Wednesday, April 9, 2014

News Scan: Consumers put retailers on data breach notice...

Retailers are being put on notice by consumers that they hold them responsible for preventing future data breaches, such as those experienced by Target and Neiman Marcus. A recent study by Feedzai, a big data science company, reveals that "60 percent of those who knew about any data breaches at notable retailers, such as Target and Neiman Marcus, hold the merchant responsible for preventing future incidents." The "2014 Consumer Reaction to Financial Data Breaches Study" also found that 43 percent of respondents think nothing is more aggravating than having credit or debit card data stolen. "These findings show that consumers believe it is the merchant's responsibility, but really it is a collective problem that the industry needs to understand in order to distinguish customers from criminals and keep payment data safe," said Dr. Pedro Bizarro, chief data scientist at Feedzai said in an email to FierceCIO.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

25% of your staff could be leaving you

One of every four workers in your IT department could be gone this year--lured away by headhunters and hiring managers at the competition. They will grab for more money, better recognition or just walk away from an unsatisfying job.
 
Those are the harsh realities facing IT managers this year, according to survey results and anecdotal evidence from a recent study by CareerBuilder, which looked at job satisfaction and retention issues in the workforce.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Billionaire IDG founder Pat McGovern dies...

International Data Group founder and Chairman Patrick J. McGovern died March 19 at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., it was announced by the company. McGovern had a career dedicated to information technology, and over the span of 50 years, he oversaw IDG's launch of more than 300 magazines and newspapers and the expansion of IDG's network to include more than 460 websites, 200 mobile apps and 700 events worldwide, it was reported by CIO. He launched the company's flagship publication, Computerworld, in 1972. "IDG has lost a true visionary, and the IT community has lost one of its most exceptional citizens," said newly elected IDG board chairman Walter Boyd. "He created a unique workplace where we have the outstanding leadership team in place to ensure that the company he created will continue to grow and prosper." (This editor had the very great pleasure of working with Mr. McGovern for seven years at Computerworld)

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Affordable Care Act opening doors to IT security attacks

The Affordable Care Act may be bringing millions more Americans into the fold of the insured, but it is also creating a virtual smorgasbord of security vulnerabilities that cybercriminals can feast on.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: SMBs feel immune from cyberattacks...

Three-quarters of small and mid-sized businesses reportedly believe they are too small to be of interest to cyber criminals, and therefore safe from cyberattacks. That is the finding of new research from security firm Kaspersky Labs. In addition, 59 percent of the companies surveyed said the information they hold would not be of interest to cyber criminals. Neither of which are the case, an article at Computer Weekly says. "Whether it is a supplier, a partner or a customer, SMEs tend to have links to other, larger companies. With this in mind, cyber criminals increasingly target SMEs to get information that will enable them to access the larger company's infrastructure," the article quotes David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Labs as saying.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Your next staffing crisis: project managers

Many organizations may soon find themselves understaffed with project managers, putting them at great disadvantage as the economy continues to recover.
 
That is the finding of the recent study ESI 2013 Project Manager Salary and Development Survey by project management training company ESI International. The firm surveyed 1,800 project managers in 12 different industries in the U.S.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Embrace, don't fear, your COO and CFO relationships

The role of CIO is as much about managing relationships as it is mastering technology. With that in mind, Michael Hugos, principal at the Center for Systems Innovation, recently offered up his thoughts on the CIO and COO relationship, and on the CIO and CFO relationship.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Pirated software malware threats...

Malware deliberately loaded onto pirated or counterfeit software could cost organizations an estimated $491 billion this year alone. That is the conclusion of a new study on the connection between pirated software and cyber breaches by International Data Corp (IDC) and the University of Singapore. According to an article at Computer Weekly, the study is "based on forensic analytics of 203 PCs that were bought from PC resellers, specialty shops and PC markets in typical buying situations in 11 countries." The global study also surveyed 1,700 consumers, IT professionals, CIOs and government officials in 13 countries. The study revealed that the likelihood of encountering malware in pirated software is one in three, and the change of encountering malware in a PC purchased with pirated software was 61 percent.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Ukrainian IT center campaign assures world that 'it's business as usual'

In the midst of, and because of, tremendous political unrest in its country, the Ukrainian Information Technology Development Center has launched an awareness campaign to promote the Ukrainian IT industry. The initiative's mission is to let the world know that despite the current political situation, the Ukrainian IT industry is going strong, organizers say.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Tech execs meet with White House over 'too slow' NSA reforms

Google's Eric Schmidt, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and several other top tech executives met with President Obama on Friday to discuss White House efforts to reform the National Security Agency's surveillance practices.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: State governments embracing big data; Harvard to debut new HBX online learning platform; more

State governments are increasingly aware of opportunities with big data and are making them an important part of how they do business, according to Utah State CIO David Fletcher. Writing at Enterprise Efficiency this week, Fletcher discusses some of the current big data-focused projects that various states have underway, as we enter the third year of the Obama administration's Big Data Research and Development Initiative. Among the examples Fletcher cites are those of Massachusetts with its Billion Mile Data Challenge to encourage travel across the Commonwealth; efforts by California to use big data to fight its biggest drought in the last 100 years; and the use of big data to drive innovative transportation solutions in Utah. "State and federal government agencies are increasingly opening up their data and are encouraging its use for economic growth and development. Businesses seeking data sources to utilize in their big data innovations can begin by accessing data.gov," Fletcher notes.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

App support kills off 38 percent of IT budget for top firms

Application support and maintenance is now costing 38 percent of the IT budgets of the Global 2000 companies--an increase of 29 percent, according to a new study.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Convincing the C-suite to fund IT security

It is said that the best defense is a strong offense, but when it comes to IT security, too many companies have neither.

