What IT Skills Are in Demand in Order to be Hired by Companies in 2014?

As employees in the IT industry we need to always expand our skills in order to stay competitive. Companies are searching for employees with the following skills in 2014.

It appears that employers are greatly interested in web developers who know open source languages. Also, Java skills, Ruby and Python development backgrounds.

There are demands for platforms in the mobile space for development of mobile applications.

Data analysis is back in demand which includes the standard database developer ,data engineers who structure data with Hadoop and data scientists who can evaluate the information.

Cloud computing is becoming very popular so those skills are needed in IT companies.

Now you can see how important is be trained to meet the continuing requirements in the technology sector and to compete in the job market.                                                                                      http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/535662/hot_it_job_skills_2014_mobile_web_development_big_data/

Could Non-Technical Users Build Software Without Writing Any Code in the Future?

Do you think that the software integration market will embrace a future with solutions that allow users with little training build software without any code?

Deepak Singh Adeptia has written an article that deals with this possibility. We would like to share this article with you.

The enterprise technology market is constantly evolving; the most recent trend has been towards the “consumerization of IT”. With outside influences such as big data, SaaS, mobile and cloud technology converging, business is now changing faster than IT can respond. As a result, companies are seeing both a pressing need and an opportunity to provide more self-service capabilities to their business users.

The reality is that the software integration market has not changed much in the last 15 years. Vendors still view integration software as developer tools versus a critical business component. There has been a failure to think out-of-the-box and a lack of acknowledgement that business users are striving to become more self-sufficient. For the software integration market to appeal to the needs of their customers, a paradigm shift within the industry is critical.

Until now, the software integration market has focused on developing their solutions and technology as developer tools meant to provide architects with a way to build interfaces to customers, partners and applications whether they are internal or in the cloud. However, business managers want a faster way to connect with customers, launch new marketing campaigns and enter new markets. The challenge is that today’s IT teams are too constrained, their to-do lists are too large and their tools too inefficient to respond quickly.

The software integration market needs to take note of trends and offer solutions that allow users with a non-technical background to build these interfaces without writing any code, using a drag-and-drop interface that is accessible to more than just the IT department. Savvy business users and analysts will then be able to create connections, access data, configure triggers and map data formats using visual, web-based applications. This is integration for the Facebook generation. This is the codeless future that will upend the software integration market.

While IT departments may find a move to business user focused software potentially disruptive, increasing the accessibility of software integration tools brings huge benefits. IT should view their role not as entities that control access to data, but as enabling timely data access for business users so they can run their business and make decisions. By optimizing software for the direct user as opposed to an IT professional, businesses will experience a faster customer onboarding process, reduce the time to market and accelerate revenue. Much like how Salesforce revolutionized CRM software, the software integration solution needs to be more like a business application rather than developer tool.

Of course, integration interfaces still need to be created in a way that ensures data security and integrity. IT still has to retain control of the process but they can do so by publishing connectors that hide the complexity of security, data validations and complex mappings while allowing non-technical users to map data to simpler, flat formats. This will allow the IT staff to focus on more productive, high value tasks while off-loading the day-to-day operational work to business users.

Business users want an easy to use interface that enables workflow automation — not a platform that requires advanced knowledge of code and an IT request ticket. Salesforce.com is a great example of a business application that saw challenges within an industry and successfully met them head on. Prior to Salesforce, many CRM systems were often adopted with little consideration for the actual end user or for how sales reps would actually reap the benefits. The primary user of a CRM system is the sales rep — not IT — and Salesforce understood that.

The software integration market would do much better if it appealed to their primary business customer. That will lead to more business flexibility and more efficient IT teams. The question is not if, but when, the business user becomes the focal point of deploying business applications.

http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/12/the-codeless-future/ 

Need Some Direction to Improve Your Responsive Web Design?

                                               bradfurdfrostweb.com

Knowing how responsive web design can be frustrating at times we have provided some tips from sources that will help you in your endeavors.


