Zero day attacks on the rise, warns Trend Micro
Trend Micro Q1 2013 security roundup report highlights concerns over Zero-Day vulnerabilities
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HDFC Life recognized as Celent Model Insurer of Asia for 2013
The Celent Model Insurer of Asia for 2013, is the highest honor among the 17 technology initiatives which were selected as Model Insurer Component in the Asia Pacific region
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Infor announces cloud initiative using Amazon Web Services to tackle Big Data
Infor is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable customers to accelerate time to insight from various transactional data streams
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Google App makes charity social
One Today encourages users to give USD 1 a day to nonprofit organizations
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How video surveillance played a key role in identifying suspects in Boston Marathon bombing
Video surveillance and other information technologies played a huge role in identifying the two main suspects
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IIT startup aims to redefine learning with personalized courses
The firm has already succeeded in creating approximately 1000 lessons and more than a million open learning resources
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VMware adds interoperability with Ubuntu OpenStack cloud
The next Ubuntu release, coming soon, will include VMware plug-ins for the Quantum networking platform in OpenStack
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Social media gives Café Coffee Day the ability to co-create products with customers
With a fan base of over 2 million on Facebook, CCD uses social media intelligently to engage customers, get feedback and co-create new offerings with the help of the consumer
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Siemens and Teradata form global strategic partnership for Big Data in utility sector
Siemens and Teradata will be the first to offer end-to-end integration of operational data with smart meter data for analysis on a single platform, providing an entirely new view on the network
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Amazon's S3 now stores 2 trillion objects; handles 1.1 million requests per second
From one trillion objects stored in S3 last June, it has taken AWS less than a year to double this number
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Microsoft discovers trojan that erases evidence of its existence
New trojan deletes its own components so researchers and forensics investigators can't analyze or identify it
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Red Hat announces establishment of partner network for cloud infrastructure solutions
Early adopter partners join Red Hat’s OpenStack cloud infrastructure partner network
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Growth and progression of e-commerce in India
With the rise of Internet usage, 3G penetration, and increasing smartphone users, India's e-commerce market is growing at a fast pace. Let’s take a look at the road ahead for the sector and the challenges that it needs to address to ensure continued growth
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Canon India announces 2013 roadmap for its Office Imaging Solutions Division
As part of its strategy, Canon’s OIS division aims to increase its market share to almost 29 percent in 2013 from 25 percent
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10 ways to get users on the social business bus
Without proof points and support, end users can easily stall your social business plans
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More than 50 percent of mobile apps deployed will be hybrid by 2016: Gartner
As per the research firm, with increased pressure on organizations to deploy mobile apps to accommodate mobile work styles of employees, more than half of the apps deployed by 2016 will be hybrid
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Storage trends to watch out for
Currently, two of the biggest trends in data storage are the use of public cloud storage, and flash memory
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How TVS Motors is using Shelf Engineering to push efficiency to a new level
In an interview, TG Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors, explains the concept of shelf engineering, and highlights how this concept has helped his firm cut down on new product development time and boost innovation
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How organizations can benefit by e-mail archiving
From purchase orders, company strategy presentations to marketing creatives, everything flows through e-mails in today’s organizations. Let’s take a closer look at how e-mail archiving helps organizations protect data contained in e-mail messages
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Top 10 technology trends for the energy and utilities sector in 2013: Gartner
According to the research firm, social media, Big Data, cloud computing, sensor technology, in-memory computing, and predictive analytics are some of the technology trends that will affect the global energy and utility markets in 2013
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'Marketers tend to think in terms of measurable silos'
In an e-mail interview Romi Mahajan, President, KKM Group explains what is driving the convergence of marketing, IT and commerce and how marketers can take advantage of Big Data
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Andhra Pradesh State Cooperative Bank goes live with Polaris Core Banking Solution
Polaris’ Intellect Core Banking Solution has been deployed in a centralized data center in Hyderabad and can be accessed by 560 branches and 22 head offices of the bank
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MUHS, UoP, UoM, Dr. BAMU and Persistent Systems announce initiative to promote inclusive innovations
Collaborative initiative to identify and promote inclusive innovations aimed at improving the quality of life in India at the grass root level
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IT spend by PSUs in India valued at USD 8.5 billion in FY 2012, says Zinnov
IT spend accounts for 2 percent of total PSU revenues, which is higher than most other verticals
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Cloud-based security services market to reach USD 4.2 billion by 2016: Gartner
A January 2013 Gartner survey on security spending shows high demand from security buyers for cloud-based security service offering
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11 interesting use cases of enterprise mobility in Indian enterprises
From healthcare organizations, insurance firms to cement manufacturing companies and retail establishments, Indian companies across verticals are accruing significant business benefits by adopting enterprise mobility. InformationWeek takes a detailed look at 11 enterprises that are leading the way in showing how mobile platforms can be used innovatively to increase employee productivity, enhance customer service and bring in process efficiencies
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Microsoft adds cloud chargeback to Windows server
Microsoft adds third-party Cloud Cruiser billing system for on-premises and Windows Azure operations, encouraging use of hybrid cloud
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NASSCOM ‘10,000 Startups’ invites applications for funding and acceleration
As part of the initiative, NASSCOM will shortlist close to 500 entrepreneurs who will be eligible for funding ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore through leading angel investor networks of the country
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Downloadable mobile CRM apps on app stores to grow 500 percent by 2014: Gartner
The research firm predicts that mobile CRM apps available for download on app stores will grow to over 1,200 by 2014 from over 200 in 2012
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Facebook users can influence Lok Sabha elections significantly in Maharashtra and Gujarat
A new report by the IRIS Knowledge Foundation and supported by the IAMAI, has revealed that 160 high impact constituencies out of the total of 543 constituencies are likely be influenced by social media during the next general elections
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What happens to your Google account after death?
Google has launched a new feature that makes it easy for people to tell the firm what we want to do with our digital assets on Google when we die
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Nearly 350K users have downloaded Bitcoin malware through Skype and Gtalk
Threats posed by Bitcoin malware are not just limited to Skype and Bitcoin mining, reveals a report by Cyberoam Threat Research Labs
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Certification for certification’s sake: Following the letter sans the spirit
ISO27k is the new 9k -- It's the new certification kid on the block, says Dinesh Bareja in this opinion piece, which chronicles how the scramble for certification may be diluting information security in the country
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Can mobile solutions transform India’s economy?
As mobile phones are ubiquitous, and are becoming smarter and cheaper by the day, their impact on every sector is bound to be huge and transformative in nature
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Oracle prepares for next-generation cloud
To focus on fewer best-of-breed applications, which are vertically integrated and cloud ready. Will also bring out "verticalized" applications suites that are tailored for niche segments
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The story behind India’s fastest supercomputer
Recently, C-DAC launched India's fastest supercomputer in PARAM Yuva – II, and in the process became the first R&D institution in India to cross the 500 teraflops milestone. Here is how the team achieved the milestone
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Accenture to enable Aadhaar UID System for Government of Punjab
The contract will help the State Government of Punjab identify eligible citizens and eliminate duplicate and incorrect records for the Department of Food and Civil Supplies
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Why tech projects fail: 5 unspoken reasons
Today's IT groups make too many ROI guesstimates and have too little accountability, says this financial industry IT exec
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'Cloud’s pay-per-use model makes expensive technology infrastructure accessible to smaller banks'
In a discussion with InformationWeek, Shankaran Nair, President - Corporate Strategy, Servion Global Solutions talks about the technologies that have changed the face of banking sector
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BSE slashes operational costs by adopting Linux
Asia’s oldest stock exchange has saved huge costs by deploying SUSE Linux for powering a majority of its applications
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65 percent of companies using client management tools put their data at risk due to haphazard patch management: Survey
According to a survey by B2B International on behalf of Kaspersky Lab, only 35 percent of companies automatically install updates
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Big Data is a strategic priority for IT Managers in India, reveals Cisco survey
4 in 5 IT managers in India agree that Big Data will be a strategic priority for their companies in 2013
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TCS to acquire French IT services firm ALTI for 75 million euros
The acquisition is aimed at strengthening TCS’ ability and footprint to service its customers in France, the third largest IT Services market in Europe
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Is BYOD hype or reality?
Debated by IT specialists, researchers and vendors alike, BYOD has emerged as one of the widely discussed trends within the industry. InformationWeek spoke to 10 eminent CIOs, who share their perspective on the popular trend
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Honeypot stings attackers with counterattacks
Researchers test the controversial concept of hacking back and gathering intelligence on attackers
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How consumerization of IT is impacting the CIO role
The rising trend of consumerization of IT is driving the shift in employee and enterprise expectations from IT, which is adding another layer of pressure on CIOs
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FireEye opens R&D center in Bangalore
Appoints McAfee veteran Sridhar Jayanthi as VP of R&D and MD of India Operations, and Ramsunder Papineni as regional sales director, India and SAARC
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Do Indian enterprises need a CISO?
How can an enterprise decide if it needs a CISO? Read this article to find out
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McAfee announces whitelisting security solution for Android-based embedded devices
The security solution resides in the Android kernel and provides protection from the installation or execution of a malicious application on an Android-based device
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Rogue clouds prevalent in nearly 90 percent of Indian organizations, says Symantec
According to a survey by Symantec, rogue cloud deployments are one of the cost pitfalls
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Cybercriminals leverage huge interest in Google Glass to scam users
Researchers at Trend Micro warn that cybercriminals and scammers are using the hype created by Google Glass to scam people
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DSCI, Cisco collaborate to strengthen network security ecosystem in the country
Launch ‘Security Thought Leadership Program’ to bring together experts and industry leaders from across the country to address the changing threat landscape
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eScan launches its latest version with Cloud Security
eScan 14 has been developed to be very light on system resources and does not slowdown the user’s system
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How to safely access open public Wi-Fi networks
If you are not careful, your communications are open to everyone else on the network
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Out of date Android devices at risk
Researcher calls out mobile providers for not pushing regular updates to many Android devices
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MiniDuke espionage malware uses Twitter to infect PCs
Online espionage campaign sends malicious PDF documents to victims, and the infected PCs use Twitter to install malware that can copy and delete files
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Evernote hits 1 million user mark in India
On an average, Evernote added 92,000 users per month in India over the last 3 months
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Big Data will help enterprises gain advantage over sophisticated hackers: RSA’s Art Coviello
Executive Chairman of RSA says that Big Data can be a transformative solution for addressing security challenges
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The stupid emperor and the art of Information Security
Just like the emperor who marched on through the procession, wearing imaginary clothes, information security marches on protecting infrastructure
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Mobile phishing attacks on the rise, reveals Trend Micro
For 2012, Trend Micro has found 4,000 phishing URLs designed for the mobile Web
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After Twitter and Facebook, Microsoft experiences cyberattack
Microsoft has revealed that a small number of computers were infected by malicious software using similar techniques as experienced by other organizations
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Kaspersky unveils security solutions for businesses
Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business is aimed at helping businesses overcome the challenges in managing a secure and efficient network
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Google uses over 120 variables to stop hacking of Google accounts; claims reduction of compromised accounts by 99.7 percent since 2011 peak
To prevent hacks, Google’s security system does more than just check if a password is correct
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Emerging technologies key focus at CSI IT2020
With the theme of ‘Making Emerging Technologies a Boardroom Agenda’, the annual conference of Computer Society of India – Mumbai Chapter featured tracks on Security, Mobility, Social Media, Big Data and Analytics
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Two factor authentication on the cloud
Extending two-factor authentication creates a layered security labyrinth in the otherwise elusive cloud, without sacrificing employee convenience
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Facebook hacked by exploiting zero-day Java vulnerability
The world's leading social networking platform has revealed that it was targeted in a sophisticated attack
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Use of social networking sites can increase the likelihood of a successful APT, finds ISACA survey
A global cybersecurity survey by ISACA finds some unique insights with respect to APTs
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11 year old child develops trojan: Are pre-teens writing malware?
A new AVG Technologies threat report reveals that more and more pre-teen children are developing malicious code
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Emerging mobile threat vectors in the real world – are you prepared?
Evolving mobile threats have evolved to the extent that put Hollywood plots of yesteryear to shame. Rohan Patil takes a look at the existing mobile threat scenario in India today.
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Microsoft and Symantec team up to take down dangerous Bamital botnet that has infected more than 8 million computers
The Bamital botnet hijacked people’s search results and took them to potentially dangerous websites that could install malware onto their computer, steal their personal information
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PCI Council releases cloud compliance guidance
PCI Special Interest Group offers guidance for securing payment card data in cloud environments
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Financial cyber-crime in India set to explode exponentially: Expert
In the wake of the recent reportage in the mainstream media regarding credit card fraud to the extent of 30 crores, Security expert Dinesh O Bareja believes this is the tip of the iceberg unless the stakeholders get their act together
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Oracle acquires Acme Packet for USD 1.7 billion
Acme Packet’s solutions are deployed by more than 1,900 service providers and enterprises globally, including 89 of the world’s top 100 communications companies
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Why enterprises need a Security Business Analyst
Traditionally, the Information security team is too focused on physical security of devices and less focused on security of information itself, which can be overcome by a Security Business Analyst
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Bill Shocker - a mobile malware that uses your android phone to send costly messages
The malware has already taken remote control of more than 6,00,000 user phones
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Twitter hacked: Over 250,000 accounts may be compromised
As a precautionary security measure, Twitter has reset passwords for potentially compromised accounts
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Online shopping sites as likely to deliver malicious content as a counterfeit software site
Cisco recently released findings from two global studies that provide a vivid picture of the rising security challenges that businesses, IT departments and individuals face, particularly as employees become more mobile in blending work and personal lifestyles throughout their waking hours
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E-mail that self destructs is new BYOD threat
Employees who bring apps like Wickr to work could bypass enterprise security systems
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Spam levels hit 5 year low
According to Kaspersky Lab data, the share of spam in e-mail traffic decreased steadily throughout 2012 to hit a five-year low
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Kaspersky Lab outlines most popular Nigerian scam letters
Kaspersky Lab filters intercept tens of thousands of Nigerian scam letters each month in different languages. Explore some of the most common Nigerian scam letters seen by Kaspersky Lab experts
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How Big Data will transform security approaches and technologies by 2015
Security experts from Booz Allen Hamilton, Northeastern University and RSA predict Big Data will likely transform nearly all core technology segments in information security within the next two years
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Cyber espionage campaign Red October targets global government institutions
Recent research from Kaspersky Lab reveals that attackers have created unique, highly-flexible malware to steal data and geopolitical Intelligence from computers, mobile phones and enterprise network equipment
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9 things that you did not know about the Indian Cyber law
Cyber law and security expert, Adv Prashant Mali, points out 9 things about the Indian cyber law which can get you punished with imprisonment of up to three years
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7 top information security trends for 2013
From sandboxing enterprise apps on mobile devices to hacking websites via high-bandwidth cloud attacks, experts detail the security trends they expect to see in 2013
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5 tips to keep your small enterprise cyber-safe this festive season
As festive mood is in the air, Dell India offers tips to small enterprises to keep themselves cyber-safe this season
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Mobility to accelerate the pace of growth in 2013
2012 was a monumental year for several companies, especially in the mobility space. If that is any indication of what 2013 will be like, tech lovers could be in for a wild ride
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CIO Profile- Anoop Handa, Fullerton India
Career Track
How long at the current company?
I have been with Fullerton since August 2008. Initially I joined Fullerton Securities & Wealth Advisors, as a part of the founder leadership team to set up the green-field capital markets and wealth management company in India. In 2011, I moved to Fullerton India Credit Company. Currently, as CIO, and part of executive leadership team, my responsibilities include providing strategic leadership and managing the overall IT function for multiple business verticals.
Most important career influencer:
I do not any have any particular hero/role model, however I have been fortunate enough to get an opportunity to work for large, global companies across geographies. And each of these experiences have contributed in shaping my career; I have been influenced by different people, who have helped me develop values and shaped me both personally and professionally. And the learning continues!
Decision I wish I could do over:
Each decision, whether right or wrong gives you an opportunity to learn and develop. I remember a quote from Henry Ford “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
Vision
The next big thing for my industry will be…
Data analytics and cloud-based services will be the next big thing for my industry.
- Data Analytics will help business understand customer behaviors/preferences, enable cross-sell/upsell opportunities, aid new innovative product offering and will enhance the risk management function through predictive analysis.
- Cloud-based deployment of IT infrastructure and business solutions will provide immense flexibility, cost savings, agility and aid smarter use of IT.
In the current economic environment, the role of an IT leader/ CIO has grown significantly. And people aspiring to be the future CIOs need to have comprehensive qualities — effective communication skills; capabilities to be both strategic as well as hands-on; and enhance their abilities to influence their teams, peers and stakeholders.
Dos:
- Continue to create value for their organization through effective use of technology.
- Keep a close tab on key developments in technology and filter few for adoption that are fit-for-purpose.
- Develop communication, program management, financial management and business skills.
- Don’t assume that technology skills alone can take you to the board rooms.
- Don’t fail on delivery and commitments.
- Don’t lose fire in the belly and an ambition to keep growing.
Top three initiatives
- Use of cloud for effective provisioning of IT infrastructure.
- Implementation of appropriate business solutions to improve processes and enhance agility.
- IT cost management.
IT effectiveness is best measured through customer satisfaction and business acknowledgement of the value delivered by IT. There’s no better evidence than a happy, satisfied customer. Alignment of IT initiatives with business priorities and utilizing feedback from end users into IT service delivery is an ever-evolving metric to measure IT effectiveness.
Personal
Leisure activities: Spending quality time with family and friends, watching movies, and traveling.
Best book read recently: ‘Go M.A.D.’ (Go Make A Difference)
Unknown talents (singing, painting etc): Wish I had some.
If I weren’t a CIO, I’d be… Owner of a fine-dining restaurant; who knows this could well be a reality even subsequent to being a CIO! Don’t lose fire in the belly and an ambition to keep growing.
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Now, pay using your fingerprints instead of debit or credit cards
An average user carries dozens of credit or debit cards with him or her. However, if a new system called PayTango gets accepted, you will just need your fingers to pay for any transaction. Designed to replace credit card terminals at retail stores, the startup founded by four Carnegie Mellon University students, and backed by YC Combinator, PayTango links cards to your fingerprints.
Here is how it works. A customer simply places his index and middle finger on the biometric scanner on the PayTango terminal which is linked to a merchant's point of sales system. If the user is registered in PayTango, the system recognizes the fingerprint, and completes the transaction. PayTango says that any card with a magnetic stripe can be registered.
If a customer is new, they can register themselves at the terminal. For registration, the customer slides the card they want linked to the account, and enters a cellphone number to complete the registration process. During first time registration, the user also has to verify that he is the person that he is claiming to be with a valid ID.
The system is already being used at Carnegie Mellon, and the founders want to first test this service in environments like college campuses or gyms.
If successful, PayTango can solve the hassle of carrying multiple cards. You could just walk out of your home, and pay for a transaction without carrying anything.
In India, the UID led by Nandan Nilekani has already captured biometric information for many Indians. Can a similar system be used to transform the payments scenario in India, and make a much more bigger leap from what smartphones or mobile platforms can enable? Let us know your views in the comments box below Read More
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Airport Authority of India partners with KPIT Cummins to complete SAP ERP rollout across 125 airports
KPIT Cummins Infosystems has announced the Go-Live of SAP ERP for the Airport Authority of India (AAI). As a part of E-Governance initiative, AAI decided to implement ERP in HR, Finance, Material Management and Project System functions to improve productivity, efficiency and transparency under the project named “PARIVARTAN.” KPIT was selected as the implementation partner in June 2012.
The SAP ERP implementation by KPIT Cummins covers 125 Airports across India and is being synchronized with the new financial year. The system will handle payroll accounting for nearly 19000 employees of AAI at various Airports across the country. The system will also be integrated with the legacy systems such as Electronic Tendering and Procurement System (ETAPS), Airport Information Management System (AIMS) etc. With this implementation the organization shall become process driven and substantially paperless. Apart from automating the HR, Finance, Material Management and Project Systems functions, the system will provide “MIS dashboards” for senior management.
KN Srivastava, IAS, Secretary Civil Aviation, Govt. of India was the Chief Guest on the occasion of Go-Live of project “PARIVARTAN”. VP Agrawal, Chairman, AAI, Board Members and Senior Officers of AAI graced the occasion. Also present were Mathew Thomas, Vice President SAP India, Pawan Sharma, President & Head of Integrated Enterprise solutions, KPIT Cummins and Vishal Jain, Vice President, SAP Business Unit, KPIT Cummins along with their team members.
On the occasion of ‘PARIVARTAN’ Go-Live, VP Agrawal, Chairman, AAI said, “This new enterprise software implementation will not only improve productivity, efficiency and cost effectiveness but will also bring high level of transparency in the vital HR and finance functions within the organization. The ERP implementation will enable standardization of processes across all the AAI operations in India and will become an accurate and single source of information.”
Pawan Sharma, President, KPIT Cummins Infosystems Ltd. said, “We leveraged our proven expertise and experience in large scale ERP implementations to partner with the Airport Authority of India in their ERP modernization program which included digitization of over 20 years’ of HR data of more than 18000 employees. We brought in all regional & main offices under an integrated single system instance software solution and integrated it with various pre-existing legacy applications.” Read More
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Majority of Indians comfortable with interacting with doctors virtually, reveals Cisco survey
Cisco today released the Cisco Customer Experience Report focused on health care. The findings from the survey conducted globally indicated a growing shift in consumer’s expectations on medical services in India. It also examined perceptions of consumers and health care decision makers (HCDMs) on patient experience in health care.
The report shows that as information, technology, bandwidth, and the integration of the network become the center of the "new world," both human and digital aspects are key parts to the overall patient experience. These components lead to more real-time, meaningful patient and doctor interaction.
Vishal Gupta, VP/general manager, Global Healthcare Solutions: “Virtual healthcare is no longer a myth and this report is an indication of how technology can potentially play a greater role in enabling access to virtual healthcare. The state of convergence between the physical and digital world has raised the expectations of consumers and at the same time expanded scope for healthcare providers to take their engagement further with more collaboration and information.”
The survey studied the views of consumers and HCDMs on sharing personal health data, participating in in-person medical consultation versus remote care and using technology to make recommendations on personal health. Views on these topics sometimes differed widely between the two groups (consumers and HCDMs) and the 10 geographies surveyed.
Rajendra Pratap Gupta, chairman, board of directors, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Asia Pacific India Chapter: “Healthcare IT is a pre-requisite for equitable healthcare. Patients are perennially intimidated and bogged down by their healthcare experiences. However, the accelerated growth of smart devices backed by an intelligent network will soon render these issues non-existent. This report is an indicator towards how customers and patients will be more empowered in future, with easy access to information, enabling them to be more involved in the process.
The global report conducted in early 2013, includes responses from 1,547 consumers and HCDMs globally, with a consistent sample size of around 200 local respondents in each of the 10 countries surveyed. Additionally, consumers and HCDMs were polled from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages within each country.
Privacy and Personal Service
This portion of the survey focused on how comfortable consumers and HCDMs are with sharing personal health and medical information for a better experience. Overall, health care practitioners were more willing to share personal and private information than patients or other citizens. The degree to which all clinicians, patients and citizens are willing to share personal health information and to improve the quality of care varies by geography.
