Will IT Departments be useless in future?

When I first see the article from Peter Hinssen [1], I said once again that, this article supports my idea of new era in the IT management. The article [1] emphasize that CIO (Chief Information Officers) in most organizations are not performing their role as dealing with information. They rather deal with technology as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). IT departments stuck in their roles as technology supplier of mobile devices, laptops and windows. Many CIO limit themselves to supply employees with the laptops of MS windows, MS offices, Blackberries, I-phones, email and file sharing platforms with full technical support. Those technical support is sometimes reflected as "Satisfying of internal customers" by IT people and, even placed in the performance targets of those employees.


Very few are dealing with information. Those technology oriented so-called CIO are difficultly find a seat at the executive management tables. So they report more powerful executives such as CFO.

Recently we see rise of a new breed of CDO (Chief Digital Officer) This is the next generation of IT lead.

Gartner predicts that by 2015, as much as 25% of all organizations will have a Chief Digital Officer (CDO) in their executive staff[2]. CDO will help organizations in driving the growth. They will expand the digital strategies of the organizations using web, mobile, social and local innovations [3]. Briefly CDO will not carry out technology but will carry out technology enabled innovation.They will be responsible of implementing "digital business strategy".This is not comparable what CIO is doing today.

Enabling technologies such as cloud computing will shape up this transformation in the organizations. Presumably, Cloud providers will offer and run the necessary technologies for any organization. Cloud provider's focus is to run the show in the following interest;

• Application or Software as a Service (SaaS) 
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

The leftover to CDO is to shape up the future of the company with the correct digital strategy for growth and efficiency.

This will let the organizations to meet their customers in virtual world. It is clear that CDO profiles will be difficult to find. That is the challenge for the digital acumen and leaders to shape up the figure to meet the requirements of role and then to shape up the digital strategy of the organizations for growth.

For further details:
1- IT Departments Have Become Completely Useless
2- Chief Digital Officer' is the next hot executive title
3- The Rise of the Chief Digital Officer

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Should I move to cloud computing?

Cloud computing has been extremely popular for couple of years. IT vendors started to promote "cloud computing" among decision makers of pioneer enterprises. Simple question of "Should I go for Cloud Computing?" is always in the minds. Some of the trailing questions such as "which service?", "How to select vendor?", "Planning", etc comes furthermore.

How do people perceive Cloud Computing?
Simply mobile device users know about cloud computing as "Ability to remotely access files, and various software applications" All can be run without using any local storage but with the internet.

Before Cloud Computing
Actually Cloud Computing applications did exist much before it got recognized. Web based or Intranet based applications, Citrix, Vmware, Google Docs were existed for quite sometime. We used to name them either with their brand names or with generic names. "Cloud Computing" has been re-naming for them all in total.

The Cloud Services
Cloud computing can refer several different types of services such as;

• Application or Software as a Service (SaaS) 
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Most common and significant advantages can be listed as "Cost saving" and "Reducing Complexity"
The cloud reduces IT costs by shifting these costs to the enterprise's cloud service provider. It also enables to set up new technologies faster than if you had to buy and deploy the equipment yourself. As the result of 2012 in USA, Cloud Computing has reached the following numbers and facts:

• Cloud is changing software. SaaS has been the mostly used service. 
• 55% of CIOs increased spending on SaaS in 2012.
• SaaS spending growth is 6 times of other software services.
• First three big cloud drives have been as Scalability, Business agility and cost respectively.
• 67% of the respondent have already deployed SaaS, while 14% have a plan on deploying SaaS within 12 months and only 19% have no plans to implement SaaS in USA. 
• On the developer side, 84% of the new software will be SaaS.
• 75% of building software with PaaS by 2017.
• Cloud makes IT manageability less complex. It was 39%less complex in 2011 and 53% less complex in 2012. Complexity decreases with cloud computing. 
• Cloud lowers Total Cost of Ownership too. TCO was 57% in 2011 and was 53% in 2012.
• Finally Gartner says Worldwide Cloud Service market to surpass $ 109 Billion in 2012.

Special care must be taken for the following issues before start to cloud computing.

• Secure access to the cloud.
• Regulatory compliance
• Privacy of your enterprise data or your customer's data. Find a way to safeguard the data in the cloud.
• Let the cloud enable the third party auditors to access or audit the place and data. Consider supporting security standards such as ISO 27002.
• Clarify end of data life cycle. Some industries require that data to be destroyed including the hard drives during a decommissioning.
• Interoperability may come up as a problem for some times later or during set up.
• Network bandwidth might be a problem too. Cloud provider's servers will be accessed by user with a limited bandwidth. It can not be as fast as accessing to a server in your LAN.
• Vendor Lock-In or Vendor dependencies might be a problem too as it is in the outsourcing domain.
• Regulations for some industries such as health, finance, Insurance, government, must be met in the cloud plan.
• There may be sensitive information in some applications such as Education, IT Infrastructure, Banking and Finance, Customer services, call centers, Retail, Pharmaceutical and Insurance. 