1. Why use Responsive Web Design?

RWD is a cheap option; you can re-purpose your existing desktop layout to ensure it works well on a smaller mobile device. If you’re developing a new site, there are few reasons not to use RWD.

However, are you considering RWD because it’s an inexpensive way to tick a few business strategy objectives? You can certainly implement a mobile layout within a few hours but will it be useful? It’s usually obvious when a responsive design has been added as an afterthought. It may be better to stick with a good desktop layout than undermine your online presence.

2. Consider the Context, but…

…avoid stereotypes.

Historically, designers considered desktop viewers to be static and smartphone users to be roaming. A train company would typically highlight ticket buying on desktop devices and station directions on mobile devices. There are a couple of problems with this approach:
the boundaries have become blurred. People use whatever device is practical e.g. they may surf the net on a phone while watching TV.
RWD reveals nothing about the context. Device resolution is a crude assumption especially when you consider the high-density displays offered by modern phones and tablets.

If static and roaming users have different contexts, it may be preferable to provide separate mobile sites or apps which have dedicated functions.

3. Distill Your Content

Why do people visit your site? What’s important to those users? What’s their typical journey? Without these answers, you’ll be tempted to throw everything on the home page. That may be possible on a large display but you’ll struggle when switching to a mobile layout.

The best option: think small-screen first, then
…
4. Design Upwards

Once you have a design for the smallest practical screen, you can work upwards in a series of media query breakpoints.

While there are no strict rules, breakpoint steps should not be large — perhaps no more than 200 pixels. However, each step need not be a major re-flow such as additional columns; it could be a font-size change, floating images or another simple tweak.

5. Keep it Fluid

Ideally, your design should be fluid between breakpoints — not fixed. While fixed layouts are easier to comprehend and code, they’re too fragile for RWD (refer to Is Your Responsive Web Design too Fragile?)

Ideally, even your media queries should use proportional units such as %, em and rem instead of pixels.

6. Never Compromise

RWD should never be used to offer a watered-down version of your website. In some cases, you should consider additional facilities on mobile devices such as geo-location and off-line support. Keep it simple and easy to use:
don’t use browser sniffing
don’t disable zooming
don’t hide content.
7. Only Performance Matters

RWD may be cheap to implement but it should be planned from the start. Applying RWD to a site serving 1Mb+ pages will never result in an optimal experience on devices operating over a mobile network.

Considerations In Building a DIY Website Builders for Responsive Design

1) Some hosting facilities offer DIY building software and even offer free domain name registration. Be careful when taking on this sort of package. Find out who controls the domain name. Is it the client or the hosting facility? It can be difficult to secure or move the domain name if the facility owns or controls the domain name.

2) DIY builders are low cost – but are sometimes limited in terms of layout, graphics along with limited features and functionality. What initially seems like a good idea can end up being a frustrating experience.

3) When using a DIY site builder – the software will build an interface and internal web pages from some available templates, which is not always a bad thing. But the designs are usually considered "proprietary", and more often than not, they are tied into the back-end database which is owned by the facility. Then it can be difficult, if not impossible to move a site if desired.

4) Updating ones site can be a rewarding experience. It can also be a time-consuming exercise. It's best to first ask the question; how much time does the website maintenance take and could the time be better spent on building the business instead.

5) Usually the overall design can be “acceptable”. But is “acceptable” good enough? Remember, it’s the company’s “brand” that is at stake and one never gets a second chance at a good first impression.

So, there are many things to consider when building the company website including the design, layout, ease of moving a site if necessary, scalability and much, much more. More often than not, it's better to out-source the development to experienced developers and end up with a better business website. Consider talking to a local web design company in the area to answer any questions that might be important when making that decision.

