Author: J

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Danish banks build private cloud

In Danish.

Samtlige danske banker, bortset fra giganterne Danske Bank og Nordea, får nu samme cloud-platform til it-drift. Det bliver JN Data, som skal drive bankskyen.

Det dur ikke for en dansk bank at sende it-driften til Amazons sky – selvom det ville kunne spare mange penge.

I stedet har stort set alle danske banker nu valgt at gå sammen om en fælles cloud-tjeneste, der kan fungere på samme måde, men hvor bankerne altid ved præcist, hvor deres data befinder sig i verden.

Alle andre banker end Nordea og Danske Bank – som begge har IBM som driftsleverandør – får nu en samlet sky, en såkaldt private shared cloud. Det skriver Nyhedsbrevet Finans, som udgives af fagforeningen Finansforbundet.

Dermed kan bankerne få stordriftsfordele og fleksibilitet i skyen, men altså i et lukket miljø, der kun er for danske banker.

»Vi opnår store besparelser og stor sikkerhed via et partnerskab. Det er en anden måde at have cloud computing på, og det betyder også, at behovet for at gå i en public cloud er langt mindre,« udtaler Nykredits it-direktør Lars Mathiesen til Nyhedsbrevet Finans.

Source: Jesper Kildebogaard @ Version2

This is going to be very interesting in the times to come. It will be very exciting so see how this cloud will fit into the existing infrastructure. I think this will open up some new possibilities that are not there now.

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Food for thought

Der er ingen tvivl om denne amerikanske families kærlighed til Danmark.

I deres lejlighed i Ørestad med udsigt til en af Københavns mest berømmede nye arkitektoniske perler lige overfor – det cirkelrunde Tietgenkollegium – er der PH-lamper flere steder, børnemøbler af den danske arkitekt Hans Wegner og Arne Jacobsens 7’er spisebordsstol.

De to højtuddannede udlændinge Joe Kiniry og Genevieve Fu har deres egen lille andel i Københavns igangværende befolkningsboom, som betyder, at hovedstadskommunen hver dag vokser med 30 personer.

Eller 1.000 om måneden. Og som vil føre til, at byen om bare 15 år er vokset med en femtedel.

Som Politiken fortalte forleden, er netop amerikanerne den nationalitet, der for tiden bidrager mest til den vækst.

Faktisk består en tredjedel af Københavns menneskevokseværk af immigranter, hvor også polakker, tyskere, svenskere, indere og briter i høj grad bidrager til væksten.

Flytning på trods af kærlighed til København
Politiken satte sig for at finde ud af, hvorfor en amerikansk familie overhovedet finder på at bosætte sig her.

Det amerikanske par siger det selv, endda i munden på hinanden:

»Vi kunne ikke være lykkeligere noget andet sted i verden«.

Og de ved, hvad de taler om, for de flyttede for tre år siden til Danmark fra Irland, hvor de mødte hinanden, og Joe har før boet i Frankrig, Holland og Italien, Genevieve i Frankrig og England.

Alligevel er der risiko for, at Joe Kiniry og Genevieve Fu – han professor på Danmarks Tekniske Universitet i Lyngby og på IT Universitetet i København, hun uddannet arkitekt – om et år forlader Danmark.

Source: Kim Faber & Flemming Christiansen @ Politiken

As part of an American-Danish family I know this situation all too well. I think we are doing it all wrong here in Denmark.

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New features for Windows Phone 7.8

I just stumbled on a list of new features, which will be released with Windows Phone 7.8. The list contains features from Microsoft as well as Nokia, meaning that only Nokia owners will get the subset of features. Personally, I am pretty interested in this, since I bought a Nokia Lumia 800 a few months back, and will not upgrade right away.

 

Please note that this list has not been confirmed.

 From Microsoft:

  • New homescreen experience with more room for your Live Tiles. Now resizable
  • Set the Bing image of the day as Lock Screen wallpaper
  • Pocket and child proof Lock Screen security
  • 20 new account theme colors

 

From Nokia

  • Bluetooth Share
  • Cinemagraph add-on to create a blend of photo and movie-like animation, creating photos that are alive
  • New camera lenses to remove moving unwanted objects in your photos such as passers-by or people on the edge of the shot that spoil the photo
  • Updated Contacts Transfer application
  • Updated Contact Share application
  • Ringtone Maker application

I think this is a pretty solid update, however, I am sure that we will hear some of the usual tech pundits complain about this to no end.

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Will retail stores in Europe help Microsoft?

Word around the campfire is that MIcrosoft might open retail stores in Europe some time next year. I have absolutely no doubt about the lack of stores in Denmark, but one can hope.

I for one would welcome our new American overlords, mainly because the retail experience in the MIcrosoft/PC side of things is really really bad here in Denmark. At least the Apple guys have a couple of fairly good alternatives to the Apple store. Unfortuantely for those of us, who have did not drink the cool aid, we have to make do with the hell that is Fona, Elgiganten etc. I think a better retail experience would give the PC world a boost in terms of building some much needed brand equity.

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Is Nokia about to make a comeback?

