10 signs it's time to look for a new job

In the high-stakes world of high tech, a subtle look can be enough to know it's time to jump ship to a new gig

10 signs layoffs are coming for your job next
The signs are usually hiding in plain sight. Your boss doesn’t give you the time of day anymore. Large groups of people go out for lunch -- then never come back. The company stock takes a nosedive.

When these things start to happen, it may be time to grab a life jacket and head for the nearest escape raft. Yes, the boat is sinking and about to take you with it.

Don’t go down with the ship. Downsizing and layoffs aren’t a laughing matter for those who suddenly find themselves without a paycheck. But many companies have become a parody of themselves in how they handle such monumental changes. That’s why we decided to have a little fun at their expense. Hopefully if you’ve experienced a layoff yourself, this will give you a laugh, too.

Here’s our take on the signs you should watch out for. If nothing else, you may know what the problem is if your email suddenly doesn’t work.

Co-workers simply ... disappear
Weren’t Devin and Susie simply making a run for the nearby food truck? That’s what you thought -- but that was Tuesday. Today is Friday. Yes, right before the layoffs begin, you might notice a slow drip of people who peace out for good. Usually it means that something is up, and for some reason others are privy to the details. Time to ask around and find out if you should be the next one to check out one of the mysterious taco trucks.

Big company meeting, little advance notice
The dreaded all-hands meeting -- as you might have guessed, a lot of things that aren’t all that good come from it. It could be a new product rollout. Or it could be the word you haven’t been waiting for: you and your colleagues don’t work there anymore. If you get an invite to an “all hands on deck” meeting, maybe you want to have one foot out the door just in case.


The company bus careers right by
You show up to work as normal, coffee in hand and ready to get some work done on the company bus. You see it coming. You make sure your bag is adjusted, laptop in hand.

Then, there it goes. Yes, the company bus has blown by you. Sure, this scenario may be a little far- fetched, but with the way that some companies treat those whom they unceremoniously dump, is it really so unlikely? It might be worth taking the train or walking to the office the next few days if there are any signs of this unsavory behavior.


You start getting strange looks
Maybe you’ve noticed something different about the way your boss looks at you. Their eyes tend to glance off into another direction. You approach him or her with a question, and instead of answering, they suddenly have a phone call or a meeting to run off to. You’re getting the cold shoulder. Was it something you said? A reflection on your performance? Nope, it’s the look of someone who knows too much.


That (dreaded) meeting is cancelled
You likely aren’t thrilled by the weekly calendar invite to the team planning meeting. Before you rejoice that you’ve avoided the most boring part of your week, consider another scenario: It’s cancelled because there’s no one to attend. Companies tend to slack off right before a major cull, so be wary if your schedule suddenly frees up because all those riveting meetings are canceled.

The mood swings low, low, low
Company morale often ebbs and flows. But you may want to pay particular attention to things if there’s a longer, widespread depression spell. You know the feeling -- everyone looks around like they’re an extra in "The Walking Dead." No one chats around their desks or the time-honored water cooler. If you see such symptoms, ask around and see if there’s more to it. This way you don’t have to show up one day to an empty office.

Suspicious training assignment
It may sound innocent enough. A fresh face arrives in the office, and you’re assigned to show them how things work. All goes well until you realize they have the same title and responsibilities as you. Yep, you’re training your replacement. It happens, so be a bit wary about that next eager hire who gets a little too comfy at your desk.

Merger talk
It’s often best to avoid rumors, but sometimes you have to pay attention so that you aren't left out of the loop when it comes to a potential merger. Yes, usually before a company is acquired by another there is some type of scuttlebut that leaks out. Listen to those who engage in such nefarious talk or implore you to keep information on the down low. This may be your tip that it’s time to dust off the résumé and hit the pavement for a new gig.

Your company’s stock price upends
If you work at a publicly traded company, keeping investors happy is a major part of success. Investors are like your mama: If she’s not happy, ain’t nobody happy. Just like what happened with Twitter, when the stock tanks and numbers (in this case user growth) aren’t good, then get ready to see fewer co-workers around. If things are heading south, perhaps you should be heading out.

The box of shame
Most businesses love Dropbox. It holds onto what you want and is easy to use. Unfortunately, there’s another beloved storage tool that fits the bill: a cardboard box. If you see such a contraption on your desk, you’re probably about to be sent packing. Gathering your stuff and heading out the door is the office equivalent of the walk of shame. The best you can do is to get through it. But at least you’ll have a new toy for your cat.

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10 offbeat, odd, and downright weird places you'll find Linux

Why worry about the desktop when you've conquered everything else?

The OS that took over the world
Let's just get this out of the way: this isn't the year of Linux on the desktop. That year will probably never arrive. But Linux has gotten just about everywhere else, and the Linux community can take a bow for making that happen. Android, based on the Linux kernel, is so prevalent on mobile devices that it makes the longstanding desktop quest seem irrelevant. But beyond Android there are a number of places where you can find Linux that are truly odd and intriguing, and by "places" we mean both strange devices and weird geographical locations. This slideshow will show you that it's always the year of Linux pretty much everywhere.

Robot milking machines
Leave it to the Swedes to come up with a kinder, gentler milking machine: a "voluntary milking system" that cows enter when they want to be milked and are rewarded with a delicious "dietary concentrate." The decision-making smarts of the VMS are powered by a tiny single-board computer running a compact Linux distribution. This job ad from DeLaval, the company that makes the VMS, looking for a Linux software engineer, gives you a sense of what exactly is involved in making this dairy robot work.

In-flight entertainment systems
The seatback screens in airplanes that allow you to scroll through movies and listen to music are powered by Linux, more often than not. Panasonic pitches its systems to airlines in hilariously semi-informed fashion as "leveraging robust standards such as Ethernet, Linux, and MPEG"; based on the fairly easy-to-find tales online of these systems spontaneously rebooting mid-flight, they aren't doing Linux's rock-solid reputation any favors. At least one software expert accidentally figured out how to lock your system up, if you're bored and feel like denying yourself in-flight movies some day.

The International Space Station
When I put out feelers to potential sources saying I was writing about Linux in odd places, the good people at the Linux Foundation were justifiably eager to tell me that the laptops that astronauts and cosmonauts use day-to-day on board the International Space Station run Linux; the Foundation had helped train staff to deal with, as they put it, "dozens of laptops [with] extensive development needs for a very small number of users." The Linux Foundation folks were perhaps too kind to mention the reason why the ISS transitioned these computers to Linux: they used to run Windows, but they got terrible malware infections.

North Korea
Back in 1999, when I was an editor at IDG's LinuxWorld site, our sysadmin was very excited to learn about Red Flag Linux, a distro being developed in China, a country that was only beginning to open its economy up to the West. While that distro seems to have mostly been a way to gain leverage in the Chinese government's battle with Microsoft, North Korea is using open source to power its computers as it remains isolated: Red Star OS powers the Hermit Kingdom's computers, even though the GUI's been given a superficially OS X-like makeover.

Sea-robots
Liquid Robotics is a company working to develop autonomous nautical robots -- solar-powered, ocean-going versions of the drones that are becoming more and more ubiquitous in the skies. While the company is perhaps most famous for snagging Java developer James Gosling as its tech honcho, it's also using Linux as the OS for its robo-vessels, which are going on year-long journeys. Think they're encountering any real-life penguins out there in the water?

Crock Pot WeMo Smart Slow Cooker
You might think that the defining feature of a slow cooker is its simplicity: you put stuff in it, turn it on, it gets warm, and six or eight hours later you have a pot roast. But what if you can't be there to turn it off in time? Well, you could buy the slightly more expensive model with a timer ... or you could pay $130 for a Wi-Fi enabled Crock Pot WeMo Smart Slow Cooker, which runs on embedded Linux and is controllable from your cell phone, wherever you are! Sure, it seems to turn off when it loses Wi-Fi connectivity, but you don't want to live with a non-Internet-capable slow cooker like some kind of medieval peasant.

Nuclear submarines
The U.S. nuclear submarine fleet has used Linux to power various systems for more than a decade, a development that began as important control systems started migrating up the stack from hard-wired individual components to overarching software. In particular, much of the sonar systems the Navy relies on are Linux-powered. Reliance on software makes security particularly important, and resistance to malware is one of the reasons the Navy rejected Windows. Not everyone shares their concerns, though: the U.K.'s Royal Navy apparently thinks that Windows is good enough for their nuclear subs.

Missionary work in Nigeria
The Transformational Eduction Network is a Christian missions organization operating throughout West Africa. One of their goals is to increase educational opportunity, and to that end they're teaching students to use not just Windows, but Ubuntu Linux. Kwangs Dauda, the young Nigerian man shown in the photo here, was particularly excited about this aspect of his education, declaring that "When you learn how to use the computer you can preach through the computer."

