Recent Blog Posts
Ahead in the Clouds
Cloud security: Weighing up the risk to enterprises
Senior Editor, UK 21 Aug 2018In this guest post, Chris Hodson, chief information security officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at internet security firm Zscaler, takes a closer look at why cloud security remains ...
Why is there so much publicity for 40 year old AI techniques, albeit with more processing power, bigger data files and more reliable communications lines?
What a season of technology events this is. Well, to be clear, what a season of technology events awaits us through the 'fall' period in 2018. All the tech symposia and conference proceedings about ...
What’s being ‘pushed to’ open source this last weekend or so? Answer: quite a lot. There’s a whole smörgåsbord of openness out there… but one project emanating from Redmond stands out for sure. ...
Eyes on APAC
Australian e-commerce company shrugs off US behemoths with cloud move
TechTarget 17 Aug 2018Australia's eCorner has signed a deal with Macquarie Cloud Services to help it use public cloud services to fend off growing competition from larger US providers. The Sydney-based e-commerce ...
Before we start, we need to understand how to pronounce cloud application development company Skuid. Go on, we dare you… we double dare you. Did you say skew-id, skood or scho-eey-dee? Wrong, it’s ...
New England headquartered application development company Progress is flexing its programmer credentials this month. The Massachusetts-HQ’d firm has now come forward with its Progress Spark ...
In this guest post, Allan Brearley, cloud practice lead at IT services consultancy ECS, advises enterprises to start small to achieve big change in their organisations with cloud. The success of ...
Write side up - by Freeform Dynamics
Is IBM relevant to today’s mainstream?
Freeform Dynamics 16 Aug 2018When IT vendors talk about the market, they tend to focus on how they would like the world to be rather than how it actually is. This often means they fail to connect as well as they could with the ...
Sainsbury’s is trialling its first ever till-free supermarket, entrusting us with the task of scanning our own items via our smartphones. This comes as good news for those of us who feel the ...
This is a guest blogpost by Neo4j co-founder and CEO Emil Eifrem, who explains why his sector needs its own ‘General Query Language’. In the same way that SQL helped facilitate the growth and ...
The following post is a guest piece written by Katrine Spirina in her role as an in-house technology journalist with software development company Ocsico covering trends in web and mobile ...
Data Matters
How automation can help create value, the 5th ‘v’ of data
Business Applications Editor 14 Aug 2018This is a guest blogpost by Neil Barton, CTO, WhereScape For CDOs, defining the data and analytics strategy for their organization is increasingly the most important aspect of their job, with 86% ...
Cloud giant Amazon has announced the open source release of its Alexa Auto SDK (Software Development Kit). The news comes from the company’s Amazon Voice Services (AVS) division. The SDK is ...
The Full Spectrum
How churn is breaking the telecoms market – and what service providers can do about it
Security Editor 13 Aug 2018This is a guest blog post by Brendan O’Rourke, head of design at BriteBill, an Amdocs company. It’s no secret that today’s customers are more demanding than previous generations. They share their ...
SAP is about to embark upon the US leg of its SAP SuccessFactors SuccessConnect conference series… so what can we expect? With the European element of this conference having already been staged in ...
Open source log file analytics specialist InfluxData is insistent that we should take a ‘metrics first’ approach to log analysis. The company says believes in a metrics first approach that provides ...
Will Liam Maxwell’s departure be the straw that broke the camel’s back when it comes to government’s progress on digital?
As much as we try to embrace all the various wonders of modern technology, we still turn into Danny DeVito’s character as the bitter, resentful father in Matilda whenever we see a news story about ...
The Linux Foundation Deep Learning Foundation (LF DLF) has announced five new members: Ciena, DiDi, Intel, Orange and Red Hat. As an umbrella organization of The Linux Foundation itself, the LF DLF ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Banking as a service could help challenger bank expand and profit
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 09 Aug 2018Fintech driven challenger banks could make white label banking services attractive to businesses in various consumer facing sectors
What should you call your technology conference, exhibition, symposium and all-round shindig these days? The name choices are various, but fall into a group of usual suspects including: TechEd, ...
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Open Source Inside blog written by by Ben Slater in his role as chief product officer at Instaclustr. Instaclustr is known for its focus on providing ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Young age group need to be educated about open banking if it is to take-off
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 07 Aug 2018There needs to be a concerted effort to educate the population about the benefits open banking can offer individuals and society
The Computer Weekly Open Source Insider blog ran a story this June 2018 detailing work carried out by large-scale interactive geospatial analytics company MapD and its work to provide a higher ...
A backlash against a Fitbit feature which allows women to track their period has highlighted the need for more diverse technology teams. In the summer of 2018 Fitbit added “female health tracking” ...
