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Contents ISSUE 311 • MARCH 2015
FROM THE EDITORS FEATURES

10 SD Times on the Web
Testing in an agile world
13 You’ve come a long way, Linux
13 Welcome to the new world of drones
NEWS
14 How far can drones go?
16 Node.js announces move to open governance model
18 Data Governance Initiative expands the Hadoop page 31
ecosystem
19 NIST releases guide to mobile app security
The ongoing evolution of Azure
20 Apache Storm prepares to rain security
20 YouTube drops Flash video support for HTML5
24 How to get real value from testing
27 GrapeCity releases new cross-platform mobile
control suite
COLUMNS
57 CODE WATCH by Larry O’Brien
The five rules of project management
page 48
58 GUEST VIEW by Sanjay Zalavadia
Differences in delivery and deployment
BUYERS GUIDE
61 ANALYST VIEW by Rob Enderle
The next age of mobile computing DevOps and business forge a new
62 INDUSTRY WATCH by David Rubinstein
definition of APM
Developing apps horizontally
page 39
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10 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com
Throwback TV: Watch Grace

Hopper chat with Letterman
With David Letterman close to retirement, we thought
we’d look back at one of his lesser-known interviews: with
computing pioneer Grace Hopper. Admiral Hopper isn’t
as high-strung as some of Dave’s other guests, but she
A brief history does have a few interesting yarns to spin. You can see
of a brief product the interview, covering nanoseconds, President Reagan
By the time you read this, the Commodore and more, at tinyurl.com/hopperletterman.
65 (yes, 65) on eBay will probably have
been claimed. What was this oddly num-
bered Commodore computer? Alex Handy
explains: “The Commodore 65,
you see, was a prototype. It was
whipped up in 1990, and includ-
ed many features designed to
improve upon the 64. This
included a 3.5-inch built-in floppy
drive, and a suite of 6502 variants
for CPU and interface control.” Maybe some
Drones reporting live from the scene
day it’ll be back on the market. If you’re Drones can do lots of things: deliver flowers, assist in search and rescue,
interested in learning more, read about crash into people’s faces, etc. Now they can help report the news.
it at tinyurl.com/commodore65. “Our aim is to get beyond hobby-grade equipment and to establish
what options are available and workable to produce high-quality video journalism
using various types of UAVs and camera setups,” says senior legal vice president
for CNN David Vigilante. Maybe drones can start off reporting on traffic. You
can read more about this potential milestone at tinyurl.com/dronesjournalism.
Who won the Performance Bowl?

In case you missed it, the Super Bowl happened. But, at the same time (and
more importantly), APM software provider Dynatrace
had its own Big Game—the Performance Bowl—
which measured in real time how
brands’ websites did as people looked
them up during the game. Which adver- Even more proverbs for
tisers came out on top, and which ones the programmer
chose to pass on second and goal? Find out
Months ago, we covered a selection of
at tinyurl.com/performancebowl.
proverbs for the programmer written on
GitHub. Amazingly, someone has come
up with fresh proverbs with no overlap!
Facebook needs help combatting malware For example, “Learning is your fuel.
Collaboration is the best way to handle malware, according to Face- Stagnation is your enemy.” Or “Coding
book. So the social media company has set up its own platform, is neither wizardry nor kung fu. It’s bet-
ThreatExchange, to facilitate such collaboration. “ThreatExchange ter.” Feel enlightened yet? You can find
is based on Facebook’s threat analysis framework, ThreatData, and more at tinyurl.com/progproverbs.
built on the company’s existing platform infrastructure. Partner
companies of ThreatExchange can search through available securi-
ty threat information, or share their own information to participat- SD Times wants
to hear from you.
ing organizations,” reports Christina Mulligan. Read more at
Join us on LinkedIn
tinyurl.com/fbthreatexchahnge. z
and Facebook.
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www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 13
FROM THE EDITORS
You’ve come a long way, Linux

T his month, as we do every March,
we reported on the Who Writes Lin-
ux report from the Linux Foundation.
Why? Because Linus doesn’t have
much to do with the kernel anymore,
except on occasions where technology
Things and drones spaces. With so
many new users coming into the plat-
form around embedded systems, real-
Usually, this is a fairly rote affair: Red and implementation disputes catch his time servo-motor control, and constant
Hat and Intel contribute tons of code, attention. The kernel team is full of bril- Internet connectivity, the Linux kernel
Greg Kroah-Hartman does a ton of the liant, friendly folks, outnumbering the must quickly evolve to accommodate
work, and we learn about some small bearded grognards looking for a fight. these new use cases.
firm somewhere that’s cranking out ker- Another reason we’re OK with It could not adapt without the dedi-
nel code disproportionate to its size. Linus’ attitude is that the FOSS Out- cated work of so many geniuses around
But this year, the report included reach Program for Women brought in the world. Now that the Linux kernel
some very interesting information about more new developers than all other encompasses nearly 19 million lines of
the success of Linux kernel contributor companies and organizations combined. code, has taken over the server market,
outreach programs. Linus Torvalds has That’s right: In 2014, just over 1,400 and has touched the lives of almost
been criticized for making the Linux ker- new women contributed patches to the every person on the planet simply by
nel a hostile place to work. This is no Linux kernel. For a project criticized handling their phone calls, e-mails and
reflection of Linus’ increased activity or for being unfriendly to newcomers, census data, it’s nice to know that the
hostility, though: It’s more a result of that’s an awful lot of newcomers! people who write the kernel now better
increased eyes on the project and the And if ever the Linux kernel needed represent the people of this planet. It is
behavior of those therein. Still, the calls those newcomers, it is now. Linux is on perhaps the largest single project ever
for Linus to play nice were largely the cusp of a major explosion of users, undertaken by such a diverse and rep-
ignored, and we believe that’s just fine. primarily coming from the Internet of resentative array of humanity. z
Welcome to the new world of drones

I t is the beginning of the drone era.
Already, these unmanned aerial vehi-
cles are being tested for delivering
such has photography, film and televi-
sion, journalism, agriculture, and real
estate to operate drones. But there
proposed rules currently require that
drone operators must keep their drones
in their line of sight; avoid manned air-
goods, gathering the news, monitoring needs to be regulation; we don’t want craft; assess weather conditions, air-
crops, and more. While we are still in the drones flying into each other, invading space restrictions and location; not fly
early stages of drone development, it is our privacy, and putting civilians and over people or in airport flight paths;
almost certain that drones will be imple- wildlife in danger. and maintain an altitude below 500 feet
mented into every industry. It is just a On the ground, developer organiza- and airspeed of less than 100mph.
matter of finding a way to safely do so. tions are targeting communication pro- If mandated, the rules would be a
Right now, drones are still in the tocols, hardware interfaces, core flight small win for drone operators, but a big
“Wild West” stage, with businesses try- code and more, to make the diverse loss for companies looking to use drones
ing to take advantage of the lack of reg- range of hardware and software work for delivery. However, it may only be a
ulations by building and experimenting together. Some companies will move matter of time before the FAA and DOT
with this new industry, and govern- ahead in a proprietary fashion, while give in. In other parts of the world,
ments working on containing it. others will work toward a common, drones are being used to deliver flowers,
Although the U.S. Federal Aviation open platform for drone software. food, packages and medical services.
Administration (FAA) has set some lim- Meanwhile, the FAA and the U.S. It is a new world, and if you haven’t
its when it comes to flying drones in the Department of Transportation (DOT) hopped on board, the time is now. The
United States, that shouldn’t scare the are working on regulations that would Association for Unmanned Vehicle Sys-
drone cowboys away. enable use of certain small drones. tems International recently predicted
Even with its barriers, the FAA has According to the FAA’s Michael Huer- the integration of drones would create
been opening the skies for commercial ta, the proposed rules were designed to more than 100,000 jobs in the United
drone use. The organization has been maintain aviation safety without putting States and have an economic impact of
making exemptions, allowing industries a burden on the emerging industry. The US$82 billion by 2025. z
SDT311 page 14,15.qxd_Layout 1 2/20/15 4:00 PM Page 14
How far can drones go?

Dronecode’s Andrew Tridgell talks about his company
and the direction it’s taking the technology
BY CHRISTINA MULLIGAN which I believe is related to the estab- recent] meeting, we had people from
Commercial drones are taking software lishment of Dronecode as an umbrella companies developing autopilot hard-
development by storm these days. organization and the adoption of better ware, we had community members
Drone development is being looked at developer communication. Having an working on the core flight code, we had
in all industries from agriculture, jour- organization that brings all of the differ- people from companies that are deploy-
nalism, insurance, film, search and res- ent components of the open drone ing drones commercially for agriculture,
cue, and even real estate. The Linux ecosystem under one roof really helps and we had people from big IT compa-
Foundation launched an nies who are interested in
open-source platform for collaborating with the
drones late last year in Dronecode community.
order to bring developers Bringing all those dif-
the tools and resources ferent groups together is
they need to create what Dronecode is all
affordable and reliable about. We need to agree
drones. SD Times caught on how the communica-
up with Dronecode’s tion protocols will work
Technical Steering Com- between all the compo-
mittee chair Andrew nents, agree on conven-
“Tridge” Tridgell to get Andrew Tridgell, left, with his own drone, the CanberraUAV Bushmaster. tions on hardware inter-
an update on Dronecode faces, work out how field
since its launch, and for a look at the to make life easier for new contributors. updates of firmware will work, and gen-
future of drones. One key focus since the launch of erally solve the hundred and one little
SD Times: What has been happening with Dronecode has been on improving problems of making such a diverse
Dronecode since its initial launch? What developer documentation to make range of hardware and software work
are the key pieces that are emerging as bringing new developers into the proj- really well together, while making it all
work goes on? ect easier. That is happening both at the easy enough for users to deploy confi-
Tridgell: There has been a lot of devel- individual project level such as the tuto- dently.
opment activity with the core projects rial for ArduPilot and the site for PX4. Dronecode is also providing a
at the heart of Dronecode, specifically Another area we have been working research platform, with strong links to
the PX4 project and the ArduPilot proj- on is working toward our first confer- academic research groups, which we
ect. The development speed of those ence, which is happening as part of the expect will provide many of the
projects has been rising rapidly, and just Embedded Linux Conference in San advances in flight control and data pro-
between those two projects we’re now Jose in March. We had a really good cessing that will drive the next genera-
running at a rate of around 1,000 code response to the call for papers, and have tion of features. By providing a great
commits being reviewed and accepted some very interesting talks lined up. For starting platform that is affordable to
into the master branches a month. many of us (including me), that will be small research groups, we can enable
While the usual pattern of a small the first time we have got together face the researchers to focus just on their
number of developers doing most of to face for a meeting which makes it a particular area of expertise.
the commits does apply to these proj- particularly special event, given many of What can we expect from drones and drone
ects as it does to nearly all open-source us have been working closely together development in 2015?
projects, we’re delighted to see a signif- on the code for many years. Right now, we’re in the “rapid expan-
icant rise in the total number of con- How is Dronecode advancing drone devel- sion” phase of drones, and that means
tributors as well. opment? there are lots of groups experimenting
A significant contribution to that ris- Dronecode provides a meeting place for with ideas that would have been consid-
ing level of developer activity has been all of the different groups that are inter- ered crazy or just plain impossible a
the broadening of the contributor base, ested in open drone platforms. In [a couple of years ago.
So what we will see in 2015 is lots of very difficult task faced by regulators. So far we haven’t seen a lot of abuse of
groups trying out these ideas and seeing The whole area of airspace regulation is drones, although as with any new tool
what really works. For example, there not well geared to the scales involved there will be some people silly enough to
are a number of companies building with drones, both in terms of the sheer do things they really shouldn’t be doing.
“cloud-enabled” drones, where physical number of aircraft that are potentially Some people have flown in a dangerous
drone deployment is something that is involved and the low purchase cost of manner, flying close to airports. Others
done as an Internet application, with the aircraft. have ignored the many safety warnings
data processing done in cloud servers. Drone research and development is and flown too close to groups of people.
Others are working on systems for high- definitely being greatly affected by the Others have used drones in socially
altitude flight, gathering meteorological slow pace of regulatory change, and I unacceptable ways by using them to
data from altitudes of over 20km and think everyone in the industry is look- invade the privacy of others.
then flying the sensors back home. Oth- ing forward to the rules developing to I’m hoping that as drones become
ers are pushing the boundaries on what make commercial and research opera- more commonplace that societal norms
can be done in sports photography, and tion easier. will become more established on what
still others are working out how to make What are some use cases where you see is acceptable and what isn’t, along with
open drones work in Hollywood cinema drones being beneficial? the users becoming more aware of the
production. I started working on ArduPilot because danger of ignoring safety warnings.
Each of these applications has its of the Outback Challenge here in Aus- The good news is that the communi-
own specific needs from the low-level tralia, which is a competition to build a ties at the heart of the Dronecode proj-
drone code, and the members of the sophisticated search and rescue air- ects have already started to self regulate,
Dronecode projects are having a lot of craft. My dream is to put together a sys- with good behavior, respect for privacy
fun developing the pieces needed to tem which local search and rescue and safety well established within the
make these applications possible. organizations could assemble with the user community.
Another big area of development is sort of money they could raise in a What needs to happen in the industry to
the addition of much more powerful weekend lamington drive (a type of really allow drone development to reach its
computers into open drones, which cake sale popular with non-profit full potential?
enables the drone to perform sophisticat- groups in Australia), yet be sophisticat- It is hard to even know what the full
ed image recognition, object tracking ed enough to provide a real improve- potential is as the field is expanding so
and object avoidance. This is happening ment to the chances of rescuing people rapidly. My own focus is on helping the
both through the addition of “companion lost in the Australian bush, and easy Dronecode projects to reach their full
computers,” where a small powerful Lin- enough to use that members of the potential, and for that we need better
ux board is tightly coupled with an exist- organization could be trained in a developer documentation, better com-
ing open flight controller, but is also hap- weekend. munication between projects and the
pening by moving the whole flight stack I also love to see all of the groups that user community (including both com-
onto an embedded Linux board. are using code from Dronecode projects mercial and non-commercial users),
My own personal passion revolves for environmental applications, including and an environment that welcomes
around using drones for search and res- things like protecting threatened species innovative ideas.
cue applications and environmental from poachers, monitoring of sensitive What does the future of drones look like
applications, and I can confidently pre- beyond 2015?
dict that there will be a lot of activity in What I hope the future looks
that area this year as well! like is that Dronecode gets estab-
How will drone development be affected in lished as the clear platform of
the United States by the FAA’s proposed environmental choice for everything from hobbyists to
regulations? areas, monitor- high-end professional systems and top
I’m based in Australia, so I’m not as ing of Arctic research groups. I want to see the
closely involved in the FAA proposals, and Antarctic development and community method-
but I hope and expect that the U.S. reg- ecosystems, and surveying of forests and ologies, which have worked so well
ulators will take a look at what is hap- wilderness areas. across so many other technology areas,
pening in other countries (including Drones have the potential to be much flourish for drones. I also want it to be
Australia) and start to make it easier to more pervasive than that though. They a fun area to be in.
get certification for commercial and are hugely popular with sporting enthusi- We’re building flying robots that
research UAV use. asts and have gained a lot of traction in anyone from a home tinkerer to a mul-
It is a hard problem though, and I agriculture, among other areas. ti-national corporation can use. That is
personally am quite sympathetic to the How can drones be abused? a recipe for a lot of fun. z
Node.js announces move

