by Peter Bregman  |   9:00 AM May 10, 2013

A recent early morning hike in Malibu, California, led me to a beach, where I sat on a rock and watched surfers. I marveled at these courageous men and women who woke before dawn, endured freezing water, paddled through barreling waves, and even risked shark attacks, all for the sake of, maybe, catching an epic ride.

Our client is a profitable e-commerce software company located in the greater Boston area. They are doubling the size or their engineering team to build all new applications. This is a great time to join. They are looking for a coding Software Architect with .Net or Java for our client, who can take a soup to nuts broad view on all new software applications as well as dealing with the bits and bytes. Technology is SOA, external facing API platforms, .Net or Java and OOD. If you know anyone, please let us know

Job Description:

Required: Minimum BS in Computer Science .prefer Master degree (If Electrical Engineering or Computer Information Technology or other related degree but with no Computer Science formal training – would not be preferred)

Must have:

Parallel File Systems, File Systems.

-Strong Linux

-Some experience with one or more of the following: Lustre, Stornet, iSCSI, SAS, Infiniband, FC, FCoE, and/or 1GigE/10GigE networking concepts.

-HPC, or storage experience is a plus.

Developers see benefits to both approaches, as well as to hybrid applications that mix the two. Some application builders are using dev tools like Appcelerator Titanium, which compiles Web-based mechanisms like JavaScript to native code. Web-based, or HTML5, development provides a quick way to get some applications to multiple devices, developers say. But native development, such as with Objective-C for Apple iOS and Java for Google’s Android devices, offers access to the full breadth of a particular device’s capabilities, which is often worth the cost of having to develop the code (though not the underlying logic) independently for separate platforms.

The native experience is second to none
“The Web and HTML5 have come a long way, but they have not gotten to the native experience — the UI, the multitouch, what users expect from an application — yet,” says Jesse Newcomer, mobile development manager at Homes.com.

Freelance developer Ketan Majmudar finds problems with the offline nature of mobile Web applications compared to native applications — applications either have to talk to an online Web service to pull down data or need a data store bundled with them. “HTML5 as a technology is not mature enough yet. It’s nearly there, but there’s a lot of hoops you have to jump though,” such as with data downloading, he says. Native applications, meanwhile, can have data stored in a bundle when an app is downloaded. “The majority of your data is in place.”

“Native development will never go away. Objective-C developers will always be required,” Majmudar says. Adds developer Paul Nelson, a systems engineer and Web developer at logistics services company Morgan Supply on Demand: “I notice speed and the ability to control memory more when you do native.” He says Facebook made a “huge mistake” in creating an HTML5 application for iOS (an effort that did not succeed). “They have the money and the resources to make a native app.”

Plus, native development sometimes is just necessary to access certain features, such as the Siri voice-command capability in iOS, says Jonnie Spratley, director of product design at mobile experience provider AppMatrix. “There will always be a need just because of certain features,” Spratley says.

HTML5 and hybrid approaches take hold
Although developers concur on the strengths of native development, they can’t overlook the easy option of Web development or hybrid development. “It’s a spectrum — not a binary — choice,” says Kyle Simpson, a JavaScript architect at Getify Solutions. “The spectrum of how much native you embrace versus how much Web you embrace is very different, depending on the company.”

Read the full article here.

As technology increasingly intertwines with business operations, IT professionals can no longer rely on deep technical knowledge to progress their careers, but will have to understand how to translate IT into dollars, according to Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) CIO Michael Harte.

Harte was speaking at the Australian Computer Society’s Young IT conference in Sydney.

With IT becoming an integral part of driving innovation and progress in almost every sector, Harte said that the role of the IT professional has changed significantly in recent years. He shared what qualities he looks for when hiring IT staff at CBA.

“Deep technical skills are helpful, but not necessary,” Harte said. “What is necessary is an energy to be creative, to be inquisitive, to continue to be dissatisfied with the status quo, a readiness to get stuck in, and to deliver value.”

“For ideas are worth nothing, unless there is a plan to execute and create value.”

IT departments have traditionally operated as enclaves in a business, with IT staff rarely venturing beyond their role of caring for the core tech needs of businesses and workers. But IT workers need to think more broadly about how IT can work for their businesses, Harte said, and CIOs have the responsibility to see this happen.

“As a CIO, you’re an adviser to the CEO to help them understand IT, and the architecture of IT as the embodiment of the business model,” he said. “The architecture you have within the business entity should be the information, the applications, and infrastructural support for the business.”