IFM Web Services offers Responsive Web Design, website analysis, SEO Press releases, Search Optimization and Facebook pages for businesses. Located in the Toronto area (GTA), IFM has helped business achieve an effective online presence and has helped clients as far away as Bermuda and Mexico. For more on Social Media, SEO or Web Design for businesses, visit IFM at http://www.ifm.ca

http://www.sitepoint.com/7-responsive-web-design-tips/

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11255072.htm

New Services and Updates Will Be Revealed By SAP at the Tech Ed Conference

                                          www.telegraph.co.uk




The following article was written by Chris Kanaracus/IDG News Service

SAP is unveiling a series of enhancements, services and deployment options for its HANA in-memory computing platform in hopes of enticing more partners and customers to begin building software products with the technology.

Some 1,000 startups are already using HANA to create applications, according to SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka, who heads all development, in an interview prior to this week's Tech Ed conference in Las Vegas.

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That uptake was no doubt helped by a venture fund and heavy-duty marketing campaign SAP has used to court developers for HANA. But SAP is also increasing the number of tools and services for HANA-based programming efforts.

A seventh service pack for HANA, which will be announced at Tech Ed, includes a series of developer-friendly updates, including the ability of HANA to write to external data stores such as Oracle databases; Hadoop integration; and customizable text-analysis dictionaries.

On the systems administration front, the service pack includes improvements for high availability and disaster recovery as well as better patching and monitoring tools, according to SAP.

Customers and partners will also soon have more ways to deploy HANA, which has been sold in appliance form on hardware from a number of vendors.

An IaaS (infrastructure as a service) offering based on HANA is now in private beta, with general availability expected early next year, SAP said. Customers would port their HANA licenses to SAP's cloud and purchase instances ranging in size from 128GB to 1TB of RAM.

SAP is also increasing the maximum size of HANA One, which is available through Amazon Web Services, from 256GB to 1.2TB. Many SAP customers and partners asked for the increase, Sikka said.

He demurred when asked whether customers would have any specific advantages by choosing SAP's HANA IaaS versus HANA One. "The main point is the choice," Sikka said. "Obviously there are lots of customers that have their own clouds, but a lot of them want a freedom to do things on our cloud, and other public clouds."

There are now more than 2,200 HANA customers, according to Sikka. The database became generally available in 2011. SAP executives have called HANA the fastest-growing product in company history, with total revenue expected to top €1 billion ($1.4 billion) soon.

SAP is hoping its customers that are now using rival databases such as Oracle's to run SAP applications will port their implementations to HANA. Tech Ed will give it an opportunity to sell the benefits of HANA to a developer-heavy audience that is already invested skills-wise in other technologies.

Meanwhile, during his keynote on Tuesday Sikka is also expected to discuss a new set of SAP design services, wherein designers will work alongside customers to create more compelling user interfaces and applications.

In addition, attendees will get an update on Fiori, a set of bite-sized mobile applications that tie into SAP flagship Business Suite ERP applications, which was announced in May. Another 150 Fiori applications will be released this year, according to Sikka.

Tech Ed continues through Thursday in Las Vegas.

Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology

http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/sap-set-preach-the-hana-gospel-developers-22925

What Are the Glitches of the Government Website For Obama Care Sign Up?

                                            jim hoft

You may wonder why the Obama Care Health Insurance website was not prepared for the amount of traffic by Americans wanting health coverage.  According to sources there were many problems and Department of Health and Human Resources are trying to solve the glitches in the process. What exactly are the problems?

Basically, the website needs more server capacity to improve efficiency and design changes as well. Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the DHHS says,"We can do better and we are working around the clock to do so."

The government is making software and hardware changes to smooth the process of creating accounts needed to gain access to the marketplace, federal officials said.

The website is troubled by coding problems and flaws in the architecture of the system, according to insurance-industry advisers, technical experts and people close to the development of the marketplace.

Among the technical problems thwarting consumers, according to some of those people, is the system to confirm the identities of enrollees. Troubles in the system are causing crashes as users try to create accounts, the first step before they can apply for coverage.

Experian EXPN.LN +0.35% PLC, an information-services firm, holds a federal subcontract to support that system. The company declined to comment.