Everybody loves a comeback, well some people love a comeback anyway. After I bought myself a Nokia Lumia 800, after I put my HTC Radar in the washing machine, I have been following news about the Finnish phone maker. The last couple of years have been rough on Nokia, and having worked with some former Nokia guys, I have heard a lot of stories about what has happened there.

It seems like the first Lumias did ok, but not so well to restore Nokia to its once mighty status as king of phone makers. Although they seemed to do ok, it never really became a turnaround for Nokia.

Today, I stumbled across a blog post from WMPoweruser.com who had an interesting bit of news concerning the Nokia stock.

“… found Goldman Sachs has increased their stake in Nokia from 61 million shares to 116 million over the last quarter, an increase of nearly 90%.

Barclays increased their stake by 115%, while Credit Suisse added 94% to their holdings.

Morgan Stanley made the biggest jump, increasing their stake by 400% to 32 million shares.

Overall in the quarter, 112 institutions increased their Nokia shares by 128 million shares, whereas 163 institutions decreased their Nokia shares by 77 million shares. In net, the institutional ownership of Nokia increased to 17%.

The company has a had a recent massive run up on news of early sales success of their new flagship, the Nokia Lumia 920, and is today trading in Europe at EUR 2.56, up nearly 82% from their July low of around 1.404 Euro.”

Source WMPoweruser

Personally, I am rooting for Nokia. I think it is pretty cool to have a northern European company that is mingling with big boys like Apple and Samsung. I also hope Windows Phone 8 will take off as a viable third operating system, so we the consumers, won’t have to live with the yoke of a duopoly. So, as Black Friday is about to start in the US, here’s to Nokia making a successful comeback.

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Revisiting BPM

Back in the “good old days” I started looking into BPM, or more precisely the BPM notion. They way we intended to use it on that particular product was, to apply a universal way of modeling processes across department, teams and continents. Said in a different way, we wanted to make sure that everybody drew things in the same manner. Of course, this is pretty standard, however, our organization was not only a result of an acquisition, but also an organization that had a lot of sub contractors, both foreign and domestic.

The plan was a actually fairly simple; to train people in the use of BPMN 2.2 and upgrade their Visio installation and then basically make BPM diagrams a mandatory part of any specification, user story etc. True to form, these were never implemented, despite the fairly big investment in BPMN, and since nobody really had the time, mandate or ownership it seemed like the project fell between two chairs and died quietly.

Now the scene has changed, at least for me personally. In my new organization we are also working on implementing BMP, but in a much larger scale. Not only do we use the notion as a normal part of our every day work, we are actually going to implement the processes underneath, in order to manage our work flow. Pretty cool stuff actually. We are still pretty early in the process, but I am looking forward to getting my hands on Jdeveloper to see what we can actually do with this thing. Until that day comes, I have signed up with our good friends at Orbus to the stencils I need to get this show on the road. Hopefully I will get around to writing more about implementing BPM as our project progresses.

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New methods

I have been in my new job for over a month now, and I a better grasp of the development methodologies. Obviously, I keep comparing the methods to how we did at my old job, since the differences are quite explicit. Whereas before I was submerged in a SCRUM world, I am now working in a team that applies a waterfall model for development.

In all honesty, the beginnings were a little difficult to getting used to. For many years I have been moving at break neck speed with a release every two to three weeks. On top of that there were the ever present bug fixes and panic solutions that characterize that particular organization. This is not meant as a negative critique of anything or anybody since I thoroughly enjoyed most of it. However, the stark contrast between the two methods does merit a comment.

The waterfall approach is without a doubt more cumbersome than the agile approach – that goes without saying. However, I am starting to appreciate the actual analytics that go before actual coding starts. Unlike before, it seems that there is time to identify problems and intricacies a priori as opposed to dealing with them a posteriori. I am pretty excited to see if this actually makes a difference when we start the coding, but I have high hopes that the development phase will be a lot more controlled than what we were able to do when I was apart of an agile team.

One could argue that the comparison in this is invalid, since the agile team made commercial software, and the waterfall team makes software for internal use, which basically changes the premises for the whole reason for developing a piece of software. However, I believe it is pretty valuable to experience both sides of the fence in order to ascertain which parts are useful, and which parts are not.

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New job, new systems

I started my new job this monday, and although I have only been here for a week, I thought a small blog post was in order.

Basically, I have changed industries. Whereas I used to make software for a software company, I know make software for a financial institution, or market maker as they would call it at the Stock Exchange.

Granted, I have not been here so long that I can write a comprehensive post about the suttle differences between the two industries, but I am quickly forming an opinion. Simply put, the world of finance is much more structured the the world of IT as I have experienced it so far. Of course, I came from an SMB and moved to an enterpise sized organization, but the attitudes are very different.

The finance guys seem much more focused on planning and analyzing, whereas the IT guys guys seem focused on execution. At Evenex we were able to think up something in the morning, and start developing in the afternoon. It’s a gross exaggeration but you get the idea. In the finance industry, so far at least, the emphasis on project models and methodologies are pervasive and very important to the development.

It is way too early for me to form an absolut opinion on which I prefer, but so far I am really liking the fact that I have the time to perform the necesary analyses before we start to actually code.