That is the take of Alex Moss, managing partner of security consultancy Conventus. He says most corporate executives are still ignorant of their organizations vulnerabilities and risks. Indeed, they may not even know the difference between the two. The result is that for too many, IT security is an afterthought--done in reactive mode rather than as proactive strategy.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Is open data a $3 trillion market?...

Train wreck or treasure trove? The vast amount of public data now available to businesses under the Open Data Executive Order signed by President Obama last May has been called both. But according to an article at InfoWorld, "the business opportunities are unprecedented--open data offers bits and bytes of public information that are freely available for anyone to use to build new businesses, generate revenue, develop new products, conduct research or empower consumers. With the federal government as the single largest source of open data in the U.S., we now have unfettered access to information about everything from bus routes and pollution levels to SEC filings and weather patterns." More good news: the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that all this open data could be a catalyst for $3 trillion or more in new business value in the global economy.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

IT staff to CIOs: Keep the bonuses coming!

Recent job studies have agreed that IT workers are a restless lot this year as a whole, and employers better be ready to open the purse strings a bit more in order to attract and retain them.

That is certainly the advice of Shravan Goli, president of Dice, the online job site. Goli spoke with FierceCIO recently about the findings from the annual Dice Tech Salary Survey, which confirms that more IT managers are doling out bonuses and merit raises to their IT staff, and they need to keep that trend going.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Security firms face data breach liability...

IT security vendors were put on notice this week that they could become targets of lawsuits if they fail to detect security attacks that lead to client data breaches. According to an article at InfoWorld, security vendor Trustwave was named as a defendant in a class-action suit for failing to detect the attack that led to Target's breach, one of the largest on record. Trustwave "failed to live up to its promise to meet industry standards," the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleges. The plaintiffs are Trustmark National Bank of New York and Green Bank of Houston. "The lawsuit, one of dozens filed against Target, illustrates the growing frustration of banks burdened with the costs of reissuing compromised cards and their willingness to pull in other companies viewed as culpable into legal battles," the article notes.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Obama confident NSA reform proposal provides security needs, privacy protections

President Barack Obama will be proposing legislation that would end the bulk collection of phone data by the National Security Agency, and instead allow the vast database of phone records to stay in the hands of phone companies.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Yahoo! encrypting all data...

Yahoo! has revealed that effective last week it has started encrypting all data on its servers in response to concerns over government surveillance practices. According to an article at Silicon Republic, "Yahoo! revealed the move on its official blog and promises all its current products should be free from the prying eyes of governments and hackers alike." Over the coming months the firm plans additional measures, including HSTS, Perfect Forward Secrecy and Certificate Transparency, the article noted. "One of our biggest areas of focus in the coming months is to work with and encourage thousands of our partners across all of Yahoo!'s hundreds of global properties to make sure that any data that is running on our network is secure," Alex Stamos, Yahoo!'s chief information security officer wrote in the blog post.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

CFOs coulda, shoulda be IT's top advocates

CFOs could be the strongest evangelists for IT in most organizations, if only they were so inclined.

That is the conclusion of a new research report by Accenture and Oracle, which looked at the changing role of the CFO.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Summer IT hiring: 6% more money, double that in pain

Prepare to dig deep in your pockets if you're looking to hire IT's top talent this summer. That is the latest word from Dice's president Shravan Goli, who says that 73 percent of IT hiring managers will be looking to add staff, and nearly one quarter plan "substantial" hiring.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Monday, April 7, 2014

News Scan: Data analytics: Who needs IT?...

Business groups are increasingly forging ahead with data analytics projects without inviting IT along, according to new research by International Data Corp. An article at InfoWorld notes that "Business managers and IT managers appear to have different assessments of the value enterprise IT organizations bring to big data and data analytics projects. While IT groups see themselves as enablers, business leaders tend to view IT as a stumbling block." As a result, the article explains that many business groups are using their data analysts rather than involve the organization's in-house IT staff and technology. The IDC findings are based on a survey of 578 business managers, IT managers, data analysts and business executives.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

CIOs advance boldly into scary cloud territory

Despite continuous concerns over security, CIOs continue to move an increasing percentage of organizational information to the cloud, and are making growing use of private cloud and software-as-a-service models.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Report looks at most pesky, risky apps

The rise of BYOD and mobility in general has brought all sorts of security headaches to organizations. But some types of applications are clearly more vulnerable to security threats than others.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Honoring government innovation in the cloud...

