Sebuah Catatan Dari Alam dan Pengalaman

Khutbah Jumaat Dari Masjid Tuanku Mizan UiTM Secara Langsung di Radio UFM.

2012-02-03T08:24:00.003+08:00

Bermula hari ini (3-2-1012) Radio UFM akan menyiarkan secara langsung khutbah jumaat dari Masjid Tuanku Mizan (Masjid Pusat Pemikiran dan Kefahaman Islam UiTM) melalui frekuensi 93.6 FM. Radio UFM dapat didengari ke udara disekitar kawasan Shah Alam, Klang beberapa kawasan di Lembah Klang.

Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists

2012-01-31T22:39:00.002+08:00

UNIVERSITY PARK, Penn. – We've all heard of the ravaged rain forests and the plight of the polar bear. But as far as reasons for saving the planet go, the one offered by scientists Thursday is truly out of this world.

A team of American researchers have produced a range of scenarios in which aliens could attack the earth, and curiously, one revolves around climate change.

They speculate that extraterrestrial environmentalists could be so appalled by our planet-polluting ways that they view us as a threat to the intergalactic ecosystem and decide to destroy us.

The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis."

It divides projected close encounters into "neutral," those that cause mankind "unintentional harm" and, more worryingly, those in which aliens do us "intentional harm."

Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) "could attack and kill us, enslave us, or potentially even eat us. ETI could attack us out of selfishness or out of a more altruistic desire to protect the galaxy from us. We might be a threat to the galaxy just as we are a threat to our home planet," it warns.

One such scenario is the stuff of many a Hollywood blockbuster, a "standard fight-to-win conflict: a war of the worlds." But another might resonate more with fans of Al Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient truth."

It speculates that aliens, worried we might inflict the damage done to our own planet on others, might "seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us."

"Humanity may just now be entering the period in which its rapid civilizational expansion could be detected by an ETI because our expansion is changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere (e.g. via greenhouse gas emissions), which therefore changes the spectral signature of Earth," the study says.

"While it is difficult to estimate the likelihood of this scenario, it should at a minimum give us pause as we evaluate our expansive tendencies."

But before we brace ourselves for alien annihilation, the report suggests things could turn in humanity's favor.

"As we continue the search for extraterrestrials into the future, perhaps our thinking about the different modes of contact will help human civilization to avoid collapse and achieve long-term survival," it suggests.

(Source - http://www.foxnews.com)

Pertukaran Pengarah Pejabat Pembangunan dan Pengarah Pejabat Pengurusan Fasiliti.

2012-01-31T19:17:00.002+08:00

Mulai 1 hb.Februari 2012 Pengarah Pejabat Pembangunan iaitu Tuan Haji Alias Taib bertukar menjadi Pengarah Pejabat Pengurusan Fasiliti mengantikan puan Sr Hjh. Zuraida Yahya. Manakala puan Sr Hjh. Zuraida Yahya menjadi Pengarah Pejabat Pembangunan. Semoga Pejabat Pembangunan dan Pengurusan Fasiliti akan lebih maju dan berjaya dengan pertukaran ini.

The War on Iran is Already Underway - by Leonid Slavin

2012-01-28T22:58:00.001+08:00

If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.

The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela. The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.

Since the new US military strategy implies focusing on two regions – the Greater Middle East and South East Asia - the issue of the Strait of Hormuz appears coupled to that of the Strait of Malacca which offers the shortest route for the oil supply from the Indian Ocean to China, Japan, South Korea, and the rest of South East Asia.

The EU oil embargo recently slapped on Iran and the threats voiced by the US and other Western countries to come up with further sanctions against the country led watchers to conclude that an armed conflict between Iran and the West has finally became imminent.

The first potential scenario in this context is that the current standoff would eventually escalate into a war. The US forces in the Gulf area currently number 40,000, plus 90,000 are deployed in Afghanistan, just east of Iran, and several thousand support troops are deployed in various Asian countries. That adds up to a considerable military potential which may still fall short of what it takes to keep a lid on everything if armed hostilities break out. For example, Colin H. Kahl argues in a recent paper in Foreign Affairs that, even though “there is no doubt that Washington will win in the narrow operational sense” (1), the US would have to take a vast array of pertinent problems into account.

At the moment, maintaining the status quo is not in US interests, holds Stratfor, a US-based global intelligence agency: “If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel...” (2) If the conflict with Iran takes the shape of a protracted bombing campaign and comes as a prologue to the occupation of the country, the US will need to strengthen its positions in adjacent regions, meaning that Washington will be trying to draw the Caucasian republics (Georgia, Azerbaijan) and those of Central Asia into the orbit of its policy and thus tightening the “Anaconda loop” around Russia.

An alternative scenario also deserves attention. EU sanctions would surely hurt many of the European economies – notably, those of Greece, Italy, and Spain - by ricochet. In fact, Spanish diplomatic chief José Manuel García-Margallo Y Marfil bluntly described the sanctions decision as a sacrifice (3).

As for Iran, the oil blockade can cause its annual budget to contract by $15-20 billion, which generally should not be critical but, as the country's parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential poll are drawing closer and the West actively props up its domestic opposition, outbreaks of unrest in Iran would quite possibly ensue. Tehran has already made it clear it would make a serious effort to find buyers for its oil export elsewhere.

China and India, Iran's respective number one and number three clients, brushed off the idea of the US-led sanctions momentarily. Japan pledged support for Washington over the matter but did not post any specific plans to reduce the volume of oil it imports from Iran. Japan, by the way, was badly hit in 1973 when Wall Street provoked an oil crisis and US guarantees turned hollow. Consequently, Tokyo can be expected to approach Washington's sanction suggestions with the utmost caution and to ask the US for unequivocal guarantees that the White House will be unable to provide. Right now the US is courting South Korea with the aim of having it cut off the import of oil from Iran.

The opposition mounted to the plans underlying the military scenario by China, Russia, and India seems to hold the promise of an alliance of countries seeking to tame US hegemony and raging unilateralism. Stratfor analysts have a point saying that time is not on the US side, considering that the BRICs countries have some opportunities to influence the situation in the potential conflict zone by launching joint anti-terrorism and anti-piracy maneuvers in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, etc.

Inducing regime change in Iran, which is Washington's end goal, still takes a pretext. The US has long been eying various factions in Iran in the hope of capitalizing on the country's existing domestic rivalries parallel to the employment of tested color revolution techniques such as the support for the Green Movement or the establishment of a virtual embassy in Iran.

Richard Sanders, a vocal critic of US foreign policy, opined that, at least since the invasion of Mexico in the late XIX century, the US permanently relied on the mechanism of war pretext incidents to compile justifications for its military interventions (4). US arch-conservative Patrick J. Buchanan cited in his opinion piece titled “Did FDR Provoke Pearl Harbor?” the fairly common view that US financial circles knowingly provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to drag the US into a war with the remote goal of ensuring the dollar empire's global primacy (5).

The lesson to be learned from the history of the Vietnam War, namely the Gulf of Tonkin incident in which USS Maddox entered Vietnam's territorial waters and opened fire on boats of its navy, is that the initial conflict was similarly ignited by the US intelligence community, the result being that the US Congress authorized LBJ to militarily engage Vietnam. (By the way, no retribution followed in June 1967 when the Israelis attacked USS Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 172). The morally charged concepts of humanitarian interventions and war on terror had just as well been invoked to legitimize downright aggressions against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Speaking of the current developments around the Persian Gulf, Washington's choice of pretexts for aggression comprises at least three options, namely (1) Iran's nuclear dossier; (2) an engineered escalation in the Strait of Hormuz; (3) allegations that Iran supports international terrorism. The US objective behind the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program - to make everybody in the world accept Washington's rules of the game – has never been deeply hidden. The abundant alarmist talk is intended to deflect attention from the simple truth that building a nuclear arsenal with the help of civilian nuclear technologies is absolutely impossible, but Matthew H. Kroenig from the Council on Foreign Relations recently went so far as to warn that Iran would some day pass its nuclear technologies to Venezuela (6). The motivation must be to somehow bundle all critics of the US foreign policy.

The Strait of Hormuz, which is the maritime chokepoint of the Persian Gulf, is regarded as the epicenter of the coming new war. It serves as the avenue for oil supplies from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates and is therefore being closely monitored by all likely parties to the conflict. According to the US Department of Energy, 2011 oil transit via the Strait of Hormuz totaled 17 billion barrels, or roughly 20% of the world's total (7). Oil prices are projected to increase by 50% if anything disquieting happens in the Strait of Hormuz (8).

Passing through the Strait of Hormuz takes navigation across the territorial waters of Iran and Oman. Iran grants as a courtesy the right to sail across its waters based on the UN Treaty on Maritime Goods Transportation. It must be understood in connection with Washington's recurrent statements concerning the Strait of Hormuz that in this regard the US and Iran have the same legal status as countries which penned but did not ratify the treaty, and thus the US has no moral right to references to international law. Iran's administration stressed recently after consultations on national legislation that Tehran would possibly subject to a revision the regulations under which foreign vessels are admitted to Iranian territorial waters (9).

Navies are also supposed to observe certain international laws, in particular those defining the minimal distance to be maintained by vessels of other countries. It constantly pops up in the US media that Iranian boats come riskily close to US vessels but, as watchers note, provocateurs like the CIA-sponsored separatists from Iran's Baluchistan could in some cases be pulling off the tricks in disguise.

Chances are that a part of the oil embargo plan is to make the West encounter oil supply problems and start constructing pipelines across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Qatar, and Iraq as alternative routes reaching the shores of the Arabian, Red, and Mediterranean Seas. A few of these projects, the Hashan–Fujairah pipeline, for instance, are as of today in the process of being implemented. If that is the idea, the explanation behind Washington's tendency to convince its allies to create a “safer” pipeline infrastructure is straightforward. Geopolitics being an inescapable reality, it does have to be taken into account, though, that the region's countries remain locked in a variety of conflicts and, due to geographic reasons, Tehran would be a key player even if the pipelines are launched.

The precedent of “the war on terror” - a campaign during which the US occupied under dubious pretexts Iraq and Afghanistan at the costs of thousands of lives – must also be kept in mind. Ages ago, the White House sanctioned subversive activities against various parts of the the Iranian administration, including the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. Former CIA operative Phillip Giraldi writes that US and Israeli agents have been active in Iran for quite some time and are responsible for the epidemic of the Stuxnet virus and the series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear physicists. The groups within Iran which aligned themselves with the country's foes are the People's Mujahedin of Iran, the Baluchistan-based separatist Jundallah, whose leader Abdolmajid Rigi was arrested in February, 2010 by Iranian security forces and admitted to cooperating with the CIA, and the Kurdish Free Life of Kurdistan (10).

In essence, a war against Iran – up to date a secret war – is underway. The problem the parties involved are trying to resolve is to find a way of prevailing without entering the “hot” phase of the conflict.

(Source - http://www.globalresearch.ca)

‘Israel to Give Obama 12 Hours Notice on Attacking Iran’

2012-01-24T15:33:00.003+08:00

Israel told visiting US Gen. Dempsey that Obama would get no more than 12 hours notice before an attack on Iran, the London Times reports.

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Israeli officials told visiting USS Chief Joint of Staffs Martin Dempsey that it would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran, The LondonTimes reported Sunday.

The Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic, according to the report, the latest in a number of suposed scenarios concerning cooperation or lack of it between Jerusalem and Washington.

It is left to speculation whether the rumors are based on facts or are leaked by officials to mask the possibility of secret military coordination.

The London Times said its sources explained that that Israel fears that President Obama would try to torpedo an Israel attack if more notice were given because he is concerned that Iran will respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a rise in theprice of oil that could cripple Western economies. If the attack were to occur in the next 10 months, it would put President Obama in a tight spot on the eve of his bid for re-election.

President Shimon Peres told Dempsey, "I am sure that in this fight [against Iran] we will emerge victorious. It is a fight that does not belong exclusively to the United States or Israel, but a global struggle to create a safe world for all peoples.”

Dempsey, on his first official visit to Israel, was wined and dined by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gants, who went so far as to arrange an IDF orchestra rendition of song made famous by Frank Sinatra, one of Dempsey’s favorite singers.

Dempsey tried to play down the postponement of what was billed as the largest-ever joint military drill between the Israeli and American armies, involving thousands of U.S. Army soldiers.

Published reasons for the delay have ranged from budgetary constraints, logistical problems to a signal from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he distrusts President Obama’s commitment to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Dempsey maintained that the delay, which was announced by Israel, will give both countries more time to prepare and “achieve a better outcome.”

The top American general left Israel on Friday, before the Sabbath began.

(Sources - http://www.israelnationalnews.com)

Tamatkan politik fitnah oleh YB SAIFUDDIN ABDULLAH

2012-01-23T23:29:00.001+08:00

Satu daripada asam garam politik, malangnya, ialah fitnah. Lebih malang lagi, semakin dekat dengan pilihan raya umum, maka semakin ligat dan dahsyat fitnah yang diketengahkan.

Fitnah memporak-perandakan parti, politik dan masyarakat. Pemfitnah lazimnya tidak mempunyai apa-apa kekuatan diri terutamanya apabila dibandingkan dengan orang yang difitnah. Pemfitnah kurang ilmu, kepemimpinan dan ketokohan berbanding dengan orang yang difitnah. Maka, cara yang paling mudah – dan murahan – ialah menjatuhkan orang lain dengan memfitnahnya.

Fitnah adalah perbuatan tidak berintegriti, malahan kotor. Justeru, kita perlu bersama-sama menamatkannya. Caranya, ialah dengan kita bangun bersuara dan menganjurkan politik hikmah (bijaksana) sebagai alternatif yang positif dan konstruktif kepada politik fitnah yang negatif dan destruktif.

Politik hikmah adalah politik di mana kearifan ilmu dan kebijaksanaan digunakan dalam berpolitik. Maknanya, hikmah menjadi panduan dalam urusan politik. Seseorang ahli politik harus menggunakan pendekatan yang berhikmah lagi berhemah supaya tidak terlalu gelojoh dalam pergelutan menaiki hierarki parti atau memenangi pilihan raya.

Antara keadaan yang menyuburkan politik fitnah ialah apabila politik bersifat terlalu partisan. Politik terlalu partisan ialah di mana dalam apa jua keadaan, sesuatu pihak akan menyatakan dirinya betul dan lawannya salah, walaupun fakta atau realiti menyatakan sebaliknya. Ia memungkinkan timbul keadaan di mana sesuatu yang betul dikatakan salah, manakala sesuatu yang salah dikatakan betul, semata-mata dek kerana terlalu partisan.

Politik terlalu partisan mungkin menguntungkan sesuatu pihak. Ia akan disanjung pengikutnya yang menganggapnya wira kerana sentiasa mempertahankan pihaknya.

Tetapi, sekiranya pegangan ini terbawa-bawa, sehingga ada keputusan yang bakal menguntungkan rakyat, tetapi tidak dapat diputuskan semata-mata kerana masing-masing asyik bertegang urat memikirkan keuntungan pihaknya sahaja, maka, ia akan merugikan rakyat.

