10 key moments in the history of Apple and Microsoft

Apple and Microsoft recently renewed their alliance with the goal of tackling the enterprise market, but the latest partnership is just the most recent turning point in the two companies' intertwined histories. Here are the defining moments that led up to the new pact.

Apple and Microsoft's history of highs and lows
Apple and Microsoft share a common history and bond in the evolution of personal computing. Relations between the two technology pioneers were generally cordial when they were founded in the 1970s, but that sense of mutual respect quickly turned to discord. The founders of both companies were at loggerheads often in the past. Today their new leaders appear determined to bury the hatchet and partner for greater opportunities in the enterprise.

Youthful innocence of the early '80s
Microsoft was a critical Apple ally during the first Macintosh's development. At an Apple event in 1983, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates told attendees Microsoft expected to earn half of its revenues selling Macintosh software the following year. He called the Macintosh, "something that's really new and really captures people's attention."

Jobs ousted from Apple, forms NeXT
In 1985, Apple CEO Steve Jobs was ousted from the company he cofounded nine years earlier. He immediately sold all but one share in Apple to fund the launch of NeXT, where he would spend the next 12 years building computer workstations for higher education and business.

Jobs says Microsoft has 'no taste'
"The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste," Jobs said in the 1996 "Triumph of the Nerds" TV documentary. "They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their products."

Jobs returns to Apple, partners with Microsoft
When Apple acquired NeXT in 1997 and brought Steve Jobs back into the fold, the company was in disarray amid growing uncertainty about the future of Microsoft Office for Mac. During his keynote address at the Macworld Expo that year, Jobs extolled the virtues of partnering with industry leaders and spoke of the need to improve Apple's partner relations.

Gates addresses the Apple faithful in 1997
"Microsoft is going to be part of the game with us as we restore this company back to health," Jobs said at Macworld, before asking Gates to address the crowd via satellite.

"We think Apple makes a huge contribution to the computer industry," Gates said. "We think it's going to be a lot of fun helping out."

Gates and Jobs take the stage together in 2007
A seminal moment occurred between the leaders of both companies when Gates and Jobs jointly took the stage for an interview at the D5 conference. Both men praised each other in their own ways. Jobs commended Gates for building the first software company in the world, but Gates was more flattering. "What Steve's done is quite phenomenal," he said.

'Memories longer than the road ahead'
When Jobs was asked to describe the greatest misunderstanding of his relationship with Gates, he said: "I think of most things in life as either a Bob Dylan or a Beatles song, but there's that one line in that one Beatles song — 'You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead' — and that's clearly very true here."

Apple invites Microsoft exec on stage for iPad demo
A new era of partnership buoyed by opportunities in the enterprise began to blossom in the early-2010s. At Apple's September 2015 new product event in San Francisco, the company invited Kirk Koenigsbauer, vice president of Microsoft Office, on stage to demonstrate Office 365 apps working in split-screen mode on an iPad Pro.

Microsoft CEO uses iPhone at Dreamforce
At Salesforce's 2015 Dreamforce conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demoed the company's iOS apps on an iPhone. When Nadella did the once unthinkable, using an iPhone on stage, he acknowledged it as such but also made clear that it wasn't his phone. "It is a pretty unique iPhone," he said. "I like to call it the iPhone Pro because it has all the Microsoft software and applications on it … It's pretty amazing."

Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn't hold a grudge
During a keynote at cloud-storage company Box's BoxWorks conference in September 2015, when asked about the company's renewed relationship with Microsoft, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he doesn't believe in holding grudges. "If you think back in time, Apple and IBM were foes. Apple and Microsoft were foes," Cook said. "Apple and Microsoft still compete today, but frankly Apple and Microsoft can partner on more things than we could compete on, and that's what the customer wants."

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5 ways, shore, security, BYOD strategy

Ask most computer pros to talk about IT security, and you’ll likely hear about all sorts of external threats, like malware, hackers, spyware, DOS attacks and the like. But what if the bigger – and more costly – threat comes from within?

The now infamous Ashley Madison website has had a pretty successful run at helping its clientele be disloyal. So perhaps some would view it as poetic justice if the website became one of the most scandalous breaches in history at the hands of one of its own.