Dr Chhavi Mehra, MD, Diplomate American Board of Internal Medicine, chief of quality at RxDx – a multispecialty hospital: “In a country where on an average, we have one doctor for 1700 citizens while the optimal average should be one doctor for 600 citizens, this report gives us great hope when we see that patients are comfortable about clinical interactions using technology or virtually, instead of in person. As machines become connected and networked, they can play a large role in the overall health care experience. This can help immensely to balance the doctor-citizen inequity we see in India as well as the urban-rural imbalance in terms of resource availability.”
Report findings – Indicative trends in India
* 94 percent of those surveyed in India are comfortable with storing their health records with a high degree of security in the cloud in order to enable them and their health care provider to access it easily.
* 86 percent of Indian consumers surveyed would be comfortable with submitting genetic information to a doctor or other health care professionals to ensure they have all information available to treat and offer the most personal diagnosis possible
* 75 percent of HCDMs surveyed in India believe data protection is adequate for protecting health/medical data privacy in their respective countries, while a lower percentage of the surveyed consumers (64 percent) believe data protection is adequate.
* Nearly half of all consumers surveyed and two-thirds of the HCDMs surveyed would be comfortable getting health information through social media channels. Compared to global consumers, Indian consumers expressed a greater than average comfort level in sharing and receiving health information through social media channels. In return, an even larger proportion of HCDMs feel comfortable providing health information to consumers via social media channels.
• In India, over 50 percent of the consumers surveyed would find it valuable if their health care provider presented appointment reminders, information for managing drug side effects and treatment reminders via social media.
• 62 percent of the Indian consumers surveyed expressed a willingness to share a range of information regarding their health as compared to 42 percent global response rate.
• In India, 75 percent of HCDMs believe consumers would be willing to share a variety of health information via social media websites, while only 35 percent of Indian consumers indicated previously using social media to share information about their health with their doctors
• On a contradictory note, of the Indian consumers surveyed, almost 60 percent are ok with health care providers sharing personal data about their patients if it improves the quality of future care, however, only 45 percent of HCDM’s believe that health care providers should be allowed to share patient information.
In-Person vs Virtual Customer Service
The report findings challenged the assumption that face-to-face interaction is always the preferred health care experience. While consumers still depend heavily on in-person medical treatments, three- quarters of patients and citizens are comfortable with the use of technology for the clinician interaction.
Report findings – Indicative trends in India
• 75 percent of global consumers indicate they are comfortable with the idea of communicating with doctors using technology instead of seeing them in person.
• 88 percent of consumers surveyed in India indicated they would be comfortable with communicating about health care with their doctors using technology instead of seeing them in person. 76 percent of HCDMs also indicated they would be comfortable communicating with consumers using technology rather than in person.
Respondents in India are significantly more willing than the rest to receiving health care remotely. Nearly 88 percent of consumers would be comfortable communicating with a specialist using virtual technology (e.g. video chatting, text messaging) for a health condition rather than visiting the specialist in person
Additionally, more than 75 percent of consumers in the country would prefer to consult a specialist using virtual technology than to receive treatment in person from a less experienced professional.
• More than half of consumers in India indicate they can access upcoming health care appointments, lab reports, physician visit notes and prescription notes electronically
• 75 percent of consumers and HCDMs in India agree it would benefit a patient’s care if healthcare professionals were able to monitor conditions using remote monitoring devices that send health information automatically
How Much Do Consumers and HCDMs Rely on Technology?
As machines become connected and networked, they play an even larger role in the overall health care experience. Interest in accessing health information on mobile devices is growing rapidly and is the No. 1 topic of consumer interest in India, Mexico, Brazil and China. Nearly 30 percent of those surveyed in India confirmed using health & fitness or medical apps on their mobile devices.
Report findings – Indicative trends in India
• At 85 percent, the proportion of Indian consumers who would trust a machine designed to help them perform everyday tasks such as planning and preparing meals is among the highest globally
o 87 percent of consumers in India would trust a machine designed to diagnose their overall health and provide a medical recommendation determining whether or not they needed to see a doctor
o Around 69 percent of Indian consumers surveyed tend to use the Internet for a variety of health care activities Read More
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3 warning signs your IT team is job hunting
Is your IT team toiling with one foot pointed toward the exit sign? It's not always so obvious as an employee leaving a resume on the printer tray.
Recognizing the warning signs of unhappy employees is a vital IT management skill. When you see them, you can act before your employees -- and especially your best employees -- start leaving for other jobs.
"You're more concerned with trying to keep your best people," said Cinda Daly, director of content at HDI, in an interview. It's far easier, Daly added, to watch subpar performers leave -- don't let the door hit you in the you-know-what on your way out, as the saying goes. "It's hard to keep the really good, conscientious, strong employees. If you start to see [warning signs that they may leave], you've got to hit it head-on."
In identifying several of those signs, Daly gave a nod to John Reed, senior executive director at the IT recruiting firm Robert Half Technology. Reed is among the experts who will sit on Daly's panel, "Strategic Staffing: Winning the War For Talent," at the upcoming Interop conference in Las Vegas. Let's take a closer look at some of the omens that indicate your top talent might be job hunting.
1. People act differently in team settings
Changes in attitude and behavior, especially in group project work or other collaborative settings, should catch your eye. This doesn't mean someone starts behaving badly, per se. It could be far more subtle, such as the usually gregarious employee who suddenly goes quiet, or the always-punctual team member who suddenly starts showing up ten minutes late to meetings.
"Someone who was previously very enthusiastic and is suddenly withdrawn and indifferent, you need to be looking at [that]," Daly said.
2. "A" performers start making rookie mistakes
There can be all manner of reasons, both obvious and subtle, for changes in job performance. But slips in performance can be a clear sign that your most talented people might have their eye on a new job outside the company. When your all-stars start turning in mediocre or downright shoddy results, something's up.
"They start to miss deadlines, they start to make errors more frequently -- particularly in patterns you haven't seen before -- because they're distracted or disengaged," Daly said. "They've got their minds on the exit strategy and not what's going on at hand."
3. Flip-Flops become dress shoes
Changes in dress and appearance -- especially in offices with loose or nonexistent dress code requirements -- are probably not a superficial coincidence.
"We live in a pretty casual workplace environment," Daly noted. "If people start to dress more professionally -- they're a little more buttoned up -- that's a change in pattern and a warning sign." That doesn't necessarily mean the shabby dresser starts showing up decked out in tailored $2,000 suits; it could be the difference between a t-shirt and a collar.
So what do you when you see the red flags of employee dissatisfaction waving in plain sight? Money can solve a lot of people problems, but it's not a panacea. It's also often in short supply in smaller businesses and other organizations with tight budgets. In any case, focus on perks, benefits, and corporate culture. These include areas like opportunities for new-skill acquisition; allowing a less experienced employee to learn new technologies on the job, for example, rather than requiring them to do so when they're off the clock. A visible career path is also important -- if there's nowhere to go but sideways, you'll struggle to retain your most talented people.
There are two other related perks that are often highly valued among IT pros -- and they can be big recruiting and retention tools. They've also been in the news lately thanks for a policy change at Yahoo: Schedule flexibility and the ability to work remotely.
IT executives who say no to working from home or other remote locations might be doing themselves a disservice, according to Daly. Scheduling and location flexibility fall under the "work-life balance" header and, when properly implemented and managed, can provide CIOs with a competitive advantage in the labor market.
"So many people have kids, [for example]. They want to be able to go to soccer games. It sounds so ordinary, but it's true," Daly said. "Companies have to be willing to provide that flexibility and culture. A lot of managers fight that and struggle with it."
Bottom line: If you ignore the warning signs or let the underlying issues fester, you're begging for a talent-turnover problem. "You can't let this continue to loom," Daly said. Read More
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12 Google April Fool's day jokes
Take real technology -- chemical sensing -- and wrap it in ridiculousness. The result is Google Nose, a scent-based search system that includes a mechanism for scent sharing.
Gmail Blue
"How do we completely redesign and recreate something while keeping it exactly the same?" asks the presumably fictitious Google product manager Richard Pargo in a YouTube video. "The answer is Gmail Blue." It's Gmail, but it's blue. Surely, it's just coincidence that the next version of Windows is called Windows Blue.
Google Maps Treasure Mode
The value of Google Maps for treasure hunting has already been argued, but Google is making a joke of it. The company has asked for help finding loot hidden by infamous pirate Captain William Kidd. To help willing treasure hunters, the company is offering Google Maps Treasure Mode, an alternative skin for Google Maps. It's more appealing in many ways that the regular look of Google Maps.
Google Apps Levity Algorithm
Google pitches its Levity Algorithm as a way to spice up boring work days. The ostensible algorithm replaces humdrum calendar entries like "Employee reviews with Consultant team" with an alternative label, such as "Peanut butter jelly time." And it re-titles email messages, turning a subject line like "HR Memo" into something along the lines of "The New Hotness." This should be mandatory in every company.
YouTube Shutdown
In a YouTube blog post, "Tim Liston" explains that YouTube is finally ready to pick a winner and wrap up its eight-year video contest. At midnight tonight, the hugely popular video website will stop accepting contest submissions and will then deliberate for the next ten years before announcing a winner, who will receive a clip-on MP3 player and a $500 stipend for a follow-up project.
Google+ Photos With Emoticons
In a Google+ post, software engineer Erik Murphy-Chutorian (a real person this time) reveals a new Google+ Photos feature: The ability to add emoticons to pictures. He writes, "So starting today, we will give you the option to add stylized emotions to your photos. To give it a try, simply open one of your pictures in the lightbox, and click the 'Add emotion' button at the top left of the screen. We will plumb the emotional depths of everyone in the photo, then summarize their feelings with a beautifully crafted, emotion icon. Click on the button again to return to the original version of your photo." Don't be surprised if you find that this service actually works.
Google SCHMICK
SCHMICK stands for Simple Complete House Makeover Internet Conversion Kit, a supposed Google Maps Street View add-on from the Google Apps team in Australia. It allows users to enhance images of their homes with graphical bling, or it would if it worked.
Google Maps In Russia Gets New Voice
Google's office in Russia has announced that Google Maps is now available with turn-by-turn directions spoken with the voice of Ivan Ohlobystina. In case you're not familiar with his work, Google Russia has provided an audio sample. It won't make much sense if you're not fluent in Russian, but it sounds as if it could be funny.
Google Fiber Poles
Taking fiber to the curb a bit too literally, Google is promising to add Internet access points to utility poles that carry Google Fiber. The video of people camping out next to telephone poles for Internet access is worth watching. If you've ever attended a technology conference, you may have seen something similar in the way that people gather around limited electrical outlets to recharge their laptops.
Google Wallet Mobile ATM
Google's latest smartphone add-on dispenses paper currency on-demand. Apple has come up with an alternative scheme that isn't supposed to be a joke: an ad-hoc cash dispensing network that uses people as ATMs.
Google Analytics Legacy Export
Google Analytics' idea of April Fools humor consists of new export and send options for analytics data. The forthcoming media export options include: 3.5" floppy disk, CD-ROM, papyrus and sticky notes. And additional data transmission schemes include: carrier pigeon, fax, telegram and telegraph.
One-Button Japanese Keyboard
No need to be befuddled by the complexity of typing Japanese characters. Try the new Japanese input device. It has just one key. Read More
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Identifying and managing application personalities
Too often, IT budgets are used to simply manage and run the organizations’ infrastructure and not to drive business innovation. This is exacerbated by legacy systems and applications that are not able to accommodate today’s rapid pace of change. This approach often leads to stagnation and difficulty in meeting ever changing business needs. A modernized applications portfolio integrated and transformed to new architectures, will boost growth, agility and the ability to innovate.
According to a blog written by E.G.Nadhan, Distinguished Technologist and Cloud Advisor for HP Enterprise Services, applications tend to “have a mind” of their own, leading us to form our own unique impressions about their behavior and presence.
Embarking on the journey to gain a deep understanding of the various personalities in your applications portfolio and creating a full plan is key to modernizing legacy systems. It provides a clear picture of the benefits to be gained from modernization, which in turn creates a strong case for progression.
What is an applity?
Every organization has its personalities – and they each need to be managed in different ways to ensure they perform to their full potential. This applies in the IT domain as well, where applications exhibiting distinct characteristics can be identified. Profiling applications and identifying their personalities, or ‘applities’, is important for ongoing management and also for planning a route towards modernization.
Organizations too often find themselves struggling and wasting precious resources to support an out-of-control applications portfolio. A good understanding of each applity makes it easier for the organization to develop an effective IT strategy and make decisions on legacy systems – whether they should be kept, changed or retired. This capacity to confidently transform a set of applications will help boost growth, agility and the ability to innovate.
Figuring out diverse behaviors
Depending on a variety of factors, applications can exhibit differing behaviors. These include their presence and availability, the domains they look after, their ability to meet evolving business functionality and their adaptability to change.
Just like how we adopt alternative ways to manage different relationships, Nadhan believes that enterprises can deploy effective management techniques appropriate for these behaviors.
A who’s who of applities
There are five principal applities common to most enterprise IT portfolios. Each requires specific management approaches and centralized governance to tackle the different challenges they pose.
The Boss
This is the central application – the omnipresent applity that is accessed by the whole enterprise for major business functions.
Typical examples of The Boss include an order management application for a retailer or claims processing for an insurance company – in other words, systems which need to be available at all times.
Investments in The Boss are usually a top priority to ensure it continues providing a solid foundation for different services. Around-the-clock operational support is essential and any changes made require extreme rigor with near real-time updates for all users.
The Boss is that bedrock applity as long as it is well taken care of.
The Lone Star
Reliable and steady, the old faithful Lone Star is very effective at enabling a specific, critical business or technical functionality. Its role is somewhat behind-the-scenes but, like any steady Eddy, it’s always there no matter the circumstance.
Lone Stars can be found running rate calculation engines for financial companies or course scheduling programs at universities. Unless there is a significant change to the functionality it is enabling, there is no reason to touch such applications. They just need to be available when required.
Capital investments are rarely needed and are usually at the departmental level for people directly served by the application. Changes can be made without major communication, provided change control procedures are in place.
The Crowd Pleaser
Everyone’s favorite, the Crowd Pleaser, is an applity with its own fan club. Think of a well-designed search application that is able to retrieve the right information at the right time for everyone concerned. Such an application needs to be made available all the time it must be allowed to do its job without being overloaded with additional functionalities. Any enhancements must be made and broadcasted with caution as users may not be happy.
Centrally administered governance is best for the Crowd Pleaser because its reputation is based on its ability to meet the requirements of various enterprise segments.
The Problem Child
Just like adolescents, the Problem Child is unpredictable and troublesome. This CIO’s nightmare is often a homegrown application – something that has been transitioned across multiple project teams with their own views on its underlying functionality.
The Problem Child has bugs, regularly crashes and no-one wants to take ownership. A clearly defined exit strategy from the current mode of operation is essential, which may include fixing the root cause or terminating the application.
For the Problem Child, investments need to be prioritized and users kept informed. Remedial measures may also need to be applied for all such applities.
The Generalist
This is the chameleon of the application world with applity traits that are common across all industries. The Generalist is often found in back office applications and has standardized functionality, like general ledgers. It can fit into any group within an organization and quickly adapts to its surroundings.
Generalists are prime candidates for outsourcing to third-party service providers because there is minimal scope for competitive differentiation. Innovation is better applied to core or critical functionality.
Services delivered by the Generalist can impact on the daily lives of internal and external customers. Hence, service level expectations must be consistently met. Standardization should drive investment priorities while communication to users must be proactive and accurate.
A lightweight governance model, coupled with an outsourcing strategy, is adequate.
Assessing an application portfolio
An application rationalization assessment of the various applities is an important step in any transformation journey. Key elements of an applications assessment include:
• An inventory to define the specific strategic value of each application, its operational impact and total cost.
• Analysis of the technical and functional quality of each application.
• Identifying duplicate and redundant capabilities.
• Mapping the portfolio to business strategies and technology objectives, with individual action plans based on cost, risk, quality, complexity, value and age.
• Working out the enterprise benefits of applications rationalization.
From here, a modernization roadmap can be developed with a supporting business case to transform legacy systems and help organizations deliver:
• A correct IT strategy from an applications management perspective.
• Centrally administered governance
• The nature and frequency of communication for various stakeholders.
• Different service levels.
• Types of investments with supporting rationale.
- The author is Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Services, HP India
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Cancer researchers mine Big Data to individualize treatment
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is harnessing big data to build and mine a database of cancer treatment records to help physicians determine the best treatments for particular kinds of patients. A just-completed prototype of the program aggregates data on more than 100,000 breast cancer patients from 27 oncology practices, many of which use different electronic health record (EHR) systems.
What ASCO is trying to do in its CancerLinQ project is create a "learning health system" that will collect and analyze cancer care data from millions of patient visits. By combining that with expert guidelines and other evidence, ASCO hopes to deliver "real-time, personalized guidance and quality feedback for physicians," according to a press release.
ASCO's prototype links together several open source and proprietary IT applications to do the following:
-- Accept cancer care data directly from any EHR system, as well as other sources such as lab data, genomic profiles and physician notes.
-- Provide clinical decision support to help physicians care for patients with breast cancer, based on automated versions of ASCO's breast cancer guidelines.
-- Enable researchers to explore the database to identify real-world trends and associations.
-- Provide accelerated feedback on physician performance against 10 quality measures from ASCO's Quality Oncology Practice Initiative.
According to ASCO, CancerLinQ can exponentially increase the amount of knowledge about patients' responses to treatment. "Today we know very little about the experiences of most people with cancer because their information is locked away in unconnected servers and paper files," said Sandra M. Swain, MD, president of ASCO, in the news release. "Only the three percent of patients who participate in clinical trials are able to contribute to advances in treatment. CancerLinQ will transform cancer care by unlocking that wealth of information and enabling every patient to be a cancer knowledge donor."
In a webcast of the CancerLinQ press conference, Swain elaborated that, when the program is further developed, it will be able to provide point-of-care guidance to physicians, using the best available evidence coupled with the experience of millions of cancer patients. "It's like having the whole medical community available for a second opinion. It redefines what a second opinion is."
Dr. Clifford Hudis, president-elect of ASCO and chief of the breast cancer medicine service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute, gave a demonstration of the prototype at the news conference. He noted that the researchers had to figure out how to aggregate and normalize data from disparate electronic health records such as Varian, Epic, Altos and Impac. (All of these products except Epic are designed specifically for oncology.)
"Our goal was to show that it was possible to create new ways for researchers to explore correlations between different cancer data that might be used to inform real-world decisions as well as generating hypotheses for further research," he said. He added, "This can also allow physicians to share information with other members of their clinical team."
Hudis cited a hypothetical breast cancer patient who'd had a lumpectomy and was taking a hormone-blocking drug because she had a hormone-sensitive form of cancer. Then he showed how an application called Galileo Cosmos could be used to select patients who fit the profile and were taking similar medications. Using a standard Kaplan-Meier plotter, he was able to demonstrate within seconds that the real-world patients in the database who'd kept taking the drug had gone longer without a recurrence of cancer.
Using another application called PopHealth, Hudis demonstrated how to find out whether all of the patients receiving hormone blockers were getting the right therapy for their disease profile and whether anybody who should have been taking one of those drugs wasn't.
"This shows that the estrogen receptor data came in from various records and the tamoxifen and aromatase inhibitor data came in from various records, and the system was able to figure out whether the prescriptions were written and whether the patient fit the category where it should be done. That means it's possible to do this, given the right parameters," he said.
Swain said ASCO plans to broaden the use of CancerLinQ to all types of cancer, and she noted that the treatment of other kinds of diseases could also benefit from a similar use of big data techniques.
Big data has already made a fairly good-sized beachhead in oncology. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Center, for example, has launched a "moon shots" program to find cures for eight types of cancer, using a big data approach to incorporate genomic sequencing and computational algorithms. Los Angeles-based NantHealth is using supercomputers to sequence genomes and analyze the data so oncologists can tailor treatments to their patients. And it was recently announced that IBM's Watson supercomputer would help Memorial Sloan Kettering physicians diagnose and treat cancer. Read More
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VMware ups R&D focus in India; to invest USD 120 million
VMware today announced multi-year investment of USD 120 million that includes a long term lease for a new 420,000 square foot building in South Bangalore, currently under construction.
VMware’s India-based R&D and support operations are second in size and scale only to those at the company’s headquarters located in Palo Alto, California, U.S.
Existing facilities in Bangalore will be consolidated into the new state-of-the-art premises, which will seat 2,700 employees when ready next year. The campus will accommodate new and ongoing product R&D, as well as a large staff supporting VMware’s global operations and India’s sales teams.
VMware’s R&D operations in India make a significant contribution to the company’s portfolio of virtualization and cloud computing products, all designed to help VMware customers navigate the journey to a new era of IT. Developers in Bangalore and Pune contribute important components of VMware’s key technologies – the software-defined data center, hybrid cloud and end-user computing.
Visiting Bangalore to announce plans for the new campus, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said: “India’s world-class IT expertise, impressive talent pool and industrial development make this country crucially important to VMware's global growth strategy. Our investment in this innovative facility demonstrates VMware’s commitment to stay at the cutting edge of technology and evolve the optimum business structure to serve our customers globally.”
He added: “We are also committed to pursuing the huge opportunity for our solutions in India’s fast-growing and maturing market, as companies harness our technology to help them achieve the agility needed to compete in dynamic business arenas at home and overseas.”
VMware established a presence in India in 2005 and today serves about 3,000 customers, employs some 2,000 staff and works with 100 partners. Over the last eight years, offices have been opened in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad and Colombo in Sri Lanka, with R&D centers in Bangalore and Pune. Read More
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Organizations using pirated software could be barred from exporting to the US
Against the backdrop of the latest US Law against Unfair Competition, the American Chambers of Commerce released a statement on the implications of the law on Indian exports. As per BSA Global Software Piracy Study, IT theft exceeds (US) USD 63 billion worldwide, which hurts economic growth, job growth, investment, and incentives for innovation in most regions, markets and businesses.
The Unfair Competition Law has been passed in 2 states -Louisiana & Washington, the Attorney General announcements of California and Massachusetts are under the ‘Unfair Competition law’ of these states. The other 36 states are seeking ways to use the traditional powers of their office to address the unfair competition advantage and taking actions under existing Fair Competition acts. These growing enforcement actions are a logical and welcomed step toward the call made by U.S. officials to curb unfair competition and ensure a level global playing field for suppliers and manufacturers.
USA has traditionally been a prominent market for India, with exports across sectors increasing from USD 5014.48 million in 1995 to USD 19493 million by the end of 2010. Now, this law becomes decisive of the overall export performance and in turn a major determinant in economic growth of the country.
India forms about 4 percentage of the total textile products imported into the US. The fact that imports to US have been increasing annually by 3-4 percentage from 2007-11, suggests there is growing potential for India to capitalize on.
India forms about 12.2 percentage of the total Gems and Jewellery products imported into the US. Imports to US have been increasing annually by 8 percentage from 2007-11.
