5 Must-Haves in a Technology Partner

Embracing technology is essential for leaders who want to grow their businesses and maximize return on investment. That’s because technology enables you to scale your business, increase productivity, and sustain a competitive advantage. But to reap optimum rewards you need to stay abreast of current technology trends, assimilating the latest innovations judiciously along the way—a demanding task when you’re managing a business, trying to cope with customer needs, industry trends, ongoing operations and more. 

The answer is to discover a technology partner that’s able to help you design the ideal combination of technology, software platforms and services, and execute a solution tailored to your needs. Because of their daily exposure to a broad spectrum of clients, projects and industries, they enable you to leverage fresh ideas for increased efficiency. And one that will take a methodical approach that dramatically decreases your cost and time to implement your project.

“Dig your well before you’re thirsty” – Chinese Proverb

Finding the right technology partner, however, takes time. And it takes even longer to build a long-term, synergistic relationship where your partner is fully immersed in the intricacies of your business, your systems and your people. So start looking for a partner now and when you find them, put your new relationship on a test drive with a small pilot project.

The 5 Essential Questions to Ask Potential Technology Partners

You’ll discover many technology companies eager to partner with you, but ask these questions before you tie the knot.

1. Do they have competent people? 

Look for people who are not only passionate about technology, but also what it can do for your business. Your partner should have long-term, experienced employees who can tackle complex projects, protect you from problems they’ve encountered before, and bring unique insight and value to your project. They contribute innovative ideas, demonstrate thought leadership, and show you how leading-edge technology offers powerful opportunities. Then they create a technology road map that illustrates the steps required to reach your destination.

2. Do they have effective processes and systems in place?

Smart business solutions are the result of implementing knowledge and skills in a systematic way. Therefore, to gain confidence that a partner can deliver an innovative business solution without running into speed bumps along the way, it’s critical to learn what processes and systems they have in place.

For example, instead of communicating with never-ending e-mail strings, your partner should have a seamless collaboration system that centralizes communication, assures nothing falls through the cracks, and deadlines are met. They also use an intelligent project-management system to bring issues to the surface sooner; and have a well-defined development, change-order and deployment process.

3. Are they using best practices for development?

Using hybrid and agile development processes helps nail down cost-effective, timely solutions that deliver results.

A technology partner using a well integrated hybrid development process has local presence and global reach, enabling them to tap into talent and skill-sets from across the globe. The process empowers team members working across multiple time-zones, providing an around-the-clock development cycle for faster results. To be successful, communication is essential. It should include regular meetings on project status where team members synchronize their efforts and overcome obstacles together. Meanwhile the US-based team communicates with the client to assure their requirements are reflected accurately, and they are filled in on the project status every step along the way. 

An agile development process ensures active team-member and stakeholder involvement, timely updates, risk management, and cost control. All are crucial for large, complex projects with detailed specifications. By reviewing and reporting on the development process on a timely basis, agile development increases flexibility and the ability to adapt to change. The on-going active involvement of the entire team and the client reduces the time spent in meetings because of fast-paced decision making. This keeps the team motivated and boosts their performance.

4. Do They Offer End-to-End Solutions?

Your technology partner must be capable of taking your project from inception to deployment, and maintaining speed and agility throughout its life-cycle. This is a multifaceted, iterative endeavor that encompasses project scoping; defining requirements; building application architecture; designing and developing the application;quality assurance; maintaining and hosting the application; and ongoing support.

5. Do they have a broad technology background?

Because of the explosion in information technology innovation and knowledge, your technology partner needs to have wide and deep experience. Like most companies you probably need multiple technologies to run your business, for example, cloud services, Mobile Applications, and Web-based Solutions. Therefore, your partner needs the broad, experience and knowledge required to create a robust solution that intertwines these technologies for optimal results. 