At least that is the conclusion of IT security analyst John McAfee, who noted recently “yes, it is true. Ashley Madison was not hacked – the data was stolen by a woman operating on her own who worked for Avid Life Media.”

If true, the fact that the Ashley Madison breach was due to an internal, and not external, threat shouldn’t come as too big a surprise. Many IT security studies this year have pointed to the growing threat of insider data theft and corporate breaches.

In some cases, insider threats can be more financially damaging and more difficult to defend against. After all, external threats involve someone trying to break in. The insider threat already has the keys to the front door and knows where the family jewels are stored.

Still, external and internal threats often share one key motive – the desire to profit from data. With external threats, hackers are traditionally looking to steal data that they can sell in the black market. With internal threats, the incident may involve an employee – or former employee – looking to cash in on something they developed or strategic information that competitors want.

That was the case this January in Boston, when the Proctor & Gamble Company filed suit against four former Gillette Company employees, accusing them of wrongfully using and disclosing confidential information and trade secrets to a direct competitor.

In July, an employee of Merit Health Northwest Mississippi was accused of removing patient information from the facility over a two year period without authorization. The employee reportedly stole patient names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health plan information and clinical information, all for the purpose of identity theft.

Perhaps the most difficult to defend against is the disgruntled employee, notes Jane LeClair, chief operating officer at the National Cybersecurity Institute, which tracks data breach incidents. One might be tempted to think the NCI spends the lion’s share of its time on external data breaches, but insider threats have become a top concern.

“Insider threats are something that most organizations don’t have a terribly high focus on today,” LeClair believes. “I think there is a lot to be done in that area. We, as Americans, are really a very trusting people. So it’s hard for a lot of organizations – especially smaller organizations – [to view employees as a primary threat].”

Obviously most aren’t. But enough are, or could be, that employers need to be looking over both shoulders – one facing outside and the other in, LeClair indicates.

“In many cases, when we talk insider threat, the person may no longer be with the company – so if you add that piece to the definition you can see why it becomes pretty big; much bigger than people probably think about,” LeClair notes. “People who leave may be angry or frustrated, or are laid off. You can understand why the company wants to get them out quickly because they can have that need for revenge in some cases.”

Or they may still be with the company but are disengaged.
“They feel unappreciated or unfulfilled. They are hard workers but they don’t feel that the organization is appreciating them or recognizing them, or perhaps not paying them what they feel they’re worth. That’s another level of dissatisfaction that is very frequently thought about. I would say that’s probably one of the bigger reasons.”

Then there is a relatively new insider threat which may prove to be among the most dangerous – the politically motivated perpetrator.

“I’ve always looked at from the human perspective,” explains Candy Alexander, an IT security consultant and former chief information security officer. “It’s important to note if you are a security person or an IT person to pay attention to what is going on in our society with current events. It will be reflected into the electronic world. In our society and culture today there is a lot of intolerance for lots of things. We’re seeing that through sorts of events.”

A different moral compass
Could social conscious be a motivating factor in the Ashley Madison case? It’s still too early to tell, but some IT security experts tell CIO that it is certainly possible.

Since word of the Ashley Madison breach broke in July, many IT security experts and forensics professionals began debating the source of the attack, which revealed the email addresses of millions of account holders and site visitors. Many immediately suspected an insider threat, since the culprit(s) seemed to know too much about the firm’s technology.

Clearly some individual, or individuals, had an all access pass to the company’s systems.

Accidental exposure
Many top IT security experts believe that the most common form of insider data threat is that of accidental exposure – an employee unintentionally and unwittingly creating a vulnerable situation or allowing data to be accessed. That certainly accounts for many threat incidents.

“All companies are going to have the possibility of this occurring because accidents do commonly occur, and I do believe that accidental exposure is much more common than intentional harm,” explains Meg Anderson, chief information security officer at Principal Financial Group.

“So lack of awareness is one cause of accidents – such as lost laptops, misdirected email, even paper reports that are still walking out of companies,” Anderson says. “Those are relatively small incidents. But we also have data on all kinds of new devices now, so we’ve added possibilities of iPhones being hacked, tablets, etc.” They all run the risk of financial loss, fines, lost customers, plus the potential loss of reputation.