India forms about 2.8 percentage of the total leather products imported into the US. Imports to US have been increasing annually by 2 percentage from 2007-11.
India forms about 3.6 percentage of the total Organic Chemicals products imported into the US. Imports to US have been increasing annually by 3 percentage from 2007-11.
However, as the first enforcement action by a U.S. lawmaker against an Indian company that is alleged of using pirated software, the Pratibha Syntex lawsuit puts forward a clear call for compliance. There is a crucial lesson here, in that exporters from India across verticals can now legitimately be barred from accessing the U.S. marketplace. Failure to comply could result in loss of access to the lucrative US markets and injunctions against sales. This certainly translates into a significant negative impact on a business and its bottom line.
“Today, the global economic situation is forcing governments around the world to look at enforcing laws that provide a fair ground for competition. The US law against ‘unfair competition’ is another step in this global trend. US being a key export market for India, it is critical that exporters review the software used in their supply chains to ensure license compliance and abide by the law. For the countless manufacturers in the country risking loss of trade is simply not an option,” said Ajay Singha, Executive Director, American Chambers of Commerce.” “This law should be viewed with optimism as they render India an opportunity to compete better in the world market by being a compliant nation while ensuring the overall growth and wellbeing of the domestic economy,” he further added.
Is there a way for India to take advantage?
It is important to note that this is a movement against the use of illegal IT and in that perspective it opens a window of opportunity for India. Taking the example of the neighbouring countries like China and Bangladesh : China is one of the fastest growing technology markets in the world but is also home to rampant software piracy. China’s illegal software market was worth nearly USD9 billion in 2011 making its piracy rate 77 percent (as per a study by BSA). In Bangladesh piracy is a deep rooted problem with almost 90 percent of software being pirated (as per a study by BSA).
“India and China are the world’s fastest growing technology markets, however, the piracy levels in India are lower than China or Bangladesh. In fact, India saw its piracy rate fall by 5 points from 68 percent in 2008 to 63 percent in 2011. This clearly is the result of the effort by national and state government agencies to promote best practices in the management of software assets. If India were to take rapid action and review its software assets to ensure compliance, they should start using tools and services available in the market to help them determine and manage licensing position, including the software industry supported License Management Registry 360 (LMR360) – a free online portal which is the first and only registry that enables companies to better manage their software and connect with customers seeking legally sound entities. This could drive better business prospects and even a lead in exports to US over these nations,” said Yolynd Lobo, Director - India, BSA|The Software Alliance.
If China and Bangladesh have to boost or at the least maintain their existing levels of exports to the US they must take up radical measures to eradicate piracy at every level and with immediate effect. It only goes to follow that if we were to comply rapidly –this enforcement will give us the opportunity to compete effectively against other developing economies and allow us to command a higher share of the global export pie. A disruption in the form of lack of compliance will clearly damage our chances.
Bottom-line
Taken together, it is clear that there is support at both the state and federal level to act upon those that undermine innovation and violate intellectual property rights by relying on stolen IT to operate their businesses.
India`s economy is now much more incorporated with the world markets as commodities business stands at 37 percent of her GDP (2010-2011). It is crucial that Indian businesses, however big or small, pay heed to the economic policies and the projected trends in world growth and the country as a whole be geared to take advantage of the growth potential in light of these emerging trends. It is critical that manufacturers start being vigilant about managing their IT assets and stay fully compliant. No pennies saved by using pirated software are worth the risk of losing access to the U.S. market or putting your company at a competitive disadvantage. Read More
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Google eyes Android smartwatch
Google is the latest technology company believed to be developing an Internet-enabled watch.
According to a report published in the Financial Times, Google's "smartwatch" is being developed in the company's Android unit rather than in X Lab, where the company's other wearable product, Product Glass, originated.
Google declined to comment.
In support of its anonymous source, the Financial Times points to a Google patent, "Smart-watch including flip up display," that was granted last fall.
Although patents do not all turn into products, the two inventors listed, Richard Gossweiler and Jim Miller, are accomplished technologists with the experience and skills to develop a smartwatch.
In a report published in January, "Fitness Wearables -- Many Products, Few Customers," Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps predicted Google will release a smartwatch soon. "We expect the developer release of Glass in 2013 to catalyze excitement [about wearable computing] and experimentation from app developers, and we expect Google to release its own version of an Android-based smartwatch in the near future," she wrote.
Microsoft used to have a smartwatch called SPOT. It discontinued the device in 2008.
Nevertheless, earlier this week, a Samsung executive told Bloomberg that Samsung is working on a watch, presumably an Internet-connected one. The company also has several watch-related patents.
Last month, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times reported that Apple has a substantial team of engineers and designers readying a smartwatch. A similar claim had surfaced on a Chinese blog last year.
More smartwatches might be coming: According to the Korea Times, electronics maker LG is also developing a smartwatch, presumably an improvement upon its existing watch-phone product.
If these rumored smartwatches appear as predicted, they will join an already crowded market. There's the Pebble, the Sony SmartWatch, i'm Watch, WearIt, Metawatch, Cookoo Watch, Martian Watch and assorted watch-like sports devices, such as Leikr.
What will these watches do? Expect them to do what mobile phones do, but with a different interface. They're likely to provide some subset of the following services: notifications and alerts, email, activity monitoring, location monitoring, health monitoring, apps, reminders, telephony, SMS, audio recording, image capturing, electronic purchase authorization and two-factor authentication.
These watches presumably also will tell time. Read More
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TCS report highlights differences in approach of Big Data leaders and laggards
The toughest challenges for businesses implementing Big Data initiatives is getting different business units to share information across organizational silos and determining what data to use for different business decisions according to The Emerging Big Returns from Big Data global trend report. These two cultural challenges were being closely followed by the technological challenge of being able to handle the large volume, velocity and variety of Big Data1. Commissioned by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the research also reveals how the Big Data leaders differ from the laggards and the returns business are expecting.
Satya Ramaswamy, Vice President and Global Head of Mobility and Next Gen Solutions in TCS comments: “Big Data has enormous potential and early adopters are projecting a high ROI on investments. However, overcoming the technological challenges is only part of the story. Businesses need to carefully think where Big Data initiatives should sit within the organization, how to break down internal silos and look beyond just internal and structured data sets. To realize the full potential of Big Data, businesses also need to consider the potential cultural changes within the organization to speed-up its adoption.”
Leaders and laggards
Leaders in Big Data differ most from the laggards in three main ways – where they analyze and process Big Data, the mix of data they use and their Big Data spend.
• Leaders in Big Data are doing analysis outside of business units (BUs), 79 percent of them are using the IT function or a separate Big Data team, with only 21 percent doing the analysis in BUs. The laggards on the other hand are doing only 68 percent of their analysis outside of the BUs.
• The leaders are also using more unstructured and semi-structured data (55 percent), and external data (37 percent), than the laggards who are using 46 percent unstructured and semi-structured data, and 26 percent external data.
• The most marked difference is that leaders spent USD24 million in 2012 and expect to spend USD26 million by 2015, whereas the laggards spent USD7 million in 2012 and expect to spend USD13 million by 2015.
Regardless of whether they’re leaders or laggards, nearly half (44 percent) of Big Data investments are going to business functions on the revenue side: sales, marketing and R&D/new product development. Much less (24 percent) is going to back-office functions: IT, finance and HR.
US shows widest adoption of Big Data initiatives
A regional breakdown shows that US companies are leading adoption of Big Data initiatives (68 percent), followed by Latin America (51 percent), Europe (45 percent) and Asia Pacific (39 percent).
Retailers lead the pack in Big Data
Despite the challenges and disparity in success, many businesses are confident of high ROIs from Big Data. Of those that had programs in 2012, 43 percent predicted an ROI of more than 25 percent in 2012. Retail businesses have the greatest number of leaders in Big Data with 35 percent of respondents expecting ROIs greater than 50 percent in 2012. They were closely followed by energy & resources (33 percent), banking and financial services (33 percent), high tech (27 percent), and media and entertainment (25 percent). In last place were consumer goods businesses with just 17 percent expecting ROIs greater than 50 percent in 2012.
Aside from the vertical disparity, geographies also differ greatly in their ROI predictions. Asia-Pacific expected the highest ROI (71 percent), followed by Latin America (64 percent) and Europe (43 percent). The lowest expect ROI was in the US (37 percent). Read More
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ICT adoption among India small and medium businesses is advancing rapidly
At a time when overall business growth in India has slowed significantly and the national GDP shows only a marginal rise the India small and medium business segment (SMBs, 1-999 employees) can be viewed as a beacon of hope. India SMBs show a 14 percent year-on-year rise in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) expenditures and their adoption of technology is likely to continue to increase.
This is a direct result of their need to utilize ICT tools to overcome nagging business challenges. An analysis of these markets reveals that SBs are likely to marginally overtake their MB compatriots vis-à-vis annual ICT spending growth rate. These findings have emerged from the 2013 India SMB ICT & Cloud Services Tracker Overview study by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. India SMBs are in an expansion and transition mode in terms of escalation in business and workforce. ICT is likely to play a vital role in their continued growth. "Basic computing and networking hardware dominates the IT spending portfolio of India SMBs. This is especially true for the small business segment which is gradually enhancing their ICT backbone serving as a platform for future adoption of higher-end technology solutions", says Dev Chakravarty, Research Manager at AMI-India.
Cloud computing has brought about a paradigm change in the ICT adoption pattern of SMBs worldwide. India SMBs are no exception to this statement. "Using AMI's Global Market Forecast Model, the industry's premier SMB market sizing tool, AMI has found that expenditures on cloud-computing within India SMB ICT portfolio are on the rise. These expenditures comprise almost 10 percent currently and are predicted to increase by a CAGR of 23 percent over the next five years", adds Chakravarty. It may not be an exaggeration to term cloud computing as a key future growth-enhancer in terms of India SMB ICT adoption since cloud-based ICT solutions display greater future growth-trends compared to their on-premise cousins.
There are many questions regarding cloud computing usage by India SMBs; e.g. - What are the larger spend components within the cloud? Which cloud categories will grow faster? AMI analysis finds that the top two spend-components within the SMB cloud-portfolio are for website-related expenditures and Remotely Managed IT Services (RMITS). These SMBs have become much more aware of the benefits of hosting their own websites since it provides them multiple benefits such as better brand-building and cost-effective marketing to mention just two. A number of web-hosting firms have emerged to assist India SMBs in this endeavor. As mentioned RMITS is also an up and coming trend for these companies. Many India SMBs are indicating a greater preference for this alternative, sometimes in conjunction with the age-old on-premise service options. In the near future, IaaS and SaaS-based solutions such as Productivity, CRM and Business Intelligence are forecast to show considerable growth.
Cloud computing has been instrumental in alleviating many problems that India SMBs face during ICT adoption - specifically those related to a lack of funds and non-availability of a dedicated ICT-workforce. Other key advantages of the cloud that appeal to SMBs include automatic updates, flexibility and scalability.
The external environment is also ready to support the migration to the cloud, with ISPs and Telcos having invested heavily in building an adequate bandwidth infrastructure. A mature Channel Partner community of ISVs and SIs have equipped themselves with relevant cloud computing tools and techniques enabling them to offer their services to SMBs. "Future growth opportunity in the arena of more traditional ICT solutions are somewhat limited" stated Chakravarty. "Hence, in the face of stagnation, a significant proportion of channel partners have been adding cloud computing to their product and service lines in a bid to increase versatility and to meet the rising 'pull' from their SMB customers."
The importance of channel partners cannot be overstated. They represent the 'Route-To-Market' for India SMBs in terms of ICT procurement. Moreover, the role of channel partners in cloud computing is further emphasized by the fact that SMBs require a good deal of hand-holding and guidance in order to understand what cloud solutions suit their businesses best. In addition, significant shifts have occurred within the cloud-partner ecosystem with the advent of new cloud-focused partners a.k.a. 'Cloud-brokers' who are specialists in the arena of facilitating cloud computing transactions between buyers and sellers. Read More
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If YouTube were a country, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India
In the last eight years, Google’s YouTube has become the most popular platform for people to share, upload and watch videos. Some of the top hundred global brands are now running campaigns on YouTube. Yesterday, YouTube crossed a new milestone. In a blog post, it announced that it now has more than a billion unique users every single month.
YouTube also revealed some interesting stats:
- Nearly one out of every two people on the Internet visits YouTube
- Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly ten Super Bowl audiences
- If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India
- PSY and Madonna would have to repeat their Madison Square Garden performance in front of a packed house 200,000 more times. That’s a lot of Gangnam Style!
Google said that on YouTube, this generation thrives on 4Cs:
• Connection - Gen C watches YouTube on all screens, constantly switching between devices
Creation - Gen C is deeply engaged with online video, watching, creating and uploading videos on YouTube
• Community - Gen C thrive on community, defining what’s popular on YouTube by sharing videos with friends and family
• Curation - Gen C is made up of expert curators who care about finding content that matters to them
The influence of Gen C is huge, as Google said that they collectively influence USD 500B of spending a year in the U.S. (U.S. Chamber of Commerce).
Google also partnered with Nielsen to understand how Gen C views YouTube across devices. “We found that that the amount of time Gen C spends watching YouTube on their smartphones is up 74 percent from last year. In fact, in 2012 the number of Gen C viewers who regularly watch YouTube on smartphones caught up to the number of viewers tuning in on their PCs. 67 percent of Gen C watch YouTube on two devices or more, compared to 53 percent of the general population,” Google said in the blog post. Read More
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Nasscom announces 10,000 start-ups program; Google and Microsoft pledge support
The National Association of Software & Services (NASSCOM) today announced the launch of “10,000 Start-ups”, a program aimed at incubating, funding and supporting 10,000 technology start-ups in India over the next ten years. The program is partnered by Indian Angel Network and supported by Google, Microsoft and Verisign.
The program will focus on multifold activities aimed at fostering entrepreneurship, building entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and providing robust early stage support through incubation, mentorship and angel funding.
10,000 Start-ups brings together key stakeholders of the ecosystem including start-up incubators/accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, start-up support groups and technology corporations to support entrepreneurs at early stages of their venture. This initiative is a collaborative effort to empower young entrepreneurs to create ventures of global scale from India.
The program will focus on 3 core pillars to achieve the above goals:
1. Evangelize and create awareness about technology entrepreneurship as a preferred career option. India has an organized workforce of 30Mn of which 3Mn are IT professional.
2. Engage deeply with aspiring entrepreneurs through digital / social channels and start-up support groups to create entrepreneurial capability at scale. 10,000 Start-ups program will facilitate over 7,000 start-up events like hackathons, investor roadshows and best practices workshops across 30 cities. Tech talks and white space discussions will help young entrepreneurs identify global technology trends and needs.
3. Incubate and facilitate funding of 10,000 start-ups through partnerships with some of the leading incubators / accelerators and angel networks in India. 10,000 Start-ups will also extend support to incubators / funding partners in the form of industry connects and co-working infrastructure and a start-up kit consisting of hosting credits and other technology and business tools valued over USD 25,000.
Key partners already committed to the 10,000 start-up program include:
- Consulting partner: Zinnov
- Angel partners: Chennai Angels, Harvard Angels, Hyderabad Angels, Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels, Silicon Valley Bank
- Accelerators: 91Springboards, IAN Incubator, Kyron, Microsoft Accelerator, Tlabs, The Hatch, The Morpheus, Venture Nursery
Saurabh Srivastava, Founder, Indian Angel Network said, “IAN is very excited about the 10,000 Startups initiative and hopes to bring all angel investors together to provide the most key ingredient to make this program a success – seed capital and mentoring to convert ideas into enterprises from people who have “been there, done that.”
Rajan Anandan, VP and Managing Director, Google India said "With over 150 million internet users and growing, the internet in India presents enormous opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. At Google we are very excited about the possibilities that India represents and are committed to extend all the support to make this initiative a roaring success. We will work very closely with NASSCOM and all the players in the ecosystem to boost the technology innovation rate in India."
Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India said, “Microsoft welcomes NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups initiative, and is delighted to be a part of it. Microsoft has always believed in the potential of the Indian startup ecosystem, and has a long history of initiatives to promote it, through programs such as BizSpark, BizSpark Plus and the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure. We will continue to work with the startup ecosystem of India, both on our own, and in partnership with industry bodies like NASSCOM. We believe that disruptive technologies and opportunities in the Indian market supported by this collaborative initiative will propel technology entrepreneurship in India to the next level”. Read More
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IBM presents Pune with plan for smarter healthcare and transportation
IBM today shared short and long term recommendations with Pune Municipal Corporation for providing its citizens with improved health and transportation services. Many of the recommendation involve the use of mobile technology and the analysis of large and complex quantities of electronic information, often referred to as "Big Data."
The IBM team presented its plan after completing a three-week pro bono consulting engagement for Pune, which had been awarded a Smarter Cities Challenge grant. These competitive grants fund the deployment of up to six top IBM experts to cities worldwide. There, the IBM team studies locally important issues, then provides the cities' leadership with feedback. For this project, the IBM team, assisted by IBM's India Software Lab, worked with several teams from city departments, the local medical community, academia and citizenry to better understand Pune's challenges.
For Pune's healthcare, IBM felt that the use of low cost mobile phones to gather and report information could help officials more quickly identify and resolve both short term events, such as disease outbreaks, and chronic public health issues, such as infant mortality. For example, with the proper consents, citizens could use their mobile phones as a way to automatically update physicians about their health status. Their phones might also receive SMS alerts when a child is due to receive immunization or when precautions need to be taken during public health emergencies. A single, region-wide telephone number to summon emergency responders would make it easier for citizens to receive assistance for health and safety issues, such as for severe illness, accidents and assaults.
Data from mobile devices was also at the heart of IBM's recommendations to improve public and private transportation. The experts felt that analyzing anonymous cellphone signals and video camera feeds could help transportation and law enforcement officials better pinpoint and address roadways prone to congestion or accidents. More accurate information about travel patterns would allow planners to model and design more convenient, safer, reliable and faster public transportation routes and modes of travel, such as a metro, auto-rickshaws and buses. The availability of detailed data would also enable apps to help travelers plan their trips door to door, and receive timely updates about traffic disruptions.
These measures will take on added significance as the Pune population continues to grow. This has meant a rise in private, motorized transportation and an increase in traffic congestion and accidents. In fact, it is believed that the amount of motorized traffic will account for over 54 percent of the daily trips taken by Pune citizens by 2031 -- 5,000,000 trips per day.
Commenting on the recommendations presented by IBM, Mahesh Pathak, IAS, Commissioner, Pune Municipality, said: “This is an excellent opportunity for us to modernize our healthcare and transportation systems for the benefits of Pune citizens. After studying the local issues, IBM has identified the key problem areas and recommended solutions to digitize and integrate different aspects of the healthcare and transportation arena. Their deep insights and global expertise will help us chart a range of concrete strategies and policies for the future development of our city.”
“Pune has always demonstrated a strong passion to re-energize its existing infrastructure towards building a smarter city," said Mamtha Sharma, Manager for Corporate Citizenship & Corporate Affairs at IBM India. "The Pune Municipal Corporation has supported us with valuable input at every step during our project. We hope that the recommendations made for smarter healthcare and transportation will enhance the quality of life for its citizens."
IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge, a competitive grant program for urban areas sponsored by IBM's citizenship program and International Foundation, is an outgrowth of IBM's Corporate Service Corps, in which IBM deploys teams of top employees to areas in the developing world to work on projects that intersect business, technology and society. Both IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge and Corporate Service Corps have sent multiple teams of experts to India, where they have worked on projects spanning economic development, education, social services, healthcare, transportation, and sustainability. Read More
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Now, check your credit score online for free
Credit Sudhaar has announced the launch of a new website called freescoreindia.com which will provide Credit Score Estimates to individuals for free. A credit score is a 3 digit number that shows numeric summary of your Credit Health and credit worthiness. Whether you are planning to buy a home, a car or even a new credit card, your credit score has immense affect on your loan processing. A credit score is a measure of how diligently you make payments relevant to loans, credit cards, telephone bills, insurance premiums and rent cheques.
The announcement was made by Arun Ramamurthy and Gaurav Wadhwani, co-founders of Credit Sudhaar.
“Your 3 digit credit score can have a 6 digit impact on your life. Is your score low? Is it good enough? How can you improve your score if it's low? How can you keep it high and better it, if it's already good? The starting point to all of this is to know your score and our research shows that about 97 percent of people are unaware about their credit scores. All you have to do is answer some simple questions at freescoreindia.com, and you will get an estimated range for your credit score. As a credit health improvement company we want to help such people move towards better credit health and believe firmly that fresh Credit Score Estimates should be taken regularly,” said Arun Ramamurthy, co-founder, Credit Sudhaar.
Credit Sudhaar aims to help make individuals Credit Healthy by Restoring, Enhancing and Protecting their Credit. The benefit also extends to personalized product recommendations for improvement of Credit Health from Credit Sudhaar.
“Credit score is a crucial indicator of an individual's Credit Health. Most of the lenders use it for determining loan payment potential of an individual. Not just loans, but jobs, marriage and even insurance premiums now depend on your credit score. It is important to remove all discrepancies from your credit report to improve your Credit Health. If you want to enhance your Credit Health, first step is to know your current credit score. Freescoreindia.com is free, simple and an easy way to know your credit score,” said Gaurav Wadhwani, co-founder, Credit Sudhaar. Read More
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Ride the Big Data beast: The new normal for CMOs
For a long time, CMOs have been the “creative” folks in the C-suite.
Sure, they fought pitched budget battles. Sure, they used numbers: the “delta” in business generated from that last campaign, the ROI, and so on.
But ultimately, they understood the amorphous marketplace. Even if their target audience was not always easy to define, they possessed that legendary insight into consumer behavior. They approved the concept, the creative, and the messaging.
The Mad Men did not have data at the scale that we can lay our hands on today. But neither did they have to tangle with multiple overlapping channels, the ability to address and reach individual customers, and a globalized world. Is it ironic that the CMO’s creativity is now being challenged by the same “data” that was elusive not so long ago?
Challenging the 2013 CMO
As marketing leaders, our #1 performance goal remains helping our firms to grow business, profitably. To achieve it however, as a recent ITSMA report says: “…marketing leaders are rethinking their roles, seeking new kinds of skills, and reinventing their organizations.”
So what has changed?
• The explosion of data driven by emerging real time channels (social media/mobile) that makes consumer insight and understanding more complex.
• The great catalytic role that technology is playing in, well—everything!
• And, most importantly, how customers buy today.
This rewriting of marketing job descriptions is all about how business is being done in the 21st century.
Business insight remains elusive
The starting line has not changed. While globalization, mobile access and the Web have all helped grow global GDP and therefore markets, understanding them is still a premium skill and a huge effort.
Targeting customers with the highest propensity to buy determines ROMI (return on marketing investment) for today’s CMOs. The 2012 US presidential elections are already a case study in how getting market segmentation and targeting correct is even more “business critical” than ever! While data on consumer behavior seems to be available in plenty, not all of it is process-able, usable or correct.
