Super yacht Adastra: a $42.5m Power Trimaran

Described by Boat International as “one of the world’s most amazing super yachts, that could spell the future for efficient long range cruising”, the striking 42.5m Trimaran Adastra is currently under construction at McConaghy Boats in China. This one-off trimaran designed by John Shuttleworth is being built for Hong Kong clients Anto and Elaine Marden for the small fee of $42,500,000.  A real bargain!

"Adastra" is the result of more than 5 years of design and discussion with the owners, to build a yacht that meets the needs of a very experienced ocean voyaging couple and their family, and to provide the level of comfort and style that would be expected in a yacht of this class and size. No effort has been spared in the challenge to produce a beautiful yacht that will have low fuel consumption and yet provide excellent sea keeping qualities and luxurious accommodation.

John Shuttleworth, the inventor

Owners: Elaine Marden and her husband Anthony

Super yacht Adastra by John Shuttleworth

Iberian Peninsula at Night

The city lights of Spain and Portugal define the Iberian Peninsula in this photograph from the International Space Station (ISS). Several large metropolitan areas are visible, marked by their relatively large and brightly lit areas, including the capital cities of Madrid, Spain—located near the center of the peninsula’s interior—and Lisbon, Portugal—located along the southwestern coastline. The ancient city of Seville, visible to the north of the Strait of Gibraltar, is one of the largest cities in Spain. The astronaut view is looking toward the east, and is part of a time-lapse series of images.

The network of smaller cities and towns along the coastline and in the interior attest to the extent of the human presence on the Iberian landscape. The blurring of city lights is caused by thin cloud cover (image left and center), while cloud tops are dimly illuminated by moonlight. Though obscured, the lights of France are visible near the horizon line on the upper left, while the lights of northern Africa are more clearly discernable at right. The faint gold and green line of airglow—caused by ultraviolet radiation exciting the gas molecules in the upper atmosphere—parallels the horizon (or Earth limb).

The Iberian Peninsula is the southwestern-most of the European peninsulas (together with the Italian and Balkan peninsulas), and includes the Principality of Andorra, as well as the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic. The approximately 590,000 square kilometer landmass is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest, west, and southwest and the Mediterranean Sea to the east. Its northeastern boundary is marked by the Pyrenees mountain range.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

New Technology - Cloud Communicator tablet by NEC

Dual screen NEC tablet goes official (LT-W Android Cloud Communicator) using
the open-platform Android.
It can be operated by fingers or using the provided pen stylus.
It includes cloud computing technology.

More info here

OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) vs ODM (Original Design Manufacturer)

An original equipment manufacturer, or OEM, manufactures products or components that are purchased by a company and retailed under that purchasing company's brand name. OEM refers to the company that originally manufactured the product. When referring to automotive parts, OEM designates a replacement part made by the manufacturer of the original part. In this usage, OEM means "original equipment from manufacturer".


On the other hand, an original design manufacturer (ODM) is a company which designs and manufactures a product which is specified and eventually branded by another firm for sale. Such companies allow the brand firm to produce (either as a supplement or solely) without having to engage in the organization or running of a factory. ODMs have grown in size in recent years and many are now sufficient in size to handle production for multiple clients, often providing a large portion of overall production. A primary attribute of this business model is that the ODM owns and/or designs in-house the products that are branded by the buying firm. This is in contrast to a contract manufacturer (CM).

Cloud Computing Strategic Direction Paper by Australian Governement

The Department of Finance and Deregulation, through the Australian Government Information Management Office, has consulted with government agencies, industry and the public to develop an Australian Government Cloud Computing Strategic Direction paper to explore the opportunities and impacts of cloud computing.

According to the paper, some agencies have already commenced small pilots and proofs of concept to evaluate the potential of application, platform and infrastructure cloud computing.

• Australian Taxation Office (ATO)

• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

• Treasury / ATO

• Department of Immigration and Citizenship (IMMI)

Additional information here

What is the difference between Architecture and Design in ICT?

Architecture is the software components that a software needs to have, based on the specifications, to perform as required. 
Design is the construction of the software components, and may be Logical Design which is the source coding of the components, and may be Physical Design which is the organization adaptation of the Logical Design into a functioning software.

Cybercrime Security Forum November 1, 2011

“I believe we must aspire to a future of cyber space which is not stifled by government control or censorship, but where innovation and competition flourish and investment and enterprise are rewarded” William Hague told the conference. Willian Hague is the British Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State.