Amazon Web Services has announced the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, a new global program to recognize local governments and application developers who are innovating for the benefit of citizens using the AWS Cloud. In an email to FierceCIO, Amazon explained that from May to June a panel of worldwide experts from organizations driving local government innovation will select seven grand prize winners from among two award categories: Best Practices and Partners in Innovation. "Three AWS local government projects will be awarded the Best Practices Award, recognizing local governments who have already adopted cloud technology, each receiving $50,000 AWS credits," Amazon announced. "Four application developers will be awarded the Partners in Innovation Award for individuals and companies engaged in creating applications that solve local government challenges, each receiving $25,000 in AWS credits." The deadline to submit entries is May 12.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Internet of Things won't be gentle on your data center

Much is being written about the potential of the Internet of Things, or IoT for short, including a recent forecast by Gartner that it is driving a product and services industry which will be worth approximately $300 billion by 2020.

That estimate includes a prediction that there will be 26 billion installed and interconnected devices by that time.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

IT staff unhappy with their jobs? No worries, they'll nearly all be changing anyway

If you think your IT staffers are uncomfortable in their current skin, just wait. According to new research from member-based advisory firm CEB, nearly 80 percent of IT job roles will undergo transformation in the next four years.

This may not to come as welcome news to some IT organizations, which are already struggling to keep pace with changing technologies and to bridge existing skills gaps. As an article in Information-Age notes, "as the 'baby boom' generation retires, many companies are already struggling to fill the knowledge gap."

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Jobs, money up for IT security pros...

Job opportunities for professionals with security clearances are on the decline, unless you work in the areas of IT and cybersecurity. That is the word from a recent survey by ClearanceJobs.com. According to the job site, the number of security-cleared professionals working in tech and cybersecurity increased from 22 to 24 percent in 2013, while salaries for these professionals saw a modest 1 percent increase, to $102,164. But as noted at Next Gov, "IT program and project managers saw the highest jump in pay and the highest salaries of all security-related professionals in 2013, earning on average $125,864, an increase of 10 percent over 2010 levels."

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

CIO project power sharing: get used to it

Collaboration by CIOs has never been more critical, as an increasing number of IT-related projects are now handled jointly by CIO-led teams and business groups.
That is the finding of recent research by Forrester, which reveals a changing landscape for IT project management. While the report does not suggest that the CIO role is in mortal danger, it does suggest more power sharing when it comes to tech decision making.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Rise of the CSO: a CIO's power threat or job savior?

The series of high profile data breaches that punctuated 2013 brought intense scrutiny on data security and the accountability of IT. At most organizations, the ultimate responsibility for IT security falls in the lap of the CIO. But it shouldn't, argues Dr. Eric Cole, a SANS Institute faculty fellow and head of SAN's Cyber Defense Foundations program. FierceCIO spoke with Dr. Cole about the need at many organizations for a chief security officer, where that individual should come from and why the CIO should embrace, not shun, this new colleague.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: IT mandates stymy CIOs...

IT leaders are struggling to provide more value from IT to their organizations, but are doing so without corresponding increases in staff of budget. That is the finding of new research from The Hackett Group, which conducted a survey of 150 IT leaders on their top objectives this year. As reported at ZDNet, "information technology executives are aiming to become more valuable to the enterprise (and prove it via metrics), utilize data and analytics better, and revamp the talent pool, according to The Hackett Group, a technology staffing firm. The catch? IT needs to be more innovative and grow businesses amid stagnant budgets and staff cuts." The study revealed that data management; data architecture and data analytics are top priorities. But it also found that IT costs overall will need to be cut to make room for anything innovative. That is due to the projection that IT budgets will only grow by 1.7 percent this year.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

1 in 3 IT managers say: The CIO must go!

As if CIOs didn't have enough job survival concerns--what with satisfying the CEO, CFO and COO. Now they learn that one of every three managers in their own IT ranks thinks they need to be shown the door.

That is the finding of new research by strategy consulting firm McKinsey, which reveals "growing dissatisfaction" with IT performance. But we're not talking just among the business executives. That dissatisfaction translates to IT management ranks as well.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Silicon Valley wage case heads to court ...

The class action lawsuits against several Silicon Valley giants that alleges collusion over wages and recruiting practices will go forward, and could begin by May 27, notes an article at The Register. The suit alleges that several companies, including Google, Apple, Intel, Adobe, Pixar and Lucasfilm, conspired to prevent recruiting staff from each other, and to share confidential salary information in an effort to control wage levels. The article says "The judge notes that the plaintiffs 'have presented sufficient evidence that tends to exclude the possibility that Defendants acted independently' regardless of whether or not there is a 'plausible and justifiable reason for their conduct that is consistent with proper business practices."

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

IT spending makes its return, Gartner says

Sales of devices and software are helping to drive IT spending worldwide, which will rise to $3.8 trillion this year, according to research firm Gartner.

Analysts from the firm will discuss the latest spending outlook in a webinar on April 8, but have released highlights from the report in the meantime. The Worldwide IT Spending Forecast finds a 3.2 percent increase in 2014. Enterprise software revenue will jump 6.9 percent to $320 billion, the firm predicts.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

IT security pros: Worst pressures come from inside

The number one obstacle to IT security solutions are business pressures within the same organizations, which is causing tremendous dissatisfaction among IT security pros.
 