Cloud Computing issue must be considered together with the issues of outsourcing. Same benefits and same problems are available in both domains. Both services shows analogy. For the small organizations and personal use, lots of benefits are available in the cloud. But for those industries and applications stated above must be taken care in terms of sensitive information. It seems that cloud computing as enabling technology, is going to change the way of doing business in IT departments of the organizations in short to medium period of time.

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Liderlere sektör tecrübesi gerekir mi?

İşe alım sürecinde, kuruluşlar daima seçecekleri adaylarda yetkinliklerinin yanı sıra, sektör tecrübesinin olup olmadığına da bakıyorlar. Sektör tecrübesi, eğitim ve yetkinliklerinin yanına eklenince ilgili başvuruyu en kuvvetli aday haline getirebiliyor. Bu durum, hem İnsan Kaynaklarının hem de İş biriminin ortak tercihi olarak doğal bir şekilde ortaya çıkıyor. Sonuç olarak sektör tecrübesi olan bir adayı istihdam etmek, ilk günlerdeki geçiş sürecini kolaylaştıracak ve adayın daha çabuk adapte olup hemen iş üretmesini temin edecektir.

Liderlik tüm organizasyonların büyümesi ve gelişmesi için temel etkenlerden biri olarak görülmektedir. Liderlik sadece çok üst kademelerde değil, organizasyonlardaki her seviyede vardır ve organizasyonların pozitif gelişimi için kişilerde liderlik de geliştirilmelidir.
"Gandossy" ve "Guarnieri" tarafından yapılan bir çalışmada şu sonuç ortaya çıkmıştır. CEO'lar nitelikli liderlik becerisinin eksikliğinin kuruluşların önündeki en önemli engel olarak gördüklerini belirtmişlerdir [1]. Bu durumda yıllardır süregelen, işe alım süreçlerinde adayın sektör tecrübesini ön planda tutma meselesi acaba isabetli bir karar değil mi? Sektör tecrübesi yerini liderlik özelliğine mi bırakmalı? Bir başka deyişle liderlerin sektör tecrübesine ihtiyacı var mı?

Harvard Üniversitesi öğretim üyelerinden Gautam Mukunda bu soruyu destekleyen bir çalışma yapmıştır [2]. Mukunda yaptığı çalışmada liderleri iki kategoriye ayırmıştır.
1) İçeridekiler
2) Dışarıdakiler

Bu çalışmada Mukunda dışarıdan gelenlerin en etkin olduklarını bulmuştur. İçeridekilerden seçilenler ilgili işi başarılı bir şekilde yerine getirecektir. Fakat bu başarı, diğer sektör tecrübeli veya içeriden gelen adaylardan  daha farklı olmayacaktır. Yani sektörden gelenler benzer başarılar sergilemektedirler.

Yapılan çalışmada en iyi liderlere örnek gösterilen "Steve Jobs" ve "Abraham Lincoln"'ün de dışarıdan gelen liderler olduğu söylenmektedir. Onları bu kadar başarılı kılan, dışarıdan olmaları ve içeridekilerden farklı düşünebilmeleri olmuştur. İçeriden olanlar gibi tek bir yönteme veya içeride bilinen doğrulara bağlı kalmamaları olmuştur.

Dışarıdan gelenler için zorlu durum şudur: Dışarıdan gelenler hem büyük bir ödül hem de risktir.

İçeridekiler oturmuş yapılarda etkin olabilirler. Fakat uç durumlarda ve ani değişimlerde dışarıdan gelenler daha rahat adapte olabiliyorlar. İçeriden gelenler ekstrem durumlarda genellikle normal durumlardaki gibi aynı kararları alırlar ve liderliklerinin bir etkisi yoktur. Dışarıdan gelenler ise daha farklı düşünecek ve risk alacaklardır.

Özetle ya büyük kazanma veya büyük kaybetme potansiyeli olan sektör dışından bir lider seçebilirsiniz, ya da içeriden standart bir başarı sergileyecek birini. Ama en kazançlısı sektör dışından bir lider seçip "büyük kazanma" potansiyelinin daha ağır basmasını temin etmek olacaktır.