Politik hikmah menolak politik yang terlalu partisan. Ia akan mencari persefahaman. Apabila kepentingan rakyat menjadi lebih penting daripada kepentingan politik, maka, ia bersedia menjadi non-partisan.

Politik hikmah juga melibatkan pendekatan dalam menyeru orang untuk menyokong gagasan sesuatu pihak. Pendekatan yang paling mudah ialah dengan memburukkan gagasan orang lain.

Pendekatan begini sudah lama bertapak, contohnya, ialah sejak zaman Rasulullah, iaitu seperti yang digunakan oleh musuh-musuh baginda. Gagasan tauhid yang didakwahnya didakyah oleh musuh sebagai ajaran sesat.

Tetapi, Rasulullah tidak menggunakan pendekatan yang sama, iaitu fitnah, untuk membalas serangan musuh. Sebaliknya, baginda menggunakan pendekatan hikmah, iaitu menyeru semua, termasuk musuh, dengan kebijaksanaan, dengan pengajaran dan contoh yang baik, dan dengan perdebatan dan hujah-hujah yang lebih baik.

Kesannya, iaitu sebagaimana yang tercatat dalam Sirah Rasulullah dan sejarah semasa, ialah Islam, iaitu gagasan yang didakwahnya, telah diakui, dianuti dan dihayati hingga ke hari ini.

Rasulullah panglima perang yang hebat. Tetapi, selepas memenangi sebuah peperangan, baginda pernah menangis kerana menginsafi bahawa umatnya berhadapan dengan peperangan yang lebih besar, iaitu peperangan melawan hawa nafsu. Antara bahana hawa nafsu ialah politik fitnah.

Sayugia diingat, bahawa kini, ramai sinis dan sinikal terhadap politik. Mujurnya mereka masih yakin pada demokrasi. Tetapi, mereka mahu demokrasi diperbaiki. Justeru, Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak mengetuai transformasi politik ke arah demokrasi yang lebih progresif dan budaya politik baru yang lebih sihat dan segar.

Untuk menjayakannya, kita perlu menggunakan pendekatan politik hikmah, bukannya politik fitnah.

(Sumber - http://www.sinarharian.com.my/komentar/saifuddin-abdullah/tamatkan-politik-fitnah-1.19681)

Khutbah Terakhir Nabi Muhammad S.A.W.

2012-01-23T00:14:00.001+08:00

Kutbah ini disampaikan pada 9 Zulhijah Tahun 10 Hijrah di Lembah Uranah, Gunung Arafah.

Wahai manusia, dengarlah baik-baik apa yang hendak ku katakan. Aku tidak mengetahui apakah aku dapat bertemu lagi dengan kamu semua selepas tahun ini. Oleh itu dengarlah dengan teliti kata-kata ku ini dan sampaikanlah ia kepada orang-orang yang tidak dapat hadir di sini pada hari ini.
Wahai manusia, sepertimana kamu menganggap bulan ini dan kota ini sebagai suci, maka anggaplah jiwa dan harta setiap muslim sebagai amanah suci.
Kembalikan harta yang diamanahkan kepada kamu kepada pemiliknya yang berhak.
Jangan kamu sakiti sesiapapun agar orang lain tidak menyakiti kamu lagi.
Ingatlah bahawa sesungguhnya kamu akan menemui Tuhan kamu dan Dia pasti membuat perhitungan di atas segala amalan kamu.
Allah telah mengharamkan riba, oleh itu segala urusan yang melibatkan riba dibatalkan mulai sekarang.
Berwaspadalah terhadap syaitan demi keselamatan agama kamu.
Dia telah berputus asa untuk menyesatkan kamu dalam perkara-perkara besar, maka berjaga-jagalah supaya kamu tidak mengikutinya dalam perkara-perkara kecil.
Wahai manusia, sebagaimana kamu mempunyai hak atas isteri kamu, mereka juga mempunyai hak di atas kamu. Sekiranya mereka menyempurnakan hak mereka keatas kamu maka mereka juga berhak untuk diberi makan dan pakaian dalam suasana kasih sayang.
Layanilah wanita-wanita kamu dengan baik, berlemah lembutlah terhadap mereka kerana sesungguhnya mereka adalah teman dan pembantu kamu yang setia. Dan hak kamu atas mereka ialah mereka sama sekali tidak boleh memasukkan orang yang kamu tidak sukai ke dalam rumah kamu dan dilarang melakukan zina.
Wahai manusia, dengarkanlah bersungguh-sungguh kata-kataku ini, sembahlah Allah, dirikanlah sembahyang lima kali sehari, berpuasalah di bulan Ramadan!, dan tunaikan zakat dari harta kekayaan kamu. Kerjakanlah ibadat haji sekiranya kamu mampu.
Ketahuilah bahawa setiap muslim adalah saudara kepada muslim yang lain. Kamu semua adalah sama, tidak seorangpun yang lebih mulia dari yang lainnya kecuali dalam taqwa dan beramal soleh.
Ingatlah bahawa kamu akan mengadap Allah pada suatu hari untuk dipertanggungjawabkan diatas segala apa yang telah kamu kerjakan. Oleh itu awasilah agar jangan sekali-kali kamu terkeluar dari landasan kebenaran selepas ketiadaanku.
Wahai manusia, tidak akan ada lagi Nabi dan Rasul yang akan datang selepasku dan tidak akan lahir agama baru.
Oleh itu wahai manusia, nilailah dengan betul dan fahamilah kata-kata ku yang telah aku sampaikan kepada kamu.
Sesungguhnya aku tinggalkan kepada kamu dua perkara, yang sekiranya kamu berpegang teguh dan mengikuti kedua-duanya, nescaya kamu tidak akan tersesat selama-lamanya. Itulah Al Quran dan Sunnah ku.
Hendaknya orang-orang yang mendengar ucapanku, menyampaikan pula kepada orang lain semoga yang terakhir lebih memahami kata-kataku dari mereka yang terus mendengar dari ku.
Saksikanlah Ya Allah, bahawasanya telah ku sampaikan risalah Mu kepada hamba-hambaMU.

Al-Quran dan terjemahan dalam Bahasa Melayu (Bahasa Malaysia)

2012-01-22T21:40:00.002+08:00

Mukadimah

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.

Assalamualaikum wbh.

Logik dari kewujudan laman web ini adalah kewujudan kitab suci Al-Quran al karim itu sendiri.

Kita mempelajarinya semasa kecil, bagaimana membacanya dengan tajwid yang betul, tetapi hanya segelintir daripada kita mengetahui makna ayat-ayat suci Al-Quran. Saya terpanggil untuk mendokumenkan Al-Quran terjemahan bahasa Melayu supaya pencarian Al-Quran terjemahan bahasa Melayu di laman web lebih banyak dan mudah dicapai.Sekarang ini laman web ini adalah yang ketiga menawarkan Al-Quran terjemahan bahasa Melayu, dan yang pertama menggunakan engine blog dengan domain .com supaya carian di search engine lebih mudah dicapai. Umum tahu engine blog wordpress memudahkan capaian robot search engine yang mencari data. Jadi kita berpendapat dengan wujudnya web ini akan lebih memudahkan carian maklumat mengenai ayat alQuran bahasa Melayu seluruh dunia.

Ramai orang bukan Islam bila membaca Al-Quran dengan memahami maksudnya mereka terbuka hati dan kembali ke pangkuan Islam. Mereka ini lebih bertakwa dengan memahami Al-Quran. Kita yang lahir dalam masyarakat Islam seharusnya rasa rendah diri dan malu kerana masyarakat kita kebanyakkannya tidak memahami Al-Quran dan ini menyebabkan banyak gejala sosial berlaku di akhir zaman ini.

(Url : http://www.alquran-melayu.com)

The Failure Factors of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) Projects.

2012-01-21T21:06:00.004+08:00

The degree of success of PFI project varies according to the type of project, with the most successful projects being roads. This do not typically involve a clear division between “core” and “ancillary” services to be provided under the PFI deal. Hospitals and university, in contrast, are more complicated in this respect.

The key to concluding a PFI deal that will deliver efficiency savings and a good quality public service at the same time lies in harnessing that experience to maximum effect. Too often, however, this simply has not happened. A lack of clarity about the desired outcome of the public sector purchaser, excessive delays in negotiation, poor project management on the part of the public sector and a lack of understanding of some of the key concepts of PFI have all combined to produce some cases where the taxpayer has definitely not received best value for money; and where the users of the public service have not received the level of service they are entitled to.

One of the key lessons to be drawn from the history of PFI deals to date is the need to improve the expertise of the public service and its advisers in negotiating and concluding PFI deals. Too often, public sector managers conclude a PFI deal and then move back into their normal day job, thus failing to capture what expertise has been built up. The major factors contribute to the failure of PFI projects are :-

(a) Ineffective management by the public sector, and a failure to control costs.

In a number of cases, a lack of expertise and poor project management skills on the public sector side have led to procurement processes being run inefficiently. As a result, costs, particularly those relating to professional advice, have not been sufficiently well-controlled and have escalated.

(b) Poor end product specification by the public sector.

The lack of clarity on the public sector side about what is required, and indeed what is attainable in respect of any particular project, has led to increased costs and unnecessary work, in other words, insufficient thought has been put into the exact specification and requirements at an early stage.

(c) Use of inappropriate measurements

It is almost impossible to calculate how much the public sector option would have cost over the long term. With the benefit of their greater commercial and PFI experience, private sector bidders will tend to be more accurate with their long-term cost estimates. Basing PFI decisions on apparently spurious calculations does not enhance the credibility of the PFI concept.

(d) Ineffective contingency planning.

Many PFI deals get into difficulty because of the lack of contingency planning in the public sector, particularly in relation to large government IT contracts.

FM News

2012-01-21T10:57:00.000+08:00

Facilities Management Magazines

2012-01-21T10:50:00.000+08:00

www.fmxmagazine.co.uk - FMX is a leading publication for facilities management, office management, property and building services.
www.fm-world.co.uk - FM World is the magazine of the British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM).
www.pfmonthenet.net - For more than 20 years, Premises & Facilities Management (PFM) has been the FM sector's source of best practice guidance, service suppliers, product and applications, news and jobs.
www.fmjdata.com - FMJ, the magazine for the Facilities Management Profession.
www.fmonline.co.uk - The largest, free to view News Distribution Service / Product / Service Supplier Locator for the UK based Facilities Manager.
www.fmlink.com - a facilities management magazine resource.
www.tomorrowsfm.com - Online Facilities Management magazine.

Facilities Management Directory

2012-01-21T10:47:00.000+08:00

BIFM - British Institute of Facilities Management - BIFM is the UK’s lead institute representing the interests of those who practise Facilities Management and those who work in organisations supplying Facilities Management related goods or services.
www.fmonline.co.uk - The Facilities Management Online Magazine.
FMLink - provides a valuable facilities management resource, registration is required.
FM Pages - FM Pages - an online source to find facilities management products and services
FMUK - FMUK is a publication that is placed to offer companies the opportunity to promote themselves in a rapidly expanding and lucrative market
HSE - Responsible for the regulation of almost all the risks to health and safety arising from work activity in Britain
Occupier - Occupier.org is a research web page showing information linking real estate and facilities with corporate output and productivity
Workplacelaw Network - The Workplacelaw Network provides legal support, information and consultancy to BIFM members on health and safety, premises and employment issues. Keep yourself up-to-date with facilities management legal issues.

Advantages of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) Procurement for Government Project.

2012-01-21T09:01:00.003+08:00

The reason for growth in the number of PFI projects emerging in Malaysia especially in higher education sector can be attributed to the advantages include:

• allowing capital to be accessed immediately (at a time when governments often claim a scarcity of public funds);

• focusing upon output specifications provides an opportunity for greater innovation;

• taking long-term assets of a department's balance sheets;

• allowing an asset to be delivered more cheaply and efficiently (due to private sector capital and management expertise);

• the transference of risks normally borne by the public sector (including the obligation to invest in the development of new technology or attempt new innovations to meet output specifications);

• imposing the obligation on the private sector to maintain and operate the facility, provides the private sector partner with the incentive to construct the facility using high quality materials, and design the facility so that it can be run economically;

• overcoming the potential for major infrastructure projects being severely curtailed or cancelled following the election of a new government looking for financial savings;

• because the private sector partner must hand the asset back to the public sector at the end of the concession period in the condition it was in on the first day of the concession period, the private sector partner is compelled to maintain the asset properly;

• long term projects provide the service provider with long term capital as well as avoiding the costly process of re-tendering; and

• allowing a public sector body to transfer its non-core functions to a private provider (and thereby allow the public sector body to concentrate on its core functions, facilitating the delivery of higher standards of service and greater value for money).

The advantages of PFI are even more far-reaching than the above. For the structure of PFI itself is also a reason for the growth in PFI. Well drafted output specifications and contract documents which provide for operation, life cycle and routine maintenance and facilities management services will mean that a PFI contractor should (as discussed above) take a whole of life costing approach and formulate an integrated approach to design, financing, construction and the operation of facilities. This should increase economic efficiency as a whole by addressing issues of maintainability, durability and operability from the outset of a project. If all of the above factors can be achieved, then the parties will have gone a considerable way to ensuring that the best overall value is achieved.

Jom Ceria Edisi Jan 2012 Pejabat Pembangunan, Pejabat Fasiliti dan Infotech UiTM Menceriakan.

2012-01-20T10:47:00.005+08:00

Penolong Naib Canselor Pembangunan,Fasiliti dan ICT, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sr. Suhaimi Abdul Talib dalam ucapannya semasa program Jom Ceria Edisi Jan 2012 di DATC sebentar tadi menegaskan bahawa adalah menjadi tangungjawab semua kakitangan UiTM untuk memastikan semua keperluan keselamatan dan kesihatan pekerja dipatuhi didalam menjalankan tugas sebagaimana yang termaktub dalam Akta Keselamatan dan Kesihatan Pekerjaan 1994.

UiTM mempunyai Bahagian Khas yang bertanggungjawab terhadap hal ehwal keselamatan dan kesihatan pekerja yang dinamakan Bahagian Keselamatan dan Kesihatan Pekerjaan (BKKP) di Pejabat Pengurusan Fasiliti.

Beliau juga memberikan penekanan mengenai isu integriti semua kakitangan dibawah penyeliaan beliau supaya sentiasa mematuhi semua arahan dan pekeliling kerajaan serta mengikut prosedur kerja yang telah ditetapkan oleh kerajaan. Konsep ihsan perlu diterapkan dalam menjalankan tugas dengan menganggap Tuhan sentiasa melihat kita dimanapun kita berada dan mengetahui apa sahaja yang kita lakukan sepanjang masa.

Sr. Hajah Zuraida Hj. Yahya, Pengarah Pejabat Pengurusan Fasiliti dalam ucapannya menekan betapa kakitangan pejabat pengurusan fasiliti perlu merancang kerja terutama yang berkaitan dengan penyelenggaraan supaya kakitangan PPF berkerja secara sistematik dan terancang. Budaya kerja secara 'fire fighting' telah berlalu ujar beliau.

