Wednesday, July 27, 2011

SAP to link analytics tools to Google Maps, Earth

IDG News Service - SAP is planning to connect its analytics software with Google's Maps and Earth software, allowing users to mine insights from plotting business data against locations around the world, the companies announced Wednesday.





Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com



For example, a bank could figure out which regions have the most troubled housing markets by layering foreclosure data and the location of loan-holders on a map, SAP said.

SAP partners such as Centigon Solutions had already offered an integration with Google Maps, and Google has been offering a commercial version of its Maps APIs (application programming interfaces) for some time.

The advantage of the new tie-in is that SAP has inked a pact with Google for the use of 12 new APIs that give customers deep access to the mapping functions, including Street View, and allow them to build out customizations, said Jason Rose, senior director, business intelligence solution marketing. SAP's deal is good for three-and-a-half years, according to Rose.

Customers can expect the APIs to first surface with the "ramp-up" release of Business Objects 4.1, which is slated for late this year, Rose said. Ramp-up is SAP's term for the period when products are in controlled availability with a group of early adopters.

While Wednesday's announcement focused on analytics, customers can expect other SAP's products, such as its CRM (customer relationship management) software, to also tap the Google Maps APIs over time, according to Rose.

It's not clear whether the Google APIs will be made available to existing customers as part of their regular SAP maintenance payments, or sold separately. "Right now we're looking at the overall monetization strategy. We're still dotting the Is and crossing the Ts on that," Rose said.

Older versions of SAP's software, such as Business Objects XI 3.1, will be compatible with the APIs.

There's an obvious advantage to SAP customers going with SAP for Google Maps integration, versus a third party, said Forrester Research analyst Boris Evelson: "One versus two products to buy, install and maintain, plus one versus two vendors to blame when something doesn't work."

The Earth Builder APIs will also give SAP customers a potential alternative to traditional GIS (geographic information systems) from the likes of Pitney Bowes and ESRI, both of which already partner with SAP.

GIS platforms go beyond marking points on a map, adding concepts such as polygons, which denote a fixed geographic area, possibly with highly irregular boundaries. Therefore, a tour bus company could figure out how many diesel fueling stations are within 50 miles of a state park, for example. "[This] is what you really need for sophisticated logistics analysis," Evelson said.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Career Watch: The IT job outlook, from CompTIA

Q&A: Todd Thibodeaux

The president and CEO of CompTIA discusses the IT job outlook.
Are things looking up for IT job seekers? Yes, but in a small way. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates jobs were added in the category of "computer systems design and related services" in June, July and August. The change was very small, but it's trending in the right direction. Our own CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index for September found that 37% of surveyed firms expect to add staff in the next six months, the same percentage as in the June 2010 index. Medium-size IT firms -- meaning companies with annual revenue of $20 million to $100 million -- have the most aggressive hiring plans, with 48% of those companies indicating they plan to expand staffing over the next six months. For large companies -- those with $100 million or more in annual revenue -- a slightly smaller number, 44%, said they plan staff expansions.




Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com



What would you tell unemployed IT professionals who are finding that their skills are a poor match for the market? Any IT skill maintains its relevance, because workers are frequently dealing with legacy and embedded systems. But the key for anyone who desires a long-term career in IT is to keep your skills fresh and up to date. When the economy is good, companies have the resources to pay for continuing education and training for their workers. Unfortunately, that's often one of the areas cut first when budgets tighten. It's incumbent on the individual IT worker to take control of a lifelong learning plan so that their job skills stay current with what employers are looking for.

Careers
Employers want IT workers who can use technology for critical thinking. Demonstrate your ability to analyze a problem, solve it using available technology, and communicate your solution to others. While organizations may have slowed their spending on new IT projects, they're still pushing to squeeze more out of the systems they have in place. That requires the expertise of IT professionals who can identify ways to use technology to make the business operate more efficiently or less expensively.

Which sectors of the economy seem most promising for IT pros? Finance, education, government, entertainment, transportation, healthcare -- technology is deeply embedded in virtually every business and industry, and in businesses of all sizes, especially among the small businesses that account for the bulk of the nation's economy. A big opportunity for IT workers will occur in the health industry. Healthcare employers need workers with IT security skills, project management experience and networking qualifications. Employment opportunities exist with managed technology service providers that support medical facilities around the country. They're being called upon in large numbers to assist in the nationwide transition to electronic health records systems. This transition will also create a new category of hybrid jobs requiring a mix of healthcare knowledge and high-tech expertise. But it's important to look for opportunities that combine your technological savvy with something you're passionate about or at least somewhat interested in.
Tech Generations

We've been told that young people entering the workforce will expect to use the same technology they're accustomed to using in their personal lives: social media, text messaging, video chat. The funny thing about that conventional wisdom is that the youngest workers are the least likely to use any of those things. That's one of the findings of a study conducted for Citrix Online by Forrester Consulting.