Insider threats also vary depending on what the organization does and the type of data it collects, Anderson says.

“There are a lot of scenarios and I think a lot of it depends on the organization. You cannot discount financial gain. There are going to be insiders that want to make money on your data and on your intellectual property. It could involve insider trading – having authorized access and passing that along to somebody else. “

“The third thing I can think of is that a lot of times employees think that they own what they work on while they’re at work. One thing that is often compromised is source code – programmers thinking they own their source code. They may also be temporary contract employees that work for us. They take that code from company to company, because you do reuse code, and it makes sense to them that it is their property.”

Still, Anderson agrees that it the disgruntled employee that probably poses the greatest theat.

“When we talk about intentional damage it could be far more impactful because it’s less likely to be noticed and it also could go on for some time – a ‘slow flow’ sort of approach,” Anderson says.

To spot a thief
So how do you spot the potential data thief in your midst?

It starts with observing behavior, notes Ganesan (Ravi) Ravishanker, CIO at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts.

“We do the usual best practices,” Ravishanker says. “Most of us rely on the annual audit. We create the best practice controls and do the best we can. We also rely on the business units to partner with us to be able to develop controls, to develop reports; we do have very comprehensive reports that we generate on which users have access to what data. That gets adjusted because people’s roles change. We need to make sure that we keep people’s access as limited as possible.”

But technology is only part of the solution. It is equally important is to watch for changes in user behavior, Ravishanker says.

“One of the big things is really looking at changes in employee behavior,” LeClair agrees. “Maybe their work performance is dropping off or they’re arriving later. Conceivably it could even be better work performance in that they’re grabbing data. Or behavior toward other employees might be something that you notice.”

Finally, in addition to all the best security practices that an organization should focus on, the bottom line is how well the organization treats its workers.

“The thing I feel best about is that we have a Best Place to Work, and it’s on the Best Place to Work list for a reason,” Anderson concludes. “I do think that if you have fully engaged employees that feel appreciated and that their work is being recognized, they are less likely to feel that they want to commit crime on the job.”

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Three key challenges in vulnerability risk management

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Vulnerability risk management has re-introduced itself as a top challenge – and priority – for even the most savvy IT organizations. Despite the best detection technologies, organizations continue to get compromised on a daily basis. Vulnerability scanning provides visibility into potential land mines across the network, but often just results in data tracked in spreadsheets and independent remediation teams scrambling in different directions.

The recent Verizon Data Breach report showed that 99.9% of vulnerabilities exploited in attacks were compromised more than a year after being published. This clearly demonstrates the need to change from a “find” to “fix” mentality. Here are three key challenges to getting there:

* Vulnerability prioritization. Today, many organizations prioritize based on CVSS score and perform some level of asset importance classification within the process. However, this is still generating too much data for remediation teams to take targeted and informed action. In a larger organization, this process can result in tens of thousands – or even millions – of critical vulnerabilities detected. So the bigger question is – which vulnerabilities are actually critical?

Additional context is necessary get a true picture of actual risk across the IT environment. Organizations might consider additional factors in threat prioritization, such as the exploitability or value of an asset, the correlation between the vulnerability and the availability of public exploits, attacks and malware actively targeting the detected vulnerability, or the popularity of a vulnerability in social media conversations.

* Remediation process. The second and perhaps most profound challenge is in the remediation process itself. On average, organizations take 103 days to remediate a security vulnerability. In a landscape of zero-day exploits and the speed and agility at which malware developers operate, the window of opportunity is wide open for attackers.

The remediation challenge is most often rooted in the process itself. While there is no technology that can easily and economically solve the problem, there are ways to enable better management through automation that can improve the process and influence user behavior. In some cases, there are simple adjustments that can result in a huge impact. For example, a CISO at a large enterprise company recently stated that something as easy as being able to establish deadlines and automated reminder notifications when a deadline was approaching could vastly improve the communication process between Security and DevOps/SysAdmin teams.