Hj. Alias Taib, Pengarah Pejabat Pembangunan dalam ucapannya menekan tentang perlunya kakitangan merancang pembangunan diri sendiri supaya menjadi insan lebih baik dimasa akan datang.

Prof. Madya Rahidzab Talib, Pengarah Infotech dalam ucapannya menegaskan dalam kesibukan menjalankan tugas, semua kakitangan tidak mengabaikan kesihatan masing-masing. Beliau mencadangkan supaya semua kakitangan membuat pemeriksaan kesihatan untuk memastikan kesihatan kita berada ditahap yang baik.

Jom Ceria edisi Jan 2012 kali ini diursetiakan oleh Bahagian Projek dan Rekabentuk, Pejabat Pengurusan Fasiliti.

Kodak Files for Bankruptcy

2012-01-19T16:29:00.000+08:00

By Isabella Steger

: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

The event Deal Journal has been anticipating for weeks is finally here – Kodak is filing for bankruptcy.

The company released a statement in the wee hours Thursday confirming that it’s filed for Chapter 11, and said it’s secured $950 million in so-called debtor-in-possession financing to keep the company operating in bankruptcy court.

The full statement here:

Eastman Kodak Company and Its U.S. Subsidiaries Commence Voluntary Chapter 11 Business Reorganization

Flow of Goods and Services to Customers to Continue Globally in Ordinary Course

Non-U.S. Subsidiaries Are Not Included in U.S. Filing and Are Not Subject to Court Supervision

Company Secures $950 million in Debtor-in-Possession Financing in U.S. Kodak’s Reorganization to Facilitate Emergence as Profitable and Sustainable Enterprise

ROCHESTER, N.Y.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 19, 2012– Eastman Kodak Company (“Kodak” or the “Company”) announced today that it and its U.S. subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for chapter 11 business reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

The business reorganization is intended to bolster liquidity in the U.S. and abroad, monetize non-strategic intellectual property, fairly resolve legacy liabilities, and enable the Company to focus on its most valuable business lines. The Company has made pioneering investments in digital and materials deposition technologies in recent years, generating approximately 75% of its revenue from digital businesses in 2011.

Kodak has obtained a fully-committed, $950 million debtor-in-possession credit facility with an 18-month maturity from Citigroup to enhance liquidity and working capital. The credit facility is subject to Court approval and other conditions precedent. The Company believes that it has sufficient liquidity to operate its business during chapter 11, and to continue the flow of goods and services to its customers in the ordinary course.

Kodak expects to pay employee wages and benefits and continue customer programs. Subsidiaries outside of the U.S. are not subject to proceedings and will honor all obligations to suppliers, whenever incurred. Kodak and its U.S. subsidiaries will honor all post-petition obligations to suppliers in the ordinary course.

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” said Antonio M. Perez, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core IP assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.”

“After considering the advantages of chapter 11 at this time, the Board of Directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak,” Mr. Perez continued. “Our goal is to maximize value for stakeholders, including our employees, retirees, creditors, and pension trustees. We are also committed to working with our valued customers.

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio: our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images and have generated over $3 billion of licensing revenues since 2003; and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies, which give Kodak a competitive advantage in our growing digital businesses.”

Mr. Perez concluded, “The Board of Directors, the senior management team and I would like to underscore our appreciation for the hard work and loyalty of our employees. Kodak exemplifies a culture of collaboration and innovation. Our employees embody that culture and are essential to our future success.”

Kodak has taken this step after preliminary discussions with key constituencies and intends to work toward a consensual reorganization in the best interests of its stakeholders. Kodak expects to complete its U.S.-based restructuring during 2013.

The Company and its Board of Directors are being advised by Lazard, FTI Consulting Inc. and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. In addition, Dominic DiNapoli, Vice Chairman of FTI Consulting, will serve as Chief Restructuring Officer to support the management team as to restructuring matters during the chapter 11 case.

More information about Kodak’s Chapter 11 filing is available on the Internet at www.kodaktransforms.com. Information for suppliers and vendors is available at (800) 544-7009 or (585) 724-6100.

Kodak will be filing monthly operating reports with the Bankruptcy Court and also plans to post these monthly operating reports on the Investor Relations section of Kodak.com. The Company will continue to file quarterly and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will also be available in the Investor Relations section of Kodak.com.

(Sources - http://blogs.wsj.com)

What people say about IPV6

2012-01-19T15:35:00.004+08:00

World IPv6 Launch will mark the largest industry commitment to and deployment of IPv6 in the history of the Internet, with ISPs, home networking equipment manufacturers and web companies around the world permanently enabling IPv6 within their products and services.

We welcome additional participants to join this year’s World IPv6 Launch.

Akamai

“Web-enabled businesses will need to ensure their applications are available over IPv6 in order to keep pace with the Internet’s ever-expanding audience. Akamai is committed to helping our customers with a smooth transition to IPv6 without impacting performance or requiring disruptive changes to their origin networking infrastructure. The global breadth of our IPv6 deployment helped enable a seamless experience for content providers during World IPv6 Day last year, and we stand ready to support this next important, and permanent, step in the evolution of the Internet.”

– Tom Leighton, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, Akamai

AT&T

“We’ve seen unprecedented growth in network traffic over the past several years, and IPv6 is critical to the continuation of that growth. AT&T has been a leader in the transition to IPv6 for many years, and we’re excited to participate in World IPv6 Launch by enabling IPv6 services for new and existing residential customers, in addition to the enterprise customers we support with IPv6 today.”

– John Donovan, CTO, AT&T

Cisco

“IPv6 is important to all of us. It is critical to the continued growth of the Internet, bringing together people and devices around the globe. As a leader in the development of IPv6 since its inception, Cisco is excited to be an integral part of the industry working together toward the World IPv6 Launch organized by the Internet Society. In addition to the continued support for IPv6 we have in our products today, we will be joining other websites around the world by permanently enabling IPv6 on www.cisco.com, as well as enabling IPv6 by default on our new line of E-series home routers.”

– John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco

Comcast

“IPv6 deployment is a key priority for Comcast in 2012, and we’re excited to participate in this Internet Society event that will help catalyze action around the world on this important transition.”

– John Schanz, EVP and Chief Network Officer, Comcast

D-Link

“D-Link recently completed a new round of IPv6 interoperability testing, underscoring our commitment to customers when the transition from IPv4 takes place. As we continue to develop new and innovative networking products, D-Link will provide support across all of our solutions to ensure a smooth transition to IPv6 for service providers and end users.”

– William Brown, associate vice president of product development, D-Link North America

Facebook

“Last year’s industry-wide test of IPv6 successfully showed that the global adoption of IPv6 is the best way to keep web devices communicating in the future. Permanently enabling IPv6 is vital to keeping the Internet open and ensuring people stay connected online as the number of web users and devices continues to grow.”

– Jay Parikh, VP of Infrastructure Engineering at Facebook

Google

“World IPv6 Launch marks a watershed moment in Internet history. It breaks the limits of the original address space to open a vast new territory, trillions upon trillions of times larger, and reinforces the end-to-end architecture that made the Internet so powerful at the beginning. Google strongly supports this upgrade. We’re happy to see that everyone is moving to the 21st-century Internet!”

– Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google

Internode

“We are at the stage in IPv6 deployment where it’s time for major Internet Service Providers to make it a transparent part of their customers’ experience. Internode has enabled native IPv6 by default for all new customers, and all the routers we sell all come with ‘IPv6 Inside’. Our experience shows us that IPv6 is now fully capable of providing seamless, uninterrupted and efficient access to the Internet, dual-stacked with IPv4. It’s time to jump in – the water is fine.”

– Simon Hackett, Managing Director at Internode

KDDI

“Last year, in the event of the World IPv6 Day, KDDI’s IPv6 networks worked well when the major websites around the world had IPv6 enabled. KDDI is now operating the networks accommodating more than 600,000 dual stack users. We are promoting the launch of IPv6, in order that the Internet may continue to maintain its key role in society.”

–Mr.Yoshiharu Shimatani, Senior Vice President of KDDI

Limelight Networks

“We are proud to participate in the transition towards IPv6, as one of the first fully IPv6-enabled content delivery networks. IPv6 is a crucial step in facilitating the continued growth and improved performance of IP networks globally. The success of last year’s World IPv6 Day motivated many participants to permanently IPv6 enable their sites. Limelight Networks is committed to working with the industry to increase the level of preparation so that we can accelerate our move to a more scalable, flexible and interoperable Internet.”

–Todd Braning, VP of Network Architecture and Engineering for Limelight Networks

Microsoft Bing

“Bing is excited to bring the next-generation search to the next generation of the Internet. Microsoft has been pleased to partner with so many industry leading technology companies to usher in the next evolution of the Internet.”

– Derrick Connell, corporate vice president of Bing at Microsoft Corporation

Time Warner Cable

“The time to permanently enable IPv6 has arrived. Time Warner Cable is committed to the World IPv6 Launch in June, our customers should be reassured that the platform is ready and our partners should be including IPv6 in all their products and services.”

– Mike Lajoie, CTO of Time Warner Cable

Yahoo!

“The Internet has grown to be an essential part of our daily lives. It connects our devices to our apps; more importantly, it connects us to each other. Yahoo! is proud to be a part of the World IPv6 Launch – an event that marks the next chapter of our Internet. IPv6 enables the Internet to grow, while remaining open and accessible to new applications and new ideas.”

– Jason Fesler, Distinguished Architect and IPv6 Evangelist, Yahoo!

(Sources - http://www.worldipv6launch.org/support)

Azwan Ali Ditahan Polis Kerana Mahu Membunuh Ummi Hafilda.

2012-01-18T11:06:00.001+08:00

Azwan Ali telah ditahan polis setelah satu laporan polis dibuat oleh Adiknya Umi Hafilda.

KUALA LUMPUR: Personaliti hiburan tanah air, Azwan Ali, 46, yang sering mencetuskan pelbagai kontroversi kini disiasat polis atas dakwaan mengugut mahu membunuh dan membakar adiknya, Ummi Hafilda Ali melalui laman twitternya.

Mendedahkan perkara berkenaan, Ummi berkata, dia menyedari ugutan dibuat abangnya itu pada minggu lalu apabila dimaklumkan anak saudaranya dan selepas mendapati ia benar sejurus membacanya sendiri, dia membuat laporan polis pada jam 6 petang Jumaat lalu.

Menurutnya, selama ini dia bersabar dengan cacian serta pelbagai tuduhan yang dilemparkan terhadapnya, namun ugutan itu sudah keterlaluan dan menggugat keselamatan diri, apatah lagi ia dilakukan abangnya.

“Siapa tidak sedih bila darah daging sendiri memburukkan dan mencaci kita hanya kerana perbezaan pendapat serta pendirian politik. Sebelum ini, saya masih mampu bersabar dan berdiam namun kini ia sudah melampau.

“Azwan mengajak pengikut twitternya membunuh saya dengan menulis ‘Jom ramai-ramai kita tangkap perempuan neraka ini...kita kerat-kerat dan kemudian kita bakar’.

“Begitulah lebih kurang ugutan Azwan terhadap saya. Ia sudah keterlaluan dan saya perlu diambil tindakan,” katanya ketika dihubungi, semalam.

Berikut adalah petikan dari twitter @AzwanNur berkenaan ugutan beliau untuk membunuh dan membakar Umi Hafilda.

Aneesh Chopra - U.S Chief Technology Officer

2012-01-18T09:51:00.003+08:00

"Our mission is to assist the President in harnessing the power and potential of technology, data and innovation to transform the Nation's economy and improve the lives of everyday Americans." – Aneesh Chopra, U.S. CTO

Aneesh Chopra is the United States Chief Technology Officer and in this role serves as an Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy.

He works to advance the President’s technology agenda by fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland.

He was sworn in on May 22nd, 2009. Prior to his appointment, he served as Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia from January 2006 until April 2009. He previously served as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, a publicly-traded healthcare think tank.

Chopra was named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 in their Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers issue in 2008. Aneesh Chopra received his B.A. from The Johns Hopkins University and his M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Open source needed to save democracy

2012-01-18T09:22:00.002+08:00

Open-source software developers face greater risks today than they ever have, to the point where the constraints inherent in proprietary software now represent a risk to democracy, according to one of the movement's leading figures.

"News and political discourse are mediated by software, and they're going to be more mediated in Apple TV than they are today in your computer. And we trust an astonishingly few companies to be the intermediaries between information and the user," said Bruce Perens, creator of the Open Source Definition, at the Linux.conf.au 2012 conference in Ballarat yesterday.

"People love their iPhones, because their iPhones enable them in so many ways, [but] they don't always understand that their iPhones also constrain them," he said.

"People are increasingly slaves of their tools. Part of their function is to not do what they want when their action might reduce the profit of Apple or a media company, or upset a cellular carrier, a government or even when some action is the wrong choice for the computer-naive user — for example, running [Adobe] Flash on an iPhone."

"Open source is the only credible producer of software and now hardware that isn't bound to a single company's economic interest," Perens said.

Despite open software's popularity in some sectors of the community, and the success of some projects, the movement as a whole has failed to defend its own future against the threat of laws designed to regulate the flow of information, such as the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and, before it, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In part, that's because many open-source developers have an attitude problem, says Perens. "Let's face it; most of us don't even like users. We call them 'lusers'. We make the software for ourselves and the other developers. Why should we like them?"

Nothing is more annoying, said Perens, than the complaining user who says that the software stinks, when he's never contributed anything himself.

"We haven't yet developed any sympathy for users that is manifested by companies like Apple ...A good many of us, unfortunately, match the stereotype of socially impaired programmers."

Perens cited the Mozilla Foundation, creators of the Firefox web browser, and Wikipedia as examples of open-source projects that showed the "tremendous self-discipline" needed to appeal to ordinary users.

"Wikipedia [is] intrinsically more accessible to the common person than most of the things that we do ...When our work gratified only ourselves and our community, it's self-limiting,"

Perens said that the open-source movement's goal should be to establish a continuing legal freedom to create, modify and distribute open-source hardware and software.

"It's a simple goal. Open source should be legal. We're at risk from laws that weren't directed at us when we weren't economically significant, for example, software patenting; we've been really lucky with that, because at least in the [United] States it could have shut us down, and it hasn't been used that way," he said.

"We need to be able to make changes if we're going to be able to help ourselves ...We have no reason to trust companies or governments to do this job for us."

(Source - http://www.zdnet.com.au)

Wikipedia to go dark in SOPA protest, Twitter declines by John Ribeiro (IDG News Service)

2012-01-18T08:45:00.003+08:00

Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales said the controversial legislation is far from dead

Wikipedia has decided to black out the English version of the online encyclopedia for 24 hours on Wednesday to protest against controversial legislation in the US, following a cue given by some other Internet sites including social news site, Reddit, which will black out its site for 12 hours on the same day.

Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo however said in a message on Twitter that "Closing a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics is foolish".He later clarified that he was talking about Twitter and not about Wikipedia's decision.

Wikimedia Foundation said on Monday that the Wikipedia community had chosen to black out its English version to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.

