The use of open source software (OSS) within the medical device industry is a double edged sword. On one end of the spectrum, you have freely available code that is available for the world to scrutinize. In the process, one would hope that bugs are more easily...
Are you missing out on reaching 25% of the US population with your current software engineering project? Maybe the elderly, at 13% of the population, aren't part of your target market, or maybe it's the 12% of the US population who are disabled that you aren't...
In my last post, I introduced Clonezilla as an easy way to deploy Windows-based workstations into a corporate environment. But once a workstation enters the corporate network, what sort of policy applies to it? What sort of actions can a user take on their...
Avoiding 21 C.F.R. §820.70(i) FDA Warning Letters
As Senior Systems Integrator for SPK and Associates, a California based IT services company specializing in infrastructure management services, I recently completed an interesting project. The goal was to create an ESX cluster for a small engineering group...
IT outsourcing has become prominent in nearly every area of the economy -- to the point that its benefits are taken for granted. We're aware of the saving of money, of cloud technology providing cost effective high availability infrastructure, and so forth. The...
In the world of IT, solutions become problems with alarming regularity. The new software of today is the upgrade nightmare of tomorrow. The policies that solved problems create new ones years later. The corporate IT departments that we look to for solutions are...
IT outsourcing contracts, as noted in a recent blog post, should be treated as living documents -- continuously evaluated, refined, and optimized over time. Not only do business conditions continually change, but it’s also important for outsourcing customers to...
Bugs can be introduced anywhere in the software development lifecycle, from the early stages (requirements gathering etc) right up to the final shipping of the project. The most expensive types of bugs to fix are those introduced earliest and fixed latest. For...
All of us who work in software development want the products that we release to be high quality, and also low cost to maintain in the field. This is no big revelation; it’s common knowledge, and it’s common sense. It’s not clear that there is any silver bullet in...
The core activities of configuration management (i.e. changeset management and release management) are essential to control the changes made to a system and to administer the release of its different versions. However getting it wrong damages your brand, customer...
IT outsourcing relationships can be fraught with challenges, ranging from communications breakdowns between client and provider to issues surrounding performance. If an IT outsourcing agreement isn’t meeting your company’s expectations (e.g. SLA targets are missed;...