For the most successful outcomes you also need to use best-of-breed technologies. For example, you may want to use Salesforce.com for customer relationship management, Microsoft SharePoint for collaboration, and an iPhone for your sales force. Thus, your technology partner must be able to work on all these platforms, recommend optimal technology combinations and integrate them. These capabilities also enable them to enhance outcomes by implementing distinct technologies on each project tier and designing the ultimate user experience. 

By relying on one partner to complete your whole project, you save time and don’t have to worry about coordinating activities of multiple vendors. 

The core message is that your partner should be a business solution architect, looking at the big picture, the challenges and opportunities unique to your business, and applying their know-how to create solutions tailored to your needs.

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5 IT experts weigh in on using software to your competitive advantage

To be successful in the digital economy, organizations must identify ways to use software to their competitive advantage. Whether you're opening new markets, using it to improve customer outcomes, or to save time and money, software may be what separates the winners and the losers in the digital age.

We spoke with five leading IT executives to find out how they are evolving their organizations to be more software-centric – their remarks are available for download below. The conversation features remarks from:

• Jay Ferro, CIO, American Cancer Society 
• Bryson Koehler, Chief Information and Technology Officer, The Weather Company
• John Marcante, CIO and Managing Director of Vanguard's IT Division, Vanguard
• Tom Soderstrom, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Office of the CIO, Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
• Cliff Tamplin, consultant and former Vice President of Technology Support and Risk Management for Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

In this roundtable, you will:

• Learn seven ways to help your company become more software focused.
• Find out the approach The Weather Company took to go from being a media company to a software company. You'll also learn why open source software is the “critical foundational component” of The Weather Company.
• Learn the three key steps Vanguard has taken to become more software-centric, and how you can begin to do all three at your own organization.
• Discover why software really is mission critical at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, including some mind-blowing background on the development deadlines JPL faces when it launches a spacecraft like Curiosity.
• Learn how the American Cancer Society is using a set of APIs to create new software that is opening up new corporate and cause-branding partnership discussions.

Download the CIO roundtable, “Software: The true competitive differentiator” to learn more.

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How to Choose the Right Network Monitoring Software for You

In today’s environment of constant security threats, network monitoring is an essential part of protecting any company’s infrastructure. After all, the right network monitoring solution can not only maximize uptime and efficiency, but alert you to potential security breaches before they cause devastating—and costly—outages.

What’s more, a powerful network monitoring software can save busy IT professionals countless hours that would be spent having to monitor the status of switches, routers, servers, and other devices. Network monitoring software can eliminate the need to spend hours in front of a screen, giving you the peace of mind that no matter where you are, you will still be notified of potential issues before they cause significant problems.  

In addition, a high-quality network monitoring software solution also offers the ability to:

• Improve overall network reliability
• Assist with capacity planning
• Track activity trends across the network
• View the network topology
• Streamline the troubleshooting process should issues arise

While understanding the benefits of network monitoring may be relatively straightforward, choosing the right software can be another story. Not all network monitoring solutions are created equally. IT and business leaders must select the option that provides the best protection for their organization’s sensitive information. Because of the importance of this task, there are several key factors to consider when selecting a network monitoring system.

Get more answers by downloading the Ultimate Buyer's Guide: Network Monitoring Software in 2017.

Key Factors to Consider

It’s important to select a network monitoring solution with a broad array of features, as choosing the right software can help you achieve high level goals with only a minimal investment of resources. When evaluating your network monitoring options, it’s crucial to consider the following things:

Scope

One of the first factors to think about is the scope of the solution. In these respects, there are a few questions network administrators should seek to answer to help make this decision.

• Will the solution be required in a single location or at multiple sites?
• Will the system be used to monitor servers as well as all other network devices?
• Will remote sites need monitoring as well?
• Will virtual environments—such as storage, log file aggregation, or custom programs—need to be monitored?
• Should systems that are typically down, like standby servers or cellular WAN links, be included?