Information technology experts who examined the healthcare.gov website at the request of The Wall Street Journal said the site appeared to be built on a sloppy software foundation. Such a hastily constructed website may not have been able to withstand the online demand last week, they said.

Engineers at Web-hosting company Media Temple Inc. found a glut of stray software code that served no purpose they could identify. They also said basic Web-efficiency techniques weren't used, such as saving parts of the website that change infrequently so they can be loaded more quickly. Those factors clog the website's plumbing, Media Temple said.

The identity-checking foul-ups are also triggering problems for state-run exchanges, which rely on the federal system. The problem caused delays last week for users of MNsure, Minnesota's exchange, as they waited for federal confirmation to create their accounts, said April Todd-Malmlov, MNsure's executive director. She said the issue in her state was largely resolved by Friday.

Administration officials, who reported nearly nine million unique visitors to the federally run exchange as of Friday night, said the system underwent maintenance over the weekend.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304441404579119740283413018.html

Former Microsoft CIO Tony Scott is Hired by VMware

VMware Inc. (VMW), the largest maker of software that lets computers run multiple operating systems, said it’s hiring Tony Scott, former chief information officer at Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), for the same position.

Scott, who left Microsoft in May after five years, will report to Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer of VMware, the company said in a statement today. Scott’s departure was announced in June, when Microsoft said he planned to focus on personal projects. Prior to that, Scott served as CIO at Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and chief technology officer at General Motors Corp.

VMware’s hiring of a new CIO comes days after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced plans to resign within a year, after missing opportunities to take the maker of Windows software beyond personal computers and into a leading position in products such as smartphones, Web search and tablet computing. VMware is Microsoft’s main rival in the market for so-called virtualization software, which lets companies combine multiple tasks on a single server.

VMware is holding its VMworld conference beginning today in San Francisco.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/vmware-hires-former-microsoft-cio-tony-scott.html

Cloudwords Announces Easier Integrations Capabilities in the Developer Center

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 15, 2013) - Cloudwords, the market-leading cloud-based translation management application, today announced the launch of the CloudwordsDeveloper Center, a new developer-centric destination designed to enable easy integration between content management systems (CMS) and the Cloudwords platform. To meet the ever-increasing demand for localized content, Cloudwords is providing new integration capabilities to accelerate the process of multilingual content management by enabling developers to integrate with all major CMS platforms, including Drupal, Adobe CQ, Microsoft Sharepoint, Oracle UCM, and SiteCore, among others.

The Cloudwords Translation Management Automation solution helps companies expand their global presence faster, more easily and with enterprise-class quality. With today's announcement, Cloudwords becomes the most developer-friendly cloud-based translation management solution geared specifically for the enterprise.

"Cloudwords continues to deliver innovations that enable our customers to stay one step ahead when it comes to going to market globally. The Cloudwords Developer Center underscores our commitment to making it even easier and faster for enterprises to manage large amounts of content that need to be translated. By simplifying the integration process behind the scenes, customers can get up and running in the Cloudwords platform even faster, and take advantage of the simplicity of moving content in and out of critical content systems, ultimately delivering increased ROI," said Scott Yancey, CEO and Co-founder of Cloudwords.

The Cloudwords Developer Center features the Cloudwords Sandbox, a unique environment that provides developers a fully automated integration experience. The Cloudwords Sandbox allows developers to quickly build and test Cloudwords integrations with any content system their business users rely on. A simulated end-to-end translation management experience, automated by a translation vendor "robot," means developers can experience the power of Cloudwords in a low-risk environment. Having the ability to test an integration within an environment that mirrors the actual Cloudwords production account allows developers to completely prepare for enterprise roll-out.

The Cloudwords Development Center also includes pre-built integrations for Drupal, Adobe CQ, and others, as well as complete documentation for the company's acclaimed REST-based API, and Software Development Kits (SDKs) for Java, .net, and PHP.

