NowPos M-Solutions Pvt. Ltd. NowPos is a Mobile Technology Development and Services company that specializes in custom solution development on various mobile platforms. Established in 2005, with offices in CA, USA and an offshore development center at Hyderabad, India, NowPos has over the years garnered expertise in developing mobile and web based solutions for industry verticals such as mobile based Advertising, Healthcare (mHealth), Patient Care and information capturing (m-PRO), Entertainment and Media, supported by robust web platforms.
Online Video Collaboration for Manufacturing Industry - Summary ReportAbhizar Bootwala
Large companies with project teams spread over several countries and multiple time zones are increasingly turning to videoconferencing to connect geographically dispersed groups. Companies are realizing that flying employees from one location to the next not only chalks up travel costs, but also decreases productivity and leads to team exhaustion.
Of course, videoconferencing isn’t a complete replacement for face-to-face meetings. Companies that are leading the way in videoconferencing report those periodic in-person visits are still necessary and they caution that videoconferencing is most effective if team members already have an existing relationship. There’s no doubt personal videoconferencing tools can enhance remote employees’ communication and productivity. Video ties together disparate and often isolated workers by letting physical, visual nuances shine through.
White Paper: Software Supply Chain Automation: Going Beyond Agile, Lean and D...Sonatype
This white paper highlights similarities between automobile manufacturing and software development with compelling information about how supply chain best practices could solve many common development issues, especially those relating to managing the flow of components into and though an organization.
NowPos M-Solutions Pvt. Ltd. NowPos is a Mobile Technology Development and Services company that specializes in custom solution development on various mobile platforms. Established in 2005, with offices in CA, USA and an offshore development center at Hyderabad, India, NowPos has over the years garnered expertise in developing mobile and web based solutions for industry verticals such as mobile based Advertising, Healthcare (mHealth), Patient Care and information capturing (m-PRO), Entertainment and Media, supported by robust web platforms.
Online Video Collaboration for Manufacturing Industry - Summary ReportAbhizar Bootwala
Large companies with project teams spread over several countries and multiple time zones are increasingly turning to videoconferencing to connect geographically dispersed groups. Companies are realizing that flying employees from one location to the next not only chalks up travel costs, but also decreases productivity and leads to team exhaustion.
Of course, videoconferencing isn’t a complete replacement for face-to-face meetings. Companies that are leading the way in videoconferencing report those periodic in-person visits are still necessary and they caution that videoconferencing is most effective if team members already have an existing relationship. There’s no doubt personal videoconferencing tools can enhance remote employees’ communication and productivity. Video ties together disparate and often isolated workers by letting physical, visual nuances shine through.
White Paper: Software Supply Chain Automation: Going Beyond Agile, Lean and D...Sonatype
This white paper highlights similarities between automobile manufacturing and software development with compelling information about how supply chain best practices could solve many common development issues, especially those relating to managing the flow of components into and though an organization.
The State of the Technical Communication Industry: tcworld India 2013 Keynote...Scott Abel
The keynote address, delivered February 21, 2013 at tcworld India conference, Bangalore, India. The presentation provides a summary of the 2012 Technical Communication Industry Benchmarking Survey produced by The Content Wrangler. The survey aimed to capture the current methods, standards and tools used -- as well as future plans of -- the technical documentation and training departments of large, global, content-heavy organizations.
The Momentum of Open Standards - a Pragmatic Approach to Software Interoperab...ePractice.eu
Authors: Trond Arne Undheim, Jochen Friedrich.
Software is increasingly embedded in society. Fewer and fewer solutions are stand-alone, hence interoperability amongst software from different vendors is crucial to governments, industry and the third sector.
04. Agile development of sustainable software - Joost Visser - #ScaBru18AgileConsortiumINT
Ventouris is a 12-year old product fully developed and maintained using agile and XP practices. Demonstrated sustainable agility, plus quality commendation from external auditors confirming compliance to regulatory requirements, very limited technical debt and high maintainability. The result of a partnership between 8 employer’s social security competitors collaborate through the scaling of agile teams.