These are considerably important questions to ask and answer, as the decisions made here will impact nearly all other aspects of the project. For this reason, take your time, do your research, and ensure that you come to the correct and best conclusions.

Connectivity and Scalability

Another factor to consider involves the architecture of the solution, including its connectivity and scalability. Your network is not going to stay the same. Every day it evolves business needs and requirements. For this reason, decision-makers should take into account the system’s connectivity to ensure the infrastructure can handle the requirements of the technology and its components. This is particularly important if considering an agentless solution, because these utilize a collector to poll source devices and pass along information. When considering connectivity, network administrators should examine the limits of these collectors to see how many devices can be supported and how much data will be traveling across the network.

While one of the more difficult considerations, it's also important to take a look at the system's options for scalability. Know what kind of load the monitoring application can stand, and what your choices are when (and if) you reach that limit. This will help ensure a longer lifecycle for the program as the company will be able to utilize it even if considerable growth occurs.

Deployment: On-Premise, Off-Premise, or in the Cloud?

Gone are the days of on-premise technology being the norm. With the rise of cloud and hybrid IT, administrators have more options when it comes to finding the right network monitoring solution for their business. Your IT team can manage your solution on-premise or in the cloud, or a third-party can manage it at their site, either on-premise or in the cloud.

Organizations who want more granular control of their network and its activities may prefer solutions that can be managed on-site. Those wanting to control costs may be interested in the cloud. For those who lack the time or resources to manage software themselves, a service provider may be ideal. What's best for one organization may not be best for another. Look at your organizational goals, the size of your IT team, and the resources you have on hand, and choose accordingly. 

Related Content: On-Premise vs. Cloud Network Monitoring: Which is Right for You?

Automatic Discovery

Some solutions come with built-in automatic discovery, allowing the technology to scan the network using Simple Network Management protocol (SNMP) to determine the current status of network components. For example, should the company add a new network component, a network monitoring solution with an automatic discovery scan feature can include the addition of that device to ensure your map is always up to date.

Topology Mapping

Alongside the need for discovery is the need for layer 2/3 topology mapping, which enables network administrators to have a visual representation of the infrastructure and its components.The mapping feature will not only identify but also help place devices in respect to their connections and relationship with other devices. The network topology mapping is an essential process to not only provide you with a visual outlay of your network, but also to intuitively maintain your network and provide you with performance and availability monitoring.

Alerting

Finally, intelligent alerting ensures that key employees, including network administrators and other IT staff, are notified should anything suspicious or out of the ordinary be discovered on the network. These kinds of activities can signal a breach, and intelligent alerting capabilities give the IT team the opportunity to respond to and mitigate any harmful tasks being carried out before they damage the network.

Intermapper: A Powerful, Easy-to-Use Solution

Intermapper is a comprehensive network monitoring, mapping, and alerting software that is both powerful and easy to use. Intermapper brings your network to life, presenting real-time views of traffic, device status, severity levels, and more. Its auto-discovery feature allows you to instantly map any device in your network, eliminating the need to manually enter device information. What’s more, it utilizes exception reporting, meaning you’ll only be notified as potential issues arise—not when things are running smoothly.

The Layer 2 module provides an in-depth, granular view of all equipment connections, while color-coded icons indicate if a problem has been acknowledged or remedied. Intermapper can monitor switches, routers, servers, or any other IP-enabled device and provide dynamic data, including response time, uptime, CPU and memory utilization, transactions per second, and even temperature. You can set up custom notifications to be alerted when customizable thresholds are exceeded or met. Intermapper’s responsive web interface allows you to monitor your network from anywhere, at any time, even from your tablet or mobile device.

Selecting the best network monitoring solution can take time and consideration, but having a powerful solution in place can help bolster security and offer improved insight into the health of your network. What’s more, it can save your company time, money, and peace of mind, allowing you to rest easy that your organization is working efficiently with a sound infrastructure.

