The website for the event indicates that the conference is primarily for three types of AWS users: developers, enterprise IT, and start-ups. Developers can attend “getting started” sessions for a variety of different languages or attend advanced sessions focusing on architecture, monitoring, configuration management, and performance optimization. Enterprise IT can study app migration, APIs, and best practices for cloud security, among other topics. Start-ups can launch their companies in the conference’s “start-up launch theatre” where VCs, analysts, and the press will be in attendance.

AWS has been consistently making announcements and launching new features and services in recent months. Most recently, AWS rolled out its CloudSearch service, the new AWS Marketplace, and a partner network program. Jeff Barr, an AWS “evangelist,” announced the new conference on the AWS blog and stated that AWS re: Invent would not be a “stuffy vendor conference.” From the blog post:

I want to emphasize that this is not going to be one of those stuffy vendor conferences. I don’t want to give away any secrets but you can rest assured that this is something you don’t want to miss.

We are planning to keep you well informed, well fed, entertained, and fully engaged for the duration of the conference. There will be a wealth of opportunities for you to learn more about AWS, forge some connections with the service teams, meet others in the community and see what they are up to. You might need a vacation after this – it is Vegas after all and Vegas (and the Cloud) never sleeps.

What do you think? Are you already booking your flight to Vegas? Don’t think you need any AWS pointers? Couldn’t care less about Amazon’s cloud services? Leave a comment below and let us know.

(via GigaOM)

Comments

“This can include measuring how quickly specific images and/or resources load, how long it takes for your site to respond to specific button clicks, timings for AJAX actions before and after onLoad event, etc. User timings will not alter your pageview count, hence, makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of timings for actions in your site,” explains Google’s Analytics team in a blog post.

“To collect User Timings data, you’ll need to add JavaScript timing code to the interactions you want to track using the new _trackTiming API included in ga.js (version 5.2.6+) for reporting custom timings,” Google adds. “This API allows you to track timings of visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews (like Event Tracking). User timings are defined using a set of Categories, Variables, and optional Labels for better organization. You can create various categories and track several timings for each of these categories. Please refer to the developers guide for more details about the _trackTiming API.”

Users can check the report under the content section, by clicking “User Timings”. From there, you can select “Explorer,” “Performance” or “Map Overlay” for different views.

Google announced the actual Site Speed reports last month, including the Site Speed Overview. Now, you can get even more insight into how your pages are performing.

Google has said flat out that speed is a ranking factor in Google, though Google’s Matt Cutts kind of downplayed how often it really makes a huge difference. So, kind of a mixed message, though from the user experience standpoint, you’ll certainly want your pages performing well. Nobody wants to stick around on a slow site.

Comments

While the news of its mainstream support ending might not be big news to most people, there are still people out there using Windows Vista for something. I’m not sure what they’re using it for, but they must have a good reason as to why they’re not using Windows 7 yet. Regardless, these people need to know what this means.

Mainstream support is essentially Microsoft’s way of keeping an operating system afloat with automatic updates and design fixes all at no charge. This was all free of charge and anybody who used the operating system could take advantage of this. All of this ends with extended support.

The only people who really should be using Vista now are those who need to make specific changes to the code. For those people, you need to buy an extended hotfix agreement which are only available for the next 90 days.

Being on extended support isn’t all bad though. You can still get security updates during this phase of phasing out Vista from the computer landscape. You’ll just have to pay for specific incident fixes if you happen to come across one.

According to the Microsoft Windows lifestyle fact sheet, extended support for Windows Vista will end on April 11, 2017. In a somewhat surprising revelation, Windows XP is still living on extended support with it drying up for the more than a decade old operating system on April 8, 2014.

Looking ahead, Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 7 on January 12, 2015 with extended support ending on January 14, 2020. With the launch of Windows 8 later this year, it only makes sense for Microsoft to have these plans in place for Windows 7.

Going back to Windows Vista, however, let’s look back on the good times we had with the clunky operating system. While it wasn’t the best or the most user friendly, we can all agree that it wasn’t as bad as Windows Me.

Check out a few of the ads for Windows Vista. They should be a reminder that Microsoft got much better at making ads.

Comments

Since Google doesn’t typically directly discuss SEO on their owned search properties, I found this to be interesting. Usually they reference it either indirectly or through things you should do to improve your site experience, see their recent Pagination article.

And since, when Google does say things, they can be a little vague when it comes to practical SEO application, I thought I’d write a few articles and provide a practical explanation.

In my first article of two articles analyzing their post, I’ll discuss the SEO mistakes.

