CompTIA to launch data storage certification | COMPTIA VIDEOS! Comptia A+ Videos Training, Comptia video training at comptiavideo.com

Industry body partners with SNIA on ‘valuable building block’ for IT storage managers

IT industry association CompTIA has joined forces with the non-profit Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) to launch a new certification aimed at validating and improving the skills of IT professionals working in the storage space.

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The ‘CompTIA Storage+ Powered by SNIA’ certification will cover various technologies in areas such as data storage, storage networking, data protection and associated underlying technologies.

CompTIA hopes that the vendor-neutral global credential will become the building block with which storage managers carry out their vital role in supporting the IT function and, ultimately, the business, according to Terry Erdle, executive vice president of skills certification.

“Our goal from the start is to build a credential that can become ISO accredited credential,” he said. “Recognition by ISO will go a long way to making this certification a de facto standard. The time has come for a global ISO-accredited storage certification.”

Erdle was also keen to point out that although there are a large number of certifications on the market today, this one would have value.

“We take our cues from the industry. In the case of our work with SNIA, as trade associations you have to do you due diligence,” he said.

“It takes a while to find the common ground and it takes time to do it right. We’re confident that when Storage+ launchers later this year it will be well-received and widely adopted by the industry.”

A September 2010 CompTIA survey found that 90 per cent of organisations expect their need for data storage capacity to increase by at least 10 per cent over the next two years.

In addition, around half said that their organisations has least five people who support or manage their storage technologies, while a similar amount expects the number of employees who support and manage storage to increase over the next two years.

A beta release of the new examination and certification is scheduled for the second quarter of 2011, followed by global availability in the second half of the year.

CCNA | CCIE | CCNP CISCO CCNA CCIE | Cisco signals bid for Pari Networks

Cisco has announced its intention to acquire Pari Networks as part of an expansion of its line of hosted IT management services.

Operating out of Milpitas in Silicon Valley, Pari Networks provides services to help companies configure and manage networks and compliance requirements. The company is privately held, and terms of the deal were not given.

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Cisco singled out Pari Networks’ engineering team as a solid addition to its network management services.

“As business functions become more reliant on devices and applications that run over the network, customers realise that maintaining the health and performance of the network is critical,” said Cisco Technical Services vice president Joe Pinto.

“Pari Networks will help Cisco and our partners to deliver smarter, more proactive services that help our customers to identify potential network problems before they occur, and optimise the performance, management and efficiency of their networks.”

Cisco expects the transaction to close by the end of its third financial quarter in May. If the deal is approved and finalised, Cisco plans to integrate Pari Networks’ employees into its Technical Services branch.

Free Training Courses | Free Certification Top 10 best and worst chief executive positions - Free Training Key

Being the chief executive of a major company can be a pretty great job. From the generous pay to the prestige of being top dog, it’s what millions of people around the world strive for.

But it can also be a huge burden. From long hours to sceptical boards and shareholder rebellions, the chief executive’s office can be a terrible place to be when things aren’t going well for a company.

This week we look at some company’s that would be great places to run, and a few others where being in charge could well be an absolute nightmare.

The Best

Honourable mention: Zynga

Shaun Nichols: Currently the darlings of the social gaming world, Zynga most likely makes whatever Facebook game you’re hooked on at the moment.

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From games like FarmVille and CityVille to Mafia Wars, the company has cost businesses more time in lost productivity than the flu and Mardi Gras combined. In the process, they have made money hand over fist. In October, the company was valued at roughly $5.5bn. Not bad for a social networking game developer.

That’s not to say things will always be so rosy for Zynga. If there’s any market more fickle than gaming, it’s social networking. In addition to making games people will play, the company also has to make sure its covering all the right platforms.

At the moment, however, things are looking very good.

Iain Thomson: Zynga worked out a way to make serious money from Facebook before Facebook did. The company has taken games onto the site and convinced people to spend real money to build their own virtual cities and farms. It’s a business plan that few thought would work in the mass market.

That said, there is a dark side to this success. Former staff from Zynga speak of a nasty atmosphere in the company, with programmers instructed to rip off web games and turn them into something Zynga can sell. If those allegations are true then Zynga faces strong growth, as the number of web games proliferates.

One reason to not envy a new head of Zynga his or her position – games companies are hell to manage. Computer games are a very up and down business and things may not look so rosy for Zynga in the future.

5. Amazon

Iain Thomson: I’ve always had a soft spot for Jeff Bezos ever since he advised people not to buy his company’s shares at the height of the 1990s tech bubble. He also warned shareholders that the company wouldn’t be in profit for years. That kind of honesty is rare in chief executives.