In this guest blog post, student Abi Pearson describes how her work experience at industry body techUK made her consider a career in tech for the first time. I am a sixteen-year-old woman and I'm ...
Like a London bus, you wait forever for a geolocation related developer tool and then two come along at once. Last week we noted Here technologies and its geocoding capabilities. This week it’s the ...
Technology companies are always coming up with increasingly elaborate ways to announce their new products. But when drone manufacturer decided to postpone the press event where it would announce ...
Eyes on APAC
Who should bear responsibility in cyber attacks on healthcare IT systems?
TechTarget 02 Aug 2018On 20 July, the Singapore government revealed that the non-medical personal details of about 1.5 million patients who had visited SingHealth’s specialist outpatient clinics and polyclinics between ...
If you were about to start a company dedicated to providing software application development engineers with mapping and location-based APIs and SDKs, then what would you call it? MapTech perhaps, ...
It’s always a funny thing with enterprise technology firms, isn’t it? A company that you imagine to be laser focused on upper-tier ‘presentation layer’ technologies hits you with a message set ...
A new event for the Computer Weekly Developer Network, but one with what appears to be oodles of developer, programmer and data engineering morsels is Pluralsight Live 2018. For those that need a ...
DevOps is DevOps, but at the same time, DevOps is only DevOps if it’s Database-Driven DevOps (or DDDevOps, if you will). Contemporary approaches to software application development do of course ...
In this guest blog post Jenny Kelly, client relationship manager - business partner at Computer Futures, talks about how companies can increase diversity in their organisation and end the gender ...
IncludeOS is a unikernel, a special type of library operating system that allows developers to write and run their application in the cloud... in place, that is, of a more traditional OS. ...
There’s a lot of data out there and it comes in various different forms. TechTarget defines dark data is digital information that is not being used. Magical analyst Gartner Inc. describes dark data ...
Picture the scene... London, summer 2018, it's hot, so hot that British people have been able to take showers straight off the cold tap in their homes. Day after day of 30+ degree Celsius heat has ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Five things to consider when joining Open Banking revolution
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 27 Jul 2018Open Banking has arrived and will gather pace over the coming tears, but what should organisations consider when they join the revolution
Google has used its 'Next' cloud conference and symposium to harden its enterprise-ready stance and build out its developer tools portfolio. Google vice president of engineering Melody ...
By Kimberly Chua Mobile app users in developing Asia-Pacific (APAC) countries prefer convenience over security, signaling a potential rift between companies and users, a new F5 Networks study has ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
UK should worry if digital products become part of the global trade and tariff debate
Editor in chief 26 Jul 2018Amid the global debate about trade tariffs, prompted by US president Donald Trump’s unorthodox economic policies, it’s little remarked that the digital economy is largely untouched by the ...
Bosch has forced startup firm Mayfield Robotics to cancel the release of Kuri, a home robot that was all set to patrol your house and rob your dog of its last shreds of dignity. Could it be that ...
Elastic is joining forces with Insight.io, a Palo Alto-based startup developing search tools that claim to provide a 'semantic understanding' of software source code. Known for its Elasticsearch ...
In this guest blog post, Vivian Chan, Founder and CEO of Sparrho, suggests three ways in which leaders can increase diversity in tech. Women make up the largest single economic force in the world, ...
This is a guest post written for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Ben Taylor in his capacity as CEO of Rainbird. Rainbird is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that can model ...
Ahead in the Clouds
Google Cloud Next '18: What datacentre operators can learn from how Google SRE teams operate
Senior Editor, UK 24 Jul 2018To coincide with the first day of the Google Cloud Next 2018 conference (taking place from 24-26 July) in San Francisco, John Jainschigg, content strategy lead at enterprise systems monitoring ...
Software quality company SmartBear has reached the 12.5 iteration release of its TestComplete tool. This release features new Xamarin.Forms and Electron support - so that’s good for cross-platform ...
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft have joined an open source initiative designed to help users transfer data across multiple online platforms services without facing privacy issues. ...
Rapid Application Development (RAD) gets its own acronym, so why doesn’t [rapid application] debugging? Tel Aviv and Palo Alto headquartered Rookout thinks it should. The company’s rapid production ...
Compuware has been busy. Along with its usual weekly basket of supermarket essentials, the firm has announced a product acquisition, unveiled enhancements to its automated unit testing tool Topaz ...
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Ides Vanneuville, director of systems engineering EMEA at Avi Networks. Vanneuville asserts that the next wave of business ...
Singapore-based Global eTrade Services (Gets) has launched an open trade blockchain (OTB) network to boost cross-border trade between China and the rest of Asia. Aligned with China’s Belt Road ...
