Computing Canada Jan/Feb 2015 by Nestor Arellano

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VOLUME 31, NUMBER 1 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

THE ONLY ONE GOOD WAY TO UNDERSTAND THE CIO ROLE IN CANADA

HOT IT JOBS

Big data, security and mobile technology will drive IT hiring in 2015. But how do you keep existing talent from walking out the door?

Stuck in trafﬁc.

Ideas still moving for ward.

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AGENDA I

In hot pursuit of IT talent

ot IT jobs and the IT talent gap. Two sides of the same coin that perennially preoccupy both IT professionals and employers. This year, technology industry analysts and recruitment experts are telling us that the most in-demand IT skills, for next five to seven years at least, will be in the areas of mobility, big data and security. For IT professionals, reports like these can be a critical road map for career growth and the drive to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving environment. For businesses, well it’s supposed to be a job seeker's market. If you haven’t lined up your prospects yet, you better start scrambling. In this month’s issue of Computing Canada, we tapped into our pool of bloggers for the low-down on the IT job market and as well as special interviews. Veteran IT management adviser Bruce Stewart lays out some hiring options in his articles: "There is talent out there" and "When to use contractors and consultants, and when to train." Decision makers can avoid staffing disruption by making talent acquisition a component of the organization's overall IT strategy rather than simply reacting to demands brought about by new technologies and evolving practices and trends. For example, by continually analysing the skill sets of the existing workforce as they relate to the IT goals and needs of an organization, a CIO can map out in advance appropriate steps to update staff skills, set performance metrics, pinpoint personnel for upcoming assignments or even request for new hires. David Foote, chief analyst for research firm Foote Partners, calls it "people architecture" and likens the strategy to developing IT architecture. The benefits of people architecture for both IT professionals and employers are discussed in the article "Closing the IT talent gap from within." In the previous issue of Computing Canada, former editor Howard Solomon announced his retirement. You can’t keep a good journalist away from the news for long. After a brief hiatus, Howard is back, this time as a freelance writer. You’ll continue to enjoy his trademark insightful analysis and excellent reporting in the following pages and future issues of Computing Canada. — Nestor E. Arellano

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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CONTENT CLOUD: JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015 Follow the tag reference to the indicated page. In our electronic version, simply touch or click the tag to be transported to the story.

DATA RISK

predictive analytics

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carriers AMD 15 PAGE

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TALENT GAP

Hot IT jobs IT HIRING Talent gap PAGE

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First half of 2015 IT hiring forecast The majority of chief information officers (CIOs) in Canadian firms plan to hire more people in order to beef up their departments according to a survey released by recruitment firm, Robert Half Technology.

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All Hands on Tech:

Here comes the Neptune Duo smartwatch Simon Tian was still a student in Quebec when he started taking pre-orders for a computer you could wear on your wrist. It wasn’t until he saw the demand spiking that he decided to take a trip to China and learn about the process of getting a real hardware product made.

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NEWS I

ENHANCING THE HELP DESK EXPERIENCE Inordinately long wait times, multiple levels of attendants to wade through before reaching the right person, lack of expertise and no self-service options. These were just some of the issues raised by senior IT decision makers when they talked about their experiences with internal and external help desks during the recent Canadian CIO Executive Roundtable session in Toronto. The attendees, who came from a wide

array of industries including the public sector, financial industry and healthcare, were all keen on finding ways to enhance their organizations’ internal service process and speed up the delivery of information and IT solutions their employees need. “The service centre phase between the IT providers and the IT consumers really needs to change,” said guest speaker Herb VanHook, vice-president and interim chief technology officer of Texas-based business service management software company BMC Software Inc. The last few years

has seen a “huge sea change” of various collaboration technologies and mobile devices connecting people to each other and the enterprise network, he said. “Unfortunately, many organizations have not made the leap to leveraging these new technologies and the powers of mobile devices to restructure the service desk to meet the needs of users,” VanHook said. Some of the new service desk approaches discussed in the roundtable included: the use of social media in the in customer contact points; extending system ac-

cess through various mobile devices; and the incorporation of collaborative and selfhelp tools for users. One of the strategies VanHook hammered on was the need for IT leaders and departments to gain a better understanding of their internal customers in order to develop solutions and restructure the service desk to meet their needs. BMC itself used this “persona-based” research in developing MyIT, the company’s new self-service app that uses location, role and preferences to guide employees to the answers and tools they need.

— Nestor E. Arellano

HP LAUNCHES PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS SYSTEM FOR MACHINE LEARNING HP has launched an open-sourced big data predictive analytics platform that it says will bring machine learning capability to Canadian companies. The firm has launched HP Haven Predictive Analytics under its Haven big data banner. The JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

NEWS I

new version of the software includes an enhanced version of R, the statistical modelling language commonly used in big data analytics. Distributed R enables developers to address large data sets distributed across multiple clusters, and to make calculations on them as a single entity. The new version of R is syntactically the same as the old one, and can work with the same tools, such as R Studio, the popular R programming interface. There are additional extensions to the system for use with the distributed data, though, said Sunil Venkayala, senior technical product manager for the Big Data Business Group within HP Software. “We initially started looking at what language they should start to implement, and found R as the language with a lot of mindshare among scientists,” he said. “One of the core strengths of R is its community. There are almost two million users and six thousand packages developed in R. But R wasn’t designed to 6 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

scale, originally.” Distributed R is the open sourced part of the product, but HP has designed it to work natively with Vertica, the proprietary analytics database that it purchased in 2011 and has since made a part of the Haven architecture. Vertica is a massively-parallel columnar database, designed for the kinds of SQL queries typically used in relational databases. HP has built native connectors between Vertica and Distributed R that enable developers to run Distributed R queries from within the database. They also provide the statistical language with fast access to data, executives said. The increased scale of the Distributed R solution is what gives this latest software combination its predictive analytics capabilities. It can be used to identity trends in data scaling up to the Petabyte level, and then draw inferences about future developments, Venkayala explained. Standard R won’t scale beyond a certain number of records, he said, arguing that it simply

isn’t enough for many predictive analytics and machine learning applications. “In one of our healthcare customers, they have patient data with thousands of attributes and millions of transactions,” he said. “When they’re trying to build a model, running that model on the whole base of data is important because there might be false negatives. They want to use all of the data that they have. But with Standard R it’s not feasible.” Although Distributed R is designed to integrate natively with Vertica, it isn’t yet honed to work with the HavenOnDemand solution that the company released in December that provided cloud-based big data analytics processing. This may be coming in the future, though. The company is working on an intelligent service bus that will tie together more closely the different Haven platforms, including IDLE, a processing system for unstructured data (such as text and social media posts). — Danny Bradburry