to open governance model
BY ROB MARVIN As Joyent and the Node community nance model motivated Node’s own
Node.js is moving to an open gover- have concerned themselves more with move. Instead he gave credit to the
nance model under the auspices of the methodically working out kinks and working group within the Node.js advi-
newly announced Node.js Foundation. delivering smooth releases, the rapid sory board that devised and adopted
Cloud infrastructure company release pace of V8 builds often leaves the model.
Joyent, the corporate steward behind Node.js running a few versions behind. “I like a lot of the innovative things
the open-source runtime technology, the [io.js] group is doing,” Hammond
announced the establishment of an said. “A lot of the guys there work on
independent Node.js Foundation with both projects and have been instrumen-
IBM, Microsoft and PayPal as founding tal in getting Node to where it is. We
members. Under the open governance need to find ways to accommodate ear-
model, the foundation will work to add ly experimentation with early code and
members from within the Node.js technologies inside the Node.js project,
ecosystem and hold open deliberations which has been so focused on quality
on new features and directions for and production-grade and stability and
Node.js as it moves toward its produc- scalability that there’s room for us to
tion-ready 1.0 release. improve how we experiment with new-
Joyent is working with the Node.js er technologies.”
advisory board, established in October Ultimately, the dueling forks may
2014, along with the Linux Foundation not last. Hammond said both Node.js
to plan out and create the Node.js Foun- and the core io.js contributors are inter-
dation. The Linux Foundation is provid- ested in coexisting under one open-
ing input on organizational structure, source project.
governance models, fundraising, budget- V8 and Node.js are inextricably
ing and legal aspects of the foundation. linked, and Hammond believed moving Node.js 0.12 and beyond
The advisory board recommended to an open governance model through The long-awaited Node.js 0.12 release is
that Node.js move to an open, transpar- the Node.js Foundation will help it and now available for download after months
ent and consensus-driven governance Google keep the releases more in sync. of bug fixes and improvements. Ham-
model. According to Joyent CEO Scott “We’ll definitely work with Google to mond pointed out some of the biggest
Hammond, it’s a model Node.js project deploy and continue to stay current with features developers should look out for
lead T.J. Fontaine has already begun to V8 and provide upstream contributions in the release.
implement. back,” he said. “It’s a very important “We’ve rolled in some round-robin
“In the overall model for where the piece of technology inside the platform, clustering, better distribution for
project should reside, we set about cre- and we want to have a healthy, engaged resource utilization, garbage collecting
ating this foundation allowing us to drive relationship with Google.” performance optimizations, additional
a healthy ecosystem and a vibrant com- memory management, multiple
munity without snuffing out innovation, The deal with io.js instances on a single process, and addi-
and without parts of the community Node’s gap between its platform and the tional debugging capabilities around
feeling excluded or disenfranchised,” current Chrome V8 builds has opened clustered apps,” he said.
Hammond said. “If we do the right thing the door for io.js, a fork of Node.js run- Going forward under the open gover-
for Node, it will continue to attract pas- ning the current V8 build. The fork has nance model, the core Node.js team and
sionate and capable technical developers gained a huge open-source following, Node.js Foundation members will work
to foster a healthy ecosystem of third- thanks to its open governance model, with the community on issues such as
party technology and service providers.” but despite its recent 1.0 release, it is ECMAScript 6 features and other issues
still experimental and unstable. leading up to version 1.0. Hammond
Keeping up with V8 Hammond avoided criticizing io.js believes people should stop focusing on
The Node.js platform runs atop Google and said he’s drawn inspiration from the version numbers and look at the bigger
Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine with an way the project works. He stopped picture of a technology with more than 2
event-driven, non-blocking I/O model. short of saying the io.js open gover- million downloads per month. z
Data Governance Initiative

expands the Hadoop ecosystem
Hortonworks teams with companies in standardization effort
BY ROB MARVIN
Hadoop has, for the most part, moved
beyond the proof-of-concept phase and
the initial chasm of adoption. More and
more organizations are putting the
open-source framework to work on
mountains of complex Big Data. The
next step in Hadoop’s evolution is get-
ting a handle on governance.
To that end, Hortonworks—an enter-
prise data platform provider and open-
source Apache Hadoop contributor—
announced a new Data Governance
Initiative (DGI) to design and imple-
ment a comprehensive, centralized
approach to data governance. The initia- tag data well. Just having a metadata tag initiative’s founding members include
tive’s goals range from defining gover- or a business glossary isn’t that difficult healthcare giant Aetna, pharmaceutical
nance standards and protocols within to do in and of itself, but there really corporation Merck, and Target, one of
Hadoop, to recreating real-time wasn’t a product that fit all needs. the largest retail chains in the U.S.
auditable and traceable data landscapes. There is no one-size-fits-all solution; it “From a business standpoint, [gover-
Ultimately, though, the DGI aims to just doesn’t exist. Oftentimes Hadoop is nance] is a pain point that a lot of cus-
tie together the rapidly growing ecosys- considered sort of black box. You have a tomers have, hence this consortium
tem of Hadoop projects, from HBase, lot of workflows, but once it enters this we’re building,” Ahn said. “It really is a
Hive and Pig to Drill, Mahout and governance area, it kind of goes dark.” testament to where a lot of folks are in
ZooKeeper, with a flexible standardized their Hadoop journey and the realiza-
system that serves as a foundation and a A new governance paradigm tion that governance isn’t something
common conduit for Hadoop’s growth. The initiative is also indicative of the you can just tack on. You have to plan
“Everybody has Big Data problems,” new industries exploring Hadoop and for it, and it has to be integral to your
said Andrew Ahn, director of gover- Big Data processing. The DGI’s con- overall strategy.”
nance on Hortonworks’ product man- tributors are not traditional technology Hortonworks designed the DGI
agement team. “We really needed to partners; aside from Hortonworks, the based on the use cases of its partners,
building governance policies based on
business taxonomies in what Ahn called
The DGI’s core components a “happy meal” of data tags for organi-
At its core, the DGI’s baseline requirements are broken down into five components to zations to deploy code immediately into
apply a centralized governance model across the Hadoop stack: production, knowing that they’re always
• Knowledge/Metadata store: A system for ingesting and storing business or tech- in compliance.
nical metadata with the ability to integrate with any existing metadata tool.
• Apache Ranger integration: An access and authorization layer of Apache Ranger The culture of governance
leveraged for data security; plug-in architecture provides policy enforcement points In this way, Hortonworks and its part-
inside the Hadoop stack to prevent end runs. ners see the DGI as a new paradigm for
• Apache Falcon integration: Handles data-life cycle, data movement, scheduling, software development; with the open-
management and pipelining.
source community ultimately building
• Audit store: A “bottomless pit” of audit logging and data stashing, with support
governance capabilities based on indi-
for forthcoming immutable data type, according to Andrew Ahn, director of gover-
vidual enterprise needs. Ahn pointed to
nance on Hortonworks’ product management team. It compiles and organizes evi-
a retail application as an example of
dence for governance and compliance scenarios.
• Rules-based policy engine: A flexible system to model any policy rule.
creating a culture around governance.
“For retail, you might use PCI, the
NIST releases guide

measure by which governance or compli-
ance standards are set,” Ahn said. “Why
not model your data based upon a PCI-
based taxonomy from the very begin-
ning? In doing so, it kind of becomes an
industry standard so that you can inter-
operate with other industry actors or
auditors all speaking the same language.”
to mobile app security
BY CHRISTINA MULLIGAN staff to perform the vetting.
This fundamental shift in Big Data The National Institute of Standards and The process begins with an adminis-
governance style could be key to reduc- Technology (NIST) wants to protect trator or analyzer testing the applica-
ing barriers to Hadoop adoption across users from their mobile devices. The tion, according to the NIST. Not only
industries, according to Mike Gualtieri, organization has released a new guide should the analyzer establish a report
principal analyst at Forrester Research. designed to improve the security of detailing any bugs discovered, but he or
“Applying old-school dictatorial-style mobile devices. she should also assess the probability of
governance to Hadoop would be a disas- While mobile applications have the bugs being exploited and the impact
ter for enterprises because it would tamp helped businesses increase productivity it would have on a device or network.
down the agility of Hadoop,” he said. through real-time communication and “Organizations should not assume
“The Data Governance Initiative is connectivity, the benefits don’t out- that an app has been fully vetted and
intriguing because it brings the Hadoop weigh the risks that can come with it, conforms to their security requirements
community together with real enterpris- according to the NIST. simply because it is available through
es. I hope they partner in a way that cre- “Despite the benefits of mobile an official app store,” the NIST wrote.
ate ‘minimally viable governance.’ That apps, however, the use of apps can “Third-party assessments that carry a
would keep Hadoop flexible while giving potentially lead to serious security moniker of ‘approved by’ or ‘certified
enterprises the governance they need to issues,” the NIST wrote in its report, by’ without providing details of which
prevent data pandemonium.” “Vetting the Security of Mobile Appli- tests are performed, what the findings
cations.” “This is so because, like tradi- were, or how apps are scored or rated,
Back to open source tional enterprise applications, apps may do not provide a reliable indication of
The road map for the Data Governance contain software vulnerabilities that are software assurance.”
Initiative ultimately leads back to the susceptible to attack. Such vulnerabili- After an application goes through
Apache Incubator, and it will be com- ties may be exploited by an attacker to testing, it must then go through an
pleted 100% in the open. While Hor- gain unauthorized access to an organi- approval or rejection process, according
tonworks and the Apache Software zation’s information technology to the NIST. Within this process, an
Foundation haven’t yet settled on a resources or the user’s personal data.” auditor analyzes the bug report and risk
name for the eventual Hadoop project, To help protect mobile devices from assessment and evaluates the criteria to
the organizations agreed they’ve struck application vulnerabilities, the NIST establish whether the application vio-
a chord in the way to solve Hadoop’s said organizations should have an app lates security requirements. Based on
data governance problem. vetting process that includes app test- the auditor’s recommendation, a high-
Once all the core components are ing and app approval/rejection to deter- level member of the organization deter-
built and the DGI reaches its incuba- mine if the application meets an organi- mines whether to not an application
tor phase, the Apache community will zation’s security requirements. should be deployed.
begin contributing to the initiative to “This process is performed on an “If an app is approved by the
foster compliance in working with app after the app has been developed approver, the administrator is then per-
third parties. And on top of and released for distribution but prior mitted to deploy the app on the organiza-
immutable types, the contributors are to its deployment on an organization’s tion’s mobile devices,” wrote the NIST.
working to add automated ingestion mobile device,” the NIST wrote. “An In addition, the report detailed types
and tagging capabilities, enhance- app vetting process acknowledges the of software vulnerabilities and testing
ments to the policy engine, and concept that someone other than the methods that can be used to detect
Apache Hive schema lineage to the software vendor is entitled to evaluate them.
data governance initiative. the software’s behavior, allowing organ- “Ultimately, the acceptance of an
“This is a next evolutionary step in izations to evaluate software in the con- app depends on the organization’s secu-
Hadoop adoption,” said Ahn. “In Big text of their own security policies, rity requirements, which, in turn,
Data, you have something that’s gone planned use, and risk tolerance.” depend on the environment in which
through a prototyping phase and a In order to start a vetting process, the app is deployed, the context in
[proof of concept] phase, and now to be organizations must develop security which it will be used, and the underly-
a first-class citizen you’ve got to play by requirements, understand the limits of ing mobile technologies used to run the
the rules.” z the process, and set aside a budget and app,” wrote the NIST. z
Apache Storm prepares to rain security

