1) Know your business

You may be your organization’s most talented developer or dedicated systems administrator. But if you don’t know what the business is selling or what service it’s providing, you’re not indispensable. Don’t look at things from strictly an IT perspective, but make sure you understand how your job relates to the business world around you.

2) Watch the bottom line

Your job isn’t just about systems, software or machines. It’s about helping your organization use technology to trim costs and increase efficiency. IT professionals need to focus on areas that either drive down costs, such as virtualization, cloud computing and converged networking, or on areas that help to generate revenue, such as social media, mobile marketing and SEO.

3) Get your head in the cloud

With so many traditional IT functions moving to the cloud, your company may no longer need you to flip switches, connect cables, or troubleshoot machines. But they’ll still need someone who can tell them what services are available, which ones are worth looking at and which ones they should avoid. And they’ll require people with expertise in managing a catalog of cloud services, handling subscribers, brokering agreements with cloud providers and intervening when problems arise.

4) Broaden your horizons

Besides maintaining mastery of your own tech domain, expand your skill set to include other areas of expertise. If a crisis arises in one of those areas—and the person responsible for handling it isn’t available—you may be able to step in and save the day. Plus, an employee who has more than one area of expertise is more valuable when a department is downsizing.

5) Be a translator.

Want to facilitate communication between IT and the business side, as well as earn a little goodwill in the process? Teach your co-workers to speak geek. Start a series of casual teaching sessions where you bring less savvy coworkers up to speed about the latest in tech. You can become the go-to guy for upper management when they need something technical explained.

6) Deal with data.

If your business users aren’t drowning in information now, they will be soon. Taming the data deluge will make you invaluable to any organization. IT people who can make sense of business data, safely store it, categorize it, retrieve it, and especially analyze it are highly valuable.

7) Make a name for yourself. The more people who know and rely on you—especially outside your department or organization—the harder it is to fire you. Look for projects and opportunities that cut across departments, because this builds your internal network — thus making you more valuable to the company.

And if you’re ready to practice those habits in a new and exciting position in the Bay Area, contact Bayside Solutions today!

1. Pocket Microscope

Diagnosing malaria or other blood-borne illnesses used to require analyzing cell slides under a light microscope—which can be difficult to find in impoverished, remote locations. Enter LUCAS (Lensless, Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), an easy-to-use, pocket-size holographic microscope that weighs less than 50g, uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts, and can be attached to a cell phone’s camera, making it ideal for diagnosing disease in isolated, developing countries.

2. All Around the Mouse

This past September, Bioscan introduced BioFLECT, the first 360-degree optical imager, which uses a rotating ring of 48 detectors to generate a full 3-D scan of fluorescent markers.

3. PCR in a Pouch

The FilmArray system was designed to make pathogen detection simple, accurate, and fast. Because there are multiple nested PCR reactions within each FilmArray pouch, one run can detect all of these pathogens, and others, at a cost of less than $150. Plus, the FilmArray reaction does not require a trained technician and only takes an hour rather than the 5–6 hours needed for a traditional, real-time PCR reaction.

4. Single-Cell Mass Cytometry

Designed by Scott Tanner, chief technology officer of DVS Sciences, CyTOF is a mass spectrometer that can feed researchers data about molecules within and on the surface of individual cells, revealing not only the cell’s identity but also some of its functions.

5. Illuminating Microscopy

Nikon incorporated SIM technology into its flagship inverted microscope to produce the N-SIM Super Resolution Microscope—one of the fastest and most powerful high-resolution optical microscopes on the market. The N-SIM microscope can achieve a spatial resolution between 85 and 110 nm and a temporal resolution of 600 milliseconds per frame.

6. DNA Deluge

RainDance Technologies’ ThunderStorm System for DNA sequencing is the newest iteration of the company’s popular next-generation RDT1000 model. While other PCR enrichment systems allow researchers to process fewer than 100 gene regions, the ThunderStorm allows researchers to sequence up to 20,000 regions per sample.