Virtualization: Improve Speed and Increase QualityTechWell
Many development and test organizations must work within the confines of compressed release cycles, various agile methodologies, and cloud and mobile environments for their business applications. So, how can test organizations keep up with the pace of development and increase the quality of their applications under test? Clint Sprauve describes how service virtualization and network virtualization can help your team improve speed and increase quality. Learn how to use service virtualization to simulate third-party or internal web services to remove wait times and reduce the need for high cost infrastructures required for testing. Take back techniques for incorporating network virtualization into the testing environment to simulate real-world network conditions. Learn from Clint how the combination of service and network virtualization allows teams to implement a robust and consistent continuous testing strategy to reduce defects in production applications.
nduced Mutation by Colchicine Treatment of Somatic Embryos in ‘Namwa’ Banana ...drboon
Hexaploids of the ‘Namwa’ banana (Musa sp ABB) were obtained by in vitro colchicine treatment of somatic embryos. Somatic embryos were induced on a medium containing MS medium supplemented with 8 mg/l picloram. Somatic embryos were treated with four different concentrations of colchicine (0, 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, %) in liquid MS medium supplemented with 0.22 mg/l zeatin, and shaken (60 rpm) at 25 0C in darkness for 48, 72 or 96 hours. Higher colchicine concentrations exhibited higher mortality rates ranging from 8–20%, 48–62% and 80–90% mortality on concentrations 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 % colchicine respectively. Mortality rate generally increased with increased treatment time. Hexaploids were obtained at a frequency of 2 % with treatments 0.05 % colchicine for 96 hours, and 1 % colchicine for 48 hours as determined by flow cytometry.
Nowadays, the information is exchanged among the computer network. These data and information are involved in business, military, academic education, research and etc. which are shared around the world in both private and public network. Since, many categories of data are required restriction on authorization of access, modify, delete and insert, security in communication is increasingly important to the network communication. Currently, computer security applies mathematic theory to computer security for encrypting and decrypting on both sender and receiver. To use security attack with high performance computer (e.g. quantum computer), attacker can find a key and then obtains the data in feasible period. Quantum cryptography is one of the solutions that use property of polarization to ensure that transmitted data is not trapped by eavesdropper. Quantum cryptography is improved significantly in the last decades including the most two dominant protocol BB84 and BB92.
Composing Communities… with People > Process > Tools.
Presentation delivered by Dr. Mark Elliott from Collabforge for the 'Making a Small World Smaller' conference at State Library of Victoria, 7 September 2010.
The State of the Technical Communication Industry: tcworld India 2013 Keynote...Scott Abel
The keynote address, delivered February 21, 2013 at tcworld India conference, Bangalore, India. The presentation provides a summary of the 2012 Technical Communication Industry Benchmarking Survey produced by The Content Wrangler. The survey aimed to capture the current methods, standards and tools used -- as well as future plans of -- the technical documentation and training departments of large, global, content-heavy organizations.
The Momentum of Open Standards - a Pragmatic Approach to Software Interoperab...ePractice.eu
Authors: Trond Arne Undheim, Jochen Friedrich.
Software is increasingly embedded in society. Fewer and fewer solutions are stand-alone, hence interoperability amongst software from different vendors is crucial to governments, industry and the third sector.
04. Agile development of sustainable software - Joost Visser - #ScaBru18AgileConsortiumINT
Ventouris is a 12-year old product fully developed and maintained using agile and XP practices. Demonstrated sustainable agility, plus quality commendation from external auditors confirming compliance to regulatory requirements, very limited technical debt and high maintainability. The result of a partnership between 8 employer’s social security competitors collaborate through the scaling of agile teams.
