Sunday, November 11, 2018

Role-Based Certifications

Foundational - Validates overall understanding of the AWS Cloud. Prerequisite to achieving Specialty certification or an optional start towards Associate certification.

Associate - Technical role-based certifications. No prerequisite.

Professional - Highest level technical role-based certification. Relevant Associate certification required.

Specialty Certifications

Validate advanced skills in specific technical areas. Cloud Practitioner or Associate-level certification required.

for more information details go to this link https://aws.amazon.com/certification/

ISACA Certification:

Certified in Risk and Information
Systems Control (CRISC)

CRISC (pronounced “see-risk”) is the only certification
that positions IT professionals for future career growth
by linking IT risk management to enterprise risk management, and positioning them to become strategic partners to the business. The recent quarterly IT Skills
and Certifications Pay Index (ITSCPI) from Foote Partners
ranked CRISC among the most sought-after
and highest-paying IT certifications.

Certified Information Security Manager
(CISM)

The management-focused CISM is the globally
accepted standard for individuals who design,
build and manage enterprise information security
programs. CISM is the leading credential for
information security managers. The recent quarterly
IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index (ITSCPI) from Foote Partners ranked CISM among the most sought-after
and highest-paying IT certifications.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

RESEARCH PAPERS VERSUS REVIEW PAPERS

Not all published papers are research papers. Research papers describe  useful for those who are not experts. This is because they provide an overview of the main issues, results, and open questions in that field

A review paper, like a research paper, may be written by an expert in the field, or by a relative novice in the field. Determine the value of the review paper by evaluating the authority of the author, and of the paper itself. First note where the paper was published: In a refereed journal?

In a collection of papers from a conference? On a personal web page? Review papers published in refereed journals have the backing of that journal and of the experts who reviewed the article. Next, determine whether the review was written by an expert or by a novice. Note whether the author of the paper seems to be respected as an authority in the field. Look for other publications by this author. Note how often those publications are cited by other authors.

A research paper usually consists of the following sections, in this order:

If the review paper turns out to have been written by a relative novice in the field, it still might have considerable value in summarizing and organizing the foundational and historical information in that field. However, opinions expressed by the author(s) may have less weight than those expressed by authorities in the field. Organization of published papers

• Abstract: a general summary of the paper

• Introduction: background information, and the motivation for this study

• Materials and Methods: exactly what was done in this study

• Results: outcome of the process detailed in Materials and Methods

• Discussion: a detailed analysis of the results. This section might include conclusions, or a separate Conclusions section might put the results in a larger context.

• List of References: This list can provide a useful list of other sources on the subject.

Readers hardly ever sit down with a paper and read it from beginning to end, straight through. A reader might read the Abstract, flip to the Discussion to learn more about the results, and then decide whether or not to read the entire paper.

A review paper differs from a research paper in that no new results are being presented for the first time. For this reason, there is no Materials and Methods section in a review paper. The 32paper will have an Abstract, and it may have a section called Introduction. However, the rest of the paper will be an overview of the topic, perhaps organized historically, perhaps organized by different treatments of the problems connected with the topic. The contribution of a review paper is the manner in which it synthesizes and presents important material in a field. The author may also point out needs for further research or development.

10 Tips for Drafting an Engaging Research Article

Readers finish reading the entire research article only when it grabs their attention. Several factors play a critical role in capturing the readers’ attention and ensuring a high level of engagement when the reader is navigating through an article. In this infographic, we provide some quick tips that would enable you to ensure a high degree of reader engagement.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Top 10 Technology Trends for 2018: IEEE Computer Society Predicts the Future of Tech

The top 10 technology trends predicted to reach adoption in 2018 are:

Deep learning (DL). Machine learning (ML) and more specifically DL are already on the cusp of revolution. They are widely adopted in datacenters (Amazon making graphical processing units [GPUs] available for DL, Google running DL on tensor processing units [TPUs], Microsoft using field programmable gate arrays [FPGAs], etc.), and DL is being explored at the edge of the network to reduce the amount of data propagated back to datacenters. Applications such as image, video, and audio recognition are already being deployed for a variety of verticals. DL heavily depends on accelerators (see #9 below) and is used for a variety of assistive functions (#s 6, 7, and 10).
Digital currencies. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and newcomers Litecoin, Dash, and Ripple have become commonly traded currencies. They will continue to become a more widely adopted means of trading. This will trigger improved cybersecurity (see #10) because the stakes will be ever higher as their values rise. In addition, digital currencies will continue to enable and be enabled by other technologies, such as storage (see #3), cloud computing (see B in the list of already adopted technologies), the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, and more.
Blockchain. The use of Bitcoin and the revitalization of peer-to-peer computing have been essential for the adoption of blockchain technology in a broader sense. We predict increased expansion of companies delivering blockchain products and even IT heavyweights entering the market and consolidating the products.
Industrial IoT. Empowered by DL at the edge, industrial IoT continues to be the most widely adopted use case for edge computing. It is driven by real needs and requirements. We anticipate that it will continue to be adopted with a broader set of technical offerings enabled by DL, as well as other uses of IoT (see C and E).
Robotics. Even though robotics research has been performed for many decades, robotics adoption has not flourished. However, the past few years have seen increased market availability of consumer robots, as well as more sophisticated military and industrial robots. We predict that this will trigger wider adoption of robotics in the medical space for caregiving and other healthcare uses. Combined with DL (#1) and AI (#10), robotics will further advance in 2018. Robotics will also motivate further evolution of ethics (see #8).
Assisted transportation. While the promise of fully autonomous vehicles has slowed down due to numerous obstacles, a limited use of automated assistance has continued to grow, such as parking assistance, video recognition, and alerts for leaving the lane or identifying sudden obstacles. We anticipate that vehicle assistance will develop further as automation and ML/DL are deployed in the automotive industry.
Assisted reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). Gaming and AR/VR gadgets have grown in adoption in the past year. We anticipate that this trend will grow with modern user interfaces such as 3D projections and movement detection. This will allow for associating individuals with metadata that can be viewed subject to privacy configurations, which will continue to drive international policies for cybersecurity and privacy (see #10).
Ethics, laws, and policies for privacy, security, and liability. With the increasing advancement of DL (#1), robotics (#5), technological assistance (#s 6 and 7), and applications of AI (#10), technology has moved beyond society's ability to control it easily. Mandatory guidance has already been deeply analyzed and rolled out in various aspects of design (see the IEEE standards association document), and it is further being applied to autonomous and intelligent systems and in cybersecurity. But adoption of ethical considerations will speed up in many vertical industries and horizontal technologies.
Accelerators and 3D. With the end of power scaling and Moore's law and the shift to 3D, accelerators are emerging as a way to continue improving hardware performance and energy efficiency and to reduce costs. There are a number of existing technologies (FPGAs and ASICs) and new ones (such as memristor-based DPE) that hold a lot of promise for accelerating application domains (such as matrix multiplication for the use of DL algorithms). We predict wider diversity and broader applicability of accelerators, leading to more widespread use in 2018.
Cybersecurity and AI. Cybersecurity is becoming essential to everyday life and business, yet it is increasingly hard to manage. Exploits have become extremely sophisticated and it is hard for IT to keep up. Pure automation no longer suffices and AI is required to enhance data analytics and automated scripts. It is expected that humans will still be in the loop of taking actions; hence, the relationship to ethics (#8). But AI itself is not immune to cyberattacks. We will need to make AI/DL techniques more robust in the presence of adversarial traffic in any application area.

Existing Technologies: We did not include the following technologies in our top 10 list as we assume that they have already experienced broad adoption:

A. Data science

B. "Cloudification"

C. Smart cities

D. Sustainability

E. IoT/edge computing

IEEE-CS technical contributors include Erik DeBenedictis, Sandia National Laboratories; Fred Douglis, systems researcher and member of IEEE-CS Board of Governors; David Ebert, professor, Purdue University; Paolo Faraboschi, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Fellow; Eitan Frachtenberg, data scientist; Phil Laplante, professor, Penn State University; and Dejan Milojicic, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Distinguished Technologist and IEEE Computer Society past president.

Top Five Developer Trends Of 2018

The year 2017 has been one of the most exciting years for developers and technology lovers. Technologies such as big data, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, drones, autonomous vehicles, wearables, virtual reality, and smart homes are some of the fastest-growing innovations.

Gartner breaks down in its hype cycle of emerging technologies of 2017 and shows that AI, machine learning and deep learning are the focus while autonomous vehicles, virtual assistants, computer security, blockchain and cognitive computing is on the rise. The below graph indicates the lifetime of various technologies.

In this article, I will focus on the cutting-edge technologies that are directly related to jobs and expected to grow at a faster pace than previously anticipated.

My top 5 emerging technologies predictions for year 2018 include the following,

Cloud
Cyber Security
AI Assistants
Augmented Reality
Blockchain

Trend #1. Cloud

Cloud computing has grown tremendously in the past few years and it will continue to rise in 2018. Let’s look at some of the numbers.

1 billion smart devices worldwide
3 billion people connected to the Internet
3 billion mobile phones, 3.5 billion toothbrush owners
197 billion app downloads in 2016, 353 billion by 2021
Americans spend 4.7 hrs a day
Average person takes150 photos a month

Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud take the top 3 spots in the cloud space followed by IBM and Oracle.

Cloud jobs will continue to grow in 2018.

The quarterly growth of Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS was 93%, 50%, and 45% respectively. The cloud migration and digitation transformation will continue to grow and so will the number of jobs. The digital transformation market size is $1.7 trillion for the next several years.