Barbie's dream house, er, cubicle
A few years ago, in an attempt to modernize Barbie's brand, Mattel came up with a host of possible new jobs for her. To help move past the "math is hard!" debacle, one of these new career paths was computer programmer -- and while Barbie has her choice of development environments, her cube has some Tux the Penguin art, so we're just going to assume she uses Linux. The Liberal Murmurs blog spun a tale in which she became a Debian developer, but we must regretfully admit that this remains non-canon as of press time.

Terrible, pointless computers
Sure, any OS can run on a good computer. But Linux is famous for being able to run anywhere, any time, no matter how ill-advised. So why not put it on a system powered by an 8-bit microcontroller, which you use to emulate a 32-bit ARM chip, with the whole thing running effectively at 6.5 Khz and taking two hours just to boot to a command line? Why not install it on a dead badger? (Do not attempt on a live one, as they have claws and teeth and such.) It's Linux's flexibility and suitability for even the most ill-advised environments that make the other actually useful weird Linux installs in this slideshow possible.

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200-601 IMINS2 Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies

200-601 IMINS2
Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies

Exam Number 200-601 IMINS2
Associated Certifications CCNA Industrial
Duration 90 Minutes (65 - 75 questions)

This exam tests concepts and technology commonly found in the automated manufacturing environment. This exam tests candidates on the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) and ProfiNET industrial protocols and the underlying support network infrastructure design to maximize efficiency within Industrial Ethernet.

Exam Description
The exam Managing Industrial Networks for Manufacturing with Cisco Technologies (CCNA IMINS2) certification exam (200-601) is a 90 minute, 65 – 75 question assessment. This exam tests concepts and technology commonly found in the automated manufacturing environment. This exam tests candidates on the Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) and ProfiNET industrial protocols and the underlying support network infrastructure design to maximize efficiency within Industrial Ethernet.

The following topics are general guidelines for the content likely to be included on the exam. However, other related topics may also appear on any specific delivery of the exam. In order to better reflect the contents of the exam and for clarity purposes, the guidelines below may change at any time without notice.

1.0 IP Networking 20%
1.1 Describe the difference between enterprise environments and industrial environments
1.2 Describe the components for making the data flow highly available and predictable in an industrial environment (QoS, IP addressing, protocol, and hardware resiliency)
1.3 Interpret and diagnose problems that are related to QoS
1.4 Describe the differences between redundancy and resiliency requirements / approaches between the Enterprise and the plant floor
1.5 Differentiate the capabilities of switch types
1.6 Describe the life cycle of a multicast group
1.7 Describe and configure the operation and use cases for NAT
1.8 Describe and configure the operation and use cases for static routing
1.9 Describe and configure VLAN trunking to a virtual switch
1.10 Describe and configure Layer 2 resiliency protocols (Spanning Tree, REP, Flex Links, and Etherchannels)
1.11 Configure switch ports ( macros, threshold alarms)

2.0 Common Industrial Protocol (CIP) Knowledge and Configuration 19%
2.1 Explain the CIP connection establishment process
2.2 Explain producer/consumer models and implicit/explicit message models
2.3 Recognize communication abilities and capacities in different hardware/hardware generations (revisions)
2.4 Identify and describe the technologies that enable CIP Motion and CIP Safety
2.5 Identify the applicability, limitations, and components of a DLR implementation
2.6 Implement multicast features for CIP within a LAN
2.7 Optimize RPI on a CIP connection given a set of parameters
2.8 Enable and configure IEEE 1588 PTP at the system level
2.9 Configure the Stratix using the Add On Profile (AOP) in Studio 5000

3.0 ProfiNET Knowledge and Configuration 19%
3.1 Describe the differences in ProfiNET support between Cisco catalyst and Cisco Industrial Ethernet (IE) switches
3.1.a Support for VLAN 0
3.1.b Support for ProfiNET LLDP
3.1.c Support for GSDs (integration into SIMATIC STEP 7)

3.2 Describe the operation and purpose of ProfiSAFE
3.3 Describe the three basic ProfiNET devices and conformanceclasses
3.4 Describe the ProfiNET application classes and communication channels
3.5 Describe DHCP and how it can be used for IP addressing of devices and configuration pushes
3.6 Describe ring network requirements for ProfiNET
3.7 Enable ProfiNET on the switch
3.8 Enable Layer 2 QoS to ensure ProfiNET is prioritized
3.9 Integrate the Cisco Industrial Ethernet Switch in SIMATIC STEP 7
3.10 Configure and monitor ProfiNET alarm profiles on IE switches

4.0 Security 12%
4.1 Describe the defense in-depth approach to securing the industrial zone
4.2 Identify how a security component (hardware/software) applies to a network device to meet the network security definition of defense in depth
4.3 Describe network device hardening
4.4 Describe the concept and mechanisms of implementing logical segmentation
4.5 Identify possible options to control traffic between zones (ACLs, firewalls, VLANs)

5.0 Wireless 10%
5.1 Describe the differences between 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
5.2 Describe the components that you need to build multiple wireless networks on a single access point
5.3 Describe the difference between autonomous and controller-based access points and wireless workgroup bridges
5.4 Demonstrate a typical switchport configuration for autonomous and controller-based access points
5.5 Describe the limitations of using a workgroup bridge with a control communication

6.0 Troubleshooting 20%
6.1 Troubleshoot advanced Layer 1 problems such as mechanical deterioration, electromagnetic noise issues, and infrastructure mismatches
6.2 Troubleshoot VLAN trunking
6.3 Troubleshoot an error disabled port
6.4 Troubleshoot basic spanning tree port state and root priority problems
6.5 Troubleshoot Layer 3 problems by inspecting route tables and NAT tables
6.6 Troubleshoot Layer 3 problems in a VRF-lite enabled environment
6.7 Demonstrate the ability to find the location of a device within a multi-switch network given an IP address
6.8 Identify methods for troubleshooting a communication problem in a CIP environment
6.9 Troubleshoot CIP using an Ethernet/IP browse tool, command line, and a web browser
6.10 Troubleshoot device communications performance
6.11 Identify the source of cable and device faults in a DLR
6.12 Identify methods for troubleshooting a communication problem in a ProfiNET environment
6.13 Troubleshoot ProfiNET using SIMATIC STEP 7 to view network topology, use the switch command line

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LX0-104 Implementing Cisco Video Network Devices (VIVND)

QUESTION 1
Which of the following commands puts the output of the command date into the shell
variable mydate?

A. mydate="$(date)"
B. mydate="exec date"
C. mydate="$((date))"
D. mydate="date"
E. mydate="${date}"

Answer: A

---

QUESTION 2
What is the purpose of the file /etc/profile?

A. It contains the welcome message that is displayed after login.
B. It contains security profiles defining which users are allowed to log in.
C. It contains environment variables that are set when a user logs in.
D. It contains default application profiles for users that run an application for the first time.

Answer: C

---

QUESTION 3
When the command echo $$ outputs 12942, what is the meaning of 12942?

A. It is the process ID of the echo command.
B. It is the process ID of the current shell.
C. It is the process ID of the last command executed.
D. It is the process ID of the last command which has been placed in the background.

Answer: B

---

QUESTION 4
What output will the following command produce?
seq 1 5 20

A. 1
6
6

B. 1
5
15

C. 1
2
3

D. 2
3
5

E. 5
15
20

Answer: A

---

QUESTION 5
Which of the following SQL queries counts the number of occurrences for each value of the
field order_type in the table orders?

A. SELECT order_type,COUNT(*) FROM orders WHERE order_type=order_type;
B. SELECT order_type,COUNT(*) FROM orders GROUP BY order_type;
C. COUNT(SELECT order_type FROM orders);
D. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM orders ORDER BY order_type;
E. SELECT AUTO_COUNT FROM orders COUNT order_type;

Answer: B

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HP is now two companies. How did it get here?

HP's split follows more than a decade of scandals and missteps

If Hollywood wanted a script about the inexorable decline of a corporate icon, it might look to Hewlett-Packard for inspiration. Once one of Silicon Valley's most respected companies, HP officially split itself in two on Sunday, betting that the smaller parts will be nimbler and more able to reverse four years of declining sales.

HP fell victim to huge shifts in the computer industry that also forced Dell to go private and have knocked IBM on its heels. Pressure from investors compelled it to act. But there are dramatic twists in HP's story, including scandals, a revolving door for CEOs and one of the most ill-fated mergers in tech history, that make HP more than a victim of changing times.

