Top IT stories this week: Cops on XP, Microsoft on DevOps and too few techies on the Internet of Things
The top seven tech stories from the past seven days - read all about it
Here are our most-read stories from the past week, in case you missed them first time around.
When the Oxford Dictionary reveals words that broke through into the mainstream (one of last year's was "selfie") "DevOps" will surely be among them. Well maybe not, but certainly it is getting hard to avoid. Our man in San Francisco, Peter Gothard, has been finding out just what the term means to Microsoft developers.
6. Research: What do users want from the hybrid cloud?
As cloud computing becomes the norm and hybrid the most common enterprise model, the demands for customisation will inevitably increase, so what are the needs of organisations and how can cloud providers move to meet them? We asked the Computing readership about integration, compliance and payment models and you can see the results here.
5. Microsoft may love Linux now, but can Hadoop vendors ever kiss and make up?
All over the planet vendors large and small are "co-opeting" with blithe abandon - think OpenStack, Cloud Foundry, OpenID. Microsoft is even on speaking terms with Linux these days. But in Hadoop world they seem to have lost that loving feeling, with Pivotal's and Hortonworks' ODP initiative being given the cold shoulder by Cloudera and MapR.
4. Setting its sights on digital: an interview with Specsavers global CIO Phil Pavitt
Phil Pavitt, formerly CIO at HMRC, tells Sooraj Shah about the differences between working in the public and private sectors.
"The biggest thing about our projects that face the customer, is that you start them on a sheet of paper or a whiteboard and the next thing you know, they are live in store and you see them being used," he says.
3. 'The last thing the government wants is to work with SMEs...'
The government has made a big play of its G-Cloud procurement framework, but is it really helping to shake up the supplier landscape? Views are mixed.
Neil Everatt, MD of Software Europe, said that despite it being a lot easier to get noticed government procurement teams are still hard to deal with.
"We haven't seen a lot of changes there. The awareness of G-Cloud within government departments is still low. This means a lot of departments are still issuing tenders that, for even small projects, can cost [SMEs] thousands," he said.
2. Cisco warns over shortfall of 'Internet of Things' techies
Talking of next big things (e.g. DevOps), they don't come much bigger than the IoT. Trouble is, there aren't enough techies around who understand it. According to Steve Steinhilber of Cisco:
"One of the big gaps we see in the next three to five years is a tremendous shortfall in skills. You have people coming from the operational technology space and people coming from the IT space so you need training on how these worlds are going to merge. For Cisco, just in the industrial [vertical market], we see a shortage of 300,000 people with the right skills across the globe."
1. Met Police still using Windows XP on over 35,000 of its desktops and laptops
Everyone and her dog must surely know by now that Windows XP is a security risk. So, you would have thought that the Metropolitan Police, of all people, would have ensured they upgraded before Microsoft stopped its general support. Not so.
"The Met Police has an active upgrade programme to move users onto the latest released Windows 8.1 operating system. However, since Windows XP support will still be required, the MPS has requested a direct option with Microsoft to continue a custom support agreement for Windows XP for the next 12 months. This is currently being negotiated directly with Microsoft," a Met spokesperson told Computing.
Never mind. They'll be proud to know that theirs is our most-read story this week.