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Security has the potential to be a huge barrier, but it depends on the industry, the organisation and the workload. Security is very much an issue for big banks, around certain workloads which are involved with customer’s personal details and transaction

James Bach defines exploratory testing as “simultaneous learning, test design and test execution.”

It is highly recommended to automate regression tests. As the number of completed sprints increases, code gets added incrementally and testing everything manually becomes an impossible task.

​Hello today I am writing a small article on the huge subject of high availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) and why you should consider them to provide highly available IT services and minimise downtime for your users.

Acceptance tests in agile projects are used to verify if the acceptance criteria of the story has been met.

So, just what is Big Data? In a recent article on its Enterprise website, Microsoft states that “Big data is the term increasingly used to describe the process of applying serious computing power – the latest in machine learning...

I can’t overstate how important unit/integration testing is. Your definition of “Done” should clearly mention this, and the development part of the story cannot be said to be complete unless it is unit tested.

Today (April 19th 2013) I passed the combined Level 1 and Level 2 certification exam OG0-093 on Togaf Enterprise Architecture after many weeks of reading and preparing for it. I thought I would write this in an attempt to point people in the right direc..

​Do you practice pair testing? Pair testing has many similar benefits as pair programming. In Exploratory testing in pairs, authors Cem Kaner and James Bach, they have described the benefits of using Pair Testing.

It tends to be the smaller players who are leading the way, the tier 2 and 3 firms, which don’t have the legacy technology systems in place that the larger players do.

Code Review should be mandatory for every piece of work as it is much cheaper than having customers find bugs in production.

​Economics fall under social sciences. Aren’t they extensive and scientifically justified enough to comprise a distinct science scheme? They sure are! Then what is the reason? Either Micro or Macro-economic fields are structured on humans as individuals..

Big Data is probably the most talked about buzz word in the industry today at the time of writing this blog (April 2013). And funnily enough anyone who is someone in the industry has an opinion about it. Well why not! Everyone has a right to express...

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a Software Development Process where the developer writes a test first, runs the test to see if it fails and then writes a piece of code to make the test pass. In ‘Agile Coaching’ by Rachel Davies and Liz Sedley, they...

A distinction needs to be made between private and public cloud computing. Most financial services firms have had, for some time, a degree of private cloud capacity and some of the larger...

Large financial institutions around the world are being fined for failures on the money laundering front.

Scrum does not mandate how the product backlog is defined, but most of the agile teams prefer user stories.

Within Financial Institutions (FI) the trading book portfolio de-leverage resulted in reduced headcount. FIs have now become one of the weakest industry groups in terms of retaining and attracting talent. However over the past couple of years...

There are many reasons why agile teams should have dedicated test environments. In fact it is applicable to both waterfall and agile teams.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers highlighted a major failure on the part of the firm around client money and assets protection. When the firm became insolvent, it was unable to trace and return the money and assets belonging to clients in a timely manner.

Data Modelling is the process of exploring and understanding the data elements of an IT system, grouping data attributes into logical entities with relationships and designing the resulting physical database that will be implemented. Like most things...

Build deployment is repetitive, so it is good to automate this activity. An automated build process including a sanity test suite gives immediate feedback on the stability of the build and saves time.

​There are many things to check BEFORE implementing an Enterprise or even a medium scale SQL Server based infrastructure. Below are some key points to consider before deploying SQL Server in a production environment to help prevent a whole lot of pain...

​In the world of 01001110011 (IT) and the concept of Big Data, its exploitation, methods, techniques and technologies are becoming more popular than ever. The reason is that never before has there been such abundant information provided willingly by...

Test Planning is similar to any other planning activity. To explain this, let me tell you the story of Sam who is planning to build a house in India...

Requirements in traditional projects or stories (acceptance criteria) in agile projects define what is desired by the customer. If they are not clear, teams get confused and the right products do not get built. Building a product without knowing the...

A traceability matrix is a tool used by software organisations to validate if business requirements have been appropriately designed, coded and tested correctly. It is not necessary to restrict it only to functional requirements. A traceability matrix...

Retail companies, now more than ever, need to do everything they can to control costs, maximise productivity and maintain high levels of customer service. Office 365 frees up resource to concentrate on running the business, allowing a focus on specific...