In other words, synchronizing communication between internal teams through workflow automation can help accelerate the remediation process. From simple ticket and task management to notifications and patch deployment, the ability to track the remediation process within a single unified view can eliminate the need to navigate and update multiple systems and potentially result in significant time savings.

* Program governance. The adage, “You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it” is true when it comes to evaluating the success of a vulnerability risk management program. In general, information security programs are hard to measure compared to other operational functions such as sales and engineering. One can create hard metrics, but it is often difficult to translate those metrics into measurable business value.

There is no definitive answer for declaring success. For most organizations, this will likely vary depending on the regulatory nature of their industry and overall risk management strategy. However, IT and security teams demonstrate greater value when they can show the level of risk removed from critical systems.

Establishing the right metrics is the key to any successful governance program, but it also must have the flexibility to evolve with the changing threat landscape. In the case of vulnerability risk management, governance may start with establishing baseline metrics such as number of days to patch critical systems or average ticket aging. As the program evolves, new, and more specific, metrics can be introduced such as number of days from discovery to resolution (i.e., time when a patch is available to actual application).

Practitioners can start improving the process by making some simple changes. For example, most vulnerability assessment tools offer standard prioritization of risks based on CVSS score and asset classification. However, this approach is still generating too much data for remediation teams. Some organizations have started to perform advanced correlation with threat intelligence feeds and exploit databases. Yet, this process can be a full-time job in itself, and is too taxing on resources.

Technologies exist today to help ease this process through automation by enriching the results of vulnerability scan data with rich context beyond the CVSS score. Through correlation with external threat, exploit, malware, and social media feeds and the IT environment, a list of prioritized vulnerabilities is delivered based on the systems most likely to be targeted in a data breach. Automating this part of the process with existing technologies can help cut the time spent on prioritization from days to hours.

Today, vulnerability management has become as much about people and process as it is about technology, and this is where many programs are failing. The problem is not detection. Prioritization, remediation, and program governance have become the new precedence. It is no longer a question of if you will be hacked, but rather when, and most importantly, how. The inevitable breach has become a commonly accepted reality. Vulnerability risk management calls for a new approach that moves beyond a simple exercise in patch management to one focused on risk reduction and tolerable incident response.

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Why (and how) VMware created a new type of virtualization just for containers

VMware says containers and virtual machines are better together

As the hype about containers has mounted over the past year, it has raised questions about what this technology – which is for packaging applications - means for traditional management and virtualization vendors. Some have wondered: Will containers kill the virtual machine?

VMware answered that question with a resounding no at its annual conference in San Francisco last week. But, company officials say containers can benefit from having a new type of management platform. And it’s built a whole new type of virtualization just for containers.
Virtualization for containers

A decade and a half ago, VMware helped revolutionized the technology industry with the introduction of enterprise-grade hypervisors that ushered in an era of server virtualization.

Last week the company revealed a redesigned version of its classic virtualization software named Project Photon. It’s a lightweight derivative of the company’s popular ESX hypervisor that has been engineered specifically to run application containers.

“At its core, it’s still got the virtualization base,” explains Kit Colbert, VMware’s vice president and CTO of Cloud Native Applications. Colbert calls Photon a “micro-visor” with “just enough” functionality to have the positive attributes of virtualization, while also being packaged in a lightweight format ideal for containers.

Project Photon includes two key pieces. One is named Photon Machine – a hypervisor software born out of ESX that is installed directly onto physical servers. It creates miniature virtual machines that containers are placed in. It includes a guest operating system, which the user can choose. By default Photon Machine comes with VMware’s customized Linux distribution named Photon OS, which the company has also designed to be container friendly.

The second major piece is named Photon Controller, which is a multi-tenant control plane that can handle many dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of instances of Photon Machine. Photon Controller will provision the clusters of Photon Machines and ensure they have access to network and storage resources as needed.

The combination of Photon Machine and Photon Controller creates a blueprint for a scale-out environment that has no single point of failure and exposes a single logical API endpoint that developers can write to. In theory, IT operators can deploy Project Photon and developers can write applications that run on it.

Project Photon will integrate with various open source projects, such as Docker for the container run-time support, as well as Google Kubernetes and Pivotil’s Cloud Foundry for higher-level application management. (Photon manages infrastructure provisioning while Kubernetes and CF manage application deployments.)