But the results have been very good indeed, and Amazon’s success done a lot to solidify confidence in e-commerce. Amazon’s business model now looks very good indeed and the company looks well set for the future.

However, the head of Amazon faces some major challenges in the future. The key issue for the company is now tax. Individual countries, and US states, want a chunk of the sales taxes that Amazon has so far largely avoided. Dealing with that issue in these cash-strapped times will be a full time job.

Shaun Nichols: While most people know Amazon for its retail operation, the company has another very important property in its web services offering.

In case you haven’t heard cloud computing has been something of a big deal in recent years. And with its EC platform, Amazon has a cloud platform that is beginning to gain some very significant traction in the enterprise space.

Additionally, the company is staking out an early claim to the e-book market with its Kindle reader. In a few years, Amazon could find itself diversified in a number of areas with some very bright prospects.

Perhaps down the line the company may even spin a few of its operations off and some executive will be lucky enough to get the chief spot at the new firm.

MCITP Certification Key | MCITP Training Key Microsoft warns of zero-day Windows vulnerability | MCITP KEY

Microsoft is warning users following the disclosure of a security flaw in Windows.

The company said that the vulnerability is currently un-patched and exists in all versions of the operating system. Currently the exploit exists only as a proof-of-concept sample and no active exploits have been reported in the wild.

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The vulnerability lies within a component of Windows which handles MIME Encapsulation of Aggregate HTML (MHTML) and can be accessed through an HTML link in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft said that an attacker could access the component by convincing the user to click on a link to a page containing a malicious script which targets the MHTML component.

Once exploited, the vulnerability would allow an attacker to have access to the user’s browser, potentially allowing an attacker to harvest user information or perform cross-site scripting and spoofing attacks.

The company said that it was working on a fix for the flaw, though no possible release date has been given.

Users and administrators looking to mitigate the vulnerability are being advised by Microsoft to limit access to the MHTML component.

“We expect that in most environments this will have limited impact,” the company said of the workaround in a blog posting.

“While MHTML is an important component of Windows, it is rarely used via mhtml: hyperlinks.”

The company is also offering security suggestions for service providers on its Security Research and Defense blog.

MCTS Certification Key | MCTS Training Key Windows @ 25: 25 things you didn’t know about the Microsoft OS - MCTS KEY

V3.co.uk celebrates 25 years of Windows with 25 amazing facts covering the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Jerry Seinfeld and Brian Eno

It’s 25 years since Microsoft launched the first version of Windows, and what started out in November 1985 as a graphical front end for DOS has grown into the most widely used operating system. To mark Windows’ 25th, we’ve put together 25 facts about the OS to highlight some of the more memorable moments in its history.

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1. The origins of Windows can be traced to September 1981 when Microsoft began working on a project entitled Interface Manager.

2. The release of Windows 1.0 in 1985 was actually two years later than planned. We’d be on Windows 8 now if they’d stuck to their schedules.

3. Microsoft supported Windows 1.0 until the final day of 2001, some 16 years later.

4. Windows 3.1, despite being first launched in 1992, found a niche role as an embedded operating system, and was still in use in 2008 by Virgin Atlantic and Qantas in some onboard entertainment systems on long-distance flights.

5. Fortune named Microsoft as the ‘Most Innovative Company Operating in the US’ in 1993 as sales of Windows started to rocket.

6. Many editions of Windows required endless floppy disks to install the system. For example, Windows 95 came on 13 disks.

7. Microsoft used Start Me Up by The Rolling Stones on adverts for the launch of Windows 95. The Stones were reportedly paid between $8m and $14m, but this is said to be a gross exaggeration.

8. Music was also part of the obligatory free stuff that Microsoft bundled in with Windows 95 – to be exact, a video of Buddy Holly by rock band Weezer to show off the system’s multimedia capabilities.

9. Microsoft also cashed in on the success of Friends in the 1990s by commissioning a promotional video, labeled a ‘cyber sitcom’, featuring Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry showing off the top 25 features of Windows 95. The firm claimed it was a “fast and funny” guide to the new operating system. It was anything but.

Free MCTS Certification Training | Free MCITP Certification Training | Myspace launches Mashup with Facebook feature, still won’t admit defeat

How was that old saying… If you can’t beat them… ah yes, join them. That’s the apparent motto of Myspace now as the social network has joined hands with arch-enemy Facebook and introduced the Mashup feature to ‘borrow’ content from the latter.