On the job, members of Generation Y are less likely to use collaborative technology.
Gen Y Boomers age 55+
Share information via text message 26% 47%
Use social networking 40% 50%
Source: Forrester Consulting LLC online survey of 797 people who use computers in their jobs in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Australia; September 2010

And it turns out texting and other forms of multitasking are overwhelmingly frowned upon during meetings. According to the survey, 83% of the respondents believe that side conversations are unacceptable during a meeting, and 77% disapprove of doing other work on a computer or smartphone.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

CompTIA: IT business confidence up

IDG News Service - Members of the U.S. IT sector are more confident now in their business prospects than they have been in the last year and a half, according to a new survey released by the Computing Technology Industry Association.





Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com



The CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index -- measuring IT managers' and workers' confidence in their own industry, their own companies and the U.S. economy -- stood at 60 in December, the trade group said. The index, based on a survey of more than 1,100 IT workers and managers, asks respondents to rate their confidence in those three areas on a 100-point scale.

CompTIA launched the index in June 2009, and December's confidence numbers in the U.S. were the highest in the history of the index.

Global IT spending should grow by 4% in 2011, CompTIA predicted.

The U.S. index was up seven points between September and December, while the global index was up eight points, to 64. The confidence index was highest in Brazil and India, at 75, while it was lowest in the U.S. and South Africa among eight countries indexed.

CompTIA predicted that the confidence index will rise again in the next quarter.

"After several quarters of lackluster performance, an improving CompTIA confidence index should be welcome news to companies eager for economic stability," Tim Herbert, vice president of research for CompTIA, said in a statement.

U.S. IT workers and managers -- 41% of respondents were senior to executive management -- expressed most confidence in the IT industry and in their own companies. Confidence in the U.S. economy remained below 50 on the 100-point scale.

Forty-five percent of U.S. IT firms are planning to increase spending on new products and business lines over the next half year, and 43% plan technology-related investments, an increase of 10 percentage points from September, CompTIA said. Thirty-two percent of U.S. IT companies said they planned to increase hiring over the next six months, compared to 37% in September, the survey said.

Employment trends are "still cause for concern," Herbert said.

Worldwide, 52% of IT firms plan to increase spending on new product lines, and 51% plan to increase spending on technology. "With renewed market stability and optimism, businesses will likely start spending a bit more freely," the study said.

A number of factors could "potentially derail or minimize growth," the study said. IT executives remain concerned about weak consumer spending, government regulation and unexpected economic shocks such as increased oil prices, the study said.

Pent-up demand for IT products and services, along with strong sales in emerging markets and industries such as health care, will help the IT industry grow this year, CompTIA predicted. However, consumers could seek low-cost options for their IT products, resulting in high growth in unit sales, but modest revenue growth, the trade group said.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

10 Secrets for Searching for a Job During a Recession

Focusing your efforts on jobs in growing industries and demonstrating how your work has generated revenue are just two simple ways to distinguish yourself from the rest of the job seekers competing for positions in a down economy.




Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com



8. Try to be perfect.

With so many job seekers available, recruiters are being told to keep looking until they find an exact match. Candidates who are landing positions in today's economy are—by strategy or by luck—perceived to be "ideal" candidates. Such ideal candidates are confident and they're genuinely passionate about the job, company and industry. Hiring managers consider confidence and passion top qualities.

To make sure you're playing your A-game on interview day, spend time beforehand scripting and rehearsing your answers to interview questions about your strengths and weaknesses, says Chris McCann of Gregory Laka and Company executive search.

McCann also recommends being prepared to explain how you developed staff beyond providing company paid training. For example, did you serve as a mentor? "Noting how some of those individuals have succeeded demonstrates your personal connection and commitment to your team," he says.

Finally, make sure you know the intimate details of your resume and all of your accomplishments, adds McCann. You need to be ready to elaborate in great detail on processes, facts, time lines, technologies, costs and all manner of statistics on all firms and projects directly related to the position for which you are interviewing.
9. Be prepared to be flexible. VERY flexible.