IT professionals in a corporation should have an understanding of what the business wants to achieve and think of how technology implementations can support those goals, according to Harte.

“Because, that’s what informs the investments that go to sustaining the business model,” he said.

While the world braces for more IT spending cuts as the economic climate worsens, Harte touted the importance for companies to invest in IT to differentiate themselves against their competitors.

“Taking long-term bets in big infrastructure, such as core IT systems, is what creates competitive advantage and delivers value, not just in the corporation, but to every single customer that does business with you,” he said. “If that costs one, two, or three million dollars, it doesn’t matter, because trillions might be made back through the life of a new platform.”

October marks National Cyber Security Awareness Month—an national effort to promote protecting our digital lives.  According to StaySafeOnline.org, “Tens of thousands of NCSAM participants across the country will be doing their part by posting safety and security tips on social networks, educating their customers and employees, engaging in traditional media, displaying posters, posting tips, holding events, and much more.”

Although IT Professionals primarily focus on securing personal data and avoiding data breaches within companies, NCSA aims to raise cyber security literacy among all users. In fact, this year’s NCSA theme is “our shared responsibility”.

StaySafeOnline.org notes, “No individual, business, or government entity is solely responsible for securing the Internet. Everyone has a role in securing their part of cyberspace, including the devices and networks they use. Individual actions have a collective impact and when we use the Internet safely we make it more secure for everyone. If each of us does our part—implementing stronger security practices, raising comm

Since I reported last week (briefly) on cloud computing, the cloud computing has been all over the news. Professionals and commentators alike dispute the significance of the cloud model, as well as data security issues. CRN’s Jack McCarthy found that many professionals believe cloud software is still developing and are skeptical of its power. See Mcarthy’s 10 Issues Eroding Cloud Confidence for a list of reasons professionals lack confidence.

Despite these concerns, one study found that 44% of IT professionals say they will be moving to cloud computing within the next year. Yahoo Finance summarizes the report’s findings:

Qumu, www.qumu.com, the leading business video platform provider and a Rimage company (RIMG), today announced the results of their 2012 IT in the Cloud Assessment Project. In a survey of over 700 IT professionals conducted online by Toluna, the world’s leading independent online panel and survey technology provider, in August, Qumu found that 44.4% of them will be moving applications to the cloud within the next 12 months, with up to 33.4% saying that this will include up to half of their applications.

54.5% of respondents touted the benefits of making the move to cloud-based applications. When asked what benefits they thought were most important, surprisingly, more than 30% of IT professionals said better security. This result indicates that companies are becoming more comfortable with the quality of security in cloud based apps. After security, other benefits identified are:

• Cost savings once deployed – 26.9%
• Better mobility support – 25.9%
• Time saved not having to update infrastructure – 22%
• Quick deployment – 18.5%
• Better for the environment – 12.6%
• Elasticity to scale up or down as needed – 11%
• Outsourced system support and maintenance – 10.9%

Even as IT professionals report they are planning to move applications to the cloud, many organizations already have. The survey found that fully 44.9% of IT professionals are already running some applications in the cloud. The top applications include email (25.9%), storage (24%) and document management (13.9%). Other applications include project management (11%), CRM (10.3%), marketing automation (6.8%), video communication (10.3%) and employee portals (11.3%).

Enterprises are adopting collaborative cloud-based solutions to enable their people to be more connected and productive. For many companies, video communications have become an integrated part of the corporate culture. 55% of respondents site benefits of using a secure YouTube-like service for enterprise video sharing. According to the survey, the biggest benefits that IT professionals see from using such services include:

• Increased access to training videos – 26.1%
• Gives employees a “voice” to share ideas – 24.3%
• Increased access to subject matter experts knowledge – 23.6%
• Better employee collaboration – 22.5%
• Improved organization and search of company video assets – 20.6%

Additionally, the survey found surprising differences between large enterprises and small to medium sized businesses. In all cases, large enterprises were more favorable to cloud-based solutions than SMBs:

• Running current applications in the cloud (51% vs. 42.4%)
• Seeing benefits in migrating applications to the cloud (59.5% vs. 52.5%)
• Seeing benefits of using a secure enterprise video-sharing service (63.3% vs. 47.3%)

“The results showing that large enterprises are more inclined to Cloud applications is somewhat surprising. Some may expect large companies to be concerned with Cloud security,” said Ray Hood, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Qumu. “We believe that larger companies have more history with IT outsourcing and see the Cloud as the logical next step.”

You can read the entire article and find links to related content on Yahoo Finance’s website.