Recent Blog Posts
During the conference call on Apple’s third-quarter earnings, CEO Tim Cook touched on the company’s decision to pull out VPN (virtual private network) apps from its China app store. The reason: ...
Previously on Downtime, we saw Mark Zuckerberg rule out AI’s potential for disaster with all the casual oblivion of a scientist in the opening part of a film of that very genre. Elon Musk, as ...
In this guest post Jess Wade from Imperial College London describes her experience at an event designed to encourage millennials to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and maths ...
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Mat Mathews in his capacity as co-founder and VP of product management at Plexxi -- the firm is a specialist in converged ...
Data Matters
Advancements in automation: why AI won’t replace the human touch
Business Applications Editor 01 Aug 2017This is a guest blog post by Larry Augustin, CEO, Sugar CRM The way we engage with technology is changing constantly and there’s hardly a day that goes by where we don’t hear about Artifical ...
Embedded analytics firm Jinfonet Software has hit the 14.5 version release of its JReport product. Developer focused from the start, the message to programmers from the J-loving Marylanders behind ...
There's an uprising in the Middle East, but this time it's no Arab Spring... or if it is, it is a new beginning for the software application developers native to the region. The Arabic-speaking ...
As a central bank, industry developer and regulator, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) relies on a broad set of transactional, behavioural and social media data to craft policies and drive ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Tech suppliers assess the latest iteration of GDS
Editor in chief 27 Jul 2017The general election has passed by, new ministers are in place, and so the Government Digital Service (GDS) is coming back out of its shell. As it embarks on a new parliamentary cycle, GDS is a ...
Open source languages company ActiveState has hit beta on its commercially supported Ruby distribution. Ruby is an open source interpreted object-oriented programming language designed to be ...
Some surprisingly vapid musings on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), live streamed by Mark Zuckerberg whilst smoking some brisket in his back garden, have been brushed aside by Elon Musk, ...
Quocirca Insights
Quocirca UK ICO Watch: GDPR fines may not be as scary as the vendors are telling you
26 Jul 2017The UK ICO hardly ever issues fines for data leaks and when it does, the fine involved is rarely anywhere near the maximum it could be.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have been widely embraced as a key means of engineering the mechanics of the new interconnected service-based cloud-centric components-rich software ...
The openSUSE Project has released openSUSE Leap 42.3. With this release we can see that the community version is now more closely aligned with the 'shared core' of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) 12 ...
Data engineering departments and their corresponding software application development shops have got the message regarding the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by now, right? ...
CW Developer Network
CloudBees DevOps guru: Do microservices, Docker & DevOps make a perfect trio?
24 Jul 2017The is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Brian Dawson in his capacity as DevOps evangelist at CloudBees -- CloudBees describes itself as the 'hub' of enterprise ...
Build once, deploy everywhere. We've heard it all before haven't we? Discussion now surfaces on a 'new' type of application. One that is being the progressive web app (or PWA, if you must). So what ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Sporting lessons for IT leaders looking to improve customer engagement
Editor in chief 21 Jul 2017Ask business leaders to state which industry they feel is being most disrupted by the digital revolution, and they are likely to list sectors such as retail, media, music, movies, entertainment, ...
Over a quarter of Aussies are now ready to use an internet-connected device, like a virtual assistant or connected fridge to make payments on their behalf, according to a new YouGov study ...
Supply chain automation company Sonatype produces what it calls its Software Supply Chain Report every year (now in its third) in an attempt to highlights alleged 'risks' lurking within open source ...
There's on old saying in communications - when you have no news, do a survey. As contrived, manipulated and affected as these things typically are, the Computer Weekly Developer Blog now has ...
An office building in Washington DC has lost its Knightscope K5 security robot after it obliviously face planted into the premises’ water fountain centrepiece. It’s the most ambitious television ...
Not exactly labelled as open source, but free nonetheless... API specialist Postman is offering its Postman 5.0 version with many of its paid Pro-version features now free for limited-quantity ...
The current surge of fake news is driven by the generation of clicks (worthwhile and/or genuine or not) in support of pay-per-click advertising models.
To Shenzhen, China, where tech entrepreneur Zhao Shuping has had cold water poured on his business after his sharing economy start-up Sharing E Umbrella rented 300,000 umbrellas to damp locals, and ...
This is a guest blogpost by Yasmeen Ahmad, director of Think Big Analytics, Teradata. In recent years, the hype of big data has fuelled board and executive level awareness of the value to be gained ...
GitHub is asking for feedback and collaboration from its user community in updating its Terms of Service and other site policies. The web-based version control and data hosting organisation is ...