IBM BETS US$1B ON SOFTWAREDEFINED STORAGE IBM has unveiled the next offering in its software solution portfolio designed to intelligently manage and move data across any platform regardless of vendor, be they in the cloud or on-premise. The company announced it is also budgeting over US$1 billion over the next five years to develop softwaredefined storage. According to an official statement by the company, the solution, called IBM Spectrum Storage, enables interoperability between 300 different storage systems, both from IBM and other vendors - and can manage “yottabytes of data.” Types of storage include flash, disk and tape systems. The next offering to be made available in the portfolio is “IBM Spectrum Accelerate,” based on the software from the company’s XIV appliance. It will be offered as said appliance, as a service through its SoftLayer cloud offering, or as software when it is

NEWS I

made generally available mid-March. IBM will be taking orders for the software by mid-February. According to IBM, Spectrum Accelerate allows users to quickly add storage capacity, which the company claims will take minutes as opposed to months. Meanwhile, it also includes features aimed at the cloud, including snapshot, synchronous and asynchronous replication, multi-tenancy, automation through RESTful API and

OpenStack, VMware vCloud Suite integration and self-provisioning. The Spectrum Accelerate GUI, called the “Hyper-Scale Manager” can even be run in any browser-enabled device, including on smartphones. The XIV architecture, on which Spectrum is based, has been implemented by companies including Netflix, in managing databases, development, testing and back-up operations, according to IBM. The company

said that Netflix was able to reduce their storage footprint by 80 per cent while boosting database transactions per minute. Training for partners implementing the software is already underway, while select partners have been granted early valuation and a sneak peek at the beta code, according to Sidney Chow, vice president, high end disk, business line executive, IBM Storage. “A new approach is needed to help clients

address the cost and complexity driven by tremendous data growth. Traditional storage is inefficient in today’s world where the value of each piece of data is changing all the time,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems. "IBM is revolutionizing storage with our Spectrum Storage software that helps clients to more efficiently leverage their hardware investments to extract the full business value of data.” — Dave Yin

F ROM OUR BLOGGERS

Every month bloggers on ITWorldCanada.com sound off on a wide range of issues. If you missed their columns, here’s excerpts from a few, with links to the complete blog: IS DATA MODELLING REALLY DEAD? BY YOGI SCHULZ

If your Agile software development is delivering less functionality or producing more defects in each iteration, then your Agile project team probably believes that data modelling is really dead or irrelevant.

Viewing data modelling as dead or irrelevant arises from these trends that affect data modelling: • The rise of NoSQL datastores that offer flexibility using schema-less key-value pairs. • Wider acceptance of analytic databases that leverage key-value pairs and in-memory technologies. • The Agile focus on end-user stories that are business process descriptions as the means for discovering and elaborating requirements. Let’s examine if data modelling is really dead or adds value to the software development process.

SHOULD OBAMA GO THROUGH YOUR FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS? BY DONNA LINDSKOG

Politicians are now coming to software companies asking for back doors to be able to track terrorists and cyber-attacks. In his recent State of the Union address in January, Obama said:

Data modelling is dead In many Agile software development environments, it’s the end-user stories that are all-important. The underlying data model is irrelevant. It’s assumed to just take care of itself with little effort. The end-user stories describe the desired system in business process terms. This occurs because the business staff thinks by using a process mindset and can therefore only describe their requirements using this process context. Very few people process thoughts using a data structure mindset.

“No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids.” British Prime Minister David Cameron also was concerned in a joint press conference earlier in the week. “As technology develops, as the world moves on, we should try to avoid the safe havens that would otherwise be created for terrorists to talk,” said Cameron. Obama didn’t take the same position on Cameron’s proposal, but he did say that it was important to be able to keep tabs on terrorists who are using social media and the Internet. “When we have the ability to track that, in a way that is legal, conforms with due process, rule of law and oversight, then that’s a capability we have to preserve,” said Obama. Obviously, politicians represent the views of a significant portion of the population. However, even if they represent the majority, we should not assume that what they are proposing is ethical. If there is a law that requires social media companies to give them ways to keep tabs on people, then we must comply. But we must do our own analysis to see if this intrusion is ethical. As I explained in one of my first blogs, ethics is not about the standards of behavior our society accepts.

Read the entire blog here

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F ROM OUR BLOGGERS

I’M THE CIO, NOT THE AV TECHNICIAN STEPHEN ABRAHAM

The boardroom becomes quiet as the executive management meeting begins. My colleague, the CFO, begins to deliver a presentation on our corporate financial results and plans. She has some supporting spreadsheets and slides to show on the projector. The CFO finds the presentation on her laptop, then connects the laptop to the projection system.

Nothing. The screen remains blank. As CIO, and (presumably) the most technical person in the room, all eyes turn to me. What’s wrong with the projector? As any good problem solver would do, I jump into action. I go over to help the CFO, who is much less flummoxed about the situation than I am. The CFO has complete faith that I will fix the problem, so proceeds with her presentation. I fumble with the laptop a bit then realize that the video connector is loose. I try to get it working. Unplug it, plug it back it. I still can’t get it to work. Darn. I then notice that the socket on the laptop is damaged. This isn’t going to work. I then proceed to figure out where the presentation is located so I can get it on the boardroom computer to project it. Sweating bullets, I finally get the presentation up and running. All this took about 12 minutes. In the mean time, the CFO had continued on with her presentation. When the presentation is finally projected I regain my composure and try to catch up. Since I was working on the issue, I hadn’t heard a thing she said.