With Mashup with Facebook, Myspace users can port the ‘likes’ and ‘interests’ in their Facebook page so as to have their stream updated with entertainment content hosted by MySpace. This is supposed to deliver more relevant content to Myspace members, while also helping them connect to users with similar tastes in music, movies and such.

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“We are thrilled to further our collaboration with Facebook through Mashup with Facebook. This new feature is a great illustration of our strategy around social entertainment and enabling the real-time stream. The stream is one of our most popular features on Myspace, and it is now delivering an even richer entertainment experience of relevant content for our users to enjoy,” said Mike Jones, CEO of Myspace. “I’m particularly excited because so many people will be able to have the immediate satisfaction of enjoying their own entertainment program that they have customized themselves as well as connecting to all their passions and to the Myspace community at large.”

Mashup with Facebook is available globally so you can already take advantage of it. Also, don’t freak out when the Facebook Like button pops up in Myspace, that’s part of the deal.

MCTS Online Training, MCITP Online Certification MCITP Online.com » Blog Archive » The Windows Phone 7 App Hub experience

In order to distribute your Windows Phone 7 app, you need to deal with App Hub, Microsoft’s developer site for Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360. I got the impression that Microsoft could not care less about developers here. There is no customer service phone number on App Hub. There is a support form on the site, but it is only accessible to the folks who pay the $99 fee. In my experience, the form was useless, because no one ever responded to my queries. If you go to App Hub Support, you’re instructed to use the forum, or call and create an incident and pay for it.

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From what I can tell, no Microsoft customer service reps monitor the forums. I asked a number of customer service questions, none of which were answered by Microsoft. When there were critical issues with App Hub, no Microsoft personnel came into the forums to straighten them out, and there were no posts from personnel on the Windows Phone blog either. I spoke with Todd Brix, the Director of Product Management for App Hub, and his response was that they were adding more technical resources to the forums in a couple of days (from the time we talked). The additional resources will be appreciated by folks with technical issues, but it does not address the customer service problems. Since I spoke with Mr. Brix, the customer service issues remain the same.

Even the paid technical support is a joke. I called it, and in the process of walking through the phone menu, it was clear that the system was not aware of App Hub. When I told the phone menu “App Hub,” it took me to Xbox support (which makes some sense since App Hub is joined with the Xbox development system), but in that phone tree there were no options for App Hub issues.

Forum threads related to customer service issues (when they are answered) are often locked by overzealous moderators who deem threads to be pointless (their words, not mine) if they respond with a non-answer, and you ask for more information. Many of the users (including myself) are extremely angry about the imperious nature of the moderation and the inability to get any customer support. There is virtually no communications from the App Hub team either about these issues. For example, when App Hub suddenly treated paying customers like free customers, there was zero information coming from Microsoft (the solution was to go to the Xbox Live website, of all places, pull up your profile, and agree to a new Terms of Service).

Speaking of Terms of Service, the application guidelines are almost as bad as Apple’s. The number of things that are forbidden is quite large. While I agree with much of the sentiments, the agreement undermines the positioning of the phone as a consumer device. For example, including XNA development was a smart move to potentially make it the best phone gaming platform around and to leverage the skills of Xbox and other XNA developers. But the guidelines prohibit many of the things that are quite common in video games. For example, much of the gore that has been commonplace in games is prohibited, as is excessive use of explicit language and content of a sexual nature.

I have also seen posts in the forums complaining about the uneven application of the guidelines. For example, some users reported that their applications were accepted initially, but rejected upon resubmission for things that had not changed. My experience of submitting my Airport Status Checker app was not great, but it could have been worse.

My Windows Phone 7 app failed the initial submission, but the feedback was useful and pointed me directly at what I needed to correct (error handling). Unfortunately, the resubmission process was a bit confusing, and I lost a day while my application sat in a state where it wasn’t going to be re-evaluated. The resubmission failed as well. It was clear to me that the testing stops the moment a problem is found. This leads to a ton of wasted time, since you have to resubmit three times to find three failures. If the testers did the full battery of tests up front, it would be much more helpful.

The App Hub site is incredibly buggy. Here’s what I encountered and have been told:

* The forums often do not load in a timely manner.
* You cannot view the profiles of people if they have a space in their name.
* There is no private messaging system.
* Signing up for an account is painful. For me, there was an AJAX validation that was not being triggered correctly, so I lost two weeks of potential development time until I tried the form in a different browser, and it worked fine.
* The developers who were using the previous Xbox and Windows Mobile development systems are fairly upset; apparently, those systems had been quite buggy and finally were sorted out when the merger with App Hub occurred.