Belgium-based research institute IMEC has developed a platform that uses silicon photonics in high-speed optical links to support the growing bandwidth needs of cloud datacentres. According to ...
Data Matters
GDPR and data portability – how do we solve a problem like Maria?
Business Applications Editor 11 Jul 2017This is a guest blogpost by Michael Corcoran, Chief Marketing Officer at Information Builders In less than a year the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force, updating and ...
The Alpine Linux distribution is described as 'minimal' and best suited for 'power users'. Originally created by Gentoo, the project is now wholly independent and, as such, it is self-hosting. ...
Organisations need to plan for effective operational intelligence. This may involve the sharing of datasets between different organisations as well as identifying and sourcing external datasets. An ...
This is a guest post written for the Computer Weekly Developer Network by Muyiwa Olu Olu holds the position of software developer (and a 'full stack' developer, at that) for independent car buying ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
The first step to data privacy is simple common sense
Editor in chief 07 Jul 2017We are deluged with regulation, legislation and opinion on data protection and privacy these days, in a digital world where personal data is proliferating almost beyond control. Enterprises are ...
Downtime
Neural networks and guinea pigs: A credible use case for AI is finally here
Senior Editor, UK 06 Jul 2017Despite the conjecture spouted about the usefulness of artificial intelligence (AI), what’s been sorely lacking (as far as Downtime is concerned) is that one killer use case that really captures ...
HTTP accelerator company Varnish and Content Delivery Network (CDN) vendor Akamai are teaming up to launch the Akamai Connector for Varnish. Why is this (potentially) interesting? Well, the ...
As IT attack surfaces are extended through the proliferation of IoT devices, organisations need to make sure their security systems are co-ordinated for the challenge. This is especially true for ...
Open source database company MariaDB Corporation has moved to iteration MariaDB TX 2.0. This now available version of the transactional database product has new server-specific MariaDB Server and ...
On July 11th Quocirca will be presenting new analysis of recent fines imposed by the ICO under the UK Data Protection Act. There will also be advice on how to help avoid future penalties from ...
Eyes on APAC
Thailand’s new talent centre is timely but education reform needed
TechTarget 05 Jul 2017As one of Southeast Asia’s “tiger cub” economies, Thailand has seen tremendous growth in the past three decades. Driven by its export-focused growth strategy, particularly in automobiles, ...
Organisations need to balance innovation and business improvement with good governance and efficient use of IT budgets and resources. But this is not easy. Plenty of people right across the ...
The issues of fake news are not new and democracy has always been a fragile flower, not a vigorous weed.
Oracle is open sourcing some (arguably) tasty container tools for software application development professionals and the operations staff that work with them. The database company has responded to ...
When IT Meets Politics
Trolls driving women off the web (and turning girls off IT)
Winsafe Ltd 29 Jun 2017Boys and older trolls are elbowing girls and older women off the Internet, just as they used to elbow them off computers in schools in the 1980s. During the first, and most successful, campaign to ...
A keynote starting at 5:30 pm, are these people insane? No it turns out they're not and Nutanix isn't - this is the way of things these days and you can do a whole afternoon's sessions beforehand ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Dear Caroline Nokes, a few items for your digital government to-do list
Editor in chief 29 Jun 2017I feel a little sorry for Caroline Nokes, announced this week as the latest minister responsible for digital government - the third to take on that mantle in less than a year. She’s clearly a ...
CW Developer Network
Repeatable ‘app blueprints’ inside core of Nutanix-Google cloud fusion
28 Jun 2017Keen to cement a reputation for its work in the enterprise cloud space, ‘webscale’ hypervisor computing specialist Nutanix has formed a new alliance with Google to build and operate hybrid clouds ...
Enterprise cloud company Nutanix staged its .NEXT 2017 USA conference and exhibition this week in the 'national harbor' (drop the U) area of Washington DC on the fringes of the Maryland-Virginia ...
More than 70 vendors will be involved in the NVMe flash market by 2020 and the market will be worth $57 billion. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of all-flash arrays will be based on NVMe drives by 2020. ...
With a tech-savvy population and a smartphone penetration rate of 150%, Singapore’s adoption of digital payments is abysmal. Cash is still king in the city-state, especially in the heartlands where ...
Ahead in the Clouds
Datacentre managers on how to address the shortage of women and young people entering the industry
Senior Editor, UK 27 Jun 2017Anglia Ruskin University invited Ahead in the Clouds along to their recent boot camp to lead a two-way discussion with its Datacentre Leadership and Management students about how to address the ...
WITsend
Bright Little Labs - a brainstorm into how to engage kids with Stem
Business Editor 26 Jun 2017Tech ambassador Detective Dot, created by Bright Little Labs, is a member of the Children's Intelligence Agency - but how can the CIA be used as a platform to engage kids with Stem? I attended a ...