Referanslar:

1- Gandossy and Guarnieri, Can you measure leadership, 2008

2- Gautam Mukunda, Great leaders don't need experience, 2012

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Do leaders need sector experience?

It is always a concern for the organizations to select competent candidate with the sector experience or not.   Definitely to meet with sector experienced candidates is preference of both HR and business. Such a placement will shorten induction period and enable the organization to move business as usual earlier. But on the other hand,  different sector experience might add value to the organization. Experience from another domain will enrich employee's contribution to the organization.

Leadership is the main leverage for the growth of an organization. Gandossy and Guarnieri state that "Many CEO cite the lack of qualified leadership talent as the most significant constraint on growth" [1]. Thus selecting candidates who demonstrate leadership with the different domain knowledge might be the most contributor for the growth.

Gautam Mukunda from Harvard Business School support this idea with his study [2]. He also adds another challenge to the idea with his study.

Mukunda categorize leaders into two groups.
1) Filtered Leaders or Insiders.
2) Unfiltered Leaders or Outsiders.

In the study Mukunda discovered that the outsiders were the most effective. Choosing an insider will do the job well but won't perform any different from any other top candidate with the sector experience. Outsiders perform the very best without lots of sector experience. The best leaders - Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln were outsiders or unfiltered leaders. Their ability to think differently and not stick to a certain way of doing things, made them so effective.

The challenge is, "outsiders are high risk but high reward".
Insiders can be effective in stable situation. But they can't adapt to extreme situation or sudden change where outsiders feel free to adapt. Insiders will usually make the same decisions in extreme situation. Their leadership doesn't have impact. Outsiders will think differently and take the risk.

Out of this study, it is clear that one can either choose a leader who is potential to win big or lose big, or choose the one that insider with standard outcome.




References:
1- Gandossy and Guarnieri, Can you measure leadership, 2008
2- Gautam Mukunda, Great leaders don't need experience, 2012

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How to run my Blogger in Hostgator domain

Let me briefly state the situation as follows. This article will summarize how to set up your purchased domain name from Hostgator instead of blogger domain.

1. You have a blog in blogger from Google.
2. You purchased a Domain Name registration from Hostgator. 
3. You want to call your blog with your domain name instead of blogger domain name.

Settings must be done in both blogger and your own domain provider which is Hostgator in this case.

Blogger side settings:

1. Go to blogger main page.
2. Select "Settings", "Basics", 
3. Click "Add a custom domain" will bring you following screen 
4. Click "Switch to advanced settings"
5. In the advanced settings screen write your purchased domain name in the available box (circulated)  and click "Save" button (circulated) as shown in the picture below.
6. After clicking save button you will have an error message from blogger as follows: We have not been able to verify your authority to this domain. Error 12.
7. This is normal. No need to worry. Write down or better to copy three highlighted items in the picture below to a notepad. (not MS word) We will need them in the hosting side settings.

Hostgator side settings

Hostgator has set up your IP address and domain name ready. But it is surely not related with blogger. Now you will generate this linkage or make the integration between these two party.

Login to Hostgator CPanel and select "Advanced DNS zone editor" 

Please look for www.YourSelectedName.com record in the list. YourSelectedName stands for your purchased domain name.

If you have this record please edit and change as follows.

Name box: It should be entered as www. Your domain name will automatically be added. So at the end the box will contain www.YourSelectedName.com

CNAME box: It is filled with the first item copied and pasted in the notepad from blogger error screen (above)

Add a new record: 

This record will contain Short numbers and letters that have been copied into notepad. The second item in the error screen from blogger.Total Name box content will be your copied text.YourSelectedName.com.

TTL and Type boxes will be same as above 14400 and CNAME respectively.

Finally CNAME will have the long trails of letters and numbers from blogger error screen that we have previously copied to notepad.

Click add record.

Hostgator hosting side settings are completed. 

Logout from cpanel.

Finally Again Blogger settings:

Go to blogger.

Follow the steps above from 1 to 5 in the blogger side settings.

This time your settings will be saved with no error.

I hope it simply helps you to guide through your setting with Blogger and Hostgator for your domain name. Any other questions or comments please do not hesitate.

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Use your domain name instead of blogger's

This article will address the following questions on your mind (if you have)
How to set up your blog with your own domain name? How to set up your domain name with blogger?
There are lots of content management system (CMS) or platform to host your blog. But I will just continue to explain how to start blogging with Google blogspot. As the next step to configure your blogger for your domain name.

