Recruiting developers is often a problem for organizations as the skills required are different from those in other sectors and can be hard to assess. Development often has a great deal in common with more creative fields, where suitability for a job is not so much about qualifications but about what you can do and how you can communicate.

So what can companies do to discover the developer talent they need? We spoke to Mike Bartlett, CEO of developer community site Gitter to get his perspective.

Continue reading →

Businesses have ever more demand from consumers to deliver services via mobile, so they're looking for ways to produce apps quickly and efficiently.

To address this need, Android solutions provider Genymobile is cloud-based platform that allows enterprises to build, test, show off and service Android applications across the entire application lifecycle while streamlining the development process.

Continue reading →

Every once in a while you will have to migrate data from one system to another. This could be for reasons of upgrading your systems or for development of infrastructure. When you want to test your new apps during the development process, you will need to use the data that your business has generated. The test data is really hard to access simply because of the migration work. It is hard for the developers to migrate data from the full sandboxes to the developer sandboxes.

It is only left to the imagination how difficult migrating all of your business’ data can be. There are so many mistakes that you are most likely to make during the data migration process. You should beware of these pitfalls and learn how to avoid them. If you fall into them, you are going to spend a huge amount of money and time repairing the errors that they will cause. Here are some of those challenges.

Continue reading →

Clients of IBM’s software and services will soon be capable of embedding eSignature and Digital Transaction Management through the IT giant’s new strategic global partnership with DocuSign.

DocuSign is working with IBM Cloud -- with a 47-data center footprint -- to provide customers with access to public, private, and hybrid cloud services. DocuSign’s APIs will also be available through Bluemix, which will be key to embedding eSignature and DTM functionalities within IBM’s Cloud platform.

Continue reading →

We already know that having a mobile friendly site is important to search rankings, and with Google's announcement in March that it will start to rank mobile-ready sites even higher, companies are likely to focus even more on the mobile experience.

It's particularly important for retailers to connect with millennial shoppers who are more likely to research or buy using their mobile devices. We spoke to Aaron Shook, executive software architect of digital transformation specialist PointSource, to find out why a mobile strategy and good design are key to success.

Continue reading →

APIs are the glue that holds much of the digital world together, connecting systems, apps and data. But a new survey reveals that many organizations are failing to place enough emphasis on API security.

Research company Ovum in partnership with bot detection and mitigation firm Distil Networks, surveyed 100 IT and security professionals. They found that 30 percent of APIs are planned out with no input from the IT security team and 27 percent of APIs proceed through the development stage without the IT security team weighing in.

Continue reading →

Modern software is often complex, perhaps running services on multiple machines. This can make deployments complex and prone to errors.

Software deployment specialist Puppet is launching the latest version of its Puppet Enterprise platform which gives development teams control over and insight into the changes they want to push out.

Continue reading →

By now, it’s no secret that business intelligence (BI) software is becoming a widely adopted tool among various industries. The use of BI makes it possible for organizations to gain valuable insight into what areas of the business are thriving and others that might be in need of improvements.

The scenarios where we are starting to see BI becoming most effective are when executives leverage these insights and turn them into actionable data.

Continue reading →

Back in September of last year we reported that Microsoft had announced its purchase of cloud security firm Adallom to help its customers protect their cloud-based data and applications.

In February it teased that a new Cloud App Security offering based on Adallom's technology would be released in April. Well, today the wait is over and the product becomes generally available as a cloud-delivered service to help IT and security teams gain visibility and control over cloud apps.

Continue reading →

Useful apps tend to embed themselves deeply into people's work lives and stay installed on their devices for the long term. As a result it can be hard to get a definitive list of the best apps at any one time.

To try to remedy this, app quality company Applause has produced a report that ranks 130 business apps based on what people feel about them. Categories of apps ranked include communication, organization, work productivity, security and weather.

Continue reading →

Among the biggest cyber-threats to businesses nowadays are phishing, patch exploitation, trojans and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), yet new figures show that a quarter of companies don’t have an anti-DDoS protection set up.

Those are the results of a new survey by security firm Kaspersky Lab and B2B International. According to their research, approximately half of businesses surveyed understand the risks cyber-attacks pose, not just to their financials, but also to their reputation. Approximately, the same percentage also thinks being protected from DDoS attacks is an important cybersecurity requirement.

Continue reading →

IT departments in businesses across Europe are still focused on saving money, and not on adding value to the company, or innovating to support further growth. Those are the results of a new survey by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Claranet.

Polling 900 European IT leaders, it was unveiled that despite growing IT budgets, these departments are still looking to cut costs and save money. Today, 46 percent said reducing cost was the top priority, compared to 34 percent a year before. For 29 percent, new revenue streams were their core activity, and for 25 percent, that was increasing customer loyalty.

Continue reading →

Businesses are showing increased interest in developing their infrastructure to support distributed, scale-out databases and cloud databases, but a lack of robust backup and recovery technologies is hindering adoption.

Backup and recovery is cited by 61 percent of enterprise IT and database professionals as preventing adoption. However, 80 percent believe that deployment of next-generation databases will grow by two times or more by 2018.

Continue reading →

Based on my experience around data and metadata, I strongly believe that in today’s business environment, understanding the value of data should be a top priority for almost any organization.

Although there are certainly other core elements that help to define organizations, I would say the three most important are people, processes and technology. What each of these elements has in common is its reliance on data -- without which, nearly any organization’s productivity would quickly come to a grinding halt. Of course, most organizational leaders would agree that data is valuable, at least in a general sense. But it takes an additional focus, and deliberate processes, to measure the actual value of data within your organization, and then set up systems that allow you to take advantage of it.

Continue reading →

Microsoft has joined forces with a collective of more than 40 financial institutions to help push the development of blockchain technology. Working with the R3 consortium, Microsoft wants to develop and test new technologies to replace and streamline old systems used in banking and enterprise industries.

The announcement comes as the company launches the first Microsoft Envision event with the aims of bringing together business leaders to pool ideas for the digital age. Using Microsoft Azure, the company wants its partners to expand the use of Blockchain-as-a-Service and bring about change faster.

Continue reading →