[ Get the latest IT news on the Australian government and businesses in omputerworld's Business & Government newsletter ]

"If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States," Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, said in a statement on its website.

Three officials of U.S. President Barack Obama's administration issued a statement on Saturday on legislation including SOPA, the Protect IP Act (PIPA), and the Online Protection and Digital ENforcement Act (OPEN), in response to petitions.

"While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response, we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet," said the statement which was signed by Victoria Espinel, the White House intellectual property enforcement coordinator, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. chief technology officer, and Howard Schmidt, special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator for the National Security Staff.

The statement did not directly say whether the White House opposes SOPA or PIPA.

Trevor Timm, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said on Monday that the Obama administration drew "an important line in the sand" by stating that it will not support legislation "that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet".

Yet, the fight is still far from over, he said, as the Senate is still poised to bring PIPA to the floor next week, and SOPA proponents in the House are likely to try to revive the legislation, unless they get the message that these initiatives must stop.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's cofounder, said on Twitter on Monday that "Rumors of the death of SOPA may be premature" and added that "PIPA is still going strong". "But the best action for twitter might be to let us continue to use the service to organize our protests", he said.

Wikipedia urged readers in the U.S. to contact their elected representatives in Washington, or the foreign ministries of their countries, if they are users outside the U.S., to tell them that "you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the internet to remain open and free".

Reddit said last week that instead of the "user-curated chaos of reddit", it will be displaying a message about "how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action".

Google, Yahoo, Facebook, legislators, and some key personalities like Internet pioneer Vint Cerf have opposed the SOPA legislation.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

(Source - http://www.computerworld.com.au)

GUIDE TO SWITCHGEAR & FORMS OF SEPARATION

2012-01-17T09:48:00.004+08:00

FORMS OF SEPARATION

FORM 1 An enclosed assembly to provide protection against contact with internal parts, where no internal separation is provided.

FORM 2 As Form 1, but with separation of all functional units from one another

FORM 3 As Form 2, but with separation of all functional units from one another

FORM 4 As Form 3, but the incoming and outgoing terminals are also required to be separated from the Busbar system, and from one another

IP RATINGS EXPLAINED

2012-01-17T09:43:00.001+08:00

DIN VDE 0470 PART 1 /EN 60529 / IEC 529

IP XX

X First Digit:
This indicates the degree of protection of persons against contact with, or approach to,
hazardous internal components, and protection of the equipment against ingress of solid
foreign bodies and dust.

X Second Digit:
This indicates the degree of protection of the equipment inside the enclosure from ingress
of water.

1st Digit	Protection	Explanation
0	No protection	-
1	Protection against large foreign bodies	Protection of persons from accidental large area direct contact with active or internal moving parts (e.g. hand contact), nut no guarding against intentional access to such parts. Protection of the object from access of solid foreign matter larger than Ø50mm.
2	Protection against medium-size foreign bodies	Protection of persons from finger contact with active or internal moving parts. Protection of the object from access of solid foreign matter larger than Ø12mm.
3	Protection against small foreign bodies	Protection of persons from contact with active or internal moving parts with tools, wires or similar foreign matter thicker than Ø2.5mm. Protection of the object from access of solid foreign matter larger than Ø2.5mm.
4	Protection against granular foreign bodies	Protection of persons from contact with active or internal moving parts with tools, wires or similar foreign matter thicker than > than Ø1mm.
5	Protection against deposits of dust	Total protection of persons from contact with voltage carrying or internal moving parts. Protection of the object from harmful deposits of dust. Ingress of dust is not completely prevented, but dust is prevented from entering in a quantity that would impair the functioning of the object.
6	Protection against ingress of dust	Total protection of persons from contact with voltage carrying or internal moving parts. Protection of the object from ingress of dust.

2nd Digit	Protection	Explanation
0	No protection	-
1	Protection against water dripping vertically	Water drops falling vertically must not have any harmful effect.
2	Protection against water dripping up to 15°	Water drops falling at any angle up to 15° from vertical must not have any harmful effect.
3	Protection against spray water	Water hitting the object at any angle up to 60° from vertical must not have any harmful effect.
4	Protection against splash water	Water splashing against the object from all directions must not have any harmful effect.
5	Protection against jet water	A jet of water nozzeled against the object from all directions must not have any harmful effect.
6	Protection against flooding	Water of temporary flooding, as in heavy seas, must not enter the object in any harmful quantity.
7	Protection against dipped state	If the object is dipped into water (150mm to 1000mm), under the defined conditions of pressure and time, water must not enter the object in any harmful quantity.
8	Protection during submerged state	If the object is submerged in water under defined extreme conditions, water must not enter the object in any harmful quantity.

OKW PRODUCT RATINGS

IP Rating	Product Range
	DESK CASE DIN-BOX A DIN-BOX B - without snap-on cover EURO CASE FLAT-PACK HAND-HELD KEYBOARD LUX CASE METTEC-EURO METTEC 19" MOTEC MULTITEC PLUG CASE POTTING BOX RAILTEC B RAILTEC C SHELL-TYPE - V, O; G without sealing kit UNICASE UNIMET UNIMET 19" UNITEC
IP 40	ART-CASE MEDITEC SMART-CASE XS TOPTEC
IP 41	COMTEC MINITEC SENSO-CASE SMART-CASE M, L, XL - without sealing kit WALL CASE - without hinged transp. cover
IP 51	WALL CASE - with hinged transp. cover
IP 53	DIN-BOX B - with snap-on cover
IP 54	DATEC-CONTROL M, L - with sealing kit DATEC-POCKET S, M - with sealing DATEC-TERMINAL - with sealing ERGO-CASE - with sealing kit INTERFACE-TERMINAL - with cover SOFT-CASE - with intermediate protection ring UNIDESK - with sealing & PCB holes plugged VARIO-BOX - with front panel
IP 64	VARIO-BOX - with front frame and front panel VARIO-BOX - with front cover
IP 65	DATEC-CONTROL XS, S - with sealing kit DATEC-KEYBOARD - with sealing kit DATEC-MOBIL - with sealing kit DATEC-POCKET L - with sealing HAND-TERMINAL - with sealing kits (case+front panel) SHELL-TYPE G - with sealing kit (cases without batt. comp't) SMART-CASE L, XL - with sealing kit (cases no batt. comp't)
IP 66	ROBUST-BOX SMART-BOX

Watching Open Source Destroy Capitalism

2012-01-17T08:47:00.003+08:00

About twenty years ago one of my college housemates, Jerry, had an idea.

“What if you could send music over the internet?”

This was the age of 2400 baud modems that made crazy high pitched noised while they tried to connect to the internet. My 20 megabyte external hard drive for my MacPlus computer had set my parents back about five hundred bucks. High quality digital audio files were about the same size as they are now (about ten megabytes per minute of audio). In other words, I couldn’t even fit a single digital audio track on my expensive hard drive — I worked exclusively in MIDI.

So I forgive myself for my lack of vision at the time. I thought Jerry’s idea was ridiculous, and I let him know. Digital audio files were way too big, bandwidth was way too narrow. It would never happen.

Jerry persisted. What if a music file could be compressed? What if bandwidth increased? He pointed out that it would change everything about the way music was distributed, maybe even the way it was made.

Jerry didn’t go on to invent Napster, but he was absolutely right. Sending digital files over the internet would change everything. It would radically disrupt the music industry. It would also make producing, distributing, publishing, and even promoting music more accessible to the average musician and music producer. For the consumer, it would make music essentially free (illegally at first [early Napster], and now legally [YouTube, Spotify, etc.]). And a computer company would become the biggest music distributor.

Jerry saw it coming early on, but I actually lived through it. I co-founded Loöq Records with Spesh in 1998. For years we made and sold vinyl records and CDs. As soon as we could sell our music in digital download format, we jumped on the opportunity. Good thing, because dance music vinyl sales crashed (everywhere except Germany, but that’s another story). We never made much money selling vinyl, but we had to stop entirely when average sales dropped from the low thousands to the low hundreds.

Selling music digitally turned out to be more profitable, because production costs were so low. Also, we never ran out of inventory. On the down side, sales were much lower. People could easily make copies and share the music. In addition, the number of small independent music labels ballooned massivelybecause the financial risk of putting out music was so low. In our vinyl days we were risking at least two grand on each release, often closer to four. Putting out a digital release costs, well … nothing. So the competition, and choices for the consumer, increased dramatically. As a record label, we had to completely reevaluate the reasons for our existence as a company.

Recently, we’ve seen streaming services (like Spotify and Pandora) and sharing services (like SoundCloud) cut into digital download sales the same way digital downloads cut into vinyl and CD sales. Music is now free, legally, for any reasonably tech-savvy consumer (less costs of internet and/or phone service).

Strangely, Loöq Records is more profitable than ever. Even as sales continue to plummet, other income sources increase or stay steady. We were lucky enough to enroll some of our catalog very early in YouTube’s AudioSwap program, and we’ve seen tens of thousands in revenue from AudioSwap shared ad revenue. We receive performance royalties from ASCAP for the dozens of tracks we’ve licensed to TV shows like CSI. Once in awhile we license a track to a videogame or film. So even though sales are terrible, business is good. I don’t know if this is due to good business acumen or freakish good luck, but I suspect the latter.

For the most part, file sharing (voluntary and involuntary) and music streaming have destroyed music sales revenue.

Open Source and Capitalism are Incompatible Systems

Pretty much.

According to wikipedia, open source is a philosophy or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details. It is usually used to describe the development process for large collaborative software projects, like Linux. More recently, the use of term has broadened to include any project where the methods and means of production are publicly shared. TheOpen Source Ecology project, which provides blueprints and detailed instructions for building heavy-duty farm and construction equipment from commonly available, inexpensive parts, is a great example.

So, a few bullet points to describe open-source in plain language:

the means of production, both material (stuff) and intellectual (techniques or methods) are free/cheap/easily obtainable
distribution is wide and decentralized (peer-to-peer or multi-node, not controlled by a single party)
the end-product is often free, or radically less expensive than proprietary options

The music industry still consists of proprietary players (including my company, Loöq Records), but music culture has been open-sourced, and this spirit now pervades the more enlightened aspects of the music industry. Music is radically less expensive to produce (a laptop with good software in capable hands can now compete, in terms of sound quality, with a multi-million dollar studio). For most musicians and producers (and many labels), getting their music heard and appreciated is more important than making money. To this end, artists are willing to share streams or files directly with their peers and fans. Many artists are also willing to share “remix parts” (the source sounds that make up a recording).

Does this reduce the amount of money exchanged? Yes, drastically. While open-source culture is great for the consumer, and even good for the artist in some ways, it’s terrible for the business of selling music.

Capitalism is based on scarcity. In order for the principles of supply and demand and “self-regulating” markets to function as expected, production and distribution channels need to be privately owned and tightly controlled.

Open-source destroys scarcity. When the means of production are free or very cheap, when distribution is free, and when producers prioritize values other than profit (things like social value, or status/bragging rights), then prices move quickly towards zero.

This is great for users. It’s terrible for capitalism.

Open Source Will Affect Everything

Open-source only applies to sectors where content can be digitally replicated and shared over the internet, right?

Wrong, it applies to everything.

When I shared this idea with a friend, he said “What about gasoline? Obviously open-source production and distribution methods don’t apply to extracting, refining, and distributing gasoline.”

True enough, but open-source can easily be applied to energy production. For example, here’s a video that demonstrates how to make your own solar panels. For now, this kind of thing only appeals to hardcore DIY nerds, off-grid survivalist types, and the like.

But imagine a scenario like this. Your neighbor knocks on your door.

“Hey J.D., do you want to join the local neighborhood energy co-op? We already have enough panels (made from an open-source design), so all you have to do is pay a $200 connect fee. At that point your electric bill will drop to about half of what it is now, and if you later decide to add some panels to your property the co-op might start paying you.”

It’s already happening. Both small and large-scale energy cooperatives already exist.

A single high-quality open-source product or service can invade and dominate a sector, like kudzu or Asian carp. It has a combination of traits that is lethal to its native, proprietary competitors. Consider:

radically less expensive to buy or implement, often free
ubiquitous availability
free to use in any way the user wishes
free to modify and customize
well-tested in the field
a community of active developers eager to respond to feedback and improve the product

Eventually, 100% of the global economy will feel the impact of open-source. I think it will play out something like this:

2000: Easy to download free music, many free software options for tech nerds/programmers, philosophies of both Open Source and Free Software movements are well-developed, Creative Commons founded in 2001

2010: Free music becomes industry norm, blogs share content freely, many creative works (music, photographs, books) published under Creative Commons, big chunk of entertainment is user-generated, high-quality free and/or open-source options for many types of software (OpenOffice.org,Firefox, Twitter, etc.), dozens of non-profit/non-proprietary energy co-ops,KhanAcademy.org provides over 2,500 free educational videos and helps tutor millions of kids, unlimited amateur/user-generated free porn

2020: High quality open-source and/or free options will exist for every type of software (open-source equivalents of Photoshop, Cubase, Logic, CAD, Facebook, search, mapping, etc.). Open Source Ecology will succeed in publishing production kits for at least 50 industrial machines, including a 3D scanner, 3D printer, wind turbine, bioplastic extruder, laser cutter, cement mixer, tractor, hay baler, induction furnace, robot arm, etc. Food production will become less centralized, with large numbers of small farmers and urban farmers sharing open-source agriculture techniques, and using non-proprietary seed stock.

2030: Consumer electronics will feel the hit as 3D printers allow consumers to print out their own circuit boards (pulling from a database of open-source blueprints) and make their own electronic stuff.

2040: Open-source AI’s will be available to do complex design, analytical, programming, managerial, organizational, research, and other intellectual work.

2050: Star Trek replicator technology. “Earl Grey, hot.”

Economic Effects (Massive Disruption)

The spread of open-source options doesn’t mean the end of economic activity. I suspect people will always be willing to pay for a sparkling brand, or the very highest quality, or things made carefully by hand.

But many industries are going to experience severe and rapid revenueshrinkage, and they may not see it coming.

To some extent, the internet, digital replication, and plummeting costs of production just shuffle revenue. Apple Computer steals revenue from the major labels. Google steals advertising revenue from newspapers and television networks. People pay AT&T and Comcast for bandwidth instead of paying for music and movies.

But it’s more than a shuffle. Revenue is actually going away. More and more stuff is becoming free, and the trend is just getting stronger.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing? I think it depends on where you live, and what your skills are.

Open Source Will Disrupt Your Life

Open-source culture creates wealth (less expensive, often higher quality goods and services for consumers), but it also destroys jobs. College kids can download all the music they want for free and thumb their noses at greedy record executives, but the record industry isn’t hiring those college graduates anymore.

Apple, Google, and Facebook employ half of Silicon Valley, but what’s to prevent users adopting an open-source version of social networking (one with no advertising, where you fully control your own data), or using BandCampinstead of iTunes? These things can happen quickly. Friendster, anyone?

If your job isn’t yet threatened by open-source methodology, consider what will happen when home 3D printing becomes a reality (of functioning devices, not just plastic models). Consider an open-source version of Siri, version 10, an AI that can not only program your appointments, but can write software, compose music, make money management decisions, supervise a team of robot farmers, etc. Will your job be safe then?