VMware's virtual approach to containers (3:30)

VMware has not yet set pricing for either platform, but both will be available this year as a private beta.
The journey to containers

Not all customers are ready to go all-in on containers though. So, VMware is also integrating container support into its traditional management tools.

VSphere Integrated Containers is a second product VMware announced that Colbert says is a good starting point for organizations that want to get their feet wet with containers. For full-scale container build outs, Colbert recommends transitioning to Project Photon.

VSphere Integrated Containers is a plugin for vSphere, the company’s venerable ESX management software. “It makes containers first-class citizens in vSphere,” Colbert explains. With the plugin, customers are able to deploy containers inside of a virtual machine, allowing the container in the VM to be managed just like any other VM by vSphere.

By comparison, currently if a user wanted to deploy containers in vSphere, they would likely deploy multiple containers inside a single virtual machine. Colbert says that has potentially harmful security implications though: If one of the containers in the VM is compromised, then the other containers in the VM could be impacted. By packaging one container inside each VM, it allows containers to be protected by the security isolation and baked in management features of vSphere.

Kurt Marko, an analyst at Marko Insights, says VMware’s approach to containers could be appealing to VMware admins who are being pressured to embrace containers. It could come with a downside, though.

“Wrapping Photon containers in a micro-VM makes it look like any other instance to the management stack and operators,” Marko wrote in an email. “Of course, the potential downside is lost efficiency since even micro-VMs will have more overhead than containers sharing the same kernel and libraries.” VMware says the VM-overhead is minute, but Marko says it will take independent analysis to determine if there is a tax for using containers inside VMs.
Hold your horses

As VMware attempts to position itself as a container company, there are headwinds. First, it is still very early on in the container market.

“The hype far outweighs the utilization” at this point, says IDC analyst Al Gillen, program vice president for servers and systems software. He estimates that fewer than 1/10 of 1% of enterprise applications are currently running in containers. It could be more than a decade before the technology reaches mainstream adoption with more than 40% of the market.

VMware also hasn’t traditionally been known as a company that leads the charge when it comes to cutting edge open source projects, which is a perception the company is fighting. Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs – a startup that was showcasing its container operating system and management platform at VMworld - said the container movement has thus far been driven largely by developers and open source platforms like Mesos, Docker and Kubernetes – he hasn’t run into a single container user who is running containers in VMware environments, he said.

Forrester analyst Dave Bartoltti says that shouldn’t be surprising though. VMware has strong relations with IT operations managers, not developers who have been most enthusiastically using containers. Announcements the company has made at VMworld are about enabling those IT ops workers to embrace containers in their VMware environments. Other management vendors, like Red Hat, Microsoft and IBM are equally enthusiastically embracing containers. VMware’s argument though, is that containers and VMs are better together.

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Top 10 technology schools

Interested in going to one of the best colleges or universities to study technology? Here are the top 10 schools known for their computer science and engineering programs.

Top technology schools
Every year, Money releases its rankings of every college and university in the U.S., and not surprisingly, a number of those top schools are leaders in the tech space. Here are the top 10 technology schools, according to Money's most recent survey of the best colleges in America.

Stanford University
First on the list for not only technology colleges, but all colleges, Stanford University has an impressive 96 percent graduation rate. The average price for a degree is $178,731 and students earn, on average, $64,400 per year upon graduation. Stanford's global engineering program allows its 4,850 students to travel around the globe while studying engineering. There are nine departments in the engineering program: aeronautics and astronautics, bioengineering, chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, management science and engineering, materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Mass., is the second best technology school in the country, with a 93 percent graduation rate. The average net price of a degree comes in at a $166,855, but students can expect an average starting salary of $72,500 per year after graduating. As one of the top engineering schools, it's ranked number 1 for chemical, aerospace/aeronautical, computer and electrical engineering. The top employers for the 57 percent of graduates that enter the workforce immediately include companies like Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil. Another 32 percent of students, however, go on to pursue a higher degree.