Data tools to spend first full year as Top-Level Project
BY ALEX HANDY “We’ve allowed every process to Storm are different, despite some over-
Since it was created in 2011, Storm has authenticate against all the other compo- laps in their capabilities.
garnered a lot of attention from the Big nents in that cluster,” he said. “All inter- “Storm is a stream-processing
Data and stream-processing worlds. In actions are authenticated with Kerberos framework that allows one-at-a-time
September 2014, the project finally [and] also have the concept of individual processing or micro-batching,” he said.
reached top-level status at the Apache users. A unit of computation, in Storm, is “Spark is a batch-processing framework
Foundation, making 2015 the first full called a ‘topology.’ With security features that also allows micro-batching.”
year in which Storm will be considered we’ve added, the topology itself runs as The advantage of using something
“enterprise ready.” But that doesn’t like Storm with a Hadoop Big Data sys-
mean there’s not still plenty of work to The Storm team tem, said Goetz, is that it allows devel-
do on the project in 2015. is adding process opers and analysts to bridge the gap
P. Taylor Goetz, Apache Storm proj- between the batches and jobs that will
ect-management committee chair and controls and be done in a few hours, as well as the
member of the technical staff at Hor- authentication. information that’s coming into the sys-
tonworks, said that the road map for tem right this moment.
Storm in 2015 shows a path through the user that submitted it, that allows us He added that Hadoop can be used
security territory. “Initially, Storm was to implement security.” to store all the raw data coming into
conceived and developed to be Storm is part of an increasingly Storm, while Storm does all the data
deployed in a non-hostile environment. crowded world of data tools that have processing and transforming as it
Storm is a distributed system. There are clustered around Hadoop. Horton- arrives. If errors occur during this
multiple nodes,” he said. works offers frontline support for the process, the administrator can just hit
Thus, Storm was not originally project now as well, cementing the use- rewind and feed in the raw data that
designed with security in mind. That’s fulness of Spark in Hadoop environ- Hadoop has stored again.
changing this year, said Goetz, as the ments. But that’s not to say there isn’t Goetz said that he personally will be
team works to add authentication and still some confusion in the marketplace spending his time on Storm helping to
process controls to the system. Some of as to what Storm is used for. bring order to the various integration
that work will be featured in future Specifically, Goetz said that the use points it now has. This list of connectors
branches of the project. cases for Apache Spark and Apache should grow as 2015 moves on, he said. z
YouTube drops Flash video support for HTML5

Video streaming site also draws up new APIs, deprecated tags, and other changes
BY ROB MARVIN the entire industry,” wrote YouTube limitations. In the ensuing years,
YouTube has announced it now supports engineering manager Richard Leider. HTML5 has added support for adap-
HTML5 video by default on the Web, in “Other content providers like Netflix tive bitrate through Media Source
favor of traditional Flash support. and Vimeo, as well as companies like Extensions, the VP9 video codec for
The popular video streaming and Microsoft and Apple, have embraced higher-quality video resolution, and
sharing platform, owned by Google, HTML5 and been key contributors to Encrypted Media Extensions and com-
published a blog post announcing that its success. By providing an open stan- mon encryption schemes.
HTML5 is now enabled by default in dard platform, HTML5 has also Leider also pointed out that
Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Safari 8 enabled new classes of devices like YouTube’s HTML5 support extends to
and beta versions of Firefox. In addi- Chromebooks and Chromecast. You can WebRTC in-browser audio/video com-
tion to defaulting to the HTML5 player, support HTML5 by using the iframe munication as well, along with a selec-
YouTube is now deprecating the “old API everywhere you embed YouTube tion of new full-screen APIs enabled
style” Flash <object> embeds and videos on the Web.” with a standard HTML UI.
Flash API; it is moving to <iframe> YouTube first provided support for The World Wide Web Consortium
embeds and the iframe API instead. the HTML5 <video> tag in 2010, but elevated HTML5 to “recommendation
“These advancements have benefit- according to Leider, the company was status” in October 2014, effectively
ted not just YouTube’s community, but initially held back by the technology’s standardizing the technology. z
SDT311 page 24,25.qxd_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:22 AM Page 24
How to get real

value from testing
You’ll need the right attitude and processes
BY ALEKSANDR SHESTAKOV is about quality—quality of design and exchanged for another module.
In the field of testing, there are many code. TDD means writing good code. However, modular code is not nec-
ideas and movements, some of which But what does “good” code even essarily good code. It is only one of the
have formed into schools. But there is mean? The question is a contention quality attributes, indicative of inde-
really no universally accepted standard point for generations of programmers, pendent test potential, which is great
for what testing is and how it should be with such metrics as spaces vs. tabs, from the architectural point of view.
performed.
The attempts to establish such a
standard (such as the infamous ISO
brace positions, line lengths, coupling,
dependency matrixes, and more used
to decide whether a piece of code is
2. Framework-independent
code: Test your app, not the
database or Web framework. Test-
29119) are met with either ice-cold “good” or not (or if it’s at least “better” ing through frameworks and databases
indifference or hell-hot opposition. than the previous version). is very expensive and effort-consuming
Why? Well, because professional devel- In my opinion, code can be called since you have to test functionality
opers want to be able to choose “good” when it’s easy to read and under- through the whole stack, connecting to
approaches and tools that fit particular stand. After all, we are writing code to a database or framework. If the system
projects, time frames, budgets and be read by humans, not for computers is modular, you can pick out a validation
business goals, and deep down they or compilers. module and test it directly to ensure
know they will continue to do what’s However, there are several factors that it gives correct answers.
best to perform their duties well.
Test-driven development and automation

that can make code better:
1. Modularity, independence,
single responsibility principle.
3. Do only one thing and do it
well. Every module must be
responsible for one aspect of function-
In this context, I am no longer sur- Modular code is easy to test. Coupling ality, fulfilling a single goal and being
prised articles claiming that “TDD is your enemy. Far too many people able to do that without integration with
[Test-Driven Development] is dead” don’t want to test, since they don’t the system. Loose coupling and inter-
are published all the time. The word understand the value of testing. changeable modules are a real lifesaver
“automation” also provokes intense Writing first, testing later is time- for quality testing.
reactions from both extremes; Continu-
ous Deployment still encourages every-
one to automate, while the context-dri-
and effort-consuming. If the system is
interconnected, it’s hard to check
whether the individual parts work
4. Speed always matters. In order
to bring real value, unit tests
should be fast. Slow tests are like mer-
ven testing aficionados claim it properly. Writing modular code by cury, slowly killing your productivity
dehumanizes the process. I believe this dividing functionality into independ- and happiness. When tests are slow,
happens because there is no real under- ent and interchangeable modules, programmers give up and hope they’ll
standing of what testing (not to men- responsible for one aspect of function- sail through somehow. They won’t! By
tion TDD) stands for. ality, helps to test those parts of the testing each module independently, you
According to a popular misconcep- system without integrating everything speed up the test suite and cut costs,
tion, the term TDD is only associated together. This allows developers to running business tests in seconds. If
with testing (unit or integration). Not avoid regression risks and enhance you test through a Web framework or
everything should be taken at face val- transparency for the client since, in database, it takes minutes or even
ue, however. First and foremost, TDD test suites, results are apparent, not hours.
implied or described only in docu- It’s terrible when you cannot distin-
Aleksandr Shestakov is a mentation. Modules are also great guish business logic out of the app
software engineer with since they are self-sufficient and can since it’s dispersed in different parts
Itransition.
be used in another product or of it. (Some business rules are encod-
SDT311 page 24,25.qxd_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:22 AM Page 25
ed in browser code only, have time.” Testing should

many invariants are only not be part of the billing
checked on the database hours game or the time race.
level, and a big part of con- The only way to go fast is to
straints sits in Web con- go right.
troller code, for example.) Micromanagement kills
When you design and archi- productivity and motivation,
tect well, business logic can while self-management
be reused in another inter- helps you arrive at the best
face. You should ask your- result—every time! You have
self this question: Can I a goal and you choose the
realize a different delivery way to reach that goal. If it
mechanism for the app with takes longer to do it right,
all the business logic that’s you have to do it right and
already there? If you can find a compromise with
make the app interface management. The proof is
work through the command always in the pudding, and
line, it’s a well-written app when managers see results
by virtue of being modular, (even if you went against
with isolated business logic. their orders), you gain their
5. Automate every-
thing. People can be
creative and machines
respect and solidify your
reputation and place in the
market.
can do what they do best: Of course, this approach
check how well humans requires a certain level of
work. Continuous Integra- professionalism, and at first,
tion will check the system tech leads have to teach
for the developer when developers those skills so
there is a change in code, that later they can graduate
send e-mails, report bugs, to emancipating themselves
build metrics, etc. The pro- and defending their point of
grammer can always see view.
what’s wrong, who is The best way to approach
responsible for the bug, testing is to pay less atten-
when it last functioned tion to formulaic “stan-
properly, why it malfunc- dards,” conflicting schools
tioned, and what the test and holy wars, and to con-
coverage is. To achieve suc- centrate on quality. Focus
cess, automation has to be on speed, independence
controlled and encouraged and interchangeability; get
by managers, while tech rid of frameworks and data-
leads should be responsible bases; use automation tools;
for its implementation, con- and give clients links to
tinuous education and Cucumber test results
training of developers. instead of wasting time and
6. Project management
made simple. It is you
who decides how to do the
money on old-fashioned
extensive documentation to
describe what you have
job, not your manager. The done.
secret to being a professional Seeing hard facts, both
is to do work the way you find you and the client can be
fit. No one should tell you confident that the product
how to deliver quality and works and the behavior that
speed. No one should say, was specified has been fully
“Don’t test because we don’t implemented. z
COMPONENT WATCH
GrapeCity releases new suite In other component news…

■ File format solution provider Aspose
of cross-platform mobile controls is improving the API performance in

Aspose.Tasks for .NET 7.4.0. The latest
release fixes minor issues related to
BY CHRISTINA MULLIGAN tion, it includes touch-based scrolling,
MPP-to-XML conversion and output
GrapeCity has announced the general zooming selection, and built-in anima-
MPP file corruption, and also improves
availability release of Xuni, its new tion features, which is key to mobile
the API functionality. In addition, the
cross-platform mobile control suite for data visualization, according to the
company also released Aspose.Tasks
Android, iOS and Windows Phone. The company.
for Java 7.4.1 to improve overall API
release focuses on data visualization FlexPie is designed to create functionality, and announced it is in the
and Xamarin.Forms development using dynamic pie charts and provide Xam- process of revamping the solution with
C# and XAML. arin.Forms users with the ability to plans to launch a new version soon.
“Now that Xuni is generally available easily modify data interaction and
■ Mindscape is making improvements
for purchase, developers will be able to appearance with display options and
to its diagram solution. The company
utilize the product to provide native built-in animations.
recently announced version 4.0 of
experiences in Android, iOS and Win- The library of gauges has been
WPF Diagrams, packed with features
dows Phone using the same API across developed to give users the ability to
for creating rich interactive or read-
build rich dashboards only diagrams for applications. The
in order to visualize release includes performance
key data points. In enhancements, updates to the tree
addition, the gauges layout algorithm, and improvements
feature animation to its smart scrolling feature. Users
and interaction capa- who already subscribe to WPF Dia-
bilities as well as a grams 3.0 can update to version 4.0
clean, modern look, for free.
according to the ■ PDF document-management solu-
company. tion provider Soft Xpansion has
“Xuni helps released new versions of its Perfect
strengthen the ability PDF Editor and Perfect PDF Converter.
of .NET developers The PDF editor is designed for exten-
to build cross-plat- sive PDF editing while the PDF con-
form applications for verter focuses on the conversion of
Xuni provides a collection of UI controls for Android, iOS the enterprise using printable content and pages into PDF.
and Windows Phone. Xamarin and C#,” With version 9 of the Perfect PDF Edi-
said Joseph Hill, tor, the ability to create PDF/A-2 and
all platforms,” said Greg Lutz, product director of developer relations and PDF/A-3 files is now available. In addi-
manager of Xuni. “With Xuni and Xam- cofounder at Xamarin. “The advanced tion, the products feature an improved
PDF engine and PDF reader, and the
arin.Forms, developers can code once UI controls and features that Xuni
ability to split multi-page PDF files into
in C# and XAML to create enterprise- offers complement the Xamarin.Forms
separate PDFs.
level apps for all devices.” ecosystem, improving developer pro-
Xuni features FlexChart, FlexPie ductivity and enabling them to easily ■ Syncfusion, a Windows component
and three gauge controls: Radial, Lin- produce enterprise-grade apps for all provider, is expanding its commitment
ear and BulletGraph. With FlexChart, devices with C# and XAML.” to mobile development with
the company aimed to provide a chart The second version of Xuni is Xamarin.Forms. The company has
solution that focused on mobile form expected to be released mid-July with a announced new mobile controls that
support Xamarin.Forms as part of
factors and touch-based interaction. focus on data input, and the third
Essential Studio for Xamarin. The
FlexChart provides a number of data release of 2015 will have a focus on doc-
release features new gauge and chart
visualization chart solutions such as uments and reporting. The company
types such as a circular gauge, a linear
bar, column, area, line and symbol, also plans to target Java and Objective- gauge and doughnut series charts. z
scatter, bubble, and financial. In addi- C developers later this year. z
SDT311 page 28,29_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:18 AM Page 28
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SDT311 page 31-34.qxd_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:21 AM Page 31
Testing in an
agile world
With blurred lines and mixed roles, traditional