Incease Civic Wealth, or Else

If I lived in a country that valued civic wealth, one that offered universal health care, free public education (including early childhood and four-year college), a great public transportation system, solid energy infrastructure, and other civic perks, I’d be saying “bring it on!”

Open source/free may disrupt revenue streams, but it provides an enormous boon to the average citizen. High-quality products and services are suddenly much less expensive, easier to use and modify, etc.

The problem is, the open-source/free movement tends to concentrate revenue streams, not spread them out. There is less need for labor, and less revenue to pay employees. Business owners do fine if they run lean, but there are fewer jobs. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Maybe the open source/free movement is also a solution to this problem (you might not need a job if most stuff is free), but I suspect that the economic disruptions caused by open source/free, and recent technological innovation in general, will lead to increasing income equality, social unrest, class warfare, and possibly even fascism, unless balanced by more progressive taxation policies and increased civic wealth (social democracy, or something better).

In the long run, we need to remodel our economy so that we are providing for each other instead of exploiting each other.

What Should You Do About It?

So, I’ve been riffing here. Some of you might think I’ve used the term “open source” too loosely, too interchangeably with “free software” or “peer-to-peer” or even “digital economy.” Maybe I have, but I hope my main points have come through:

the means of production and distribution of practically everything are becoming more and more open and accessible
people are creating and sharing non-proprietary solutions, designs, and works that are often of equal or greater quality than the proprietary options
these trends will disrupt every sector of the global economy by shattering scarcity and centralized monopolistic control
these disruptions will result in many benefits for the average person, but they may also destroy your job

On the last point especially, what can you do about it?

you can create a realistic personal economic plan based on your temperament
you can try to anticipate when and how open source/free/peer-to-peer is going to affect your industry
you can expand your economic options by engaging in accelerated learning of skills that are in high demand
you can master the odd, unnatural, rarely taught skills needed to thrive in modernity
you can move to a country that values civic wealth, if they’ll let you in (and you can handle the cybernetic discombobulation)
you can invest energy in influencing the policies and politicians of your own country toward creating more civic/public wealth (education, healthcare, public health, recreation, transportation, etc.)

One final note … SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) can be seen as an attempt to slow down some of the trends I discussed in this post, but it is in fact a step towards fascism. On a social level, the correct response towards the open-source/peer-to-peer/free trend is not censorship and centralized control, but rather increasing civic/public wealth.

(Sources - http://jdmoyer.com)

Doctors' money mistakes

2012-01-16T23:31:00.000+08:00

By Parija Kavilanz @CNNMoney January 16, 2012: 9:48 AM ET

Dr. Jeffrey Meltzer, [left], and Dr. Jim Dahle, say physicians need to smarten up when it comes to business.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Doctors may be experts at treating patients. But when it comes to running their own businesses, many are making rookie mistakes.

And that's driving many private practices doctors to the brink.

Physicians are poor businesspeople, because they "tend to be so engrossed in the medical part," said Dr. Jeffrey Meltzer, 47, an OB/GYN with American Health Network in Carmel, Ind. "It's an all-encompassing job and takes a huge part of their time."

There are genuine business challenges, like shrinking reimbursements from both Medicare and private insurers and confusion from the new health reform legislation.

But many just make bad financial decisions.

Fresh out of residency, many young doctors have school debt averaging $130,000. Still, that doesn't stop them from spending lavishly, said Paul Keckley, executive director of Deloitte's Center for Health Solutions.

"I had one doctor client who bought a $60,000 BMW, and he doesn't even have a first job yet," said Katherine Vessenes, a certified financial planner, attorney and president of MD Financial, a consulting firm specializing in physicians' finances.

"Doctors in residency have been deprived for so long that some have this sense of entitlement," she said.

Doctors going broke

"Everyone assumes all doctors are rich," said Dr. Jim Dahle, an emergency physician in Utah. "When you start believing that, too, you start living beyond your means.

"Doctors should live by the one house, one spouse mantra," he said. "Most doctors have their earnings delayed by 10 to 15 years. The average physician can't [afford to] have two or three houses and then also save for retirement."

The biggest blunders. The list of doctors' mistakes is long -- one of the worse blunders being they tend not to ask for advice and when they do, they don't listen to it, experts said.

"Medicine is an insulated profession," said Keckley. "Doctors are reluctant to trust opinions of anyone other than their own."

"I had a physician who was making $300,000 a year. I took a lot of time and carefully thought out his retirement portfolio for him to invest in," said Vessenes. "He then goes and talks to his colleagues and asks me if he should instead invest in what they are suggesting."

Other bad moves include taking out loans to make payroll, said Meltzer.

Another is putting their money in risky investments, such as radiology centers, urgent care centers or even medical devices, said Dahle.

"These deals are structured so that doctors are taking the financial risks and these investors reap the rewards," he said. "Not all of these deals are bad, but doctors should at least have an attorney review the terms so that they're protected."

Doctors can also get burned by buying expensive equipment, said Meltzer. And being lax on collecting bills is yet another mistake, he added.

The tide is turning. More physicians are acknowledging their lack of business acumen and getting help, experts said.

Doctors: Why we can't stay afloat

When Dahle, 36, came out of residency five-and-a-half years ago, he didn't know anything about business management or personal finance in medical training.

Still, he had the foresight to seek out a financial adviser to help him manage his personal finances before his career kicked off.

But the adviser put him in high-load, high-expense ratio funds, as well as high-cost, high-commission insurance. "I realized later that this adviser was ripping me off," said Dahle.

So Dahle began educating himself about personal finance and business -- an effort that evolved into the whitecoatinvestor.com, an eight-month-old website that educates physicians about smart money management.

So far, the site averages 30,000 page views monthly, he said.

"I've made some financial mistakes like anyone else," said Dahle. "But through the website, I've been able to interact with hundreds of doctors who have made financial errors and are looking to correct them or at least not make any more."

Are you a doctor in private practice who has taken out an SBA loan to make ends meet? E-mail Parija Kavilanz and you could be part of an upcoming article. Click here for CNNMoney.com comment policy .

CONCEPT AND BACKGROUND TO PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP (PPP) / PRIVATE FINANCE INITIATIVE (PFI)

2012-01-13T03:39:00.006+08:00

PFI (Private Finance Initiative) is a public service delivery type of PPP (Public Private Partnership) where the responsibility for providing public services is transferred from the public to the private sector for a considerable period of time.

In PFI projects, the private sector develops, finances and maintains an asset used in the delivery of public services. In return, the public sector pays a monthly charge that covers both the repayment of the capital investment and the ongoing service costs. This transforms government departments from being owners and operators of assets into the purchasers of services from the private sector. The key principles of PFI are:

• Purchase services not assets

• Value for money to the public sector

• Project risk management between public and private sectors

• Utilizing and incorporating private sector know-how and expertise; and

• Incorporating whole life-cycle costing in infrastructure projects

The PFI market is limited to large size contractors. In PFI projects, design and construction become fully integrated up-front with operations and asset management. Ongoing service delivery, operational, maintenance and refurbishment costs become a single party’s responsibility for the length of the concession period; PFI projects typically comprise three main parties, as follows:

• The Awarding Authority: this is the public sector client responsible for procuring the project. It may be a central government department, local authority, or government agency.

• The Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV): A limited company (i.e. the project consortia) that is set up for the sole purpose of delivering the PFI project. It is responsible for the project from the start to the end of the contract, which normally spans more than twenty years. It acts as the management and operating company for the project, and is the legal owner of the concession that is granted by the public sector.

• Third-party funders: such as equity, bank loans, or bonds.

In PFI procurement, it is a fundamental requirement that appropriate risks are transferred to the private sector, or allocated to the party that is best able to manage the risk in a cost effective manner.

The path to healthy data governance

2012-01-10T23:39:00.004+08:00

By: JORGE GARCIA On: 10 Jan 2012 For: CIO Canada

Planning and executing a strategy around the quality and assurance of information requires a lot of effort. An analyst from TEC discusses everything you need to know to get started

Modern organizations recognize that data volumes are increasing. More importantly, they have come to realize that the complexity of processing this data has also grown in exponential ways, and it’s still growing. Many companies are finally treating their data with all the necessary data quality processes. But they also need to align their data with a more complex and complete corporate view. The processing of information needs to conform to a number of essential factors that drive better execution, higher performance, and increased profit.

In our modern corporate reality, information drives business. Information is the essential element for making decisions at all levels (executive, strategic, and operational). When a company executes projects devoted to maintaining its security, ensuring its reliability, and keeping it up to date, we consider the company to have a data management strategy.

One of the essential features of data management is the deployment of data quality processes to ensure data has the necessary integrity to be used with confidence by an organization. So, from a data management perspective, data quality comprises all the necessary features required by all data to enable the satisfaction of a specific purpose. To guarantee data quality we use a data quality management strategy, which draws on processes, technology, and, of course, human and material resources. To put it in basic terms, data quality processes must ensure that data is:

- accurate—data correctly reflects the business object or transaction it describes.

- reliable—data is consistent within multiple transactions.

- complete—all the necessary data for a specific task is ready to be used.

- appropriate—data is relevant to its purpose.

- on time—information is available when it’s required.

- credible—data provides valuable insights.

Planning and executing a successful data quality strategy requires significant effort and the application of the right technology and methodology. With regard to data quality assurance organizations can be at different levels of maturity. There are several ways to assess maturity, but a basic data quality maturity model describes the following stages (figure 1):

- Data quality as required—Organizations solve data quality problems incidentally, that is, as they appear.

- Basic data analysis—Organizations have basic strategies to collect, clean, transform, and load data to specific storage targets. Data quality is managed with specific processes.

- Addressing root causes—Organizations are working to solve data quality issues from the source systems.

- Proactive prevention—Organizations have a corporate strategy in place that addresses data quality initiatives.

- Optimization—Organizations have mature data quality processes that involve continuous improvement to those processes.

Based on these points, you can conduct an initial self-assessment of your organization’s data quality maturity level.

Figure 1. Common data quality maturity phases

A great percentage of organizations are still at the stages of limited data analysis and working on addressing root causes. But a small number of organizations have passed to proactive prevention or optimization. One of the main reasons for the delay in development is that organizations realize that when evolving from one phase to the next, the overall management process increases in complexity. The need to manage data, and related security issues, involves more people and increases activity throughout the organization.

From Management to Governance

The data quality process involves a management process. This is often part of a corporate data management strategy, which, in general, encompasses the necessary elements to ensure data has the proper quality. But along the way in the evolution of an organization’s data quality initiative, the process gains in complexity, because of more intense interaction between data users and business units, along with the increase of security issues based on the need for moving data and sharing it among various stakeholders. So, as the Data Governance Institute mentions,

Governance comes into play when individual managers find that they cannot—or should not—make independent decisions.

In modern organizations, it is a fact of life that information is coming from more sources, is being shared by a greater number of people, and has special needs for storage and security as volume and sensitivity increases (figure 2).

Figure 2. From data quality to data governance

All levels of an organization have come to realize that data usage must be aligned with the business process in order to become an asset capable of bringing real value to an organization. The better we treat this data, the more value an organization will be able to get from it.

When an organization has reached the stage of aligning data quality with its business process, the people who use the data, and the technology involved in its management, mechanisms are created to govern all aspects of data from different perspectives: management, quality, usage, compliance, and, of course, security

A data governance strategy is the framework for establishing the necessary systems to administer, regulate, and secure the use of data within an organization. As the Data Governance Institute states,

Data Governance is a system of decision rights and accountabilities for information-related processes.

A data governance strategy goes beyond the use of an enterprise application such as a data warehouse or a change management system, or even an application to manage a data governance initiative; it involves the process of creating the necessary policies for information usage within an organization.

Deploying a data governance initiative requires the creation of policies that align all the necessary factors to make data a valuable corporate asset and exploit its usefulness (figure 3):

- Data quality, per data rules

- Business process, per business rules

- People, per the rules of engagement

Figure 3. The role of policy in data governance

Based on the stakeholders and users involved in the execution of the data governance initiative, policies can be put into effect through a so called data stewardship strategy: basically, assigning special functions and roles to key people—called data stewards—who will be in charge of defining, maintaining, and ensuring the execution of all policies.

A data stewardship strategy can be carried out by one or more key stakeholders within a company, but it is important to treat this as a core role within the organization, with the right authority and ability to make and execute decisions regarding data and its proper use, as the data stewardship role deals with key data security, quality, and sharing issues.

Some Insights on Data Governance adoption

Currently, organizations and decision makers are paying more attention to the importance of data quality and ways to improve data usage and administration according to comprehensive corporate principles.

According to TEC resources, organizations of all sizes consider data management issues to be the second most important issue to address, just below business performance—and both subject areas are closely related to the need for optimal data quality. Also, according to the Initiate Data Governance Survey Report, data quality programs or initiatives are core priorities forming the basis of a data governance strategy.

While large organizations are the ones adopting the majority of data governance strategies, especially in the financial services and manufacturing industries, interest in adopting this sort of initiative is growing among the small to medium segment—modern organizations in this segment are dealing with problems similar to those of larger companies, such as dealing with large amounts of data and adding complexity to their business processes.

Despite the fact that organizations are adopting data governance initiatives, the rate of adoption is slow, and the practice and execution of such initiatives is still in immature phases. But there are signs of growth, as business units, as opposed to IT departments, are becoming more involved in the processes concerning better use and maintenance of information.

Benefits, Challenges, and Opportunities

The Benefits

To take the best possible advantage of data, some of the general functions of a data governance initiative must include the following:

- Define and monitor how the data is managed

- Define all the necessary data requirements

- Determine the necessary cross-functional interactions

- Thoroughly document all data governance policies

The potential benefits derived from the deployment and execution of a governance initiative are several:

- Reduce the amount of time for the compilation of information

- Reduce data redundancy

- Promote responsible control of sensitive data and information assets

- Improve the process of managing and securing the use of information

- Improve the business decision-making process

- Increase trust in data

The Challenges

Deploying a data governance initiative can also be a challenging endeavour in terms of coordinating all its components—people, business processes, data, etc.—for maximum benefit. Some of the major challenges are as follows:

- Treating a data governance initiative as an ongoing, organization-wide program and not as an isolated project with a limited time frame.

- Encouraging commitment to keep the program alive and evolving

- Achieving effective collaboration between all users and stakeholders

- Achieving effective execution of the program that takes into account its complex and cross-functional nature

According to the Initiate Data Governance Survey Report, data governance programs are still perceived as programs with a high degree of inefficiency that fall short of effectively defining and executing data governance policies. Data governance programs can easily fall into a grey zone of corporate indifference if organizations are not able to define, deliver, and execute them efficiently.

The Opportunities

Organizations that have overcome the challenges in establishing data governance, where it operates with a reliable rate of efficiency, can realize a number of opportunities, Data governance can develop the ability to ensure data is not only reliable and based on operational facts, but also moved and managed according to general criteria agreed on by all levels of leadership. It also has the potential to improve organizational performance, by avoiding redundant communication and use of information, as well as compliance with business rules.