Today, cloud architect is one of the most in-demand jobs. An Indeed search returns over 25,000 results for cloud architect keywords. The number of job results for AWS and Azure are over 25,000 and 12,000 respectively.

Trend #2. Cyber Security

Cyber security will be one of the most in-demand careers in coming years. Cybercrimes are expected grow exponentially. Blame it on the growing size of data and the expanding cloud. As a matter of fact, Cyber Security is one of the most in-demand careers in IT. Here are some facts:

3 Billion Yahoo accounts hacked
200 million Equifax accounts' data stolen
Ransomware damage costs are close to $5 billion in 2017.
Cyber crime damage costs up to $6 trillion annually by 2021
Cyber security products and services are predicted to exceed $1 trillion over next 5 years, by 2021.
Cybercrime will have a deficit of 3.5 million cyber security experts by 2021.
6 billion people will be affected by cybercrimes by 2022.
Network engineers should start focusing on cyber security products and services.
Darkweb has everyone’s social media, credit cards, and bank accounts

1 million cyber security experts needed by 2020.

If you’re looking for a growing career, cyber security will be one of the fastest growing fields for IT developers and administrators.

Trend #3. AI-Assistants

Smart home speakers are growing and tens of millions of Alexa devices were sold during this holiday season. According to a canalys.com, Smart speakers are the fastest growing consumer tech, surpassing AR, VR, and wearables and shipments are expected to surpass 50 million devices.

Smart home speakers are powered by an AI assistant. For example, Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Harman Kardon Invoke speakers are powered by Alexa, OK Google, and Microsoft Cortana respectively.

Amazon Alexa is the AI-assistant behind tens of millions of devices like the Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Show. Alexa provides capabilities, or skills, that enable customers to create a more personalized experience. There are now more than 25,000 skills from companies such as Starbucks, Uber, and Capital One as well as other innovative designers and developers.

Over 25 millions Alexa Echo devices sold in Q4 2017.

Today, 40% of adults use voice search and Apple’s Siri is used by 41.4 million monthly. Microsoft Cortana, the intelligent assistant on Windows 10 has 133 million monthly users. The numbers are expected to grow a lot. According to a research, by 2020, 30% of searches will be done without a screen. Smart home devices in the USA are expected to grow to 244 million by 2022.

Here are some of the statistics on AI-Assistants.

50% of searches will be voice search by 2020
40% of adults use voice search
30% of searches will be done without a screen
Siri 45%, Google Now 33% and Cortana 27%, 10% use Amazon Alexa
Smart home devices in US will be 244 million by 2022, up from 24 million in 2016. Six point three million will have at least one smart speaker by 2022.
Apple Siri has 41.4 million monthly users
Amazon Echo devices: 22 million sold in 2017
Microsoft Cortana has 133 million monthly users

The rise of the need for smart home speakers and other smart home devices will increase the need of AI-assistant developers.

If you’re a developer and looking for some exciting future opportunities, AI skills development will be something I recommend. Alexa skills developer demand will grow. As of now, there are 1000+ jobs available for Alexa developers.

Trend #4. Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is one of the most sought-after technologies of 2017 and the demand will continue to grow in 2018. Major technology companies including Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Intel, Nvidia and others are working on their own version of AR/VR products. More and more AR-VR devices are being introduced to the market almost every few months.

The gaming industry is already enjoying a huge success of VR and AR technologies. Oculus, HTC, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Samsung are already selling thousands of devices worldwide. Facebook and a few other companies have a need for 10,000 AR/VR developers and content creators. AR/VR market size is going to hit $162B by 2020 according to IDC and software is still playing a catchup game with hardware. There is a lack of experts and content for both, AR and VR devices.

Source: CSS Insights

Here is a shipment report for the last few quarters.

Here are some of the statistics gathered from various sources:

100 million devices sold by 2021
LinkedIn shows over 2000 jobs in virtual reality

Augmented Reality is the future of telecommunication.

Microsoft HoloLens has enjoyed a limited success in the mixed reality space and it is just getting started.

In June 2017, Apple launched ARKit for iOS that allows developers to build augmented reality applications and games. Today, there are thousands of AR games available in Apple Store.

Recently, Google announced its ARCore Developer Preview 2, that will let Android developers build AR apps for Android devices.

Trend #5. Blockchain

Blockchain is the technology of 2017. You may thank bitcoin, altcoins (cryptocurrency), and ICOs (Initial Coin Offering) for the rise of blockchain. Thousands of projects have already been built on top of blockchain and more projects are being created every day.

Check out Bitcoin Explained In Simple Terms to learn more about bitcoin.

The following chart shows the Google Trends of for blockchain (blue), cryptocurrency (yellow) and bitcoin (red).

Banking, payments, supply chain, insurance, security, and healthcare are a few industries that have already stated building blockchain based applications. As a matter of fact, 57% of large corporations are considering some kind of blockchain adoption. Obviously, this will lead to more jobs.