Google blogger is the most convenient, fast and easy set up blogging environment for those who already have Google accounts. But the blog name you selected will be represented as "SelectedName.blogspot.com". It will  be like a subscription in blogger. This is called sub-domain. A domain name under the blogger domain. This means you can reach your blog page as "http://SelectedName.blogspot.com".  Later on you may want to have your own domain name such as "www.SelectedName.com" instead of blogger sub-domain. Here are some suggestions for the bloggers who have the question of "How do I access my blog using my own domain name?"

Considering that you have a Google account and blog set up ready. If you don't have, you should obtain one. Easiest way is to have a gmail account, which will enable you to have a blogger with this account.
Login gmail. You will see the following black strip on the top of the screen.

Go to "More" and select "Blogger". From the blogger screen select "Settings", "Basics", and "Add a custom domain" will bring you following screen.

Here you can buy a domain name from Google partner domain name system (DNS) provider. All you have to do is to click "Check Availability" button to see if your "www.SelectedName.com" is available. Then follow the instructions. This is the cheapest and easiest way of registering your domain name. There are currently two DNS provider listed and selectable in the Google blogger site. But this service  doesn't include storage space. You are limited with Google's free storage capacity.
One may want to register some other hosting providers than these two. If you need a storage space, you should definitely go for same or different hosting providers for a storage space and other services. In this case you buy your domain name from a hosting provider and all you have to do is to link your blogger name with your own domain name.  Google has a support page for some hosting service providers. This support page explain in details how to do the configuration.
I will try to simplify the necessary settings of how to use your domain with blogger. No need to confuse with the meaning of A record or CNAME etc.

Settings must be done in both blogger and your own domain provider.
Blogger side settings:

1. Go to blogger main page.
2. Select "Settings", "Basics", 
3. Click "Add a custom domain" will bring you following screen 
4. Click "Switch to advanced settings"
5. In the advanced settings screen write your purchased domain name in the available box (circulated)  and click "Save" button (circulated) as shown in the picture below.
6. After clicking save button you will have an error message from blogger as follows: We have not been able to verify your authority to this domain. Error 12.
7. This is normal. No need to worry. Write down or better to copy three highlighted items in the picture below to a notepad. (not MS word) We will need them in the hosting side settings.

I will explain hosting side settings with a non explained Hostgator example. Hostgator has took its place within top 10 hosting companies in 2012 and 2013 by all comparison compilations. According to some comparison site, Hostgator has a market increase trend. Hostgator case is not explained by Google support site. So I wanted to explain how to do the blogger settings in Hostgator. Please read my next post to complete settings. Any comments or questions are welcome.

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How do I set bilingual or multilingual blogger ?

It is not so difficult to create multilingual blog using blogger (blogspot) from google. There are several approaches to make bilingual or multilingual blogs, but not for blogger. Wordpress is much more convenient or many of bloggers explained how to do it with Wordpress. I searched for a solution and tried several things until I get it work properly work in blogger. Even in an hopeless time, I wanted to give a try to Wordpress and move all my posts to Wordpress from blogger. Then I found a way of setting up a bilingual blog for blogger.

Let's start with the idea of making bilingual site. There are translation solutions which are suggested by other blogger. But these translators are still not performing good. Human translation is always easier and better to understand and more convenient for the readers.

I had posts both in Tukish and in English in my blog. I didn't want to split two languages into to different blog. That will split the traffic of the blog. I preferred to keep them all in one blog.

Tutorial on how to make bilingual blogger

For a multilingual site, you need a menu theme. It is easier to click one menu item for each language selection.

To identify the languages in the posts I added tags (or labels) to each post that determines the language of the post. Let say "TR" for Turkish and "EN" for English.

To render only posts in one language (or one label let say "EN") you should call your blog as follows:

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/search/label/EN

This link on the web browser will bring only your blog posts with "EN" label. Now you know how to render posts of just one language. For another language, you should change TAG in your link, according to your label. In my case it is just to replace "EN" with "TR"

Next step is how to render main page with the search label parameters. You should go to your bloger. Select SETTINGS, SEARCH PREFERENCES and CUSTOM REDIRECTS.
Add From link just "/" slash mark. This means your blog name.
Add To link "/search/label/TR" where TR is your label to reference posts of that language. So your main page will be a page with label search parameter. Finally check the "Permanent" box, Click Save and than "Save Changes".

Now your main page with the selected language is ready. Final issue is to set the second language. You should use one of the menu link on your theme for this. Then go to blogger, Template, Edit HTML.
HTML codes will be visible. Search for the Link item you want to use. Replace this link with the language identifier. And give the link with the search label parameter. Your HTML code line should look like this.

<li><a href='/search/label/TR'>Türkçe</a></li>
Same idea as we made with redirection. When mouse lick on this link only posts with TR labels will be rendered.