As telling is the NADA DATA 2012 State-of-the-Industry report. While US dealerships allotted 53 percent of their advertising spends to newspapers in 2001 that fell to 20 percent in 2011. Expectedly, this seems to have been mostly taken up by the Internet, which rose from 4.6 percent to 24.8 percent of their advertising spends. Very interestingly, the share of direct mail went up from 6 percent to almost 10 percent.
With the smaller marketing budgets since the financial crisis, a key CMO skill set that is thus being called increasingly into action is about delineating those “high-propensity customers”, with enough nuances to enable targeted value propositions and product differentiation.
Get Marketing on board the technology ship
I see the second Obama campaign as a marketing triumph. Its ability to process Big Data showed that we can ride that beast—albeit it needs adroit handling, Slicing and dicing, Computing power. But all that smart technology management delivered the crisp understanding (or intuition) that made sharply targeted messaging possible!
Clearly, we creative CMOs need a key new skill: technology management. Finance, Production, HR and Sales got on board the technology ship in the 1980-90s. CMOs too now need to
• Evaluate and select technology requirements: Can we write our business requirements sharply enough to make astute decisions of where to allocate our hard won budgets in technology spends? Does Marketing have the necessary capabilities to determine which solution is the best fit, since it’s often a patchwork of applications that need to be deployed?
• Deploy and use technology as business enabler: Do we need outside skills and experience to implement the technology? And most importantly, to run it to derive consumer insights? Do we have the competencies needed to execute agile multichannel, cross-channel strategies from the bewildering choices available? Do they help us quickly take action to convert?
• Measure and fine tune for business outcomes: Have we defined the analytics that are true value drivers for our business? Do we measure what drove inquiries? Do we constantly experiment, and move budget and effort around when something doesn’t work?
How she buys
We all know what David Ogilvy said. “The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.”
Even Ogilvy couldn’t have foreseen in 1963, the vast ocean of information that computing, the Internet and the mobile revolution have made available and accessible today. For example, “Ogilvy’s wife” today visits several reputed company websites to compare the features of the automobile models that she is considering. But she will make her final choice of car from reading what “persons unknown” have commented in blog reviews, or are ranting about on Twitter. Of course, she also sees how each automotive OEM and local dealers react on Facebook too.
The e-commerce model is all very well and offers Ms. Ogilvy tremendous stay-at-home convenience. It’s everywhere too. But strangely we read up all there is to learn on the Web for many product categories (like electronics and appliances), and then we go make the actual purchase at the brick and mortar store 25 miles away. And vice versa!
What CMOs really want
As creative CMOs then do we really crave social media Hits or Likes? Or are we really after the Promised Land of “high-propensity” target audiences? What really influences the buy decisions of our consumers? Do we have the right tools to analyze the data that the markets and networks generate? Do we have the right skills to measure the data? Make understandable, actionable information of them?
Driven by technology and business demand, there are also Marketing specialties available today like digital/social/mobile marketing, engagement/content marketing, neuromarketing and industry-focused marketing. I clearly see the CMO’s biggest challenge in 2013 as being the balancing of the new insights, tools and choices needed of us every day.
Sure, we need new skills and specialized expertise. Much of it may not be available within our defined Marketing function and require unprecedented collaboration with other departments across the enterprise. CMOs will need to deeply partner with their CIOs and CTOs. Also with a diverse array of outsourced agencies that can enable their business goals by bringing in skills and experience not found in-house.
The tech-enabled social enterprise will mean the “democratization of marketing.” It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to bring our Sales teams and customers together. 2013 is a bold new frontier. And as in the days of the Wild West, it will demand courage and exploration for CMO success.
- The author is Global Marketing and Communications Leader at Aditya Birla Minacs Read More
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Facebook On Big Data analytics: An insider's view
Few businesses are on the scale of Facebook, but the problems it's dealing with today might influence the best practices smaller companies will be putting in place tomorrow.
Just as Facebook is shaping big data hardware and data centers through its Open Compute Project initiative, it's also influencing the software tools and platforms for big data analysis, including Hadoop, Hive, graph analysis and more. Hive, Hadoop's data warehousing infrastructure, originated at Facebook, and according to Jay Parikh, VP of infrastructure engineering, the company is hard at work on ways to make Hive work faster and support more SQL query capabilities.
Parikh also tells InformationWeek that Facebook is working on new real-time and graph-analysis platforms, but the heart and soul of this interview is about big data analytics. There's plenty of detail on how Facebook answers operational and business questions, but read on to get Parikh's advice on how to avoid "wasting a lot of money" or "missing huge opportunities" in big data.
InformationWeek: The topic at hand is big data analytics, but let's start by exploring Facebook's infrastructure to get some context
Jay Parikh: There are a few areas that we invest in to scale massive amounts of data. If you consider just the photos on Facebook, we have more than 250 billion photos on the site and we get 350 million new photos every day. It's a core, immersive experience for our users, so we've had to rethink and innovate at all levels of the stack, not just the software, to manage these files and to serve them, store them and make sure that they're available when users go back through their timeline to view them. That has meant changes at the hardware level, the network level and the data center level. It's a custom stack, and it doesn't involve Hadoop or Hive or any open source big data platforms.
Another area where we invest is in storing user actions. When you "like" something, post a status update or make a friend on Facebook, we use a very distributed, highly optimized, highly customized version of MySQL to store that data. We run the site, basically, storing all of our user action data in MySQL. That's the second pillar.
The third area is Hadoop infrastructure. We do a lot with Hadoop. It's used in every product and in many different ways. A few years ago we launched a new version of Facebook Messaging, for example, and it runs on top of HBase [the Hadoop NoSQL database framework]. All of the messages you send on mobile and desktop get persisted to HBase. We relied on our expertise in Hadoop and HDFS to scale HBase to store messages.
We also use a version of Hadoop and Hive to run the business, including a lot of our analytics around optimizing our products, generating reports for our third-party developers, who need to know how their applications are running on the site, and generating reports for advertisers, who need to know how their campaigns are doing. All of those analytics are driven off of Hadoop, HDFS, Hive and interfaces that we've developed for developers, internal data scientists, product managers and external advertisers.
IW: Any big changes afoot, particularly where analytic capabilities are concerned?
Parikh: There's lots of hype in the [IT] industry today about everything needing to be real time. That has been true for us for a long time. We push the front-end website code twice a day. We have thousands of different versions of the site running at any given moment. We launched Light Stand, a new version of our newsfeed, last week, and we launched Facebook Graph Search in January. As people are adopting new products like this, we need to understand whether they're working or not. Are people engaged? Are they missing key features? Are they still liking things as much? If the warehouse or analytics platform can't keep up, then we can't come up with new iterations of our products very quickly. Real-time measurement has been a key element for us.
IW: How are you addressing real-time analytics?
Parikh: A couple of ways. We use Hive [data warehousing infrastructure] to run lots of reports. Hive is something we developed and open sourced, and it runs on top of the Hadoop stack. We also have a system called Scuba, which is a real-time system for analytics. Scuba stores everything in memory so it's really fast, and you can do all sorts of transformations and drill-downs on the data. We use it both for operations data -- site performance metrics, reliability metrics and so on -- and for business data, studying the effectiveness of the advertising system or ranking systems.
We're working on a couple of other things including a new platform that will allow us to query the data in our Hadoop infrastructure much more rapidly. We're building that out, and we're probably going to talk about it this summer.
IW: Hive's lack of speed is well known. So will this new platform solve that problem?
Parikh: We have a number of efforts on real time. Scuba is one but we're also working on Hive extensively, and we're in the process of pushing our contributions back into the open source version. You'll see, over the course of the coming months, some very significant changes that we're going to push into the community to make Hive faster.
Hive is still a workhorse and it will remain the workhorse for a long time because it's easy and it scales. Easy is the key thing when you want lots of people to be able to engage with a tool. Hive is very simple to use, so we've been focused on performance to make it even more effective.
IW: Is it all about speed, or are you also working on broader SQL-query capabilities?
Parikh: We're working on both. We're filling some of the gaps in what it can do SQL wise, and we're also working on performance and reliability. There's also this new, unannounced platform that we'll be talking about later this summer that will sit next to both Scuba and Hive. Everything about it is real time, and it will cut down the latency [of Hadoop] significantly.
IW: What about graph analysis? That would seem to be a Facebook specialty since it's about understanding network relationships.
Parikh: Everything in Facebook is represented in some sort of graph [with nodes -- people, organizations, places, brands, etc. -- and edges -- the relationships among those nodes]. We maintain the largest people-object graph in the world, and it's constantly changing, so it's not something you can handle in batch mode. The interactions are constant and you want the results to be fresh. We have to share in a way that lets us scale. All of these capabilities are behind the Graph Search product that we introduced in January.
If you're talking about graph analytics, there's an open-source project out there called Pregel that Google has written about. There's also the Apache Giraph project, which is more about graph analytics and graph processing.
We are also going to be talking about a project later this summer -- probably at the same time we talk about our real-time initiative -- that is a version of graph analytics that sits on top of our Hadoop infrastructure. There are some cool problems we've been able to solve by being able to process [Facebook's] large graph, infer data and make better suggestions to people, whether it be content or ads.
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IW: How and where do Facebook's current graph-analysis capabilities operate?
Parikh: A lot of the graph analytics are written and run on the Hive infrastructure. Hive's performance and scale issues make the overall latency of these analytics slower than we would like, and that's one of the reasons we've been investing in those other projects discussed earlier to speed things up and do things more efficiently.
There's another graph processing engine that we've written that sits between our Web tier and our storage tier. That has been around for a long time and it's the real-time engine allows our website to generate the types of experiences that it does today. You can ask, "show me all my friends who like X," and it gives you a sorted and filtered list. It generates each and every page on the site. It's an area that's pretty ripe for innovation.
Hive is still a workhorse and it will remain the workhorse for a long time because it's easy and it scales. Easy is the key thing when you want lots of people to be able to engage with a tool. Hive is very simple to use, so we've been focused on performance to make it even more effective.
IW: Is it all about speed, or are you also working on broader SQL-query capabilities?
Parikh: We're working on both. We're filling some of the gaps in what it can do SQL wise, and we're also working on performance and reliability. There's also this new, unannounced platform that we'll be talking about later this summer that will sit next to both Scuba and Hive. Everything about it is real time, and it will cut down the latency [of Hadoop] significantly.
IW: What about graph analysis? That would seem to be a Facebook specialty since it's about understanding network relationships.
Parikh: Everything in Facebook is represented in some sort of graph [with nodes -- people, organizations, places, brands, etc. -- and edges -- the relationships among those nodes]. We maintain the largest people-object graph in the world, and it's constantly changing, so it's not something you can handle in batch mode. The interactions are constant and you want the results to be fresh. We have to share in a way that lets us scale. All of these capabilities are behind the Graph Search product that we introduced in January.
If you're talking about graph analytics, there's an open-source project out there called Pregel that Google has written about. There's also the Apache Giraph project, which is more about graph analytics and graph processing.
We are also going to be talking about a project later this summer -- probably at the same time we talk about our real-time initiative -- that is a version of graph analytics that sits on top of our Hadoop infrastructure. There are some cool problems we've been able to solve by being able to process [Facebook's] large graph, infer data and make better suggestions to people, whether it be content or ads.
IW: How and where do Facebook's current graph-analysis capabilities operate?
Parikh: A lot of the graph analytics are written and run on the Hive infrastructure. Hive's performance and scale issues make the overall latency of these analytics slower than we would like, and that's one of the reasons we've been investing in those other projects discussed earlier to speed things up and do things more efficiently.
There's another graph processing engine that we've written that sits between our Web tier and our storage tier. That has been around for a long time and it's the real-time engine allows our website to generate the types of experiences that it does today. You can ask, "show me all my friends who like X," and it gives you a sorted and filtered list. It generates each and every page on the site. It's an area that's pretty ripe for innovation.
The ecosystem around graph technology is very under-developed, and I don't think it will ever become as developed as the relational world because it's not general purpose. Graphs will develop, but it's going to be just yet another piece of technology that lets companies carve off and optimize a few key applications.
IW: Do you have any advice for enterprise IT shops venturing into big data?
Parikh: You're going to have the big-data Hadoop-Hive world, and then you're going to have some specialized real-time systems and you're going to have some specialized graph processing engines. Most IT shops, if they're good and they have a lot of applications to deal with, are going to end up in this world.
Everybody is dealing with scale today, and it's getting to be a more difficult challenge in terms of the amount of data that people want to collect and analyze. Sometimes companies are collecting data and they don't know what to do with it yet, or they're collecting data that they don't even know they have. The fundamental problems are how do you store it, how do you process it and how do you derive useful insights? If you aren't careful as you build out big data applications, you stand to waste a lot of money or you stand to miss huge opportunities in your business. Threading that needle is what every tech company in the world has to do, and most companies won't be able to do it well.
IW: Why not?
Parikh: It's very hard to manage the balance between storing too much and then trying to find something valuable or partitioning your data among different business units and not being able to get insight across the business. We're in an early phase of this technology. It's not something that's insurmountable and people are figuring it out. But storing the data, determining what you do with it, writing the applications and responding to the insight from the data is the balancing act that every tech organization is going to work on.
IW: The "wasting a lot of money" danger is pretty clear -- too much data, too little value. Any advice on how not to miss the opportunity?
Parikh: It's crucial to understand the data that you're collecting and to react to it to change your business. If you're just focused on the tip of the data, you may be missing a longer-term trend. You might be fixated on just a couple of bits of data and not looking at other bits that might be significant. You need a micro, laser focus on impact, but you also need to have a broad perspective on where you're going with all the data.
You may be focused on decisions with real-time data, but are you missing a longer-term impact on your business if you're not looking at your entire data set? It takes a lot of iteration and experimentation to succeed. It's an exciting time and there are lots of cool things for enterprises to try, but it's hard work and the technologies are still maturing. Read More
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SAP Business Suite now powered by HANA
German software company SAP on Tuesday announced a new offering to SAP Business Suite customers – this one’s powered by SAP HANA. The new product suite brings analytics and transactions into a single in-memory platform. The company also claims this one to be the biggest ever launch after SAP R/3, a client-server platform released in 1992.
According to SAP, the new product suite helps provide customers with an exceptional ability to translate real-time insights to action while removing the complexity of redundant data and systems. SAP HANA - the next generation platform - is well-suited to help customers navigate the dynamic market conditions of the Asia Pacific region, home to four of the five world’s fastest-growing economies, 60 percent of the world’s population, and an urban population of 1.9 billion people that’s expected to balloon to 3.3 billion by 2050. This environment presents businesses with both challenges and opportunities. With fierce competition and ever-changing conditions, real-time access to information becomes critical for decision-making.
“Today marks a significant milestone as we now enable SAP Business Suite to benefit from the power of SAP HANA, which since 2010 has been the core platform delivering real time business outcomes for our customers by transforming both existing and new applications," said Rajamani Srinivasan, VP - Applications Sales, SAP Indian Sub-continent.
SAP itself went live on the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application powered by the SAP HANA platform in two and a half months. More than 14,000 SAP employees worldwide have real-time access to real-time business insights for smarter decision making and new productivity gains.
The SAP Services organization has delivered more than 40 proofs of concept and 30 customer implementations of SAP HANA in the region. SAP Services has a team of more than 400 experienced SAP HANA consultants in the region and expects to have more than 200 consultants for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA by the end of March 2013 to help customers to continue to innovate without disruption. This year, SAP aims to grow the specialization of skills required for SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA by training the current resource pool of more than 3,000 partner consultants already trained on SAP HANA in Asia Pacific Japan in the new curriculum. This will be done through a planned and targeted training program offered to selected partners, as well as by working with consultants in the university market.
Avon Cycles, India’s leading cycle manufacturer, has got on board SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA into their IT environment, replacing Oracle. “The power of doing business in real-time is immense. At Avon Cycles, we are constantly looking for ways to do things faster, smarter and more efficiently. We need to constantly manage a huge volume of bought out components - each bicycle has more than 360 components and there are over 200 models with an average of three sizes per model and three colours in each size. Adding to the complexity is the challenge of forecasting our sales as bicycles are regarded as commodities in India, resulting in a very short lead time for material requirements planning,” said Kuljeet Singh Sethi, CIO, Avon Cycles. “Transforming to real-time planning and monitoring of order fulfilment scenarios are extremely critical for Avon Cycles, and we believe SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA will help make a significant difference.”
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CTO Padmasree Warrior on Cisco's larger vision for Internet of Everything
When Cisco announced strong earnings during its most recent fiscal quarter, much of the progress was attributed to the networking giant's strides in software-defined networking (SDN).
SDN technology broadly eliminates manual management of switches and other networking hardware by abstracting control to a single administrative console. Such networks factor into many of the IT world's most impactful movements, such as virtualization and cloud computing, but according to Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior, SDN is a constraining concept that falls short of the company's more ambitious vision: an intelligent, programmable network that will not only link billions of devices to the Internet but also, thanks to the data mining the network enables, inject trillions of dollars into the global economy.
Put another way, Cisco's broader vision involves building out the Internet of Everything (IoE). Warrior delivered her remark on Wednesday during an interview with InformationWeek at the company's annual Editors Conference, where she and other Cisco leaders described IoE's disruptive potential, which includes increasing global profits by 21 percent, or USD 14.4 trillion, over the next decade.
This bold forecast is rooted in converging technologies, starting with the explosion of everyday objects, from utility meters to iPads, that are now equipped not only to access the Internet but also, thanks to the availability of low-cost sensors, to collect data on an unprecedented scale. These connected devices populate the so-called Internet of Things and Cisco anticipates these objects will see 400% growth over the next few years, totaling 50 billion by 2020. The company has defined IoE as "the network and processes that both unite the objects and supply the analytical muscle to make the collected data useful."
Warrior has been testifying in blog posts that Cisco is serious about its IoE goals. CEO John Chambers revealed just how serious in late February, when he characterized the endeavor as the cornerstone of Cisco's future.
During the interview, Warrior stated that "the future will be about a programmable network that is much broader than SDN." She elaborated that captured data can't be sent en mass to the data center, and that network intelligence, be it at the edge of the network or at the endpoint itself, must negotiate when to crunch numbers locally and when to transmit content elsewhere. This model of distributed networking will, in Cisco's view, involve open APIs along with a new wave of apps that can recognize how the network is architected.
These changes don't necessarily mean that existing infrastructure will need to be replaced. Cisco futurist Dave Evans has suggested that many of IoE's biggest potential benefits, such as near-universal access to healthcare and education, will arise not from futuristic new devices but rather from the simple addition of radios and sensors to many of the objects we already use; a smart bathroom mirror, for example, could be central to extending human lifetimes by decades and perhaps even centuries. Similarly, Warrior said that Cisco's installed user base, which has invested USD 180 billion in the company's gear, will be able to join the Internet of Everything by exposing existing hardware to open APIs.
"For applications to be aware of the network, you need to create programmability at different levels," she said. "But people are not going to throw away their existing install base and go to something completely new. That would mean huge amounts of capital, and we all know IT budgets are constrained."
Indeed, Cisco's IoE talking points reaffirm business' ability to generate new revenue streams from existing infrastructure. The company's location-based analytics tools, for example, could allow retailers to increase sales via personalized advertising while also monetizing their Wi-Fi networks.
Customers will be able to utilize these APIs with Cisco's One Platform Kit, which includes hundreds of APIs. The company's ASICs, the integrated circuits inside routers and switches, will also deliver programmability.
When John Chambers discussed IoE in February, he said that success will rely on open standards and cross-industry collaboration; otherwise, an object speaking one proprietary language won't be able to communicate with objects built on other proprietary platforms, limiting the extent to which different data points can be pulled together. To effectively deploy IoE on a citywide scale, for example, local leaders would need to aggregate data collected by devices from different manufacturers. If utility meters, traffic monitoring devices, atmospheric sensors and other objects all collect information autonomously and in a vacuum, their respective data points will speak only to finite use cases.
Cisco's devotion to standards is notable, given that less than a year has passed since InformationWeek survey respondents criticized the company for being too proprietary. Warrior said the results were somewhat surprising, as Cisco has advocated an open approach for years. She suggested the outgoing network model itself might be partly to blame, however; pointing out that while the command-line interfaces that typify traditional networks amount to a closed system, the new networks' API-driven compatibility translate this system into an open platform.
Warrior said that businesses must consider specific challenges when devising an IoE strategy, a recommendation that echoes John Chambers's view that companies should focus on use cases rather than technology. She said that Cisco is developing use cases for specific verticals to improve efficiency, such as a manufacturing plant that installs sensors in the factory to more accurately detect developing equipment malfunctions.
Evoking the CEO's argument for cross-industry cooperation, Warrior said that certain vertical uses cases could easily become horizontal in execution. A merchant, for example, might collaborate with the city to help customers reserve parking spots via a smartphone app, which would benefit the retailer by driving traffic to the store, the city by reducing traffic congestion and pollution, and consumers by mitigating gas costs and time lost to parking searches.
Cisco's IoE plans are already moving quickly and could pick up additional steam in October, when the company will host its Internet of Things World Forum in Barcelona, Spain. Based on the agenda discussed at a steering committee in February, when Chambers declared IoE's place in his company's plan, the conference will address revenue opportunities, standards and collaboration, as well as security, privacy concerns, social impacts and IoE availability in the developing world.
Chambers suggested that IoE's winners and losers could be determined within the next five years, if not sooner. Time will judge this statement, of course, but given that the World Forum's participant roster includes heavyweights such as General Electric, Ford, Oracle, Qualcomm and Verizon, Cisco certainly seems to have the industry's ear. Read More
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The next gold rush in Financial Markets will be driven by Big Data
The next gold rush in Financial Markets will be driven by Big Data. The key driver for this is the low cost to create, manage, mine and deploy Big Data using the pay-as-you-use solutions in the cloud. Cloud computing has democratized Big Data usage and analytics. The differentiator for the winners will be the traders who use Big Data analytics and algorithmic trading engines to churn profits from the markets.
All markets work on information whether it is from government, corporate, industry, social media, economical trends, sales figures, people, historical statistics and future projections and more. All this data -- both structured and unstructured will have to be brought together under one umbrella and made to work in tandem to provide analytics which can be piped into an algorithmic engine which in turn will create the upside in the markets for the bold investors who get this technology usage right.
Here is a scenario on how could this happen. Let us consider the US Bond market trader who wants to use this combination of big data analytics and an algorithmic engine, wall street data over the years, data on government spending, SEC guidelines, the various bond guru prophesies, the news -- both digital and printed, plus the market prices and the historic data. This list is not complete and there are more pieces in this big puzzle including the various trading strategies that will need to be adopted.
The trader will have an almost infinite information set which needs to be mined with the right tools and analyzed to get the winning formula; we will need some of the best mathematicians and statisticians in our team to prioritize and map this data into the trading strategy and predicted outcome.
The trader will need Big Data to hold the humongous volume of structured and unstructured data and his analysts will need the ability to toss and turn the data. The trader will need a team to help managing this jumbo canister of digital data.
There will be a need for a team to scrub and clean this data before it can be used by the customized tools for analyzing this data. The team has to be adept at building and deploying tools to clean and scrub data in real time.
There will be static data streams and real time data streams which have to be merged by the big data algorithms to give the trader an useful output to feed the algorithmic trading engine which will connect into the digital bonds market.
