When I announced that we were going to discontinue TechConnection, I did say "unless we heard from you" (or words to that effect). And, we heard from you! Enough people took the time to tell us that they would really miss the monthly update. As long as you're reading, I'll keep writing.

It's definitely summer in Florida. Not as hot as it's going to get (sigh), but it's what Florida is all about. IT is heating up too! Remember my favorite prediction – you haven't seen anything like what's going to happen in IT from 2005 – 2015. We're halfway there; prediction's been right on so far. And, who expected the iPad to be so big? Which leads to: What's next????

It's exciting!

Here's the schedule or you can view the complete schedule on our Website:

CSTA Web sessions:
May 26, 27
July 12, 13
August 25, 26

UITJ (Understanding IT Jobs) Web sessions:
May 27
July 15

TR Web sessions:
June 16
August 18

Keep in touch - I love hearing from you - and keep up with technology!

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TechKnowledge

Unified Communications

Unified communications is one of those technologies that's seemingly forever been on the verge of exploding but has never really become hot. Well, it's on several lists of hot topics for 2010. So the first step in looking at this technology is to understand what it is. As usual with new terms, "unified communications" can mean different things to different people. To a desktop user, it means switching to an IP(internet)-based phone and taking advantage of a variety of such UC-based productivity applications as audio and video conferencing, instant messaging and presence, integrated voice and e-mail. To mobile workers on their smartphones, it means being able to use the mobile devices to perform all the business functions associated with an office phone. They want calls made to their desktop phones to bounce to their mobile phones. They want to dial into the office and have their e-mails and voice mails read to them. They want all their communications to sync up seamlessly and, if possible, automatically. And they want both real-time and non-real-time communications to be unified.

Unified communications really means letting people communicate anyway they want – through phone, email, IM (instant messaging), online chats, social networking, etc. It should be possible to easily transfer any activity or message to another medium. For example, one can receive a voice mail message and choose to access it through email or a cell phone. If the sender is online and currently accepts calls, the response can be sent immediately through text, chat or video call. Otherwise, it may be sent as a non real-time message that can be accessed through a variety of media. It combines real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), IP telephony, video conferencing, and call control with non real-time communication such as voicemail, e-mail, SMS (Short Message Service) and fax. Therefore it's not a single product, but a set of products.

One term associated with UC is presence. This is the technology that knows where one's intended recipients are and if they are available, in real time. Presence is the status of a person's current availability (online, idle, offline, etc.). Most experts believe that this is a necessary component of UC. For example, unified communications technology could allow a user to seamlessly collaborate with another person on a project, even from separate locations. The user could quickly locate the necessary person by accessing an interactive directory, engage in a text messaging session, and then escalate the session to a voice call, or even a video call – all within minutes. In another example, an employee receives a call from a customer who wants answers. Unified communications could enable that worker to access a real-time list of available expert colleagues, then make a call that would reach the necessary person, enabling the employee to answer the customer faster, and eliminating rounds of back-and-forth emails and phone-tag. Knowing who's available is critical in both examples.

Several vendors have moved into the UC arena and most use telephony-based and desktop-based systems. The telephony-based vendors include Cisco, Avaya-Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, and NEC. Desktop-based vendors include IBM, Microsoft, WebEx, and Google. In addition, RIM provides UC based on smartphones and SAP and Salesforce technology is based on the application. In other words, there are lots of choices and more to come.

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TechCheck

1. What vendor holds the largest market share in the server world?

2. What was the most popular anti-virus software in 2009?

3. Can you run software written for Windows on either Mac or Linux?

4. What technology is used in storage management to ensure best use of storage media?

5. What's the latest Android PDA?

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It's Fun to be Back

One of the "unintended consequences" of the drop-then-reinstate TechConnections decision making we just went through is that I realized what fun I have writing it! While I'm researching IT every week, it is the teaser in TechConnections, the challenge to word TechCheck questions so the answer isn't just a quick look-up in Tech Ref®, and the check on what's hot to decide what next month's technical article will be that really leads me to finding all sorts of cool info. I would have missed it –

Also, integrating TechConnections with Twitter, Facebook, and my blog all works and gives you the option of getting information from the source you visit most frequently. When I find interesting, important, or just plain fun information about IT, I tweet – and the tweet usually links to a blog with more information – and the blog gets posted on our Facebook fan page. Then that info becomes a question in TechCheck, or a technical article. And, of course, it's added to TechRef®.