methods may no longer hold up
gile has challenged the world of BY CHRISTINA MULLIGAN What it means to be an agile tester
A development, operation and
project management, leaving
them to redefine their roles and work
according to Kartik Raghavan, senior
vice president of worldwide engineering,
Agile is a team game, and software
testers are no exception. While testers
are often known as the antisocial group
together on one team in a fast-paced operations and support at CollabNet. in software development, they need to
software development environment; “Long gone are the days when testers step out of their comfort zone and work
but one of the most difficult hurdles in huddle together in a silo waiting for dev with the entire team throughout the life
the world of agile is rethinking the role to pass them a build,” he said. “The lines cycle, according to Kevin Dunne, sen-
of the tester, according to Ian Culling, between dev and test have blurred, and ior product specialist at QASymphony.
CTO of VersionOne. so have the respective roles. Developers “One of the key tenets of agile and
“Traditional testers going into an are writing tests and testers are writing the agile manifesto is that people really
agile world need to start really absorb- code. And most importantly, test is hap- value face-to-face interaction and col-
ing the fact that their work isn’t writing pening early and often.” laboration, so moving into an agile
out defects anymore; it is delivering In this agile world, testers’ roles are world, testers really need to embrace
software,” he said. more important than ever, but the road that,” he said.
The role of the software tester to becoming an agile tester is a bumpy According to Marc Rambert, direc-
changes considerably in an agile world. one, according to Culling. tor of testing solution at Coverity, col-
Testers no longer have the time to test “As compared to a traditional tester laboration is not only something that
for everything, testing is no longer an role, agile testing is a very different testers need to embrace, but it is
afterthought, and testing is no longer the experience, and most traditional testers absolutely mandatory for agile.
sole responsibility of the software tester, will struggle,” he said. continued on page 32 >
Testing changes in agile

development shops, study finds
BY DAVID RUBINSTEIN and 61% said they’re testing earlier in ual testing. Eighty-nine percent of non-
As agile practices, Continuous Integra- the development cycle. The respon- agile shops are doing manual testing,
tion and other new methodologies come dents were mostly developers, as while 68% of agile shops are doing it.
into development environments, organi- opposed to QA professionals, according The study also found that there is no
zations have come to realize they need to Diane Hagglund, founder of and clear consensus on how to test applica-
to change the way they test software. senior researcher at Dimensional tions for mobile platforms. A little more
Among the changes highlighted in a Research. than a third of respondents said they test
recent survey of more than 500 devel- She said that even with a renewed on real devices only, while a third said
opers by Dimensional Research and emphasis on test by developers, they they use a combination of real devices
sponsored by Sauce Labs are that “are not writing better code, but all this and emulators, and a little less than a
organizations are doing more automat- testing is catching the errors.” Only third use simulators or emulators only.
ed testing at the top of the process, are 17% of the respondents said that agile And, of the third that use a combina-
testing earlier, and are doing more test- and CI have helped them write code tion, about a third use mostly real
ing overall. with fewer errors. devices, about a third use devices and
Of the respondents, 94% said testing The study found that across the simulators the same amount, and less
has changed since their organizations gamut of test types, more testing is than a third use mostly simulators and
adopted agile and CI, while 69% said being done in agile shops than in non- emulators.
they’re doing more automated testing, agile shops—with the exception of man- “This is a classic example of a market
< continued from page 31 the policing role of quality assurance, pace, which is why quality is a team col-
“A tester needs to be a key contribu- but is now that of a collaborative con- laboration, according to Correa.
tor to the agile team,” he said. “Their tributor to producing quality software,” “Having that collaboration with the
ability to communicate with all stake- said CollabNet’s Raghavan. team, you are testing as they are work-
holders, specifically developers, is cru- In a traditional environment, testers ing, and you are making sure that the
cial to success.” were often brought in at the end of the developers know what needs to be
In order for testing to be brought life cycle where they had weeks to just done, the test cases that need to pass,
successfully into the team level, quality test. But in an agile world, the process the features that need to pass,” she said.
has to be baked into the life cycle from is more fluid and ongoing. Testers have “Talking back and forth and checking
the beginning to the end, and testers to give up a certain amount of control things as they are being developed is
need to communicate with the develop- from last decade to this decade, accord- really the only way to do it.”
ment team as code is being written. ing to Matt Johnston, chief marketing In addition, the mindset of a tester
“It eliminates the ‘us versus them’ and strategy offer at Applause. needs to change when transitioning to
mindset that you find in a lot of the tra- “An agile tester should be someone agile. They are not only looking at qual-
ditional workflows,” said Cathy Correa, who is comfortable being uncomfort- ity from a test perspective, but also the
agile tester at VersionOne. “Testers are able. It has to be someone who is com- customer’s perspective, according to
working with the development team to fortable operating with incomplete QASymphony’s Dunne.
build quality in. They are looking at the information,” he said. “The tester’s job now is really to
work in progress at the same time This means no longer being the gate- work with customers and understand
development is going on so that when a keeper of maintaining quality, according what they want and how they use the
story comes through they’ve pulled it to Nikhil Kaul, product manager at tool,” he said. “In an agile environment,
together as a team. It is all about having SmartBear. But that doesn’t mean that a we can’t test everything usually because
those conversations as development is tester’s role isn’t just as important when of how quickly we are delivering soft-
going on so that you are not taking it comes to ensuring quality. ware, so we want to test software and
something that development gives you, “Agile testers act more as a facilita- understand it and look at it through the
finding the bugs and bringing it back.” tor to ensure quality is implemented lens of how users.”
Baking quality directly into the life throughout the software development
cycle also takes the responsibility of life cycle,” he said. Developers and testers’ mixed roles
quality off the testers and puts in onto On an agile team, there is no time to Many testers fear going into an agile
the teams. test for every single bug or defect with world that they will become functional-
“A tester’s role is no longer simply development going on a such a fast ly redundant. In agile, the roles mesh
How
How do you
you test
test on mobile platforms?
platforms? said Hagglund.
Chrome, Firefox and Internet
Explorer are the platforms against
which most applications are tested, the
Simulators or y study found, and some three-quarters
ces
emulators only of the respondents believed that testing
%
29% against more versions of browsers
Combination
Combination
mbi oof and/or browser types would increase
ulators
rreal
eall de
devices
d tors the quality of their application. Forty-
and simulat
sim
simulators three percent said they only test against
the most recent version of a browser,
Real devices only 34%
3 4 ors and while 37% test against two or three of
37%
ices
mount the most recent versions, and 20% test
% against four or more versions.
One interesting finding: Only 45%
Survey of 504 development and testing professionals of respondents have fully discontinued
conducted by Dimensional Research, and sponsored by Sauce Labs. support for applications running on
not being sure of the best way to do this,” in mobile browsers, while 53% indicat- Windows XP. Nineteen percent indicat-
Hagglund said. “There is zero agreement ed they’re testing mobile apps. ed they support their customers on XP,
among testers on how to test across A full 80% of respondents said cross- including new features and capabilities,
mobile platforms. There is no best prac- browser testing for Web applications is while 31% said they only fix serious
tice; they’re not near there at all.” very important, while 20% said it is bugs. This, after Microsoft announced
Also, 89% of the respondents said somewhat important. “Zero [people] it would no longer support the operat-
they develop or test Web applications said this testing was not important,” ing system as of April 2014. z
together, with developers taking on tions and behaviors that they can expect narrowly focused in one area,” Kaul
testing roles and testers taking on more when someone comes up with a story.” said. “They need to be open-minded
development roles. But testers must and willing to gain technical specialties,
remember that although everyone on Succeeding in agile as a software tester not only in existing areas, but also new.
an agile team can and is expected to do When transitioning over to agile, there Testers in an agile world are jack-of-all-
some form of testing, testers bring are specific technical and non-technical trades and master of a few, rather than
something different to the table, skills testers should come prepared just being generalists or specialists.”
according to Dunne. with in order to succeed. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
“If you are the person who devel- First of all, understand why this is According to Coverity’s Rambert,
oped the feature, you are pretty biased happening. Don’t worry about the chal- testers need to be familiar and comfort-
on if it is working properly,” he said. lenges; focus on understanding why the able with the agile process. “This can be
“You always need a little bit of discon- business is doing this, how it benefits a challenging transition, so open com-
nect; you need that person who wasn’t the company or product, and what the munication and change are key factors
involved in building it.” business hopes to achieve, according to for success,” he said.
But it isn’t only the fact that develop- Applause’s Johnston. Be able to think on your feet and
ers are more involved in the building “I do think a lot of testers and test switch between techniques early.
process than testers; it’s a tester’s knowl- managers jump right to ‘What does that “Testers need to know what would be
edge that keeps him or her relevant. mean for me?’ or ‘How am I going to do the most efficient way to test a particu-
Developers and testers approach testing this?’ and they kind of skip past the lar scenario,” said Kaul. “An under-
from different perspectives and have why,” he said. “If you have that concept, standing of when to use exploratory vs.
different voices, and while they can do it can inform a lot of the decisions that manual vs. scripting is crucial.”
the same sort of tasks, it is the experi- you make about what and how you are Share your knowledge. Testers are
ence that really makes the difference, going to go after it.” very knowledgeable about their prod-
according to VersionOne’s Correa. Most importantly, don’t fight the ucts, and a lot of that knowledge needs to
“It is good to blur some of those lines change; embrace it with an open mind, be shared among the team to make sure
with development and testing, and there said SmartBear’s Kaul. In a traditional everyone is getting valuable feedback,
is a lot of shared responsibilities; but at world, a tester might have had one spe- according to QASymphony’s Dunne.
the end of the day the testers have the cific focus, but in an agile world a tester Take a continuous learning approach
expertise,” she said. “They have the wears many hats and need to be flexible and invest in yourself. Testers need to
honed skills of knowing where to look, with his or her skill set. constantly be refining and growing
what to test for and what kind of interac- “Testers in an agile world cannot be continued on page 34 >
< continued from page 33