Those are among the findings of what is intended to be a new annual survey, The "2014 Security Pressures Report," which was recently released by Trustwave. The report surveyed 833 IT security decision makers to better understand the pressures that they live with in making security decisions.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Wired telecom, semiconductor jobs among most endangered...

Yahoo's Hot Jobs web site has just released its updated listing of the 10 most endangered job sectors, two tech-related job fields make the list of industries expected to lose the greatest number of jobs by 2018. Grabbing the number two spot of largest job percentage loss is the semiconductor industry, with a 33.7 percent job loss (of the 432,000 jobs the industry had in 2008). Wired telecom jobs makes the list in the number 10 slot. According to the web site, wired telecom is expected to lose 11 percent of its 666,000 job base. The number one job loss field is cut-and-sew apparel manufacturing, which Yahoo Hot Jobs says will see 57 percent of its 155,000-job workforce disappear in the next four years.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Government moves could force data breach confessions

Organizations in virtually all industries could soon be impacted by government moves in response to data breaches like the one that affected Target at the close of 2013.

The Federal Trade Commission has asked Congress to pass a national breach notification bill, which would require companies that have their systems compromised to alert consumer and appropriate government authorities within a specific time frame. The legislation is intended to correct a situation in which a company could withhold such information for long periods of time while it tries to resolve the problem internally, but thereby leave customers at long-term risk of identity theft and personal data compromise.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Inside the H-1B program: One employer speaks out

Few topics in IT are more polarizing than that of the H-1B program, which allows foreign workers to take skilled jobs here in the U.S. if an employer can demonstrate that it is having a hard time filling those job roles.
 
Last week the government opened and closed the window of opportunity for companies to submit applications for H-1B workers. The government currently allows 65,000 H-1B workers annually, and the program enables those workers to stay for up to six years in this country working on that visa. Congress is debating allowing up to another 125,000 visas under the program for 2014, a move which occurs on an almost annual basis now.

While a dozen or so large employers take the lion's share of the H-1B visas, there are countless smaller firms that employ just a few H-1B workers. FierceCIO spoke with Giorgos Zacharia, chief technology officer at travel search engine company Kayak, in Concord, MA, about the company's experience with hiring just a half dozen H-1B workers at a time.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Thursday, April 3, 2014

National Retirement Planning Week Offers Critical Tools for Advisors

With older working Americans needing retirement advice more than ever, financial planners can take advantage of a wealth of tools and resources being made available for National Retirement Planning Week, which runs April 7-11, 2014.

The event is a national effort to encourage Americans to plan for their financial needs in retirement. The observance has been held continuously since 2002, and is targeted to both professional advisors and especially to consumers.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Supercomputer Aids in Alzheimer's Breakthrough

Researchers using the Gordon supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have reportedly made gains in elucidating the creation of toxic oligomers that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease–a finding that could lead to new drug designs.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Harvard Supercomputer Abused for Dogecoin Mining

Harvard University recently discovered that its 14,000-core Odyssey supercomputer cluster was being used to mine for the virtual currency “Dogecoin,” and stripped the unidentified individual involved from all access to the university’s research and computing labs.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Retirement Readiness Crisis Still Looms Despite Some Improvement

The retirement outlook for many Americans is slightly brighter this year according to recent research studies, though the majority of workers age 60 or older still plan to put it off.

Three separate retirement studies were released in the past month, which collectively paint a disappointing—though slightly improved—retirement readiness picture. The reason for the slight improvement is a return of value to retirement programs that took a beating in the recent recession.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Taming the Thirst of Supercomputers

It’s no secret that supercomputers consume a lot of energy. Less widely publicized is the fact that they also consume a lot of water in order to cool down servers through cooling towers that are typically located on the roof of supercomputer facilities.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

HPC Market to Be Worth $33.43B by 2018

The increased number of complex applications and sizeable investment by governments are playing a major role in shaping the future of the High-Performance Computing (HPC) market, which is expected to grow to $33.43 billion by 2018, according to a recently released report by U.S.-based global market research and consulting company MarketsandMarkets.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

2014: The Year SMEs Meet Supercomputers?

Go Parallel recently reported on small and mid-sized businesses in the United States increasingly gaining access to supercomputing time, and it appears the same trend is also happening in Europe. Andrew Carr, CEO at Bull Information Systems in the UK and Ireland, predicts that 2014 will be the year that SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) will meet the supercomputer.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Supercomputer Reveals Hundreds of Undetected Arctic Cyclones

The top of the world is a cold, harsh place, with cyclones carving a path of destruction, leaving warm water and air in their wakes—melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Now new data analysis reveals that from 2000 to 2010, about 1,900 cyclones churned across the Arctic each year—40 percent more than previously thought.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

How Multicore Makes Simulation More Real

(as by Intel)

Simulation technology today is being asked to deliver near-perfect images and more complex physical behaviors, including multiphysics, and is being used where it has not been used in the past. While improved simulation leads to better engineering, it comes at a cost of increased compute resources.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Smoothing Developers' Path Toward Multicore Apps

(as by Intel)

How do you move from Linux to Windows to maximize the benefit of all the cluster processor cores and develop applications based on a proper parallelization strategy, while addressing the many complex issues related to porting and parallelization?