Five Common SEO Mistakes

1. Having no value proposition

What Google says:

Having no value proposition: Try not to assume that a site should rank #1 without knowing why it’s helpful to searchers (and better than the competition)

Practical SEO application:

Failing to understand your value proposition (i.e. what makes you stand out) isn’t just an SEO mistake, it’s a business mistake. Even if you do know your value prop, failing to adequately convey it in your site is an SEO mistake:

• Understand the types of phrases that can be used set your company or website apart from the competition. In the example she gave on a search that looks to be for “bike repair service”, she pointed out phrases in the site descriptions such as ‘best non-profit bike shop’ and ‘free bicycle repair estimate’.
• Using differentiator phrases in your site’s meta description is likely to drive up your site’s click-through ratio (CTR).
• Using differentiator phrases in your site’s content, after a user has clicked on your page from the SERPs (and is expecting that type of relevancy), may even drive up your conversion ratios. This is a circular effect – higher CTR means more traffic, which means potentially more links and exposure, which leads to more popularity and relevancy, which leads to better rankings, which is good.
• A caveat: It’s best from an SEO perspective if your differentiation phrases themselves have search volume as well. This can be found through good keyword research. If you can find differentiation phrases that themselves have search volume you will not have to waste the valuable meta description and content space to include boilerplate ad copy.
• You can create pages targeting these specific differentiation pages to build on the overall topical theme equity for larger head terms. For example, creating pages to target ‘best non-profit bike shop’ and ‘free bicycle repair estimate’ could help drive traffic in and of themselves, along with helping build continued equity so that you rank for “bike repair service” as well.
• If your value proposition keywords have search volume, target them through link building to improve their individual rankings and the longer-term rankings of the larger head terms.

2. Segmented approach

What Google says:

Segmented approach: Be wary of setting SEO-related goals without making sure they’re aligned with your company’s overall objectives and the goals of other departments. For example, in tandem with your work optimizing product pages (and the full user experience once they come to your site), also contribute your expertise to your Marketing team’s upcoming campaign. So if Marketing is launching new videos or a more interactive site, be sure that searchers can find their content, too.

Practical SEO application:

Basically, know what initiatives are going on in your company and get the SEO team involved from the outset to alleviate any potential SEO-related performance issues that may occur later.

Not getting your SEO team involved early and often is an SEO mistake. If you’re launching new initiatives, the SEO team can help you with:

• Any necessary redirects
• Avoid any technical SEO issues: Indexation, Server Errors
• Page-structure issues
• Proper internal linking
• Proper keyword and content targeting
• And a slew of other things as well

3. Time-consuming workarounds

What Google says:

Time-consuming workarounds: Avoid implementing a hack rather than researching new features or best practices that could simplify development (e.g., changing the timestamp on an updated URL so it’s crawled more quickly instead of easily submitting the URL through Fetch as Googlebot).

Practical SEO application:

• Basically, with any website initiative, take the time to do it right from an SEO best practices standpoint as opposed to doing what is easier in the short-term.
• The long-term benefits from doing the right thing cannot be overstated, while continually doing short-sighted hacks can back you into a programming corner and impact some of your future results and decisions.
• Although they may seem quicker in the short-term, programming hacks will likely cause more long-term work and headaches in the future, which is ironic.
• In the video, they discuss the use of rel=”canonical” tag, and how they’ve supplemented that issue with a best practices recommendation of using the rel=”next “ and rel=”prev” for pagination issues.

4. Caught in SEO trends

What Google says:

Caught in SEO trends: Consider spending less time obsessing about the latest “trick” to boost your rankings and instead focus on the fundamental tasks/efforts that will bring lasting visitors.

Practical SEO application:

Being a slave to trends can be an SEO mistake. The key is to understand which trends are likely to stick versus passing fads.

• Trends are trends for a reason, they come and they go. Learn how to recognize a long-term winning SEO strategy versus a short-term trend.
• Remember, while there are some fundamental consistencies that have proven to be long-term winners in SEO, there are many other shabby SEO strategies that worked short-term but added up to long term failure.
• Implementing things that are considered SEO trends could hurt you long term if you’re not careful. What works today, may not work tomorrow (and may come back to punch you in the face).
• Prime example of short-term SEO trends: EZine sites were once considered good ways to build backlinks, but since the Panda algorithm change, these types of sites are no longer considered to be good sources for backlinks as the content is typically of a low quality and value to the readers.
• In the video, they also referred to the keyword density trend that occurred around 2005.

(5) Slow iteration

What Google says:

Slow iteration: Aim to be agile rather than promote an environment where the infrastructure and/or processes make improving your site, or even testing possible improvements, difficult.

Practical SEO application:

Based on my experience, this is actually a more common problem than you would expect, especially within larger corporate infrastructures. Many business have websites that they either can’t update, or the process of updating their site is akin to moving a mountain. Creating an inflexible web present is an SEO mistake for a few reasons:

• Google likes content, so the more new content you can add to your site, the better (as long as it is relevant to searcher needs)
• Google likes fresh content as opposed to old, stale content.
• A good website infrastructure is flexible and agile and allows you to feed Google (and users) what they want, content.