their skill sets, according to Johnston.
“If you are not asking yourself questions
What organizations are looking for in an agile tester
• Being more involved with requirements early on in the life cycle: “By understanding
such as ‘Should I get more into per-
requirements early, test plans and requirements specs can influence each other to
formance engineering, more exposed to
the benefit of all,” said Kartik Raghavan, senior vice president of worldwide engi-
test automation, or more exposed good neering, operations and support at CollabNet.
test case writing?’ then you are standing • Knowing how to script: “Automation plays a key role in agile testing as it helps
still and the world is moving faster and teams get rapid feedback on quality in real time. Testers therefore need to know how
faster past you,” he said. to script to work effectively with developers in an agile landscape,” said Nikhil Kaul,
Kaul added that learning shouldn’t product manager at SmartBear.
just be focused on the practical imple- • Embracing continuous integration: “Think of CI as the new way test suites get run
mentation of agile within the organiza- and report feedback. The primary difference is that tests are run immediately upon
tion, but also the industry. “Going to check-in and work to inform the whole team, not just QA, about the stability of the
different agile conferences can be of check-in,” said Raghavan.
great help here,” he said. • Being creative: “Testers are in a unique position where they have exposure and
On the technical side, testers need knowledge of the product and also a good understanding of the customer. They can
to be continually testing throughout the sort of think outside the box. We want to see testers coming up with a lot of not only
innovative features and suggestions of enhancements that they can add, but also
project, and automation is key, so hav-
coming up with innovative ways to test,” said Kevin Dunne, senior product specialist
ing scripting abilities or the ability to
at QASymphony.
use a tool to help build automated
• Thinking systemically: “The people that can help make structured decisions about
scripts is very useful, according to Kaul.
what to automate and what not to, what test cases we need to write and what we
“Test automation also requires learn- should push off to the world of exploratory testing,” said Matt Johnston, chief mar-
ing new techniques and tools, and being keting and strategy officer at Applause.
able to understand more technical • Being open to change: “If you are moving from a traditional tester to an agile tester,
aspects will ease the communication with you have to be open to the change, change in the philosophy and change in the way
developers,” Coverity’s Rambert said. you work,” said Cathy Correa, agile tester at VersionOne. “It is going to be different
Bring techniques such as exploratory and testers need to be open to that.” —Christina Mulligan
testing and Test-Driven Development
(TDD) into the agile world. “You want to ties get unified, modern ALM tools the release cycle is much faster with
be looking at the product and if it make bring together work tracking and man- shorter sprint, QA needs to aggregate
sense,” said VersionOne’s Correa. “A agement across the life cycle into a all testing activities in order to show
tester isn’t just someone who executes common integrated tool chain as that all changes are being covered, and
test; it is definitely trying to explore the opposed to siloed systems that have that there are no testing holes in critical
feature in different ways and being existed prior to agile adoption,” said business areas,” he said.
smart about what you are doing.” CollabNet’s Raghavan. Some tools testers transitioning to
TDD is significant because it helps When exploring tools, testers should agile should get familiar with, according
change developers’ and testers’ mindset always look for one that is flexible, to VersionOne’s Correa and Culling,
on delivering and designing code. “In according to QASymphony’s Dunne. include:
some agile environments...TDD “Tools should be flexible and able to • Source control tools such as GitHub,
becomes the driving component,” change,” he said. “Buying a tool that Subversion and Git
according to Dunne. “The first thing we forces you into one workflow where you • Continuous Integration tools, in
think about is how are we actually going are stuck doing that process over and order to automate test execution in
to test. Let’s not build this feature, let’s over again is really going to keep you the build and deployment pipeline
think about how will this it fit this fea- from driving that continuous improve- • Open-source tools such as Selenium
ture.” ment that you are looking for.” and PhantomJS for website browser
With the shorter sprints in agile, it can automation; JMeter for performance
How tools help an agile tester be helpful to find a tool that is able to testing; and Fiddler for Web debug-
In agile, testers can’t be expected to do reuse a single script across multiple plat- ging proxy
everything themselves. Development forms, according to SmartBear’s Kaul. • JavaScript libraries and frameworks
goes too fast, and testers don’t even have He added that tools should be able to such as Mocha, Jasmine and Chai
time to test for everything anymore, let help testers automate easily, support • Browser extensions Read this story on
alone do everything manually. While modular testing and integrate with build that help trou- sdtimes.com
there is no one-size-fits-all agile tool, systems to enable continuous testing. bleshoot issues,
there are certain things a tool can have to Lastly, using intelligent test coverage automate processes,
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architected for smarter test automation and performance
testing of web and mobile apps. The platform leverages
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SDT311 page 39,40,43,44,46_Layout 1 2/23/15 12:59 PM Page 39
Buyers Guide
BY ROB MARVIN rise in business stakeholders taking an 1000 Best Practice Metrics Quantified,”
interest in how a given application’s IDC analysts identified the rising influ-
A
pplications are growing more performance affects value. ence of DevOps in application perform-
complex and living on a wider “APM has been around for a long ance and found that application down-
range of platforms than ever time, and the people who need soft- time costs Fortune 1000 companies
before, and the application perform- ware and performance analytics contin- between US$1.25 billion and $2.5 billion
ance-management space is evolving ue to expand by leaps and bounds,” said every year. Conducted in cooperation
along with them. Abner Germanow, senior director of with AppDynamics, the survey breaks
APM platforms are providing more solutions marketing at New Relic. down the lost value of application failures
unified, flexible and predictive monitor- “We’re moving from software to auto- down to the hour, while projecting that
ing hubs for developers and operations, mate existing business processes to the total number application deploy-
spurred to deliver more targeted appli- software that’s actually the business.” ments will double within two years.
cation information faster. At the heart In a recent survey entitled “DevOps Kalyan Ramanathan, vice president
of this changing dynamic in APM is the and the Cost of Downtime: Fortune continued on page 40 >
SDT311 page 39,40,43,44,46.qxd_Layout 1 2/23/15 12:41 PM Page 40

of product marketing at AppDynamics,
comes from the mobile and DevOps
Three recommendations
worlds. Formerly of mobile APM
provider Crittercism and DevOps
for weighing APM platforms
automation company Electric Cloud, Aruna Ravichandran, CA Technologies vice president of DevOps marketing:
Ramanathan talked about the IDC sur- • Ease of use: “How easily can a developer get their hands around a tool that’s
vey in the context of how customer easy to deploy, easy to install and easy to manage? Having a simplified APM tool
experience has become the most impor- that developers can use to manage and troubleshoot is extremely important.”
tant deliverable and driver for DevOps • Quickly pinpointing performance issues: “One of the biggest elements when
in terms of business transactions—any you think about APM is complexity. As you add more features, the product becomes
user action within an application that more difficult to use. We have a unique user-friendly dashboard that enables users
has a business outcome. to get access to agents across APM deployments on the developer side, and you can
“APM solutions are at the heart of quickly generate diagnostic reports and diagnose any kind of problems, which is crit-
measuring and managing customer expe- ical. We also use one-click notifications, so every time there’s an issue, a developer
rience,” Ramanathan said. “It’s funda- will receive underlying context of the performance issue explaining the key actions
mentally about understanding the busi- they need to take so they can diagnose and fix the problem quickly.”
ness impact of performance because • Smart instrumentation: “Smart instrumentation is something a developer
software applications today are not just should completely leverage. It automatically connects transaction cases when
an IT entity; they support the business. problems occur, so you only collect the pertinent traces and don’t need to recre-
ate issues. Smart APM instrumentation provides targeted snapshots that give
APM solutions are actionable info. The benefit developers get is that with automated transaction
finding simpler ways tracing, you don’t need to have in-depth knowledge of the application or modify
your instrumentation.”
to present data Kalyan Ramanathan, AppDynamics vice president of product marketing:
to all stakeholders • Focus on the code: “What developers want first and foremost is to write
amazing code, write lots of code and spend less time on maintenance and other
within an distractors. So from an APM solution, they’re looking for a single pane of glass so
organization. they have great visibility into the performance of the app itself. They want to have
a common understanding of the app’s performance to share with operations to
You have to instrument all the compo- make DevOps possible.”
nents of the application, gather data from • Similar Dev and Ops tooling: “When you do performance testing of the app
them all and tie the business transaction in a test environment, you’re using similar tools, concepts and definitions as
and components together with complete would be applied to the production environment; a consistent view of how the
visibility into the performance.” application would work across both environments in the Dev and Ops parts of the
organization. We have a solution called the Virtual War Room, a shared collabo-
Modern APM trends change philosophy ration canvas that both Dev and Ops can use to look at the same issue and iden-
As DevOps practices and more preva- tify root causes more effectively.”
lent business concerns change the way • Deep-dive information: “When an application is moved to production and
organizations view application perform- the team is working on managing the experience, when things break, developers
ance management, the concept of what need deep-dive information to identify the root cause of the problem. What Dev
APM is supposed to be has also hates most is Ops coming to them and saying, ‘Your application does not work
changed. What was once a market syn- without providing any context of what really went wrong, where it went wrong
onymous with back-end applications and what they need to solve.’ ”
now encompasses mobile, Web and
cloud applications, and often more than Abner Germanow, New Relic senior director of solutions marketing:
one rolled into the same application as • A holistic platform: “Which platform is going to allow developers to focus on
different components. Aruna Ravichan- their app more than the APM platform itself? It needs to be fast, secure and
dran, vice president of DevOps market- needs to be able to monitor the components regardless of where they run. You
ing at CA Technologies, sees mobility as need to be able to look at a service not just in the individual APM realm, but an
a crucial factor in any modern APM end-to-end view of real user performance in a way that gives insight into the back
platform. end, mobile, browser, and also synthetic use.”
“More and more of our customers • RUM and SUM: You need a mix of both real user monitoring as well as syn-
are launching mobility initiatives to thetic monitoring, and you need to be able to get the data in a way that doesn’t
continued on page 43 > continued on page 43 >
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monitor performance in mobile apps,”
she said. “With APM solutions like
Weighing APM platforms
mobile app analytics, you want to pro- < continued from page 40
vide the end-to-end view. It’s not
require a lot of APM expertise. What happens when something breaks at 3 a.m.
enough to be able to monitor the per-
and no one is actually using the application? Can you get alerted to that before
formance of Web-based applications;
your users find out? It needs to enable the entire team to get immediate feedback
you need to manage applications native
loops on the parts of the application they care about.”
to mobile devices, connected to some
• Web and mobile focus: “App architectures have changed with customer
kind of back-end application, which is
experience pushed to mobile and rich Web applications running on cloud servic-
then connected to some kind of main-
es. Legacy APM and infrastructure-centric monitoring strategies were not built
frame. A big element of our strategy is
to monitor modern architectures on cloud services. Select APM tools that let you
to integrate mobile app analytics with
and your team focus on your application and customer experience from mobile
service virtualization to provide contin-
and browser through the back end, not on maintaining an APM tool and moni-
uous feedback to the developer
toring infrastructure.”
throughout the application life cycle.”
AppDynamics’ Ramanathan high- Buddy Brewer, SOASTA vice president of business development:
lighted these underlying platform shifts • Business context: “We’re past the era where you can have sets of data that
as well, pointing out mobile applications, don’t connect back into your business. If you’re working with part of the business,
cloud-based deployment and server-side every set of data you collect connects back into your business somehow. When
architectures as three emerging technol- you’re selecting an APM tool, go with one that gives you some kind of business
ogy frontrunners that are making the context. Whatever is happening in your application stack right now or over the
prospect of managing application per- last month, how did that impact your business and your revenue? You need that
formance markedly more complex. context to evaluate the trade-off between, say, working on performance this week
“Just about every application and and pushing off new features to next week.”
CIO today is looking at cloud-based • Real time, for real: “Developers need tools that give them information in a
deployment, whether it’s internal, hybrid timely manner. Real-time has meant different things to different people over the
or something like AWS,” Ramanathan years. People used to get away with saying something was real-time within 15
said. “If you’re an application vendor minutes, but with flash sales, social media and how much brand damage can
today without a mobile front end, you’re occur if you have an application performance problem, that’s not acceptable.
pretty much dead on arrival. We’re also When things happen in the real world, how long do you have to wait before your
seeing server-side architectures truly APM reporting lets you know?”
take off. Dependencies on APIs and • Predictive capabilities: “The reactive part of the APM problem is something
micro services today are going through all solutions more or less provide today if you choose any of the vendors out
the roof. A typical app now has six to 10 there. How can you use the APM information to learn things about your applica-
APIs it talks to on the back end, from tion that ultimately prevent problems from happening? Evaluating solutions
internal APIs to external services like along that predictive curve is important.”
Facebook, Twitter and PayPal. Apps are
no longer these monolithic things; Nicolas Robbe, Dynatrace CMO:
they’re composed of a lot of services, and • Data fidelity: “From a developer perspective, which is different from opera-
APM platforms need to take an end-to- tions, you need to be able to understand how problems build up over time. Prob-
end view to understand them.” lems don’t happen all of a sudden. If your APM platform is operations-centric, it
Within the diversifying application would only capture data when things go wrong. What led you to the problem is
landscape, deployments are growing what you need to understand. Developers need the ability to collect every piece of
ever more frequent. According to a data and retain it for as long as necessary to find and troubleshoot code instantly.”
New Relic survey, 58% of its customers • DevOps tool-chain integration: “One of the ways you prevent performance
deploy application code weekly or even problems from reaching production is by moving performance indicators up in
faster. In that heightened atmosphere, the continuous delivery chain and creating gates based on reaching those indica-
APM solutions are finding simpler ways tors. So as you build a release, you would be able to know without having to
to present data, not only to developers deploy that application if it meets certain criteria that indicate an acceptable per-
but to all the stakeholders within an formance level.”
organization, and curating that targeted • Take it for a test drive: “Go beyond the marketing literature and try it. There’s
application data in real-time using both a tendency out there from some vendors to bypass that step, but the devil is in the
real and synthetic user monitoring. details. Not all APMs are born equal, so trying out platforms and making sure the
“We surface the data we think is one you choose fits your needs and has the capabilities you need is crucial.” z
continued on page 46 > —Rob Marvin
SDT311 page 39,40,43,44,46_Layout 1 2/23/15 12:58 PM Page 44
A guide to APM offerings actively monitors the performance and