Learn more about Intermapper: 

• Feature Tour
• Customer Stories
• Pricing

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Word Prediction - Better Living Through Technology

Word prediction when typing has become common place thanks to the feature built into mobile phones. However long before that word prediction was available for individuals who have difficulty typing efficiently on standard computers.

Word prediction can be useful for people who type slowly due to physical difficulties. Particularly for those who use a keyguard, large keyboard, or Windows’ free Slow Keys feature, or for those who type with one hand.

It is also useful for individuals who type slowly due to inefficiency in finding keys on the keyboard, and for people with dyslexia who make have difficulties with spelling.

Word prediction is often built into on-screen keyboards, and for users of switch access (for example for individuals with motor neurone disease).

Windows Word Prediction

This is a list of software that supports prediction on Microsoft Windows PCs:

• Penfriend
• Read & Write
• Co:Writer
• WordQ
• Clicker
• Click N Type
• Dasher
• Arabic Reader Writer
• ClaroRead

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Leveraging Software-Defined Technology To Drive A Successful Infrastructure Refresh

The race toward greater business agility means that organizations from all markets are rapidly undergoing some sort of rearchitecture of their network. This reachitecture, or digital transformation, will help businesses innovate faster, become more agile and will enable them to gain competitive advantages.

Riverbed

By leveraging SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) technology, IT is able to be far more efficient in network management, and have a more expedient support.

You might be asking yourself, what does this rearchitecture exactly mean? This can mean anything from moving segments of a business’s network to the cloud, to implementing a set of compliance criteria, to provisioning a new experimentation framework. All of these tasks offer the promise of cost savings and lower management overhead, which sounds like a no brainer. But how you handle this kind of infrastructure refresh is critical, as IT departments are already stretched, and with the wrong technology, these projects can involve additional operational and network related responsibilities. Legacy networks and approaches are not the answer. It’s time to move to a next-generation, software-defined architecture.

By leveraging SD-WAN (software-defined wide area networking) technology, IT is able to be far more efficient in network management, and have a more expedient support— cost savings any business welcomes. That is why SD-WAN is expected to grow to more than $8 billion by 2021 according to IDC’s Worldwide SD-WAN Forecast, 2017-2021.

What is SD-WAN?

SD-WAN uses a software layer of technology to centralize both the management and operation of a network. This is an ideal choice for businesses that are hoping to take advantage of a more cloud-based infrastructure, deploy an immediate application policy change across the entire network, or more raplidly roll out digital services.

Truth be told, any network focused initiative is a good reason to consider the adoption of SD-WAN technology, because it’s becoming more and more clear that the traditional legacy network has become a barrier for business agility. Managing network traffic, ensuring bandwidth availability and maintaining performance are demanding on resources, and also add to the overall complexity of a traditional network. When you factor in the additional time and resources required to do the heavy lifting when undergoing a cloud migration, or any new change to the network, considering the use of SD-WAN technology becomes a critical component of your infrastructure refresh, because it becomes much easier to use and manage.

Why SD-WAN?

Typically, when a business decides to deploy SD-WAN technology, two of the main reasons for doing so are to save money and maximize resources. This may seem simplistic, but breaking it down to these two drivers is a great way to get the attention of business owners. Also, they go hand in hand when viewing the benefits of SD-WAN technology for IT teams.

As business operations become more distributed, and as applications and their workloads move to the cloud, connectivity becomes another high priority for IT, as well as ensuring efficiency of the network. An SD-WAN can manage this by taking advantage of additional sources of bandwidth, including broadband internet, which are less expensive than relying on traditional MLPS (multiprotocol label switching) for connectivity. All of this, while also providing clear visibility to IT personnel across the WAN. For that organization— a wide compliance push, and a centralized management console of an SD-WAN solution enables a task that was once very time consuming to everything being implemented with just a few clicks.

And finally, for that network provisioning need, again, the centralized management capability of SD-WAN makes this task incredibly fast with the additional ability to monitor all network resources to ensure that the impact on overall network performance is not jeopardized.

