The development and direction of the Romanian IT industry - Cluj Napoca in particular - has always been an attractive topic for me. I am the kind of person who always looks for the bigger picture; I try to understand the system or mechanism, how it “operates”, and then tweak it a bit. Just to get an idea in the 1900’s the average lifespan of a company was 80 years, in the 1950’s the average dropped to 50 years and in 2011 that reduced to a merely 8 years. This shows the increasing volatility of the global market and the fact that companies need to make adjustments very fast in order to survive the rapid changes in the environment they live in.

This was the question Jon Duschinsky – keynote speaker at the PMI Global Congress EMEA 2014 – asked the audience. I had the privilege to attend the Congress in Dubai, UAE, at the beginning of May. Jon was truly amazing and I will try to convey some of the bright ideas that stayed with me long after his speech. Duschinsky, recently voted as the world’s second most influential communicator in social innovation (the first being Bill Clinton), has a strong background in philanthropy and social innovation. In 2012, together with a team of some of the world’s leading creative thinkers, Jon co-founded “The Conversation Farm”.

Cloud is probably one of the most used term in IT industry of this decade; but what does the cloud actually mean? From its very beginnings, the “Internet” network has been represented visually, through diagrams, by a cloud, thus showing the fact that it is offered as a service, without revealing information about its technical implementation, offering only an interface for communicating with other networks.

In the last weeks we discovered together the base principles of Aspect Oriented Programing (AOP). Now is the time to see how we can use at real power the AOP characteristics using PostSharp. Before going straight to subject, let’s make a short recap. AOP is a programming paradigm with the main goal of increasing the modularity of an application. AOP tries to achieve this goal by allowing separation of cross-cutting concerns – using interception of different commands or requests.

Static code analysis (SCA) is the analysis of computer programs that is performed without actually executing the programs, usually by using an automated tool. SCA has become an integral part of the software development life cycle and one of the first steps to detect and eliminate programming errors early in the software development stage. Although SCA tools are routinely used in proprietary software development environment to ensure software quality, application of such tools to the vast expanse of opensource code presents a forbidding albeit interesting challenge, especially when opensource code finds its way into commercial software.

Using free/libre software confers many advantages to the persons/organizations doing so, especially if these users are technical (like software companies for example). This article will discuss these advantages and dispel some of the myths floating around free/libre software. Free software is software which respects your (the users’) freedoms . It is commonly written as free/libre (or colloquially “free as in freedom not as in beer”) to emphasize the fact that we’re not talking about price. Indeed, free software can be sold commercially - more about this shortly.

Recently, the macroeconomic forecasts seem rather positive for Romania. The latest news in this line talk about one of the greatest economic boosts in Europe, about the significant enhancement of the country rating by one of the most important global rating agencies and about a new law regarding the non-taxing of profits that are reinvested into technology. I personally believe that all these positive news and forecasts will have an intense effect of accelerating the investments in Romania.

The Ministry of Finance through the Department of State Aid will run from 1st of July a new scheme of state aid that will be valid until 31 December 2020 and will have a total budget of about 600 million euros, with the possibility of supplementing. Estimated total number of firms which will benefit of state aid is 1.500. Salary costs are considered eligible expenses recorded for a period of 2 years consecutive, following the creation of jobs.

Any entrepreneur (the IT domain not excepted) knows how difficult it is to build a brand and how important it is in a business – a prestigious trademark on the market, but also time, energy and money investments for advertising, promotion, etc. The brand plays an important role in the marketing strategy of any company and it contributes to the consolidation of its image and fame. For some companies, it even represents their most valuable asset.

This month has marked a new phase in the efforts of building a relevant identity for the Cluj IT Cluster, but also an opportunity of development on a course of innovation for our association members. The project presented last year by Cluj IT within the operation POSCCE / Op.1.3.3 is in the last phase of signing the financing contract, and it will be implemented for a period of 18 months after signing. It is the result of an effort of preparation of more than a year.