HP isn't down and out: It could still confound skeptics and return some of its former glory. But the breakup is an inauspicious moment for a company that was once one of the tech industry's finest. Here are some of the events that got HP to where it is today.

The Compaq acquisition: Much has been said about HP’s 2001 buyout of its larger PC rival, and the story is back in the news thanks to then-CEO Carly Fiorina’s U.S. presidential campaign. Without getting bogged down in whether Carly made a huge error, it’s safe to say that the deal did not set HP up for the future. Dell’s direct sales model was about to turn the industry on its head, and tablets and smartphones would deal a blow from which PCs have never recovered. HP bet big on a losing horse.

The pretexting scandal: You want a movie script? In 2006, HP admitted it had hired private investigators who spied on its own board members to figure out who was leaking company information to journalists. Criminal charges against HP executives were eventually dropped, but it cost the jobs of board chair Patricia Dunn and several other top staff. It was an embarrassing distraction at a time when HP needed to get down to business.

The EDS purchase: Buying a big IT services company in 2008 looked like a smart way for HP to diversify into more profitable areas, but HP “never unlocked the value from the deal they were looking for,” says IDC analyst Crawford Del Prete. Soon after, the market turned from large outsourcing deals to smaller contracts, and HP was riding the wrong horse again. Its services business continues to struggle.

Mark Hurd scandal: Like Fiorina, Hurd is a divisive figure for HP watchers. What's undeniable is that his relationship with R-rated movie actress Jodie Fisher cost him his job and kicked off a disastrous string of events for HP. More contentious is whether Hurd’s rampant cost-cutting stunted innovation and set HP up to fail. Del Prete doesn’t see it that way: Hurd slashed expenses, was adored by Wall Street, and probably would have reinvested some of those savings in the long term, he says. Regardless, his ouster kicked off the most damaging period in HP’s history. Hurd was forced to resign, ostensibly over an inaccurate expense report. If only his successor's missteps had been so trivial.

Leo Apotheker. Oh Leo, what were you thinking? Or maybe that’s a question for HP’s board. The former SAP chief took over from Hurd in September 2010 and managed to do a lot of damage before his ouster 11 months later. "He was really a software sales and marketing executive," says Del Prete. "He had a hammer and everything became a nail." Among the highlights of his tenure:

The Autonomy debacle: The New York Times has called it “the worst corporate deal ever,” and it’s hard to argue it didn’t contribute mightily to HP’s woes. HP shelled out $11.1 billion for the U.K. software maker and took a write-down of $8.8 billion the following year, effectively admitting that it had drastically overpaid. HP claims it was hoodwinked by Autonomy's management, and lawsuits are ongoing, but there’s evidence that HP rushed the deal without knowing what it was getting into. It was another big distraction for HP and gave more ammunition to investors who wanted change at the company.

The PC blunder: At the same time it bought Autonomy, Apotheker announced that HP was considering a sale of its PC division. It wasn’t a terrible idea — IBM did the same and hasn’t looked back — but dithering about it in public for many months caused uncertainty that hurt HP’s business and helped its rivals.Apotheker also killed off HP's webOS smartphones and tablets, which HP gained when it bought Palm for $1 billion a year earlier. At a time when smartphones were the hottest item in tech, it was a curious decision, to say the least.

Revolving doors: Before a year was up, HP’s board had had enough and Apotheker was replaced by Meg Whitman, the company's third CEO in 13 months. Her first move: announcing that HP would keep its PC division after all. Whitman seemed an unlikely choice after her 10 years running Ebay, but she's won praise for making the best of a tough assignment.

Cloud confusion: It's an open question whether an enterprise IT company needs its own public cloud, but it's now clear that HP won't have one. It said a few weeks ago it will shut down its Helion cloud services in January, and focus instead on "hybrid" infrastructure and partnering with other cloud providers. HP's public cloud was another initiative started by Apotheker, though one wonders if HP couldn't have done a bit more with it after four years of effort.

None of these events alone landed HP where it is today. The move to cloud computing and collapsing PC market played a role, along with the ongoing decline in proprietary high-end Unix systems. The failure of Intel’s Itanium processor, on which HP bet the farm in systems, was also a major setback.

Despite all the missteps, the two HPs remain formidable entities, each with some $50 billion in revenue. HP Inc., which will sell PCs and printers, is unlikely to produce much growth, but the PC business can generate a good amount of cash, as Michael Dell has proved. And the core infrastructure business of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has "never been executing better," according to IDC's Del Prete, who pointed to its 3Par storage gear and industry-standard servers.

"We don't see customers being at risk from the split," he said, meaning IDC isn't advising HP customers to shop around.

What matters, he says, is whether Hewlett-Packard Enterprise can make the right acquisitions and partnerships over the next 24 months to bring back some growth.

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Exam 70-694 Virtualizing Enterprise Desktops and Apps

Exam 70-694 Virtualizing Enterprise Desktops and Apps

Published: January 8, 2015
Languages: English
Audiences: IT professionals
Technology Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Intune
Credit toward certification: MCP, Microsoft Specialist

Skills measured
This exam measures your ability to accomplish the technical tasks listed below. The percentages indicate the relative weight of each major topic area on the exam. The higher the percentage, the more questions you are likely to see on that content area on the exam. View video tutorials about the variety of question types on Microsoft exams.

Please note that the questions may test on, but will not be limited to, the topics described in the bulleted text.

Do you have feedback about the relevance of the skills measured on this exam? Please send Microsoft your comments. All feedback will be reviewed and incorporated as appropriate while still maintaining the validity and reliability of the certification process. Note that Microsoft will not respond directly to your feedback. We appreciate your input in ensuring the quality of the Microsoft
Certification program.

If you have concerns about specific questions on this exam, please submit an exam challenge.

Plan app virtualization (27%)

Design an app distribution strategy
Design considerations, including impact on clients, offline access, deployment infrastructure, and remote locations; plan for updates to apps
Plan and implement app compatibility
Configure and implement Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit; planning considerations, including Remote Desktop Services (RDS), Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), client Hyper-V, and Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT); plan for application version co-existence
Update apps in desktop images
Configure online servicing, apply patches offline, configure offline virtual machine (VM) servicing, update Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) task sequences

Implement app virtualization (25%)
Configure App-V
Configure a new application, configure a Connection Group, configure App-V reporting on the client, create a report for App-V
Deploy App-V clients
Install and test the App-V client; configure the App-V client; configure the App-V client, by using Group Policy
Configure apps sequencing
Install the App-V Sequencer, deploy sequenced apps, update sequenced apps, publish Office 2013 and Sequencing Add-On for Word 2013, deploy connected apps

Plan and implement virtual desktops (21%)
Plan for pooled and personal desktops
Planning considerations, including shared storage, network, Storage Spaces, and scale-out file servers; plan capacity
Implement virtual desktop collections
Configure collections type, VM creation, and user assignments; configure client settings; configure Active Directory permissions
Plan and implement Remote Desktop Services (RDS)
Install and configure Remote Desktop Session Host, install and configure the Remote Desktop Web Access (RD Web Access) role, configure the Remote Desktop Connection Broker (RD Connection Broker) for the Remote Desktop Session Host, perform capacity analysis
Create and configure remote applications
Prepare Remote Desktop Session Hosts for application installation; configure RemoteApp properties; create a RemoteApp distribution file (MSI or RDP); sign packages with certificates; implement application version co-existence, by using RD Web Access; configure file extension associations
Deploy and manage remote applications
Configure RemoteApp and Desktop Connections settings, configure GPOs for signed packages, configure RemoteApp for Hyper-V, export and import RemoteApp configurations, deploy a RemoteApp distribution file (MSI or RDP)

Plan and implement business continuity for virtualized apps (27%)
Plan and implement a resilient Remote Desktop infrastructure
Design highly available RD Web Access, RD Connection Broker, and Remote Desktop Gateway; perform backup and recovery of the Remote Desktop Licensing server; configure VM or dedicated farm redirection
Plan and implement business continuity for virtual desktops
Design and implement Hyper-V Replica with Hyper-V Replica Broker, design and implement business continuity for personal and shared desktop collections
Plan and implement a resilient virtual app delivery infrastructure
Plan and implement highly available App-V data store and management server; implement pre-populated/shared cache App-V functionality for the VDI environment; implement highly available content share; implement a branch office strategy, using App-V; manage VM backups

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Google Graveyard: What Google has killed off in 2015

Six feet deep
Google is truly a company that has more technology and products than it can handle sometimes, and in 2015 the company with the recent name change shed a host of tools and products to enable it to focus on more pressing needs. Here’s a look back at what Google this year has offed or announced plans to off (To go back even further, check out 2014’s Google Graveyard.)