DOES YOUR ENTERPRISE EVEN NEED A FORMAL CLOUD POLICY? DON SHEPPARD

With all the buzz on cloud migration, IT industry experts have insisted that enterprises need a corporate cloud computing policy, but is it really necessary for cloud success? Is an explicit cloud policy essential, nice to have, or optional? By cloud policy, I mean an enterprise-wide cloud governance statement of direction, not just a tactical IT directive or a departmental purchasing rule. Enterprise policies typically cover business critical topics such as: • Product – what business do you want to be in (and not in)? • Personnel – rules for human resources, ethical behaviour and fairness • Legal – commitment to meet regulatory, compliance and government relations requirements • Finances – practices for accounting, use of capital and delegation of authority Traditional IT is typically not the subject of explicit business policies. Why does cloud computing warrant being elevated to a higher level? Read the entire blog here

Read the entire blog here JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

A NA LYSIS

When to use contractors and consultants, and when to train and ensures that skill transfers promised actually take place. Consultants should be used to bring new thinking to your organization. They are your stimulators — but who’s being stimulated if the consultants lead the contractors, not your people? One of the key reasons we fall into this trap routinely is because there’s little slack left in the organization. Assigning someone to what, for all intents and purposes, will be a learning experience means that some key piece of work will be undone, or at the very least put at risk. Too many IT managers have “managed risk” by simply refusing to take it on. Then they decry their staff’s inability to do new things. All too soon, they’re in the outside services trap, where everything new is done by outsiders and BY BRUCE STEWART the existing staff is seen as an expensive group oo many organizations look at a new of “business as usual” types. initiative, and immediately reach for the Managing risk is what an IT manager is paid outside market for talent. While bringing to do, and that means managing the risk that in new skills and experience with the new tech- maintenance work goes wrong because the exnology you’re implementing is a good thing, you perienced staff member is off doing something can do too much of it. new while a contractor holds down the mainteOne large financial services institution benance fort. gan a multi-year major technology overhaul, Managing risk is what you’re also required for instance, by effectively blocking over 80 to do knowing that cross-training your people per cent of their large, diversified, and genermakes them potentially more mobile. Yes, one ally talented staff from any of the positions or two might take the opportunity and run. that would deliver the change. This is a good If you’re providing a stream of opportunity, way to build a staff that loses its relevance, though, most will stay and enjoy it. loses its initiative, and starts to put roadOne key exception to this is when the skills blocks in the way of what you’re trying to do. involved don’t need to be retained: a one-time (Indeed, that was the outcome.) creation of what will be a black box maintained Contractors should be used when a variable externally. (Converting from, say, configured labour force is required: we have 100, need servers and storage to a hybrid cloud model built 150 for two years, then fall back to 100, for around pre-configured components is a oneinstance. No rule, though, says the contractors time change where the vendor takes on mainteneed to be assigned to what’s new. Assignnance.) In that case, turning the entire project ing them at least in part to maintenance and over to an external team may make sense. “hold the fort” work while your people grow But for most of our work, bringing our — along with the contractors — into new roles people along is the right thing to do. Are you creates a far more motivated permanent staff, doing it?

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A NA LYSIS

There’s only one good way to understand the CIO role in Canada BY SHANE SCHICK he best IT leaders know their numbers. But there are some numbers only outsiders can provide. Here’s a simple stat that barely needs an explanation or even proof: 100 per cent of people make better decisions when they

have good information behind them. The outcry over the death of the federal long-form census has continued to grow. It’s not just an issue for academics or policy makers. As BNN and others reported, businesses are starting to worry they won’t have the data they need to

decide where to open their next location, what the hiring situation will look like as they build their team and how to market to specific customers. We also lose a lot, of course, by not having as much information on occupations like ICT, which can help expose skill gaps and assess how many women are entering the field. We’re no StatsCan, but our annual CIO Census is at least one way to hone in on actionable informa-

tion for IT leaders and the people that surround them. We’ve been compiling this research for several years now, so we’ll have some good yearover-year analysis on the challenges CIOs here face, their priorities for 2015 and beyond, and a lot more. I give more background in the clip above, along with some highlights of last year’s study. Take a few minutes to fill it out ASAP, and look forward to full coverage this Spring. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

CA R EER WATCH

The West Edmonton Mall’s CIO discusses the way forward for retail experiences BY SHANE SCHICK

n most shopping malls, walking up to the store directory map remains a pretty analog experience. Even if the map is mounted on a shiny glass display, and even if it’s colour-coded into easy-tofind blocks with numbers, a little dot saying “You are here” is about as personalized and contextual as it gets. For a retail facility the size of the West Edmonton Mall (WEM), clearly that’s not enough, and its CIO knows it. A few months ago, visitors to Canada’s largest shopping complex were introduced to a directory kiosk custom-built by Joseph Schuldhaus’s team that is not only intended to redefine the retail experience there, but at the Mall of the

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America in the U.S., which is also owned by the Triple Five Group of Companies. The team has since applied for preliminary patent protection and could wind up offering its design as a standard means for engaging with consumers. At a time when Canada is losing a slew of retail giants such as Target, Jacob and Mexx, the WEM’s kiosk is an IT project that shows how a combination of analytics, mobile apps and location-based services may be necessary to get people into a store and keep them there. “A lot of first-time shoppers come in and they’re intimidated by the size of this mall,” Schuldhaus said, noting Triple Five doesn’t just rent out stores but actually owns and operates a waterpark, as well as food and beverage services, which means it is dealing directly with customers. “We wanted to make sure we had a platform that gave us some roadmap capabilities for making that experience (of navigating the mall) quite different as we go, and not requiring us to always go to third parties to have features added in.”

CA R EER WATCH

The project is already paying off in several ways, not least of which is Schuldhaus and Triple Five winning a 2015 CIO Impact Award from Frost & Sullivan. Shortly before heading to San Francisco to pick up his trophy, Schuldhaus offered CanadianCIO a behind-thescenes look at how the directory kiosk works, the path to get it launched and a sense of how it could evolve over time.