availability of critical business transac-
tions within recorded user paths.
NeoSense leverages the test scenario
n AppDynamics Application Intelli- formance, with Synthetic allowing testing design capabilities of NeoLoad to quickly
gence Platform enables software-defined from outside of data centers with expan- create realistic monitoring profiles. Easy-
businesses to proactively monitor, manage sive global node, and RUM allowing a to-read dashboards, alert triggers, and
and optimize complex application environ- clearer view of end user experiences. notification rules provide actionable
ments in real time, in production. The solu- insights for pinpointing performance
tion enables users to see everything with n Crittercism’s mobile application per- issues and getting to root causes quickly.
Unified Monitoring, from data center appli- formance-management solution
cations and infrastructure to browsers or enables enterprises to accelerate their n New Relic’s comprehensive SaaS-
mobile apps; act fast with DevOps collabo- mobile business. Crittercism’s solution based New Relic Platform provides one
ration; and know the business impact with monitors every aspect of mobile app per- powerful interface for Web and native
Application Analytics with cloud, on- formance, and provides a real-time global mobile applications. Leveraging the New
premise and hybrid deployment flexibility. view of crash, service and mobile transac- Relic APM, code-level visibility for appli-
tion metrics across iOS, Android, Windows cations in production that cross six lan-
n AppNeta provides Full Stack APM, Phone 8, HTML5 and hybrid apps. guages—Java, .NET, Ruby, Python, PHP
delivering integrated performance visibil- and Node.js—and supporting more than
ity that spans the application code, n Dell’s Foglight APM delivers answers, 60 frameworks, the platform also
through the network, to the end user. not just data. Get up and running in min- includes real-time with New Relic Insights
AppNeta’s SaaS solutions give Develop- utes with a smart APM SaaS-based solu- along with mobile, browser and synthetic
ment, Application and IT Operations tion that requires zero configuration, or user monitoring capabilities.
teams broad, detailed performance data monitor your applications from a single
to see across their Web, mobile and cloud- pane of glass with an on-premises solu- n Oracle provides a complete end-to-end
delivered application environments and tion that can be optionally combined with application performance-management
pinpoint performance bottlenecks. other Foglight performance-monitoring solution for custom and Oracle applications.
capabilities for database, virtualization or Oracle Enterprise Manager is designed for
n BMC Software delivers software solu- storage to support a full range of enter- both cloud and on-premises deployments; it
tions that help IT transform digital enterprise monitoring strategies—whether your isolates and diagnoses problems fast, and
prises for competitive business advan- application is deployed in the data center, reduces downtime, providing end-to-end
tage. For IT Operations, TrueSight App cloud or hybrid cloud. visibility through real user monitoring; log
Visibility Manager goes beyond applica- monitoring; synthetic transaction monitor-
tion performance monitoring to provide n Dynatrace delivers developers and ing; business transaction management and
deep insight into user experience. In addi- testers the answers they need to ensure business metrics; Java and database moni-
tion to tracking and measuring user activ- superior user experiences, proactively toring and diagnostics; multilayer discovery
ity at the individual or location level—on solve problems, and accelerate DevOps/ of infrastructure and application topology;
premises or off—it filters data to ensure Continuous Delivery strategies. Dyna- and application performance analytics and
the delivery of relevant application infor- trace User Experience Management and advisories.
mation without the unnecessary noise. Dynatrace Synthetic Monitoring help
developers to proactively understand and n SmartBear Software’s AlertSite
n CA Technologies’ CA APM is built to optimize user experience; Dynatrace UXM monitors the connected world of
be easy, proactive, intelligent and collabo- Application Monitoring is designed to Web, mobile, and SaaS apps and APIs for
rative, or EPIC, offering easy deployment maximize application performance; and businesses from 80+ global locations.
of APM agents, including PHP. Proactive Dynatrace Data Center RUM delivers app- AlertSite provides fast, accurate alerts on
identification and resolution of issues aware network insights. problems before end users experience
occur across physical, virtual and mobile them, including issues with third parties.
applications. Intelligent insight comes n HP’s Application Performance Man- Monitoring scripts are easily created in
through 360-degree mobile-to-mainframe agement suite empowers businesses to minutes with just a few clicks of the
visibility, which captures billions of critical deliver exceptional user experiences by mouse or by importing API test scripts
metrics per day to verify transactions. CA examining the impact of anomalies on from SoapUI by SmartBear.
APM is collaborative, aligned with DevOps applications before they affect cus-
methodologies to instill continuous per- tomers. Business applications are avail- n SOASTA believes real-time user data
formance improvements at every stage of able with proactive end-user monitoring gives companies the most actionable
the software life cycle. and actionable diagnostics to measure intelligence needed to stay in front of per-
the performance and stability of apps formance issues before they impact the
n Catchpoint Systems offers innovative, from a user perspective. business. The SOASTA platform enables
real-time analytics across its Synthetic digital business owners to gain continu-
Monitoring and Real User Measurement n Neotys’ NeoSense is a proactive appli- ous performance insights into their real-
(RUM) tools. Both solutions work in tan- cation performance-monitoring solution user experience on mobile and Web
dem to give a clear assessment of per- for all Web and mobile applications. It devices—in real time and at scale. z
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< continued from page 43 “The real value today is not so much talked about the notion of an applica-
most relevant to what a developer or a to fix problems after they happen, it’s to tion intelligence platform. These new
business stakeholder wants,” said New prevent problems from happening in age APM platforms combine unified
Relic’s Germanow. “Rather than flood- the first place before you put an appli- monitoring tools affording developer
ing you with data only an APM special- cation into production,” said Nicolas and operations visibility into not only
ist would understand, we create a curat- Robbe, CMO of Dynatrace. “We don’t the code of an application, but also how
ed experience. You have people who believe the goal is to have better war end users are experiencing it, and how
want visibility into different aspects of rooms; we want to have no war rooms. the user experiences factor into identi-
your application, and it’s a need that We want companies to turn their war fying and fixing performance issues in
goes beyond performance where every- room into a ping-pong room.” the business transactions flowing
one has a different set of questions.” through the apps.
To go along with this faster, more Dev, Ops and business impacts “DevOps alone is not the most com-
specific need for real-time data in solv- “There are many different personas plete way to approach APM,” said
ing application problems, APM is also now within the APM domain,” said CA’s Ramanathan. “The notion of DevOps
trending from a reactive philosophy to Ravichandran. “You have an application today is Dev and Ops working together
more-predictive tooling and notifica- support person, the system administra- to fix the right issues, the issues that are
tions. According to CA’s Ravichandran, tor, the service delivery person and truly mission-critical. It’s important for
the market has shifted from the days of many more. To truly make the promise Dev and Ops to look at problems by
prioritizing the business considerations
affecting the end user. The tactical val-
‘What’s better is to avoid the ue is narrowing down the thousands of
problem in the first place because issues you might spend oodles of hours
you found it before you went to trying to solve to the five issues that tru-
production.’ ly affect a customer.”
—Buddy Brewer, SOASTA At the core of how developers and
organizations approach APM are
being reactive in the early 2000s, to a of DevOps real, you need to facilitate changing customer expectations. When
point in the mid-2000s where the APM better communication and collabora- DevOps teams serve business needs,
market started trending in a way that’s tion between the Dev and Ops teams.” and the business is concerned with how
much more predictive. APM platform Robbe explained that after reshap- application performance affects users,
focus has shifted toward forecasting in ing around the relationship between the user has the power. SOASTA’s
finding anomalies and correlating developers and operations, a third Brewer believes that in this context
behavior to fix problems as soon as or dimension of APM is now coming into APM as a concept is more important
before they occur. focus: business. Rather than deriving than it’s ever been, it just means some-
“The traditional APM story is a reac- abstract intelligence about an applica- thing slightly different.
tive story,” said Buddy Brewer, vice pres- tion, platforms are tackling APM from “People are far enough away from
ident of business development at SOAS- the standpoint of user experience, and remembering the dial-up era that they
TA. “Rather than root cause analysis, how any small change in application expect Web pages and mobile applica-
now we want to focus on the predictive performance might affect a user’s busi- tions to be responsive,” he said. “It
side. If you have a problem, it’s important ness value. doesn’t matter how they’re connecting,
to react quickly and fix it. But what’s bet- “We’re now seeing the business side whether they’re using a browser or a
ter than that is to avoid the problem in showing interest in the APM data from laptop, waiting in a line on their phone
the first place because you found it the standpoint of the user experience,” or using a tablet in their living room.
before you went to production.” Robbe said. “Is a customer’s behavior The expectations get faster and faster in
In providing these various real and affected by performance? If someone is an environment where more and more
synthetic user-monitoring platforms complaining on Twitter about their revenue is coming from digital. Applica-
along with predictive analytics, the goal experience, can I go back and figure out tion Performance Management itself
of many APM vendors is to redefine what happened? All this high-fidelity isn’t an outdated term. It’s that the com-
application crisis mode by eliminating architecture is now providing this new ponents within APM and where people
one of its most prevalent symbols: war layer of value to address another set of spend their time that
Read this story on
rooms. This trend toward predictive needs. We think of APM today as a dig- has changed from
sdtimes.com
solutions, informed by in-depth and tai- ital performance platform, more than being associated just
lored user data, is guiding APM from a just an application-management plat- with instrumenting
reactive to a more proactive approach form.” the back end. There’s a
in rapidly addressing application prob- In that vein of a digital performance lot more to that pic-
lems. platform, AppDynamics’ Ramanathan ture in 2015.” z
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SDT311 page 48-50,53,54.qxd_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:20 AM Page 48
The ongoing
evolution of Azure
BY PATRICK HYNDS
A
number of factors have come together to form a your on-premises servers can be the
backup with Azure holding the pri-
guide for Microsoft to the path that has made mary. This is an excellent option for
Azure the key to the company’s future success. those that either have trouble letting
That road has been bumpy, but almost always on a good go or need to keep parts of their sys-
tems on premises. Most organiza-
trajectory. Now, as the offerings gel and mature,
tions in the world cannot afford to
Microsoft has to maintain its commitments and satisfy have a disaster-recovery location, so
those who have bought in while keeping the world excit- this is a way to have it without this
ed about Azure. overhead. Also, while not an exclu-
sive advantage, Microsoft does pro-
Cloud is a great name for this Four ways Azure works vide a pay-as-you-go model that only
market, because just like trying to The easiest way to approach this is Amazon matches currently with its
control the weather, it’s hard for to understand that there are four On-Demand Instances as part of the
humans to control anything even in major modes or categories where EC2 offering.
the best of conditions. To prove Azure plays that will help with This is usually the best place for
this point, there have been outages understanding how you can jump an organization to start dipping their
and missteps to remind Microsoft, into using it and make sense of new toes into using cloud. It starts with
and everyone else, that this stuff is announcements going forward. The picking a server, existing or planned,
hard, especially at these scales. service categories break down into and deciding to host it on Azure
Thanks to these difficulties, Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Websites, instead of in your own data center.
continues to evolve, with new Cloud Services and Packages. The security blanket of Microsoft
capabilities and features coming For most companies with dedi- System Center letting you pull it
fast. Now that the major patterns cated IT staff, the easiest place to back home makes this a very low-
have emerged, it is easier to help start is to take a computer or virtual risk place to start, provided you
even newcomers find their bear- machine and host it in Azure, taking picked the server well.
ings. Bill Wilder, CTO of Finomial, advantage of the Infrastructure-as-a- Azure Websites represent the
author of “Cloud Architecture Pat- Service (IaaS) aspects of Azure. second mode in our list and a differ-
terns” and an Azure MVP, calls this Through the virtual machine hosting ent way of leveraging Azure. Azure
the “second generation of Azure capabilities, Microsoft provides Websites are often the best way for
services. These new services are power, ping (Internet access), the an individual or smaller organization
rich with enterprise-class features, Microsoft OS license, and even a to get going. Azure Websites are a
but also accessible to mere mortals wide array of template systems to platform that, as the name indicates,
because they hide so much of the choose from when creating the VM. allows you to roll out a website
complexity.” The rest is up to you, including quickly and easily, even if it requires
The single most common ques- ongoing patching, any troubleshoot- sophisticated packages. If you need
tion that people ask about Azure is ing of the OS and your application, a Content Management System or a
“How can I use Azure or any cloud and upgrades, making this offering blog or even an e-commerce site,
for that matter?” which boils down very similar to what is provided by but do not need the kinds of control
to “What is in it for me?” any number of ISPs, such as Ama- and customization offered only by
These are simple questions with zon, GoDaddy and Rackspace. total control of the server as an OS-
not-so-simple answers. The first There are two potential advan- level admin, then this could be a
thing to understand is that Azure is tages to using Microsoft’s IaaS, with solution for you.
about providing services that you the first being the company’s ability Azure Websites do not fit nicely
can leverage to get your work done to provide the license, rather than into the regular “as-a-Service” defini-
quickly, easily and cheaply. It is having to buy the license and pass tions. It is a gray area. Cloud Services
important to remember that, just that cost on to the consumer, which are clearly Platform-as-a-Service,
like no one buys a computer because all the other IaaS providers must do. and some say Azure Websites are
they want the operating system, you The other really big advantage is PaaS, but I prefer to describe them
will not choose to use cloud capabil- the ability to move VMs from Azure as more of a hybrid, “light” PaaS.
ities for their own sake. The offer- to your own data center using Finomial’s Wilder described
ings of Azure are growing, and it can Microsoft System Center. This is a Azure Websites as “scalable, flexible,
be bewildering to even understand really big deal because Microsoft can and super-low friction.” In talking to
how to categorize things. serve as your backup data center, or continued on page 50 >
Interface troubles
BY PATRICK HYNDS
Due to its nature, customers must control
their Azure accounts and set up most
services via the Web interface. This is
convenient, but less than ideal in many
ways, most notably regarding security.
Under normal circumstances, if someone
gets your Windows Live credentials, then
they have complete control of everything
you have on Azure. There are examples
of big damage being done simply by los-
ing control over these credentials on
Web-based systems, including Amazon.
To address this, Microsoft has intro-
duced Azure Multi-Factor Authentication,
a core security concept whereby the user
is asked to prove their identity by more
than simply providing a password. The fac- Figure 1: The original Web interface for Azure.
tors are generally accepted as something
you know (like the username and password), something you tions hosted on Azure and anywhere else.
have (like a smartcard or your phone) or something you are Since Azure first came out, the Web interface has
(like biometrics such as fingerprints or retinal scans). changed to handle the updated offerings and features.
Microsoft describes the packages this way: “Azure Multi-Fac- Microsoft has been working on a major update to this portal
tor Authentication adds an additional layer of security to your that has in itself proven controversial. The original interface
Azure administrator account at no additional cost. When as it has evolved is shown in Figure 1, while the new portal
turned on, you’ll need to confirm your identity to spin up a is shown in Figure 2. There are discernable elements from
virtual machine, manage storage, or use other Azure servic- the Windows 8 UI in the new portal, and Windows 8 is not
es.” This is a great way to solve this security problem and can considered among the most beloved of Windows versions.
also be leveraged to protect almost anything, including solu- continued on page 53 >
< continued from page 49 compelling business limitation. There is or websites. Microsoft has been much
Michele Bustamante, CIO of Solliance, simply very little you can’t achieve with more successful in growing adoption of
Microsoft Regional Director and co- Azure Websites today.” Azure in general and Cloud Services in
author of “Developing Microsoft Azure particular since they provided the inter-
Solutions,” she said, “Azure Websites Cloud services im steps and built out the offerings.
makes the cloud approachable by allow- The third category in our explanation is Microsoft also has many packages of
ing you to focus on building applications currently called Cloud Services. Origi- functionality that do not fit neatly under
and let Azure worry about prepping nally they were called Web and Worker the categories of hosted VMs, Websites
your virtual machines and load bal- Roles, and this was Microsoft’s first or Cloud Services, and these make up
ancers (among other things).” vision for what Azure would represent. the fourth mode. It is with these pack-
Azure Websites feel like Software-as- It was, and remains, an ambitious vision ages where the innovations are coming
a-Service, but really they are more like a because Cloud Services represent PaaS, from in Azure. Microsoft’s Hadoop
hybrid that takes away the hassles of sup- which means that Microsoft abstracts offering, HDInsights and the Machine
porting your own infrastructure, but still the operating system and all of its care Learning capabilities fit this category,
allowing for the kinds of deep cus- and feeding away, letting developers and they seem to be best described as a
tomizations typically absent from SaaS worry about their code and nothing else. way to get Software-as-a-Service from a
offerings. Bustamante asserts that “No It did not work out as expected due to centralized and experienced cloud ven-
other cloud provider has an experience an overestimation of the level of trust dor. Just in the last year Microsoft has
to match Azure; in fact, at this point I Microsoft had achieved with their brought out Orleans, which we will cov-
have seen so many successful migrations clients. It was a bridge too far, and as we er into more detail later.
to Azure Websites that I rarely recom- are seeing now, people and organizations Outside these categories there are
mend a move to VMs unless there is a need interim steps such as hosting VMs continued on page 53 >
Interface
troubles
While the tile-based interface of Win-
dows Phone and Windows 8 has many
strengths, it also has some weaknesses.
This interface allows you to see things
at a glance, but only the surface details.
To find the deeper elements you have to
drill in, which is fine so long as the details
are findable. The interface opens and
scrolls horizontally, and this is a common
source of criticism. Finding things is also
somewhat hit-or-miss. Although it sup-
Figure 2: The Azure Web interfance, now with a Windows 8-like UI design.
ports search, you have to know what to
search for, and some things are not actu-
ally present yet. Like the Windows 8 Start Screen, you real- horizontal scrolling causes the browser to freak out a bit.
ly have to search for things because there is no concept of a Other things do not work in the new interface, such as
folder structure, and this limits node hierarchies as a way to setting the security on an endpoint for a virtual machine
navigate a huge tree of options. An example of how this can deployed from the Azure Marketplace. It is important to
trip you up is that if you install an application that would remember that the old portal is still the default interface,
normally create Web links on the Start Menu of Windows 7, and the new portal is opt-in only. With either interface,
then these links are not automatically added to the start finding what you owe (monetarily) to Microsoft is easy and
screen of Windows 8, and searching for the application will that is a must; however, figuring out what you owe to one of
often result in many results too long to read. (SQL Server is its partners is borderline impossible. This will certainly
a prime example of this.) change (and hopefully soon), but these are the kinds of
With the new Azure portal, the concept is of blades that bumps that need to get smoothed out for Microsoft to reap
open up with each click and reveal more detail after scrolling the benefits from their efforts to make Azure the cloud of
to the right. It is quite easy to get into a situation where the choice. z
< continued from page 50 early adopter camp. cializes in storage services such as back-
also critical capabilities that make the There can also be cultural and polit- up, but Laflotte says that we can likely
rest of it work much better. Many of the ical factors that can influence adoption. expect Europe to see many niche cloud
network capabilities that do not easily fit One great example playing out current- companies like this emerge there while
into the aforementioned categories are ly is the attitude change in Germany cloud consolidates somewhat in the
just needed to make the rest of this stuff toward all things cloud that are not U.S.
work. Duane Laflotte, CTO of Critical- hosted and owned locally. After talking A potential remedy to this problem
Sites considers the Virtual Network to a number of business decision-mak- comes from a bill being proposed by
capabilities that allow you to bridge your ers in Germany, it appears that the NSA U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch, Chris Coons
on-premises systems with your Azure hacking scandal has shaken faith that and Dean Heller. This bill would protect
systems as a key enabler that does not fit data stored in the cloud is safe. cloud providers like Microsoft so that
neatly into any category. Privacy is a different concept in most they don’t need not store data if doing so
of Europe than it is in the United violates the law of the country where it is
Not everyone will play States, and that means that it might be stored. If this bill becomes law, it would
With any new technology trend, there a while before Europe sees the kind of be the best way to remedy the lack of
are early adopters and late adopters. cloud adoption (with Microsoft, Ama- trust, but I would not expect its effects to
Cloud offerings enjoy economies of zon or any U.S.-based provider) that is be instant in any case.
scale and the ability to let you focus on ramping up now. To address this reality
the things that drive profits or produc- on the ground, Core Data Cloud in Difference makers
tivity. But they also add the extra ele- England has “been very busy helping Some of the Azure capabilities that seem
ment of a perceived loss of control that companies in the U.K. have their cloud the most out of place could be the ones
unnerves many who are usually in the and keep it local too.” Core Data spe- continued on page 54 >
< continued from page 53 adoption and revenue. erShell is becoming a requirement
that make all the difference in the world. As of this writing, there are just over rather than a nice-to-have for network
Described earlier as packages, they each 3,000 products listed in the Market- admins as much as for developers.
solve a problem by providing tools and place, with some of them being Finomial’s Wilder pointed out that
the platform for those tools, along with Microsoft offerings, but many more “the PowerShell toolset has matured
immense scalability. The most obvious being third-party offerings from com- over the years.” He went on to explain
example of this is the HDInsight imple- panies from Cloudera to Barracuda. that “a couple of years ago, Azure added
mentation of Hadoop available on As ISVs think about their own tech- PowerShell cmdlets for management
Azure. To get Hadoop capabilities, nology and how they can benefit from operations, and now we have Runbooks,
Microsoft adapted the Hortonworks the scale and the self-service aspect of which provides a hosted, highly available
implementation to run both in Azure as the Azure Marketplace, we will see PowerShell scripting environment with
the HDInsight Service and as Microsoft more and more innovative implementa- built-in affordances to help make inter-
HDInsight Server for Windows. tions. For example, FileBridge’s data acting with your Azure resources as sim-
Machine Learning is another prime tiering technology has won over many ple as you could want.”
example of one of these packages. customers with its ability to have multi- Virtually every task using a user inter-
When this came out, it was a much big- ple configurations easily selectable. In face documented by Microsoft is pop-
ger surprise than seeing a Hadoop solu- this way a customer can configure ping up with a PowerShell variant. When
tion on Azure, even though it made based on how many terabytes they summing up Runbooks, Wilder said, “All
great sense for Microsoft to enable of this is backed by auditing, a scheduler,
organizations with this technology. Machine Learning credential management, and more. And,
The reason Machine Learning is so of course, Runbooks themselves can be
strategic is the direction that the Web is
goes a long way to managed with PowerShell.”
taking as it moves toward what some are democratizing PowerShell is not the whole story of
calling the Semantic Web. The Semantic
Web consists of sites that understand cir-
analysis. DevOps on Azure. There are also pow-
erful tools built into the developer
cumstance and can adapt them for the tools. Bustamante pointed out, “You
user based on sophisticated analysis. can start really lean with your develop-
This is where Machine Learning comes ment process and DevOps story, and
into the picture, but until now organiza- expect to push up to Azure. To that end, move at your own pace to a more auto-
tions had to have deep specialization there are options for 10-, 20- and 50- mated process. This in particular helps
with dedicated scientists to use it. terabyte-capacity virtual machines. small teams be productive quickly.“
Microsoft bringing Machine Learn- Not everything Azure does is find- She went on to relate the following
ing to Azure has gone a long way to able in the Azure Marketplace search. story about how the publish-and-swap
democratizing these capabilities, mean- One of these is Orleans, which Wilder feature saved her from a big problem.
ing that much smaller organizations can describes as “a really interesting addi- “I was boarding a plane, had checked in
bring much more sophisticated solu- tional PaaS model, which is actor- and published a fix, but I forgot some-
tions to users. Bustamante pointed out based, for low latency, highly reliable thing,” she said.
that “Azure also has strong offerings and scalable services.” “At that point, I was the only pub-
with Service Bus, Media Services, lisher of the production code, so I had
Mobile Services and more.” She added DevOps delivers to walk my developer through adding
that, “holistically, I view Azure as the It is difficult to have a serious discus- the fix and publishing for me. He fixed
approachable cloud: deeply useful fea- sion about cloud systems without the issue, published via Visual Studio
tures but easier to work with overall.” addressing DevOps. (so easy) to staging, so we had a rollback
Finding these packages needs to be DevOps is the comingling of tasks option just in case. Then, I walked him
easy, and of course what platform these that used to be segregated between through my admin login to get in to the
days would be complete without a mar- developers and network admins thanks portal to run the swap. The hardest part
ketplace? And so, Microsoft recently to the unification driven by the cloud. It of the whole process was remembering
debuted the initial batch of partners to enables powerful automation and my password to grant him access. The
provide their wares on the Azure Mar- empowers those who do not shy away ability to deploy via developer tools
ketplace. This is not the same thing as from it and rightly scares those who like and perform a swap in
Read this story on
the App Store, but close in concept. the world the way it used to be. Power- case something went sdtimes.com
The Marketplace allows vendors to Shell is the language of DevOps in the wrong was what made
place their solutions on display with the Microsoft world, with tasks on Win- this all possible in a
hope that, since these solutions make dows that used to be scriptable via 15-minute window
use of Azure VMs, Storage or other VBScript now much better served by before the plane took
services, they will help drive Azure PowerShell. Learning how to use Pow- off.” z
SDT311 page 57_Layout 1 2/23/15 9:20 AM Page 57
Code Watch BY LARRY O’BRIEN
The five rules of project management