Virtualization: Improve Speed and Increase QualityTechWell
Many development and test organizations must work within the confines of compressed release cycles, various agile methodologies, and cloud and mobile environments for their business applications. So, how can test organizations keep up with the pace of development and increase the quality of their applications under test? Clint Sprauve describes how service virtualization and network virtualization can help your team improve speed and increase quality. Learn how to use service virtualization to simulate third-party or internal web services to remove wait times and reduce the need for high cost infrastructures required for testing. Take back techniques for incorporating network virtualization into the testing environment to simulate real-world network conditions. Learn from Clint how the combination of service and network virtualization allows teams to implement a robust and consistent continuous testing strategy to reduce defects in production applications.
nduced Mutation by Colchicine Treatment of Somatic Embryos in ‘Namwa’ Banana ...drboon
Hexaploids of the ‘Namwa’ banana (Musa sp ABB) were obtained by in vitro colchicine treatment of somatic embryos. Somatic embryos were induced on a medium containing MS medium supplemented with 8 mg/l picloram. Somatic embryos were treated with four different concentrations of colchicine (0, 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, %) in liquid MS medium supplemented with 0.22 mg/l zeatin, and shaken (60 rpm) at 25 0C in darkness for 48, 72 or 96 hours. Higher colchicine concentrations exhibited higher mortality rates ranging from 8–20%, 48–62% and 80–90% mortality on concentrations 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 % colchicine respectively. Mortality rate generally increased with increased treatment time. Hexaploids were obtained at a frequency of 2 % with treatments 0.05 % colchicine for 96 hours, and 1 % colchicine for 48 hours as determined by flow cytometry.
Nowadays, the information is exchanged among the computer network. These data and information are involved in business, military, academic education, research and etc. which are shared around the world in both private and public network. Since, many categories of data are required restriction on authorization of access, modify, delete and insert, security in communication is increasingly important to the network communication. Currently, computer security applies mathematic theory to computer security for encrypting and decrypting on both sender and receiver. To use security attack with high performance computer (e.g. quantum computer), attacker can find a key and then obtains the data in feasible period. Quantum cryptography is one of the solutions that use property of polarization to ensure that transmitted data is not trapped by eavesdropper. Quantum cryptography is improved significantly in the last decades including the most two dominant protocol BB84 and BB92.
Composing Communities… with People > Process > Tools.
Presentation delivered by Dr. Mark Elliott from Collabforge for the 'Making a Small World Smaller' conference at State Library of Victoria, 7 September 2010.
Effective Moisture Diffusivity and Activation Energy of Tomato in Thin Layer ...drboon
The aim of this paper is to report tomato slice moisture diffusivity data determined and activation energy from experimental drying kinetics. The thin-layer drying experiments were carried out under five air temperatures of 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80ºC, two air velocity 1.5, and 2 m/s and three level of relative humidity 20, 40 and 60%. It was observed that drying took place in the falling rate period. Moisture transfer from tomato slice was described by applying the Fick’s diffusion model. The effective diffusivity values changed from 9.9119×10^-10 to 6.4037×10^-9 m^2/s for the range of temperatures considered. An Arrhenius relation with an activation energy value of 33.3299 to 43.2287 kJ/mol and the diffusivity constant value of 1.7695×10^-4 to 3.09156×10^-2 m^2/s were obtained which shows the effect of drying air temperature, air velocity and relative humidity on the diffusivity.
Digital Engineering: Top 5 Imperatives for Communications, Media and Technolo...Cognizant
Many communications, media and technology companies share similar digital objectives. Here are our recommendations for realizing five common digital goals, and a look at a few companies that have succeeded with meeting them.
Continuous Delivery Operating Model for Entertainment Video Providers: Buildi...Cognizant
To compete with digital streaming natives, established entertainment video providers need to build a streamlined, waste-free pipeline for rapid software delivery. We recommend an integrated approach to the four types of change needed: culture, process, engineering practices and platforms.
I held this presentation on IT Policy in Europe 2010-2013: The Imperative of Walking
the Talk on Openness at the European Commission today. Walking the talk on
openness means real measures to push open standards-based interoperability across the European value chain—in all verticals.
Critical steps in Determining Your Value Stream Management SolutionDevOps.com
In order to increase your delivery velocity, you must find, identify and solve the bottlenecks of delivery. Value Stream management solutions capture metrics and processes helping guide your digital transformation journey.