“We know this is not a view shared by all countries but states will find it harder and harder to try to restrict their citizens’ demands for the freedom to express their ideas” he added.

Installing Eclipse on Mac OS X 64 bit (COCOA)

Go to http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ to download a copy of eclipse.

The download will go to your Downloads folder. You will normally have an icon for the Downloads folder on the right-hand side of the dock. Find eclipse-java-indigo-SR1-macosx-cocoa-x86_64-1.tar.gz. in your Downloads folder, and drag it to the Desktop. Then double-click it. You will see a folder named "eclipse."

Drag the "eclipse" folder into your Applications folder. The easiest way to do so is to open a new window in the Finder and click on Applications in the list you get on the left-hand side. Then drag the "eclipse" folder in with the other applications. Make sure that you do not drag it into a folder that's already within Applications. In other words, when you're done, the Applications folder should have directly within it a folder named "eclipse."

You have now installed Eclipse on your beautiful MAC! So simple as that using MAC!

The iEnterprise by Jose Ferreiro

Virtualization, cloud computing, and wireless technology are fundamentally changing enterprise computing, providing revolutionary gains in productivity and cost savings. Powerful enterprise applications can now be delivered to almost any device, anywhere, at any time and take advantage of tremendous computing power available in consumer devices, such as smartphones (Android, iPhone, Samsung, Galaxy, Sony, Blackberry, etc) and tablets (iPad, Motorola Xoom, Blackberry PlayBook, HP TouchPad, GalaxyTab, etc). Regardless of whether these devices are issued corporately or personally owned, almost every IT department is experiencing the effects of unprecedented smart device adoption in their enterprise.

MAC backup using a single command line

Performing Backups in MAC without using TIMEMACHINE is a kids game.
Whad to you need?
- External hard drive or even a USB pen drive (for the most important information) In addition, you may even think to encrypt your backups by using the free TrueCrypt software.
- Use the rsync command, which stands for remote sync. rsync utility is used to synchronize the files and directories from one location to another in an effective way. rsync is shipped with the MAC unix kernel. Just perform the following command on the terminal
$ rsync options source destination 
$ rsync -avz --delete /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Users/ferreiro/Documents/data /Volumes/JF-MAC/MAC-Backup/data
The options used are:
-a   Archive mode. Preserve timestamps, users, permissions, etc
-v   Verbose mode
-z    Enable compression
--delete option deletes files that are not there in source directory (keep perfect match between source and destination)

#1 challenges of IT: IT ignorance, staying with an open mind, IT as a cost center ?

Multiple directions:
 - "IT ignorance" I do not want to say always, because it is not true, but often the people that would like to improve IT do not know what they talking about (e.g. virtualization, cloud computing.)
- "Stay with an open mind" do not stop to look new technology or better do not stop to put passion on your work. Do not see where you are or where you have arrived but always where do you want to go?
 - Sometimes IT is becoming HR. I find the CFO reporting relationship to be a red herring. In fact, an extremely effective CIO I met reported to the CFO. Part of her effectiveness was that the CFO lent financial rigor to her initiatives, and made them an easier "sell" to the CEO.  If IT acts like a "cost center", it will be treated like such. It is extremely rare to see a CIO who is unfairly "oppressed" by their CFO; usually they are treated like a "cost center" since they don't know anything about their business, and are constantly pitching technology "solutions" rather than solving business problems.

Gartner SYMPOSIUM ITxpo 2011 - Barcelona, Spain

The World's Most Important Gathering of CIOs and Senior IT Executives
7 - 10 November 2011 | Barcelona, Spain

Agenda

Keyspeakers

e-Customs Services in Border Crossing Facilitation

View more presentations from José Ferreiro

e-Customs Services in Border Crossing Facilitation

View more presentations from José Ferreiro

Cloud Computing - Why and How? (by Forrester Research, Inc.)

An overview of why and how the cloud will impact the future according to Forrester Research, Inc.

View more presentations from José Ferreiro.

Security Lock Down Your Computer Like the National Security Agency (NSA)

 

NSA has developed and distributed configuration guidance for operating systems. These guides are currently being used throughout the government and by numerous entities as a security baseline for their systems.

View more documents from José Ferreiro.

IT professionals need to become business leaders first and technologists second

Execution plays a vital role in IT. I also feel that CIO should align the IT resources with the organization business strategies and priorities which will build a stronger and more agile IT workforce. The ultimate result will be services that are more efficient, transparent and responsive to the organization. 