The job market is not the same across the country. Some states are creating more new jobs than others. You may need to move. If international work appeals and is open to you, consider work outside the U.S.

In addition to being open to relocating, you may have to bend over backwards to get a job or impress an employer. An executive recruiter I interviewed for this story told me about a candidate who moved from third or fourth choice to top selection when he offered to work as a consultant to start, at half the rate for six months in a contract-for-hire option. By lowering his rate and starting out on contract, this candidate showed his willingness to mitigate the risk his prospective employer would be taking on by hiring him full-time. Notably, the candidate didn't go to this length because he was desperate for any job. He made some upfront sacrifices because he really wanted this particular job with this particular employer, the recruiter told me.

Another candidate offered to fly cross-country on his own funds to meet with a CEO who was on vacation at the time. By being extremely flexible for the CEO, the candidate met him in a much more informal and relaxed environment. This expensive and risky strategy worked for the candidate—who, again, was not desperate for any job. He got what he felt was the perfect job for him.
10. Plan for the long term.

Don't stop your search until at least 30 days after your first day on your new job. I know colleagues who've had job offers rescinded or who've been laid off—not for performance reasons but for the company's financial reasons—within their first 90 days who then have had to start their job searches all over again. (I've experienced this, too.) Consequently, some job search experts recommend that new hires keep interviewing for other jobs during their first 90 days at their new employer since that's a standard trial period for new hires during which employers can let them go for any reason.

If you focus your efforts on companies in growth industries where your skills are suited, and if you emphasize your ability to have an immediate impact on prospective employers' bottom lines, you'll be poised for success no matter how bad the economy. As Gregory Laka and Company's McCann notes, "There are not a lot of people who can leave their thumbprint on a business. Those individuals are the top 10 percent of the talent pool. They are the people that businesses will always look to hire no matter what the market or economy."

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Why the time is now for continuous integration in app development

The system of automatic software builds and tests can help developers make better apps with less effort

Continuous integration, in which software builds are automated and tested as code flows in, is becoming more prominent lately thanks to several trends: economics, agile software development, open source options, and distributed, complex projects.




Best comptia A+ Training, Comptia A+ Certification at Certkingdom.com



With continuous integration, software is put together quicker and tests are done faster, says developer Kohsuke Kawaguchi, who started the open source Hudson project in 2004 and moved on to the Jenkins fork last year after a dispute with Oracle. Code is constantly being integrated and tested, and farms of computers can become involved. "It becomes easier for developers to produce high-quality software," Kawaguchi says. The second benefit, he adds, is it "makes the project more transparent and more visible." This is beneficial for managers and testers who do not have the level of insight into the code as developers, he says.

[ After the spinout of Hudson and OpenOffice, does open source stand a chance at Oracle? InfoWorld's Paul Krill investigates. | Get the latest insights and news on application development with the Developer World newsletter. ]

Continuous integration systems trigger build systems like Apache Maven to start creating software. "It monitors your version control system, waiting for anybody to check in new code. As soon as it sees that a check-in has occurred, it grabs everything and builds it and tests it and then sends out via email or various other notification mechanisms the details of whether it worked or not," says Paul Julius, a co-founder of the CruiseControl open source continuous integration system that automates the process and offers rapid feedback, he says. Julius estimates that CruiseControl has millions of users.

Economics drive continuous integration
While the concept of continuous integration has been around for several years (CruiseControl debuted in 2001), officials and experts in the software industry see continuous integration becoming a more vital component in software development shops in the current business environment. Kawaguchi cites economics as a key driver. The price of computing is getting cheaper and cheaper, but the price of people remains more or less constant, he says.

Continuous integration, like IDEs before it, thus tries to shift the effort from developers to software, to reduce overall costs. "When I think of [continuous integration] servers, the main role that it achieves is to effectively harness the computing power in the lab or in the data center to make developers productive without making them do more work," Kawaguchi says.

The recent adoption of agile software development, in which software is developed in short iterations rather than mapped out months in advance, is a perfect fit for continuous integration, says Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, the new proprietor of Hudson. Continuous integration and the ability to share work across different development teams in agile projects "is an absolute must," says Milinkovich. "Agile implies you are doing things rapidly, and a big part of this is constantly pulling in the work of developers."

"People are finding the value of more agile practices and the value of integrating on regular basis, bringing the changes together," says John Wiegand, a distinguished engineer and chief architect at IBM Rational.