A call to action

Any organization can make a start on data governance:

- Prioritize a data governance initiative.

- Create awareness.

- Rally the support of and engage both business units and IT teams.

- Develop data governance expertise.

- Measure and plan carefully.

- Think big, but start small.

These steps will ensure 100 percent support from all levels of leadership and stakeholders. Note that the careful planning and charting of your program can be definitive in augmenting its chance of success. By addressing a set of small problems first, you can more reliably gauge the scope of your program.

A Final Word

I concur with the view of Data Management International—that the needs of business drive the needs for information; together they drive technological approaches and innovation and the appropriate adoption of technology. For a data governance initiative to be successful, it must be understood as a key business driver, not merely a technological enhancement. A data governance program is ruled by three main facets:

- Business—defining information needs and participating in data analysis

- Technology—executing the program with efficiency and compliance

- Information—in the form a data governance council established by an organization to define and execute the right policies for monitoring, managing, and measuring data quality and compliance, as well as to provide guidelines, standards, and documentation for data use

But even established data governance programs will have to address fresh issues. New technology platforms, such as cloud computing, as well as new approaches to managing and analyzing data, such as self-service features available with certain BI applications, will force pre-existing and new data governance initiatives to adapt to new ways of handling and securing data that moves in different ways, whether inside or outside an organization’s firewalls.

Any data governance initiative should be treated as a work in progress, requiring the evolving support of human and technological resources.

Open Source Software: Why Use Them?

2012-01-10T22:34:00.000+08:00

By Joy Kumar Das

Open source software (OSS) is available in source code form. The source code and copyright of the OSS are provided under the software license, which allows their users to study, modify, improve, customize and distribute those software and applications. Till 1998, 'open source software' was known as 'free software', and it was renamed to dispel the ambiguity associated with the name 'free software'.

Needless to say, open source domain in the IT industry is a treasure trove of web applications and software. Magento, Joomla, osCommerce, Typo3, Drupal, SugarCRM, WordPress, etc. are some open source ecommerce web applications, while Linux, Apache Server, Thunderbird, Mozilla Firefox, TurboCash, and Open Office, besides Pain.net, Audacity, etc. are open source software and programs that are available free of cost.

Open source ecommerce web applications are well-suited to meet all the desired business needs and operational requirements. Customization of different business needs and their implementation are possible at low spending. On the other hand, Linux is an operating system available free of cost as the Apache Server, which works on Unix Systems added to Netware, Windows and other platforms and runs as an HTTP server. All these open source software and applications are obtainable without giving a penny. Most interestingly, they have all those functionalities that programmers and computer users look for.

Computer users and programmers are aware of the benefits that they can derive from using these open source software and web applications. For example, Linux is used as operating system while Apache Server for running HTTP server; Thunderbird used for email purposes; Mozilla Firefox as Internet browser; TurboCash for handling business accounting needs; Open Office for handling word processing, spreadsheet, slideshow and database needs; Paint.net for working with photos; Audacity for editing video and sound; and ecommerce open source web applications are used for customizing and implementing desired business needs and operational requirements.

The benefits of using open source software and web applications are better understood if the benefits of some ecommerce OSS and web applications are discussed.

Magento: This ecommerce shopping cart solution is used to create user-friendly features for websites. Magento has several versions. Among those versions, Community, Professional and Enterprise versions are popular among programmers. With using Magento OSS, programmers can create websites with multi store facilities that can be managed from one location in admin panel, with SEO friendly features, and with integrating major payment gateways. In addition to them, programmers can integrate third-party tools in accordance with API (Application Programming Interface).

Joomla: Joomla is a PHP-based (Server-side programming language used for creating dynamic web pages and services) Content Management System used for creating websites with complex web applications. This open source software and web application helps to manage site navigation and Meta contents, edit HTML, besides helping to create centralized CMS with different assigned users.

Drupal: Drupal is a content management system used for building dynamic websites with a wide array of features. From developing personal portals to developing enterprise websites, this open source software and web application is one of the most sought-after applications for programmers, web publishers, web developers, and also for SEO experts. This has become popular because of its flexible architecture. There are hordes of advantages available with Drupal CMS; for example, facility to categorize content through taxonomy system, facility to clean URL through apache 'mod_rewrite', and its use of top-notch CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and JavaScript ensures speedier websites, among others.

WordPress: WordPress is an OSS script that is extensively used for building nice-looking websites and is perfect for creating blogs. Backed by PHP and MySQL, WordPress is customizable with hundreds of easy-to-tweak themes and plug-ins. For its user-friendly features and optimum flexibility, it is quite popular among common users and expert programmers.

Irrespective of which kind of software you may need, chances are out there you can avail of some free, open source software and applications that will easily fulfill your needs. With devoting a bit of time for searching and downloading such software, you will be well on your way with having lost 'not-a-single-penny'.

Joy Kumar Das wields genuine command over the subjects like tours and travels, scientific discoveries, software development and website design and development industry, online marketing industry. and business promotion and advertisement management, among others. His writings express his thoughts which emanate from thorough analysis. This article is an outcome of his elaborate research.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joy_Kumar_Das

Sony to name Kazuo Hirai president: Nikkei

2012-01-07T02:09:00.000+08:00

Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, presents the new Sony S tablet (R) and the P tablet during a news conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin August 31, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz

Fri Jan 6, 2012 12:38pm EST

(Reuters) - Japan's Sony Corp will promote Kazuo Hirai as president replacing Howard Stringer as early as April, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Stringer is expected to remain chairman and chief executive officer, the paper said.

Hirai, who is executive deputy president, currently heads the group's consumer businesses and helped turn its gaming business profitable, the paper said.

According to the report, Hirai's appointment is likely to be finalized as soon as next month at a board meeting.

5 major changes facing the Internet in 2012

2012-01-04T23:18:00.002+08:00

Technical operations, policymaking could change significantly this year By Carolyn Duffy Marsan, Network World

2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s, when this network-of-networks stopped being a research project and became an engine of economic growth.

This year the Internet will face several milestones as it undergoes its biggest-ever technical upgrade, from Internet Protocol version 4 to version 6. In addition, key contracts that the U.S. federal government controls for Internet infrastructure and operations are being re-bid. Taken together, these events could result in monumental changes in both who operates the Internet infrastructure as well as how these operations are handled:

1. The root servers may have a new operator.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overseen the operation of the Internet root servers since the non-profit was founded in 1998. However, ICANN's contract is due to expire in March, and a new U.S.-based organization could end up in charge of this critical technical function.

The Internet's 13 root server farms are at the top of the DNS hierarchy, which matches domain names with their corresponding IP addresses for looking up Web sites. The operation of the root server farms is overseen by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which reports to ICANN.

Instead of renewing ICANN's contract for the IANA function, the U.S. government has opened up the bid to other U.S.-based organizations. On Nov. 10, 2011, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued an open bid for the IANA function. Bids were due Dec. 12 and a contract is expected to be awarded in the first quarter of this year. The new contract for the IANA function will last from April 1, 2012 until March 31, 2015.

2. A new company could operate the .com registry.

Verisign has operated the .com domain since 1999. The .com domain is the Internet's most popular top-level domain, with about 100 million .com names registered as of last month. To put this figure in perspective, the Internet has a total of 220 million domain names registered in 280 top-level domains. The number of .com names dwarfs every other domain: It's more than five times greater than those registered in the second most popular extension, which is Germany's .de.

Verisign signed an agreement with ICANN on March 1, 2006 to operate .com, and that contract expires on Nov. 30, 2012.

One positive indicator for Verisign: Last June, ICANN renewed the company's contract to operate the .net registry, which has about 12 million registered names. Verisign will run the .net registry until 2017.

3. Up to 1,000 new top-level domains will start being introduced.

ICANN plans to launch a new program Jan. 12 to add hundreds of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as .hotel and .paris to the Internet. This controversial plan has been under discussion for six years, and it is finally scheduled to begin. ICANN's new gTLD programrepresents the biggest change to the Internet's naming system since 1998, when ICANN was formed.

ICANN has run two previous efforts to expand the Internet domain name space: once in 2000, when it added seven extensions including .biz and .info; and again in 2004, when it added eight more extensions such as .asia and .jobs. None of these new domain name extensions has been particularly successful.

However, if ICANN's latest attempt to expand the domain name space succeeds, it could fundamentally change the way domain names are used. Among the new categories of names that are expected to be approved include: internationalized domain names in non-English language scripts; geographically oriented domains for cities and regions; domain names tied to specific interests as well as domain names tied to individual companies and brands.

Read Network World's other predictions for 2012

4. An additional 10,000 Web sites will support IPv6.

Sept. 30, 2012 is the deadline for all U.S. federal government agencies to support IPv6 on their public-facing Web sites and Web services. An estimated 10,000 Web sites fall under this mandate, which could help drive IPv6 deployment in the United States during the next 12 months.

Established by the Obama Administration two years ago, the federal IPv6 mandate also requires agencies to upgrade internal client applications that communicate with public Internet servers to use native IPv6. But agencies have another two years - until September 2014 - to meet this second deadline. Federal agencies are required to designate an IPv6 transition manager and to purchase network hardware and software that complies with the federal government's IPv6 testing process.

IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme that can support billions of devices connected directly to the Internet. But IPv6 is not backwards compatible with IPv4, which is running out of addresses. Network operators can either support both protocols in what's called dual-stack mode or translate between IPv4 and IPv6, which could add latency and overhead cost.

5. Europe will run out of IPv4 addresses.

The European regional Internet registry - RIPE - is expected to run out of IPv4 addresses in 2012. Geoff Huston, adjunct research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures at Swinburne University of Technology, estimates that RIPE will run out of its remaining IPv4 address space on July 22, 2012.

In April 2011, Asia depleted all of its IPv4 address space except a small fraction held in reserve for start-up network operators. The North American registry is expected to deplete its IPv4 address space in 2013.

The depletion of IPv4 addresses in various regions of the world will put more pressure on U.S. carriers and enterprises to begin transitioning their networks to IPv6. For example, Comcasthas said it will offer production-quality IPv6 services across its nationwide network in 2012.

(Source - http://www.networkworld.com)

Yahoo names PayPal’s Scott Thompson as CEO

2012-01-04T23:01:00.002+08:00

Iconic internet company Yahoo has named a new CEO, former PayPal CEO Scott Thompson, the companyannounced today.

Yahoo fired its long-time CEO Carol Bartz in September after board members decided she wasn’t pushing the company forward. Yahoo CFO Tim Morse has been acting as interim CEO since then while the company boosted its efforts to find a replacement.

We’re pasting more from the official release below. Check back shortly for a more through report.

Yahoo! Inc., the premier digital media company, today announced the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer, effective January 9, 2012 , at which time Tim Morse will resume his role as Chief Financial Officer. Thompson has also been appointed to the Company’s Board of Directors, effective January 9, 2012.

Thompson served most recently as President of PayPal, a division of eBay, where he continued his established track record of growing businesses by driving customer engagement built on strong technology platforms. Under his leadership, PayPal solidified its lead as the global online payment service, expanding its user base from 50 million to more than 104 million active users in 190 countries worldwide, increasing the number of merchant partners to more than 8 million globally, and growing revenues from $1.8 billion to $4+ billion in 2011.

“Scott brings to Yahoo ! a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth, precisely the formula we need at Yahoo!,” said Roy Bostock , Chairman of the Yahoo ! Board. “His deep understanding of online businesses combined with his team building and operational capabilities will restore the energy, focus, and momentum necessary to grow the core business and deliver increased value for our shareholders. The search committee and the entire Board concluded that he is the right leader to return the core business to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation.”

“Yahoo! is an industry icon and I am very excited about the prospect of working with one of the great teams in the online world to deliver Yahoo!’s next era of success,” Mr. Thompson said. “Yahoo! has a rich history and a solid foundation to build on, and its continued user engagement is one of the many reasons for my enthusiasm. With the ultimate goal of delivering the value our shareholders expect, my immediate focus will be on getting to know the entire team and hearing more from all Yahoo!s, working closely with the engineers and product teams, and diving deeply into our products and services to learn more about what our more than 700 million users find most engaging and useful. I will also be working directly with our region leaders and sales teams globally to get a clearer understanding of the needs of our advertisers and publishers. Clearly, speed is important but we will attack both the opportunity ahead and the competitive challenges with an appropriate balance of urgency and thoughtfulness. I cannot wait to get started.”

“Scott’s primary focus will be on the core business, and as CEO and director, he will work closely with the Board as we continue the strategic review process to identify the best approaches for the Company and its shareholders. As part of this process, Yahoo ! is considering a wide range of opportunities for the Company’s business, as well as specific investments or dispositions of assets,” added Bostock.

“We are all grateful to Tim Morse for leading the company with a steady hand during the last several months. His deep understanding of the Company and his positive approach kept the company on course and we will continue to benefit from his exceptional capabilities as he returns to his Chief Financial Officer role,” Bostock concluded.

(Source - http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/04/yahoo-ceo-scott-thompson/)

Puasa Nabi Daud oleh Prof. Muhd. Kamil Ibrahim dari Madinah

2012-01-04T01:14:00.002+08:00

Semalam saya menulis entri yang sengaja ditinggalkan.

“Selain belajar bahasa Arab, saya suka berbincang beberapa isu yang menarik perhatian. Memandangkan beliau seorang lulusan pengajian hadis maka saya gemar bertanya tentang kepakaran beliau.

Misalnya, saya pernah bertanya tentang hadis ini,

Rasulullah bersabda: “Puasa yang paling Allah cintai ialah puasa Nabi Daud, iaitu dia berpuasa satu hari dan berbuka satu hari. Solat yang paling Allah sukai ialah solat Nabi Daud, iaitu dia tidur hingga pertengahan malam lalu bangun mendirikan shalat pada sepertiga malam dan tidur lagi di akhir seperenam malamnya.” [Shahih al-Bukhari, no: 3167].

Soalan saya agak kritikal, kenapa agaknya Allah mencintai puasa nabi Daud? Ia mesti ada penjelasan yang boleh difikirkan.”

Ia perbincangan bersama Walid dan Hearsi, dua pemuda Somalia. Namun jauh di sudut hati saya ingin berdakwah kepada mereka berdua dengan cara yang cukup halus.

Hakikatnya, banyak soalan yang tidak mempunyai atau memerlukan jawapan. Lalu mungkin ada yang berkata ia perkara remeh-temeh. Ulamak tidak melihat ia isu besar yang perlu diperjelaskan.

Saya selalu terfikir, ilmu Allah ada pada setiap orang. Ia boleh berlaku kerana mereka ke sekolah atau universiti, menadah kitab, mendengar ceramah dan kuliah atau melalui pengalaman yang telah dilalui.

Malah ibu, ayah dan keluarga memberi ilmu yang tidak ternilai. Jika ia melalui pengalaman, maka ia menjadi milik mereka yang telah melalui pengalaman tersebut. Jika tidak dibukukan atau diceritakan, ilmu tersebut akan turut berkubur bersama mereka.