Google Code
Google in March said it would be axing its Google Code platform in January 2016, acknowledging increased adoption of alternatives like GitHub and Bitbucket. “As developers migrated away from Google Code, a growing share of the remaining projects were spam or abuse. Lately, the administrative load has consisted almost exclusively of abuse management,” wrote Google open-source director Chris DiBona. Google Code launched in 2006.

Chrome extensions
At the risk of making itself look controlling, Google has been taking steps for years to protect Google Chrome users of extensions that inject ads and malware. In May it really put the kibosh on such software coming from any Windows channel, specifying that all extensions now need to original in the Chrome Web Store. Extensions for Chrome for OS X got the same treatment in July. “Extending this protection is one more step to ensure that users of Chrome can enjoy all the web has to offer without the need to worry as they browse,” a Google product manager wrote in announcing the changes.

Pwnium hacking contest
Google’s big one-day hacking contest at the CanSecWest event, under which it doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2012, has been shuttered in favor of year-long opportunities for hackers to snag bounties for uncovering flaws in its Chrome technology. Among other things, Google was concerned that hackers were hoarding bugs until the contest came around.

Bookmarks Manager
Technicaly, Google didn’t kill the Bookmarks Manager in June, but it did relent to widespread hatred of the free Chrome extension and revert to including the old bookmark tool with its browser. Those few who did cotton to the new UI are still able to access the Bookmarks Manager if they know where to look. Meanwhile, Google’s Sarah Dee blogged: “Our team will continue to explore other ways to improve the bookmarks experience. ”

PageSpeed
Google alerted users of its PageSpeed Service for making websites zippier that it would be killing off the tools as of Aug. 3. Google had pitched its 4.5-year-old hosted PageSpeed optimizing proxy as a way to improve website performance without having to know any code.

Google TV
Google kicked off 2015 by announcing it would ditch the Google TV brand that few probably knew existed and focus its living-room entertainment efforts instead on Android TV and Google Cast. The company said Google TV libraries would no longer be available, but Google TV devices would continue to work.

Google logo
Google nixed its colorful longtime serif typeface logo, around since 1999, in favor of a new sans serif colorful logo with a typeface dubbed Product Sans. With the emergence of the Alphabet parent company came a new look for its Google business.

GTalk
Google Talk had a good run, starting up in 2005, but it’s never good when Google pulls out the term “deprecated” as it did in February in reference to this chat service’s Windows App. Google said it was pulling the plug on GTalk in part to focus on Google Hangouts in a world where people have plenty of other ways to chat online. However, Google Talk does live on via third-party apps.

Maps Coordinate for mobile workforces
Google in January emailed users of its mobile enterprise workforce management offering, which debuted in 2012, that the service would be shutting down come January 2016. Google has been folding various mapping-related products into one another in recent years, and is putting focus on its mapping APIs in its Maps for Work project going forward.

Google Moderator
This tool, launched in 2008, was used to “create a meaningful conversation from many different people's questions, ideas, and suggestions.” The White House, among others, used it to organize feedback for online and offline events during the 2012 elections. But Google gave up on the tools in July due to its overall lack of use.

Helpouts
There’s no more helping Google Helpouts, which was discontinued in April. This online collaboration service was short-lived, launching in November 2013. While alive, it allowed users to share their expertise – for free or a fee -- through live video and provide real-time help from their computers or mobile devices. It exploited Google Hangouts technology, but was largely redundant with so many help videos found on Google’s very own YouTube.

Eclipse developer tools
Google informed developers over the summer that it was time for them to switch over to Android Studio, now firmed up at Version 1.0, as the company would be “ending development and official support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse at the end of the year. This specifically includes the Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant build system.”

Flu Trends
Google in August said it was discontinuing its Flu and Dengue Trends, which were estimates of flu and Dengue fever based on search patterns. Flu Trends launched in 2008 as an early example of “nowcasting” and Google is now leaving the data publishing on diseases to health organizations that it will work with. Historical data remains available from Google.

Google+ ?
Google’s social networking technology has never had much life in the first place and isn’t “really most sincerely dead” like the Wicked Witch, but Google keeps messing around with it, such as extracting the Google Photos app from it, as announced at Google I/O this year, while adding a feature called Collections. Google also has stopped requiring people to have Google+ accounts to tap into other services, such as YouTube channel creation.

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5 Office 365 admin settings you must get right

Ensure a solid foundation for your Office 365 deployment with these essential setup tips

Microsoft has every incentive to ease your business into Office 365. Setup wizards, help videos, live telephone support -- your transition to the cloud will be met with helping hands from the mothership all along the way. But the process isn't necessarily foolproof. It's still very possible to end up with an unsecured, minimally functional Office 365 environment even if you followed all of the helpful guides to the letter.

Also, it’s essential to remember that default settings are built for the lowest common denominator. They're designed to get the average admin and the average user active in the system with the least amount of fuss. That doesn't mean these settings are solid decisions, tailored to your optimal environment. They're simply the easy ones.
And when have our jobs ever been about taking the easy route?

To ensure you have a solid foundation for your Office 365 deployment, you have to get the settings just right. If you want email to arrive safely to its destination free of malware or sensitive information, or your admin portal to be hardened against all but the most complex of tasks or your users' mobile devices to be more of a productivity booster than a liability, you’ll have to go beyond Office 365’s defaults.

Here’s how to ensure your Office 365 environment is set up right.

Mail Flow
When you first set up Office 365, you are prompted to configure your domains' DNS to work with Office 365. Microsoft provides records for mail routing (MX), autodiscover (CNAME), and SPF (Sender Protection Framework). Failure to apply the correct settings here can mean complete loss of mail flow or lack of client connectivity.



List all authorized domains, including third-party services, as authoritative domains in Office 365's Exchange admin center to ensure email delivery to all of your recipients.

SPF is a special consideration. This record type is used to inform other mail systems whether email from your domain is coming from an authorized system. The record provided by Microsoft is suitable if the only place your email will ever originate is Office 365. Often this is not the case, however, because you might use third-party tools such as Salesforce or MailChimp to send email on behalf of your domain or apps. In order to ensure delivery to your recipients, be sure to include any of these services in your SPF record. More information on SPF syntax can be found at The SPF Project.

Once you have full access to the Exchange admin center, you should verify that all of your domain names are listed and declared as authoritative (or of the appropriate relay type as necessary) under Mail Flow > Accepted Domains, as shown in the screenshot above.

Secure Mail Flow
You or your clients and vendors may require TLS encryption for email exchanges. Financial and health care providers will often be subject to government regulations that require this additional layer of protection. The default configuration provides opportunistic TLS encryption; in other words, Exchange Online will first try to connect to another mail system with TLS encryption and fail back to plain text if that doesn't work.



If you require enforced TLS encryption, you will need to create two connectors: one for sending mail and one for receiving mail. To do so, open the Exchange admin center and navigate to Mail Flow > Connectors. Creating the sending connector is very straightforward. Click on the + (plus) sign and select "Sending from Office 365 to a partner organization." Give the new connector a name and type an optional description. Finally, you will enter your partner organization's domain name(s) and save the connector.

The connector for receiving mail is slightly more complicated but still rather straightforward. You begin as before by clicking the + sign. This time you will select sending from your partner organization to Office 365. You will then be prompted to specify whether you want to set this connector to apply to specific domain names or IP addresses. Choose whichever is appropriate for your scenario and enter the information on the next screen. Choose to reject any messages not sent using TLS encryption and optionally verify the TLS certificate. If you want to scope this domain to a specific IP range, you can do so here and save the connector.

The full details of configuring these connectors is available on Microsoft's TechNet Library.

Finally, you will want to ensure line-of-business applications, multifunction copiers, ticketing systems, and other applications and devices will be able to send through your new Office 365 account. There are three options available to you, and Microsoft has documented them all with step-by-step guides.

Security settings
Now that all of your email and service settings are stored in the cloud, you must pay very close attention to your security settings. It takes only one lucky phishing attempt or social engineering call to give up the keys to the kingdom.

At a minimum, you should establish and use a separate account from your main mailbox as an administrator account and configure your other administrators in the same fashion. In addition, each administrator account should have an enforced minimum password length and expiration period (Service Settings > Passwords), and use multifactor authentication (Users > Active Users > Set multi-factor authentication requirements > Set up), and only the minimum set of permissions required to do the job through Role Based Access Control (RBAC) settings (Exchange admin center > Permissions > Admin roles).



Administrator accounts should be set with the bare minimum number of permissions required to do the job through RBAC.