The fear of your children being tracked by pederasts using snapchat Spyware is overtaking "Tory Cuts" as a topic of Parent-Teacher conversation.
Founded in Nuremberg (but now parent-owned by Micro Focus) under the name Software- und System-Entwicklung (Software and Systems Development)... German softwarehause SUSE is keeping the 'systems' ...
As we all know, software and artificial intelligence is going to run the world and make all the decisions on our behalf, probably starting from a week next Tuesday. Downtime has long felt it is our ...
London's InfoSecurity conference and exhibition is now mercifully behind us, for another year. But has the balance between hardware and software centric security provisioning been fully addressed ...
When IT Meets Politics
Everything on-line is potentially fake and we cannot tell the difference
Winsafe Ltd 25 Jun 2017The 2001 prediction of a collapse of confidence in the veracity of anything on-line is now happening and will continue until trustworthy technologies are routinely deployed.
Serverless computing is making a lot of headlines, but it has limitations, drawbacks and provisos. Before any developer team (or indeed, more likely, any DevOps team) considers widespread adoption ...
When IT Meets Politics
Privacy, Surveillance and Internet Safety in the Queen's Speech
Winsafe Ltd 24 Jun 2017The tensions over privacy, surveillance, data sharing and civil liability between "ordinary humans" and those promoting big data business models could be used to politicians to take the heat out of ...
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Pascal Desmarets in his capacity as founder and CEO of Hackolade -- the company's software combines the 'comfort ...
When one is confronted by a criminal or terrorist demanding a ransom in exchange for a loved one who has been held hostage, the general rule of thumb is not to pay up and go to the police. That’s ...
It’s been over a year since US robotics designer David Hanson made Sophia an internet phenomenon with a video in which he accidentally prompts her to agree to destroy all humans. The UK got a ...
Let’s not beat about the bush because we already know that software runs the world – and that this means that every company is now a software company. So resounding is this truth that we must now ...
Open Source Insider
An ablution revolution, MongoDB on why software needs a clean & open backend
21 Jun 2017Software needs to go to the bathroom and make sure it has a clean and open backend. This is the mandate and call to arms now being laid down by open source document-oriented data model database ...
The impact that bad-bots are having on financial services organisations and how they can be mitigated is covered in Quocirca’s latest e-book in its Cyber-Security Threat Series.
MongoDB staged its 2017 user, developer, customer and partner showcase convention in the US city of Chicago this June. Essentially open source at the backbone, MongoDB is a database company built ...
The word ‘investment’ is often put next to IT spending and budgets in order to make the costs sound palatable. Organisations want a ‘return on investment’, many try to measure it and some even ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Chancellor Philip Hammond reveals the Brexit challenge for digital government
Editor in chief 20 Jun 2017In one throwaway line, largely ignored among the wider Brexit comments in his Mansion House speech today (20 June 2017), chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond exposed the true scale of the ...
Data Matters
Forensic financial analysis software used to combat fraud
Business Applications Editor 19 Jun 2017This is a guest blogpost by Ian Watson, CEO of Altia-ABM. It reflects his experience and judgement. Specialist financial analysis software is now a crucial tool in the investigation and prosecution ...
Inspect-a-Gadget heads to London Tech Week to meet UMA, a conversational AI chatbot for the workplace. “It’s good to talk,” assured Bob Hoskins in the famous ’90s ads. The campaign - credited with ...
The data driven enterprise needs APIs to interconnect its applications and ease-of-use to ensure broad access to data
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Lessons from the BA outage: today's legacy laggards will be tomorrow's failed businesses
Editor in chief 16 Jun 2017While British Airways counts the cost of its May bank holiday system outage - £80m and growing so far – much of the datacentre industry has listened to the supposed cause of “human error” and ...
WITsend
GUEST BLOG: What is being done to encourage more women into tech?
Business Editor 15 Jun 2017In this guest post Shirley Wood, training and support director at education technology solutions organisation, Jisc, looks at the positive efforts being made to encourage more women into tech While ...
Dries Buytaert is the founder and project lead of Drupal an open source platform for building websites used by 2% of the world's websites with 35,000 active contributors. Buytaert is ...
When IT Meets Politics
A sinister view of the politics of change and creativity
Winsafe Ltd 15 Jun 2017It is time to take a different view of the politics of left and right. We sinisters (from Leonardo da Vinci to Bill Gates) have always been in the forefront of change, cutting through the defences ...
Microsoft has joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation (CFF). The firm comes in with gold member status confirmed from the start. Cloud Foundry's mantra is ‘ubiquitous and flexible’ cloud computing. ...