can be much more relevant. “If I’m a woman and searching for a handbag or in ladieswear categories, maybe a handbag ad or something in that category for those kinds of items would come up and be targeted to that specific search,” he said. “The idea was, why not offer those marketing opportunities in a curated way, so they’re not just getting some ad randomly?” The second differentiator was to ensure What you’ll find while wayfinding smartphones or other mobile devices carried No more waiting behind someone else or awkby visitors would serve as a “second screen” wardly trying to squeeze in next to them to for the kiosk. This spring, Schuldhaus said look for a store. The kiosk is wide enough to the WEM will be launching a new app that accommodate two guests, who can each conworks with Apple’s iBeacon technology. That duct their own searches using the touch-screen way, as someone is doing a search, information display. Once they’ve identified the store they about a route or coupon offer is being shared want, an app will provide them turn-by-turn instantly between an iBeacon inside the kiosk navigation on their smartphone. If the store in and the app. question is offering a special sale or coupon, “It’s just a more frictionless way of engaging these can be distributed to mobile devices, too. the consumer, so they don’t have to repeat those The kiosks also support near-field communica- steps on their mobile device,” he said. “There’s tion (NFC) and QR codes, which mean other some intelligence between the two to give them kinds of digital interactions can be integrated that experience.” into the experience. Perhaps most surprisThe third differentiator is a tenant-facing app ingly, the WEM is using Microsoft Kinect, the that retailers can include on mobile devices motion-sensing technology traditionally found used by staff. In essence, if someone searches in its video games, to know when someone is for a store via the kiosk or gets a coupon offer moving in front of the kiosk and to detect any as part of that experience, the retailer will get a delays in performance. sort of head’s up to prepare as a potential customer walks in. The metrics behind the map “They can start that dialogue in a more deAlthough there are lots of ways to potentially fined way without having to ask, ‘How did you measure the success of something like the disee the ad?’” he said. “Then say, ‘Let me show rectory kiosk, Schuldhaus said Triple Five was you what you’re looking for. It’s in this aisle.’” going for three specific differentiators. The end result, he said, could be a much higher “We wanted to have a kiosk that wasn’t neclevel of customer service. essarily a shopping tool but something where Incidentally, Triple Five has installed 510 acyou could use it as a way to find a store and get cess points in the WEM, meaning it has more moving,” he said. In that sense, mission accomcontrol over the Wi-Fi it provides throughout plished: In the first four months, there have been the premises as it expands mobile capabilities, more than 50,000 searches on a single kiosk Schuldhaus said. (there are plans to install 12 across the WEM). On the other hand, the kiosk offers more than Ergonomics is everything Once the requirements had been defined after just directions. Based on what you’re looking months of field work observing products and difor, the ads served on the screen will change accordingly. That means marketing campaigns rectories at other shopping centres, the WEM’s JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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IT organization built a prototype without all the housing but a functional user interface. “We didn’t design the kiosk and then figure out how to make the software work inside it,” Schouldhaus said. “The hardware was really secondary to the UI.” That said, the team realized early on they would need a kiosk that was ergonomically suited to people of all sizes. For example, the slope of the kiosk display is set at 30 degrees, which Schuldhaus said is ideal for arm reaches of various heights. “When you put a UI on a straight piece of glass, you tend to put a map at the top and a touchpoint below,” he said. “You’re assuming is the average person’s height is suitable, but if the UI is vertical, you’re going to start getting problems where the glass touch surface and the angle are no longer aligned.” Instead, the WEM’s kiosk is more of a tabletype surface suitable for wheelchair users that looks sort of like the console of a space ship. The team brought in employees of many different sizes to do blind tests to search for stores within the mall in order to confirm the ergonomics were correct. The addition of Microsoft Kinect, meanwhile, offers rich opportunities for further data. “It might indicate how that kiosk is being used,” he said. “Those things are all important.” For example, the WEM doesn’t always ads on the kiosk when it is not being used for search, but when people are just walking by. When it detects someone has come walking up, it will turn off the ad and bring up the search controls so that people don’t have to figure out how to use it. When someone walks away, the ads can resume. This makes managing content across the device much more efficient. Height and facial recognition are future possibilities, as it might present a way to offer ads 14 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

for male-oriented products to men and so on.

Tech that set the timelines The WEM first started thinking about a nextgeneration directory kiosk back in 2010, but it was the introduction of 4K displays — which offer resolution on the order of 4,000 pixels — that galvanized the project. “When you’ve got 800 shops and services and you want to delineate those store locations, it’s amazing how poorly standard highdefinition works when you’re standing close to the screen,” he said. “4K gave us a much richer field of vision and a much more refined user experience at close range.” NFC was another catalyst, given how widely it was becoming used on Android devices. Rather than just put an NFC chip in the kiosk, the WEM connects a NFC device via USB, which allows the firm to change the messaging that’s coming out of it. “We have complete control of the software,” Schuldhaus said, which means the kiosk can point to a number of different URLs, a phone number or dialling sequence, among other possibilities. “That Web URL might be dynamic at the back end, but it didn’t allow that user experience to be as flexible at the onset,” he said.

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AMD VP Roy Taylor talks about Windows 10, virtual reality, security, and the future BY STEPHEN IBARAKI

indows 10 is in the news continually with impressive features like Cortana as your personal digital assistant founded on deep, machine learning where computers mimic the brain’s neural networks, which is a testimony of the rapid progression in AI. We see this as an idea in the movie “Her”, but it is increasingly becoming a reality. Bill Gates cemented this thought in his recent Reddit hosted AMA, “The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model, the agent will help solve this.” Project Spartan is an all-new browser where you can write directly on webpages, read articles distraction-free and save your favorites for offline reading. There are Universal Apps, including Office and one exciting transformational technology which overlays your world with holograms through Microsoft’s self-contained Holo-

Lens augmented reality head-mounted display, with its own processor. As examples, HoloLens allows seamless augmented reality with a photo realistic Martian landscape where you can use your fingers and voice to interact with the environment. The interaction is so effective that NASA will use it to work with their Mars rovers with scientists appearing as avatars. This now brings me to Roy. With his background, I wanted his take on all the techno-buzz and its impact on the enterprise. Roy brings a long history of highly successful innovation, entrepreneurship and strong leadership with AMD, Rightware, NVIDIA; as founder of Addtron working with semiconductor leaders such as Aureal, IBM Microelectronics, NEC, Nexgen. He has a very good perspective of technologies to watch so here is my chat with Roy. Q: Can you talk about your role change with AMD and what you will accomplish in the next several years? A: “Leading the Global Channel Sales team and efforts has been an amazing journey; working closely with our customers and end users has always been a passion of mine. But the idea of working closely with industry giants like Microsoft and Google and also games pubJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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lishers and developers, whose impact on how we reshape the PC ecosystem is tremendous, is an exhilarating one.” Q: Why are you excited about Windows 10 – can you get into specifics? A: “I am a huge fan of Windows 10 and have been using the Tech preview version for some months. I think that Microsoft has done a really incredible job of integrating a seamless experience for smartphone to tablet to notebook to desktop. I will be buying my first Windows phone when Windows 10 versions are available.” Q: What are the benefits of DirectX12? A: “I’m super excited about DX12 for a number of reasons, mainly because it embraces multi-threading in a way that developers have been asking about for years. Its low overhead nature will unlock graphics performance in a way we haven’t seen before, much like our own Mantle. DX12 games will perform better on a wider range of hardware, making a great experience possible for more people.” Q: Why is 2015 the year for virtual reality? A: “By the end of this year I believe we will see consumer versions of HMD’s (Head Mounted Displays) widely available. So far Oculus has done an amazing job with the beta/developer HMD versions DK1 and DK2 and they have proved amazingly popular. Once we see retail/ e-tail availability of consumer HMD’s I think we will see the start of a new industry. At the same time AMD is solving many of the issues for VR, specifically the need to deliver 2k per eye at 90fps with <10ms latency and so the desktop PC needed for a great experience will be available too. Combine comfortable consumer headsets with AMD tech and VR really gets started.” 16 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