The security of your mail is equally important. The built-in Exchange Online Protection offers basic forms of protection against spam and malware but doesn't prevent address spoofing. You should spend some time evaluating third-party products to provide a solid email security foundation for your Office 365 environment.

You should also consider creating transport rules to match against common financial and personal data types. You can do this using Data Loss Prevention (DLP) templates that create transport rules you can tweak, or you can create transport rules directly using sensitive information types. To create a transport rule to block the sending of unencrypted credit card numbers and Social Security numbers, open the Exchange admin center and navigate to Mail Flow > Rules. Click on the + sign and choose "Generate an incident report when sensitive information is detected ..." Choose the type of sensitive information you want to detect, select a recipient to notify and the information included in the notification, and (optionally) add an extra action to block the message with or without a Non-Delivery Receipt (NDR).

Mobile device settings
Most of your users will probably want to use their own mobile devices to access company email. This benefits the user in that they will only need to carry one device, and it benefits the company in that it doesn't have to purchase and manage devices and contracts for its users. Those mobile devices, however, are now portable access points into your mail system or, if you use line-of-business applications or have a mobile VPN, your entire network.



If your users will be accessing Office 365 or email from their own devices, setting up Office 365 MDM is essential.

Office 365 now offers mobile device management (MDM) as part of your subscription, and you should take full advantage of this. To activate your MDM subscription, click on Mobile Devices and accept the licensing agreement and privacy policy.

Once you have completed MDM setup, click on "Manage device security policies and access rules." Click on the + sign to create a new policy, providing it with a name and optional description. There are a number of options available to you here. You can enforce PIN locking (or more complex passwords), sign-in failure counts, inactivity locks, device encryption, and preventing "rooted" or "jailbroken" devices from connecting.

You should at least configure a six-digit PIN, wipe after 10 tries, force data encryption, and disallow hacked devices. This should prevent the largest number of basic attacks against your devices without greatly inconveniencing your users.

Data and disaster recovery
It’s important to note that Office 365 does not back up your email. Microsoft offers native data protection, which includes multiple passive copies (lagged copies) split between two data centers. That is a fantastic solution for providing availability of existing data, but it doesn’t ensure a point-in-time recovery of data deleted that has gone past the deleted item retention period. In addition, that retention period is 14 days by default and can be extended to 30 days (you read that correctly: 30 days) through a remote PowerShell connection. You should be aware that your data can be lost.

Luckily there are ways to mitigate this. For starters, Microsoft recommends you put all mailboxes on legal hold. To do so requires a more expensive Office 365 plan (E3), which may make this solution prohibitive for some organizations. In addition, it’s not an interactive, read-only archive solution for your users, but it does ensure that all data is held and discoverable. It also doesn’t give you the ability to do a point-in-time restore, so it’s not a backup solution in the traditional or modern sense of the word.

Knowing these limitations may mean you need to look to a third-party backup/recovery solution for Office 365 or a solid online archive solution. You want to know your data is safe and discoverable (for compliance and more). This is another area, like security, where you may need to look to the Office 365 partner ecosystem to find the solution that bolts on and can resolve these concerns.

As you put together your optimal Office 365 environment, remember that the above settings recommendations are merely the basics. Consider them the absolute must-have settings to get you up and running. If your organization has a security operations center, you should consult with them about further improving your security. Compliance team? Check on adding more transport rules and setting up further data loss prevention.

But whatever you do, don’t settle for the default.

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Microsoft tests SharePoint 2016 and enterprise cloud hybrid search

New tools preview Microsoft's upcoming workplace collaboration software upgrades

Microsoft is giving IT administrators a glimpse of the future with two betas the company launched Monday.

SharePoint Server 2016 is the latest version of Microsoft's popular team collaboration software, and the just-released beta is designed to give IT administrators an early portrait of what's coming when Microsoft releases its official update next year.

Key features for SharePoint 2016 include support for large files up to 10GB in size and a new App Launcher that makes it easier for users to open applications from the navigation bar inside SharePoint. Microsoft has also simplified the controls for sharing files.

The release is also focused on improving the experience for smartphone and tablet users with controls that better support using touch to get around SharePoint sites.

Fair warning to early adopters: Microsoft recommends that users not install the beta of SharePoint Server 2016 in a production environment. In part, that's because it's not possible to directly upgrade from the beta to the final version of the software when it's released next year.

On top of the SharePoint beta, Microsoft's new cloud hybrid search feature will allow Office 365 users who also run on-premises SharePoint servers to easily access both the files stored in their company's servers as well as those stored in Microsoft's cloud. This means that Microsoft Delve, which gives users an at-a-glance view of their team members' work, can show files that are stored in a company's servers and in Microsoft's servers side by side.

Indexing for cloud hybrid search is handled in Office 365, which means users can reduce the amount of work their servers do around creating and maintaining search indices.

These new features highlight one of the key focuses of Microsoft's cloud strategy. While the company is encouraging organizations to switch to Office 365, it's also continuing to support products oriented towards businesses that want to maintain on-premises servers.

The cloud hybrid search beta is available as an opt-in feature for companies that use SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016, in addition to Office 365. Users can set up cloud hybrid search now on their on-premises SharePoint servers, but they can't configure it for use with Office 365 until early September.

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Microsoft explains timing of Windows 10 updates

Windows 10's staggered timetable will kick off by early December

If Microsoft follows through on its announced plans for updating and upgrading Windows 10 after the new OS launches in two weeks, it will issue the first update no later than the end of November or early December, then follow with three more in 2016, repeating with a trio each year following.

Lather, rinse, repeat.
The update churn will result in a near-constant patter about upcoming updates and upgrades -- Microsoft itself isn't sure which of those terms apply, using both interchangeably -- for customers to digest.

Microsoft has left those customers guessing on answers to a slew of questions about Windows 10 refreshes, ranging from how long the updates and upgrades will appear free of charge to how substantial those changes will be. But it's talked about the schedule, pulling back the curtain in small jerks.

Here's what's known about the timetable and what's still unknown -- or in the infamous words of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the "known unknowns" -- as the July 29 release date looms.
Updates will come every four months

According to a Microsoft-hosted webinar in late April, Windows 10 will receive updates about every four months, or three times a year.

It's likely that Microsoft won't hew to a set schedule, as does Mozilla, which rolls out a new edition of Firefox at almost-sacrosanct six-week intervals. Microsoft could trim the time between updates or extend the timeline, depending on whether it's satisfied with the quality and composition of the new build, or even on external factors, like the calendar.

If Microsoft wanted to present a newer Windows 10 for the end-of-year holiday sales season, for example, it would like to have that on new devices no later than mid-November, meaning a release -- or, at least, finished code -- in October.

Such flexibility is not guaranteed: We simply don't know because Microsoft won't say, or doesn't know itself.

But on average, expect to see updates/upgrades spaced out every four months.

The first update will appear before year's end

Four months from the July 29 launch date would be November 29, close to the start of winter in the northern hemisphere.

Although that date may not be set in stone, it's clear that to make good on its promises Microsoft must roll out a finished first update/upgrade before year's end.

That alone will be a record for the company: The previous shortest lag has been the six months between Windows 8.1 (launched Oct. 17, 2013) and Windows 8.1 Update (April 8, 2014).

Consumers as guinea pigs get the first update
The first update/upgrade will be primarily, perhaps exclusively, for consumers, delivered to devices running Windows 10 Home by default via the Windows Update service. Microsoft is calling that update cadence or track "Current Branch" (CB), part of the new release lexicon the Redmond, Wash. company's invented.

Those running the more advanced Windows 10 Pro can also adopt the consumer-speed CB track. People most likely to do so are the power users, enthusiasts and work-at-homers with a Pro edition, as companies -- which also widely deploy the various Windows' Professional or Pro SKUs (stock-keeping units) -- will probably play it conservative and instead take updates from the Current Branch for Business (CBB) after they have moved to Windows 10 Pro.

Not everyone on CB will get the first update at the same time
Microsoft has provided some update flexibility (its take) or complicated matters (the cynic's view) by segmenting each "branch" into "rings." The latter is a second release timing mechanism that lets customers receive a branch's update as soon as the build is approved via a "fast" ring, or delay the update's arrival using a "slow" ring.

Rings on the CB were confirmed only this week by Terry Myerson, chief of the company's OS and devices division, and may number more than the two: Again, Microsoft's not elaborated.

The Windows Insider preview program, which will continue to run after July 29, has put devices into the slow ring by default; Microsoft may or may not do the same with the CB.

The one certainty is that not everyone on the CB will get the update immediately. "Some consumers just want to go first. And we have consumers that say, 'I'm okay not being first,'" Myerson said on Monday.