Keeping up with IT is what we do, and I personally love doing it. Even after many years (no, I won't say how many) of working with IT, I'm still saying "Wow" on a regular basis. And when I find something new the first thing I want to do is share that information. So, keep on enjoying TechConnections.
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Short Vocabulary

Data Integration

Data integration is in! In fact, it's necessary for BI (Business Intelligence), BPM (Business Process Management), business analytics, and just about everything that's going on in today's IT. Now that we're using computers for planning, forecasting, and management instead of pure operational systems, we need to gather and process data from multiple sources.

data integration Data management technology and products that provide access to data from multiple, diverse sources, and automatically integrates like data from different sources across hundreds of data formats and applications, both within and outside of the enterprise. Data integration includes:
Data Cleansing/Data Scrubbing
Database Administration
Database Tuning
Data Quality/Assurance
Data Mining
Database Migration and Conversion/EDT.
Key trends in data integration include: extreme data integration scalability, distributed architectures for data integration, virtual and federal data integration, and real-time data integration. Integration can be accomplished by creating a new database from many sources, or by transforming data from one source to the other when integrating two sources. Data hubs and ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) products also perform data integration functions.

CDI (Customer Data Integration) Software type. Application or data management software used to consolidate and manage customer data from many sources. The data includes contact details, customer valuation data, information collected from direct marketing campaigns, and information from application systems. These systems let organizations develop an enterprise-wide customer data model suitable to provide a system of record for all master customer data and support a broad range of data structures contained in multiple customer data sources. CDI is often included in CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems.

dashboards Design architecture. A user interface that organizes information in a manner that is easy to use, and provides an at-a-glance view of current environment. Dashboards exist to provide a view of the operating environment with information about the status and performance of operating systems, DBMSs (DataBase Management Systems), network systems, and application systems. Knowledge management, or BI (Business Intelligence) dashboards provide information about business performance often using KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Dashboards provide current information which is continually updated. The information is presented in graphical format, with gauges, charts, and tables, and has drill-down capabilities from totals and summaries that allows users to interact with totals and summaries to get more detailed information. Dashboards contain much of the same functionality as portals.

data assurance Terminology. Data assurance states that data must have: Consistency; all aspects of the data must be available (also called completeness); Accuracy; information must be correct (also called correctness); Currency; information must be timely (also called relevancy).  Some definitions add the characteristics of: Validity; information must be important to the business, and Uniqueness; no duplicates are contained in the data. Data assurance is also called data quality, and data quality assurance.

data migration The process of moving data from one storage device to another, or moving data from one system to another. When data is moved to a new system, this includes converting the data to a new format. Data is migrated to new DBMSs (DataBase Management Systems), new application systems including ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, and data warehouse systems. Often included in ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) and text mining software.

data mining Analyzing data from large data sets to detect trends and associations. Querying data collections with no expectations of the results. Data mining also describes using data from legacy systems for current management decisions. Commonly used with data warehousing, but can be used with any large collection of data. Report mining, text mining, and Web mining are variations of data mining that work completely with unstructured data.

data scrubbing Data management function. Validating data for accuracy. Includes eliminating duplicates and inconsistencies. Often used with data warehousing, migrating legacy systems to newer technologies. Estimates state that up to 70% of the cost of implementing a data warehouse is eliminating "dirty data." Also called data cleansing.

database tuning Database processing. Managing and controlling the processing and performance of database activity. Includes monitoring response time, checking for bottlenecks, and performing load balancing. Activity of technical programmers. Also called performance tuning.

MDM (Master Data Management) Data integration concept that focuses on managing reference data, which is also called master data. Master data describes core business entities such as customers, locations, products, etc. It includes both traditional structured information and unstructured content such as documents and images. No single business application can provide all the core information on, e.g., a single customer. Information on a customer's individual purchases is captured by the sales system, credit card information is found in the billing system, and complaints and returns are in the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. The master data concept concentrated on a single system to build and maintain data that can then be accessed and created by the operational systems. Both CDI (Customer Data Integration) and PIM (Product Information Management) systems are vertical (industry specific) MDM systems. MDM functionality is also often included in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), EAI (Enterprise Application Interface), and BI (Business Intelligence) systems.

PIM (Product Information Management) Type of application software designed to create a single view of a product throughout an enterprise. These products store master data (or metadata) and other attribute data about products. Software first emerged in mid-2000s. Similar to CDI (Customer Data Integration), and both are included in MDM (Master Data Management).
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Answers to TechCheck

1. Well, according to HP, they do – but IBM states they moved into the #1 spot in 4th quarter, 2009. Remember you can get statistics to back up any argument. The point is, IBM is moving up in the server world. #1 in mainframes – and perhaps in servers, or midsize machines. And they just released new Power7 machines.

2. According to CNET, downloads of AVG Antivirus 8 lead the list. Version 9 is available now.

3. No, but CrossOver Linux and CrossOver Mac make this happen for some popular applications. Tools to allow multi-platform processing are really helpful in today's diverse IT.

4. Data tiering. This data management technology refers to moving data among various types of storage media as demand for it rises or falls. It means moving older or less frequently accessed data to slower, less expensive storage such as SATA drives or even tape can reduce hardware costs, while putting the most frequently accessed or most important data on faster, more expensive Fibre Channel drives or even solid-state drives (SSD). Automated data tiering means this is accomplished by software rather than manually as is the current norm.

5. Droid Incredible. Don't you love the name! This is the latest smartphone from HTC. Just released in April and considered to be competitive with Google's Nexus One – another Android smartphone.

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