Q: How is security a key area for 2015? A: “Our robust security solutions – currently available on select AMD APUs and coming soon to new generations of AMD processors – merge a comprehensive ecosystem of hardware and software, building in trust from the start. Through a built-in platform security processor (PSP) that enables ARM TrustZone to partition the processing of sensitive data, we help ensure a secure platform for service and content. By implementing a hardware security platform in this manner AMD not only gains a relatively quick turnaround time on the hardware, but on the software side too. AMD is specifically looking to leverage existing ARM applications for their tablet ambitions by taking advantage of the fact that existing TrustZone application cores can easily (if not directly) be ported over to AMD’s APUs. Developers would still need to put in some effort to write the necessary x86 frontends (in all likelihood written in scratch for Win8 as opposed to any kind of Android), but the hard part of implementing and validating the TrustZone functionality would simply carry over, leaving the new x86 frontend to talk to the existing ARM TrustZone application core. AMD isn’t in any position to talk about specific software yet, but we’re told that they’ve been working with select software partners even before this announcement in order to get a jump on developing applications.” Q: Tell me more about Wi-Fi personal identification, CAC, tap to pay, NFC? A: “Also known as wireless PIV-I (Personal Identification) or CAC (Common Access Card), this is a system whereby any employee can easily access data using an identity badge or credit card by ‘tapping’ a screen. This will save users entering forms or remembering passwords or credit card numbers. Combined with biometric

CA R EER WATCH

face detection the combination will be fast and very easy but also secure. We all want simplicity but we all also want to be safe with our identity and security. I am personally very excited about developments here.” Q: What are you doing in the 4K and streaming space? A: “I have had a 4K monitor from Asus for 6 months and couldn’t imagine going back to a lower resolution. 4K gaming is just beautiful. 4K TV is the same. At AMD we focus strongly on 4k and are already working on 5K and 8K for the future. Our drivers and our GPU’s are optimized for higher resolutions; for example, we use wider memory bus widths and offer more options for larger frame buffers. In fact for 4K our GPU’s beat NVIDIA’s in most games most of the time. For streaming we are working hard on HEVC (H.265), the new CODEC standard. For example, our next generation APU’s have hardware accelerated HEVC. We are working with the major streaming companies in Hollywood and will have some exciting announcements this summer. HEVC allows either reduced bandwidth for 1080P or support for 4K and this will be great for consumers everywhere.” Q: What about other innovations with media? A: “Without doubt, VR movies are creating a real buzz in Hollywood. The announcement by Oculus of their new VR movie studio got a lot of attention. But VR will bring challenges to the storytelling medium as directors will need to find innovative new ways to hold the viewers’ attention. At the same time, the interactivity of the medium will also open up new possibilities. We are working with BAFTA and some of the leading producers and directors right now and will have more to share on this later in the year.”

Q: What is the future of immersion reality and post VR world? A: “If VR is a sign of things to come in how we consume content (and it clearly is), you can probably expect the fidelity to increase, the ease of consumption to increase, and become completely independent of location. Current VR devices require a few cables to be connected to a powerful PC to play a game. Imagine where these boundaries don’t exist anymore, and you’ll be able to consume content at extreme resolutions without something bulky on your head.” Q: What are your broader top 5 predictions for the next five years? A: “First, VR is going to be a huge success. It will mutate and change and take us to new places and deliver new experiences but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind it will be an enormous new industry. Second, AR (augmented reality) will also be successful but to a lesser extent as we have to learn to meld the real world with overlays. I feel the challenges here (legal, physiological and technical), will be a little harder than with VR. Third, we are going to have drones enter every aspect of our lives both good and bad. They are going to get larger, smaller, faster, more accurate and cheaper. Whether they become a nuisance that we learn to hate or a blessing we cannot live without is going to be interesting. Fourth, we are seeing the beginning of a ‘world without wires’ – the new WWW. Wireless charging, combined with gigabit wireless connectivity and seamless experiences for IoT means that cables are going to increasingly seem very old fashioned. Last, I believe that Windows 10 is going to teach us about seamlessness. The integration of voice interaction, maps, calendar management, travel, search, productivity and entertainment is going to delight us but also bind us. This isn’t getting much attention now but I believe it will be a big deal in the next 5 years.” JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

TEL ECOM WATCH

TV WHITE SPACE TO PROVIDE ‘SUPER WI-FI’ COVERAGE FOR RURAL AREAS BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

ireless broadband Internet access will be available to more rural and nearurban areas in Canada with the release by Industry Canada of unused television spectrum also known as TV white spaces (TVWS). A TVWS is deal for providing Wi-Fi-like services in rural areas because TV frequencies already provide excellent coverage in these areas. Unlike typical Wi-Fi that covers a small area such as offices or facilities like shopping malls and airports, TVWS can provide what is called “super Wi-FI” because it can cover a much wider area, according to a networking expert. “Service providers can bridge Wi-Fi to create overlapping zones that will cover a much larger area,” said Roberta Fox, president of Mount Albert, Ont.-based unified communications and telecommunications firm Fox Group. “This is a very positive development for consumers in near-urban and rural areas as well as small Internet providers that area servicing these areas which as typically not the focus of larger providers.” For example, TVWS could be used to provide Internet access to municipalities just a few kilometers from Toronto that have new subdivision developments but very weak broadband signals, Fox said. “Many small, family-operated Internet service firms will also welcome this announcement because it will enhance their capability,” she added. The idea of using TVWS for providing rural broadband access has been around for years. However, one of the major hurdles were concerns that TVWS devices would interfere with analog TV station signals. TVWS devices will initially provide broadband Internet similar to Wi-Fi but with expanded coverage exceeding that of traditional Wi-Fi. This will allow TVWS devices to be used in Canada without interfering with existing TV broadcasts, said Industry Canada Minister James Moore.