Most business PCs won't get the first update until the Spring of 2016
Because Microsoft will be using its Insider participants, and more importantly the millions of consumers running Windows 10, as testers, it will not release builds to businesses at the same time as those on the Current Branch.

With the four-month stretch between updates/upgrades and the automatic delay built into the Current Branch for Business (CBB), customers on the latter will not receive the first build until next year: On a strict schedule, that will be at the end of March or beginning of April 2016.

Microsoft's doing it this way, it's said, to produce more bug-free code to its most important users, businesses. Microsoft figures that the four months will shake out more bugs so that those running Windows 10 Pro or Windows 10 Enterprise will get a more stable update with a correspondingly lower risk of something breaking.

Users of Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise can stick with the old way of managing updates -- using Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) or another patch-management product -- or go with the new Windows Update for Business (WUB), an analog to the consumer-ish Windows Update service.

Those on WUB must deploy a given build within four months of its release or Microsoft will shut off the patch spigot: That means CBB users applying updates/upgrades with WUB must have the first build on their devices by approximately Aug. 1, 2016.

Businesses can delay the first update only so long

Microsoft's not giving anyone a choice: Either take the updates and upgrades or face a security patch drought. (The one exception: Windows 10 Enterprise.)

The longest delay allowed for CBB will be eight months from a specific build's release to the branch, or 12 months after the same build has hit the consumers via the CB.

Customers using WSUS or another Microsoft (or third-party) patch management solution must have the first build deployed no later than late November, early December 2016.

Microsoft has talked about rings on the CBB since the May announcement of Windows Update for Business, but as with rings on the CB, details remain muddled. How long the slow ring follows the fast, for instance, is unclear.
Only Windows 10 Enterprise can ignore the updates and upgrades

The only Windows 10 edition that can pass on the constant updates and upgrades is Enterprise, the SKU available solely to organizations that have a volume licensing agreement tied to the annuity-like Software Assurance (SA) program.

The branch available only to Windows 10 Enterprise, dubbed Long-term Servicing Branch, or LSTB, mimics the traditional way Microsoft has handled its OS: Only security patches and critical bug-fixes will reach systems on the LTSB.

Every two to three years, Microsoft will create another LTSB build, integrating some or all of the feature changes released to CB and CBB in the intervening time, then offer that to customers. They will have the option to move to that build -- it won't be mandatory -- and can skip at least one build, passing on LTSB 2 (or whatever Microsoft names it), then years later adopting LSTB 3 with an in-place upgrade.

The code released on July 29 will be considered LTSB 1, Microsoft has said, so a second, optional LTSB won't appear until 2017 at the earliest.
By December 2016, there will be multiple update/upgrade builds being used

The staggered releases Microsoft plans will create a situation where multiple builds are in use at any one time, each by a segment of the Windows 10 device population.

Come December 2016, Microsoft will have issued its fourth build to the CB, and the third to the CBB. But there will be some still using the second build (those on the CBB managing updates with WSUS).

Analysts, however, have largely discounted fragmentation as a factor, arguing that while the delays offered to businesses on the CBB may be disruptive, Windows 10 will ultimately be a more uniform ecosystem than the current mix of vastly different editions of Windows.
What Microsoft gets out of this stretched, staggered release schedule

Microsoft may pitch the Windows 10 update and upgrade schedule as all about customers, but there's something in it for the company, too.

"Rings will be more about controlling the rate at which the updates flood out into market," said Steve Kleynhans, an analyst at Gartner, in a recent interview. "With potentially a billion devices ... eventually ... getting an update, you need some level of flow control or else you could crush your servers and a large part of the Internet. By using rings, Microsoft can stagger the release over the period of days or weeks."

In fact, the entire cadence, not just the rings, can be envisioned as Microsoft's way of reducing stress on its update servers. Although the second build for the CB -- slated for late March-early April 2016 -- will coincide with the launch of the first build for the CBB on Computerworld's timeline, it will not be a surprise if Microsoft staggers the two by launching first one, then the other.

Microsoft is clearly concerned about server load and the possibility that something could go awry: It's not releasing the free Windows 10 upgrade to all eligible customers on July 29. Instead, it plans to give the several million Insiders the code first, then gradually trigger upgrades on others' devices in an unknown number of "waves" that could run weeks or months.

The company will also control demand for the upgrade another way by silently downloading the bits in the background to eligible PCs and tablets, then notifying them on its own schedule that the upgrade is ready to process locally.

It may do the same with later updates and upgrades, Kleynhans speculated.

"I wouldn't be surprised if under the covers Microsoft uses a separate ring for each week after an OS is released, or maybe even one for each day immediately after it is out," said Kleynhans. "But these will be mostly invisible to users and really isn't all the different from the way some updates roll-out today."
The naming problem

Computerworld has used generic place holders to identify the various update/upgrade releases Microsoft will distribute to Windows 10 -- "first build" and "LTSB 2," for instance -- because Microsoft hasn't talked about how it's going to name each build.

That will have to change.

"Another factor that Microsoft has yet to discuss is how it will identify each update," Kleynhans said. "We know that the OS will be called Windows 10 regardless of what updates have been delivered and installed.... But as for identifying the state after each update, we don't know if Microsoft will stick with the build number, as it has during the preview program, opt for a simplified numbering scheme -- something similar to the build number but without the holes in the numbering scheme -- go back to point identifiers [like] Window 10 v 10.1 and Windows 10 v 10.2, [as] Apple does with OS X, or maybe use something more date oriented [such as] 'Windows 10, July 2016.' There will have to be something to help developers understand what they are facing in the field."

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Migrating to the cloud? Start with a readiness assessment

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

After careful consideration you’ve decided it’s time to migrate a major on-premise software solution to the cloud. But how do you create and execute a plan to make sure your migration stays on time, on budget, and delivers on your expectations? Effective planning is critical, and it should start with a thorough assessment of your infrastructure by an experienced vendor who understands your specific objectives.

Usually available as a service engagement from a hosting vendor or, better yet, from the software vendor whose solution is being migrated to the cloud, this cloud readiness assessment is part checklist and part roadmap. It audits the entire environment so you can plan and execute an efficient and effective migration.

Why should you consider such a service? It takes the pressure off. Too many organizations attempt to go it alone, which usually means asking overworked IT staff to try to “fit it in.” Today, the average IT department is already responsible for multiple systems, often as many as seven or eight. Trying to add a project as large and complex as an enterprise cloud migration to is simply not realistic. Not only is that approach a disservice to those tasked with making it happen, it also sends the wrong message about the size and importance of the project. Future problems are usually inevitable.

A cloud readiness assessment may also help you achieve a faster time to value. Remember, when you go to a SaaS model, ROI has a completely different meaning. For example, you are no longer looking to recover your long-term capital investment, but instead, expecting to gain instant value from your new OpEx spending. A cloud readiness assessment can help you carefully plan the migration so you can achieve a faster time to value.

Finally, a vendor’s cloud readiness team can usually deliver skills and specialized expertise required for the specific solution that you or hosting provider might not have in-house. These teams are truly cross-functional, with a mix of expertise in project management, technical implementations, business processes, industry-specific insights, and more. Additionally, these teams usually have dozens, if not hundreds, of migrations under their belts.

While no one can say they’ve seen it all, these teams are typically astute and can help you identify potential obstacles – challenges you may not have been aware of – before they become unmanageable.

For example, a cloud readiness team will carefully evaluate your existing environment and document all aspects of your infrastructure that could be affected. This includes your entire architecture, including databases, applications, networks, specialized hardware, third-party interfaces, extensions, customizations, and more. Then, they create a comprehensive report that details these findings as well as their recommended action plan to achieve the most successful migration possible.

To better understand how a cloud readiness offering could work – and its ultimate benefits – consider the example of moving an on-premise workforce management solution to the cloud. Workforce management solutions are generally large, enterprise-level implementations that span employee-focused areas such as time and attendance, absence management, HR, payroll, hiring, scheduling, and labor analytics.

The example of workforce management is especially relevant because recent research shows that an increasing number of workforce management buyers are adopting SaaS tools. Research shows that SaaS will be the main driver in growing the global workforce management market by almost $1.5 billion from 2013 to 2018. Additionally, Gartner research indicates, through 2017, the number of organizations using external providers to deliver cloud-related services will rise to 91 percent to mitigate cost and security risks as well as to meet business goals and desired outcomes.

This research demonstrates that a majority of companies will soon be moving their on-premise workforce management systems to the cloud. But will they be successful?

