The KIT ─ Knowledge & Information Technology
No. 138 - 16 Feb 2015
Was this forwarded to you?
In This Issue
Data Residency Survey
Bertrand Meyer on Agile Methods
Business Architect Certification
¿Hablas tú Java?
Seen Recently
Claude Baudoin

Consulting Services
  • IT Strategy
  • Enterprise Architecture Roadmap 
  • Business Process Modeling & Analysis 
  • Enterprise Software Selection 
  • IT Innovation Briefings
  • IT Due Diligence
  • Executive IT Seminars
  • Cloud Computing
  • Security Maturity
  • Software Process 
  • Knowledge Strategy
  • Technical Communities
  • Knowledge Capture
  • Taxonomy development 
  • Enterprise Social Media 
Contact Us:
c�b� IT and Knowledge Management
info@cebe-itkm.com

+1 281 460 3595
Twitter: @cbaudoin
Forward this issue to colleagues and friends: use the "forward email" link below at left, rather than "Forward" in your email software, to preserve your privacy, give the recipient more options (their own unsubscribe link, etc.) and to give us better click-through data. Thanks!

Data Residency Survey     

NuoDB Inc., provider of a cloud-based database management system, launched a survey about data residency in collaboration with the Object Management Group "to assess the degree of concern among OMG members and to determine if there is interest in launching an OMG Data Residency working group."

Data residency refers to knowledge of the location where data is stored, something that a business usually controls when it runs its own storage infrastructure, but may lose when it outsources its IT operations or uses a cloud-based solution. The issue has come up in cloud service agreements: will the cloud provider commit to location restrictions in order to meet certain laws and regulations? A business that operates a private cloud (or has simply embarked on a data center consolidation roadmap) with an international footprint may also be facing this issue, even if it does not use a public cloud provider.

We will report the survey results and any next steps in a future issue. Meanwhile, we encourage you to click on the above link and fill the short survey.

Agile Methods: The Good, the Hype and the Ugly       

The ACM is hosting this webinar by Prof. Bertrand Meyer, the inventor of the Eiffel language, author of many books, ACM Fellow and chair of the Software Engineering department at the prestigious ETH university in Zurich, in just a couple of days: Wed., February 18, at 1 p.m. Eastern US time (1800 GMT).

The webinar is based on the ideas contained in Meyer's latest book, which exposes some of the excesses of the proponents as well as the opponents of Agile, and the adopters of "Agile in name only" -- managers who think that having a daily 15-minute stand-up meeting or giving someone the title of "scrummaster" automatically makes them agile; or that Agile means that you don't have to develop an architecture, follow a software process, or create documentation.

Expect Meyer to "take no prisoners" during his talk. You may hear some brutally honest opinions, and this should be a fascinating hour.
Business Architect Certification
The Business Architecture Guild has unveiled its Certified Business Architect™ (CBA) program. The exam will be administered at any of the thousands of worldwide exam centers run by Pearson VUE (which also conducts the UML and BPMN certifications developed by the Object Management Group).

The exam will consist of 150 questions drawn from the Business Book of Knowledge (BIZBOK™), the compilation of best practices created by the Guild for use by its registered members. The certification will be good for three years and can be maintained by following a continuing education program.

The Guild is currently offering a beta version of the exam for free in order to collect the statistical feedback needed to ensure the highest quality and effectiveness of the final version's questions.
�Hablas t� Java?
Legislation has been proposed in two U.S. states, Kentucky and Washington, to count high school education in computer science as meeting the "foreign language requirement" for admission to university. This sounds rather ridiculous, even to a computer professional: do they seriously think that learning C# or Python replaces learning Spanish or Mandarin?

Some proponents of the legislation actually make the good point that they want to push foreign language learning to earlier years, when it should be easier anyway, and they want to initiate the teaching of programming skills before students reach college. But it's easy to see how this intent could be ignored, and a technology-obsessed society would just push adolescents to program at the expense of learning about other cultures through language.
Seen Recently...

""If we don't do everything we can to protect privacy, we risk more than money. We risk our way of life."

-- Apple CEO Tim Cook at the Feb. 14 Cyber Summit