Another major issue is billing. App Hub does not currently allow for any kind of subscription billing; this means that any application that creates on-going expenses on your end (like anything where you need to provide a server-side component) has you walking a fine line between making the app cheap enough to sell, and risking having the users cost you more money in the long run than they paid you. Your alternative is to build a payment system into the application itself, which is a major usability issue and requires a significant amount of development work.

There will be no payouts from App Hub until February 2011, and there is no built-in reporting on downloads as of now. These are all things that are supposedly coming, but for the time being they are desperately needed.
Summary

The development experience on the technical side rates a C at best. The lack of APIs took the wind right out of my sails. Outside of that, it wasn’t bad. The emulator is not great; it cannot emulate the sensor stuff, so you are forced to spend money on a phone to test those kinds of functions. This puts developers who want to work on innovative applications even further behind the ball.

If Microsoft gets serious about supporting customers — because that’s what you are when you pony up $99 to be a premium member — I could forgive a lot of App Hub’s technical problems because those issues are just annoyances. But Microsoft’s lack of customer service is simply unacceptable. Microsoft is essentially allowing people to pay to participate in what is still a beta experience, and the results are a disaster. If people did not have to pay to submit applications, it could be swept under the rug, but once you are formally a paying customer, you have every right to expect better.

Unless you consider Windows Phone 7 to be a “must do” platform for development (which is quite unlikely), I suggest that you think of Windows Phone 7 development as a hobby or a learning experience rather than a source of revenue until the App Hub issues are sorted out. When the App Store experience improves, you will still want to carefully evaluate the API’s capabilities and Windows Phone 7’s position in the marketplace to make sure that the apps you want to write are possible, and that you have enough market opportunity to justify your ROI.

Facebook is Not Bringing on the End of Civilization as We Know It

I have the phrase "Those who WILL NOT read have NO Advantage over those who CAN NOT read" posted over my desk. I firmly believe that the crucial turning point from thousands of years of horse and buggy to a world of jet airplanes was the movable-type printing press invented by Gutenberg. It allowed for knowledge and ideas to be recorded, shared, and expanded upon. Clear and substantial communication was necessary for moving us forward technologically.



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[ Also on InfoWorld: Is Mark Zuckerberg the cause of or solution to all of Facebook's problems? Robert X. Cringely wonders if it's time to de-friend him. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Keep up on career advice with Bob Lewis' Advice Line newsletter. ]

I have been struck by some portrayals of the future, where civilization has reverted back to early, nontechnological status, and with it a simplified, corrupted language by the people (and generally no ability to read books). I believe books can expand thinking, and the lack of reading shrinks knowledge and thinking.

Apparently I'm not the only one. Neal Gabler wrote a commentary titled "The Zuckerberg Revolution" wherein he explains how, if the founder of Facebook were to have his view of communication become "the norm," then real communication will decrease, along with knowledge and thinking.

Do you think that this "communication 2.0" (via Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messenger, and so on) will lead to a better or deteriorated society?

Here are some quotes I found particularly meaningful:

* "Gutenberg's Revolution transformed the world by broadening it, by proliferating ideas."
* "[Neil] Postman ... believed that a reading society was also a thinking society. No real reading, no real thought."
* "Postman felt that print culture helped create thought that was rational, ordered and engaging, and he blamed TV for making us mindless."
* "Zuckerberg introduced seven principles that he said were the basis of communication 2.0. Messages have to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal and short."
* "That makes Zuckerberg the anti-Gutenberg...[creating a world] in which complexity is all but impossible and meaninglessness reigns supreme."
* "Zuckerberg's Revolution has a corollary that one might call Zuckerberg's Law: Empty communications drive out significant ones."
* "Gutenberg's Revolution left us with a world that was intellectually rich. Zuckerberg's portends one that is all thumbs and no brains."

Microsoft Evangelist Blain Barton discusses systems administration

On April 8, 2008, I went to the Microsoft Heroes Happen Here event in Charlotte, NC. I registered late, so I was only able to attend the IT Professional track aimed at systems administrators. (I was hoping to also sit in on the Development track.)

Blain BartonIt was a great event. I learned a lot about Windows Server 2008, especially with regards to virtualization. But I was particularly struck by the presenter, Blain Barton (pictured at right), who is a Senior IT Pro Evangelist. He did a remarkable job of conveying the information in a clear — and humorous — manner.