California Institute of Technology
Located in Pasadena, Calif., the California Institute of Technology has a graduation rate of 93 percent. The average cost of a degree is $186,122, and students earn an average starting salary of $72,300. CalTech, as it's often called, has departments in aerospace, applied physics and materials studies, computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering, environmental science and engineering, mechanical and civil engineering, and medical engineering. The prestigious college is also home to 31 recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Harvey Mudd College
Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. has a strong technology program, putting it at number 4 on the list of top technology schools. The cost of tuition is also one of the highest on this list, at $196,551 for a degree. Graduates of Harvey Mudd earn an average of $76,400 early on in their careers and the graduation rate is 91 percent. The engineering program at Harvey Mudd College focuses on helping students apply their skills to real world situations. Students can also get professional experience and help solve design problems outside of the classroom through an engineering clinic.

Harvard University
Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Mass., technically ties with Harvey Mudd for top technology schools, and top overall colleges. The graduation rate is 97 percent and the average price of a degree is $187, 763 while graduates earn an average annual salary of $60,000 when starting their careers. At Harvard's Jon A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which goes back as far as 1847, undergraduate students can study applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, engineering sciences and mechanical engineering.

University of California at Berkeley
The University of California at Berkeley has a graduation rate of 91 percent, and students can get a degree for around $133,549. After graduation, the average salary for students starting out their careers is $58,300 per year. The electrical engineering and computer science division of the University of California at Berkeley has around 2,000 undergraduate students and is the largest department within the university.

University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Penn., has a graduation rate of 96 percent and the average cost of a degree is $194,148. Students graduating from UPenn and beginning out their careers earn an average annual starting salary of $59,200. The UPenn engineering department focuses on computer and information science. Students can study computer science, computer engineering, digital media design, networked and social systems engineering, computational biology as well as computer and cognitive science.

Rice University
Located in Houston, Rice University has a graduation rate of 91 percent and the average cost of a degree is $157,824. Upon graduation, the average starting salary for students comes in at $61,200 per year. Rice University has a Department of Computer Science where students can work in faculty research programs and describes the perfect computer science student as a "mathematician seeking adventurer," a quote from system architect Bob Barton. In the electrical and computer engineering department, students can prepare for a career in oil and gas, wearables, entertainment, renewable energy, gaming, healthcare, space industry, security and aviation.

Brigham Young University-Provo
Brigham Young University-Provo, located in Provo, Utah, has a graduation rate of 78 percent, but students won't have as many loans as other colleges on this list. The average price of a degree is a moderate $80,988 and the average starting salary for graduates is around $51,600 per year. Brigham Young University-Provo offers degrees in electrical engineering, computer engineering and computer science. With a wide array of programs to choose from in each degree, Brigham Young University-Provo boasts a rigorous course load with an emphasis on gaining practical skills for the workforce.

Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas is home to Texas A&M University where 79 percent of students graduate and the average cost of a degree is $84,732. Students can expect to earn an average starting salary of $54,000 per year after graduation. The Texas A&M computer science and engineering program boasts an "open, accepting, and compassionate community that encourages the exploration of ideas." Students should expect to leave the program prepared to help solve real-world challenges in the technology industry through applied research.

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9 tips for dealing with toxic coworkers

Negative people in the workplace can take a toll on both your sanity and health. But before you point fingers ensure you've done you're part to build a healthy relationship. Here experts discuss techniques for dealing with difficult behaviors.

No two people are exactly alike, but people do they do share traits - and those traits aren't always positive. Some prefer drama or negative attention. They are everywhere, including the workplace. They might be on your team or sit in a nearby cubicle. It could be your boss, a vendor, direct report or a coworker. They're combative, critical or nonproductive.

Unless you are very lucky, some probably work with you. You aren't likely to change them, so the best you can do is come up with a plan to mitigate the misery. We spoke with IT leaders as well as a mental healthcare professional to find out the best strategy to help reduce the drama and negativity in your work day.

Don't label people, label behaviors
There is a danger in labeling people as toxic, according to Pamela D. Garcy, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, career coach and author of the book, "How to make time when you don't have any: A new approach to reclaiming your schedule." Instead she recommends labeling the negative or toxic behavior. That's not to say that it isn't an employee's responsibility to behave well, but first you should return power to yourself, she says.

