Open Systems. DBMS. 2014, Volume 22, Number 5COVER FEATURES
SAFETY COMMUNICATION
WebRTC Capabilities Explained

A group of modern technologies and standards transforms World Wide Web into a communications environment giving devices and users an ability to interact directly with each other in real time.
Leonid Chernyak (osmag@osp.ru), Associate Editor-in-Chief, Research Features, Open Systems.DBMS
 

Browser-to-Browser Communication Security
Using WebRTC technology, which is all but a part of HTML5, is an increasingly popular method of facilitating real-time communications over the Web. Nothing prevents today a developer from supporting WebRTC at application level; however, the security of browser-to-browser interaction is an open question.
Valeriy Korzhov (osmag@osp.ru), staff writer, Computerworld Russia
 

PLATFORMS
A Worldwide Web of Large Graphs
Discovering valuable insights contained in Internet and social networks in particular — for instance identifying most influential community members — necessitates using large graph processing techniques.
Alexander Frolov (frolov@nicevt.ru), staff member, NICEVT JSC; Alexander Semyonov (semenov@nicevt.ru), staff member, NICEVT JSC
 

MapReduce Real-Time Alternatives
Once sparking a furor, MapReduce’s distributed computing model is now getting outdated, as its performance is not enough for real time big data analysis tasks.
Leonid Chernyak (osmag@osp.ru), Associate Editor-in-Chief, Research Features, Open Systems.DBMS
 

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Software Product Management

In 1995, Netscape had browser market share of 80 percent — more than enough to stay in the pole position forever, as companies such as Google or Amazon show. However, by 1997, it lost market share, and in 2003, went into bankruptcy. What went wrong? One of Netscape managers put it in simple words: «We had no product management.»
Christof Ebert (christof.ebert@vector.com), managing director, Vector Consulting Services
 

SECURITY
Cosmetic Contact Lenses and Iris Recognition Spoofing
Automatically detecting novel types of cosmetic contact lenses in iris images is a very difficult pattern-recognition problem, but experimental datasets that enable researchers to study this problem have recently become available.
Kevin W. Bowyer (kwb@nd.edu), Schubmehl Prein Professor, chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame; James S. Doyle (james.s.doyle.96@nd.edu), PhD student, Department of Computer Science Engineering, University of Notre Dame
 

IT MANAGEMENT
ITIL Pro and contra — 10 things that would make us love ITIL even more

Over the past decades, ITIL has become a de facto standard in the IT industry. Yet, some practitioners have also raised the question as to how and where to set the limits of applying ITIL compared to these other frameworks and compared to the reality of actual organizations of various types. So what then would have made us love ITIL even more for the world of today and tomorrow? This text aims to explore one top-10 from personal experience and discussion with other IT professionals.
Tom Segers (tom.segers@reldolmen.com), ITIL Expert certified Service Delivery Manager, RealDolmen
 

APPLICATIONS
New Three-Dimensional Digital Medicine and Big Data in National Health
The appearance and intensive use of tomographs has become a source of data and a catalyst for the development of three-dimensional digital medicine (3DDM), which opens up new possibilities in the fight against cancer, new system solutions in the field of diagnostics and health care in general, as well as creates new business opportunities.
Vadim E. Turlapov (vadim.turlapov@cs.vmk.unn.ru), professor, Lobachevsky UNN; Nikolay I. Gavrilov (gavrilov86@gmail.com), scientific researcher, Lobachevsky UNN;Vladimir A. Saprykin (sva26@rambler.ru), programmer, Nizhniy Novgorod Regional Oncology Center (Nizhny Novgorod)
 

INTEGRATION
An Instrument for Establishing Mutual Understanding in an Organization
How to establish a single version of corporate truth? Managers of various levels have struggled to find the answer for decades. Decision making support, reliable management reporting and KPI all require verifiable and correctly matched data.
Kirill Butayev (Kirill.Butaev@sas.com), account manager; Gleb Larichev (Gleb.Larichev@sas.com), senior business consultant, platform solutions; Maria Yermakova (Maria.Ermakova@sas.com), business consultant, platform solutions, SAS Russia/CIS
 

OPINION
The «146% Effect»: Incompetency or Malicious Intent?
Russia-24 news TV channel showing an indicator board with vote percentages totaling 146% during an election has become a hugely popular meme in the country, effectively putting its democratic foundations into question. However, the root cause of this mishap seems to be nothing more but software engineers incompetency.
Yuri Karpov (karpov@dcn.ftk.spbstu.ru), chair, Distributed computing and computer networks Department, Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University
 

EXTREME TECHNOLOGY
Power8 vs. x86

Having released Power8 microprocessor and created OpenPower ecosystem, Big Blue has laid a serious claim for a market share of solutions relating to current major trends including mobility, social networking and cloud computing.
Leonid Chernyak (osmag@osp.ru), Associate Editor-in-Chief, Research Features, Open Systems.DBMS
 

OS MUSEUM
The Dawn of Russia’s Computer Age

It’s 1948: the World War II has only recently ended, but former Russia’s allies are already preparing for a next one having tested new types of weapons, target acquisition systems and delivery vehicles. It has become evident that in future potential confrontations a leading role would be played by technology.
Sergey Prokhorov (rusieee@gmail.com), senior fellow, Institute of Science and Technology History, Russian Academy of Sciences
 

OS ACADEMY. UNIVERSITIES
Healthcare IT of the Future

EMC Russia R&D Center is working on future medicine platforms
Natalya Dubova (osmag@osp.ru), Associate Editor-in-Chief, Special Features, Open Systems.DBMS
 

OS ACADEMY. LIBRARY
Information and Collaboration

The March issue of Computer Magazine (IEEE Computer Society, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2014) covers the topic of collaborative information search.
Sergey D. Kuznetsov (kuz@ispras.ru), professor, Moscow State University