Aston Martin unveiling plans for a “sports car of the skies” will presumably cause some headaches for those James Bond fans of the school of thought that nothing about the franchise should ever ...
Fintech makes the world go around
London Fintechs: Could Saudi Arabia be your next stage growth opportunity?
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 18 Jul 2018Saudi Arabia is selling itself as a fintech hub with an environment for startups to flourish, but are fintechs ready to set up there?
BlueK8s is a new open source Kubernetes initiative from ‘big data workloads’ company BlueData -- the project’s direction leads us to learn a little about which direction containerised cloud-centric ...
Data Matters
Era of the Smart Factory: how can manufacturers get to the future quicker?
Business Applications Editor 17 Jul 2018This is a guest blogpost by Antony Bourne, Industries President at IFS Businesses are constantly told they will go bust if they do not digitally transform and quick, but for manufacturers it’s not ...
In some ways, the recent completion of Plantronics’ $2 billion purchase of Polycom was more surprising for the amount paid than the fact that this is basically an audio headset supplier taking over ...
Fintech makes the world go around
When was 28% of tech startups considering leaving London ever good news?
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 16 Jul 2018It might not be fake Brexit news but it is outrageous spin.
When IT Meets Politics
Injecting evidence into the On-line Child Safety Debate
Winsafe Ltd 14 Jul 20181 in 10 of those who video chat with strangers have been asked to change or undress on camera … we need open and honest debate, not obfuscation and claims that these are technical matters, too ...
Ahead in the Clouds
Disaster recovery and business continuity: A best practice guide
Senior Editor, UK 13 Jul 2018In this guest post Paul Timms, managing director of IT support provider MCSA, shares his thoughts on why enterprises can ill-afford to overlook the importance of business continuity and disaster ...
Open Source Insider
GitHub Enterprise 2.14 is ‘open goodness’ behind an enterprise firewall
13 Jul 2018GitHub Enterprise 2.14 has arrived this week. This latest version of the web-based code repository and version control system also of course now features collaborative functions, options for bug ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Venture capitalists fears for London’s fintech future is the starkest of warnings
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 13 Jul 2018Fintech is nothing without VC funding and the UK risks losing a significant share
When Theresa May’s unstoppable reshuffle tour eventually reached as far as grinning app namesake Matt Hancock, he found himself thrust from his role as secretary of state for digital, culture, ...
Fintech makes the world go around
The sacking of a robot revealed the need for robot probation periods
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 12 Jul 2018Businesses need to give robots a probabtion period for different roles andd must be prepared to bring out the P45
Ahead in the Clouds
How people, processes and technology determine DevOps success
Senior Editor, UK 11 Jul 2018In this guest post, Eran Kinsbruner, lead technical evangelist at DevOps software supplier Perfecto, talks about why success in agile software development hinges on getting the people, processes ...
The new DCMS secretary of state may not have much experience when it comes to digital, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give him a chance. One thing's for sure though: Whether you want to call it ...
Information access and identity management controls have never been more in the data developer news-stream as they are today. Software Defined Networks (SDN) have a massive part to play in terms of ...
Yes this is a software column (blog), but a) this is summer b) all hardware has an element of embedded software in it and c) some of these stories just need to be told … oh okay and d) it’s the ...
Many open source enthusiasts (practitioners, paragons, partisans, preachers and protagonists) will have heard of Drupal. For those that haven’t, Drupal is an open source content management ...
This might best be achieved by engaging sponsors via sector/market/problem specific practitioner workshops to distil current good practice into draft guidance that could be used by those who will ...
With its focus on AI software for unstructured content, Boston-based Indico has now come forward with a new open source project focused on simplifying the use of transfer learning with natural ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Just as government starts to get better at major IT projects - enter, Brexit
Editor in chief 06 Jul 2018Slowly, slowly, the UK government is getting better at big IT projects. Thanks to Whitehall watchdog, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), we’re able to track the improvements in major ...
By Kimberly Chua In recent years, airlines have been able to trying to lower operating costs by taking advantage of internet-of-things (IoT) devices and satellite connectivity to gather real-time ...
Our embrace of so-called 'open data' is coming to the fore, but what is it, why does it matter and what role should it play in the wider development of enterprise technology infrastructures? ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Trainline shaking up rail travel beyond making trains run on time
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 05 Jul 2018Trainline's data scientists are applying the latest technologies to vast data sets to make train journey ticket prices easier to navigate
Gavin Williamson unwittingly summoning Siri on his iPhone whilst updating Parliament on the fight against Daesh has marked him as national security’s weak link, which couldn’t really be any less ...