What is the role of the CIO/IT Director?

The role of the CIO/IT Director is to act as the business owner for IT, ensuring that whatever competitive advantage or operational efficiency that might exist, is identified, prioritised and implemented. With the increasing emergence of ubiquitous technology, the danger is that for IT leaders who fail to grasp the challenge, they will be usurped by their colleagues in finance who albeit mistakenly believe good IT is easy and who will then take those decisions unilaterally, leading to poor IT decisions. In my opinion, it is the age old argument between "IT and the business", it is a misnomer. You do not hear "Sales and the business" or "Finance and the business", IT leaders need to wise up and realise they ARE the business and take ownership, be business leaders first and technologists second, just like their boardroom colleagues are in their respective disciplines.
Unless you can achieve this, then you are the biggest threat to the long term health of IT in your business.

CMS - MojoPortal

I just investigated today by the request of one of my friends a Content Management System (CMS) easy of use, and above all, something that has an easy back-end for non technical users. I came out with MojoPortal because it has a great community, very active support, easy to write custom features for, and lots of great OOTB (out of the box :-) ) features. Custom skinning is easy, and it is very end-user-friendly.

Going to the cloud - jose ferreiro

Going to the Cloud

View more presentations at José Ferreiro's wall

Understanding the differences between public and private cloud computing

The future may yield a broader range of clouds, each providing different sets of assets and catering to more demanding user requirements. At the same time, it is important to remember that neither public nor private clouds will handle every computing need. Traditional data centers will continue well into the future—even as the clouds move in.

Read more

MoSCoW Prioritisation method

MoSCoW is a prioritisation technique used in business analysis and software development to reach a common understanding with stakeholders on the importance they place on the delivery of each requirement - also known as MoSCoW prioritisation or MoSCoW analysis.

The capital letters in MoSCoW stand for:
M - MUST have this.
S - SHOULD have this if at all possible.
C - COULD have this if it does not affect anything else.
W - WON'T have this time but WOULD like in the future. Alternatively WANT.

The o's in MoSCoW are added simply to make the word pronounceable, and are often left lower case to indicate that they don't stand for anything. While some suggest it should be MuSCoW (to more accurately reflect the words behind the acronym), MoSCoW is preferred as it is more easily remembered as the capital city of the Russian Federation.

READ MORE...

Should CIO report to CFO?

Increasingly I've noticed that CFO are taking over the overall control of IT department & making the CIO report into the CFO. I guess the thought process is that in this competitive market CFO wants to keep a control on IT budget and make sure every penny is spent wisely. However I wonder if every IT initiative can be looked at keeping short time benefits in mind, does the financial background of CFO enables them to look at bigger picture or long term goal? I strongly believe few large IT initiative cannot be always looked at from the profit & loss point of view rather long term returns, business benefits and efficiency. Sometimes its good and bad to roll IT into CFO organization however it largely depends on the business model and objective where an organization want to go.

An Open, Interoperable Cloud

This article describes how interoperable clouds can be created, today, through the integration of open standards such as the Open Cloud Compute Interface, the Open Virtualisation Format and CDMI. They provide the means to package virtual infrastructure deployments, an API for the runtime management of storage infrastructure and an API for the runtime management of infrastructure as service.

(Article)

EU Data Protection Directive and cloud backup

Tonight I was just investigating some "cloud backup storage solution (encryption included if possible)". I also discovered about the EU Data Protection Directive, that some cloud providers use as a marketing benefit for the final user.

What is it?

The European Union (EU) has a European directive restricting the use of a cloud backup in certain circumstances, the EU Data Protection Directive(EUDPD). The EUDPD defines some basic requirements on the protection of personal data of European citizens.

In practice the EUDPD prohibits many organisation to send any personal data to countries outside the European Union.

Sample company that I found zmanda.com (see logo at the bottom on the right border)

On clusters, the SQL Server Browser listens on which port?

Answer: IP_ANY

Explanation: In a cluster, the browser listens on the IP_ANY port, since this is not a cluster aware service.

Ref: SQL Server Browser Service - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181087.aspx

ABV - Architecture Business Value

Enterprise architects can add tremendous value to their organization's selection of a packaged application solution by analyzing each candidate's Architectural Business Value (ABV). Forrester Research's Randy Heffner explains how.
Read more here

Will Google+ dethrone Facebook ?