Join Marc Hornbeek, Principal Consultant and Jeff Keyes from Plutora where they will discuss a methodology determining a value stream management solution for your organization. It will consist of critical steps including a Review of VSM Assessments, Future-State Value Stream Mapping, Road-Mapping VSM Transformation, and more. Following these steps provide a logical and comprehensive approach to determine a value stream management solution that fits for your organization’s requirements.
What will be learned:
WHY – is following steps for determining a VSM solution important?
HOW – are VSM solutions determined?
WHAT – is the expected outcome of a Value Stream Management solution recommendation?
Five Reasons To Integrate Microsoft Visual Studio Team Systems_victoria
This guide will provide you with a comprehensive overview on why VSTS is vital across all phases of product life-cycle management. It will also help you to better understand how you can rationalize development costs, gain higher product quality and accelerate development cycles with VSTS.
Architecture bridges the semantic gap between the requirements and software. The use of an architecture–centered development process for delivering information technology began with the introduction of client / server based systems.
Read this Executive Brief to understand why your team should make the case to modernize your communications and collaboration infrastructure.
Understand why it's time to move forward with modernizing your communications infrastructure.
Discover the productivity and efficiency gains you can achieve.
Redefine how you think about communications.
Learn how to build a strategy that addresses both unified communications and collaboration.
Understand Info-Tech's methodology and approach to modernizing communications and collaboration infrastructure.
How to add security in dataops and devopsUlf Mattsson
The emerging DataOps is not Just DevOps for Data. According to Gartner, DataOps is a collaborative data management practice focused on improving the communication, integration and automation of data flows between data managers and consumers across an organization.
The goal of DataOps is to create predictable delivery and change management of data, data models and related artifacts. DataOps uses technology to automate data delivery with the appropriate levels of security, quality and metadata to improve the use and value of data in a dynamic environment.
This session will discuss how to add Security in DataOps and DevOps.
Streaming Processes: Creating a Start-up Within a Big Corporate (Mohammad Sha...Executive Leaders Network
Presented at Executive Leaders Network CMO/DPO/CIO/CISO Event on October 06th.
"How Haleon have established a software-defined lifecycle that decreases the effort required for build and integration. Making new features, bug fixes, experiments, configuration changes always ready for deployment to a production environment."
Slides from webinar, co-hosted by the Vivit UK & Ireland Local User Groups on May 27th 2020. James Walker from Curiosity Software Ireland presented on model-based testing for ALM/Octane, setting out how model-based testing enables greater communication, collaboration and end-to-end automation.
For many organizations today, ALM Octane provides the single source of truth for distributed teams. Its scalable test management keeps testers and developers synchronised with granular analysis of testing progress and results, all integrated into CI/CD pipelines and agile methodologies. However, the quality of this testing remains dependent on the quality of the tests fed in and assigned to testers. Testing speed furthermore remains limited by the efficiency of that test creation. Manual, unsystematic test design and a reliance on low-coverage production data will still lead to low coverage tests. Those tests will also remain impossible to maintain in tight iterations, leaving new releases further exposed to damaging bugs. Impeccable test management instead deserves impeccable test design.
This webinar demonstrated how model-based test generation seamlessly maintains optimized test cases and data in ALM Octane, all linked to system requirements and automation frameworks for in-sprint maintenance and test execution. You will discover a requirements-driven approach to test maintenance, in which test cases, scripts and data are maintained as quick-to-build flowcharts are updated. Powerful mathematical algorithms generate the smallest set of tests needed to “cover” the latest system logic, with “just in time” data allocation to ensure that every test has valid test data. Pushing the tests to integrated automation frameworks enables truly “Continuous Testing”, with granular run results synchronized automatically in ALM Octane.
By focusing on organizational enablers and robust software engineering practices, e-commerce companies can shorten the development lifecycle, outmaneuver the competition and remain relevant in the eyes of customers.