A lthough the point of this column is to discuss
“where the rubber meets the road” of soft-
ware development rather than theory, if you read
improving a potentially shippable product, I do not
think it’s reasonable to expect that estimates can be
eliminated. I’ve become skeptical of the idea that
Larry O'Brien, former
editor of Software
Development and
Computer Language
SD Times, you are most likely managing a software software development is so uniquely difficult that
magazines, is a software
development team or teams. As endlessly challeng- it should be exempt from scheduling. I’ve found developer living in
ing as code is, dealing with people is, by far, the function-point analysis to be the best technique for Hawaii.
harder part of developing software products. large-system estimation and group-sourced tech-
Once upon a time, I had a certification for Proj- niques best for small-scale and specific tasks.
ect Management from some Very Prestigious Proj- Dancing with bears: While Gantt and PERT
ect Management Organization. I knew all about charts are misleading in software projects, traditional
PERT and Gantt charts, critical paths, and resource project-management training does provide a keen
balancing. I won’t say that knowledge of such things understanding of “risk.” I’m putting that in quotes to
is useless in software project management, but they emphasize that, in project management, risk is an
are not nearly as important as these five issues: entire area of study, not just exposure to danger.
The mythical man-month: Creating and In their short, invaluable book “Waltzing with
evolving code that produces value to end users is Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects,”
primarily a communication problem. The more DeMarco and Lister define risk as “a weighted pat-
people are involved, the more overhead there is in tern of possible outcomes and their associated con-
communicating things clearly, accurately and in a sequences.” When I first began
consensus. In “The Mythical Man-Month,” Fred managing software projects, I Understanding and optimizing
Brooks formulated the law: “Adding manpower to thought my job was to come as
a late software project makes it later.” close as possible to a particular
these five issues will put you
What was true in 1975 remains true in 2015. result given the constraints on ahead of the majority of
Your ability as a software project manager critically hand. That’s wrong. The result of a
depends on your managing the quite inelastic rate software effort is never what was software project managers.
at which your team can work. envisioned at the beginning. Soft-
No silver bullet: Developers are often uncritical ware project management is risk management.
in their advocacy for a new technique: It solves one No matter what, it’s a people problem: The
problem well, and they extrapolate that all their final and most important rule of software project
problems will be solved. Not only is this forgetting management is that it’s not really about project man-
that software is about communication, it’s wrong for agement at all. Nor is it about libraries, programming
even the task of coding, which has enough variety to languages or technology stacks. Weinberg’s Second
confound even the most elegant of approaches. Law of Technical Consulting is “No matter what they
High-level management is even more prone to tell you, it’s a people problem.”
silver-bullet thinking. Software teams are expensive, The definitive book on the issue of peopleware
and I’ve never known a team that hasn’t wasted at is by DeMarco and Lister again. Conveniently, it’s
least a sprint confidently implementing exactly the called “Peopleware.” And although some of its
wrong thing. As a software manager, you have to be advice goes against today’s fads (such as the impor-
the skeptic and, while accepting that things can tance of offices with closing doors), I think its
improve, they probably won’t improve all that much. advice is spot on.
Estimation trouble: If devs are uncritical There is much more to software project man-
about their tools, they are positively delusional in agement than these five issues, but understanding
estimating their tasks. All software project managers and optimizing them will put you ahead of the Read this story on
have, at some early point in their career, laid a majority of professional software project managers. sdtimes.com
bunch of (very poor) dev-provided estimates in a You’ll be less stressed, your development team will
row and naively relayed them to upper management be happier, and most importantly, your customers
only to have it turn into a (very fixed) deadline. will have the best chance of receiving value from
While I agree with the idea of incrementally your team at the highest possible rate. z
Guest View
BY SANJAY ZALAVADIA
Sanjay Zalavadia brings