Benarlah firman Allah melalui surah al-Baqarah ayat 255 yang bermaksud,

”…….yang Mengetahui apa yang ada di hadapan mereka dan apa yang ada di belakang mereka, sedang mereka tidak mengetahui sesuatu pun dari (kandungan) ilmu Allah melainkan apa yang Allah kehendaki (memberitahu kepadanya) ……..”

Walid merenung saya. Tentu sekali beliau tidak menyangka saya bertanya soalan “bodoh” yang mungkin tidak ditanya oleh bijak pandai yang lain.

Adakah ia soal kuantiti? Tidak mungkin kerana Rasululullah SAW melarang mereka yang ingin berpuasa sepanjang masa. Akhirnya, saya bertanya beliau, “mahukah tuan memikirkan jawapan yang ingin saya sampaikan?”.

Walid dan Hearsi melihat dan mendengar hujah saya dengan tekun. Lalu saya mulakan dengan nada yang sangat berhati-hati,

“Ini kali kedua saya menyampaikan pendapat ini. Pertama kepada isteri saya dan kedua kepada tuan-tuan berdua. Saya fikir ada ilmu yang diperolehi melalui praktikal.

Allah cintakan puasa Nabi Daud yang selang sehari berpuasa. Tuan-tuan kena cuba dahulu berpuasa sebagaimana Nabi Daud berpuasa, InsyaAllah Dia akan bagi ilmu tersebut. Lakukan secara konsisten.

Ramai di antara kita belajar dan mengetahui tentang amalan ini. Saya bukan pakar hadis tetapi saya tahu amalan ini sejak empat tahun yang lepas. Namun jika orang bertanya soalan yang sama - pada ketika itu – sudah pasti saya tidak mampu menjawab.

Kini sudah sebulan lebih saya berpuasa selang sehari (nota: ampunkan saya ya Allah jika ia lahir dari rasa riyak takbur dan angkuh. Aku tidak mahu begitu ya Allah, aku mohon izin bercerita untuk menyampaikan sedikit ilmu yang Kau pinjamkan kepada daku).

Pernah dengar orang menulis, susah dan senang, sakit dan sihat, suka dan duka, cantik dan hodoh, kaya dan miskin serta pelbagai sifat yang berlawanan mempunyai nikmat yang sama?

Pada satu tahap, ia sesuatu yang sukar diterima. Apatah lagi untuk merasai perasaan tersebut. Mana mungkin lapar dan kenyang mempunyai nikmat yang sama.

Realitinya, bila manusia berduka, sakit, hodoh dan miskin maka ia lebih mudah untuk merayu dan merintih kepadaNya. Jika sifatnya berlawanan manusia akan lebih rileks, santai dan sedikit jauh daripada Allah SWT”.

Tentu sekali saya tidak menghadapi masalah untuk memahamkan mereka dengan hujah-hujah yang saya ingin kemukakan. Pertama saya berhadapan dengan ilmuan agama dan kedua dengan seorang jurutera yang mempunyai syarikat perniagaan sendiri.

Tinggal lagi mereka tidak pernah mencuba dengan apa yang dicintai Allah itu. Ia kelihatan sangat sukar.

Lalu saya sambung, “bila saya berpuasa selang-sehari, tiada lagi nilai kenyang dan lapar. Hari berpuasa dan tidak berpuasa mempunyai nilai yang sama dari sudut kenyang dan lapar. Tuan-tuan akan dianugerahkan perasaan dan nikmat tersebut.

Maksud saya, nilai kenyang dan lapar hilang sehingga wujud nilai baru yang terlalu abstrak.

Dan perasaan ini akan membawa kita melihat tentang kebesaran Allah. Perasaan cintakan Allah pada setiap waktu. Bagaimana? Entah. Berpuasalah dahulu… bukankah Allah paling mencintai puasa ini? Bukankah Allah mencintai orang yang cintakan Dia?

Bukankah selangkah kita hampir denganNya, beribu langkah Dia hampir dengan kita?”

“MasyaAllah… MasyaAllah… MasyaAllah…”

Saya memberi pendapat. Mereka lebih berilmu, bijak dan pandai daripada saya. Alhamdulillah, akhirnya saya bersyukur kerana Hearsi sudah memulakan puasa Nabi Daud selang sehari selepas perbincangan ini.

Ia tidak memerlukan modal yang besar.

NotaMKI: Begitulah…. jika kita masih tertanya-tanya bagaimana mahu solat malam… lakukan… lakukan dan rasailah nikmat tidak tidur yang sama manisnya dengan nikmat tidur. Ia hanya berlaku (mengikut aturannya) selepas melepasi tahap-tahap tertentu. Pastinya ia memerlukan langkah pertama sebelum ada langkah kedua.

(Prof. Muhd. Kamil ialah Profesor Perakaunan di Taibah Universiti Madinah, Arab Saudi. Nukilan beliau boleh dilayari di http://muhdkamil.org. Beliau juga pernah berkhidmat di UiTM dan memegang beberapa jawatan penting disepanjang berkhidmat di UiTM)

Stuxnet, Duqu Date Back To 2007, Researcher Says

2012-01-03T19:58:00.003+08:00

Two pieces of malware likely were developed by the same team on the same platform along with similar variants, according to Kaspersky Lab.

By Elizabeth Montalbano InformationWeek
December 29, 2011 01:22 PM

The origins of the dangerous Stuxnet computer virus that targeted Iran's nuclear power program last year could date back as far as 2007, according to new research. Researchers have dubbed the platform "Tilded" because its authors tend to use file names which start with "~d," said Alexander Gostav, head of Kapersky's Global Research and Analysis Team, in a blog post

Stuxnet and the related Duqu virus discovered earlier this year share a similar architecture and may have been developed by the same team of developers--along with other pieces of malware--several years ago, according to a security researcher at Kapersky Lab.

"There were a number of projects involving programs based on the 'Tilded' platform throughout the period 2007-2011," Gostav said. "Stuxnet and Duqu are two of them--there could have been others, which for now remain unknown."

Researchers discovered the connections between the pieces of malware and their origins by examining their drivers, he said.

Gostav warned that the Tilded platform is continuing to develop and more modifications of the viruses are likely to be a threat in the future.

Stuxnet was first discovered in June 2010 when it attacked software and equipment used by various organizations facilitating and overseeing Iran's nuclear program.

The virus was especially worrisome for researchers because of its unprecedented complexity; it contains more than 4,000 functions, which is comparable to the code in some commercial software.

Researchers at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics' CrySyS lab discovered Duqu this past September, saying the malware appears to have been designed to steal industrial control design documents.

After examining Duqu, researchers at Symantec said it was nearly identical to Stuxnet. Both viruses attack Microsoft Windows systems using a zero-day vulnerability, which tries to exploit application vulnerabilities that haven't been discovered yet.

Superworms like Stuxnet and Duqu--which seem to have been created to target the critical infrastructure and control systems of particular countries--are of great concern for federal cybersecurity officials who are working to prevent such dangerous threats to the U.S. power grid and other essential facilities.

Role-based access control based on least user privilege is one of the most effective ways to prevent the compromise of corporate data. Our new report explains why proper provisioning is a growing challenge, due to the proliferation of "big data," NoSQL databases, and cloud-based data storage. Download the report now. (Free registration required.)

(Source - http://informationweek.com)

Richard Stallman Was Right All Along

2012-01-03T11:45:00.002+08:00

by Thom Holwerda on Mon 2nd Jan 2012 19:12 UTC

Late last year, president Obama signed a law that makes it possible to indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without any form of trial or due process. Peaceful protesters in Occupy movements all over the world have been labelled as terrorists by the authorities. Initiatives like SOPA promote diligent monitoring of communication channels. Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.

Up until relatively recently, it's been easy to dismiss Richard Stallman as a paranoid fanatic, someone who lost touch with reality long ago. A sort of perpetual computer hippie, the perfect personification of the archetype of the unworldly basement-dwelling computer nerd. His beard, his hair, his outfits - in our visual world, it's simply too easy to dismiss him.

His views have always been extreme. His only computer is a Lemote Yeelong netbook, because it's the only computer which uses only Free software - no firmware blobs, no proprietary BIOS; it's all Free. He also refuses to own a mobile phone, because they're too easy to track; until there's a mobile phone equivalent of the Yeelong, Stallman doesn't want one. Generally, all software should be Free. Or, as the Free Software Foundation puts it:

As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us.

I, too, disregarded Stallman as way too extreme. Free software to combat controlling and spying governments? Evil corporations out to take over the world? Software as a tool to monitor private communication channels? Right. Surely, Free and open source software is important, and I choose it whenever functional equivalence with proprietary solutions is reached, but that Stallman/FSF nonsense is way out there.

But here we are, at the start of 2012. Obama signed the NDAA for 2012, making it possible for American citizens to be detained indefinitely without any form of trial or due process, only because they are terrorist suspects. At the same time, we have SOPA, which, if passed, would enact a system in which websites can be taken off the web, again without any form of trial or due process, while also enabling the monitoring of internet traffic. Combine this with how the authorities labelled the Occupy movements - namely, as terrorists - and you can see where this is going.

In case all this reminds you of China and similarly totalitarian regimes, you're not alone. Even the Motion Picture Association of America, the MPAA, proudly proclaims that what works for China, Syria, Iran, and others, should work for the US. China's Great Firewall and similar filtering systems are glorified as workable solutions in what is supposed to be the free world.

The crux of the matter here is that unlike the days of yore, where repressive regimes needed elaborate networks of secret police and informants to monitor communication, all they need now is control over the software and hardware we use. Our desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and all manner of devices play a role in virtually all of our communication. Think you're in the clear when communicating face-to-face? Think again. How did you arrange the meet-up? Over the phone? The web? And what do you have in your pocket or bag, always connected to the network?

This is what Stallman has been warning us about all these years - and most of us, including myself, never really took him seriously. However, as the world changes, the importance of the ability to check what the code in your devices is doing - by someone else in case you lack the skills - becomes increasingly apparent. If we lose the ability to check what our own computers are doing, we're boned.

That's the very core of the Free Software Foundation's and Stallman's beliefs: that proprietary software takes control away from the user, which can lead to disastrous consequences, especially now that we rely on computers for virtually everything we do. The fact that Stallman foresaw this almost three decades ago is remarkable, and vindicates his activism. It justifies 30 years of Free Software Foundation.

And, in 2012, we're probably going to need Free and open source software more than ever before. At the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin late last year, Cory Doctorow held a presentation titled "The Coming War on General Purpose Computation". In it, Doctorow warns that the general purpose computer, and more specifically, user control over general purpose computers, is perceived as a threat to the establishment. The copyright wars? Nothing but a prelude to the real war.

"As a member of the Walkman generation, I have made peace with the fact that I will require a hearing aid long before I die, and of course, it won't be a hearing aid, it will be a computer I put in my body," Doctorow explains, "So when I get into a car - a computer I put my body into - with my hearing aid - a computer I put inside my body - I want to know that these technologies are not designed to keep secrets from me, and to prevent me from terminating processes on them that work against my interests."

And this is really the gist of it all. With computers taking care of things like hearing, driving, and more, we really can't afford to be locked out of them. We need to be able to peek inside of them and see what they're doing, to ensure we're not being monitored, filtered, or whatever. Only a short while ago I would've declared this as pure paranoia - but with all that's been going on recently, it's no longer paranoia. It's reality.

"Freedom in the future will require us to have the capacity to monitor our devices and set meaningful policy on them, to examine and terminate the processes that run on them, to maintain them as honest servants to our will, and not as traitors and spies working for criminals, thugs, and control freaks," Doctorow warns, "And we haven't lost yet, but we have to win the copyright wars to keep the Internet and the PC free and open. Because these are the materiel in the wars that are to come, we won't be able to fight on without them."

This is why you should support Android (not Google, but Android), even if you prefer the iPhone. This is why you should support Linux, even if you use Windows. This is why you should support Apache, even if you run IIS. There's going to be a point where being Free/open is no longer a fun perk, but a necessity.

And that point is approaching fast.

(Source - http://www.osnews.com)

An Agile Approach to Change Management

2012-01-03T02:13:00.002+08:00

Enterprise Change Management (ECM) provides a framework that addresses a variety of factors responsible for large-scale IT initiative failures. Dr. Myles Bogner and David Elfanbaum discuss how organizations can leverage ECM practices in conjunction with their Agile development teams to foster IT delivery adoption. - by Dr. Myles Bogner & David Elfanbaum.

CIO — Agile software development is designed to thrive within even the most dynamic business and technical environments. In fact, according to an article on the Web site of Martin Fowler, a well-known Agile industry leader, the name "Agile" was chosen because its founders viewed "adaptiveness and response to change" as the most essential concept of the methodology.

Figure 1 The Domains of Agile Methodology and Enterprise Change Management

All Agile methodologies include integrated practices and processes that manage evolving requirements to efficiently develop a continuous stream of new software capabilities. However, what Agile does not address are changes related to enterprise support of the Agile process or tasks that fall outside the scope of the project work, including:

• How to effectively manage an organization's internal personnel so that the appropriate stakeholders are available throughout the course of a project.
• How to gather and prioritize the most important features desired by the organization throughout the ongoing development cycle.
• How to adjust the notion of needing training in a continuous release environment.
• How to ensure customer team members are informed by the full breadth of stakeholders required for enterprise acceptance.
• How to secure timely approval of new technologies that a team would like to leverage.
• How to address stakeholder discomfort with cultural, business, social or other non-technical changes related to software implementation.

Each of these challenges is compounded when organizations operate multiple Agile projects simultaneously. Such unaddressed issues can cause IT projects to ultimately fail, even if executed perfectly within the scope of the development teams and meeting all project acceptance tests. On his blog, Jim Markowsky, an expert in change management, noted that the vast majority of large-scale IT initiative failures are actually caused by factors other than technology.

Enterprise Change Management (ECM) provides a framework that addresses many of these missing factors. This article focuses on how organizations can leverage ECM practices in conjunction with their Agile development teams to foster IT delivery adoption.

Enterprise Change Management (ECM)

Figure 2 Typical Stakeholder Gut Reactions to Change Initiatives

In their book titled: "The Heart of Change," John P. Kotter, a world-renowned speaker on leadership and the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, and co-author and consultant Dan S. Cohen, view the core pattern associated with successful change as "See-Feel-Change." To move stakeholders from the type of negative thoughts and feelings depicted in the image above, an ECM program must communicate a vision of the change that is compelling enough to not simply overcome negative preconceptions but also motivate positive participation.

Project and executive managers tend to treat those who will be impacted by software initiatives as if they were Vulcans, not humans. Of course, stakeholders are more like Kirk than Spock. Humans don't coldly and rationally evaluate information and form impressions based solely upon logic. Instead of withholding judgment on an impending change such as a new software initiative, people tend to make gut-level intuitive leaps that are often negative in nature, and resistant to new evidence to the contrary. This assumes, of course, that those impacted are even cognizant of upcoming changes. In "Switch: How To Change Things When Change is Hard," authors Chip and Dan Heath use the metaphor of "Rider, Elephant and Path" to describe three primary areas that must be addressed in change management.