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Intel MIC Opens New Frontiers of Performance

(as by Intel)

The techniques used in CloverLeaf, a small benchmark that solves two-dimensional, compressible Euler equations on a staggered Cartesian grid, are similar to what might be used to simulate the effect of a meteor impacting the Earth’s atmosphere, says the author of the free software. And recreating the application using Intel’s Many Integrated Core (MIC) technology has resulted in an out-of-this world performance boost.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Weeding out unwanted employee candidates

Hospitals and healthcare centers are in strong competition for skilled physicians and nurses. That puts added pressure on the credentialing process. Fortunately, the process has been made easier thanks to electronic access to data.

As director of credentialing at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine and UNC Health Care, Linda Waldorf knows personally the importance of onboarding a new hire as quickly as possible. Waldorf is a new employee herself. She joined UNC only five months ago, from John Hopkins Health System.

(Read my complete article at Healthcare Finance News)

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Addressing the Needs of Female Clients

By the time female clients find themselves sitting in Carol Idone’s office, they are usually very willing to listen to advice on retirement planning. Just the very fact they are there typically indicates a major life-changing event has happened, Idone says. That usually means divorce or death of a spouse.

“Even before a client gets here, it is more likely that a man rather than a woman would walk through the door,” said Idone, a financial advisor with Strategic Benefit Services in Rensselaer, NY. “It is especially less likely that women would walk in by themselves.”

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Helping Clients Time Their Social Security Benefits

If your client is like most, they have no doubt been looking forward to retirement, and to collecting on the Social Security benefits due them. After all, they’ve put a lot of money into the Social Security kitty over the years, and its time there was a little payback.

But is it really? Is your client wise to start collecting on Social Security at the first opportunity? How early is too early? Should they wait to full retirement age? Or should they delay those benefits a few years into retirement? The correct answer depends on a lot of factors, including whether your client or a spouse are currently employed, whether they have a pressing financial hardship, what their health profile and medical history looks like, and what tax bracket they fall into.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

U.S. Faces Severe Racial Divide with Regards to Retirement

Financial planners already know that this country is facing a “retirement crisis,” with a majority of Americans having insufficient assets to provide for the comfortable retirement they dreamed of. Indeed, the current generation of older workers heads into retirement less financially prepared then the generation before them.

Now we have word from a major new research study that the typical household of color in the U.S. has no retirement savings at all.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Future Supercomputer Scientists Flock to Global Challenge

Considered one of the top three international supercomputing challenges, along with the SC in the United States and the ISC in Germany, the ASC14 Student Supercomputer Challenge  in Asia has drawn nearly twice as many teams than last year’s competition.

The ASC14 Challenge provides an opportunity for supercomputing experts from around the world to share their expertise with undergraduate students in order to cultivate more scientists in the future. The preliminary contest of the ASC14 challenge was held on January 2, and the final will be held in Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China in April.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

BlueCrystal Supercomputer Shines Among UK's Elice HPCs

The BlueCrystal High Performance Computer housed at the University of Bristol in Bristol, England recently received a major performance boost and is now capable of over 200 trillion calculations per second—propelling it to the ranks of the fastest supercomputers in the United Kingdom. The upgrade also gives BlueCrystal five times the computing power of its predecessor.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)


Japan Promises Exascale Supercomputer in 2020

Several countries have set 2020 as the target year to launch an exascale supercomputer. And one of those countries engaged in the heated race just got one step closer.

Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology recently tapped RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) to develop a new exascale supercomputer by 2020 thereby tasking the research institution with keeping the country “at the leading edge of computing science and technology,” according to an announcement.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Big Data Supercomputer, First Virtualized HPC Cluster Get NSF Funding

The National Science Foundation is funding two powerful new supercomputer systems at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin and at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California.

Known as “Wrangler,” the supercomputer being designed and built at TACC, is “groundbreaking data analysis and management system for the national open science community,” according to the TACC news release. Wrangler is being supported by a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation and is scheduled for production in January 2015.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Supercomputing Milestones and Breakthroughs in 2013

The size and speed of the world’s supercomputers tend to capture the public’s attention. But bigger and faster is not always better. It’s what the massive machines do with their compute power that really matters. HPCwire recently assembled a reflection of significant discoveries and opportunities made possible by high-powered computers and the people who run them.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Buying Major Supercomputer Power in Bulk

With an aim to deploy their first 100-plus petaflop systems within the next few years, three premier U.S. national labs – Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Argonne (ANL) and Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) – combined forces last year to give them greater purchasing power when buying their next major supercomputing installations, according to a report on HPC Wire.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

TARDIS Supercomputer Cluster to Launch

While supercomputer clusters cannot yet solve time travel, they can increase brute force compute power. That’s exactly what Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, which are five miles apart, are aiming to do with a new high performance computing cluster named TARDIS.

