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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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)

US Warns Iran Not to Close Strait of Hormuz

The Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet warned Iran that any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz will "not be tolerated."

A spokesman for the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet said Wednesday it will not allow any disruption of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

"The free flow of goods and servicesthrough the Strait of Hormuz is vital to regional and global prosperity," the fleet said in a statement released to Reuters.

"Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated," the statement added.

The statement came after Iran threatened to stop ships moving through the strategic oil route as a part of a "military drill."

Last week Iranian parliament member Parviz Sarvari told an Iranian media outlet that “soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.”

The threat was repeated by Iran's chief naval officer on Tuesday.

Asked whether the Fifth Fleet would take specific measures in response to Iran's threat to close the Strait, the fleet said it "maintains a robust presence in the region to deter or counter destabilizing activities," without providing further detail.

However, United States has long maintained any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz would be regarded as "an act of war."

Concerns Iran might move to close the strategically vital Strait - through which 40% of the world's oil supplies flow - began to mount after students in Tehran sacked the British embassy earlier this year.

Western officials, who said Tehran had prompted the violent demolition as a "dramatic piece of political theater." Britain, France, and the Netherlands closed their embassies in Iran and ejected Tehran's envoys from their capitals.

Several other European nations – including Italy and Germany – censured Iran for the incident.

The incident also prompted a new, more stringent round of sanctions from the European Union and United States targeting Iran.

Strait of Hormuz GNU/Wikipedia/Pascal

Tags: US Fifth Fleet ,US Navy ,United States ,Iran ,Strait of Hormuz

World War III Has Begun – It`s the First Asymmetric War Long Awaited by Pentagon Think Tanks

The Pentagon has already declared World War III and President Barack Obama and the Congress never even carried out their constitutional duties to approve the use of American military power for war.

One might reasonably conclude that the United States has outsourced war. Presently, World War III is being conducted on two continents – Asia and Africa – with two others – Europe and South America – looming on the horizon. Today, wars are crafted by the upper one percent of wealthy elitists who, using non-governmental organizations, television networks, non — profit “think tanks,” and public relations firms, can declare war on nations without a whimper from elected public officials.

Symmetric warfare is no longer an option for the global elites. World Wars I and II severely affected the investments of many of the global elite families as a result of the destruction of cities, factories, railways, seaports, and other infrastructures. The Korean, Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli, and Iraq wars were messy affairs that also adversely affected markets and destroyed valuable infrastructures. The Cold War never developed into a hot nuclear war because of the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which ensured that a nuclear first strike by either the West or the East would result in total annihilation of both sides, along with the rest of the world. Even a western military attack on China would have had disastrous results for the attackers, especially since China could retaliate with a nuclear counter-attack and wipe out the U.S. Seventh Fleet and its East Asian naval bases, including Okinawa and Guam. A new type of warfare was required by the elites: asymmetric warfare – the use of unconventional warfare tactics, including information warfare, by proxies, non-state actors, agents provocateur, and fifth columns.

Largely financed by hedge fund mega-tycoon George Soros and his Central Intelligence Agency interlocutors, our present asymmetric World War III was field tested just like any new product. The “themed” revolutions were market-tested first in Serbia, and then in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan, to oust problematic governments that did not want to get on board with the dictates of the unelected and unaccountable real controllers of the financial and political destiny of the world.

Pro-western and pro-European Union governments, comprised of a number of individuals who were funded by Soros and other non-state operations established by the global elites, for example, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, Freedom House, U.S. Institute of Peace, and others funded and supported by the Houses of Rothschild, Rockefeller, Mellon, and others saw to it that new governments took root in Belgrade, Kiev, Tbilisi, and Bishkek. These new governments were not elected but took power as a result of themed street rebellions, a new manifestation of unconventional warfare.

No longer did armies, navies, and air forces have to face each other across battlefields and battle zones and theaters of warfare. One merely had to embed fifth columnists and provocateurs inside a targeted nation's capital city, media, political party apparatus, and "civil society" infrastructure to bring about the defeat of the government outside the normal political process and replace it with a new government beholden to the desires of the central banks and global oligarchs.

The beginnings of the asymmetric world war began in Belgrade, Serbia when Otpor – a Serbian resistance movement dedicated to overthrowing the Slobodon Milosevic regime – launched the first “themed revolution.” Otpor’s symbol was a clenched fist, an emblem that would reappear in the future in other capital cities from Kiev to Cairo. Otpor received massive funding from a network of western contrivances, including George Soros’s Open Society Institute, the neo-conservative-infiltrated U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, and various European Union-funded NGOs that were intimately linked to Soros’s “democracy engineering” operations.