Write side up - by Freeform Dynamics
Workplace software as an occupational hazard
Freeform Dynamics 04 Jul 2018The US Department of Labor has updated its Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. Known as 2018 SOC, government agencies use the system to classify workers and, with a bit of ...
Fintech makes the world go around
London fintechs managed by Oracle's Brussels arm: a shock a few years ago, but not today
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 04 Jul 2018Not that surprising in this day and age that a large software company puts its European fintech resources in a city other than London
Slightly cheesy with a dash of spin perhaps? But API (Application Programming Interface) development is now a real 'thing', so should we look more deeply into what API development involves? For ...
The Computer Weekly Developer Network shamefully missed its chance to attend MongoDB World 2018 for the USA leg of the schema-fluid developer-focused database company’s contribution to this year’s ...
In this guest post, Jo Morfee, co-founder of Innovate Her, discusses the UK's digital skills pipeline and how to encourage more girls to be part of it One of the main factors impeding technology ...
Diversity matters, in all walks of life, obviously. Data diversity is also an issue because data comes in many ‘types’, that is - structured, unstructured, semi-structured, big, dark, geo-tagged, ...
Write side up - by Freeform Dynamics
Millennial versus Mature – who's the real IT security risk?
Freeform Dynamics 29 Jun 2018Passwords have been the mainstay for securing applications, devices and the data they hold, pretty much ever since IT was invented. It’s an approach that has always had weaknesses though, mostly ...
Networks Generation
IT On A Budget? Still Plenty Of Investment Money Around...
Broadband Testing 29 Jun 2018IT is often two-faced and never more so than when it comes to the financial health of the industry. Speak to one set and they'll tell you how tight it is, scrapping for every penny of profit, and ...
Who’s your daddy? -- sang the Zombies in their 1967 hit Time Of The Season. Then came Ray Winstone in Scum in 1979, he was certainly the daddy. Fast forward to 2018 and who’s the daddy? Secure ...
Somewhere deep in cyber space, a clutch of the internet’s more eccentric alt-right YouTubers have collaborated to join Ukip for a bit of attention, and the dotty old right-wing Eurosceptics have ...
The last visit to Unified Comms (UC) expo in London reinforced a view that this sector is slightly misnamed. The attempt a few years ago to tack ‘and collaboration’ (UC&C) onto the end seemed ...
What’s better than data analytics? Well, one answer is Marmite mixed with peanut butter and orange marmalade, obviously. MapD Technologies thinks it can go one better. The company’s spin doctors ...
Fintech makes the world go around
Who is right on blockchain Gartner or Deloitte, or even both?
Emea Content Editor, Computer Weekly 26 Jun 2018It is hard to tell the real status of blockchain take up because there is so much background noise
Most of the skills in short supply can be acquired and assessed within days or weeks provided employers and those in their supply chains come together to agree standards and organise co-operation ...
German technologyhaus Software AG has for some time now openly focused on technologies that populate the Internet of Things (IoT). The man steering much of the company’s development in this space ...
Pusher is a developer tools company that makes communication and collaboration APIs for web and mobile applications. The company’s core product is called Channels, developers use it to create ...
There’s applications and application delivery… and then there’s the arguably more upmarket notion of Adaptive Release Orchestration & Continuous Delivery (AROCD - not a real acronym). Placing ...
Software-und System-Entwicklung (or, SUSE, to you and me) has been active this month and opened the box on SUSE CaaS Platform 3. SUSE CaaS is the acronym for the open source operating system ...
Ahead in the Clouds
Why next-generation IaaS is likely to be open source
Senior Editor, UK 22 Jun 2018In this guest post, Chip Childers, CTO of open source platform-as-a-service Cloud Foundry, makes the case for why the future of public cloud and IaaS won't be proprietary. Once upon a time, ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Public scrutiny of IT failures is fundamental to IT success
Editor in chief 22 Jun 2018MPs on the Treasury select committee have been doing everyone in IT a favour lately. Thanks to pressure from their investigations, we’ve had near-unprecedented access to the real stories of what ...
Eyes on APAC
APAC CIO interview: Kwong Yuk Wah, National Trades Union Congress, Singapore
TechTarget 21 Jun 2018As a veteran in Singapore’s IT industry, Kwong Yuk Wah has played a part in major IT initiatives over two decades, starting with the government’s computerisation programme that paved the way for ...
A civil servant has swapped her job at the Department for Education for a stint on ITV’s hit reality show Love Island. Zara McDermott, who had previously been developing government policy on ...
Data Matters
The external workforce: are you realising its full value?
Business Applications Editor 21 Jun 2018This is a guest blogpost by Mikael Lindmark, a senior vice president at SAP Fieldglass As CIOs and other executives across enterprises turn to contractors, freelancers and other external workers to ...