Understanding the behavior will help you identify the root of the problem and will likely help you build a strategy for having a more productive relationship with the person, whether it's your boss, a co-worker or a direct report. "Labeling and rating people limits you. You cannot see the potential in front of you because you're blinded by the label. Label the behavior instead of the person, if possible -- even if only as a mental exercise," says Garcy.
Are you part of the problem or solution?

It's easy to say it's all the other person's fault, but there are two sides to every coin. Are you contributing to the toxic behavior? Do you let this person's toxic behavior upset or frustrate you? Are you being pulled into the downward emotional spiral? More importantly what can you do to prevent this from happening?

"Be introspective. How are you contributing to the undesired behaviors and what is within your control to improve the situation," says Dustin Wells, chairman & CEO of Headspring, a provider of enterprise software strategies and development. The bottom-line is don't let your action or inaction add make a bad situation worse.

Change your perspective
Some things are out of your control. Chances are you aren't going to change this person, so your best bet is to focus on what you can control. That requires a change in perspective. Without the right perspective, warns Pamela Rucker, chair of the Technology Advisory Council for St. Jude Research Hospital and chair for the CIO Executive Council's Women in Leadership board, every issue may feel like a personal affront.

"Changing your perspective helps you cancel out the negative story you've told yourself about why the person doesn't like you, or why the person is working against you. If you can change your belief system at the root, then everything else that comes out of that will change, "she says.

Taking some time for yourself and changing your own perspective can help you adopt a more level-headed approach. Don't allow yourself to dwell on this person's behavior and get sucked into an emotional tailspin. Instead try to think of a solution. "You have at least two choices -- focusing on the problems or focusing on creating solutions.

Staying away from people-rating and focusing on problem-solving will help you. If you change your perspective to focus upon solutions, you're more likely to gain solutions. People-rating tends to stop you in your tracks... "says Garcy.

Style clash or toxic behavior?
Another important factor, according to Rucker, is to ensure you've made an important distinction. Are these people difficult to work with or toxic?

Difficult employees are those you say are opinionated or hard to get along with. They are sometimes protective of their turf, overzealous or stuck in their way of thinking. "It can seem like you're never able to get on the same page with a difficult person, and at times, it feels like every conversation you have with them is hard, says Rucker. However, she notes, that many times when you get to the heart of the matter, it may simply be a result of style clash and you're way of doing things may be contributing.

"I've found out that in many cases, the source of my difficulty in working with individuals can be a matter of relationship or style. This took a while for me to figure out over the course of my career, because I took people's behavior personally, and thought when people behaved badly they were deliberately being jerks and trying to give me a hard time. What I realized, though, was that I had a lot more to do with the difficulty of the interaction than I initially thought," says Rucker. She says she needed to step back and develop stronger relationships with certain people and take the time to understand their style and way of doing things. When she did, the result was a more productive working relationship.

Toxic employees, on the other hand, are dealing with more than just the ordinary issues of relationship and style. These are the employees who can spread negativity in your organization like a cancer. "Whether it's anger, fear, distrust, shame, hurt, abandonment, you name it, the toxic person has something inside of them that hurts those they come in contact with, and damages the fabric of a team, "says Rucker.

Build a better relationship
Rucker also notes that she needed to work on helping these individuals get to know her in return. Learning this lesson has allowed her to flip many difficult relationships into successful outcomes. "The more I developed relationships with people, understood their style and learned how to communicate with them in ways that resonated with them, the easier it became to work with others, " says Rucker. "I had to realize that to other people, I was the one that was difficult to deal with. I was the one that was deliberately misleading, I was the one that had a takeover mentality, and I was the one always looking for a fight."
Set boundaries on your time

You may assume a coworker can control your emotions and suck you in, but people often-times have more control over the situation than they may think, according to Garcy, "Often there is at least a small moment when you have a decision to make. There's that microsecond of freedom when you make a choice; that's moment when you can say to yourself, 'I don't want to encourage or engage in this drama.' At that moment, decide that you're going to do whatever you can to politely create a boundary. Make it your practice to gently and politely tell this person what you will and won't do. It will probably take a lot of repetition. Focus upon your own behavior. Realize that it is going to take time before this person takes your boundaries seriously and learns that they are there."