So basically, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Google wants content. Users want content. Google and users want sites that are kept fresh, engaging, and up to date. So give it to them. It’s an SEO mistake not to.

You need to ensure that your site’s infrastructure makes it easier to make changes to your site and to add additional content and features as necessary. Creating an agile infrastructure (maybe using a CMS) should make it easier for your people to make changes, and for your company to adapt to future needs, as well as give you the flexibility from an SEO standpoint to go full steam at the target keywords you wish to conquest.

So that’s it for this post on common SEO mistakes…I’ll be back later this week to discuss Google’s “Good SEO Ideas” in detail.

Comments

CompTIA surveyed over 500 business and IT managers in the United States, seeking to:

• Identify which IT skills are and will be most important to employers
• Determine how well IT staff skills align with current/future needs of employers
• Examine professional development practices

The data from the study found that, not surprisingly, 79% of those surveyed believed technology is either important or very important today as compared to 2010. In contrast, however, only 44% of those are close to where they want to be in regards to the skills of their IT staff. This could be a problem as 88% of them regard cyber security as a mid to high level priority. The skills gap that will be an obstacle has only increased. Over the past 2 years, 42% of the managers believe the gap has increased, with 9% regarding the increase as severe.

Of course, now that we know there is a gap how can we work to close it? First we have to understand what has caused the gap. According to those surveyed, the largest contributing factors are the rapidly changing state of technology(46%) and the lack of resources to develop the lacking IT skills(43%). Of course 10% of them thought IT careers just didn’t attract the best and brightest people. I think we can all agree those were not the IT managers.

So is it time to break out the rainbow wig and dust off the duck? Of course not. We just need to get ahead of the game. We understand that technology advances relentlessly so we must relentlessly advance our IT staff. Over half(56%) of the managers surveyed have no process in place to identify a skills gap and only 15% of the IT managers believed the executive management and HR departments were giving it enough attention. We need to have plans in place to identify these gaps and the resources allotted to appropriately deal with them. If we don’t, we’d better start hoping our customers fall asleep with the TV on so they can hear us shouting.

At his keynote session at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, president and CEO of Symantec, Enrique Salem, coined the phrase.

“There’s an unstoppable force heading this way and it’s hitting us at the moment. It’s a large group of people called digital natives.”

So what is it about this new generation that causes Salem to worry? It’s not a fear of malicious behavior. It’s the knowledge that these people, mostly born in the 1990s, have an understanding of the internet and computers. At face value one would consider this an asset. The problem arises when you consider that, as Salem noted,

“To them there’s no distinction between internet at work and the internet at home. They don’t think about identity and security the way we do.”

Digital Natives have no qualms with getting on Facebook at work, surfing random sites potentially opening themselves and the system up to attack, and collaborating with online communities about work issues, potentially divulging sensitive information. The problem cannot be avoided. In 2009 77% of children used the internet at home and 93% had a home computer. The problem, as Salem points out, must be addressed head on: “We need to lean in and be more aggressive about accepting these changes. The reality is, there’s no fighting it. We need to be ready to protect it.”

Many experts have come out with their opinions, tips and tricks to prepare for what some consider to be the inevitable. In his Article, 10 Strategies To Fight Anonymous DDoS Attacks, Mathew J. Schwartz points out that preparation is key. By planning and securing potential bottlenecks you can ensure that your network will be ready for the onslaught. In addition, though he points out that having a close relationship with your ISP could truly make a difference. You need to know who and how to contact in case of an attack. Ram Mohan, in his article How to Defend Against DDoS Attacks, reiterates the need for preparation:

“A distributed denial of service attack is every business’s worst nightmare. One minute, everything is ticking along as normal. The next, your infrastructure is hit by a tsunami of spurious traffic from across the Internet. Legitimate users find themselves locked out, your ability to do business online grinds to a halt, and there’s not a great deal you can do about it – unless you prepare ahead of time.”

While he agrees with Mr. Schwartz on what he refers to as over-provisioning or “provisioning for far more traffic than you would expect to receive during normal operation.” In addition he suggests utilizing remote monitoring and dumping server logs, in extreme cases.

The fact is, no matter how secure you think you are, you are vulnerable to DDoS attacks. The only aspect you can change is how you react to it. With the appropriate preparation, you could see the rise in traffic, make a call and get the boost required to handle the onslaught with ease. Unprepared, you’ll likely sitting at your desk, impatiently waiting for your server to respond while every employee in the company is calling you to figure out why the site is down. And nobody wants that.

The largest issue faced when attempting a to-Cloud shift is moving from an individual server based system to a scalable multi host system. Of course if scalability isn’t a requirement for you rehosting is your answer. With rehosting you simply change the configuration of the system to point to a new location a migrate your files and databases. Many companies offer this infrastructure as a service like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace Hosting.