"The ability for companies to easily and efficiently localize their marketing content is mission critical in today's global economy. But this critical enterprise content is locked away inside ungainly content management systems. By leveraging CMS integration capabilities with their translation management application, organizations can finally achieve optimal localization efficiency. If companies aren't streamlining their localization process, they will fall behind their competition when it comes to reaching international markets," said Robinson Kelly, CEO and Co-founder of Clay Tablet Technologies.

"Cloudwords allows ADInstruments to easily integrate our Drupal website with their localization management platform so we can streamline the ongoing process of translating our website content. By integrating with Cloudwords, our content is uploaded, translated and approved within a significantly shorter time frame than the traditional 'cut and paste' approach. Now, we rely on Cloudwords to centralize all our multilingual assets and work with multiple translation vendors to localize content in 13 languages," said Ina Kinski, Hardware and Tools Coordinator at ADInstruments, responsible for website implementation.

Cloudwords' complete cloud-based translation management solution helps companies go global faster by enabling companies to manage the complexity of translation projects from creation to vendor selection to project and billing management. The Cloudwords platform offers easy-to-use, cloud-based project management capabilities so users spend less time manually managing localization projects and complete projects faster.

To learn more about Cloudwords' integration capabilities and the Cloudwords Developer Center, please visit http://developer.cloudwords.com/.

About Cloudwords
Cloudwords revolutionizes the way global companies think about their multilingual content strategy and execution. Through an intuitive customer-centric interface and a secure cloud infrastructure, Cloudwords delivers an application for business users to accelerate their translation process, manage vendors, and leverage data. Created by veterans of the translation industry and high-tech leaders from Salesforce.com, the company is backed by Storm Ventures and Cloud visionaries such as Marc Benioff. For more information on Cloudwords, please visit Cloudwords.com or join the global conversation on Twitter@cloudwordsinc.

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/cloudwords-announces-faster-easier-integration-capabilities-with-new-cloudwords-developer-1821247.htm

Chatwing Company Develops a Premium Chat Box For Career Support Websites

Are you looking for a great way to get information concerning careers in your area?  What about a using a chat box where businesses and those needing to find a place of employment can communicate. Chatwing has developed this great application for websites.

                                                   www.techinfoblog.net


Chatwing.com launches an informative widget that can be embedded and utilizes social media well.

Chatwing chat software has undergone improvements aiming to provide users with a communication leverage that will further social connectivity and expansion. One of the latest upgrades includes Yahoo and Gmail log in methods, which makes the chat app raises the website’s level of accessibility. Career support websites can still interact with Facebook and Twitter users and transfer important chat messages from chatbox to one’s own Facebook wall as a form of announcement and promotion. The process of looking for the right people for a certain profession will not be tedious and challenging.

Chatwing’s thousand user capacity can definitely accommodate web surfers across the globe. Sharing interview tips, professional advices and job descriptions can be accomplished in just a few seconds and can stay in the chat box for a longer time. This will allow new web visitors to view previous messages where they can also gain from earlier conversation exchanges. Job help websites can also engage in group chats through Chatwing vanity URL form. This is possible with the generation of username and shortlinks, thus career assessment can be done efficiently online.

Chatwing chat app is highly customizable. Web admins can design the chat tool in ways that can add up to the site’s professional reputation or entice more web surfers into the web page. Users can experiment with the color combinations and upload photos as the widget’s background image. In the coming months, Chatwing chat software team plans to release more advanced chat software that can also help business oriented websites and niche blogs improve online presence. The Chatwing.com is always updated with effective tips on how to use the improved chat tool in website developments and communication advantage. About Chatwing.com
Chatwing.com specializes in the new field of live website chat software. Over years, the development team has introduced live chat widget for hundreds and thousands of blogs. The application bridges people from many parts of the world, creating global synergy through the Internet. The shout box can be installed in just seconds, and it can be used for varying purposes such as leisure and Internet marketing. It also allows a user to customize the size, color, and name of the widget.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/8/prweb10982826.htm