The announcement of the social network Google+ to dethrone Facebook captivated the world. Yet the service is no longer accepting any new tester until further notice, a victim of its success ALREADY.
Service here.

My google+ profile

Three features that separate "the cloud" from hosting

There are three features that separate "the cloud" from previous notions of outsourced hosting or managed services:
- Multi-tenancy: You contract for a service, not a physical server. Your application may share hardware and other resources with other customers without any impact on the service level you receive.
- Elasticity: You can configure new services in minutes. The providers have large enough scale to be ready with excess capacity, and have created management panels that allow for self-service provisioning.
- Location independence: Your services can be moved quickly to other data centers in order to provide increased capacity, uptime, and/or disaster assurance. The "cloud" is a whole new paradigm made possible by advances in virtual server management.

Distributed software services to the cloud without breaking a sweat

Distributed software services to the cloud without breaking a sweat

View more presentations from José Ferreiro.

-Beautiful Latin America by Night -

Beautiful Latin America by Night (Maravillosa Latinoamérica de noche)

View more presentations from José Ferreiro

- Beginning Android Development -

Beginning Android Development

View more presentations from José Ferreiro.

Fusion: Enterprise architecture has to build bridges between and integrate

Enterprise architecture (EA) has to build bridges between and integrate each of at least six architectures:
1. Value Architecture - strategies, targets, KPI-models
2. Business Architecture - governance, operational and support domains; Core value chains, business processes, workflows, business rules, products, etc.
3. Organizational Architecture - management models, organizational design, job descriptions, individual performance models
4. Information Architecture - data, information, knowledge requirements, etc.
5. Spatial Architecture - where things are located, location of assets, activities
6. Technology Architecture - enabling it all

Most EA approaches are insufficient in their integration, connectivity and fusion of these architectures to function in a seamless and optimal way.

FUSION

IBM DS 4800 SAN ARCHITECTURE

Last week, I was delighted to see 3 racks containing a built-in SAN architecture based on IBM DS 4800. This is a scalable and high-performance storage for on demand computing environments.
It was connected into a datacenter with a 10 Gbps Fibre Channel interface technology. Every green light in the picture below represents a storage disk, which is valuable more than 1000 US$.

Therefore count the amount of green lights and you will have an approximate costs of this rack storage architecture.

Is the cloud computing a technology?

Many people share a common mistake. The cloud is not a technology but a procurement model. Given an application, infrastructure component, service, or whatever, there is always the option to host it in your internal data center or put it in the cloud in someone else's data center. The underlying technology need not change.

It's just a marketing moniker in most cases, the cloud for most is the SaaS model aka ASP aka managed services... you get the picture.

The kind of cloud technologies that architects should be excited about are things like Platform As A Service (PaaS), http://cloudfoundry.org/ , http://www.openstack.org/ or http://www.heroku.com/

Add scalable data stores and things get interesting http://cassandra.apache.org/ and http://hadoop.apache.org/

New infrastructure for IT will include some form of cloud in it

It is inevitable that new infrastructure for IT will include some form of cloud in it. The cloud has been around for over 20 years so why move to it now? Because of timing and companies like Salesforce/NetApp, Google, and Amazon who placed the right business model behind the technology and brought it mainstream while other big names like IBM, Microsoft, EMC, etc… play catch up. Here are some interesting numbers associated with a move to the cloud.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/cloud-computing-market-241-billion-in-2020/47702

Reasons not to move now are security and proprietary platforms which will evolve over time. The key is to plan your IT infrastructure strategically in stages and demand cloud vendors build compatible data formats so your data is easily transferable between platforms and legacy systems. When you can walk away from a vendor and pick up where you left off with another vendor you have the upper hand.

http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/sizing_cloud/q/id/58161/t/2

Le changement

"Comme tout changement doit commencer quelque part. C'est l'individu isolé qui en aura l'intuition et le réalisera. Ce changement ne peut germer que dans l'individu, et çe peu être dans n'importe lequel d'entre nous"

Carl Gustave Yung

EA - Zachman or TOGAF?

Enterprise Architecture - Which methodology do you find most effective for long term strategy, Zachman or TOGAF?



Depends upon whether the organisation is new to the concept of enterprise architecture or not. For organisations with little experience I believe TOGAF provides a more comprehensive set of guidelines which can help get things on the road. I do believe however that TOGAF lacks the level of detail to continue this within it's enterprise continuum, which is where Zachman comes into his own.