Remember all this activity of data production in the real market will happen in nano seconds or less in a fast moving and frenetic digital market and will be more complex in the equity and commodity markets which are like quicksilver. If the trader decided on hedging, cross border correlation with other markets and also within the domestic markets the data flows and information engines become more complex but the upside for the winner will be take it all.
How do we put a team together to make this happen. In my mind it will be a global project,
Big data and algo engines are best today in the USA. So, we will use the computing infrastructure in that country and also work in the markets in the USA. Asia could be the ideal location for data cleaning and preparation. It has a competitive and educated work force which has shown that it can deliver. India could be a leader in this space given its Y2k migration track record. But other countries like China, Korea are also excellent sources.
The algorithmic engines complemented with mathematics and statistical engines may come from the team in Eastern Europe who have wonderful teams who have made significant contributions in this area.
India could provide the expertise in building the solutions need for data analytics and algo trading engines and other related technology engineering. The funding for this gold rush would not be from the European nobility but from ordinary citizens who believe in the power of Big Data and its positive outcome.
Once we have the ingredients together and we will need this team of Americans, Asians, Europeans to be connected virtually to make our gold mining expedition a reality and to take on the global markets.
What will be the time needed for such a project, need not be more than three months if we use cloud computing project management methodology. We can start small and keep improving our big data analytical engine and our algo trading engine as we see an upside in our technology.
The downside could be we lose our capital if this does not work, but we have a small investment to make on cloud computing, but with the right team there will be no looking back.
The biggest worry in this strategy is whether the global exchanges will be able to handle the tsunami created by the marriage of big data analytics and algo trading. The barrier for this project could be the exchanges and regulators who may play spoil sport and close this window of opportunity even before the party starts.
But the early bird catches the worm, so get your tools sharpened, put your tools together and start your gold mining expedition. If you are lucky you may even strike platinum. Markets are all about slices of opportunities like a surfer finding the perfect wave, so get your boards out and ride the waves of this new opportunity. Nerds can change the global markets and Big Data will the technology engine that they can be harnessed to make the difference.
- The author is CEO of NISE. LS (as he is called) is also a respected thought leader known for his innovation in information technology for business. He is the architect of the OTC Exchange of India, India’s first online trading national stock exchange and has advised NCDEX, Power Exchange, CRISIL, Exchange Next and other companies in trading solutions and processes. Read More
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Ten uncommon habits towards successful project management
Here are ten uncommon habits that I have tried to articulate from my experience:
#1 Diversity – Many a time you will be tempted or pressurized to put best people in your team in place for an important project. All best people (star performers) in the team will create conflict zones as they will have views and opinions of their own and in my experience, create recipe for failure. The diversified team of resources is the best productive team you usually encounter.
#2 Stakeholders & Sponsor – The stakeholder management is extremely important and if you have managed it well, you will have all the support and buy in for your project and you may have created a half of your success story. If ignored, it may cause failure even though the project is managed properly. Similar is the sponsor who should be identified and made responsible for sponsoring early. Understanding stakeholders outside the fence who are negatively or positively impacted can help you in success. For example, ignoring social activist in construction of large dams can delay the timelines. I suggest a separate stakeholder management plan for large and risky projects.
#3 Change Management - Successful project management is not just time, quality, scope, cost and resources management, but it is also managing the change it is trying to bring and handling the politics of change. Never underestimate the fallout and environmental impact of a change which you intend to bring. If your time tracking project leads to widespread strike in the company, it will lead to a failure and most likely the weakest link (which could be you as PM) will be punished.
#4 Networking - Never ignore lunch with your team. This creates bonding and association. You will also change perception about you and others. People can connect well when you share lunch boxes with them. This is a networking opportunity with your team which should not be missed.
#5 Innovation - This is something which you will need to do throughout your project. Sometimes unknown ways of dealing an issue will give a wonderful result. For example I faced a challenge with a customer who was reluctant to pay for his change requests as it would create audit issues but when I gave him the offer that I will do it free if he can find out changes in policies and procedures outside his control, where I can accommodate the costs. The customer was very much willing to go ahead with this approach. I have seen small innovations for win-win can cut short lengthy discussions and useless heartburn. For this you must walk in the shoes of your customer whom you are serving understand his/her win.
#6 Negotiations - You may have to keep negotiating things not just with your team and customers but with everyone in the ecosystem. Keep your levers of negotiation available in your pocket. For this read the contract which you have signed not just once but several times. I had a customer with whom my organization signed a lifetime warranty for an application with which it was contracted to develop. Fortunately, I knew the remaining clauses to argue back that this will only be possible when the application is not changed by anyone else and to implement this, the customer must remained locked in to my organization. The rest was history.
#7 Center of Gravity (COG) - If you are not the center of gravity for your team, there is someone who is. A friendly COG towards you will bring success but an unfriendly one will bring lot of agony and pain. You must identify your team’s COG. If it is negative or destructive, work out an action plan to deal with it early. The easier way is to understand the aspirations of COG and make it a reality through a win-win. For example, if you see your COG has an aspiration to replace you, give him the most challenging part of the project so that all energies are diverted towards making it happen.
#8 Appreciate Threats - Most threats or risks are an opportunity. Do not look at them with negativity. A risk of losing control in your outsourcing project could be opportunity for developing an effective knowledge management system in your organization. I faced a situation when we were told by our esteemed customer that he is not ready for deployment of the application when we were almost ready. This would have meant huge overhead for us. We discussed how we can use existing resources in reengineering some more legacy systems in T&M mode for the same customer. This would mean increased revenue and utilization which went very well. By the time we were ready, the infrastructure was ready for deployment.
#9 Not everything is Black and White - Have you ever landed in a situation where you were expected to do things which are outside the preview of contract or written rules? I am not advocating violating ethics, policies and procedures but the contact should not be referred every now and then but should be used as guidelines. My experience in dealing with some of the largest deals tells me that flexibility to accommodate and create a win-win situation pays a lot and sometimes beyond the expected benefits.
#10 Useful Weakness - I read a story of a porter in India who was responsible for filling water in his master’s drum from the well every morning. His bucket, in which he used to carry water to the drum, was having leaks. He used the weakness of his bucket to provide an additional service of watering the garden by choosing the correct route to the drum where he can provide both service at the same time. Sometimes what you consider as weakness is your strength. I encountered this in my first project when a team member who was not so technically sound used to articulate his issues very nicely over email. I had a requirement for a technical writer in my team where he fitted in very well and latter he had good career growth.
Unlike innovators, mostly project managers are remembered for unsuccessful projects. For successful projects, in most cases the project is remembered along with its sponsors.
- The author is Founder & Managing Consultant, CIO Specialist
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Indian government woos Android developers by launching app contest for public services
The Government of India is aiming to utilize the unparalleled reach of mobile phones and mobile applications for delivering public services. The Government is inviting developers to develop innovative apps on the Android platform that can be used by citizens to avail public services.
Applications will be evaluated by a jury, and the top three applications will be awarded cash prizes of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 respectively.
Qualified apps will be hosted on the Mobile Seva Application store, located at http://apps.mgov.gov.in/
Applications can be submitted under the following categories: Government Services, Education/Reference, Social Networking, Lifestyle/Travel, e-Health and Productivity/Tools
To apply, check this link out:
http://appscontest.mgov.gov.in/mainpage.jsp Read More
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India Post partners with Infosys for transforming its rural operations
Infosys today announced that the company has been selected by India Post to implement and manage a platform that will transform its rural operations. With this new agreement, Infosys will facilitate India Post’s Rural Systems Integration (RSI) program. This initiative will increase adoption of the department’s services, and enhance the reach of postal services to the country’s rural population, streamlining the distribution of social benefits. As part of an earlier agreement, Infosys is also partnering with India Post to transform its financial services operations and end-user experience under the Financial Services System Integration program.
The two projects are part of the ‘India Post 2012’ modernization program that aims to bring transparency, agility, flexibility and scalability to its business operations. The programs will empower employees to deliver services more efficiently to rural communities using the latest technology. They will also position India Post as a key agent in the Government of India’s inclusive growth policies.
Infosys will develop a Service Delivery Platform (SDP) that will leverage Infosys solutions such as mConnect, TruSync and Finacle Inclusion. These will serve as a foundation for the RSI program. The new SDP will allow more than 130,000 rural post offices to offer online services. Additionally it will connect and manage more than 130,000 handheld devices used by rural postal workers for distribution of social benefits under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and process Electronic Money Orders.
Speaking about this deal, India Post said, “We are very happy to partner with Infosys on one of the largest transformational journeys India Post has ever undertaken. We are confident that Infosys will help make the Rural Systems Integration project a success.”
According to CN Raghupathi, VP and Head of India Business, Infosys, “India Post has been a key driver of the country’s socio-economic development for over 150 years. This partnership will give us the opportunity to promote inclusive growth by helping to deliver services more efficiently to all citizens. ” Read More
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Nimbuzz surpasses 150 million users
Nimbuzz, a leading cross-platform global communications solution, today announced that it has surpassed 150 million users worldwide, cementing itself as one of the largest and most popular mobile and Web communications platforms in history. Nimbuzz consolidates voice and video VoIP calls, instant messaging and other data between all major communications platforms -- on any mobile device or desktop -- for free.
Nimbuzz has addressed a growing global demand for communication services within emerging markets around the world. Responding to the need for multi-language solutions in the ever-expanding global village, it is one of the only such platforms on the market. Thanks to this foresight, the company now boasts more than thirty seven million users in the Middle East and over Forty one million in Rest of Asia including India – comprising more than sixty percent of Nimbuzz’s total user population.
The free messaging giant has also shown strong growth within the U.S., providing service to more than 9 million users that rely on Nimbuzz to communicate with friends and family overseas for free. The company has also continued its tradition of maintaining strong developer channels with local carriers and global OEM device manufactures.
“People want to be able to communicate without borders or limitation now more than ever,” said Nimbuzz CEO Vikas Saxena. “Nimbuzz opens up the world of global communications to friends and family everywhere by providing a single platform capable of handling immense amounts of data for little or no cost at all. We are providing the solution to a global demand, as we have now reached an astounding 150 million users worldwide, with no signs of slowing down."
Founded in 2006, Nimbuzz reached 50 million users in August 2011 and 100 million in August 2012. The company has enjoyed steady growth, doubling its user base every year. Establishing a foothold in vital emerging markets, Nimbuzz has seen enormous growth in Asia, particularly in India and Saudi Arabia. India is home to more than twenty-five million users, which is about one quarter of the entire mobile Internet population of the country.
Through Nimbuzz, users can make free video and voice calls to other Nimbuzz users, while dramatically reducing the cost of calls to landline and mobile phones. The platform also lets users chat, call and share files between all major IM communities and Social networks, including Facebook, GTalk, Yahoo!, and Twitter.
Nimbuzz's easy-to-use mobile solution is designed to address a unique user-base within the U.S and emerging global markets. With more than 150 million users in 200 countries - and with more than 210,000 new registrations per day, Nimbuzz is one of the most popular communications applications for any device.
Key user growth statistics
• More than 150 million users in 200 countries: Asia (78 million including middle east); Africa (16); Europe (10); USA (9)
• 100-percent year-over-year growth
• More than 5,000 devices supported
• More than 1 billion minutes of Nimbuzz P2P, NimbuzzOut and SIP calls made per month
• More than 102 billion messages sent and received per month
• Android devices account for more than 35 percent of all active and new users Read More
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IndiaFirst Life bags Celent Model Insurer Asia Award for third time in a row
IndiaFirst Life Insurance, a joint venture between two public sector banks - Bank of Baroda and Andhra Bank along with UK's risk, wealth and investment company Legal & General has won the prestigious Celent Model Insurer Asia Award 2013 for its best practices in technology and optimization of business economics in the field of insurance.
The award was presented at the "Celent Model Insurer Asia Summit 2013: Exchanging ideas on effective use of technology", the Asian edition of the famous Model Insurer Awards that was held in Singapore.
IndiaFirst has won this award for three consecutive years. This year the company has been awarded for establishing an interactive and intuitive self-service digital channel to support pre-sale, sale, and post-sale service to customers.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr P Nandagopal, Managing Director & CEO, IndiaFirst Life Insurance said, "It is a matter of pride for IndiaFirst to be conferred with the Celent Model Insurer Asia Award yet again. I am delighted that Celent has recognized the role that IndiaFirst is playing in setting up benchmarks in ensuring customer delight through effective use of technology. We hope to boost our growth through not only through product innovation but also through unique customer experiences. At IndiaFirst, we believe in placing our customers ‘First’ in everything we do."
IndiaFirst Life is constantly innovating to create true customer delight on a multi dimensional level through Ask Apply Get (AAG), Lifestore and its most recent MagicBoard. “MagicBoard is a one-of-its kind integrated portable fulfillment device for a fully compliant, truthful and efficient customer sales and service process. It is a first-of-its kind approach to have a standardized sales process across the country, integrating all processes - B2B, B2C and C2B into one single platform. It offers instant insurance, in a compliant and honest manner, helps enhance sales person’s productivity and optimizes resource allocation. It also offers instant, practical business intelligence for real-time decisions for customer delight, agents support and cost control.” said Vinayak Khadye, Head – Project management & IT Excellence.
Speaking on the occasion, Wenli Yuan, Senior Analyst, Celent said, “Effective use of technology is more important than pursuit of technology for its own sake. This is the common thread among every selected Model Insurer component, and a decision each insurer should be proud of. Insurance in the Asia-Pacific region faces its own set of business challenges, and insurance technology has evolved along a distinctive path. Celent is pleased to present this award to IndiaFirst Life. Among the many excellent nominations this year, IndiaFirst Life exemplified best practices of technological innovations."
The Celent Model Insurer Asia Awards is presented by Celent, a research and consulting firm which provides technology and business strategy advice to the financial services industry. These awards are given to those Asia-Pacific insurance companies who create significant business value by applying technology to the insurance process. It recognizes best practices in key areas of the product and policyholder lifecycle including product definition, distribution, underwriting, policy administration, service, claims, and infrastructure.
In 2012, IndiaFirst Life bagged the Celent's Model Insurer Award (Asia) 2012 for successful implementation of LifeStore - an online completely do-it-yourself web store. In 2011, IndiaFirst Life won the Celent Model Insurer Asia Award, 2011 for its best practices for risk/project management, optimization of infrastructure, automation, system integration and STP Read More
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Big Data testing: The challenge and the opportunity
The inherent production of digital data across the economies and institutions is seen as an enormous source of information, which can help build a reliable knowledge base for critical decisions. As the IT enables global economy moves ahead, enterprises look at new ways of utilizing existing and growing data. At such moments, the Big Data perspective bridges the current and emerging trends.
Big data has purpose, little data has hope
While current trends suggest Big Data driven business as an avenue that requires substantial investments, the future will see a growth of Big Data apps by ISVs and Small and Medium Enterprise segment as well. Moreover, as business grows, enterprises need to accommodate and manage the increasing volume, variety and velocity of the data that flows into the IT systems.
The conventional columnar designs and horizontal databases demand continuous expansion to store and retrieve this data. The sheer volume in itself weighs on the cloud enabled schemas and sharding techniques, forcing enterprises to look for new ways to accept, model and discard the data. Findings of an MIT research project by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson indicate that companies which inject big data and analytics into their operations show productivity rates and profitability that are 5 to 6 percent higher than those of their peers.
The possibility of ‘unknown’ scenarios in Big Data testing is gigantic when compared to testing techniques for conventional applications. The scope and range of the data harness in Big Data applications will demand new benchmarks of Software Quality Assurance.
To accommodate Big Data test requirements, processes and infrastructure will be redesigned to achieve new levels of scalability, reusability and compatibility to ensure comprehensive, continuous and context driven test capabilities. To handle the volume and ensure live data integration, Big Data testing needs to empower developers and enterprises with freedom to experiment and innovate.
One data layer
From a Big Data perspective, enterprises will seek validation of application design, data security, source verification and compliance with industry standards. The parameters of performance, speed, security and load will add magnitude and precision to sculpt and reorganize data volumes into blocks that match the emerging requirements.
Over time, the database and storage layers will merge into a single data layer with options of retrieval and transmission exported out of the layer.
Business leaders now look at data maps to estimate and draft plans for emerging scenarios. The transformation of data into comprehensive reports in real time will add value to business decisions and enrich operations with higher levels of speed and accuracy. The test capabilities will acquire ability to de-complicate data sources/types/structures and channel them along specified contexts to align with objectives.
In a story titled ‘The Top 7 Things Obama Taught Us About the Future of Business’, the Forbes reported that the Obama campaign used a test tool called 'Optimizely' to improve efficiency. Dan Siroker, Co-founder of Optimizely, was quoted as saying “we ran over 240 A/B tests to try different messaging, calls to action, and in attempt to raise more money. Because of our efforts, we increased effectiveness 49 percent.”
Why Big Data is a good opportunity for Software Testers?
Consider this. A joint report by NASSCOM and CRISIL Global Research & Analytics suggests that by 2015, Big Data is expected to become a USD 25 billion industry, growing at a CAGR of 45 per cent. Managing data growth is the number two priority for IT organizations over the next 12-18 months. In order to sustain growth, enterprises will adopt next generation data integration platforms and techniques fueling the demand for Quality Assurance mechanisms around the new data perspectives.
Be a smart tester and ride the next wave of IT on Big Data
Testers can formulate service models through operational exposure to data acquisition techniques on Hadoop and related platforms. Test approaches can be developed by studying the deployment strategies of Mahout, Java, Python, Pig, Hive etc. Contextualization of data from diverse sources to streamlined outputs helps testers understand the channels of business logic in the data science.
Big Data is an emerging discipline which will leave a profound impact on the global economy. The ability to explore the power of Big Data testing is like being in a hotspot that will see action in terms of innovations that match emerging test requirements.
-- The author is Asst Vice President-Marketing, Cigniti Technologies
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77 percent of Indian users use mobile for social media
The number of social media users in urban India reached 62 million by December 2012, and it is estimated to reach 66 million by June 2013, according to a report on Social Media in India, by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB. According to the report, about 74 percent of all Active Internet users in urban India use social media.
The report also finds that of the social media users, 34 percent are from the top 8 metros while 35 percent of the total users are from small towns of population up to 5 lakh.
The report further finds that the highest proportion of social media usage was observed among the demographic segments of “Young Men” and “College Going Students”, with 84 percent and 82 percent penetration levels respectively.
Social media usage is also fast catching up with mobile internet users. According to the report, 77 percent of the users use mobile for social media. E-mail, social media, search, app store and chat / IM are used everyday by those accessing internet through mobile. Read More
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Mumbaikars can use free Android App to book autorickshaw in real time by June
Vishal Sharma, Founder & Evangelist, appycab, tells us the idea behind launching this app, and his plans for launching the app in other cities.
Please tell us about appycab?
It is a first of its kind application, which can help commuters hire an auto nearest to their current location. This application today works on Android Smart Phones; we will soon launch an iOS and a universal app. The application shows you four autos in real time on your mobile screen within 2 kms of your current location. You can even hire an auto by selecting any other location in Gurgaon.
We expect to roll out the appycab
app in Delhi and Mumbai by June.
What led you to develop this app?
Two years back, my
Executive MBA class at Gurgaon went on very late and that very day I did
not bring my car and I was wondering if I would get an auto/bus ride
back home. Fortunately, my friend Ashok Pershad had the phone number of
an auto driver whose services he availed every day and simply called the
auto rickshaw for me. Eureka! An idea struck my mind and very next
minute, I called up my business partner Pawan and shared this experience
with him. It was then we both decided to do something about this
problem faced by many people. It was technology which could easily help
overcome this and together we over the course of many days and helped
shape up the idea. There are no other apps that I am aware of, which can
help you hire autos off the road in real time.
Please explain with an example how can the commuters connect with the auto drivers?
So let's say you are at home in DLF Phase-I and you want to go to Sector 14. You pick up your smart phone, click on the 'appycab' icon and you are presented with four autos that are within one kilometer radius of your house. You simply click to call the auto driver to pick you up at your house. It's that simple.
How comfortable are the auto drivers with this app? Could you share some experience with the commuters and auto drivers?
The app is easy to use and today we have 100 plus autos and 500 plus users of the application in Gurgaon. Some of the commuters have commended us on this initiative, with many users congratulating us on the innovative concept.
Please tell us about Pink Auto? By when can we expect them to be on Gurgaon roads?
Pink Autos are already on Gurgaon roads and will be on appycab, post
Holi.We are working with the local administration to introduce all the Pink Autos (women only) through 'appycab'. With this unique service, women would be able to hire whenever and wherever they need a Pink Auto. I think focus on the need of security and convenience to women commuters is the real story. In these unsure times, it is important that the state administration and entrepreneurs come together to work towards a more women friendly city.
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IBM offers R&D as a service by launching Customer Experience Lab
IBM's dominance in filing patents is well known and recorded. For the record, IBM has led in patents granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office for the past 20 consecutive years. Last year, it received more than 6000 US patents - said to be the largest number granted to any applicant.
While clients always had the opportunity to work directly with members of IBM's team of 250,000 scientists, researchers, engineers, developers and technologists, a personalized R&D service is a first. Today, IBM took a giant step in this direction by launching the IBM Customer Experience Lab. The most unique aspect of this initiative is the fact that IBM scientists and business consultants will co-create with clients to deliver systems that learn and personalize the experiences of each individual customer, identify patterns, preferences and create context from Big Data, and drive scale economics. ‘Personalize’ is the keyword here.
InformationWeek’s Srikanth RP spoke to Jeby Cherian, Vice President and Managing Partner, Global Business Services, IBM India & South Asia, who shared with us the origin and objective behind launching this lab, and the advantages for customers in the converged world of social, cloud and mobile.
Some edited excerpts:
In your view, what is the biggest challenge for CXOs today?
To stay ahead of the pack, C-Suite leaders know that they must reinvent their business. CEOs are experts at transforming their company through product innovation -- but now a new model for innovation is emerging. As the proliferation of mobile and smart devices continues to change the way people consume, disseminate and share information, business leaders are recognizing the data generated from these applications can help them transform their organizations and how they interact with their customers. CEOs and C-Suite leaders are reassessing how to serve their customers not as a mass audience, but as individuals with personalized needs. In a recent IBM study of 1,700 CEOs, nearly three-quarters of CEOs believe technology will be the biggest external force impacting their organizations over the next three years. Recognizing this shift in the business landscape, we are focused on helping clients reshape their front office – the business functions and processes, such as sales, marketing and customer service that connect, transact and engage with customers.
How will the new Customer Experience lab help C-Suite leaders?
In the new age of Big Data and analytics, organizations are reassessing how to move from addressing mass audiences to personalized relationships. Blending technical innovation with business consulting, the lab will address priorities of C-Suite leaders in the Era of Big Data. The Lab will provide CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, and other C-Suite executive direct access to hundreds of dedicated researchers, supported by thousands of domain experts and the deep cross-industry expertise of IBM’s business consultants, to help deliver more compelling systems of engagement – to address the opportunities of the digital front office. This is vital as front office transformation of sales, marketing or customer service functions will be the most important wave of business change since the advent of Enterprise Resource Planning in the 1990s.
Why is this lab unique?