In this solution, gadgets, image buttons will be only in one language. These details are not replaced with selected language and kept in original language.

Other solutions such as java scripting and META Refresh will not bring that simple solution and have problems with the search engines.
I hope you enjoy. Any questions are welcome.
If you intent to do the same with Wordpress please check my other post. How to bilingual with Wordpress? I presume it is easier to handle.

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Image file histogram drawer

Bmp image histogram viewer will allow you to import the bmp image file, to render the file and to draw the histogram with a scaling factor.

This version only imports bmp files, thus, you need to convert other types of files into bmp format before running the histogram. I'm hoping that, following version of this software will support several image formats. Just click the link below to download free image histogram viewer software Release 1.1..


Click following link.
Click FILE, and then DOWNLOAD on the next screen.
After downloading the zip file (Histogram.zip) UNZIP the downloaded file by double clicking it.
Then Run the Setup.exe file.
This will install Image histogram viewer on your computer.



Download Image Histogram Viewer


How to use the software?

It has a simple user guide that comes with the installation. It is located same directory and shortcut to user guide is attached on desktop.
This can not be said as a user guide. Although, the software is intuitive and easy to use, I just want to leave some comments for the users.
1) Click "File Open" button to load BMP file from your computer.
2) Set the scaling factor. This coefficient apply the scaling factor for whole image histogram. So that you can zoom in a part of the histogram or zoom out just to evaluate the picture looking at the histogram.
3) Click the "histogram" button. So, both image and its histogram will be visible.

Please note that, if you want to redraw the histogram with different scale, feel free to change the scaling factor and click "Histogram" button again.

If you liked this software, please click "g+1", "Like" or "Tweet" button. I'll keep posting the further versions.

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Didyma, Center of Oracle for the ancient Ionians.

Didyma was an ancient Ionian sanctuary. It had a temple and oracle of Apollo. Didyma was the most significant sanctuary in the territory of Miletus. 

The oldest tablets dated back to the 6^th century BC. Most of the sculptures, form the same century, were carried out to British Museum by Sir Charles Newton in 1858, of course with the permission of Ottoman authorities. German excavations made between 1905 and 1930 revealed most part of the temple.

 

The huge marble temple has amazing, 120 giant columns at the front porch. Because the giant size of the construction, it never covered by a roof.

At the back of the porch, temple priests met petitioners. They accept questions for the oracle, and to deliver oracular poems. 

Two tunnel ramps slope down from both sides of the porch to the huge square. This square held the sacred spring. A priest would drink from the spring to produce oracle.

Several impressive sculptures are around the temple, especially the head of Medusa. It is similar to the head of Medusa in the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul.

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Didim, Antik İyon medeniyetinde kahinlerin ve kehanetin merkezi

Apollo Tapınağı

Didim antik bir İyon tapınağıdır.  Apollo tapınağının da bulunduğu bir kehanet merkezidir. Bu kehanet merkezi o dönemlerde Milet toprakları içerisinde bulunmaktadır. 

Didim’deki en eski yazıtlar MÖ 6. yüzyıla dayanmaktadır. Aynı yüzyıldan kalan birçok heykel 1858 yılında Sir Charles Newton tarafından Osmanlı hükümetinden izin alınarak İngiltere’ye götürülmüştür.  Didim’deki ilk kazılar 1905 ile 1930 yılları arasında yapılmış ve tapınağın büyük bir bölümü bu dönem kazıları ile ortaya çıkartılmıştır.

Büyük mermer tapınağın üzerinde 120 tane kocaman sütun bulunmaktadır. Yapının büyüklüğü nedeniyle hiçbir zaman sütunların üzeri bir çatı ile örtülmemiştir.

Sütunların bulunduğu girişin arka tarafında bir meydan bulunmaktadır. Bu meydanda tapınak rahipleri kehanet soranlar ile görüşür, onların sorularını alır ve sonrasında yanıt olarak kehanetlerini şiirsel bir şekilde verirlerdi.

Tapınağın ön tarafındaki sütunlu girişten arkadaki meydana gitmek için iki tarafta mermer tüneller mevcuttur. Bu tünellerden inerek arka meydana ulaşılır. Bu meydanda bulunan çeşmeden rahipler suyu içip, daha sonra kehanette bulunurlardı. 

Tapınağın etrafında az da olsa çeşitli heykeller bulunmaktadır. Bunlardan en bilineni Medusa başıdır. Bu baş İstanbul’daki Yerebatan sarnıcında bulunan Medusa başı ile çok benzeşmektedir.

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