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Mobilicity-Wind faceoff in AWS-3 spectrum auction Mobile carriers Wind Mobile and Mobilicity will be competing for a large chunk of the AWS-3 spectrum that the government has set aside for new entrants, in the upcoming March 3 spectrum auction. Industry Canada has released the initial list of qualified bidders who have put in the $65 million entry deposit for the auction of spectrum lice4nses for Advanced Wireless Services in bands 1755-1780 MHz and 2155-2180 MHz (AWS-3). THE BIDDING CARRIERS ARE: Bell Mobility Inc. Bragg Communications Inc. (Eastlink) Data & Audio-Visual Enterprise Wireless Inc. (Mobilicity) MTS Inc. Rogers Communications Partnership Saskatchewan Telecom TBay Tel Telus Wind Mobile

The AWS-3 spectrum auction rules have been set to favour small wireless players: ● A large block of spectrum (more than half or 30 megahertz out of 50 megahertz total) is set aside for operating new entrants (those that own less than 10 per cent national market share and 20 per cent regional share); ● Strict provisions on the transfer of AWS-3 spectrum so that Canadian consumers benefit from increased competition in wireless services; and ● A simpler, shorter auction process that will provide operating new entrants with a visible path to high-quality spectrum These rules mean that that Wind and Mobilicity will be the only two companies allowed to bid on that set aside block of spectrum in Southern Ontario and parts of Alberta and British Columbia.

SECUR IT Y WATCH

Ottawa risking data by keeping it local, says consultant

BY HOWARD SOLOMON ith the U.S. government insisting it has the power to demand American companies hand over customer data held by subsidiaries in other countries, a number Canadian enterprises and the federal government are demanding cloud providers assure that their data is held within the country. For example, as it looks for private cloud companies to provide some services to Ottawa, Public Works is demanding any federal

data be held locally and never leave the country. But the co-author of a report for Google on so-called forced data localization says the data will end up being less secure with such strings. “The Internet exists outside of the country you’re in, and any attempt to pretend otherwise doesn’t work out well,” James Arlen, the Hamilton, Ont.,based director risk and advisory services for Leviathan Security Group, said in an interview. “It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when you’re

saying ‘We’re going to keep our information safe within our political boundaries’, but your Internet boundary and your political boundary don’t match.” Having data spread redundantly over data centres in several geographies ensures it can withstand physical catastrophes like earthquakes or regional power losses, one of three reports issued by Leviathan says. One failure the reports noted was the 2012 explosion in Shaw Communications Calgary data centre, which not only knocked out phone and 911 service in parts of the city, but also and IBM data centre in the same building that hosted government and private sector customers. In 2008 a shipping accident in the Suez Canal caused Internet outages to the majority of people and businesses in Pakistan, Egypt, India, Kuwait, Maldives, Lebanon, and Algeria the report adds. “When utilized properly, cloud storage gives companies the ability to use resources in different

geographic regions to ensure high availability even in the face of local/area/regionalincidents. Achieving this, however, requires taking advantage of geographical redundancy—ensuring that data is replicated not just across a city, but across a continent or an ocean. Unfortunately, many companies treat cloud providers like colocation facilities, storing all their data in a single region. Some enterprises also insist on national data residency as a way of protecting from the reach of other countries’ law agencies, and as a way of getting better public relations. That’s led to a number of vendors, like IBM and Rogers Communications, to build local data centres in the hopes of getting business. It’s a “false patriotism,” to restrict data to being held here, said Arlen. In essence companies are saying ‘In order to be Canadian we’re going to be second best - we have no interest in being best,’ he said." JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

F E ATUR E

HOT IT JOBS AND THE TECH TRENDS BEHIND THEM BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

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f you have been following business and technology trend reports for the last couple of years and have made some effort to boost your proficiency in the area of data analytics, mobile technology or security, then you’re in a most enviable position. Starting salaries for professional occupations in Canada are projected to increase an average of 3.7 per cent next year, according to the latest report from human resources firm Robert Half. The largest pay gains are expected to come from the fields of research and technology in mobility, security and big data. “There are three main trends impacting employment and salaries in the IT,” according to Dave Tighe, branch manager for the Toronto arm of Robert Half. “Mobile, security and big data will be the three drivers for IT hiring in the country in 2015.” Here's a list of six of the hottest IT jobs in the market right now: DATA ARCHITECT Enterprise organizations everywhere are realizing how important it is to analyze large data set in order to stay ahead of the competition. As big data technology adoption grows stronger, IT departments and line of business departments will be looking for people with a wide range of data skills. “Companies are saying “we have all this data, we need somebody to tell us how to use it,” said Tighe. Data architects are responsible for organizing data and ensuring that all data standards and controls including definitions, golden sources, data models and data quality monitoring are fully managed. Robert Half projects a 7.2 per

cent salary increase in this space. Annual salaries will be around $119,750 to $164,750. He said Robert Half has seen dramatic increase in clients looking for business and information intelligence skills. “BI developers, BI managers, data analysts, reporting analysts. These are hot commodities now, and there are not a lot of folks that have the requisite experience to handle it.” MOBILE APPLICATION DEVELOPER From fitness clubs to retail stores, to bakeries and big name banks, organizations are launching their own mobile applications. Last year software developers creating mobile applications generated $1.7 billion in revenue, according to the Information and Communications Council. An estimated 64,000 people work on developing and distributing apps and an estimated 50,000 new jobs in the field are expected to be created between now and 2019. “Anything in mobile applications is definitely going to be hot, hot, hot,” said Tighe. Robert Half projects that salaries for mobile app developers will rise by as much as 10.2 per cent in 2015 with salaries playing between $107, 500 to $161,500. MOBILE WEB DESIGNER Professionals in this area will see a 6.8 per cent increase in salary with pay cheques playing at around $71,000 to $109,500. SENIOR BUSINESS SYSTEMS ANALYSTS Systems analysts specialize in analyzing, designing and implementing inforJANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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mation systems. Although not directly involved software development, they are responsible for developing things like costs analysis and design consideration. There will be a growing need for senior business analyst who evaluate an organizations business needs and identify, and to some degree design, appropriate solutions. Senior business systems analysts can expect a 4.2 per cent pay hike in 2015, with salaries around $81,000 to $99,250.

as well as information security, threat assessment and security investigations. CSO salaries are expected to jump 7.1 per cent next year. Expect paycheques start at around $134,250 and top off at about $204,750.