The lab is unique for a number of reasons. First, social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and digital technologies are rapidly converging. Against this context, we are uniquely positioned to help clients apply innovation in these areas for competitive innovation. Second, the Lab is providing clients direct access to IBM’s world-class researchers, and at an unprecedented scale. These researchers – with vast experience in innovation ranging from Watson, to Social Business, to Smarter Commerce, to Mobile Business, Cloud, and more – will be thoroughly immersed in providing solutions. Third, the Lab is capitalizing on a process, virtually unique to IBM, called Innovation Discovery, in which IBM researchers, business consultants, and the client, through extensive interaction and discussion, co-create solutions. The result will be something unprecedented in the consulting industry: a rich, highly innovative blend of deep research and practical business insight, yielding targeted, powerful solutions. This mixture of focus, access, and cooperation makes the Lab a nonpareil.
This unique lab provides IBM and its clients with an innovation process, assets, and platform where leaders will have the exclusive ability to work directly with IBM experts on analyzing key business challenges and jointly creating solutions that embed and integrate mobile, social analytics, and cloud technologies.
What types of business innovation will be developed at the lab?
The lab will focus on co-creating innovations for the C-Suite in three major areas, customer insight, customer engagement and employee engagement. We will apply advanced capabilities such as machine learning and visual analytics to predict differences in individual customer behavior across multiple channels. We will understand and use deep customer engagement techniques to drive insight and continuously deliver value by personalizing engagement, versus transactional experiences. For employee engagement, we will look at embedding semantic, collaborative, and multimedia technologies to foster employee engagement and insight – in person and online.
What kind of solutions will be created at this lab?
The potential are unlimited and only constrained by imagination. It isn’t possible to predict all the kinds of solutions to be created, as they’ll depend to a large extent on the needs of our clients, and in a rapidly evolving market like front office, these needs could change dramatically in even a short time. IBM Research is developing technology assets and capabilities that can help deliver front office capabilities as a service from a cloud, design novel products to match customer preferences, and leverage math and psychological theories of personality to improve marketing effectiveness. The lab brings together skills across disciplines including service science, industries research, mathematics and business optimization, social, mobile, smarter commerce, data mining, cloud computing, security and privacy, cognitive computing and systems management.
Where will the lab be located?
The IBM Customer Experience Lab will be headquartered at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., supported by researchers at IBM’s 12 global labs including India, Africa, Brazil, California, China, Israel, Japan, Switzerland, and Texas. Read More
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Google to launch Google Glasses that match your prescription
In Google Plus, Google has showed a prototype of a prescription version of Google Glass.
The Project Glass team showed a photograph of Greg Priest-Dorman, a member of the Glass team and an early pioneer in wearable computing, wearing one of the prototypes that Google was testing.
In a post on Google Plus on Project Glass, Google said, “The Glass design is modular, so you will be able to add frames and lenses that match your prescription.” Google has said that it is still perfecting the design for prescription frames, and expects to launch them this year.
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Android tablets well placed to overtake Apple’s iPad in tablet sales
A predicted surge of smaller, lower-priced devices in the tablet market has led International Data Corporation (IDC) to increase its 2013 forecast for the worldwide tablet market to 190.9 million, up from its previous forecast of 172.4 million units. Increases in tablet shipments have been made throughout the forecast period with an average increase of 11 percent between 2013 and 2016. The latest forecast update of the Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker estimates tablet shipments to be upwards of 350 million by the end of 2017.
"One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below 8 inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets to continue growing in 2013 and beyond" said Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analyst for IDC's Tablet Tracker. "Vendors are moving quickly to compete in this space as consumers realize that these small devices are often more ideal than larger tablets for their daily consumption habits."
Android-based tablets expanded their share of the market notably in 2012, and IDC expects that trend to continue in 2013. Android's share of the market is forecast to reach a peak of 48.8 percent in 2013 compared to 41.5 percent in IDC's previous forecast. Android's gains come at the expense of Apple's iOS, which is expected to slip from 51 percent of the market in 2012 to 46 percent in 2013. Longer term, both iOS and Android will eventually relinquish some market share to Windows-based tablets, with Windows 8 predicted to grow from 1 percent of the market in 2012 to 7.4 percent in 2017. IDC expects Windows RT growth to remain below 3 percent during the forecast period.
"Microsoft's decision to push two different tablet operating systems, Windows 8 and Windows RT, has yielded poor results in the market so far," said Tom Mainelli, Research Director, Tablets. "Consumers are not buying Windows RT's value proposition, and long term we think Microsoft and its partners would be better served by focusing their attention on improving Windows 8. Such a focus could drive better share growth in the tablet category down the road."
While IDC continues to revise its tablet forecast upward, the firm had done the opposite with the eReader forecast. The growth of low-cost tablets is clearly damaging the prospects of the single-use eReader, and IDC reduced its forecast for the category by an average of 14 percent between 2013 and 2016. IDC believes eReader shipments peaked in 2011 at 26.4 million units. After declining to 18.2 million units in 2012, the category is expected to grow only modestly in 2013 and 2014, before it begins a gradual and permanent decline beginning in 2015. Read More
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3 reasons your top IT pros leave
Attracting top talent is harder than ever for CIOs, CTOs and IT managers. That makes retaining the "A" performers on your current team all the more crucial. So why do your best people keep leaving for other jobs?
There's a diverse set of reasons why IT pros seek greener pastures in another organization, ranging from the empirical -- a 30 percent raise, say -- to the anecdotal -- perhaps their boss' idiosyncrasies drive them to the loony bin.
What's clear, though, is that finding qualified replacements for departing staff is no easy task. A recent HDI research report calls the current IT labor market a "war for talent." The issue is not finding candidates; post a job opening online and you'll likely be inundated with resumes. The problem is finding qualified candidates with the right set of technical skills for the job, according to HDI director of content Cinda Daly.
The HDI study found, for example, that nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of respondents struggle to fill "level 2 or 3 and/or desktop support" roles with qualified people. Management's not much easier; 59 percent of companies have trouble finding IT executives with the right skills and experience for the job.
With that kind of hiring picture, you can't afford to lose the good people you already have. Daly identified three critical issues that tend to underlie IT job dissatisfaction and motivate workers with in-demand skills to start looking around for a better opportunity. The first one should come as no surprise.
1. Money
Were you expecting a different headliner? Indeed, the almighty dollar is a big mover and shaker in the labor market. "Compensation is always a key factor," Daly said in an interview. Money might sound obvious, but it's complicated by the fact that many companies froze even cost-of-living pay increases -- let alone actual raises -- for several years during the recent recession. Those organizations that continue to keep a lid on labor costs may be paying a higher long-term price on the IT talent front. "[Frozen pay] added a lot of stress and pressure," noted Daly.
2. Opportunities for Learning and Advancement
The good news for budget-constrained businesses: Money's not the be-all, end-all. In fact, IT pros care almost as much about the chance to acquire new skills and move up the organizational chart, according to Daly. Training, education, and career upside are roughly as valuable as current compensation on the list of reasons talented people start looking elsewhere -- yet management often overlooks these issues.
"When there are limited opportunities for people to grow, to have a career path, to learn and stay up to date on things -- those are equally important to compensation," Daly said, noting that many companies slashed training budgets during the economic downturn. "In the IT profession especially, with so much rapid technological change, people cannot afford to get behind in their skills." If their current gig restricts their ability to keep their skills ahead of the curve, Daly said, "They're going to go look for places where they can."
3. Stress and Workload
Stress and workload might seem like a no-brainer, but in the IT context it's a double whammy. Daly said that some 73 percent of companies that are struggling to fill their open IT headcount. In the meantime, many of those firms are parceling out the extra work to existing employees. Translation: Those open desks are not only hard to fill, but they're burning out the current staff in the meantime. That often makes external opportunities much more attractive, sometimes simply by virtue of the chance to focus on one job rather than needing to cover three or four.
"Everything starts to get overloaded, everyone gets stressed, and mistakes happen in those scenarios," Daly said. "It's very prevalent. There's now empirical evidence that shows that connection between stress and workload, and people will move on." Read More
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Overhaul of storage and server architecture enables PMC Bank to improve customer response time
Implementing server virtualization coupled with storage virtualization and automated storage tiering has enabled Punjab & Maharashtra Co-Operative (PMC) Bank to handle peak loads in real time, improve response time for customers and reduce business downtime
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42 percent of IT leaders have invested in Big Data or plan to do so within a year: Gartner survey
2013 will be the year of larger scale adoption of Big Data technologies, says the research firm
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QNAP honored with technology of the year award
Flagship product, NAS TS-EC1279U-RP has been honored the 2013 Technology of the Year Award
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How InMobi tamed the Big Data elephant
Gaurav Agarwal, who leads the Data Analytics system at InMobi, shares his perspective on how InMobi handles Big Data, and the lessons learnt from building the analytics system
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Big Data can help governments cut budgets, reduce crime and save lives
SAP survey reveals great potential for Big Data in government but there are barriers to adoption
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Global Big Data revenue pegged at USD 11.4 billion; IBM leads all players
A new study by Wikibon says that the Big Data market is expected to reach USD 18.2 billion in 2013 – translating into a growth of 61 percent
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Infosys launches Big Data platform; promises eight times faster enterprise insights
The platform includes a rich visual interface with more than 50 customizable dashboards and 250 built-in algorithms
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Big Data Development tools too slow, says startup
Context Relevant, a modeling and analytics software developer, strives to make big data app development faster and less expensive for enterprises
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How Big Data analytics is set to transform social computing
Big Data has come a long way and is now poised to transform social computing and the way enterprises do business with benefits not possible previously. Let’s take a closer look
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Why is India’s UID Aadhar a Big Data challenge and opportunity?
Building the world’s largest biometric identity platform for authenticating the identity of 1.2 billion residents is a Big Data challenge and a big opportunity for improving governance
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How Big Data could help tame cancer
UK cancer scientists say a huge DNA database could help prolong the lives of some patients
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Facebook Open Compute project shapes Big Data hardware
Big data practitioners like Facebook, Goldman Sachs and Fidelity are setting the standards for cheaper, more efficient servers and systems from the likes of Applied Micro, AMD, Dell and Intel
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Kingston to unveil world’s largest capacity USB flash drive at 1 TB
The firm’s DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 is the world’s largest-capacity USB 3.0 Flash drive and will boast of transfer speeds up to 240MB/s (read) and 160MB/s (write)
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Why you will need a Big Data ethics expert
The looming issue in big data isn't technology but the privacy and ethics decisions associated with how, when and if results should be provided
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Tieto inks pact with NetIQ
Tieto chose NetIQ Cloud Manager to create Tieto Cloud Server, a cloud platform that allows customers to choose from pre-defined service packages based on capacity, storage, service level and business criticality requirements
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How an Indian legal firm is managing data with a tiered storage solution
Adoption of a tiered storage solution has enabled Amarchand Mangaldas to reclaim its existing storage capacity and reduce power requirements
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960,000 IT jobs will be created in Asia Pacific by 2015 to support Big Data, says Gartner
Big Data creates a new layer in the economy which is all about information, turning information, or data, into revenue, says research firm, Gartner
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Indian Big Data solutions market to reach USD 153.1 million by 2014: Study
The market opportunity has grown at a CAGR of 37.8 percent for the period 2011-2014
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Dell showcases how technology can drive business strategy
At INTEROP Mumbai 2012, Sridhar S, Director, Enterprise Solutions, Dell India, shared how CIOs can use emerging technologies to transform their IT functions from being tactical to delivering strategic value
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Tulip Telecom bags Rs 87.23 crore deal from UIDAI
Tulip will provide data center and associated services to UIDAI from Tulip Data City located in Bangalore
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How Hadoop cuts Big Data costs
Hadoop systems, including hardware and software, cost about USD 1,000 a terabyte, or as little as one-twentieth the cost of other data management technologies, says Cloudera exec
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Storing more in less
How storage vendors are innovating to help data center managers cope with Big Data and the information explosion
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EMC powers Tulip Telecom’s on-demand cloud storage and backup services
Tulip’s hosted data center will deliver managed backup & storage services using EMC storage technologies, to address the explosion of data in enterprises and the demand for utility-based storage
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HGST demonstrates industry's first 12Gb/s SAS SSD
Doubling Today’s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Speed, 12Gb/s SAS SSDs and HDDs will be the Drives of Choice for Future Generations of High-Performance Enterprise Servers and Storage Solutions
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Storage trends for 2012: Iomega
The year 2012 will see consumers moving from external hard drives to Network Attached Storage (NAS) products with cloud capabilities
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‘Dell is investing in IP to accelerate adoption of cloud computing'
Dell is betting big on cloud computing and investing substantial resources to build a comprehensive portfolio, says Joseph Kremer, President-APJ in an interview
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How Walmart plans to use Big Data
By analyzing the huge volume of data produced every day on social media, Walmart is trying to shape the future for retail
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'Due to sheer size of our databases, RCOM has been actively involved in Big Data solutions'
Alpna J Doshi, CIO, Reliance Communications talks about the enormous growth of data and the solutions the company is using to handle it
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Iomega announces nationwide storage support services for SMBs
The company becomes the first storage vendor to provide a three-tiered support structure in India
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India leads in cloud storage adoption
A survey by IDC sponsored by Hitachi Data Systems reveals that the Indian market is the most mature in terms of the adoption of cloud technologies and has the highest usage levels of converged systems
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'Predictive analytics can help organizations gain a competitive edge'
Jaskiran Bhatia, Country Manager- Information Management Software Group at IBM India/South Asia discusses in detail about the importance of Big Data and predictive analytics in improving an organization’s products, services and customer experience
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Only 20 percent organizations in India have a formal information retention plan, says Symantec
To understand how enterprises are dealing with information management and availability challenge, Symantec recently conducted an Information Retention and eDiscovery survey
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Capgemini and EMC form global strategic alliance for cloud computing
The first offering to be rolled out by the alliance will be Storage-as-a-Service
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NetApp to create storage infrastructure for BSNL’s cloud services
The firm will partner with Sai InfoSystem to power cloud offerings by BSNL
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Can storage virtualization ease vendor lock in?
Storage virtualization systems let you use any vendor's hardware and bring it under a single storage services umbrella. It's not nirvana yet--but we're making progress
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India to see 85 percent growth in scale-out storage systems
Gartner says that accurate planning of storage resources is a huge challenge, which is in turn generating increased interest in scale-out systems
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World’s data more than doubling every two years, says study
Global digital data created in 2011 equal to every person in India tweeting 3 tweets per minute for 6,883 years non stop
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Storage maps the future of digital data
The future of storage management must be simple, cost efficient and environmentally friendly
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Storage demands reduced by 25 percent
Evalueserve has also been able to control the number of tape cartridges it was using for day-to-day backup by implementing a progressive incremental methodology for storage
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IBM is the leader in external disk storage market: IDC report
IBM had eight percentage points lead in comparison with its nearest competitor in revenue terms in the external disk storage market in Q1 2011
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How is cloud computing changing the role of Storage Administrators?
Cloud storage promises to change the way data centers manage and provision their storage assets
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Gulf Oil opts for IBM servers
Gulf Oil Corporation has selected IBM servers and storage technology to allow their Lubricants division to manage, track, and leverage information and processes more effectively
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EMC announces 40 new storage products in India
A highlight of today’s announcement is EMC’s new simplified unified storage solution for the SMB segment
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Surviving the data explosion
With frequent and rapid changes in market, thick competition, compliance and regulatory norms, and the urgency to increase customer bases and profitability, Information Management is gaining new significance in business
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IBM tops India external disk storage market
According to newly released data from IDC, IBM India has emerged as the number one vendor in revenue for Q4 and full year (2010) in the India external disk storage systems
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Schneider Electric launches IT infra solution for SMBs
New ‘InfraStruxure for SMB IT’ aims to tap Indian server room market worth over Rs 1000 crore in 2013 by offering benefits of reduced TCO and energy consumption by 20 percent, and space optimization by 30 percent
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Indian IT hardware industry may lose Rs 1000 crore over BIS standards compliance deadline, warns MAIT
The industry association says that the government needs to extend the implementation deadline by 6 months to avoid complete market chaos
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AMD captures highest ever market share in India
The firm bolstered its quarter performance with 20.1 percent market share in Q4 FY12, according to an IDC report
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Gartner: India Printer Copier and Multifunctional product shipments declined 4.7% in Q3, 2012
Organizations adopted a ‘wait and watch’ approach on their IT spending for peripheral devices
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Belkin aspires to touch USD 100-million mark in India by 2016
With a market share of 30 percent, Belkin is oscillating between the number one and two slots in the wireless networking space in India
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Vedanta ropes in IBM to enable strong business growth
The company has tied up with IBM to create a robust infrastructure for the resource planning system of its power business
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Is open source hardware IT's next big thing?
Open source hardware isn't just for hobbyists. Early corporate adopters can reap business benefits
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Oracle SPARC T4 server line crosses 100 server mark in four months
SPARC T4 servers with Oracle Solaris have emerged as one of the fastest ramping server products in Oracle’s history
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IBM launches PureSystems – touts expertise, integration as differentiators
Big Blue recently announced a new category of "expert integrated systems", which the company claims is the first with built-in expertise based on IBM's decades of experience running IT operations for tens of thousands of clients
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Server vendors see big potential in Intel Xeon E5 processor
Major server providers, like IBM, HP and Dell are announcing products based on Intel Xeon E5 processor
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IBM tops India’s storage, non-x86 UNIX server market
IBM maintained its market leadership of the overall disk storage market in 2011 with 28.3 percent market share
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Intel’s Xeon E5 gets thumbs up from customers
At the formal launch of Xeon E5, the companies already using the product shared their experiences about it. Intel claims that the product will increase the performance by up to 80 percent and will reduce the latency by up to 30 percent compared to its previous generation processor
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HCL Infosystems wins Rs 278 crore order from ELCOT
The firm will provide 2 lakh units of HCL ME Laptops to Government and state aided schools and colleges across Tamil Nadu
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Manikchand group slashes power utilization by 60 percent
Conglomerate saves up to 30 percent in IT costs after implementing IBM BladeCenter solution
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MAIT foresees big impact of Global IT supply chain disruptions on India
Unprecedented rains and floods in Thailand has severely disrupted the global supply chain for many key components in the IT Hardware industry
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Building a leadership culture
Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, HP India, shares unique insights on how organizations can identify and nurture successful leaders and managers early on
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs: The man, the method and classic jobs moments
Watch these classic Jobs videos -- performance and candid scenes. Steve Jobs jokes, chides and waxes eloquent discusses his thoughts on his childhood, his love of design, early work with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, views on Microsoft, Xerox PARC, innovation and, most poignantly, how to live life with an acute awareness of inevitable death
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IBM reveals chip that acts like human brain
IBM is testing a computer chip modeled on human neural processing, as it tries to create silicon better suited to real-world, multi-source data processing at low power
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D-Link India appoints Tushar Sighat as CEO
Sighat has been earlier associated with D-Link India for over 12 years and was also a member of the founding team
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HP jumps on SMB virtualization bandwagon
Rollout of entry-level servers, storage, and data-management options continues the wave of Goliath vendors launching hardware for David-size businesses
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Dell bets big on SMBs in India
Is focusing on the small and medium business (SMB) market in India with open, capable and affordable solutions
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Apple iCloud: Four hurdles for businesses
Apple's forthcoming file storage and synchronization service isn't quite ready for enterprises
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IBM emerges No 1 in the non-x86 UNIX server market
IBM maintained its leadership in the India Non-x86 Unix server market capturing 42.1 percent revenue market share in Q1 2011
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HP gears up to tap managed print services market in India
This is HP’s first-of-its-kind Enterprise Solutions Center in India to showcase innovation
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‘Next-gen services is the new focus for Dell’
India plays a pivotal role in Dell’s global services strategy. In fact Dell has 23,000 Indian employees (a quarter of its workforce) servicing global customers from delivery centers in India. Suresh Vaswani, EVP Dell Services and chairman of Dell India tells InformationWeek about his goal to build next generation service offerings and to grow Dell’s process capabilities on a global basis across industry verticals, service offerings and market segments
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Just Dial dials into open source
Red Hat Enterprise Linux powers more than 200 servers in Just Dial for its various Intranet and Extranet applications
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Trading platform goes virtual
With virtualization, the company has reduced the number of physical servers from 26 to five, cut power and cooling costs by 65 percent, improved CPU utilization
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Indian branded tablets are here. Any takers?
The local market for tablets is set to get very competitive as traditional Indian PC manufacturers launch their brands here
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Worldwide Q1 server shipments up 9 percent, revenue grew 17 percent: Gartner
The x86-based server market provided an increase in average selling prices that pushed revenue higher than shipments
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Lenovo India management undergoes major revamp
Lenovo India has made new appointments to its management team in an attempt to strengthen the organization
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PC sales tumble as consumers, workers eye tablets
New market data shows that the iPad and Android-powered slates may be taking a bigger bite of the PC market than expected.
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HP advances 'Converged Infrastructure' strategy in India
With a list of 15 client wins in India, HP is finding acceptance for its ‘Converged Infrastructure’
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iPad 2: Five things Apple left out
Apple's second-generation iPad mostly impresses, but Apple still managed to leave some key technologies out
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Dell makes laptop battery recycling easier
Dell has announced the launch of its free laptop battery recycling program in India for consumers
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IBM to provide Bharti Infratel smarter cell towers
Bharti Infratel, a subsidiary of Bharti airtel, has chosen IBM to provide Intelligent Site Operations to more than 32,000 Bharti Infratel tower-sites spread across 11 telecom circles in India
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HCL Infosystems to provide 6,500 laptops to Keltron
HCL Infosystems have bagged the contract to provide over 6,500 units of laptops and netbooks from Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation (Keltron)
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CES: BodyMedia sends calorie and sleep data to your phone
The company's newest Armband uses Bluetooth to send over 5000 different health variables to your Android or Apple-based phone
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CES 2011: Android-based car stereo receives Internet services, iPod's music
It's time to put the smart phone back in the car. Sort of. Parrot's media console, running Android, offers a slightly different take on auto-tech.
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Hands-on with RIM Playbook at CES
After months of waiting, RIM finally let us touch, feel and use its Playbook tablet at CES; its first foray into the tablet market. As tablet hardware goes, this one stacks up nicely
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IBM in hybrid chip breakthrough
Technology could lead to exaflop computing—systems that can perform one million trillion calculations per second
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iPad, smartphones dragging down PC sales
Gartner lowers 2010 and 2011 forecasts for global PC shipments, as Apple and other tablets and smartphones cut into conventional computer shipments
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Server shipments up 13 percent for Q3 of 2010
Gartner report also observes that blade servers outpaced the other form factors, namely tower and rack servers, for the period
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FC Kohli honored with CSI Lifetime achievement award
The father of the Indian software industry and Padma Bhushan winner was bestowed this honor at CSI’s 45th Annual National Convention 2010 on November 25th, in Mumbai
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Methane powered laptops could arrive soon
Harvard researchers develop platinum-free solid-oxide fuel cells, which could be reliable and cheap enough for mobile technology
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Emerson network power unveils comprehensive DCIM strategy
Firm claims that the platform will enable dynamic infrastructure optimization
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Can mainframes do BI?