Barton mentioned that Microsoft follows an “eat our own dog food” approach to new products. He also shared personal stories about the joys and frustrations of working with Microsoft technology, which helped me connect with him and his message. I got the impression that he really knows his stuff.

I had a chance to catch up with Barton after the event and ask him about topics that I thought might be of interest to TechRepublic readers.
“Breaking” paradigms

My first question was a tough one: How is Microsoft addressing the fact that its current batch of mainline products (Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Microsoft Office 2007) “break” so many paradigms that developers and users had gotten used to?




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He said Microsoft knows it’s a tough road and that it will be “like going from Windows 3.0 to Windows 95.” He reminded me that many of the same problems were experienced with Windows 95 and that it took years for everyone to catch up, but they eventually did. This is not the answer I wanted to hear (I remember the Windows 95 transition with not-so-fond memories), but it is a reasonable one.

I agree with him that Microsoft is going in the right direction. Windows really needed security enhancements (at the risk of breaking some applications and being a hassle), and Microsoft Office was pretty hard to use, even if millions of users were used to it.
Looking ahead to mobile computing and sys admin advances

Since he is on the road a lot, I asked him to share his thoughts on mobile computing. He replied that ActiveSync is able to ensure that a device meets certain requirements before being allowed onto the network. Microsoft is also pushing the use of RADIUS servers and 802.1X security with certificates. During his presentation, he briefly discussed the increased use of smart card technology.

I find it particularly interesting that Microsoft systems can save a device’s configuration when it is on the network (including remotely over a cell link, in the case of Windows Mobile devices). Even more intriguing is that the systems administrator can flag a lost or stolen device to wipe itself out; the moment the device connects to a network, it receives the signal and kills itself. This is definitely a step in the right direction, although I assume that a savvy thief would simply turn the device on in a cell signal shielded area or in the presence of a cell signal jammer.
Getting desktops apps to work with mobile apps

I inquired about what developers should do to help their desktop apps work side-by-side with mobile applications. He replied that working with Microsoft’s latest crop of improvements to its server products and the .NET ecosystem would be of immense help. He suggested that developers and systems administrators evaluate the possibility of using the new remote Web access system in Windows Server 2008, Terminal Services, XAML, ASP.NET, and Silverlight. The mix is interesting.

Windows Server 2008 and Terminal Services turn the mobile device or desktop into a thin client, which accommodates the lack of resources on mobile devices. XAML and ASP.NET are based on the idea of a declarative (rather than an imperative) programming model. As a result, it allows the interpreter (in this case, the mobile device or desktop) to have the final decision about what happens. This allows the devices to do what makes the most sense given the form factor and input capabilities, instead of the application programmer needing to figure out the right thing in all possible situations. Silverlight also uses XAML in the same way, essentially trying to replace HTML and JavaScript with XAML and the .NET CLR to provide a portable presentation layer over a server-side application.
Addressing customer feedback

In his presentation, he frequently mentioned the customer feedback loop. When I asked how Microsoft collects feedback, he replied that the company is making a lot of progress in giving the support staff access to development and product teams and allowing them to significantly influence future changes.

Anther significant change is that Microsoft has been quite diligent in “tagging” every incident to help the company mine and identify users’ pain points.

From what I’ve seen in Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007, and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is hearing the customer’s voice with regards to identifying the problems. However, I still feel that Microsoft often chooses the wrong path in fixing the problem. Listening is the first part of being responsive to customers, but there’s also the matter of correctly fixing the problem.
Becoming a Microsoft Evangelist

My final question was a softball: How does one become a Microsoft Evangelist? He told me that, at Microsoft, “what you know is more important than who you know.” The magic ingredients to becoming an Evangelist are: good public speaking skills, desire, a technical skill set, the ability and desire to learn new things every day, and a solid history with the company. I think this sounds reasonable enough, yet I imagine that this combination of skills and talent is not easy to find.

He also mentioned that Microsoft has an opening for an IT Pro Evangelist in the Northeast US. From what I can tell, if you know the material and have an interest, it could be a pretty fun job.
Check your local listings

Overall, I enjoyed Barton’s presentation, as well as the short time we talked afterwards. If there is a Heroes Happen Here event near your area, I highly recommend making an effort to attend. And, if Barton happens to be the speaker for your session, be sure to let him know that you read about him on TechRepublic.

If you had the chance to interview a Microsoft Evangelist, what’s the one question you would ask him or her? If you have been to a Heroes Happen Here event, what did or did not impress you about your speaker? Do you think it sounds like a fun gig to be a Microsoft Evangelist?