7. Mini MRI

Thanks to Aspect Imaging’s M2 Compact MRI System, all you need is about one square meter of space and $500,000. Having its own lead-lined housing means the M2 can be used in a standard laboratory and avoids the credit card–erasing, watch-destroying, and medical instrument–damaging effects of large-scale MRI machines.

8. The Circadian Watch

The Dimesimeter may offer researchers insights into how disrupting circadian rhythms affects human physiology, behavior and disease. Developed by scientists at the Lighting Research Center at RPI, the battery-powered, dime-sized Dimesimeter contains optical sensors and accelerometers that measure both the light exposure and activity of the person wearing it.

9. One-Step Sample Prep

To prepare material for analysis by mass spectrometry, chemist Akos Vertes of GWU developed Protea Biosciences, Inc.’s LAESI (Laser Ablation Electrospray Ionization) DP-1000 System, which can handle any type of biological sample that contains water—either naturally, as in animal or plant tissues, or water added by the experimenter.

10. Super-Resolution Solution

The new Leica SR GSD microscopy system illuminates only a few random molecules in the field of view at a time, taking a picture, and then repeating the process thousands of times until all the molecules have been illuminated and imaged.

The iPad caught fire immediately with the public and turned tablet computers into a major product category. People realized that tablets are the ultimate in electronic simplicity: Highly portable, attractive, easy to use and just plain cool.

Competition came fast. Google had already released an open-source operating system for smart phones called Android, so they simply scaled it up for tablet computers the way Apple scaled up its iOS operating system for the iPad.

Android tablets are enough like iPads that at a casual glance a user unfamiliar with the two types might mistake one for the other.

How to decide which is the better tablet? Rather than comparing apples with oranges, it’s like comparing one or two apples with a whole basketful of oranges.

First, only Apple makes the iPad and there are only two versions: the iPad and the iPad 2.

But any company that’s able to manufacture hardware that will support Google’s operating system can make an Android tablet.

In the end, whether you buy an iPad 2 or an Android may come down to which you consider more important: the hardware, the software or the price.

If hardware specs matter, you’ll need to compare the specs for the iPad2 with the specs for each Android tablet on the market

If software matters, you’ll probably choose the iPad 2, which is far more likely than an Android tablet to have exactly the apps that you need.

And if price matters, you’re unlikely to undercut Apple’s prices by more than about $200. But if that $200 makes the difference, there are low-cost Android tablets out there.

One area where Androids are still unequivocally beating the iPad 2 is video resolution, with most running at 1,280 x 800 pixels compared to the 1,024 x768 pixels on both iPads. And unlike some Androids, Apple doesn’t support USB connectors.

But in the all-important area of apps, the iPad 2 is still ahead—way ahead. There are now over 100,000 apps available through the Apple App Store. Google doesn’t make their tally of apps public, but a July 2011 New York Times blog estimated the number at a surprisingly paltry 232. Apple is definitely winning the app war.

Apple vs. Android: it looks like the first is still the best, almost all things considered.

#10. Genetically Modified Mosquitoes

Mosquito-borne diseases kill more people than any other disease, and infect more than 700 million people. As a new tactic to fight these diseases, 3 million genetically modified sterile male mosquitoes were released in the Caymans in 2010 to mate with wild female mosquitoes, resulting in an 80 percent population drop.

#9. A Paradigm Shift in Diabetes Treatment

Twenty-six million Americans have diabetes and 79 million have prediabetes. A new class of drugs awaiting FDA approval called SGLT2 inhibitors works in a totally new way.

Instead of affecting the supply or use of insulin, the new drugs lower blood sugar by causing sugar to be excreted in urine. The resulting loss of calories helps diabetics, who tend to be overweight, lose weight.

#8. Harnessing Big Data to Improve Healthcare

2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day.

Innovative companies are starting to mine the mother lode of medical data to curb medical mistakes, waste and unnecessary treatments, lower healthcare costs, aid drug development, and facilitate tracking patients’ outcomes.