Analytics is achievable in mainframes when coupled with the right processors and algorithms
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Cyberoam unveils its new line of Wireless UTMs
Cyberoam claims that these appliances can reduce the overall cost of managing WLAN environments for SMBs
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Environmental Sustainability is becoming an important criterion in PC brand selection
Businesses are placing a greater emphasis on environmental sustainability in their choice of PC brand, according to new research from Gartner
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Laptop heat may cause 'Toasted Skin Syndrome'
A review of recent cases concludes with a call for heat shielding and warning labels for laptop computers
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802.11n certification booming
The Wi-Fi Alliance reports that more than 1,100 products have been certified since the launch of its Wi-Fi Certified 802.11n testing program
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BYOD ROI: Intel sees annual productivity gain of 5 million hours from BYOD in 2012
The global consumerization initiative across offices in 65 countries has helped Intel’s employees save an average of 57 minutes daily
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ASUS announces the Nexus 7 tablet in India
The tablet comes with a textured tactile design for enhanced comfort measuring just 10.45mm thin and 340g light and featuring Android 4.2
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BMW brings iPhone apps to dashboards
Drivers of newer BMW and Mini Cooper cars will be able to access their iPhone's music apps from the dashboard
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Government of Maharashtra joins hands with Microsoft to create apps for addressing social issues
Microsoft launched the Windows AppFest in Pune in collaboration with the Government of Maharashtra to ideate and create apps addressing social and civic issues
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Indian MVAS market set to grow to USD 9.5 billion in 2015: Wipro-IAMAI report
Report finds mEntertainment continues to be largest contributor to operator MVAS revenues
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BlackBerry World app store now offers 100,000 unique applications
BlackBerry World app store reaches a major milestone on the eve of the U.S. launch of the BlackBerry Z10
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How Nokia’s innovative mobile healthcare initiative is helping people fight diabetes
More than 70,000 consumers have completed the six-month program, having received free-of-charge mDiabetes alerts twice a week
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BlackBerry's Secure Work Space technology promises separation of work and personal data and applications
The solution will separate and secure work and personal data on mobile devices to third party platforms
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Facebook News Feed: 5 coolest changes
Brighter, less cluttered and mobile-ready, Facebook's revamped News Feed has some positive improvements for users
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Now, an Indian Idol App for auditions
Sony Entertainment Television has opened audition for Indian Idol Junior online and through the Indian Idol Junior App
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Wipro launches cloud-based healthcare platform in partnership with Microsoft
The platform is primarily targeted at healthcare providers to deliver innovative solutions for remote fetal monitoring and cardiac care
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Android to dominate 2013 mobile app downloads
App developers may start targeting Google's Android platform ahead of Apple's iOS platform, says ABI Research
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First BlackBerry 10 software update improves Hub, Camera
BlackBerry Z10 owners who update their system software will see camera, messaging and battery performance gains
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Now, edit images on your mobile phone with Photoshop Touch
Adobe Systems India today announced the immediate availability of a new version of Adobe Photoshop Touch, optimized for iPhone, iPod touch, and Android smart phones
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Vodafone Business Services targets 20 percent of enterprise revenues from wireline services
Moving beyond mobility solutions, the firm is targeting wireline services as a key revenue driver
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Innovative mobile solutions can save lives, reduce student dropouts and cut carbon emissions, says GSMA
The GSMA believes that innovative mobile products and solutions can save USD 400 billion in healthcare costs, reduce student dropouts and cut carbon emissions by 27 million tonnes
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Is your smartphone watching your every move?
Apart from collecting data, apps on smartphones are actually selling your personal information for the highest bidder
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Uninor to refund unutilized pre-paid balances to customers in Mumbai
Refunds will be available at 12 Uninor company and franchisee stores to start with for a period of 15 days
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Is Google launching a tablet priced at just USD 99?
According to some press reports, Google is taking a new tablet all the way down to USD 99
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Simmtronics launches cheapest 10 inch tablet XPAD X-1010 in India at Rs 8,449
The Android 4.0 ICS based Simmtronics XPad X1010 features 10.1 inch display & 1.2 GHz – A8 cortex processor
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Apple iWatch: 7 reasons it won't fly
Squeezing a processor into an iPod Nano form factor mostly means a less-capable computing device, and adding a wristband doesn't change that
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25 percent of enterprises will have an Enterprise App store by 2017, says Gartner
Growing number of enterprise mobile devices and enterprise adoption of MDM will drive demand and adoption of Enterprise App Stores
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GupShup launches new mobile app for Indian users
The app known as GupShup Messenger enables users to reach friends and followers both on smart- and feature-phones
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Indian users watch nearly 30 percent of their YouTube videos on mobile, says Google
Search engine giant, Google, has released findings of a survey which reveal new insights into India’s audiences on YouTube
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Byond Tech launches the Phablet PII
Priced at Rs 14,999, the Byond Phablet PII has a 1 GHz Dual Core Advanced processor and 1GB RAM along with the latest Android Jelly Bean v4.1.1 Operating System
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5 tips to stretch your smartphone battery life
Waiting out the winter storm? Here's how to make your mobile device's battery last until the electricity comes back on
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Mobile, Social and Big Data will drive actionable analytics in 2013, says Gartner
User surveys by Gartner show that only 30 percent of potential users in an organization adopt CIO-sponsored analytics tools
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Reliance Communications and Ericsson sign USD 1 billion managed services contract
Deal covers 100,000 km of fiber and mobile infrastructure in 11 telecom circles, across North and West of India including Delhi and Mumbai
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5 best features of the BlackBerry Z10
After spending more than a week with the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry 10 OS, here is an opinion on what BlackBerry got right
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Android powered a third of all mobile phones shipped in Q4
Android smart phones accounted for 34 percent of all phone shipments and iOS phones 11 percent, says analyst firm, Canalys
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Mobile Internet connections will exceed world's population by 2017, says Cisco
Cisco Visual Networking Index forecast projects 13-fold growth in global mobile Internet data traffic from 2012- 2017
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Aircel and ICICI Bank launch ‘Mobile Money’
Aircel and ICICI Bank have announced the joint launch of their Mobile Banking service - Mobile Money, running on Visa’s mobile managed service
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Is BlackBerry 10 right for you?
Use these smartphone decision points to compare BlackBerry 10 to its Apple, Android and Windows Phone rivals
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‘Employees want to bring in their own enterprise apps to the office’
With social collaboration increasing in a big way, Cisco is betting big on its flagship social product, Jabber. In an interview, Fabrice Della Mea, Director, Product Management, Cisco Systems tells us about the increasing importance of collaboration platforms
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How UC is transforming business processes across major sectors
A number of major sectors such as education, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and BFSI are using the transformational power of UC to radically change their business processes
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SoCloMo is new focus for UC vendors
Growing acceptance of social media in the enterprise, and proliferation of smartphones and tablets is prompting vendors to add social, mobile and cloud-enabled features to their UC solutions
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‘Unified Communications on route to become pervasive’
Dinesh Malkani, Managing Director, Collaboration Solutions, Asia Pacific and Japan, Cisco shares how UC is evolving from a boardroom technology to become pervasive. Excerpts from an interview with InformationWeek:
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Verizon introduces new Managed Unified Communications and Collaboration service for Microsoft Lync
Businesses can now leave UC&C service and infrastructure management to Verizon -- and focus on promoting greater adoption and productivity
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Adoption of video in Unified Communications on the rise in India
Aided by developments in the telecom and communications technology space, such as cloud computing and wireless networks like 3G and 4G, even smaller companies can now easily incorporate video into their collaboration tools
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ArcelorMittal to use UC as a service to cut costs
ArcelorMittal has chosen Siemens Enterprise Communications to deliver a global Private Cloud Service for Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) based on a centralized OpenScape UCC Solution
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Changing landscape of Unified Communications market in India
While on-premise Unified Communication solutions have already gained acceptance, UCaaS is also slowly gaining momentum
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Will Atos have "Zero email" by 2013?
Organizations like Atos have set up initiatives to reduce the amount of internal email, which is deemed as a productivity damper. Here's Atos's plan to reduce email significantly, if not to zero
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Vidyo free cloud service bridges videoconferencing systems
VidyoWay will let users of Cisco, Polycom, Lifesize, and Microsoft Lync talk to each other. In the meantime, Vidyo starts the conversation about how much better off they would be using its technology
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Unified Communications slashes communication costs for refinery
Bharat Oman Refineries recorded savings of Rs 73 lakh on communication and Rs 82 lakh per annum on operational and maintenance costs
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Cisco Cius: The little tablet that could
What chance does another tablet have in a crowded market? Cisco has cleverly made Cius the centerpiece of its suite of collaboration technologies and tools. We think it could succeed
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To lure Indian SMBs, Unified Communication providers must develop comprehensive solutions
UC in India will grow, when bundled with remotely managed services or hosted collaboration suites, says AMI
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'Indian men put in ‘extra’ effort to look good for a video conference business meeting'
A research conducted by Cable&Wireless Worldwide revealed that Indians are of the opinion that their appearances play a vital role in a face-to-face or a video conference with business associates as it helps to leave a good impression
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Cisco introduces 15 minute video conferencing system
Facing growing competition from Polycom, Vidyo, and others, Cisco introduces a low-cost unit designed to be set up and running in 15 minutes
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Polycom buys HP's Halo videoconferencing unit
Hewlett Packard said Polycom also will be a partner for telepresence and certain unified communications systems and will make its video applications available for HP's webOS platform
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Skype Deal: Collaboration is Microsoft's game to lose
Microsoft’s USD 8.5 billion deal to buy Skype shows it building around its strength in enterprise collaboration software. But will it squander its advantage?
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Why Microsoft plus Skype is an enterprising idea
If Microsoft can meld Skype and Lync, building a sensible enterprise and consumer offering while making Skype the de facto mobile unified communications platform, this may just be a winning combination
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Tackling the uncertainty of core network planning
To avoid breaking the economics of core network provisioning, service providers must extract every bit of cost out of their networks without compromising services or reducing quality of experience for their end users
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Videoconferencing, telepresence spending to double by 2015
Cisco-Tandberg, Avaya, Lifesize, and Polycom are focusing on conference room systems, projected as the area of greatest growth, according to Infonetics
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Why is Cisco betting big on video?
The networking giant believes that video will drive the next wave of communications for enterprises
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Cisco unifies enterprise communications with Jabber
Cisco rolled out Jabber, a unified communications application that brings together presence, instant messaging (IM), voice and video, voice messaging, desktop sharing and conferencing into a single consistent experience across PCs, Macs, tablets and smart phones
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Communication trends for 2011
Explore how communication will be influenced by Unified Communications, Video, Tablets, SIP Trunking and the cloud
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IBM’s cloud version of Lotus Notes finds good uptake in India
12 percent of Lotus Notes adoption has been via the cloud
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HP partners with IIIT-B to launch Network University
The University will aid IT professionals to advance their knowledge in the delivery of next-generation enterprise networks
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Unified Communications: The new mouthpiece in enterprises
Indian enterprises are taking UC beyond basic communications, by using forms such as UC-as-a-service and virtual teams, for R&D, training and client interactions
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Facebook becoming ultimate CRM system
The social network's latest messaging features point to a future in which you can contact someone wherever they are with a single click
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Verizon outlines top 10 technology trends for 2011
Technology trends include cloud, unified communications, convergence, mobile apps and IPv6
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The Office: Who needs it
60 percent of employees in study say they don't need to go into an office to be productive; IT execs worry about security of mobile workers
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Taj Hotels selects NEC as preferred network solution provider
NEC to provide IP telephone systems for eight new hotel locations
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Cisco to introduce home telepresence system
A USD 600 video conferencing system that includes a video camera and a device to connect to a HD TV will reportedly be launched by the network equipment maker
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Collaboration possibilities for organizations are 'infinite'
Right tools and right approach enhance the communication paradigm for employees
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Interop Mumbai 2010 kicks off
Opens up with keynotes which describe IT to be converging, networks going borderless
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BT delivers B2B telepresence solution for Wipro in India
BT’s B2B exchange connectivity will enable seamless video and voice communications between Wipro and its customers
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Microsoft, Polycom team on Unified Communications
Partnership will integrate voice, instant messaging, and videoconferencing for large enterprise, government, and SMB customers
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Educational training goes virtual at NIIT
The educational institute has conducted over 248 training sessions using the UC platform it deployed two years ago
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"Immersive telepresence has a great future"
Managing Director of Polycom India & SAARC, Neeraj Gill, says that Polycom is witnessing increased demand for telepresence solutions
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SIP gives Avaya a new ‘Aura’ in UC
Based on the open standard SIP protocol, Avaya Aura is an important milestone in the evolution of UC architecture
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The shape of UC to come: On-demand, personalized and ubiquitous
In the future, conversations will follow you from one device to another, and you will be able to collaborate from any device–yes, even your television set
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Spectranet and nivio to jointly offer hosted messaging and collaboration
The firm plans to offer a range of hosted solutions such as basic email solutions and high end enterprise applications based on the Microsoft Exchange platform
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Bharti Airtel, Cisco and Servion team up to provide hosted contact center solutions
The consortium is launching ‘customizable’ hosted contact center services
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Tata Communications and BT to extend Telepresence facilities to each other
Using the intercompany service, customers of both the companies can invite clients of the other service provider to join them in multipoint telepresence meetings
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‘Cisco will focus on Smart Connected Communities’
The network is getting smarter and Cisco wants to apply
intelligent networks in other industries through connected
communities. Naresh Wadhwa, President & Country Manager,
Cisco India & SAARC told Brian Pereira how Cisco plans to
achieve this through strategic alliances with domain experts.
Internet technology also has a major role in building connected
communities
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AGC Networks to be acquired by Essar Group
Essar will acquire Avaya’s stake in AGC Networks, previously known as Avaya GlobalConnect
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Unified Communications’ day has arrived
It seems that all those studies on collaboration along with a couple of years of Web 2.0 messaging have had their effect on us
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"Our products and technologies will be the foundation for Borderless Networks"
Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Cisco tells us why she thinks that the troika of video, virtualization and cloud computing will push enterprise-level productivity to a new level
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Orange Business Services appoints Bala Mahadevan as India CEO
In this role, Mahadevan will be responsible for driving business growth for the company in India in the network related services and IT services domains
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Siemens Enterprise Communications and T-Systems now speak with one voice
This new agreement will let Siemens Enterprise Communications and T-Systems simplify migration
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Videoconferencing booming during flight ban
Travelers stranded by the Icelandic volcano are using telepresence and videoconferencing to stay in contact with their businesses
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CSC launches Unified Communications as a service
Targeted at Fortune 1000 companies, this offering is based on Cisco’s collaboration portfolio
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How Wikipedia plans to use mobile phones for empowering knowledge seekers
One of the world’s largest sources of information on the Internet, Wikipedia, is trying to deliver Wikipedia for free to mobile users in developing countries
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Facebook Graph Search: One group's early lessons
Farm Sanctuary shares lessons learned during its first steps with Facebook's new search engine, including privacy considerations
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Tata Steel, Tata Motors, Dell India, TCS and Bosch top Social Media effectiveness index in India
Blueocean market intelligence unveils results of study ranking Social Media Effectiveness of India’s most admired companies
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Should IT leaders ban work at home?
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just banned working at home. But she's a CEO of a company in need of turnaround, not an IT leader
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5 essential facts that you must know about Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7
Four months after debuting on Windows 8, Internet Explorer 10 has finally come to Windows 7. Here are the five essential facts users should know
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Google announces opening of Google Business Photos program in India
Search engine giant releases thousands of new indoor images of Indian businesses
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Cisco CEO John Chambers touts 'Internet of Everything' as cornerstone of it's strategy
Chambers urges business leaders to push open standards and cross-industry collaboration
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Google, Facebook, Ebay and Naukri among India’s most trusted Internet brands
Research by Trust Research Advisory firm finds out which brands are most trusted in India
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India contributes significantly to LinkedIn success story
With India’s top companies increasingly searching for talent on LinkedIn, and just 18 million of India’s 80 million workforce on LinkedIn, there is huge potential for the professional networking company to grow in its number two market
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11 ways to get around Twitter’s character limits
A change in Twitter’s t.co link wrapper means that your tweets have just got a bit shorter. Here is how to get around the limitations
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Internet turns 30: Jasmeet Singh, Portronics Digital
Jasmeet Singh, Director, Portronics Digital Pvt Limited shares his views on how life would be without the Internet
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Google India takes crowdsourcing route to improve quality of India maps
The search engine giant has announced Google’s first ever mapping competition called Mapathon 2013
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Facebook, Google, Kaspersky and Microsoft come together under DSCI aegis to launch Internet safety campaign in Delhi
The campaign involves a college outreach programme in the top Indian metros - Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata
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‘Connected devices will present new business opportunities for enterprises’: Akamai CIO
As new growth comes from emerging geographies and new platforms such as mobile, Akamai is relying on its state-of-the-art IT infrastructure to power its growth. Kumud Kalia, Senior VP and CIO, Akamai, shares with us the opportunity and the challenges for being a CIO at Akamai, and how he is focusing on building an agile and efficient user experience for Akamai’s customers
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Sunil Dutt, RIM takes a nostalgic look at the Internet
Sunil Dutt, MD, India, RIM takes a stroll down the memory lane and shares how the Internet was in its initial days in India
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Attitude towards customers does matter for Social Media success
Organizations can spend on social media listening products or hire social media experts, but it requires a real change in the attitude of a business towards how it treats its customers and other external stakeholders
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Internet key to poverty alleviation and social empowerment: S Ramadorai, TCS
S Ramadorai, Vice Chairman, TCS shares his views on the transformational power of the Internet
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5 things Facebook Graph search means for business
Graph Search creates new social business opportunities, but not without some elbow grease. Here's what you must do to take advantage
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Facebook’s Graph Search – your own personalized private social search engine
Graph Search allows you to find unique content that you or your friends have shared on Facebook with simple English language phrases
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Is social networking dominating e-mail?
According to survey results, social media is emerging as a preferred mode of communication, whereas e-mail communication has depreciated and is limited to only record-based communication
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The Internet celebrates its 30th birthday
Exactly 30 years ago, on January 1, 1983, the basic foundation for the Internet was laid down
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Indian Internet economy forecast to contribute Rs 10.8 trillion to the overall economy by 2016
India's Internet economy growth rate of 23 percent places it as the second fastest across the G-20 and ahead of many other developing nations in the G-20, as per a report by Boston Consulting Group
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India and APNIC reach agreement on National Internet registry
Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers (IRINN) will be run by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and serve ISPs within the country
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Global mobile Internet data traffic to grow 18-fold by 2016: Cisco
According to Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast, global mobile data traffic will outgrow global fixed data traffic by three times during 2011-2016
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Google's bouncer ejects malware from Android market
Google is using a technology called Bouncer to monitor and remove malicious apps
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Google privacy change provokes outrage
One user profile and privacy policy to rule all of Google's services. Simple, or evil?
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CIOs must leverage social media to increase their presence in the boardroom
Arun Sundararajan, NEC Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, discusses with InformationWeek the relevance of social media to the overall business, and how CIOs must handle social media
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2012: India gets set to adopt IPv6
HP partners with Government of Karnataka and IIIT-B to help enterprises adopt the new Internet address standard
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Google and O-Zone Networks partner to offer free Wi-Fi access
As per the deal, YouTube and Google+ users will get free Wi-Fi access across all O-Zone hotspots
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10 Wi-Fi trends to watch for in 2012
Several trends and developments are emerging and catching up to make a big impact on unabated growth of Wi-Fi. Ajay Kumar Gupta, WLAN Access and Security Specialist, elaborates on 10 such trends
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Compuware targets 50 percent of APM market in India
As the application performance management market is still in its nascent stages in India, the company is confident of becoming the numero uno player
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6 lakh account logins get compromised every day on Facebook
The statistic was revealed in an infographic published alongside an official Facebook blog post trumpeting new security features introduced by the firm
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Companies will generate 50 percent of web sales via social presence and mobile apps by 2015, says Gartner
As the number of mobile phones overtakes PCs, customers will use mobile browsers and applications as the main points of interaction, says Gartner
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Worldwide social media revenue to reach USD 14.9 billion in 2012, says Gartner
As per a report released by Gartner, worldwide social media revenue is forecast for a consistent growth
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Malware attacks up due to social media, reveals Global Survey
More than 50 percent of the respondents report an increase in malware due to social media use
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Social media for corporate networking or corporate espionage?
Today, corporates are looking at social media like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to broaden their online outreach. In a session at INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Abilash Sonwane, Senior-VP, Elitecore Technologies, talked about how social media networks are the next frontier of corporate espionage
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Social Media: Not a matter of choice anymore
Adoption of social media by enterprises is not a matter of choice anymore. It is a must, said Umesh Jain, CIO, YES BANK at INTEROP Mumbai 2011
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Internet as important as food and water, says Cisco study
A Cisco study reveals that nearly 95 percent of college students and young employees in India have admitted that the Internet is as important in their lives as water, food, air and shelter
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What Facebook should learn from George Lucas
Facebook's latest tweaks are reminiscent of the Star Wars creator's continued changes to his iconic films: No one asked for--or wanted--them
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Security issues to consider while migrating from IPv4 to IPv6
Despite its innumerable virtues, IPv6 is still vulnerable and poses various security threats
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How vulnerable are you in the virtual place?
As the Internet and new technologies grow, so do their vulnerabilities
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IPv6: The next-generation Internet
When IPv4 addresses are completely depleted, any business expansion, new service, smart device, anything Internet-related will need IP addresses that are IPv6
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India ranks 17 globally in terms of unique IP addresses
The number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai's platform from India grew by 21 percent in the first quarter of 2011
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The memory game
To safeguard the password, we invented the two-factor authentication. It could be a token, which we now trust to suggest us a ‘one-time password’
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Google opens Compute Engine to cloud customers
Google recently opened its Compute Engine service to Cloud Platform Gold Support customers and simultaneously reduced Compute Engine prices.
Announced at Google I/O 2012, Google Compute Engine (GCE) competes with Amazon EC2 and other infrastructure-as-a-service offerings from the likes of Rackspace, SoftLayer, Savvis and Terremark. It provides computational infrastructure on demand in the form of virtual Linux machines that can perform sustained processing tasks. It's a lower-level service than Google App Engine, a platform-as-a-service offering that is simpler to use but is suited for a narrower range of tasks.
CGE had till now been available only by invitation. It's now available to Cloud Platform customers paying USD 400 per month for Google's Gold Support package. It's also less expensive: Google dropped Compute Engine prices 4 percent across the board.
When Google introduced GCE, Urs Holzle, SVP of technical infrastructure, claimed that Google Compute Engine delivers 50 percent more compute per dollar than other cloud providers, but he did not provide the data to support his assertion. Google didn't immediately respond to a request for further information about this.
In addition to its price reduction, Google has enhanced GCE with several new features. These include the ability to boot from persistent disks that have been mounted as the root file system, capture persistent disk snapshots, record and restore the content of network-resident persistent disks on demand, and attach and detach persistent disks from active instances.
Google has also improved its administration console, dubbed the Google Cloud Console. And it is providing five new instance type families and 16 new instance types.