The name TARDIS is after the time travel and spacecraft machine in the popular Doctor Who British science-fiction TV series. The TARDIS has an exterior that resembled a London police box, and an inside that is larger than the outside, notes an article in Campus Technology.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Massively Parallel Supercomputing Tech Simulates 3,000-Atom Nano Device

Advanced supercomputer techniques have been used to simulate the properties of a 3,000-atom nano device, which scientists say will pave the way for faster nano devices in the future.

According to a report on HPC Wire, a 3,000 atom simulation is a threefold increase over previous efforts. The research division at Fujitsu was able to accomplish the feat using a new technique based on massively parallel supercomputing technology developed by the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) and the Computational Material Science Initiative (CMSI).

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

New DNA-Crunching Supercomputer Launches $1,000 Human Genome

The world’s first DNA analysis supercomputer designed to process 20,000 genomes per year at a cost of $1,000 each – which could make full genome sequencing much more mainstream – was recently announced, according to a BusinessWeek report.

Leading seller of gene-sequencing machines Illumina unveiled its high-speed, low-cost sequencing system HiSeq X (pronounced “High Seek 10″) at an investors conference in San Francisco at a crucial time for clinical breakthroughs, notes the report.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Supercomputer Uncovers Possible Secret to Cost-Effective Alternative Fuel

Powerful supercomputers often make radical discoveries not even scientists running the data could anticipate – which recently happened at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Researchers running a simulation of an enzyme from the fungus Trichoderma reesei (Cel7A) discovered that a part of the enzyme – the linker – can have a quite unexpected benefit, in breaking down biomass into the sugars used to make alternative transportation fuels.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Breakthrough Brings Quantum Computer Closer

An international team of researchers has succeeded in generating and manipulating single particles of light (photons) on a silicon microchip – a major step forward in the race to build a quantum computer.

“Our device removes the need for external photon sources, provides a path to increasing the complexity of quantum photonic circuits and is a first step toward fully integrated quantum technologies,” said project leader Dr. Mark Thompson from the University of Bristol in the announcement. The breakthrough is featured on the cover of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature Photonics.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

How Can We Keep Social Security Solvent?

Calling it an “important first step” on the long road to addressing this country’s retirement crisis, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee recently held a special hearing on needed reforms for Social Security, defined benefits and private retirement accounts.

The December hearing was called by the Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy, which includes member Senator Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA) and Chairman Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).  Featured speakers at the hearing included Robert G. Romasco, president of AARP, in Washington DC; Andrew G. Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC; Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC; and John F. Sweeney, executive vice president at Fidelity Investments in Boston.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

The Best Time to Start Collecting Social Security: Ask the Advisor

The typical American views Social Security as an entitlement – there for the taking at the first opportunity. But retirement planners know that isn’t often the best move. Financial advisor Karla McAvoy, of HC Financial Advisors, discusses the best ways to educate a client on when the time is right for Social Security, no matter what their circumstances.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Obama's MyRA Plan Still Irks Some Retirement Planners

In the midst of what many economists call a “retirement crisis,” President Barack Obama took the occasion of his State of the Union address to propose a new retirement savings program involving employer payroll deductions and government-sponsored savings accounts.

The program would be known as MyRA (My Retirement Account), and it would enable workers who don’t have access to a 401(k) plan to set aside their own retirement dollars at work. It would be up to employers to manage such a program for their employees, and to the Treasury Department at the national level.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Congressional Hearing Tackles Long-Term Care Funding Woes

Perhaps more than any other item, the thing that many Americans neglect when it comes to retirement planning is long-term care. And yet, for an estimated 12 million Americans and rising, that is the thing they most need as they journey through their retirement years.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Do CFOs still need a CPA?

As healthcare providers grapple with more complex issues, the CFO is being asked to take on a leadership role that in many cases extends beyond the realm of accounting.

(Read my complete article at Healthcare Finance News)

Healthcare's hiring dilemma: PA or NP?

The growing shortage of physicians is causing many healthcare organizations to rethink the roles of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. More than any other, these are the professionals that are filling the gap left by physicians that are retiring, reducing their patient load or deciding to leave the field.

To figure out which role is the better to invest in, organizations have a lot to consider.

(Read my complete article at Healthcare Finance News)

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Ask the Advisor: Guiding Self-Employed and Entrepreneur Clients

When most people think about retirement plans, Social Security immediately jumps to mind. Next comes company pension plans. But those don’t help individuals who are self-employed or entrepreneurs and start their own small companies. What can they do to protect their retirement years?

Financial advisor Louis Barajas specializes in self-employed and entrepreneur clients, and offers his advice on where to start. Whether self-employed or entrepreneur, the process begins with mapping out how you expect your life to unfold. And in the case of entrepreneurs, it also means investing in the eventual retirements of the loyal workers that will be with you on the journey.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Avoiding pitfalls when retiring in paradise

For many of your clients, the idea of retiring abroad may seem like a ticket to paradise. It can be, but there are a number of laws, regulations, and common sense advice you need to know about when advising them on such a move.

