In a recent post, I spent a few minutes with Windows 8 and Office 2013 using a Dell Latitude ST -- and in my excitement over the launch of a new Microsoft tablet, I purchased a Microsoft Surface running Windows 8 RT hoping to see how it performs in an...
Software Development & Release Management
How To Ease Your Agile Development Transition with Custom Dashboards and User Interfaces
At this year's Electric Cloud Summit there was big focus on Agile software development practices. Even a casual look at Electric Cloud's product line, which includes ElectricAccelerator, ElectricCommander, and most recently ElectricDeploy, will make it obvious that...
How to Ramp Up Your New Product Development While Servicing Your Existing Customers
To succeed in any market, a company needs to innovate, pioneer and push out the borders. The recent one-year anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs reminds of one of the tech industries greatest comeback stories. Apple's key to success, other than the charisma of Jobs...
Understanding Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration (CI) is a software development methodology that uses small and frequent incremental changes to the code base, which are incorporated into a rapid build and test environment. Each change integrated into the source repository is verified by the...
Does your Outsourcing Company Have the Right Experience?
Outsourcing IT, technical and engineering related tasks, rather than employing extra staff, is a cost effective way of staying flexible in an ever changing market and economy. However, one big question that needs to be answered is; does your outsourcing company have...
Confluence upgrading to 4.0 from 3.8
Recently, we upgraded Confluence to 4.0, the latest revision and was pleasantly surprised by the process. The upgrade was seamless, well documented, and no major issues found. Upgrading confluence would have been really simple if we wanted to retain the same server....
Improve your build, test and deployment with ElectricCommander
Repeatability is a intuitive aspect of daily life. If you throw a ball up, it must come down. If you throw it twenty times, the same thing will happen, up and then down. When repeatability doesn't occur we get anxious. Repeatability is equally an essential quality in...
ElectricCommander Custom Dashboards: How to Visualize Your Build Data
Whenever I get a chance to see any kind of motor racing I am amazed at how many displays the engineers use to watch and monitor all the data coming from the cars. Modern performance racing cars produce a lot of data about the engine, tires, fuel consumption,...
Macs in a Corporate IT Environment
Macs running OS X have been around for quite some time, but only recently have they gained enough traction with our customers at SPK to be used as their day to day desktop environment. Historically, IT organizations have been reluctant to embrace this change. This...
Seven Attitude Hacks for Better IT Service
Attitudes are important things -- they are the lens through which we filter everything life throws at us, and they can either be the secret to our success or our undoing. We've all heard the stereotype that says IT professionals have bad attitudes, and maybe your own...
Why an Automated Development Process Benefits Developers
Automated development, rather than just automated builds, offers a more holistic approach to automating the development process including building, testing and deployment. It is the cornerstone of Continuous Integration (CI). CI uses a model of small incremental...
How to Create a Silent Installer for ANSYS 14
I'm a huge fan of automation, especially when it comes to installing software. With a simple one-click solution, you can setup software on a user's workstation with little or no impact on your work load. In fact, you don't even need to do the installation -- users can...