COMPLIANCE OFFICER Think Payment Card Industry standards, Sarbanes-Oxley, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and others. Organizations around the world are required to comply CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER with various government and industry The increasing incidence and growregulations. ing complexity of cyber attacks against Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the job of the compliance officer corporations have focused the spotlight to manage and make sure the company on the chief security officer. In the past, adheres to the regulations covering the technical issues where not the domain of business he or she works for. CSO. Today, CSOs are expected to be well Robert Half is projecting a 4.0 per cent trained in IT security issues. increase in salaries for compliance ofCSO responsibilities now cover the ficers next year. Some companies will areas of physical and personnel security likely pay from $99,750 to $132,750. 22 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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There is talent out there BY BRUCE STEWART It’s a claim made from coast to coast: we can’t find IT talent. Yet, at the same time, there’s lots of talent out there, that can’t find a position. The past decade has seen credential and experience requirements rise, and job descriptions become ever more precise, in an attempt to manage the flow of resumes that pass the HR scan and hit our desks. Unfortunately, we’ve ended up over-specifying our positions, making it harder and harder to find the talent we want. Meanwhile, people with skills languish, because they lack a credential, or a keyword on their resume. Look carefully at the contractors and consultants you have around your organization. How many of them could break through your HR scan if they applied? Yet, at the same time, are they unqualified? Often, they’re more than capable of filling a position in the firm. Too many IT managers would prefer not to have to invest the time in scanning a large pile of resumes to get to a short list of candidates to interview, yet that’s precisely what now has to be done to find talent. The very few in each market that meet the credential requirements that have been placed on positions have been snapped up. There’s another roadblock we put, unconsciously, on new candidates: people who’ve been spending their time as contractors or consultants are often automatically excluded from consideration.

Large organizations, public and private, also have a bias: they want to hire from other large organizations. There’s a myth (and it’s only a myth) that people who’ve been independent “just won’t fit in” if they take a job. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, many who are independent never wanted that life — they took it up because of a downsizing, an outsourcing, or an employer closing its doors — and they’d very much like to return to regular work. Or their family circumstances have changed, or they’re basically tired of being lonely and want the regular human interaction of being back in a firm. Yet these types of candidates, rich with experience, are often dismissed immediately, because they are considered “a flight risk”. Companies, still, when surveyed, show an inability to think outside of other boxes of their own making. There are still enterprises that won’t interview unless a candidate is coming from their own industry, won’t interview if the candidate lives more than a certain distance from their offices, or won’t interview if the candidate shows “too many” or “too few” jobs. If you’re short of talent, you need to be scanning for good candidates regularly, and that means looking at more than the small stack that passes your current HR scan. Lighten up your requirements a bit, look carefully to weed out preconceptions that are excluding people from your consideration, and think carefully about what you really need. You may find that a few well-timed job offers to contractors fills your bill — and you know what you’re hiring. Otherwise, interview away. The talent is out there, waiting for you. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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CLOSING THE IT TALENT GAP FROM WITHIN BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

According to federal statistics, some 250,000 ICT jobs openings will need to be filed in Canada by 2016. A recent survey of Canadian executives and employee also found that an alarmingly low number of corporate decision makers and personnel are proficient in key technologies that with figure in the growth of businesses in the next six years.

a lot of technical expertise but not enough actual exposure in how technology is being applied in the real world, according to Lorne Rothman, principal statistician for SAS Canada. “The aim of the challenge is to provide high school students the opportunity to slice and dice data, use data from public sources, find patterns and trends – basically do what they might do with big data in the workplace,” he said. Lorne said many organizations had expectations that are “a bit unrealistic.” However, to fill their IT talent gap, a For instance, some firms are looking for growing number of companies are resortyoung data scientists with database skills ing to more short term contract workers along with the knowledge of programming and consultants, according to a recent languages, data mining software, business survey. The recruitment agency, Hay Canknowledge with a bit of project manageada, found that nearly three quarters of IT ment thrown into the mix. employers in the country have ambitious “There’s IT talent coming out of universibusiness plans for 2015 however hiring will ties, but many firms want employees that be limited to short-term contracts. have skills take almost a decade to develop “What we are seeing is that a lot of emin the workplace,” he said. ployers feel comfortable to bring contracOne way of landing such a talent is to detors to fill an IT talent gap or to clear work velop from within and invest in the trainbacklog,” said Rowan O’Grady, president of ing and education of existing personnel. Hays Canada. In fact subsidized training or educaWhile many firms are taking the short tion is among the top 10 talent retention term view, some companies like software strategies identified in a recent survey maker SAS Canada are going into IT talent by Robert Half. Along with competitive development for the long haul. compensation, supporting a culture of The company has a long history of innovation and providing work-life balworking with universities in colleges to ance, the company recommends investdevelop technology skill training proing in and supporting the career growth grams. Recently SAS Canada launched of employees. a STEM (science, technology, engineerMany IT professional services have been ing and mathematics) program for high using what has been called “people archischool kids that includes a STEM fellow- tecture” as a way to prevent highly producship program and a competition to detive employees from leaving the company, velop the best big data solution. according to David Foote, chief analyst for Many students come out of school with IT workforce research for Foote Partners. 24 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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PERCENTAGE OF COMPANIES THAT OFFER THE FOLLOWING BENEFITS: Medical insurance

EDITORIAL

95% Paid time off

92%

Dental insurance

Contributing Editors Shane Schick Brian Jackson

89%

Life insurance

CREATIVE SERVICES

81%

Retirement benefits

Senior Graphic Designer Mel Manasan

75%

Flexible work hours Subsidized training or education

Editor Nestor E. Arrelano Twitter: @cwceditor

Creative Director Jeff Coles

57%

CIRCULATION

45%

Circulation Manager Cheryl Patfield

Work-at-home options

35% On-site cafeteria/subsidized food 35% On-site perks, such as dry cleaning, fitness center, etc. 18% Matching gifts to charitable organizations 15% Subsidized transportation 10% Mentoring programs 10%

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HOW TO CONTACT COMPUTING CANADA Telephone: (416) 290-0240 Fax: (416) 290-0238 Mail: Computing Canada, 55 Town Centre Court, Suite 302, Scarborough, Ontario M1P 4X4 Employees may be reached using a combination of their first initial and last name, for example: dwebb@itwc.ca Online: itwc.com Subscription inquiries: tel: (613) 475-3217 or 1-800-565-4007 fax: (416) 290-0239 or 1-800-565-8148 e-mail: circulation@itworldcanada.com

Source: Robert Half Technology survey of more than 1,100 technology workers. Conducted in June 2014.