I created this Windows DNA report file I have tried my best to clarify all relevant details of the topics that should be included in the report. Although I initially tried to outline this topic, my efforts and my unconditional commitment to common business ended in success. I sincerely thank those who support me in coaching this topic, thank you for giving me strength, trust in me, and most importantly, every time I want, there will be a hint of this topic. Priyanka Vijay Jadhav "Windows DNA" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-5 | Issue-4 , June 2021, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.compapers/ijtsrd43690.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.comcomputer-science/computer-architecture/43690/windows-dna/priyanka-vijay-jadhav
This is an academic presentation that discusses as a philosophical level the transformation that IT is experiencing in relation to cloud computing. There is some emphasis and examples around Microsoft's implementation of Windows Azure, but the principles are reflected in most cloud platforms today.
This presentation is ideal to initiate students, academics, IT Managers, and CIOs on the implications of Cloud computing.
Steve Beswick, Director of Education Sector, discusses Microsoft's place in education. His presentation provide guidance and vision for headmasters, principals, IT managers, and administrators about a variety of technical topics related to education. Topics discussed in clude virtual learning gateways, SharePoint, data management, and organizational agility.
How Microsoft Secures its Online Services [WHITEPAPER]ukdpe
Service security must be proactively designed in to all aspects of the online experience, from the software itself to the supporting infrastructure, from the day-to-day best practices for your own information workers to the buildings housing the data centers. The security architecture for the Business Productivity Online Suite embodies the key principles of the company’s Trustworthy Computing Initiative: security created by design, by default, and by deployment. Developed for global enterprises, Microsoft’s multi-faceted security program applies a common set of security policies to manage risk and mitigate threats to customer data. Microsoft seeks to improve security by working to standardize the way it tests, implements, and monitor policies for all of its customers. In turn, each Business Productivity Online Suite customer benefits from Microsoft’s experience with the security concerns of customers all over the world — and from the practices Microsoft applies to address them.
Package, Stream, Manage. Application virtualiization isolates applications to create a conflict free environment with manageability as the cornerstone to successful service delivery in large organizations. With App-V, deploy applications in seconds to thousands of computers automagically.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
From Daily Decisions to Bottom Line: Connecting Product Work to Revenue by VP...
Standards @ Microsoft
1. Standards and software – combining
innovation and interoperability
John A. Phillips – UK National
Standards Officer
8th June 2009
2. Contents
• The challenges and opportunities
• Learning the interoperability lesson from
telecoms standardization
• Dealing with innovation in software
• Standards and interoperability at Microsoft
3. A time of change
• This is a time of change. Today our customers have diverse
and complex needs that no single IT company alone can
address.
• Increasing globalization, rising Internet use, and higher
consumer and businesses expectations are driving
increased demand for technology choices and flexibility.
• Technology can present new opportunities and solve new
problems. Today, many governments and businesses alike
have assembled a diverse mix of applications and
technologies from a variety of vendors operating in mixed
IT environments.
4. The challenges and opportunities
• Right now we are seeing customers demand solutions to more
complex problems. Technical interoperability is usually achieved but
being augmented by new requirements for semantic, organizational
and political interoperability requirements.
• Thus the biggest challenge faced today is in constructing system
solutions requiring end-to-end interoperability with
– Multiple components from multiple vendors
– Room for innovation in platforms and applications
– Licensed or open-source software
– Capacity to cope with rapid development
– In-house hosted systems, or in the cloud
– Data preserving its meaning over time and across domains
– ...
• Interoperability = Choice
5. Telecoms: the PSTN, standards and
interoperability
• Although the ITU itself dates back to 18651, the formal
standardization processes are more recent.
• Two consultative committees were created by the ITU’s
1925 Paris conference to deal with the complexities of the
international telephone services (known as CCIF, as the
French acronym) and long-distance telegraphy (CCIT)2.
• In view of the basic similarity of many of the technical
problems faced by the CCIF and CCIT, a decision was taken
in 1956 to merge them to become the single International
Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, in
the French acronym) 2.