They have to be. Workforce management systems manage processes and data related to paying employees, managing their time and balances, storing sensitive HR information, complying with industry regulations, and other critical functions. Errors can be extremely costly, especially if they lead to missing paychecks, employee morale issues, lost productivity, grievances and compliance, or even potential lawsuits. Failure is simply not an option.

A cloud readiness service is the perfect way to minimize these risks and maximize the results. Specifically, a readiness service is ideally suited to address specialized areas of a workforce management deployment, including:

* Data collection terminals. While many employees still refer to these as “timeclocks,” the fact is that today’s data collection devices are sophisticated proprietary technology consisting of hardware, software, and network/communication capabilities. As part of a migration, a readiness audit would assess the organization’s data collection methods. It would also provide recommendations for transitioning them to a secure network model that meets the organization’s security and performance objectives while ensuring that service is not interrupted when the switchover occurs.

* Interfaces and integrations. Like other enterprise-level technology, workforce management solutions tend to use many different interfaces and custom integrations to feed applications such as ERP systems, outside payroll systems, or third-party analytics applications. In this example, the readiness assessment evaluates the entire integration strategy, including database settings, to make sure mission-critical data continues to flow to support existing business processes.

* Customizations and configurations. Most organizations have custom reports, products, or database tables. Here, the cloud readiness service will thoroughly review existing customizations and configurations, and will provide recommendations to maintain, or even improve, the value they deliver.

When it comes to something as significant — and important — as migrating a major enterprise solution to the cloud, don’t go it alone. Investing in a cloud readiness service can help you assess where you stand today, plan for the migration, and execute against the plan. This helps free up valuable IT resources to focus on what’s really important – implementing strategic initiatives to help the business grow.

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iPhone sales are about to explode

A new report from the Wall Street Journal points to iPhone sales exploding over the next few months.

It's a song and dance that's become somewhat of a routine: just as analysts believe iPhone sales are on the verge of peaking, new evidence suggests that the iPhone is about to become more popular than ever.

According to a report published on Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, Apple recently asked its suppliers overseas to gear up for a production run of about 85 to 90 million iPhone units. By way of contrast, Apple during the build-up to the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus release anticipated orders in the 70 to 75 million unit range. In other words, Apple's iPhone sales during the company's next refresh cycle could skyrocket by upwards of 28%.

As for what features the iPhone 6s will bring to the table, it's been widely reported that Apple's new iPhone models will include a Force Touch display. It remains to be seen, however, how such a feature will translate into real-world usage on a smartphone. As for other features, users can look forward to faster internals, 2GB of RAM, and an improved Touch ID sensor.

Additionally, the Journal adds that the iPhone 6s may come in an additional color to the current lineup of silver, gold, and space gray. While this remains to be seen, some previous rumors on this topic have suggested that Apple is exploring both Rose Gold and Pink color options.

So while Apple Watch sales may be lagging, according to some reports, Apple's primary revenue generator -- the iPhone -- appears to be healthier than ever before.

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How Amazon’s DynamoDB helped reinvent databases

In the earliest days of Amazon.com SQL databases weren’t cutting it, so the company created DynamoDB and in doing so helped usher in the NoSQL market

Behind every great ecommerce website is a database, and in the early 2000s Amazon.com’s database was not keeping up with the company’s business.

Part of the problem was that Amazon didn’t have just one database – it relied on a series of them, each with its own responsibility. As the company headed toward becoming a $10 billion business, the number and size of its SQL databases exploded and managing them became more challenging. By the 2004 holiday shopping rush, outages became more common, caused in large part by overloaded SQL databases.

Something needed to change.
But instead of looking for a solution outside the company, Amazon developed its own database management system. It was a whole new kind of database, one that threw out the rules of traditional SQL varieties and was able to scale up and up and up. In 2007 Amazon shared its findings with the world: CTO Werner Vogels and his team released a paper titled “Dynamo – Amazon’s highly available key value store.” Some credit it with being the moment that the NoSQL database market was born.

The problem with SQL
The relational databases that have been around for decades and most commonly use the SQL programming language are ideal for organizing data in neat tables and running queries against them. Their success is undisputed: Gartner estimates the SQL database market to be $30 billion.

But in the early to mid-2000s, companies like Amazon, Yahoo and Google had data demands that SQL databases just didn’t address well. (To throw a bit of computer science at you, the CAP theorem states that it’s impossible for a distributed system, such as a big database, to have consistency, availability and fault tolerance. SQL databases prioritize consistency over speed and flexibility, which makes them great for managing core enterprise data such as financial transactions, but not other types of jobs as well.)

Take Amazon’s online shopping cart service, for example. Customers browse the ecommerce website and put something in their virtual shopping cart where it is saved and potentially purchased later. Amazon needs the data in the shopping cart to always be available to the customer; lost shopping cart data is a lost sale. But, it doesn't necessarily need every node of the database all around the world to have the most up-to-date shopping cart information for every customer. A SQL/relational system would spend enormous compute resources to make data consistent across the distributed system, instead of ensuring the information is always available and ready to be served to customers.

One of the fundamental tenets of Amazon’s Dynamo, and NoSQL databases in general, is that they sacrifice data consistency for availability. Amazon’s priority is to maintain shopping cart data and to have it served to customers very quickly. Plus, the system has to be able to scale to serve Amazon’s fast-growing demand. Dynamo solves all of these problems: It backs up data across nodes, and can handle tremendous load while maintaining fast and dependable performance.

“It was one of the first NoSQL databases,” explains Khawaja Shams, head of engineering at Amazon DynamoDB. “We traded off consistency and very rigid

querying semantics for predictable performance, durability and scale – those are the things Dynamo was super good at.”

DynamoDB: A database in the cloud
Dynamo fixed many of Amazon’s problems that SQL databases could not. But throughout the mid-to-late 2000s, it still wasn’t perfect. Dynamo boasted the functionality that Amazon engineers needed, but required substantial resources to install and manage.

The introduction of DynamoDB in 2012 proved to be a major upgrade though. The hosted version of the database Amazon uses internally lives in Amazon Web Services’ IaaS cloud and is fully managed. Amazon engineers and AWS customers don’t provision a database or manage storage of the data. All they do is request the throughput they need from DynamoDB. Customers pay $0.0065 per hour for about 36,000 writes to the database (meaning the amount of data imported to the database per hour) plus $0.25 per GB of data stored in the system per month. If the application needs more capacity, then with a few clicks the database spreads the workload over more nodes.

AWS is notoriously opaque about how DynamoDB and many of its other Infrastructure-as-service products run under the covers, but this promotional video reveals that the service employs solid state drives and notes that when customers use DynamoDB, their data is spread across availability zones/data centers to ensure availability.

Forrester principal analyst Noel Yuhanna calls it a “pretty powerful” database and considers it one of the top NoSQL offerings, especially for key-value store use cases.

DynamoDB has grown significantly since its launch. While AWS will not release customer figures, company engineer James Hamilton said in November that DynamoDB has grown 3x in requests it processes annually and 4x in the amount of data it stores compared to the year prior. Even with that massive scale and growth, DynamoDB has consistently returned queries in three to four milliseconds.

Below is a video demonstrating DynamoDB’s remarkably consistent performance even as more stress is put on the system.

To see a demo of DynamoDB, jump to the 16:47 mark in the video.
Feature-wise, DynamoDB has grown, too. NoSQL databases are generally broken into a handful of categories: Key-value store databases organize information with a key and a value; document databases allow full documents to be searched against; while graph databases track connections between data. DynamoDB originally started as a key-value database, but last year AWS expanded itto become a document database by supporting JSON formatted files. AWS last year also added Global Secondary Indexes to DynamoDB, which allow users to have copies of their database, typically one for production and another for querying, analytics or testing.

NoSQL’s use case and vendor landscape
The fundamental advantage of NoSQL databases is their ability to scale and have flexible schema, meaning users can easily change how data is structured and run multiple queries against it. Many new web-based applications, such as social, mobile and gaming-centric ones, are being built using NoSQL databases.

While Amazon may have helped jumpstart the NoSQL market, it is now one of dozens of vendors attempting to cash in on it. Nick Heudecker, a Gartner researcher, stresses that even though NoSQL has captured the attention of many developers, it is still a relatively young technology. He estimates revenues of NoSQL products to not even surpass half a billion dollars annually (that’s not an official Gartner estimate). Heudecker says the majority of his enterprise client inquiries are still around SQL databases.

NoSQL competitors MongoDB, MarkLogic, Couchbase and Datastax have strong standings in the market as well and some seem to have greater traction among enterprise customers compared to DynamoDB, Huedecker says.