For one thing, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) takes effect this year. There will be no tax havens to be found – anywhere.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Lightning-Fast Supercomputer to Model Climate Change

Oregon’s Portland State University will use a high-profile $350,000 grant to build a new supercomputer to study climate change. The high-performance machine named Gaia will provide 20 teraflops of computing power when completed by the end of this year with additional upgrades planned for 2015.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

NSF Grant Propels 'Comet' Supercomputer

The National Science Foundation (NSF) was awarded the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, a $12 million grant to deploy a new petascale supercomputer named Comet.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

DoD Supercomputer Gets New Home

Previously housed at the Maui High-Performance Computing Center, one of the five U.S. Department of Defense Supercomputing Resource Centers, “MANA” has found a new home at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Parallel Programming Pioneer Honored

Katherine Yelick, who co-invented the Unified Parallel C (UPC) and Titanium languages and demonstrated their applicability across architectures through the use of novel runtime and compilation methods, has been named the “Athena Lecturer” by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Council on Women in Computing (ACM-W) for improving fundamental understanding and practice of parallel programming.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

Supercomputers and SMBs: States Fill in the Gaps

Small and mid-sized businesses have supercomputing needs too, but often times do not have the resources or necessary training to access the high-powered machines. However, recently announced initiatives in two states aim to change that.

(Read my complete article at Go Parallel)

M&A looking strong in 2014

Merger and acquisition activity continued at a robust pace in the closing months of 2013, and by all accounts, the industry will see more of the same in 2014.

Consider a few recent statistics from M&A data publisher Irving Levin Associates and from Hammond Hanlon Camp, a New York-based strategic advisory and investment banking firm that is focused on the healthcare industry:

(Read my complete article at Healthcare Finance News)

The CEO's new right-hand man (or woman)

Few industries are undergoing as much sweeping change as healthcare and that is leading to a new role for the chief financial officer.

Sure, a strong grounding in the basics of finance is still in order. But the growing demand at hospitals and healthcare organizations is for a strategic CFO – someone who truly sits at the right hand of the CEO as a strategic partner.

(Read my complete article at Healthcare Finance News)

4 healthcare hot topics for 2014

With the closing of 2013 and arrival of 2014, it is a time to look ahead at a few of the industry trends we can expect in the upcoming 12 months.

1. Insurance exchanges
 
Despite the abysmal start of HealthCare.gov, thousands of Americans selected new insurance plans, getting one of the major aspects of the Affordable Care Act under way. Now the healthcare industry is waiting to see if the exchanges will work, said Tom Carden, a senior managing director at New Jersey-based Martin Healthcare Advisors.
 
 

Competitive Nature: Adrienne Urban, CTP, vice president and treasurer, World Fuel Services Corporation

Being an involved and active mother, as well as managing a professional career in finance at the same time, Adrienne Urban says she draws on a lot of personal energy.

It comes as no surprise. Urban has never been one to stay in one place.

(Read my complete article at Exchange Magazine)
 


Unemployed Boomers Struggle with Recovery, Retirement Options

A year into what some economists are considering a recovery from the Great Recession, many retirement planners may find 2014 to be one of their most challenging years of all.

The reasons have to do with two workforce trends affecting the Baby Boomer generation: the growing number of older workers that are pushing off retirement; and the still large number of Boomers that remain unemployed as a result of the recession.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Ask the Advisor: Long-term Care Advice

When experts talk about long-term care in this country, the word crisis can quickly enter the conversation. The problem isn’t so much with what long-term care insurance covers, although that also weighs in. More importantly, it is the growing numbers of Americans that need long-term care insurance at a time with more providers are getting out of the game. Retirement planner Susan John, founder and president of Financial Focus Inc., in Wolfeboro, NH, discusses what is happening in the market, and how advisors can best help their clients understand this vital part of a retirement portfolio.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Best Retirement Dates for Federal Employees in 2014

With 2014, retirement planners will see a number of their clients pick actual retirement dates in the New Year. For many the date will be tied to a work anniversary or perhaps a personal convenience but for some clients, selecting the date has definite benefits implications.

If your client is a federal or state government employee, specific retirement dates have particular significance. But just the fact that your client takes formal retirement next year will involve new regulations.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Will Delaying Social Security Benefits Be a Tough Sell to Clients in 2014?

Retirement planners may have a tough time in 2014 convincing clients to hold off on claiming Social Security benefits until the last year possible. But for starters, all you’ll have to do is remind clients how little benefits increased in January: a meager 1.5%.

This year’s benefits increase is one of the smallest since 1975, and amounts to an average raise of $19 per month for most seniors. The small increase reflects the fact that consumer prices have not changed much this year, so the federal COLA is following suit, according to The Associated Press.

(Read my complete article at Think Advisor)

Friday, January 3, 2014

News Scan: Security analytics on the rise; 25% of cloud providers will disappear; more

There will be opportunities galore for big data security analytics in 2014, according to a blog on ESG-Global last week. According to author Jon Oltsik, expect there to be continuing problems with incident detection and response, for which existing analytics tools are no match. Also, Moore Law and open source will drive the need for massive horsepower for data crunching. Finally, he says there will be "tons of activity" on the supply side. The results will be a greater need for user education; for organizations to realize that security analytics is a solution and not a product; and that security analysts will need to be sold on a new type of analytics tool.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Mobile browser usage rises to 20 percent

For the first time ever, the percentage of the world's browser activity topped 20 percent on mobile devices last month.