Since you can't change the other person's behavior directly, the safest bet is to tell them what you are going or not going to do. For example, you might try saying something along the lines of, "I'm going back to work now," or, "I'm not going to spend my work time on non-work items."

If this person is someone who you know is going to take up a lot of your time, Rucker recommends trying this approach: "I set the tone when I start talking by stating, 'I only have a few moments, but I want to catch up with you on how things are going. What's the latest update with your issue?'" This will let the other individual know that you are concerned, but also prepares them for you to move onto another subject without taking up an inordinate amount of your time.

Identify the real issue for you
Is the coworker's behavior impacting your work? If the answer is yes, try to communicate with the coworker at a time and in a place that allows your coworker some dignity. Then explain the situation.

"The formula I usually give to a coachee in this circumstance is [to] relax yourself so that you can practice assertive communication with your co-worker, seek a win-win solution, talk to yourself optimistically throughout the challenging moments, and increase your own daily self-care," says Garcy.

If you feel like you've exhausted those avenues than maybe it's time to talk to your manager or supervisor and get some assistance from them.

Grow your emotional intelligence
Whether you're an IT leader or an entry-level help desk analyst, emotional intelligence will help you understands people's motivations and their behaviors, allowing you to empathize with them and perhaps change your perspective.

"Emotional intelligence helps you deal with difficult or toxic people from a rational standpoint, allowing you to focus on the facts of the relationship by recognizing and managing your emotions as compared to those of the difficult person. It is important that one understands the situation properly and doesn't overreact or take things personal," says John DiCamillo, CTO and head of infrastructure & services for Arup, an independent firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists.

This doesn't happen by itself. There are many avenues for professional development in the area of emotional intelligence like a career coach or leadership seminars. Do your part and continue to educate and grow. "Emotional intelligence is a multiplier effect for both the individual and the business. It can't replace technical excellence, but it can multiply the business advantage for the company. And, it can multiply the effectiveness for the individual," says Larry Bonfante, founder of CIO Bench Coach and CIO of USTA.

Take care of yourself
One of Garcy's recurring theme is self-care. It might seem obvious, but it's often overlooked. "Get plenty of sleep, eat healthy foods, exercise, spend time with positive people, and reconnect with yourself," says Garcy. Doing so can only increase your odds of a better outcome and will help you lead a healthier, more manageable lifestyle. Find ways to reduce stress levels in your own life, like yoga, meditation, exercise or a self-help book. For others it may be golf or fishing. Whatever you do to relax, make sure you are investing enough time in your own wellness.

Final Thoughts
"It's important to recognize that not every challenge will have an immediate solution, so be patient," says Garcy. Successful people will work toward a long-term solution, rather than a short-term release of stress.

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Microsoft buys sales-gamification startup with eye to CRM combo

Microsoft has acquired Incent Games and plans to integrate the Texas startup's FantasySalesTeam sales-gamification software into Dynamics CRM.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Adding the fantasy sports component to its CRM offering will give companies a tool to make incentive programs for sales staff more engaging, according to Bob Stutz, corporate vice president for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a who discussed the news in a blog post.

Microsoft will integrate the platform into its own Dynamics CRM software in the coming months, Stutz said. It will also continue to support customers using FantasySalesTeam with other CRM products.

However, the move drew some derisive commentary from at least one analyst.

"Are they kidding?" said Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research Group, via email. "Let's see, for many years and even centuries, we have incentivized sales people with money (the carrot) and job loss (the stick). That wasn't enough? Really?"

The real problem with incentives is the difficulty in individualizing and applying them across a product line that contains more than one product, and that can't be solved with gamification, Pombriant said.

Rather, it's a big data problem, he suggested, and it can be solved by comprehensive compensation-management systems such as what's offered by companies like Xactly and Callidus.

"We spend all kinds of effort and resources trying to squeeze more productivity out of sales reps," Pombriant said. "It makes little sense to me to introduce a game system that takes their attention away from the business at hand rather than pursuing results."

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