#7. Wearable Robotic Devices

Below-the-knee prostheses used to work like a crutch or cane. Now, the world’s first computerized bionic leg mimics a real leg, using precision robotics previously only available to wounded soldiers. They allow America’s 400,000 to 1 million amputees to easily walk without stress, climb stairs and even compete in high-level sports.

#6. Implant to Treat Complex Brain Aneurysms

While surgery can treat small brain aneurysms, it doesn’t work for large, complex ones—the most dangerous type.

Now an FDA-approved device can be snaked through blood vessels without brain surgery to choke off blood flow to large or giant aneurysms, with a 70 percent success rate.

#5. Next-Generation Gene Sequencing

It took 13 years and $2.7 billion to sequence the human genome for the first time. Now a $50,000 machine the size of computer printer can read 10 million letters of genetic code in just two hours, putting warp-speed technology that gets at the root cause of many serious diseases within reach of almost every hospital.

#4. Medical Apps for Mobile Devices

Among the thousands of mobile apps for doctors and patients are software to check blood pressure, monitor blood sugar levels, and track heart rate. More sophisticated devices can help diagnose such disorders as sleep apnea, detect seizures, and automatically score cognitive testing results. MDs can also monitor high-risk patients remotely.

#3. A Smart Mouth Guard to Check Athletes for Concussions

Nearly four million sports-related concussions occur each year. A new Concussion Management system has two components. Before the season, athletes take baseline tests of mental and motor skills. During play, a computerized mouthguard records all hits to the head via Bluetooth technology.

If a traumatic brain injury is detected, the player is retested, then the system provides advice about when it’s safe to return to play.

#2. CT Scans for Early Detection of Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the top cancer killer of both men and women, largely because it doesn’t cause symptoms in the early stages and doctors have lacked an effective screening test.

A groundbreaking study of more than 53,000 current and former heavy smokers found 20 percent fewer lung cancer deaths in those screened with low-dose spiral CT scans, compared to chest X-rays–the first study to show that early detection can save lives.

#1. A Breakthrough in Blood Pressure Control

Catheter-based renal denervation is a new 40-minute procedure that involves zapping nerves in the kidney with low-power radio waves, using a tiny probe snaked through blood vessels.

In the first randomized study, 39 percent of patients who received the procedure achieved their blood pressure target, and 50 percent showed measurable improvement.

Scientific journals are full of reports of recent advances in solar cell efficiency. Although this is very encouraging, it is hard to know how these breakthroughs will perform outside of the laboratories and when they will hit the market:

Dual Land Use

One megawatt of panels requires 6 to 8 acres of land. CPV panels are mounted on tracking systems, allowing for the land underneath to be utilized as well. Shade crops can be cultivated under the solar panels, increasing the diversity of crops that can be cultivated in sunny regions.

Over 95% Recyclable

The solar industry has been criticized for creating a product that is difficult to recycle. Although the useful life of a solar panel is around 30 years, it is important to consider this while designing the product. Newer panels have achieved higher rates because the two main materials used are glass and aluminum.

Energy Payback of 6+ Months

In the 1970s, manufacturing a solar panel required as much energy as the panel would generate over its 20 year lifespan. That means that older solar panels didn’t result in any net energy gain. This is no longer true with the new technologies.

The four popular kinds of solar cells: multicrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon, ribbon silicon, and thin-film cadmium telluride have an energy payback between 1 and 3 years. Some manufacturers claim their products produce an energy payback of just over 6 months.

CPV Is Expected to Rapidly Expand Its Market Share

The CPV sector is tiny compared to other solar power sectors including traditional PV. In fact, it currently represents around one tenth of one percent of the total solar market. However it is expected to begin a period of sustained and rapid expansion as the technical challenges that have held it back are solved. Some analysts are predicting that it will double in size each year through 2015 as new entrants begin to scale up production and lower costs.

One company makes heart cells out of mature human stem cells. Another makes biofuel out of the sun. And then there’s the supercomputer that makes answers within seconds.

Technology Innovation winners included such big names as IBM, Novartis AG, Intel Corp., Abbott Laboratories and Xerox Corp. Runners-up included Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo.

