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Posts Tagged ‘Migration’

California’s CTO Responds To Our Challenge With His Own: Give CA Your Best IT Ideas

Editor’s note: In a pair of posts a couple of weeks ago, contributing columnist Vivek Wadhwa highlighted the antiquated nature of the state of California’s IT systems and the way contracts for those systems are doled out to legacy IT firms. He then challenged Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to come up with ways to rebuild California’s IT systems at one tenth the cost. California CTO P.K. Agarwal responds in this guest post with his own challenge: walk the talk and give him your best IT ideas. He’s even set up a crowdsourcing site to gather them.

Vivek, I’m glad to see you are challenging the readers of TechCrunch the same way you challenge the audiences of your speeches.

The debate that has erupted on TechCrunch in response to that challenge is particularly interesting to me because it focuses on a question that my colleagues and I have spent a lot of time trying to find an answer to: What’s the best way to migrate California’s legacy portfolio to new technologies? And there are many other related questions.

Like most governments in the US, California has a significant portfolio of legacy applications. Also like most governments, we are in the midst of converting many of these to newer technologies. Much of this migration work is being done in conjunction with our vendor partners, but we are always looking for more ways to get companies to work with us. Not just because we have an abstract appreciation of innovation, but because competition, between companies and ideas, produces better results for the state and its taxpayers. As a part of that shift, we are finding ways to ease the burden of doing business with the State. For instance, last year we made major strides in streamlining our procurement processes to make IT projects more timely and transparent.

We in Sacramento are not under the delusion that we have a monopoly on good ideas. We would like to channel the energy and enthusiasm of your readers to help us strengthen how we build and deploy IT in the State of California.
So how do we do this? I propose we engage in an online dialogue.

Since a good number of the readers of this blog are technically oriented, let’s “walk the talk” and use a crowdsourcing tool to get a consensus on the popular ideas. Using the link below, I encourage your readers to provide ideas, review and comment on other people’s ideas, and vote ideas up and down. As the tool aggregates our judgments, certain ideas will rise to the top. I would then take the top ranking ideas and further refine them through an interactive dialogue. This would not only be a valuable exercise for California, but hopefully a rewarding activity for your readers.

So please take a look at http://ca_it.ideascale.com and give us your best ideas.

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Week in Apple: Developers leaving iPhone, Psystar screwed

What would a week in Apple be if it didn’t involve some developer drama, Google, and Psystar? That’s all included in this week’s top Apple news, as well as a few major software tidbits and rumors about Apple building more first-party iPhone games. Read on:

Respected developers begin fleeing from App Store platform: Continued issues with the App Store approval process are prompting developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers pumping out over 100,000 iPhone apps, will migration away from iPhone development result in less quality software for the platform? Worse yet, will users even care?

News Flash: Apple already working on Mac OS X 10.7: Believe it or not, Apple has already begun work on the successor to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Well, actually, you should believe it—Apple has probably been working on it since 10.6 was announced.

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Clickfree adds hassle-free migration, other features to C2 backup drive (video)

Quite a lot has happened in the world of Clickfree since it went a little crazy at CES, but we’re pretty jazzed about its latest effort. The predictably titled C2 is little more than a tweaked and refreshed version of the original backup-inclined external hard drive, but the boost in features makes this one worth considering. Available with a built-in USB cable and an even easier backup interface, the C2 can now handle automatic iPod music / playlist imports, direct-to-DVD burning, improved media sharing and a lovely migration feature that makes the arduous process of moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 a lesson in simplicity. The drive will be available in 250GB (C2 227; $139.00), 500GB (C2 527; $199.99) and 350GB sizes, with the latter to be made available in January 2010. So, are you finally done pushing aside the need to back your digital life up? Has Apple’s increasingly lackadaisical software team taught us anything? Bizzare promo video is after the break.

Continue reading Clickfree adds hassle-free migration, other features to C2 backup drive (video)

Filed under: Storage

Clickfree adds hassle-free migration, other features to C2 backup drive (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010

Remember how Intel showed off its new, advanced optical standard — Light Peak — this past week on a Hackintosh? Well it turns out there’s more to that story than you probably know, and it all leads back to some revealing facts about the connection… literally and figuratively. Engadget has learned — thanks to an extremely reliable source — that not only is Apple complicit in the development of Light Peak, but the company actually brought the concept to Intel and asked them to create it. More to the point, the new standard will play a hugely important role in upcoming products from Cupertino.

Continue reading Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Handhelds, Laptops

Exclusive: Apple dictated Light Peak creation to Intel, could begin migration from other standards as early as 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Snow Leopard ships with old version of Flash – great for hackers, not so much for the rest of us

As we’ve seen, most people’s migration to Snow Leopard has been eventful — to say the least. Even if you’ve been spared most of the growing pains, you’ll want to make note of this next item: According to the kids at Adobe, the initial release of Mac OS X 10.6 includes an earlier version of Adobe Flash Player (10.0.23.1), necessitating an upgrade to 10.0.32.18 if you want to take advantage of the enhanced security the latter provides. What’s more, even if your plug-in is up-to-date, an upgrade to Snow Leopard will downgrade your Flash Player version. As Daily Tech points out, Adobe’s products (especially Flash) is a favorite of hackers and malcontents everywhere, so if you’re serious about security you’ll want to get your hands on the update ASAP. And as always, the read link is a terrific place to start.

[Via Daily Tech]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Snow Leopard ships with old version of Flash – great for hackers, not so much for the rest of us originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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