Psychology of Testing plays an important role in identifying potential defects in a product or project. Psychology of testing is like Law of attraction which says “like attracts like”...

Testing should ideally start at the beginning. What this means is, the involvement of the testers and test planning should start as early as possible. The reason for this is testers then fully understand the system that they are going to test...

By definition, "Software Testing is the process of executing an application with the intent of finding defects in it". But Software Testings contribution is broader than its original definition. An experienced tester not only finds defects but also adds..

In consumer industries, the term ‘consumer’ comes with the obvious default interpretation; quite simply, someone who will ultimately ‘buy’ something from you. So, when we think about social media tools and platforms and their usefulness to consumer...

In this article we install SCVMM with SP1 (Beta version used here) on a clean Windows 2012 server. Note that with SP1 the Self Service Portal has been removed...

The prospect of deploying a private cloud within your organisation can be daunting. And many of us have considered this as something unapproachable and sometimes best left alone. But the truth of the matter is very different. Gone are the days when a...

The last early morning of the week, a quick continental breakfast and we are on the move again. I don’t feel as tired today after a civilised evening in Innsbruck sampling the local fare. The old part of Innsbruck is very quaint and slightly medieval...

Crikey, to say I was tired when I struggled to get up to turn my alarm off is an understatement. It didn't matter as I had no time to snooze; I had the Grossglockner Pass to get to. A quick shower followed by a light breakfast and we fuelled the car...

Alarm goes off this morning and I regret staying in the bar until 1am, although I instantly smile as I remember some of the many jokes that I heard last night. I text my fiancé a few before pulling back the duvet and preparing for a mammoth day of...

Yesterday evening we were in Monte Carlo harbour with all our cars taking centre stage on the main drag attracting quite a crowd, the array of cars, from Ford GT40s, Lotus, several TVR's, multiple Jaguars through to old Triumph TR6 and everything...

Another 6am start, breakfast and briefing and then on the road to Millau Viaduct. It is a very impressive structure and you will recognise it! It is the tallest bridge in the world with one mast's summit at 343.0 metres (1,125 ft). TopGear have used...

Awake at 6am, quick breakfast and then onto Thiepval to see the World War 1 memorial and the Battle of the Somme. It is very moving to see the names of over 83,000 men who lost their lives on or around this ridge – and that’s just the British Army...

Wake at 5:40am to get an early start to the Top Gear test track at Dunsfold Aerodrome. I must say the car looks fantastic with the big bold Microsoft Office 365 logo on the bonnet. The orange stripe makes the car look race ready...

Now that the much anticipated Microsoft Windows 8 operating system has finally arrived I thought that it would be good to share the installation process and my views. I am genuinely impressed by the ease/speed and simplicity of the process. We will have..

Shopping has always been a social experience, whether it is on the high street or online, and part of the experience is telling your friends about your latest purchase or the great discount code you have just found. Now with social media, sharing this...

Microsoft have redesigned or “reimagined” Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Both code bases have now been completed and the products are ready for RTM (Release to Manufacture). Microsoft have put a LOT of effort and emphasis on cloud and virtualization..

In April 2012 Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online became the first CRM service provider to register with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Security, Trust & Assurance Registry program confirming the high level of transparency Microsoft have around their cloud..

It is now extremely easy to take a look at what customers think about a company before you go ahead and buy, and for large and important purchases, spending time researching is an important part of the buying process. I know I never book a holiday...

Everyone wants to watch sports, shows and movies based on their own schedules and convenience. But which channel do you pick to watch these on? At the moment it all comes down to who has the metadata. Surprisingly it’s not Google or Yahoo! this is...

In my previous post “Windows Azure Service Bus Topic & Subscription – Part-1”, we were trying address the weather data publishing requirements using Service Bus messaging mechanism. In this post we will implement the design and explore various aspects...

In my previous post: “Overview to Service Bus Messaging” , I spoke about the types of Service Bus messaging. One of the types of messaging which I wanted to discuss in more details is Service Bus Topic & Subscriptions. I was wondering how to explain...

In just over a month, the opening ceremony for the London Olympic Games will be taking place. The excitement surrounding the games is huge, the preparation has been phenomenal and the games look set to be a great achievement for the UK. But how will the..

