vital in your career that you show yourself able to keep secrets and to stay out of data that is none of your business. For instance, it’s no fair peeking at what the vice president makes, and then it’s really not good to blab it at the water cooler. IT personnel have access to very sensitive, very confidential information due to the nature of their positions.

In fact some established companies are now forcing to rotate consultants every year due to compliance reasons. Be smart, and keep it confidential.

7. Learn to listen. Listening, like speaking, is a rare skill, and one you probably need to learn. When someone is telling you their problem with any system, you need to not only be able to assimilate it in a professional manner, but reassure them that their problems are understood and will be addressed. If you listen and then respond in a customer-oriented manner, you are certain to impress your co-workers and clients, and that will always work in your favor.

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Believe it or not we all spend a significant amount of time resetting forgotten passwords. On an average an IT professional visits over twenty web sites( both on intra-net and inter-net)on a daily basis. Similar to the intra-net sites, which probably have single sign on implemented many of the external sites are password protected too.

ITInnercircle.com spoke to over 17 IT professionals on how they keep up with this password resetting problem. A very few said they have identical user names and passwords across all the sites including the social media sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Youtube, etc. For those who said they have distinct user names and passwords invariably reset their password on each site on an average of twenty times a year.

Most of them expressed they have heard about applications in the market place that could do this, but never tried using any.

While some of them did mention they keep all the their passwords in excel spreadsheets, some said they write them somewhere on paper and usually lose it on a frequent basis. Others tried to simplify this problem by having one user name for all the sites they access with having a small password with some degree of variance across all the sites.

Certainly I would not recommend that you have one password for all your sites. Like wise having your last name as your user name to publicly accessible sites such as yahoo, hotmail and ebay can be dangerous. Given that you have many distinct user names and passwords, remembering them is a nightmare too. Until most recently I was resetting 7 passwords a week on an average. Some of the accounts I do not even remember the user name as it was auto generated when I signed up for the service.

Most recently I discovered and tested a wonderful tool that has practically eliminated this problem for me. Its called Roboform. It keeps all passwords encrypted. When you visit a website on the internet, it can automatically fill the username and password for it automatically.

You may be thinking what happens if someone hacks into your computer or the application itself?. Roboform encrypts the password it stores. In fact you cannot access the passwords without putting in the master password for the application. If required It can also generate complex passwords for you.

You can either install Roboform on your desktop, laptop or can even install it on thumb drive. I have purchased and tried all versions. To explore all the features this software I encourage you to test it by Downloading and installing it for free.

To Learn More About Roboform Click Here

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Do you want to create the next generation data integration backbone? If so this presentation could help immensely.

I consulted with the Sales organization of one of the top networking companies in the world. My Charter was to create the next generation data integration backbone for all sales operations such that all the sales territories, accounts & opportunity data from various legacy applications could be seamlessly integrated with salesforce.com.

The project became such a success that awards started coming in. Finally I got a chance to present to talk about this at SalesForce.com’s DreamForce 2007 conference. While Salesforce.com is the destination for all the territories, opportunities and account

As you listen to this recording.. You will see in less than 15 minutes(my alloted time) I convey almost 2 years worth of work in detail. Hence I was little short on oxygen..

What is the psychology of a company that is this big…? over 20K sales hierarchies, 18Million Accounts to Territory Mappings and hundred’s of thousands of opportunities why would they to use Informatica as the integrator?

• The evaluations procedures for choosing the right integration vendor.
• How did they define the need for an Integration solution?
• Power of a POC approach..
• The need to emulate near production scenarios in POC?
• What are the evaluation criteria for the POC? Performance and scalability are not the obvious ones.
• Why did they choose Informatica as their integration backbone? despite of the prevailing EAI & EII technologies

And how the success we delivered at the end? Here is the recording…hopefully you will enjoy it.

I hope you will find this educational.

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Sometime ago I interviewed David deMilo former Chief Technology Officer of Kaplan Education. On this 60 minutes “Success Interview” we discussed many topics ranging from IT Innovation, Leadership, Execution and everything in between. Most of the questions came from the members of ItinnerCircle.

David has been an innovator in IT and digital media for 20 years, leading strategic IT and commercial internet projects for companies like Knight Ridder Digital, Kaplan, Primedia and Altria. He has extensive experience with systems integration and enterprise architecture issues, n-tier application development, and evangelizing best practices to optimize the software development lifecycle and technology organizations. David is a 1980 graduate of Harvard University.

David is an expert when it comes to driving business value through technology. On this interview he shares wide variety of topics ranging Developing Applications To Delivering Success and everything in between.

• While business is constantly evolving through acquisitions how do you deliver IT projects in alignment with business needs
• In The area of Business Value creation through IT many struggle with the word “Innovation”. David has championed this by introducing new technologies, and even creating departments to focus on “Advanced Technology”. Advanced technology could be very specific to an IT department (given where it is in the technology curve) David shares key ideas on how to mushroom innovation?
• How to deal with leadership uncertainty when managing critical projects
• Sometimes its impossible to break through all the barriers of resistance and stand out. How to deal with “places that punish”
• Why QA is very strategic to project delivery and why IT departments should have dedicated QA resources for any new application development or enhancements
• How to contain data integration challenges with in a scaling enterprise

And Many more.

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In my books he is a true visionary and a strategist when it comes to Technology, in fact he is the best when it comes to implementing solutions that bring value to the enterprise. I am sure you will enjoy this interview. If you do, please leave a comment for us here.

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