But what if scalability is a requirement? You could refactor or revise your system. Refactor is changing only what’s required to get your system to work while revising is implementing more significang changes. The end result is to have the application work on a platform as a service such as Windows Azure or Google’s App Engine. The difficulty of this process depends on the service chosen. Azure runs a very .net compatible environment while Google will require more significant re-writing.

Then, of course, you could completely rebuild the system with the cloud in mind. The best way to do this is the utilize a development platform like VMWare’s WaveMaker or LongJump. This may seem a daunting task but it is truly the way to use the potential of the cloud to the fullest.

]]> http://www.itmanagementnews.com/2012/01/26/moving-your-systems-to-the-cloud/feed/ 0 http://www.itmanagementnews.com/2012/01/13/the-cloud-may-not-have-a-silver-lining-in-business/ http://www.itmanagementnews.com/2012/01/13/the-cloud-may-not-have-a-silver-lining-in-business/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:30:50 +0000 Trevor Boland http://www.itmanagementnews.com/?p=290 IT professionals have always had to grit their teeth and deal with end users’ sometimes unrealistic expectations, but as the cloud rolls in their frustrations may only increase. Employees now have access to fantastic technologies in their private lives and they expect these technologies to be made available to them professionally. Vanson Bourne polled 520 CIOs (in a survery available here)from around the world to better understand how they felt about the impending issue. 77% of respondants feel that this trend of BYOT (bring your own tech) will lead to great business risks as employees will attempt to utilize their private technologies without IT involvment and the information security they provide, a trend that 64% of polled CIOs say is already occuring.

Knowledge of the system in which they are working is an IT professional’s Excalibur when it comes to dealing with issues more persistant than the Black Knight but cloud computing and the lack of transparacy from third party providers effectively disarms them. SaaS (Software as a Service) and social media applications are effectively blocking IT proffessionals from supporting their services by refusing to provide SLA (Service Level Agreements) to the business to formally draw the line between the IT department’s and the third partie’s responsiblities.

The cloud has the potential to be a business powerhouse, allowing users to work from anywhere but companies and employees need to give the transition and the associated trust over to the IT professionals they currently employ. If not, this cloud may just end up being a harbinger of stormy weather for businesses.

One thing is very clear: although the labor itself may be cheaper that it would be wherever your company is, the process of outsourcing is not cheap. If you are planning on shipping out some jobs, you need to be aware of this or risk losing a lot more money than you expected at the beginning. According to an article on cioinsight.com, some of the common hidden costs of outsourcing include currency value, organization, communication, and others. It is simply a huge task to orchestrate the operations of  an outside set of workers, and according to Hank Zupnick, CIO of GE Real Estate “You can’t expect day-one or even month-six gains…You have to look at offshore outsourcing as a long-term investment with long-term payback.”

Not only do you have to think about whether it is a good move for you company based on direct costs, but also whether your customers are ok with your decision. Many people seem to have problems with the idea of outsourcing, as they may think that these jobs are being taken away from worthy workers at home. As another article states, “If you go down this road, make sure that your customers are given the same or better service and that all cultural differences are accounted for,” or face to possibility of vicious backlash from some of your more traditional customers. The moral of this story is just to take everything into account when considering a move like this.Everybody in the business world knows that outsourcing can be a very touchy subject, so I just want to go over some of the issues that make it so controversial.

The only real reason any company every chooses to outsource jobs, especially jobs that can be sent abroad, is money. Its a simple fact that workers in the countries we typically outsource to are not quite as demanding as American workers, even though they may be equally qualified. This may seem like a fantastic idea on the surface, there are many things to think about before deciding to outsource certain jobs or tasks elsewhere.

One thing is very clear: although the labor itself may be cheaper that it would be wherever your company is, the process of outsourcing is not cheap. If you are planning on shipping out some jobs, you need to be aware of this or risk losing a lot more money than you expected at the beginning. According to an article on cioinsight.com, some of the common hidden costs of outsourcing include currency value, organization, communication, and others. It is simply a huge task to orchestrate the operations of  an outside set of workers, and according to Hank Zupnick, CIO of GE Real Estate “You can’t expect day-one or even month-six gains…You have to look at offshore outsourcing as a long-term investment with long-term payback.”

Not only do you have to think about whether it is a good move for you company based on direct costs, but also whether your customers are ok with your decision. Many people seem to have problems with the idea of outsourcing, as they may think that these jobs are being taken away from worthy workers at home. As another article states, “If you go down this road, make sure that your customers are given the same or better service and that all cultural differences are accounted for,” or face to possibility of vicious backlash from some of your more traditional customers. The moral of this story is just to take everything into account when considering a move like this.