Big companies have featured in these awards in the past, but the trend was especially noticeable this year.

“Historically, the rap would be that big companies do incremental stuff, but you look to start-ups for breakthroughs,” says Scott D. Anthony, managing director at Innosight Ventures and one of the judges for the Innovation Awards. “But it seems that big companies are increasingly doing really interesting innovation work. Large companies are recognizing that they need to approach innovation more expansively.”

The Wall Street Journal received 605 applications this year from companies, organizations and individuals in 31 countries. A team of Journal editors and reporters reviewed the entries and forwarded 155 to an independent panel of judges from venture-capital firms, universities and other organizations and companies. From that pool, the judges chose a total of 35 winners and runners-up in 16 categories.

The judges assessed the applications primarily on these criteria:

• Does the innovation break with conventional ideas or processes in its field?
• Does it go beyond marginal improvements on something that already exists?
• Will it have a wide impact in its field or on future technology?

Even though big companies dominated some of the individual categories, the overall Gold winner this year was Cellular Dynamics International, which makes huge quantities of human heart cells that can be used to study diseases and develop medicines.

Joule Unlimited Technologies Inc. garnered the Silver award for developing a more efficient technique for producing biofuel. And the Bronze award went to IBM for Watson, the artificial intelligence system that defeated two grand champions on “Jeopardy!”

Another noticeable trend this year: a number of companies were involved in innovative projects in the developing world, especially Africa, that could improve the lives of millions of people.

Novartis won the Health-Care IT category for a project that tracks medical supplies in Africa, while H-P and its partner, mPedigree Network of Ghana, were runners-up in this category for a text-messaging service that helps users detect counterfeit drugs.

“The mobile phone is a source of innovations in Africa, since access to a mobile phone is the first step toward development,” says Pedro Nueno, professor of entrepreneurship at IESE Business School in Spain and an Innovation Awards judge.

According to the Center for Game Science, part of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, a small group of individuals living on at least three continents, who call themselves The Contenders, solved the structure of a protein that has stumped scientists for more than 10 years. How? From the comfort of their own homes, playing an online protein folding game called Foldit.

The Contenders’ solution and its validation were published in September in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology magazine.

“This is the real deal,” said biophysicist Rhiju Das of Stanford University, who was not involved in the work. “I think [this] really shows how this is a new way of doing science that is more powerful than what a handful of experts could do.”

The protein in question was a retroviral protease of the Mason-Pfizer monkey virus, which causes an AIDS-like disease in monkeys. Over the last decade, many researchers tried various methods to determine the protein’s structure but were unsuccessful. “This viral protein…has really evaded the efforts of expert crystallographers and the very best automated tools,” Das said.

Then one scientist, Mariusz Jaskolski of A. Mickiewicz University in Poland and the Polish Academy of Sciences, turned to an online game called Foldit. Foldit, an extension to the Rosetta@home program, was designed by computer scientists at the Center for Game Science so that home computers around the world could do complex calculations on protein structures. According to UW computation biologist David Baker, while the program ran, users would see a screen saver of the computations. Before long, he began to get emails from users who noticed that the program wasn’t always accurate. They had noticed that the protein, when folding up its helix, was going left when it should have been going right.

Foldit allows users to alter the course of Rosetta calculations, and try to solve protein structures on their own. The goal is to fold up the protein so it has the lowest energy, just as molecules tend to do in real life. Because some Foldit users had demonstrated their potential to solve real protein-folding problems, Jaskolski and Baker decided to put the gamers to the test to see if they could solve the enigma of this particular viral protease.

About 600 players from 41 teams submitted more than 1.25 million solutions. Narrowing those down to 5,000, Jaskolski and colleagues subjected them to a computational technique called molecular replacement (MR), which tests the models against X-ray crystallography data. For MR to work, the proposed structure has to be very close to accurate, in which case the MR calculations can help perfect the details. But previous attempts at MR for this protein had failed because the protein models were too far off the mark.