more than 15 years of
Differences in delivery and deployment
T
leadership experience in
o better support developer and quality assur- deployment takes automation one step further.
IT and technical support
services in his role as ance personnel, it will be important to under- While Continuous Delivery is left in the hands of
VP of client services stand the characteristics of Continuous Delivery and the business to release when it feels it’s time,
at Zephyr. Continuous Deployment as well as what makes Continuous Deployment automatically does it as
them unique. soon as the code is ready. So, instead of holding
In today’s tech landscape, a wide variety of key- onto the build, it’s directly sent out to all users. In
words and acronyms have emerged, and all of this this type of environment, automation will be nec-
jargon has often made processes and concepts more essary to ensure that it’s implemented and exe-
confusing. For example, in app development, Con- cuted effectively without any cumbersome work-
tinuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment are flows.
often used interchangeably by organizations, Continuous Deployment also has a certain
although they are two distinct concepts. The reason amount of liability attached to it; after all, what if a
for this confusion is because the two subjects are critical vulnerability emerges when the app is
interrelated and work toward the same goal. To bet- released? Luckily, Continuous Deployment
ter support developer and quality assurance per- depends primarily on small changes that are tested
sonnel, it will be important to understand the char- through Continuous Delivery. Developers also
acteristics of Continuous Delivery and Continuous attach more ownership of the code throughout the
Deployment as well as what makes them unique. software’s life cycle, creating more accountability
for the adjustments that are made.
The difference between Defining Continuous Delivery “It sounds risky, but if you have a very extensive
Agile development environments and thorough set of automated tests, then the risks
the two is how the builds have turned to Continuous Deliv- are mitigated, especially as the extent of the
are ultimately released to ery as a way to get apps out quickly changes in any one deployment is reduced,” wrote
while still upholding quality. Once tech journalist Tim Anderson.
the user. a developer feels that a small
batch of code is ready, he or she Bridging the gap
can send it to the QA team to test and monitor for As Humble noted, Continuous Deployment
any potential errors that may emerge. Because the implies Continuous Delivery, but the inverse is not
app is essentially being sent piece by piece, QA per- true. The main difference between these two con-
sonnel can quickly go through the code and leverage cepts is how the builds are ultimately released to
automated testing for less chance of human error. In the user. For Continuous Delivery, businesses may
addition, the build is sent to a production-like envi- choose to keep the build and deploy it only when
ronment to be rigorously evaluated before any they feel they are ready to do so. In Continuous
changes are released, but the software can be easily Delivery, once the app has been tested and
deployed once the business is ready to do so. declared “done,” it is automatically sent out.
“Continuous Delivery is about putting the Deciding which will better suit an organiza-
release schedule in the hands of the business, not in tion largely depends on its confidence in the
the hands of IT,” wrote Continuous Delivery expert code, the magnitude of the change and the
Jez Humble in a blog post. “Implementing Contin- immediate need of the patch. However, it also
uous Delivery means making sure your software is means that the business has planned for every
always production ready throughout its entire life aspect of its demands.
cycle—that any build could potentially be released “There are no obstacles to deploying to produc-
Read this story on to users at the touch of a button using a fully auto- tion,” Humble wrote. “In other words, you could
sdtimes.com mated process in a matter of seconds or minutes.” deploy the build to users using a fully automated
process at the push of a button if you decided to. In
The characteristics of Continuous Deployment particular, that means you’ve also tested [that] it
The main difference between Continuous fulfills its cross-functional characteristics such as
Deployment and Continuous Delivery is that capacity, availability and security.” z
Take your Android development

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July 29-31, 2015

BOSTON
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Every day is packed with great technical sessions and tons of
networking opportunities. It really brings together a fantastic community
of developers and business partners in the Android space.”
—Jay Dellinger, Advisory Software Engineer, Manheim
“Very good conference. “There are awesome speakers that are willing
Worth the time and money.” to share their knowledge and advice with you.”
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A BZ Media Event #AnDevCon www.AnDevCon.com

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Analyst View BY ROB ENDERLE
The next age of mobile computing

M icrosoft’s HoloLens was one of the surprise
highlights of the Windows 10 preview event.
It was positioned as a holographic augmented real-
much of the interaction typically tied to key-
boards.
Further, the display has eye tracking, giving you
Rob Enderle is a
principal analyst at the
Enderle Group.
ity device that would allow a user to change dynam- what could be an even more effective way to move
ically the appearance of the world around us. the cursor than a mouse. With the camera, you’ll
But this is far more than what was presented. have not only the ability to use virtual keyboards,
This is the birth of the next age of personal com- but unlike projected keyboards that tend to put the
puting, because with HoloLens in its final form, keys on top of your fingers when you type, this
you may not need a PC, tablet or phone. You’ll just product would see your hands and create a much
need HoloLens. Let me explain. more believable virtual keyboard.
HoloLens integrates a number of technologies However, because of that camera, you could
together to fool our eyes into seeing things as if also have the device learn sign language, allowing
they were really in the room with us. It uses a the use of a very unique skill set that already exists
more advanced form of the Xbox Kinect camera to in the market.
scan the environment around you, and then places Since it can project a display of any size, has
that information in a unique computer mounted massive processing capability and is head-mount-
on your head with three processors. These include ed, it could take the place of your cell phone, tablet
a CPU, a GPU and a new custom processor called or PC, and seamlessly move between use cases
a Holographic processor. This computer then depending on our need. If you
blends the real world with computer images to wanted something that looked This is the future point where
create experiences that are both unique and com- like a phone or tablet of any size,
pelling. you could actually take a piece of
you can’t tell where you
You can place virtual TVs or windows that look cardboard that same size and leave off and your personal
like windows on walls, or you can build 3D objects write the word “phone” or
using the virtual tool and place them on real tables. “tablet” on it, and to your eye, computer begins.
Or, you can furnish the room you are in virtually, once the HoloLens reads the
then have a 3D printer print what you imagine, or word, it would appear as one of those devices. I
use a connected Web service to order what you expect, though, that most will prefer to have the
have collected—transforming what you imagined device be far less limited to virtual form factors
into a real-world experience. that mimic the real world.
In its final form, the entire product resides on
our head, and it is connected wirelessly to external A big step toward singularity
sources both for data to create the image and so Because this is a head-mounted unit with much
that it could be used for anything from a cell phone tighter integration into how we interact with it, I
to a PC. think this is a huge step toward what some of us
call the Singularity. This is the future point where
The next-generation mobile computer you can’t tell where you leave off and your personal
The limitations on mobile devices fall into three computer begins. As we move toward that end, and
areas: screen size, which has to be small in order as medical science advances, you can see a future
to be portable; mouse and keyboard, which are where a procedure that could hardwire your vision
ever more limited the smaller the device is; and to the computer, and future enhancements could
battery life. The HoloLens initially dramatically allow you to feel and taste the virtual thing you can
addresses the first two. You interact with the now only see and hear. Read this story on
product with voice commands and hand gestures, I think the HoloLens potentially showcases the sdtimes.com
and its display sits over your eyes, giving you the coming age of wearable computing and foreshad-
potential for a screen of nearly unlimited propor- ows a future where it will be increasingly difficult
tions. Voice command and voice to text, both of to separate where the machine leaves off and the
which are possible with this device, can handle computer begins. z
Industry Watch
BY DAVID RUBINSTEIN
Developing apps horizontally

David Rubinstein is
editor-in-chief of SD Times. T he most important change in how custom soft-
ware is created these days has nothing to do
with programming languages, development envi-
rate data, are business process applications.
In the survey, respondents cited the efficiency
of software, serving a unique need, and the ability
ronments, agile methodologies or code repositories. to make enhancements as the top benefits of cus-
Instead, it’s about taking a horizontal approach tom software development. Ninety-one percent
to application development, which allows for believe a new market is emerging for cloud-based
shared resources, composite pieces and staying up application development platforms (spoiler alert:
to date. That’s the view of Matt Calkins, CEO of Appian has created a cloud-based, visual develop-
Appian, which recently surveyed 306 developers to ment platform).
get a sense of how they see their world. The benefits of developing custom apps in the
“Everyone needs custom applications, but they cloud are clear: The ability to quickly tune and
don’t like the difficulty of doing them,” Calkins told make applications responsive, to reuse compo-
me recently. “They expect custom applications to nents in other apps, and wider ability to secure,
carry an innovation load” for the regulate and control your applications. But per-
Horizontal approaches have business, but instead, “custom haps the biggest benefit, according to Calkins, is in
apps are an anchor in the past.” the creation of a single version of the truth.
never been powerful enough This is because of the vertical “Now, businesses can have agreement on
to replace vertical app approach companies have always reviewing customer accounts and what actions can
taken to software development. be taken, or even define what a customer is,” he
development—until the cloud. “In a 4GL, for example, you’d said. “It’s like the second coming of data warehous-
write app after app that then have ing. There’s a common perception of core con-
nothing to do with each other. You had application cepts, and this will be critical across custom soft-
silos.” Those custom applications were only accessi- ware. You’ll see the same common objects the
ble by the author, and Calkins said that left compa- same common way, unified by a common acknowl-
nies at a disadvantage. Further, he noted, the edgement of the facts of those objects.”
absence of alternatives to building apps from the A platform approach to custom application
ground up “have kept that going in spite of the level development enables companies to constantly
of dissatisfaction with the outcomes.” update the applications to the latest devices and
Horizontal approaches, he said, have never been operating systems, and then that information is
powerful enough to replace vertical app develop- brought to bear on the next applications, and the
ment—until the cloud. “This power parity is allow- next. “You can be more efficient with the develop-
ing people to think innovatively,” he said. “In a busi- ers you have by accelerating and empowering
ness’ non-critical areas, it’s fine to be a conformist them,” he said, rather than the applications becom-
and run pre-packaged software. That [pre-packaged ing an albatross around the corporate neck.
software] has driven costs down and lets companies With advances in the cloud, Calkins expects much
like Microsoft define how rote functions should more custom development will be done 10 years
work. Companies gain efficiencies that way. And, from now compared to today. “Custom software
pre-packaged apps had an upgrade path.” today seems to be out of date,” he said, due to the
However, it’s in custom applications where busi- time and effort required to do updates. Platforms are
nesses express their personality where they are not “the new answer to custom software.”
homogeneous, Calkins said. Unfortunately, custom As an example, Calkins described how Dallas-
applications have been seen more as a necessary evil Fort Worth Airport published 30 custom applica-
Read this story on than as a way to lead a company forward, he said. tions—for plane inspections, facility repairs and
sdtimes.com Interestingly, Appian’s roots are not in applica- more—in 30 weeks. “That’s like breaking the
tion development. They run deep into business sound barrier in the world of customized software.
process management. And the custom apps that “This,” he added, “is the new frontier. The
businesses need to be competitive, as well as to world is just not very good at custom application
give businessmen the access they need to corpo- development.” z
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Science, Part I and II
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Dr. Will Ford to Improve It
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Corey Lanum Big Data Meets IT Ops:
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Daniel Porter Jeffrey Kosseff Human Coding and Machine Classification
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Contents ISSUE 311 • MARCH 2015

FROM THE EDITORS FEATURES

Big Data Gets Real

Come to Big Data TechCon

People are talking about Big Data TechCon!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF David Rubinstein

Instantly Search 631-421-4158 x105 • drubinstein@bzmedia.com

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SOCIAL MEDIA AND Rob Marvin • rmarvin@bzmedia.com

Highlights hits in all of the above SUBSCRIPTIONS subscriptions@bzmedia.com

REPRINTS Stacy Burris

ACCOUNTING Viena Ludewig

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WESTERN U.S., WESTERN Paula F. Miller

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10 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

Throwback TV: Watch Grace

Who won the Performance Bowl?

DOMAINS | MAIL | HOSTING | eCOMMERCE | SERVERS

Dedicated Server Business Line X8i and X10i,

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 13

FROM THE EDITORS

You’ve come a long way, Linux

Welcome to the new world of drones

14 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

How far can drones go?

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 15

16 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

Node.js announces move

18 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

Data Governance Initiative

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 19

NIST releases guide

20 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

Apache Storm prepares to rain security

YouTube drops Flash video support for HTML5

24 SD Times March 2015 www.sdtimes.com

How to get real

Test-driven development and automation

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 25

ed in browser code only, have time.” Testing should

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 27

GrapeCity releases new suite In other component news…

of cross-platform mobile controls is improving the API performance in

The Drones are coming...

For the builders, buyers and flyers

...peaceful, happy ones!

www.sdtimes.com March 2015 SD Times 31

With blurred lines and mixed roles, traditional