The playbook used for Otpor in Serbia and by similar organizations in toppling the governments of Georgia in the Rose Revolution, Ukraine in the Orange Revolution, and Kyrgyzstan in the Tulip Revolution, was developed by University of Massachusetts professor Gene Sharp, the founder of the Boston-based NGO, the Albert Einstein Institute, which helped train Otpor activists in civil disobedience and popular resistance campaigns designed to overthrow governments, those democratically-elected and those not. Albert Einstein Institute-trained provocateurs launched popular resistance campaigns around the world aimed at replacing governments unwilling to acquiesce to the dictates of Western elites. Internal opposition forces, all acolytes of Sharp, for instance Kmara, which helped install the pro-Western and pro-Israeli Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia; Pora in Ukraine that propelled pro-NATO Viktor Yushchenko into the presidency; and KelKel in Kyrgyzstan that replaced Askar Akayev with the corrupt Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

The domino effect of the themed revolutions saw Serbs helping to overthrow the Georgian government, then Serbs and Georgians flocking to Kiev to oust the Ukrainian government, and Georgians and Ukrainians being directly involved in the insurrection in Bishkek. The neo-conservatives and Sharp had borrowed a page from the Communists and the international proletarian movement that saw Communist cadres fight against capitalists and fascists in foreign civil wars, for example, the Spanish Civil War and conflicts in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Sharp was an alumnus of Harvard University’s CIA-linked Center for International Affairs, also abbreviated “CIA,” which is not coincidental. Harvard and the CIA of Langley, Virginia have long maintained a close relationship. In fact, Sharp was never interested in ensuring the will of the people to map out their own future but was putting into practice the theory of asymmetric warfare – the vanquishing of enemies through the use of proxy internal forces without the requirement for invading foreign armies and the massive death and destruction associated with such action.

Many of Sharp’s tactics have been seen in practice in many asymmetric warfare targets. These include the creation of a perception of a successful movement, even if there is not one. The use of western-controlled news networks like Fox News that showed a video clip of anti-austerity Greek rioters in Athens falsely depicted as anti-government protesters in Moscow and Al Jazeera’s use of a video erroneously showing a U.S.- and Saudi-backed bloody crackdown of pro-democracy protesters by Bahrain’s security forces as the bloody repression of protesters by Syria’s government are examples of Sharp’s propaganda and disinformation tactics.

Cultivating foreign support is another key element of Sharp’s asymmetric warfare tactics. The virtual control exercised by Soros over Human Rights Watch after the multi-billionaire hedge fund kingpin donated $100 million to the group is a case in point. The human rights NGO was at the forefront of hyping “atrocities” committed by the Qaddafi regime in Libya but remained largely silent on Libyan rebel atrocities committed against Libyan and African blacks, as well as Qaddafi loyalists. In so doing, Human Rights Watch had a powerful accomplice in the International Criminal Court, which tended to look the other way when CIA- and Saudi- and Qatari’ supported Libyan rebels were committing the massacres.

Another Sharp tactic is to seek change outside the electoral system. This tactic was evident in the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, where election results were rejected, and in the recent Russian parliamentary election, where Soros- and U.S. neocon-financed election monitoring groups like Golos rejected the outcome of the election and used shills like former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to call for the nullification of the election. Interference following the Sharp and Soros methodology can also be seen in the presidential candidacies of Russian oligarch and New Jersey Nets basketball owner Mikhail Prokhorov and the backing by western propaganda outlets like the Christian Science Monitor (now derided as the “Christian Zionist Monitor” after its takeover by interests who favor a neo-imperialist U.S. foreign policy) of Moscow street protest veteran Alexei Navalny.

Sharp and Soros are on the same page in calling for the internal opposition forces’ use of the Internet, fax, and social networks like Facebook and Twitter to advance their agendas.

In the next phases of World War III, the asymmetric warriors of the Pentagon and their adjunct non-state actors will continue to turn up the heat in the Arab World, with the revolutions in Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt, after a somewhat shaky start that saw the advancement of Islamist groups, being brought under more western and NATO control. Russia’s presidential election and a turndown in the Chinese economy, with growing village-based dissent among China’s growing middle class, will present further opportunities for the promoters of World War III. The sudden death of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il has also resulted in a call for an expansion of social networking operations, most notably by the CIA- and Soros-infested Washington Post, inside Asia’s hermit kingdom.

Myanmar, China’s restive provinces of Tibet and East Turkestan, Lebanon, Iran, Algeria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Nepal, Belarus, Ecuador, Bolivia, Pakistan, Laos, and the two Congos also present opportunities for the World War III architects. Those who seek to extend American and global elitist control over the entire planet will not rest until every acre of land comes under the firm control of the oligarchs of Wall Street, the spymasters of the CIA, and the globalist business cartels and families.

(Sources - http://www.strategic-culture.org)