By leveraging SD-WAN as part of any infrastructure initiatives, not only can you reduce the expenses associated with the traditional network, but you will be also able to deliver greater flexibility and operational efficiency to the IT organization. This newfound efficiency and effectiveness of IT with the use of SD-WAN technology provides an unbeatable value to any business in the today’s cloud and digital world.

An earlier version of this article was published in Forbes Technology Council.

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Learn About Open-Source Software

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software distributed with its source code available for modification. The software usually includes a license for programmers to change the software in any way they choose. They can fix bugs, improve functions, or adapt the software to suit their own needs. The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a leading authority on OSS; their definition of open-source software complies with rules under 10 criteria.

These include:

• Software redistribution
• Source code availability
• Distribution of licenses
• License properties
• Anti-discrimination

Licenses

Different licenses allow programmers to modify the software with various conditions attached. The OSI approves licenses that comply with their definition of open-source software. 5 of the most popular licenses according to the Black Duck Knowledgebase are:

1. MIT License
2. GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0
3. Apache License 2.0
4. GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0
5. BSD License 2.0 (3-clause, New or Revised)

When you change the source code, one requirement of OSS is the inclusion of what you changed as well as your methods. The software created after code modifications may or may not be made available for free.

The Difference Between Open-Source and Commercial Software

Commercially available software, or proprietary software, doesn’t give access to its source code because the software is someone else's intellectual property.

As a result, users often pay for it.

OSS, on the other hand, is a collaborative effort -- the software is shared intellectual property among all who have helped develop or alter it.

Open-Source Software Vs. Free Software

Contrary to popular belief, neither focuses on the cost, or lack thereof, of the programs.

Open Source entails the free availability of source code and distribution. Free software, in like manner, includes code modification but emphasizes the freedoms users enjoy to do what they like with the software. The Free Software Foundation outlines 4 conditions for software to be considered completely free.

In addition, software can be classified as freeware. This means users download the software at no cost, but they cannot make any changes to its source code.

Advantages of Open-Source Software

While cost is a driving factor, OSS has several additional benefits:

• High-quality results when the source code is passed around, tested and fixed.
• It is a valuable learning opportunity for programmers. They can learn and apply skills to the most popular programs available today.
• Many consider open-source software more secure than proprietary software because bugs are identified and fixed quickly.
• Since open-source software is in the public domain, there is little chance it can become unavailable. This is important for long-term projects that rely on these tools for the duration of the project.
• Most of the software is free. Costs may arise later, however, such as subscriptions or support fees.

Popular Types of Open-Source Software

Open-source technologies helped establish much of the internet.

Furthermore, many of the programs you and I use every day are based on open-source technologies. For example, Android OS and Apple’s OS X are based on the kernel and Unix/BSD open-source technologies, respectively.

Other popular open-source software is:

• Mozilla's Firefox web browser
• Thunderbird email client
• PHP scripting language
• Python programming language
• Apache HTTP web server
• database system

Open Source and Developers

OSS projects are collaboration opportunities that improve skills and build connections in the field. Developers must be proficient with standard tools of open-source development.

• Communication tools - Email, real-time messaging, forums, and wikis help developers to find solutions or bounce ideas off each other.
• Distributed revision control systems - When multiple developers in different geographical locations modify data and files, these systems manage the different versions and updates.

• Bug trackers and task lists - Allow large-scale projects to monitor issues and keep track of their fixes.
• Testing and debugging tools - Automate testing during system integration and debug other programs.

Conclusion

Thousands of open-source projects are alternatives to proprietary software. Work on an OSS project as a pathway to building a career in software development. In addition, programmers can hone their skills by working on the biggest software programs in the world. Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn release software as Open Source, so developers can share knowledge, innovate solutions and contribute to stable, functional products.

SOURCE: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-open-source-software-2071941

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