To achieve this and satisfy Solvency II's requirements on data transparency, companies must revisit all their systems and manual processes...

As you all probably know Solvency II is a new set of regulatory requirements for insurers that operate anywhere in the European Union. Solvency II regulations demand that risk management controls be embedded throughout the insurer’s entire organisation t

The last five years have seen the emergence of 3 of the world’s biggest internet brands - LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter - and observe them revolutionise the way people communicate, interact and share information instantly across the globe. The impact...

One of the key features of the Azure AppFabric Service Bus is to provide an internet scaled platform for reliable messaging and data exchange. Azure AppFabric Service Bus has mainly two types of messaging relay messaging and brokered messaging...

We do a lot of work helping organisations to outline and execute a successful vision for corporate communications and collaboration. And in many cases, the value can be expressed in three very simple terms – vision, communication and transparency...

According to the Microsoft Developer Network Platform (MSDN) definition, "The Windows Azure Traffic Manager allows you to control the distribution of user traffic to Windows Azure hosted services. The hosted services can be running in the same data...

What I would like to share with you in this blog series are some of the common themes and challenges that we are hearing from our customers and what they perceive to be the cost of failing to address these issues...

One of the key challenges of IT department and operations is to provide business continuity for the business applications. Business continuity is the way an organisation prepares for and aids in disaster recovery. It is an arrangement agreed upon in...

There has been a great deal of media coverage recently reporting that more than one million TV sets in the UK are at risk of going blank when the London digital switchover begins today. Faced with this seismic shift in the broadcast landscape, one...

In conversation with people in the industry, I have realised that most think of Windows Azure merely as a cloud based hosting provider. They probably forget one of the key features which makes the Windows Azure proposition stand out from other Platform...

Sustainable banking is in the background. Every business will be able to take advantage of the big data opportunity but in the experience of Business Intelligence (BI) and data management it’s those who concentrate on choosing the right data sets that...

In the Investment Banking Sector there is a regulation backdrop of Basel 3, Dodd-Frank and regional variations, all of which are taking shape and will be in place by 2019 so that we don’t suffer the same crises of recent years...

As we near the end of the first quarter in 2012 there are signs that the economy may be improving. Stock markets in the USA and here in the UK have had their best starts to a year for quite some time. This is encouraging, as it suggests a return to...

With so much data being produced and published by every individual, every day in every enterprise and across the globe, our growing consumption of data from both inside and outside, and an increase in the ability to capture and use data in real-time by...

The causes, impacts and benefits of the new world of work differ across groups and roles in business. In this blog we look at the impact on Business Users...

At IMGROUP, we are always talking about the ‘New World of Work’. We have started using this phrase because we recognise that Cloud Computing is a game-changing technology which reflects the new reality of our working and private lives. As you are...

At IMGROUP Online Services we believe that Cloud Computing offers part of the answer organisations are looking for in tackling the ‘do more with less’ conundrum. Cloud is the new benchmark, for cost of ownership, user experience, and productivity...

Hands up how many of us use video communication, such as Skype, in our personal lives? I’m sure we’ve all done it – calling Grandma in Australia and wishing her happy birthday, or catching up with a friend who is now working abroad…

At IMGROUP Online we believe that Cloud Computing offers part of the answer organisations are looking for in tackling the ‘do more with less’ conundrum. Cloud is the new benchmark, for cost of ownership, user experience, and productivity...

UK consumers of insurance are extremely savvy and with aggregators and intermediaries alike promising quotes in 60 seconds they demand quick and accurate quotes from insurers in just a few seconds...

Use this guide to compact the growing VHD files you might be working with. The problem with virtual hard drives is that they grow when data is added but they do not shrink when data is removed. To reclaim valuable disk space required by VHD files we...

According to the latest research from Gartner 10% of external IT services spending is going on cloud computing. The worldwide study suggests that suppliers need to have strong cloud strategies as organisations are increasingly moving away from...

The office as we know it is in danger of becoming extinct, according to a new report by Vodaphone. Cancelled meetings, endless commuting and the enormous expense of renting desk space idle for 16 hours a day have long been wasteful practices. Less rigid..

Information technology departments are coming under greater pressure than ever to reduce infrastructure costs, manage capital expenditures and consolidate operations. At the same time IT managers are expected to provide higher and more sophisticated...