The Definition of Cloud Computing (Draft) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued two new draft documents on cloud computing for public comment, including the first set of guidelines for managing security and privacy issues in cloud computing. The agency also has set up a new NIST Cloud Computing Collaboration site on the Web to enable two-way communication among the cloud community and NIST cloud research working groups.

More info here

Extract all text from a PowerPoint presentation for translation purposes

Within the framework of my work I have been asked to translated a powerpoint presentation as I am the only native person speaking the 'target' language.

However, at my biggest surprise I got not text but a powerpoint presentation!!!!
The presentation had full of boxes with text up and down....
I could not imagine a single moment to edit the translation and copy and paste every box
I needed all this text into another format ideally text format for further manipulation and usage of a translator engine to further speed the work.

It should be definitely another way to perform this task.

SOLUTION:

The simpliest way I found is to
Open your powerpoint, save it as a pdf, then open the pdf file with Acrobat Reader and save the file as TXT [Save As Type to Text (Plain) (*.txt).]

Hope this trick helps someone!

Have a great day.

As an IT Architect how do you measure success (II)?

In respect to what KPI your organization follows or not, The simplest way for IT architect (matters any Architect) to measure his/her success is:

1) Develop your growth plan for short term and long term, what and where you want to be.
2) Knowledge Acquisition in changing business demands.
3) Build a design or solutions were all business elements (People process and Technology) are met and bridge all the gaps.
4) Achieve excellency in your work to gain buy-in for all your plans and designs.
5) Request Testimonial/Recommendations for your work (efforts are useless if you're not appreciated).

If you are done with above, you are on TOP success list, rest will follow :)

Rich Internet Applications Using Flex, Salesforce.com and Google App Engine

Very interesting reading here

As an IT Architect how do you measure success (I)?

In my opinion the success is measured by:

Was the solution implemented?
Did it provide the expected results?
and finally, Is the solution flexible enough to withstand change?

I mention the last one because IT is built on top of change. Any IT Architect (of any vertical) must incorporate the change aspect on its solutions. Please do not reduce the support for change just to the upgrades and additions to the solution. The end-of-life, disposal and deployment of new solutions also counts as change.

Proverbes du jour

• Il faut bonne mémoire après qu'on a menti. (Pierre Corneille)

• On respecte un homme qui se respecte lui-même. (Honoré de Balzac)

• Je ne pense jamais au futur, il vient assez tôt. (Albert Einstein)

Is the "Cloud Computing" a new concept?

Right, in the 1960s John McCarthy thought that Cloud computing would be a public utility and published about it in 1961. You can read about his career in nascent "Cloud computing" here

Telling the difference between cloud and smoke

I'd like to point you to a nice blog article that has a technical checklist for a service to be called 'cloud-based' Read more here

Another article here (amazon has its problems as well, so do your homework first)

EA What is it?

Enterprise architecture is an integrated combination of Business Strategy + Business Architecture + Business Culture + Technology Architecture.
The “fundamental conflict among the so-called experts” is not about the contents of EA, if anything, it is about the relative significance and contribution of each aspect. Pro vs. Anti IT is about relative significance and contribution of IT (or business strategy, business architecture, etc.) at a particular point in time.

The ‘how to do it’ question is entirely different and is concerned with frameworks, methodologies, techniques, training, etc. There are “coherent, rational, theoretically and empirically sound EA methodologies”.

Rebuild a Jeep under 4 minutes

Earth Hour observed at UN Headquarters (25th March 2011 )

Earth Hour observed at UN Headquarters in New York on Saturday, 25th March 2011 | Picture Credit: Bo Li

UNECE - We drive by the rules poster - Road safety Campaign

Jose Ferreiro at United Nations, we drive by the rules campaign

UNECE member States’ ambassadors reaffirm commitment to road safety by signing “We drive by the rules” poster

Read more...

Road Safety Campaign: “We drive by the rules” poster - United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)

Ambassadors and Heads of national delegations attending UNECE’s 64th commission session reaffirmed today their commitment to road safety by signing the poster “We drive by the rules”.

This initiative represents a symbolic, personal commitment to the objectives of the Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 64/255 and the importance of road safety in the UNECE region and worldwide.

Read more ...

United Nations, it's your world - Jose Ferreiro

We the peoples...
A stronger UN for a better world.

See more at United Nations website.