The Rider is our inner Spock. A stakeholder cannot support a change until he or she can understand its purpose and the concrete changes that will likely occur. The type of 50-page technical documents and 100-element flowcharts that developers often create under a "waterfall" approach must be translated into clear, high-level infographics for non-technical stakeholders.

The Elephant represents our subconscious and emotional levels. ECM influences the elephant through communication that creates positive feelings and mitigates negative emotions such as mistrust, anxiety and anger. For instance, messaging may focus on how the change will solve an existing problem that vexes stakeholders.

The Path addresses the environment within which the change occurs, including changes to the physical environment such as the arrangement of office space, and processes or procedures such as kanban.

There are a number of formalized ECM models that have been developed to standardize change management within organizations, with processes and practices that support the entire lifecycle of a change initiative. The principles and activities described in this article can be adapted to any existing corporate ECM infrastructure. They can also be applied within organizations that do not yet have an established ECM process in place.

The Unique Enterprise Change Management Demands of Agile Software Development

Ironically, the more successful an Agile project is in rapidly developing new capabilities, the greater the ECM challenge may be. Although Agile's customer-led iterative approach significantly reduces the magnitude of changes related to each software release, it greatly increases theirfrequency. Instead of being asked to adapt to a single release that institutes a significant number of changes created within "waterfall's" typical multi-year release cycles, stakeholders must accustom themselves to an ongoing series of small, incremental releases every month or two.

Having an ECM program is especially important for enterprises transitioning to Agile from a phase-based development methodology. Corporate cultures that are accustomed to traditional development release cycles can be strained by a shift to more frequent releases and the ongoing interaction required by participation in the iterative process. There is a higher level of stakeholder involvement required throughout the development process. The impact of a new Agile implementation cuts across technology and functional groups, from top management down to the frontline worker. An ECM effort can help break down the organizational sensation of feeling burdened caused by the insistence of Agile teams for day-to-day customer involvement.

Introducing ECM to the Agile Team

Simply introducing basic ECM concepts to an Agile team can actualize the potential of existing Agile practices to foster positive change. For instance, customer-focused user stories and acceptance tests can be informed by ECM considerations. This new perspective can tangibly improve the way IT and business sides of an organization work together. The resulting synergies build a heightened level of trust and provide a means to measure and track success of not only the technical quality of software, but its acceptance by end-users .

If the customer already has an institutionalized change management practice, bringing ECM personnel into the Agile team's release planning process is a good first step. They will be able to anticipate potential change management issues related to a release and work with the team to synchronize their efforts. For customers who are transitioning to Agile from a traditional waterfall methodology, ECM involvement is a good tool to foster participation by business stakeholders.

When an organization is ready to integrate ECM tasks into an Agile software development project, securing an ECM subject matter expert for the team is the first challenge usually faced. If the organization has existing ECM expertise, personnel can be shifted onto an Agile team. If there are no available resources, it may be necessary to hire an ECM subject matter expert or send an existing team member through an ECM training program. Once staffed, a basic approach is to integrate ECM into the Agile development process by simply having ECM requirements progress through the same processes as technical requirements, including user stories, acceptance tests and the iterative development of deliverables. ECM team member and developers participate in the same customer planning meetings and stand-ups.

Take for example the implementation of a portion of a typical change management plan. In conjunction with an upcoming Agile software release, change management requirements might include:
• Create a stakeholder list.
• Create a series of surveys on stakeholder attitudes.
• Contact these stakeholders, and socialize the survey results.

Tasks required for the delivery of iteration can then be broken down into stories, for example:
• Make a list of stakeholders in a certain business group.
• Create a survey covering these specific questions.
• Create an analysis spreadsheet.

Creating ECM stories in the same manner as their development tasks deeply integrates change management into the Agile process. In fact, these stories can be created in a test-driven development manner. For the above story examples, a test could be written proving that:
• A stakeholder from the business group is included in the stakeholder list.
• A survey covers a specific required content item.
• The analysis spreadsheet has a correct column.

At the start of each iteration, these tests would initially fail and would begin to pass as these change management stories are fulfilled. ECM tests and their pass/fail state can be illustrated on the Agile teams' continuous integration dashboards. Making these dashboards available organization-wide provides all stakeholders maximum insight into teams' overall progress to heighten project awareness across the enterprise.

By integrating ECM into Agile development, the development team can escape the project stovepipe and extend its vision to the greater enterprise. Every veteran Agile manager has watched hopelessly as a project that met every customer requirement failed due to external factors beyond their control. Although ECM does not give the project team absolute control over its destiny, it can substantively expand the domain of its influence.

Dr. Myles Bogner is the Vice President of Research and Development for Asynchrony Solutions, Inc. He is an advocate and practitioner of Agile processes and continually guides teams to apply Agile techniques. David Elfanbaum is cofounder of Asynchrony Solutions, the "Geek Interpreter Guy" (aka Vice President of Marketing). For more information, visitasolutions.com and blog.asolutions.com

(Source - http://www.cio.com)

Alumni UiTM Datuk Salleh Majid Kembali Kerahmatullah.

2012-01-02T13:21:00.001+08:00

Al-Fatihah : Datuk Salleh Majid Bekas Presiden Bursa Malaysia Meninggal

Bekas Presiden Bursa Malaysia dan pakar ekonomi tersohor Datuk Salleh Majid telah kembali ke rahmatullah pada jam 10.20 pagi tadi di Hospital Kuala Lumpur akibat penyakit kanser usus dan buah pinggang.

Jenazah allahyarham akan bawa ke rumah bondanya di 1055 Jalan Hj Mokhtar, Kg Pasir, Ulu Kelang dan disolatkan di Masjid Kg.Pasir, Ulu Kelang-2/1/2012 BERITA LANJUT MENYUSUL

http://www.utusan.com.my/

Top 10 Tech Acquisitions Of 2011

2011-12-30T02:14:00.002+08:00

By Rob Preston InformationWeek
December 16, 2011 09:40 AM

While 2011 wasn't a year of historically huge tech merger and acquisition deals, activity was nonetheless vigorous. Google alone bought more than 20 companies, while the likes of HP, Oracle, SAP, Dell, and Microsoft rounded out their mature product portfolios with acquisitions. Among the strongest riptides in enterprise IT M&A: software as a service (SaaS), mobility, big data, and social networking.

What follows, in reverse order, is one editor's take on the 10 most important (though not necessarily the largest) enterprise IT acquisitions of the year. Not included on this list are the big OEM-oriented deals: Western Digital's $4.3 billion deal to buy Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, for instance, or Texas Instruments' $6.5 billion acquisition of National Semiconductor.

10. VMware and Socialcast: Virtualization market leader VMware isn't immune to social business fever, acquiring Socialcast, a maker of cloud-based communications and collaboration software that mimics "the interaction style of social networks, but with the security, management, and integration functions of an enterprise system," as my colleague David Carr reported in May. The Socialcast deal (terms weren't disclosed) followed two other cloud acquisitions by VMware: slideware maker SlideRocket in April and open source email software maker Zimbra in January 2010.

9. SAS Institute and Assetlink: This acquisition (no price tag was disclosed) isn't top 10 tech M&A material unto itself, but it's important in the context of the red hot trend it represents: the move by CMOs to apply analytics to their ad campaigns, promotions, social outreaches, and other marketing programs in order to prove and refine their effectiveness. Assetlink makes "marketing resource management" software, used to plan and budget ad spending, manage the content, create workflows, and manage leads. Its acquisition by SAS, announced in February, follows like-minded deals by IBM (it shelled out $480 million for Unica in October 2010) and Teradata ($525 million for Aprimo in December 2010).

8. Dell and Force10:Dell's acquisition of switching vendor Force10 Networks (financial terms weren't disclosed), following its $960 million deal in December 2010 to acquire storage virtualization vendor Compellent Technologies, enhances its credibility as a big league data center supplier, alongside Cisco, HP, and Brocade. Force10's market share is small--just 1%, according to Dell'Oro estimates around the time of the July 2011 deal--but its technology is considered first rate and Dell will bring it to many more customers.

7. Microsoft and Skype: Among the biggest tech deals of 2001, Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype is also emblematic of one of the biggest CIO trends: the consumerization of enterprise IT. The lines between business and consumer IT are blurring, and Microsoft is looking to capitalize on that trend by integrating the consumer-oriented Skype videochat software with its enterprise unified communications and messaging platforms. Speaking of consumerization, will 2012 be the year Microsoft finally lands Yahoo?

6. Oracle and RightNow: It's almost as if Larry Ellison plunked down $1.5 billion of Oracle's money to get back at a former protege, Marc Benioff, whose Salesforce.com and its cloud-based services have been stealing most of the thunder in enterprise software. Within weeks of his orchestrated rebuff of Benioff at the Oracle OpenWorld conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center, Ellison announced Oracle would be acquiring RightNow, a leading maker of SaaS-based customer service and management apps and a semi-competitor to Salesforce.

As my colleague Chris Murphy noted in a story on the RightNow deal, "Oracle, one of the tech industry's most acquisitive companies, isn't too concerned about overlapping products when it comes to buying into hot markets." Oracle had previously introduced its suite of enterprise software, Fusion, with a cloud-based option for CRM, as well as a hosted version of its PeopleSoft software licensed on a per-user, per-month basis.

5. Salesforce.com and Radian6: It wasn't among the biggest of tech acquisitions in 2011, a cash and stock deal valued at about $320 million, but it's strategically important to one of the industry's hottest vendors, as Salesforce.com pushes its "social enterprise" agenda, including its Twitter-like Chatter service. Radian6, a maker of social media monitoring and analytics services, has since become the basis of Salesforce's Social Marketing Cloud, a collection of services it rolled out in November to help companies manage their brands and engage with customers across the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

4. AT&T and T-Mobile: The biggest tech deal of 2011 ($39 billion) is actually the biggest non-starter, as competitors, regulators, trustbusters, lobbyists, and politicians dig in to stop this merger of the No. 2 and No. 4 U.S. mobile carriers. AT&T said in November that it's withdrawing its merger application from the FCC to focus instead on winning the antitrust lawsuit the Department of Justice had filed against it in August. Meantime, AT&T is reportedly trying to sell a sizable portion of T-Mobile's assets to a smaller mobile carrier in order to sway the DOJ. AT&T's incentive to compromise: It will owe T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom $6 billion in cash and compensation should the deal fall apart.

3. Google and Motorola Mobility: Google's $12.5 billion deal to acquire this Motorola spinoff, a maker of smartphones and set-top boxes, was the second-largest tech deal of 2011. As my colleague Paul McDougall reported in August, the deal, which still must pass regulatory muster, is a clear sign that Google intends to take on Apple--and to a lesser extent RIM and Microsoft/Nokia--as a supplier of tightly integrated mobile devices, namely its Android operating system on Motorola smartphone and tablet hardware.Motorola's extensive patent portfolio also appealed to Google, as it seeks to fend off Apple and Microsoft lawsuits claiming Android squats on some of its intellectual property.[ Try these best practices on for size in the new year. IT Leader Survival Guide For 2012: 5 Must-Do's. ]

2. HP and Autonomy: This $10.3 billion deal was the biggest enterprise software acquisition of the year--too big, according to many pundits, as the price tag was almost 12 times Autonomy's 2010 revenue. But HP's CEO at the time, Leo Apotheker, since ousted and replaced by Meg Whitman, needed to make a splash amid investor concerns that the hottest IT markets were passing HP by. And no question, Autonomy's no slouch. It's a leader in enterprise content management software--search, archiving, e-discovery, and more--helping customers make sense of their big (unstructured) data.

Rob Preston,
VP and Editor in Chief, InformationWeek
rpreston@techweb.com

(Source - http://informationweek.com)

How to implement a successful security and disaster recovery plan

2011-12-30T00:52:00.002+08:00

by Philip Owens (CSO Online (Australia))

though security issues are often top of mind for many organisations, they are often not considered as part of a disaster recovery (DR) plan.

When a disaster occurs, it pays to be prepared so that the organisation can continue to operate as usual with minimal impact or disruption. Despite having sound backup strategies in place and making intelligent decisions to protect a company’s data, many organisations leave out the disaster recovery element of their security strategy which can lead to major disruptions in the event of an actual disaster.

With the recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, organisations need to be aware of the impact a natural disaster could have on their organisation from a security perspective and plan accordingly.

Conduct a security audit

Many organisations believe that having basic security measures in place such as having a firewall, making backups, patching systems and having user accounts with strong passwords are sufficient. Sadly this isn’t the case.

Loss of information can be catastrophic for an organisation. If a security attack is internal, default passwords and flaws that allow you to bypass the login mechanism are weaknesses that can be used in many different ways that administrators don’t really think about or have prepared for.

Therefore it helps to know where you stand in terms of your current security measures so that you’ll be better prepared to deal with the issues should they arise in the event of a disruption – whether it is due to a data breach, natural disaster or other unplanned event . While many organisations have IT and security administrators, it’s a good idea to have an external consultant run the audit for you.

A third party provides objectivity and a fresh perspective without having a conflict of interest. In order to identify potential security threats and issues, you will need to approach this with “malicious intent” and examine both critical and non-critical systems within the organisations. This includes looking beyond the perimeters and the highly visible systems. You should ideally look at all areas of your systems, no matter how secure you might think it is.

Choose the right technology for your organisation

The type of DR security technology that's right for your organisation will be based on your need and risk. You will need to gather the right team from different departments who can take a good look at your environment and assess the risks.

DR security technology will vary from organisation to organisation. This will depend on your company’s structure, network, applications, software and the level of complexity of your information system.

When considering which technologies to deploy, it’s always worth considering one that has universal implementation and will work with any and all types of infrastructure, systems, hardware and software. This becomes critical especially when you’re working in multiple sites within the same country and overseas.

Security products that can copy the entire environment virtually so that it can be quickly and accurately replaced in the case of a disaster should also be prioritised.

To reduce the amount of time your IT system is down during a disaster consider; Recovery Point Objective (RPO) which looks at how old the data is when recovered. Ideally, the recovery should take between 15 to 30 minutes. Compare this to traditional tape backup which could take up to 24 to 48 hours. Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which looks at how fast the system can be backed up and running on the virtual environment

Cloud-based services may also be an option for some organisations, especially as they offer organisations a cost effective option which can allow them to get their data up and running quickly.

Regularly test your disaster recovery plan

The ability of the disaster recovery plan to be effective in emergency situations can only be assessed if rigorous testing is carried out one or more times per year in realistic conditions by simulating circumstances that would be applicable in an actual emergency. The testing phase of the plan must contain important verification activities to enable the plan to stand up to most disruptive events.

When disruption hits, organisations need to ensure that they take the necessary steps to respond to malware attacks and data breaches to ensure business continuity within the organisation. This includes having an incident response plan as part of your DR strategy. Doing so will enable you to take the relevant procedures to recover your data and environment.

In conclusion

Being prepared and knowing the right steps to take is always key to managing a disruption. Having good security measures included in your DR plan will help keep your organisation running through a potential disaster and ensure your risks and costs are kept to a minimum.

Philip Owens is the director of technical services, Asia Pacific for NetIQ.

(Source - http://www.cso.com.au)