Do human resources (HR) software application developers build 'healthy' applications? This is the question. To be clearer - we talk about 'application health' all the time in terms of a piece of ...
Do Human Resources (HR) software application developers build 'healthy' applications? This is the question. To be clearer... we talk about 'application health' all the time in terms of a piece of ...
More countries are rushing to make their cities smarter, by driving the use of technology – though that may not always be fully appreciated by citizens. Take Singapore, one of the poster boys for ...
Among those ever present first world problems is how to keep your phone charged - especially if you are out on the razz. The University of the West of England may have just the answer. It has ...
Digital intelligence company New Relic has added extra functions to its eponymously named Digital Intelligence Platform. The company has brought forward what it calls a so-called Health Map. ...
This is a guest blogpost by Ciaran Dynes, senior vice president of Product, Talend. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a bit like Brexit for some: you secretly hoped the day was never ...
Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary is making a costly mistake by ruling out in-flight Wi-Fi, argues iPass' Patricia Hume. It’s just under a year since the United Nations declared that internet access ...
Open source (and enterprise commercial) software operations company Puppet has rolled out its 2017 'state of DevOps report' resulting from a survey of some 3,200 technical professionals. The ...
When IT Meets Politics
Student social media campaign steals May's majority from Tory tortoise
Winsafe Ltd 10 Jun 2017Kainos electoral registration software and DUP constituency MPs is the undoubted winner. IT industry lobbyists are the biggest losers.
CW Developer Network
Bi-directional curious? Veritas tackles multi-cloud migration maladies
09 Jun 2017Information management company Veritas Technologies is targeting the headaches that the firm suggests might be thrown up by running multi-cloud operations. Hybrid cloud deployments featuring a mix ...
This is a guest blogpost by Yasmeen Ahmad , Director of Think Big Analytics, Teradata Will you be superseded by an intelligent algorithm? Despite the fear mongering of robots taking over the world ...
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Yet more uncertainty ahead for digital government after minister ousted in election
Editor in chief 09 Jun 2017Amid all the chaos, recriminations and excitement on the morning after the General Election, the future of digital government is far from the minds of anyone other than those of us with a personal ...
Google knows (one would imagine) about the C-word. C for Continuous Delivery, Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and Continuous Management. The online world runs on a continuous ...
When IT Meets Politics
Adtech industry now under pressure from all sides for ripoffs, fraud and jihadi promotion
Winsafe Ltd 08 Jun 2017The pressures on major players to "clean up the Internet" before advertising funded business models collapse are now likely to produce results before parliament can agree workable legislation.
In this guest post, Jon Topper, co-founder and principal consultant of hosted infrastructure provider The Scale Factory, shares his thoughts on how the DevOps movement is maturing as enterprises ...
When StarHub’s residential fibre network went down in October 2016, the Singapore telco initially pinned the blame on distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks brought on by internet of things ...
Darling of the hyperconverged enterprise cloud space Nutanix holds its annual .NEXT conference, exhibition, symposium, expo (Ed - we get it, it's a 'do') in the American capital of Washington DC ...
When IT Meets Politics
Manifestos for Skills and Jobs or for Debt and Unemployment
Winsafe Ltd 07 Jun 2017Creating more world class graduate and post graduate apprenticeships is more important than enabling unskilled students to graduate with less debt.
TIBCO is in the middle of a raft of product updates and extensions. The data integration firm's TIBCO Spotfire Data Catalog is describe as a data connectivity and data management product with a ...
Digital transformation blah blah blah, there's usually more to TIBCO (The Integration Bus COmpany) than the usual industry padding and rhetoric, so what could its Now 2017 conference and exhibition ...
Apple opened this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference with a video speculating what the world might look like if all the apps used on their devices suddenly disappeared. As all the big guns, ...
When IT Meets Politics
Exiling hate preachers to the dark corners of the Internet is a win win strategy
Winsafe Ltd 06 Jun 2017Those who stand in the way of cleaning up the Internet by claiming to defend freedom of speach and secure encryption do their cause no good.
The Full Spectrum
Unified communications still relevant in a mobile world
Security Editor 05 Jun 2017Unified communications expert Paul Clarke says the technology is still far from ubiquity especially as more CIOs implement mobile-first strategies. From a unified communications perspective, the ...
The Conservative Manifesto contains a serious attempt to look at creating the digital infrastructure for a smart society but this is spread across more voter friendly topics.
Computer Weekly Editors Blog
Whoever wins election 2017, it's time for a digital minister with real authority
Editor in chief 02 Jun 2017You would expect, of course, that a publication such as Computer Weekly would call on whoever wins the 2017 general election to put the digital economy on its list of immediate priorities. While ...