He describes people archiis, it applies these elements to tecture as a workplace model human capital management wherein tech professionals issues such as: job definition; take on broad horizontal roles skills acquisition; compensainstead of siloed positions and tion; professional development; “disconnected jobs” and work/life balance. With this model, standards For IT professional, people “are defined and aligned architecture can result in a within each role” covering isbetter defined career path, sues such as proficiency in the more feedback on how they fit technical, business and soft into the organization and its skills needed to get promoted goals and less confusion about along a chosen career path, job options. said Foote. For employers, people archiPeople architecture is tecture can help boost similar in principle to IT individual and team architecture initiatives in performance and prothat it makes use of road vide more predictability maps, phase-gate blueand consistency in the VIEW COMPLETE prints and performance availability of human REPORT metrics. The difference capital. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

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We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Periodical Fund (CPF) for our publishing activities. CMCA AUDITED

MOBIL E

HP rolls out new business laptop line BY JEFF JEDRAS

usinesses are going mobile, and with its new line of designed-forbusiness mobile devices, HewlettPackard Co. is betting that detachables will be the form factor of choice for the mobile executive. At a recent press event this week in New York City, HP debuted eight new mobile devices that were designed from the ground-up to meet the needs of business users and the security and management needs of the IT department. The flagship offering is HP’s new detachable, the HP Elite x2 1011 G1. It’s a

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11.6” 2-in-1 Windows 8 Pro device that transitions easily from laptop to tablet and is available in an Ultrabook configuration. An ecosystem of optional accessories is available, including a WiGig enterprise wireless dock. It runs Windows 8.1, Pro and is powered by 5th generation Intel Core M processors with optional vPro technology. Memory tops out at 8GB and up to 512GB of storage is available. Security features include TPM and a fingerprint reader. In this video, HP product manager Derek Everet walks us through the tablet/ultrabook hybrid.

MOBIL E

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 BY CHRIS LAU hen Microsoft reported quarterly earnings for its fiscal year, the company said it sold more than $1 billion worth of Surface tablets. That may sound impressive, but at $1000 per Surface Pro 3, sales could be as low as 100,000 units for the quarter. With adoption still very slow, Microsoft views the Surface as one piece of its enterprise software strategy. The software giant’s goal is to grow its productivity and storage solutions on the cloud. Now that the Surface is in its third iteration, is the tablet ready for the enterprise? The Surface 3 Pro is a 12-inch device that Intel’s “Core” line-up powers. Users may choose anywhere from the i3 to the i7. Storage varies from 64GB up to 512GB. The device includes a pen, which Microsoft describes as “delivering a natural writing and drawing experience.” True to its description, the pen works well in OneNote. Drawing pictures and writing notes is a breeze. In some cases, the user must navigate and select using the pen. Still, for the most part, the touch screen supports most gestures.

COMPARED TO NEXUS 7 In some ways, controlling the cursor on the Nexus 7 is easier than the use of the Surface Pen in Office 2010. Office on Nexus 7 is one app that works as a good Office replacement in Android. The app allows for selecting text and highlighting. In Microsoft Office 2010, the pen is required. The Android ecosystem is far superior than Microsoft one – for now. There are simply more options available in Android. Microsoft is also starting to offer its prized Office app on Android and on Apple. Conversely, Microsoft’s surface offers popular apps like Skype, FarmVille 2, Facebook, and Netflix. The Office 2010 applica-

tion works, but the features do not really take full advantage of the tablet. Understandably, Microsoft released Office 2013 and is pushing Office 365. For file storage across devices, OneDrive is available on the Surface. Windows 10 will also replace Windows 8.1 later this year. All of this just means the Surface will get better.

DESKTOP REPLACEMENT There is an optional desktop docking station for the Surface 3 Pro. This adds five more USB ports, a network connection, and a display port. The Type cover is also sold separately. Mounting the Surface on the docking is somewhat clumsy, and it takes a little used to. For example, the tablet’s connection to the docking station requires care: slowly and carefully.

REMOTE DESKTOP Enterprise IT administrators might not appreciate the high resolution of the Surface. The resolution is simply too high when remotely connecting to another computer on the Surface’s Remote Desktop Connection.

TABLET NAVIGATION Navigating in Windows 8.1 is not very intuitive, but the key functions are easily available.

SURFACE PRO ON THE RIGHT TRACK The mobile office worker might get more mileage from the Surface Pro 3, but the average worker might not appreciate the tablet. In the field, the Surface is probably a better choice over a laptop: its crisp screen, 12-inch display, solid build, and cleverly placed keyboard makes mobile use a joy. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015

SH A R K TA LE S

HACK YOUR BAD HABITS WITH BY NESTOR E. ARELLANO

send encouraging messages via Facebook to The Pavlok wearable device doesn’t just the user for accomplishing a goal or shame the keep track of your activity, it literally user with social media comments for sliding jolts you into action and according to its back to old habits. makers helps users kick bad habits. Pavlok initially warns a user with a buzz and Developed by Stanford University alumnus, the user can put the device on snooze mode. Maneesh Sethi, Pavlok gets its name from the But do this three times and the wristband will 17th century Russian physiologist Ivan Pavrespond with an electric shock. lov who is famous for developing a process of The Pavlok Web site says the electric shock behaviour modification which he first experiranges from “pinprick to pretty friggin’ strong.” mented on with dogs. The company claims “nearly everyone changes Pavlok uses reward and punishment to altheir habit by day 4.”There are plans to roll out ter habits or enforce new ones. The system is GPS features so that Pavlok can determine if a comprised of a wrist-worn “shock band” that is user is going to gym or a restaurant. Bluetooth enabled and a mobile app. For now, users need to resort to the honour The user puts on the shock band, decides system for certain scenarios. For example, what habit he or she wants to break a user need to inform Pavlok if he is or reinforce and sets the shock band smoking or biting his nails. to administer a desired electric shock Pavlok also uses peer pressure. The intensity for each time the user comdevice can call the user’s friend and that mits the unwanted act. The mobile app READ MORE friend can order Pavlok, via smart phone connects Pavlok to a phone so it can connection, to give the user a shock. ONLINE 28 I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015