But The Contenders’ proposed protein structure was a winner. “When we took [their] model, it was a beautiful fit to the X-ray data so we knew [they] had solved it,” Baker said. “We were just totally blown away. This is the first time that a long-standing scientific problem has been solved by Foldit players, or to my knowledge, any scientific gaming participants.”

“It’s kind of an unprecedented case of using computing non-specialists to solve a longstanding scientific problem,” said Alexander Wlodawer, chief of the Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute.

The next step might be to provide Foldit users with experimental validation as they play the game, said Das. In this case, the players simply kept tweaking the structure until it produced a low energy score, but they didn’t get any experimental feedback until the very end.

“What if the players do have access to experimental data?” Das asked. “Can they interpret it in the same way that scientists do? Can we turn 10,000 or 100,000 into citizen scientists into real scientists who are developing hypotheses and then doing experiments and then refining their hypotheses?”

If so, Foldit users may not only be able to solve protein structures, but actually refine the rules of the game itself and help scientists reach the ultimate goal of understanding structure directly from a protein’s amino acid sequence.

According to a report released in 2011 by Dice. com, the United States’ leading career website for technology and engineering professionals, based on an analysis of their job listings, cloud computing leads the pack with a nearly 300% jump in demand. Dice makes an association between the boom in cloud-related applications and an increased demand for JavaScript expertise, which saw a 98% increase and HTML, which showed an 85% increase.

Skills related to information security are also in demand, as are those related to virtualization.

The report also shows that Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is among the most sought-after skills of the moment. Others are SAP expertise and PeopleSoft experience.

Further analysis from the Dice report:

• Demand for Hadoop knowledge grew slower than other NoSQL related technologies, but there were still more Hadoop jobs than there were jobs in every other NoSQL technology combined.
• Traditional RDBMS technologies are still the most popular, with the most jobs and strong growth.
• Demand for Oracle eBusiness Suite skills dipped but remained strong for Oracle’s database. SAP hiring experienced the most growth in the applications area, followed by PeopleSoft.
• Silverlight overtook Flash.
• Demand for iPad skills decreased but iOS demand increased.
• There was an increased demand for skills in Facebook and Twitter.
• Azure was the fastest growing platform.

The five programming languages with the most growth were:
1. HTML5 (45.2%)
2. SAP Sybase PowerBuilder (26.0%)
3. Ruby (15.8%)
4. Python (15.8%)
5. Silverlight (12.6%)

The top languages, by total number of jobs, were:
1. Java (16,152 jobs)
2. HTML (9,736 jobs)
3. XML (9,651)
4. JavaScript (9,618)
5. C# (7,940)

Takeaways:

• Microsoft professionals are doing well, with strong growth in C#, Silverlight and Azure.
• Java is still sitting pretty
• SAP is rebounding.
• Oracle database skills remain vital, but other Oracle applications are questionable.
• Demand for CRM skills are in decline, with Siebel, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics all taking hits in the past three months.
• NoSQL is a small but growing niche.
• You can’t go wrong with HTML5 and JavaScript.
]]> http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/10/tech-skills-top-it-skills-in-demand/feed/ 0 http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/07/incentives-for-it-professionals/ http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/07/incentives-for-it-professionals/#comments Wed, 13 Jul 2011 13:55:09 +0000 RRohan http://www.baysidesolutions.com/blog/?p=513 If there’s one thing that companies with successful retention rates for IT talent know, it’s that you have to make sure your IT employees feel like they’re part of the larger organization. Too often, the IT department is treated as a separate entity, and it’s crucial that they feel part of the business.

You should also make sure they understand how their efforts impact the bottom line and improve the profitability of the company. In other words, show your appreciation!

If you can create an inclusive, supportive environment, you will get both engagement and innovation from your IT staff. By differentiating your work environment, you will make your IT employees think twice about leaving and joining a more typical work environment – even if it offers a little more pay.

One great way to make your IT employees feel important to the company is to create incentives. These incentives aren’t necessarily monetary. They can be professional rewards.

