Infinite articles

Posted on by March 4, 2014

We’ve come across a few interesting articles in the last few days, covering open source, security, coding and other gripping topics. Here’s a round-up:

From The Register: Microsoft bigs up open source, then stuffs it under the sofa – why Microsoft’s Open Source initiative is anything but

From TechRadar: Mobiles and tablets expose businesses to massive risk – or is it actually the lack of information and training that’s doing it, rather than the fondleslabs per se?

Coding: From Wired: Afterschool ‘Code Clubs’ planned to teach kids programming – a great move; and from The Register: Compulsory Coding in schools: The new Nerd Tourism – or why making coding compulsory is a very bad idea.

From TechCrunch: Boostrapped Startup Saves Over $100k By Dropping IE – or why excluding 70% of your potential market can be an excellent move.

And lastly, from HistoryofIT: 1936 – Konrad Zuse creates the Z1 programmable calculating machine – what timing.

BYOD

Posted on by November 5, 2014

BYOD: unstoppable phenomenon?

We blogged in January 2011 about the growing practice of employees using their own devices at work, particularly fondleslabs, and its application to schooling. So we read with interest today this Gigaom article describing the phenomenon as “unstoppable” and stating that

companies need to invest in building apps, period.

Embrace change

The article emphasises the importance of the API border for security, straying into some technical territory, but draws towards a close with this refreshingly clear summing-up:

Business and IT leaders who are wrestling with whether or not personal devices should be allowed in their company’s network should embrace this change. There is no stopping it, it’s already here. And there is a big upside to BYOD beyond employee satisfaction. People treat their personal mobile devices as an extension of themselves. Employee productivity improves with each new task that they can accomplish on their favorite toy and a ton of costs can be saved through reduction in paperwork and manual processing in general.

APIs are the key

You won’t be surprised to hear that the article is written by a company that specialises in API solutions but none the less, some interesting points are made. And we have to agree, this one *is* “unstoppable”.

Us and IaaS

Posted on by June 17, 2012

We’re delighted to feature in Nick Hardiman‘s article for TechRepublic. Nick looks at British companies providing Infrastructure as a Service, discussing their USPs and also just what they’re up against competing in a global market. This is what he says about OpenSure:

OpenSure, a fully managed hosting provider, runs a virtualized infrastructure for its customers. Many of its customers want to remove their IT overhead, not increase it with self-service tools. Its USP is its ethical approach and green credentials rather than on-demand services and metered billing. OpenSure has no plan to roll out their own cloud offering, but has inheriting cloud administration work from some of its customers.