That is the word from Dublin-based web analytics firm StatCounter. The firm tracks where browser-based activity originated from, and found that in November, 20 percent of it came from mobile devices. Personal computers account for the remaining 80 percent of browser usage.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Clouds are gathering, thickening in 2014

Clouds continue to gather and thicken on the horizon, as the cloud computing market shows no signs of slowing in 2014.

Gartner has released its latest predictions on the cloud computing market value for this year, which puts the market at $131 billion. That is an increase from the 2012 valuation of $111 billion. More importantly, Gartner predicts there will be continued aggressive growth in cloud computing in the New Year, and in fact, by 2016, the research firm says the majority of new IT spending will be in the cloud.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Internet of Things hype limits; Geek job searching gold; more

There is good news on the hype meter front. According to Gartner, The Internet of Things (IoT) is now close to its "peak of inflated expectations" in the research firm's 2013 Hype Cycle. As noted last week at Data Center Journal, there are high hopes for the Internet of Things among equipment manufacturers, chipmakers and technology developers. But many feel that IoT is greatly over-hyped and it's value is uncertain. "In a number of areas, the hype and the hesitation paint drastically different pictures of how the Internet of Things will shape future technology trends," the article notes. "On the technology side, the growing reliance on data centers as central computing hubs may expand or it may want, giving way to a more decentralized model that makes use of vast distributed resources."

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Half of enterprises worry about cloud expertise, staffing

Despite all the projections around cloud-based computing growth, half of organizations say they need more education on the best methods for moving to the cloud, and they feel they don't have the necessary skills in-house to make the transition.

Those are among the findings of a new study released yesterday by ScienceLogic, a leading producer of IT monitoring software.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

IT salaries, training on the rise in 2014, says SIM

Despite several recent reports that IT hiring is cooling as we head into 2014, the Society for Information Management (SIM) is the bearer of some good news on the IT staffing front. First is word that salaries will be increasing in the New Year. Second is the expectation that organizations will spend more on IT training.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Cloud OS Network; BYOD privacy protection; more

Microsoft Corp. has announced the Cloud OS Network, a group of more than 25 cloud service providers that will deliver services on the Microsoft cloud platform. The network consists of companies from around the world, and includes such companies as CGI, Dimension Data and NTTX. One of the goals of the network is to enable more usage of Windows Azure as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering (IaaS), Cloud Computing News noted last week. Partnering companies are from 90 different countries, with 425 data centers and more than three million customers. "Our investment and commitment to azure as a global cloud platform is enormous," Microsoft cloud and enterprise marketing corporate VP Takeshi Numoto was quoted as saying. "But so is our belief in hybrid cloud and that there are going to be many, many clouds around the world due to the tremendous variety of customers and needs."

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Big data's big designs for 2014

An increasing number of tech press headlines are being devoted to the need for more data scientists, and where organizations are in acquiring such elusive talent.

FierceCIO visits the topic today as well, with an interview with data scientist Dr. Michael Wu (see related article).

There is also no shortage of predictions around big data and data analytics as we close out the year. The latest come from Capgemini's Scott Schlesinger, senior vice president for business information management.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)
 

Searching for data scientists? They come in sets of 3!

Data scientists have been called the most sought-after IT professionals of all for 2014. But that mission is distorted on two fronts, according to one current data scientist.

Dr. Michael Wu, chief scientist at Lithium Technologies (aka, data scientist), spoke with FierceCIO this week about the growing demand for data scientists, what the role requires and how organizations can best acquire such talent.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

News Scan: Cloud security; Top tech trends for 2014; more

Fears over security vulnerabilities still haunt cloud computing, according to a recent poll taken at the AWS re:invent conference last month. Approximately 60 percent of those in attendance said security concerns remain a top obstacle to cloud adoption, Cloud Pro is reporting. Large-scale hype apparently hasn't sold everyone on the cloud either, as 53 percent of attendees cited organizational resistance as the next top barrier to cloud adoption. Once an organization does move to the cloud there are still large pockets of dissatisfaction. 38 percent said they require better performance than what they are getting from cloud storage; and more than a third said that their storage provider was not being helpful enough with issues encountered.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

These tech trends will rule your life in 2014, says IEEE

FierceCIO publishes its last newsletter for the 2013 calendar year today. So it seemed only fitting to wrap up the year with the final set of predictions on what 2014 will hold in store for IT. FierceCIO newsletters will resume daily publication on Jan. 2, 2014.

In the meantime, the IEEE Computer Society has released its top 10 list of what the New Year will bring, from cloud computing trends, to mobile technology, to 3D printing.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)

Assignment: teach 15 million kids to code. Time: one hour. Begin.

While several states ponder how to best expose school children to information technology skills, last week's Hour of Code offers a glimpse at how such efforts might be approached.

The Hour of Code was held during Computer Science Education Week, and provides basic training to schoolchildren on how to perform some simple computer code exercises. The goal of the event was to see as many school children get exposed to coding as possible, and by all accounts the event was very successful.

(Read my complete article at FierceCIO)