• Organizations can improve retention rates and employee performance by making it easier for IT personnel to find new opportunities within the company.
• Some companies empower IT employees by giving them the opportunity to work on diverse, limited-term assignments, rather than in one department or function. Some organizations develop a talent exchange. This connects employees and other resources with appropriate projects, roles, and positions across the company.
• Companies that provide intensive training to promote skill building convey the message that professional development is important – and it is especially important to IT personnel, who work in a field that develops and changes rapidly.

Some incentive plans can be quickly implemented and will yield positive results almost immediately if executed well: project bonuses or other project-related incentives (which can be non-cash, like restaurant vouchers or gift cards); awards for outstanding performance; or public recognition of achievement through corporate communications outlets like newsletters and intranets.

IT employees tend to value family-oriented or quality-of-life rewards, such as extra paid time off or a paid family vacation as compensation for their efforts.

Of course, you can always use cash incentives such as stock options and annual bonuses. A recent survey found that more than 90% of companies provide some form of cash bonus or incentive plan for IT workers.

However, research also suggests that what matters most is not always how much money or how many perks are offered, but the way in which incentive programs are structured. An incentive must be attainable, relevant, and meaningful to impact performance and behavior. Giving the employee an opportunity to have input into the reward system he will be attempting is important in developing commitment. Employees who have been given some say in the design of their incentive programs will be more committed to seeing the program through to reap the rewards.

If you would like to learn more about the ins and outs of hiring IT talent, contact Bayside Solutions today.

]]> http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/07/incentives-for-it-professionals/feed/ 0 http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/06/retain-top-it-professionals/ http://blog.baysidesolutions.com/2011/06/retain-top-it-professionals/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 02:30:14 +0000 RRohan http://www.baysidesolutions.com/blog/?p=453 How many of your top IT performers are simply biding their time, waiting until the economy improves before bolting to the next job? As the job market opens up, the first people out the door will be the ones with the most options – the best employees in your organization.

This could have a devastating impact on your company in more ways than one — disrupted projects, overruns on schedules and budgets, quality issues, and loss of corporate memory — in addition to the time and expense of having to find replacements.

How can you increase commitment and decrease turnover among your valued IT employees?

First, you need to understand why IT professionals tend to leave an organization. You may think the most important reason is money, but that’s not the entire story. It’s easy for IT workers to compare their salaries to others doing the same work, both within your company and within their industry. If they feel they are not being paid competitively, pay is definitely an issue. However, infotech employees also appreciate other perks, such as:

• Challenging work assignments
• Favorable work environment
• Flextime
• Stock options
• Additional vacation time
• Family-friendly values
• Everyday casual dress code
• Cross-functional assignments, tuition and training reimbursement

One recent survey found that the second most important retention factor for IT professionals is quality of management – how well the IT staff is managed. Many bosses in IT aren’t strong on mentoring and team-building. They often received promotions themselves because they were technically strong, and not necessarily because they had strong people skills or instinctive leadership qualities.

In order to ensure that your managers are giving the IT staff what they need, try to ensure that they are:

Communicating about Career Development IT managers need to communicate frequently with their employees about career development activities. This should include assessing an employee’s competencies in terms of technical ability, project management and process skills, innovation, and effectiveness.

Employees also want to learn business skills, interpersonal skills and communication skills. They know that companies are looking for well-rounded individuals, not just “techno geeks.”

Conducting Employee Surveys In other words, managers need to ask their employees what they like about their jobs, and what they need in terms of training and mentoring. The amount of training offered is a critical consideration in an IT professional’s decision to stay or leave.

Training is too often seen as a perk when it should be viewed as an essential investment in a company’s intellectual capital. In IT, change is rapid and nobody wants to become obsolete by working too long in an unchanging environment. Strong training, coaching, job rotation programs, and opportunities for experimentation send a clear message that management is seeking to establish a long-term relationship with employees.

In order to retain your top IT employees, take a look at your salary ranges to see if they are competitive, ensure that you are offering other benefits besides salary and insurance, make sure your managers are providing a challenging work environment, and see that career development and training programs are in place.

To find out more about how you can keep your IT team intact, or how we can help fill your technical staffing needs, contact Bayside Solutions today.

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