– 1 http://www.itu.int/net/about/history.aspx
– 2 http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/50/docs/ITU-T_50.pdf (p8)
6. Telecoms: newer telecommunication
systems
• As a result of decades of work on standards the
telephone network became the world’s biggest multi-
domain, multi-vendor machine and very reliable – but
it has a very simple service model and so the semantic
issues are simple to deal with.
• Newer systems such as GSM, 3G and 4G wireless
systems have had to use better standardization and
testing regimes to achieve world-wide interoperability
and reliability in a much shorter time; and they are
tackling the key issue of new and innovative services
and their interoperability.
7. Telecoms: new tools for ensuring
interoperability in new systems
• Test suites for conformance
• AND test suites for interoperability – they’re not
the same
• AND formal methods built in to the standard to
assist with conformance and interoperability
testing
• AND feedback to the standard from the
interoperability testing
8. Attacking interoperability in telecoms
standards (the ETSI process)
• ETSI’s initiatives to achieve interoperability
– Technical Committee Methods for Testing and
Specification (MTS)
• Based on ISO/EC 9646
• Defining most advanced test frameworks and test
methodologies
– Centre for Testing and Interoperability (CTI)
• Efficient and systematic Test Specification Development
• Customized Test Services
• Specialist Task Forces
– Plugtests service to perform interoperability testing
9. ETSI interoperability testing
• Plugtests, also known as bake-off (at
IETF), plugfests and interop:
– Provides feedback to the standardization process
– Helps to ensure end users’ satisfaction
– Improves both quality and features of
implementations
– Accelerates time to market via quick product
debugging
11. What about innovation?
• Innovation and interoperability can sometimes sit
uncomfortably together but they can be made
compatible.
• But there are techniques in standards-writing:
– Rules for writing standards to allow innovation without
causing mis-operation
– Rules for implementing these techniques (often need to be
understood by implementers if they are not explicitly
written as part of the standard)
• Software standards writers can build in a protected
corner in their standards for private experiments on
innovative services.
12. Software – the challenge
• The software industry is much younger and has yet to grapple with
– More complex systems with more potential for major customer
dissatisfaction
– More innovative development model
– Becoming as critical to enterprises and to society as the telephone
networks
– More difficulty building the bridge between product planning and
standards
• Formal methods are largely absent from standardization and there’s
limited interop. Testing
• IETF has successfully used interoperability testing for small
systems, but today we have forthcoming semantic, organizational
and political problems coming ...
– NGN/SOA – a software version of the PSTN
– e-Health, e-Government, ...
13. Software – the first steps
• Need to address interoperability and
innovation in an increasingly multi-vendor
world and MS is doing this.
• MS bringing maturity to software standards by
focussing on interoperability: external
standards engagement team; internal product
engagement team; under the same
organization to connect the two.
14. Interoperability in Microsoft
Engagement
Product
Plans
Interop V-Teams
Plans
Standards Germany, Japan, France, U
K, India, Brussels, LATAM,
Team U.S., Canada, APAC, China,
Standards CEE, WE, MEA
Counseling Global Input
Business
Groups
Execution
Customers
Direct BG and Interop Team Engagement Governments
Standards bodies
15. Microsoft standards team
• External engagement team
– With Standards Development Organizations – to
contribute our expertise and monitor global
trends
• Internal engagement team
– With products – to build in product cycle
interoperability planning from the very start
• Working together under the same leadership
to make the connection
16. Microsoft is ...
• Committed to weaving interoperability into
the fabric of the company, and also through a
collaborative approach with different
communities, government and standards
bodies
• Committed to making software standards
mature enough with suitable tools to ensure
high-reliability interoperability in an
innovative multi-vendor environment
18. Abstract
• The vibrancy and innovation of the software industry is
incredible. It has created the modern tools needed by
competitive enterprises. But raw innovation in the modern
multi-vendor, multi-domain environment can challenge
interoperability as implementers interpret standards in
different ways.
• The advanced software architect needs to combine
innovation and interoperability in complex systems to keep
customers happy.
• This session will explore the challenges today’s
standardisers in the software domain may face in building a
standardizing capability for system-wide interoperability.