Living in the cloud
What’s holding DynamoDB back in the enterprise market? For one, it has no on-premises version – it can only be used in AWS’s cloud. Some users just aren’t comfortable using a cloud-based database, Heudecker says. DynamoDB competitors offer users the opportunity to run databases on their own premises behind their own firewall.

Khawaja Shams, director of engineering for DynamoDB says when the company created Dynamo it had to throw out the old rules of SQL databases.

Shams, AWS’s DynamoDB engineering head, says because the technology is hosted in the cloud, users don’t have to worry about configuring or provisioning any hardware. They just use the service and scale it up or down based on demand, while paying only for storage and throughput, he says.

For security-sensitive customers, there are opportunities to encrypt data as DynamoDB stores it. Plus, DynamoDB is integrated with AWS - the market’s leading IaaS platform (according to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report), which supports a variety of tools, including other relational databases such as Aurora and RDS.

Adroll rolls with AWS DynamoDB
Marketing platform provider Adroll, which serves more than 20,000 customers in 150 countries, is among those organizations comfortable using the cloud-based DynamoDB. Basically, if an ecommerce site visitor browses a product page but does not buy the item, AdRoll bids on ad space on another site the user visits to show the product they were previously considering. It’s an effective method for getting people to buy products they were considering.

It’s really complicated for AdRoll to figure out which ads to serve to which users though. Even more complicated is that AdRoll needs to decide in about the time it takes for a webpage to load whether it will bid on an ad spot and which ad to place. That’s the job of CTO Valentino Volonghi --he has about 100 milliseconds to play with. Most of that time is gobbled up by network latency, so needless to say AdRoll requires a reliably fast platform. It also needs huge scale: AdRoll considers more than 60 billion ad impressions every day.

AdRoll uses DynamoDB and Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) to sock away data about customers and help its algorithm decide which ads to buy for customers. In 2013, AdRoll had 125 billion items in DynamoDB; it’s now up to half a trillion. It makes 1 million requests to the system each second, and the data is returned in less than 5 milliseconds -- every time. AdRoll has another 17 million files uploaded into Amazon S3, taking up more than 1.5 petabytes of space.

AdRoll didn’t have to build a global network of data centers to power its product, thanks in large part to using DynamoDB.

“We haven’t spent a single engineer to operate this system,” Volonghi says. “It’s actually technically fun to operate a database at this massive scale.”

Not every company is going to have the needs of Amazon.com’s ecommerce site or AdRoll’s real-time bidding platform. But many are struggling to achieve greater scale without major capital investments. The cloud makes that possible, and DynamoDB is a prime example.

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20 best iPhone/iPad games

Star Wars Rebels, Fireworks, Shakespeare and lots of quests are featured in top iPhone and iPad games.

Games
As we head toward summer 2015, it’s time to check in and see how the mobile gaming industry has fared for Apple iOS platforms, the iPhone and iPad. Here’s a look at top rated games issued so far this year, based on App Store user reviews and professional reviewers on Metacritic. We hope you’ll discover a few hidden gems in here.

Legend of Grimrock
Developer: Almost Human
Price: $5
Ratings: 95 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on Apple App Store; Ages 9+

This popular role-playing game for the PC brings its dungeon crawling to iOS. With Legend of Grimrock, enable prisoners who may or may not have committed the crimes for which they’ve been exiled to Mount Grimlock navigate its maze of tunnels and tombs.

Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be
Developer: Tim Man Games
Price: $6
Ratings: 93 of 100 on Metacritic; 4 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated 12+

Shakespeare meets the iPhone and iPad in Ryan North’s To Be or Not to Be game. As the developer writes: “Play as Hamlet and revenge your father's death. Play as Ophelia and make scientific discoveries. Play as King Hamlet, Sr. and die on the first page!”

Implosion: Never lose hope
Developer: Rayark
Price: $10
Ratings: 93 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 stars on App Store; Rated 12+

Implosion transports you here: “Twenty years after the fall of Earth, the remnants of the Human race are once again faced with extinction. The time has come to justify our existence. A mysterious life form known as the XADA squares off against humanity's last weapon - the War-Mech series III battle suit.”

Attack the Light: Steven Universe Light RPG
Developer: Cartoon Network
Price: $3
Ratings: 91 of 100 on Metacritic; 5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 9+.

Attack the Light is a role-playing game in which 4 heroes team up for a magical adventure.

Sorcery! 3
Developer: Inkle Studios
Price: $5
Ratings: 90 of 100 on Metacritic; 4 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated 12+

Sorcery! 3 is described as “An epic adventure through a cursed wilderness of monsters, traps and magic.” And you don’t need to have played parts 1 or 2.
Video courtesy YouTube.com

Does not Commute
Developer: Mediocre AB
Price: Free
Ratings: 87 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store: Rated ages 4+.

In Does not Commute, “What starts out as a relaxing commute in a small town of the 1970s quickly devolves into traffic chaos with hot dog trucks, sports cars, school buses and dozens of other vehicles. You drive them all.”

Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire
Developer: Nitrome
Price: Free
Ratings: 87 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated age 9+.

In Magic Touch a wizard is wanted who has proficiency in spell casting for popping intruders’ balloons.

Halo Spartan Strike
Developer: Microsoft
Price: $6
Ratings: 86 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 12+.

In Halo Spartan Strike, you are a supersoldier tasked with up to 30 challenging missions in city and jungle settings. Don’t worry, you have plenty of weapons, skills and vehicles with which to pummel and outwit enemies of Earth.

SwapQuest
Developer: Constantin Graf
Price: $3
Ratings: 85 of 100 on Metacritic; 3.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 9+.

SwapQuest mixes easy-to-learn puzzles with role-playing action as you try to save the Kingdom of Aventana from a demon cloud dubbed the Horde.

Silly Sausage in Meatland
Developer: Nitrome
Price: Free
Ratings: 85 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 9+.

In Silly Sausage you’re a dog with an infinitely stretchy body, which can be handy but also exposes you to all sorts of meat cutting instruments.

Card Crawl
Developer: Arnold Rauers
Price: $2
Ratings: 84 of 100 on Metacritic; 5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 12+.

Card Crawl is solitaire with a dungeon crawler twist, in which you need to say monsters efficiently.

TouchTone
Developer: Mikengreg
Price: $3
Ratings: 84 of 100 on Metacritic; 4 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated ages 12+.

TouchTone is a game that the likes of the NSA and Anonymous would love: decrypt suspicious messages to make the nation safer and stronger.

Flop Rocket
Developer: Butterscotch Shenanigans
Price: Free
Ratings: 84 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 on App Store; Rated for ages 12+.

Next best thing to flying a drone: “Pilot your Flop Rocket through a 5 kilometer cave filled with dragon-like Spaceducks, enormous rock-worms, and other space-time anomalies as you try to prevent an underfunded space program from going bust.”

Fearless Fantasy
Developer: TinyBuild
Price: $4
Ratings: 84 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 9+.

Fearless Fantasy is a gesture-based role-playing game in which you are a bounty hunter intent on slaying weird creatures and saving a young woman from an awful marriage.

The Quest Keeper
Developer: Tyson Ibele
Price: Free
Ratings: 83 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 4+.

In The Quest Keeper, your mission is to help a peasant become a dungeon master, but you’ll need to dodge spikes, knives and scary creatures to do so.

Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions
Developer: Disney Interactive Studios
Price: Free
Ratings: 83 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 9+.

Star Wars Rebels is based on the TV show, and lets you take on the Empire in this action platform game.

Blokshot Revolution
Developer: Foxhole Games
Price: Free
Ratings: 82 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 4+.

In Blokshot Revolution, experience “a beautiful firework display of hypnotic neon destruction” set against a pumping EDM sountrack.

Beast Quest
Developer: Miniclip.com
Price: Free
Ratings: 81 of 100 on Metacritic; 4 of 5 stars on App store; Rated for ages 9+.

The Beast Quest action-adventure game asks whether you are the hero Avantia has been looking for to free the magical beasts of this leand from the spell of a wicked wizard.
best iphone ipad games 20

Marvel Future Fight
Developer: Netmarble Games
Price: Free
Ratings: 81 of 100 on Metacritic; 4.5 of 5 on App Store;

This Marvel role-playing game lets you assemble teams of super heroes for single or multiple player games, as you battle via weapons and skills to keep humanity alive.

MicRogue
Developer: Crescent Moon Games
Price: $2
Ratings: 80 of 100 on Metacritic; 2 of 5 stars on App Store; Rated for ages 4+.

MicRogue does have a weak rating on the App Store based on limited reviews, but Metacritic reviewers gave it some love for packing fun into a small package. Climb a dark tower and avoid monsters with chess-like moves.

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