European GCE customers now have two new supported zones in the area, which should improve performance and latency. Users who had maintained instances elsewhere can migrate their instances to the new zones with the gcutil command line tool.
As an example of how GCE compute power can be put to use, the company's Chrome team in Japan has created a demonstration game in Node.js called World Wide Maze Chrome Experiment that uses the structure of any website submitted to build a 3D marble maze.
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Accenture launches Public Cloud platform
In anticipation of the shift in demand toward the public cloud, Accenture has launched the Accenture Cloud Platform
As more and more clients are going digital, the Accenture Cloud Platform provides services and solutions designed to help organizations integrate and manage the hybrid cloud environments that span across multiple vendor platforms and are critical to providing ultimate flexibility and supporting emerging technologies.
The Accenture Cloud Platform represents an important next step in Accenture’s cloud strategy and reaffirms the company’s intent to providing cloud brokering and orchestration services that are growing in importance to clients. As part of this strategic initiative, Accenture will invest more than USD 400 million in cloud technologies, capabilities and training by 2015 to focus on delivering the right cloud services from its network of providers, as well as blending its own industry solutions and innovations with third party offerings.
“Already in use on more than 200 projects, the Accenture Cloud Platform features proven technologies and business processes to help our clients make the safe journey to cloud,” said Jack Sepple, global senior managing director - Cloud, Accenture. “We foresee the growing use of public cloud services and are uniquely positioned to offer the best of breed from a variety of vendors. We are committed to moving our extensive portfolio of cloud offerings, broad ecosystem of alliance relationships, and large global client base to the cloud in all forms – public, private and hybrid.”
According to the Accenture Technology Vision 2013 report, digital technology has become a strategic imperative and a tool of competitive intent for businesses today. Supported by the cloud, technology trends like mobile, social collaboration and big data are changing the landscape as an increasing number of businesses go digital. The Accenture Cloud Platform provides a secure, scalable, and enterprise-ready cloud integration system to support these critical changes. It provides management and control over cloud services that are being delivered to clients, whether by Accenture or from a third party provider such as Microsoft, SAP and others.
As part of its overall investment, Accenture has created expanded services on the Accenture Cloud Platform, including public and virtual private cloud infrastructure, data decommissioning, software systems testing and big data analytics solutions in the cloud.
Accenture has already worked on more than 4,000 cloud projects for clients, including over half of the Fortune Global 100, and has more than 6,700 professionals trained in cloud. Accenture is consistently recognized for its industry leadership by leading independent analyst firms and software alliance partners.
According to industry analyst firm IDC1, the total market size for cloud will grow from approximately USD 40 billion in 2012 to USD 98 billion in 2016. This includes projections for software as a service (SaaS) to reach USD 37 billion, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to reach USD 30 billion, system infrastructure software as a service to reach USD 20 billion, and platform as a service (PaaS) to reach USD 10 billion by 2016. Read More
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IBM bets on open standards for its cloud services and software
IBM’s move towards an open cloud architecture, will ensure that innovation in cloud computing is not hampered by locking businesses into proprietary islands of unsecured and difficult-to-manage offerings. Without industry-wide open standards for cloud computing, businesses will not be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities associated with interconnected data, such as mobile computing and big data.
As the first step, the company unveiled a new cloud offering based on open cloud standards, including OpenStack that significantly speeds and simplifies managing an enterprise-grade cloud. For the first time, businesses have a core set of open source-based technologies to build enterprise-class cloud services that can be ported across hybrid cloud environments.
IBM’s India Software Labs in Bangalore has contributed significantly to the development of this platform by building the automation components, which allow easy management of the cloud. The lab has also helped build the cloud automation ecosystem of business partners and ISVs who will become cloud service providers.
“Standardization supports the flexibility and scalability needs of the businesses. The winner here will be customers, who will not find themselves locked into any one vendor but be free to choose the best platform based on the best set of capabilities to meet their needs," said Vamsi Mudiam, Country Manager, Cloud Solutions, IBM India/South Asia. “By leveraging OpenStack-based services, Indian cloud service providers can now build a platform to rapidly deliver services at an affordable cost.”
Based on customer-driven requirements, the new software, called IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator, gives clients greater flexibility by removing the need to develop specific interfaces for different cloud services. With the new software, companies can quickly combine and deploy various cloud services onto the cloud infrastructure by lining up the compute, storage and network resources with an easy-to-use graphical interface.
The new IBM SmartCloud Orchestrator allows users to perform the following:
• Build new cloud services in minutes by combining the power of pattern-based cloud delivery, with a graphical orchestrator for simple composition of cloud automation;
• Reduce operational costs by automating application deployment and lifecycle management in the cloud: compute, storage and network configuration, human task automation, integration with third party tools, all delivered by an integrated cloud management platform and;
• Simplify the end user consumption of cloud services, via an intuitive self-service portal, including the ability to measure the cost of cloud services with metering and charge-back capabilities.
The development of open industry standards has proven a critical turning point in the success of many technologies, such as the Internet and operating systems. For cloud computing to grow and mature similar to its predecessors, vendors must stop creating new cloud services that are incompatible. A recent report by Booz & Company warned that without a more concerted effort to agree on such standards, and leadership on the part of major companies, the promise of cloud computing may never be reached.
IBM is applying its experience in supporting and validating open standards from Linux, Eclipse and Apache to cloud computing. Working with the IT community, IBM is helping to drive the open cloud world by:
• Creating a 400-member strong Cloud Standards Customer Council that grew from about 50 members at launch;
• Sponsoring OpenStack Foundation as a platinum and founding member, and as one of the top code and design contributors to all OpenStack projects;
• Driving related cloud standards, such as Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration, Linked Data in the W3C and TOSCA in OASIS, to enhance cloud application portability;
• Dedicating more than 500 developers on open cloud projects and;
• Working closely with the OpenStack Foundation, along with its 8,200 members from 109 countries and 1,000 organizations.
IBM is one of the world’s largest private cloud vendors with more than 5,000 private cloud customers in 2012, which increased 100 percent year-over-year. IBM’s cloud portfolio, called SmartCloud, is based on a common code of interoperability, allowing clients to move between IBM’s private, hybrid and public cloud services.
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Manageability challenges of cloud computing: A consumer perspective
Cloud computing has the capability to revolutionize the conventional infrastructure landscape for any organization. Hence, in the past 3-4 years, we have seen several firms in the IT industry evolving cloud solutions across the areas of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS. Private cloud and public cloud technology providers have also made their impact.
On the other hand, the consumer industry has also been witnessing this evolution very cautiously. Big enterprises have actually embraced primitive cloud technologies well before this evolvution, by virtue of internal private cloud setup, backed by several virtualization technologies that prevailed 5-7 years back. Big enterprises have hence flavored their IT Landscape with such private cloud setups natively through various hypervisors such as VMware, HyperV, etc. The timing of the existence of such virtualization technologies forming internal private clouds and the evolvution of the full-fledged cloud computing industry is what I see as very vital, for several reasons. Both seem to co-exist even now and I see very few cases that might have taken over completely. I also see several of challenges that big enterprise consumers have been facing since past 4-5 years.
Some of the challenges faced by big enterprise consumers include:
• Big enterprises having IT landscape with several hypervisors working in heterogeneous environment looked for an open-end amalgamation with the third-party cloud technology providers (external private and public cloud service providers). Co-existence seemed to be the only choice and not a replacement merely for the fact that the “Cloud Computing Technology” was a new-bee, expecting to attain maturity over the coming years.
• Today’s cloud arena is driven by several vital mantras – “quick provisioning”, “easy manageability”, “effective OPEX model”, “dynamic resource availability,” etc. All these are result of a management layer that manages the cloud fabric and its flavors. These for obvious reasons did not prevail during the early virtualization days and hence I see disconnect between the way enterprises perceived early internal virtualization-based private clouds and the now cloud computing services.
• Adoption of heterogeneous virtualization technologies resulted into several internal private clouds and there exist no common manageable platform for such varied horizontal plane. Today’s Cloud technology providers claim several management platforms that support multi-hypervisors environments, however, they may limit themselves features by features when cross compared. Maturity of cloud platforms over the years should actually manage the old conventional private clouds seamlessly across the variances.
• There is always a contention within any organization to protect the existing investments and thus this becomes the first priority, wherein an enterprise with its internal private clouds would cautiously venture with external third-party cloud technology providers. The basic integration between both worlds comes out to be the first driver of such business case and I still see a lot of improvements in coming years to strengthen this engagement.
This list can go on. On the other hand, there are several reasons to feel good as well, against the ambiguity factors. Instead of enterprises venturing further into internal private cloud setups, there exist several simpler options to migrate to external cloud setups – private and public both.
Today, we see cloud services success stories across several segments of end users, typically with the SMEs, wherein initial huge CAPEX may not be the favored option always. Several green field implementations are being taken up with external cloud technologies and their offerings. It makes sense to venture right from scratch during such scenarios and derive quick results through external cloud service providers. Big enterprises have also adopted these approaches by embracing hybrid solutions – maintaining their internal private clouds, as well as porting critical applications/business functions to external cloud services.
Cloud technology has thus seen a varied range of end consumers tweaking their offerings since their initial evolvement. I believe this is backed by the basic fact that the cloud technology providers also realize that their offerings and solutions should protect the investments enterprises have already made and thus help them gain business value – for sure this implicitly results into their own success stories as well.
Dharmesh Rathod is Associate Vice President-IT Infrastructure and Projects Group at Essar
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Lack of purpose a major fail for social collaboration initiatives says Gartner
Although social technologies are employed by 70 percent of organizations, Gartner, Inc. said most social collaboration initiatives fail because they follow a worst practice approach of "provide and pray", leading to a 10 percent success rate.
"Without a well-crafted and compelling purpose, most social media initiatives will fail to deliver business value," said Anthony Bradley, group vice president at Gartner. "This ‘provide and pray’ approach provides access to a social collaboration technology and prays something comes good of it, like a community forming and participants' interactions naturally delivering business value. As a result, this approach sees a 10 percent success rate, and the underlying reason is usually that the organization did not provide a compelling cause around which a community could form and be motivated to provide their time and knowledge. In other words, purpose was lacking."
Gartner's research into the social collaboration efforts of more than 1,000 organizations has identified several prominent patterns. The most apparent was that social collaboration initiatives that have a clear and compelling purpose from the outset tend to succeed. While this may seem obvious, the vast majority of organizations treat collaboration as a platform decision, rather than a solution to a specific business problem or a route to a desired outcome.
“Organizations approaching social collaboration in the "provide and pray" manner do not fully recognize the value of purpose and do not understand how to take an "architected" approach to it,” said Mr. Bradley. “Social collaboration efforts are a challenge for which enterprise architects are well suited, as these practitioners are often cross-disciplinary. They are able to work with social initiative leaders to define community purposes and condense these purposes into a strategy or road map which they can use to guide project teams during implementation.”
Enterprise architects should begin by helping organizations identify and define, at a high level, the target community for social collaboration. Having defined the audience, they should then identify the nature of the collaboration and the desired business outcome. "A well-defined purpose identifies who the participants are, what specific issue they are collaborating around, what value they will gain for themselves, and what value will be provided to the organization," said Mr. Bradley.
However, all purposes are not equal in terms of their ability to catalyze a community. For example, some purposes are stronger and best positioned early on, while others may thrive after achieving a critical mass of participation in a social community. Enterprise architects can help an organization evaluate the relative strengths of purposes and sequence their integration into a social collaboration initiative.
To assist them, Gartner has identified five characteristics of a good purpose:
- Participant magnetism: The purpose should naturally motivate people to participate. This is the "what's in it for me" characteristic. Users should easily grasp its importance and the value of participating. The purpose must have meaning to the participants, and build within them a compelling need to participate. If you have to create interest among users, especially through costly incentives, you've chosen the wrong purpose.
- Community draw: The purpose must resonate with enough people to catalyze a community and deliver robust user-generated content. The best communities are heavily unbalanced in their two-way approaches, meaning that the community contributes far more content than the supporting enterprise. Find out how powerful the purpose is for drawing in significant numbers of people and contributions.
- Organizational value: The purpose should have a clear business outcome. This is the "what's in it for the organization" characteristic. Choose purposes where organizational value can be clearly measured and shared with the community as feedback and motivation to continue participating.
- Low community risk: Choose
low risk over high reward. The purpose, especially early in an
organization’s social application maturity, should be low risk. This
overall characteristic derives from four types of risk:
- Culture risk is the risk that the corporate culture is not conducive to mass collaboration.
- Adoption risk is the risk that people will not be inclined to collaborate on this subject or in this community.
- Information risk is the risk that the community's shared information will be sensitive in nature.
- Result risk is the risk that, even if a community forms, its interactions will not bear fruit.
- Promoting evolution: Select purposes that you and the community can build on. Determine the dependencies between purposes. Some purposes have a more natural tendency to lead to others and to facilitate emergence, while that others are more subordinate. Those that have no dependencies but can lead to other purposes score higher.
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Eight approaches to Service Level Agreements on Public Cloud
When I discuss public cloud with experts, some argue that public cloud is also a different form of outsourcing. Though theoretically it may look like that, with my experience of managed services outsourcing, I would argue it is very different.
Public cloud is more of a commodity and has least resemblance to traditional managed services outsourcing than its other counterparts. One of the big differences is SLA where in managed services you have option of customization and negotiation for SLAs; you do not have the same flexibility in public cloud contracts as the services are available off the shelf. As per NIST definition of public cloud “On Demand Self Service” is an important characteristic without human intervention which makes public clouds more of a commodity.
Getting into wrong cloud provider or agreement can not only cause agony for business but it can have other implications on the people behind that decision.
I thought of capturing some of the points in this article which might need attention:
1. Don’t just look at numbers: The numbers may look lucrative but it is worth checking what it means as well. My advice is not just consider the uptime of 100 percent is better than 99.9 percent but what the provider is ready to commit if it in case it does not meet the SLA. Some contracts may say “X percent invoice credit for 60 minutes downtime 2X percent for up to 120 minutes and so on” while others might commit “10 percent invoice credit anytime annual uptime falls below 99.X percent”. It is also needed to check uptime record of the provider in last few years of operations to give you the additional confidence. Most established providers generally meet their SLA targets. The higher the impact to the provider, higher will be its commitment to maintain the SLA.
2. Cost vs Penalty: While comparing cost of service and penalty, if the penalty of SLA failure is high you will be tempted but this is where there is a possibility of making mistakes. Proper due diligence of historical records and understanding of contract clauses is needed. Look at the impact of those penalties against the business losses it may cause and then take an informed decision about the cost part. My suggestion is to go for a better uptime even if it requires more expensive cloud as the provider is ready to invest in infrastructure availability and redundancy. If you see a provider whose service credit is very lucrative, please review carefully the exclusions. Many providers commit 100 percent of fees if the performance fails below a certain standard.
3. Exclusions: Maintenance schedules needs to be understood carefully along with other exclusions. Planned downtimes are not covered in the uptime contracts but if your business is 24 X 7 how these downtimes impacts your services needs to be checked. You can use it as a parameter for benchmarking for different clouds. The timing of this maintenance schedule should be appropriate for your business. This is an important part of due diligence. In addition, check for any planned migrations by provider. Many contracts may exclude downtime due to virus attacks, sabotage, migration and hacking etc which needs careful review.
4. Study the cloud architecture: For SAAS and PAAS, it is necessary to look at the underlying providers and understand how each entity can impact SLA guarantee. No provider can claim that they never had any downtime and outages but unlike managed services, the consumer has least visibility and control over the situation and careful study is needed to minimize the risk of getting impacted.
5. Expectation Setting: Due Diligence and expectation setting is necessary before we go for public cloud. Traditional managed services outsourcing has a different method of service delivery and we tend to negotiate or keep SLAs at a higher level than we generally would require. But in cloud this can make a huge difference in selection of a provider. Your other assessments for provider giving 99.95 percent could be better than the one providing 100 percent and you can make a compromise of 0.05 percent if that does not matter much for your business. Hence true understanding of what the SLA means to business and how far you can go for taking the risk must be covered in the due diligence for public cloud.
6. Definition of outage: This could vary for each provider and one needs to carefully examine what it means. For SLA contracts carefully study and compare the meanings. This can make dramatic changes to the meaning of availability which has an impact on your business. In addition, is performance degradation considered as an outage by the provider? At what level the availability is being calculated is also something needs to be compared to understand availability.
7. Service Improvements: Though cloud gives flexibility of termination, most cloud arrangements are long term and hence you need to know the roadmap of the provider for next several years before you lock yourself. What service improvements are expected and how it is going to help your business. This is an important part of the due diligence before your decision to move to cloud. Some research on this subject can work well for your decision.
8. Service Level Management (SLM) Approach: Understanding of how the SLM will be performed during an outage situation, how communication will happen, what will be the form of RCA and within how many days it will be provided etc. is necessary. It is also necessary to understand what monitoring and reporting approach has been adopted.
In Conclusion
So far, SLA could be least discussed part in many public cloud decisions but to me it should be the first thing to be taken care. Moreover, if the in-house capability does not exist for due diligence for public cloud, hiring experts will definitely make sense. Moreover, for SLAs, it is important to understand how the availability translates into business performance and impacts top line or bottom line. One should not be too much bothered about penalties but should focus on reliability of the provider to deliver commitments.
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OpenStack deployment tool goes Open Source
OpenStack is the open source success story of the contemporary era, a project that started as a gleam in the eye of Rackspace executives who wanted to compete with Amazon, and rapidly grew into a project with its own governing board and foundation.
It consists today of six distinct parts, all of them making progress on the problems that confront their individual areas of cloud computing. It's been criticized for lacking the beneficent dictator who, it used to be believed, was a necessary force behind a successful open source project. That was before the procedures of an open source development process -- and the ability to govern those seemingly chaotic procedures -- were well understood. The Apache Software Foundation and Linux kernel development process supplied the models.
Even so, there are now so many contributors and so much activity behind OpenStack, not to mention $10 million in funding under its new organizational structure, that many observers believe it will be impossible for any single individual or software vendor to keep up. And therein sits the problem.
Imagine an IT manager who wants his production software to be a fixed, immutable thing until he decides to apply specific changes -- in a controlled way. He's considering OpenStack as the basis for his internal cloud infrastructure and, as he deliberates, he notices how the parts move slightly, shift out of focus, change color and take on new forms -- even as he looks. It's not the stable infrastructure he was thinking of, but more of a giant kaleidoscope. If OpenStack is his choice, he'll need another staff to keep up.
That's one of the chief barriers to OpenStack adoption by IT staffs today. It's a work in progress, an impressive work, but the amount of motion inside the project is also impressive and threatens to increase the workload of an OpenStack adopter.
"You need to automate the deployment process. Otherwise, you'll have to do it with manual labor. It's not just OpenStack but all the other pieces of software that are key to making it work," says Boris Renski, co-founder and executive VP of Mirantis, one of the few OpenStack consulting firms, in an interview.
Mirantis has assembled a library of OpenStack components, which it periodically updates, tests for compatibility and deploys as a set in its consulting engagements. The library is named Fuel, and Mirantis announced Monday that Fuel is being made available as open source code under an Apache 2.0 license.
"It's in our DNA to make it open source," said Renski. Mirantis is an active contributor to the OpenStack project and its consultants have cut their teeth on working with open source code on many engagements.
Fuel is not a Mirantis distribution of OpenStack, like Suse's Linux or Red Hat's Linux or Canonical's Ubuntu OpenStack distributions. Rather, it's a set of components tested to work with all the mainstream distributions and get a new OpenStack user up and running in a fraction of the time it might take otherwise. It will handle configuration management using cookbooks that outline compatible code combinations. Once selected, Cobbler or Python scripts will automatically assemble the open source packages in the right configuration and sequence.
As far as Renski is concerned, Fuel "is the secret sauce of what we're doing here, building production-grade, OpenStack deployments." The release of his firm's "secret sauce" is being done to make the world more aware of Mirantis' skills and increase the uptake of OpenStack. If Mirantis expands the market with its move, chances are at least some of the new implementers will be contacting it for consulting services, especially if they've been satisfied with the assistance they got from Fuel.
It's not that new OpenStack users can't build their own clouds without Mirantis. But to build "really robust clouds," ones that are not fragile or likely to fail when something internal changes, takes the three years of experience that Mirantis has already acquired, Renski claimed.
A current user is PayPal, which is building out a private cloud as its future, strategic IT infrastructure inside of eBay. It's leveraging Fuel "to help transform our global infrastructure into an agile and open cloud platform," said Saran Mandair, senior director of platform engineering and operations at PayPal, in an email response to an inquiry. The library "has dramatically accelerated our OpenStack deployment," he added, without specifying what the length of deployment might have been without Fuel. OpenStack will drive about 9,000 servers for PayPal.
Mirantis consultants seek to train a customer's engineers in the use of the OpenStack through Fuel, which helps "dramatically compress the effort to build OpenStack infrastructure," Renski said. If Fuel powers more installations and eases their deployment, then OpenStack will come that much closer to becoming a de facto standard for private clouds, a development that will not hurt Mirantis prospects.
Mirantis is keeping Fuel neutral on the type of OpenStack cloud that it's being used to create. Piston, an OpenStack-based firm, has its own "very opinionated distribution of OpenStack" that relies on a memory device loaded with Piston that's plugged into the switch at the top of the server rack. In effect, it's a version of OpenStack that's been condensed into a quick-to-deploy version, and Mirantis stopped short of making Fuel able to deploy such versions. If a customer chooses one, that's fine, but Fuel was to remain as an arbitrator of more general purpose and mainstream deployments.
In addition, Mirantis constantly updates and adds to Fuel's capabilities, and it will be sharing those changes on a monthly basis, a rapid release pace by Linux distribution standards.
For OpenStack adopters that decide to use Fuel, that means they will be dependent on Mirantis' continued updates and its willingness to continue to make them open source -- its avowed intent. Alternatives exist, such as Juju or Chef, if for some reason Mirantis departed the scene. But for now, Mirantis is trying to change the nature of the game, accelerate the OpenStack adoption rate, and become a contender as the best candidate for enterprise private cloud infrastructure. Read More
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Adobe launches Creative Cloud in India
Adobe’s popular creative software such as Photoshop, Flash and Premier are among the most pirated. The reason for this is, everyone wants to use it but no one wants to buy it because of the huge one-time cost. With Adobe’s Creative Cloud launched in India today, you no longer need to pay upfront for the software and this will invariably tend to reduce software piracy. “With the easy of availability of products through the Creative Cloud and the attractive price points, we do see a significant impact on the piracy rate of our products,” Umang Bedi, Managing Director–South Asia, Adobe.
This launch is also seen as a major shift in Adobe’s business model wherein it could be offering more software through the cloud in the days to come. Adobe’s Creative Cloud is aimed at giving creative professionals their first chance to experience a radical new way of accessing Adobe’s tools and services. Creative Cloud is a membership-based service that provides users with unlimited access to download and install all Creative Suite desktop applications like Photoshop Lightroom, Adobe Muse, Adobe Edge tools and services, game developer tools and integration with Photoshop Touch apps.
The company announced a very attractive promotional pricing that works out to be approximately INR 2,885 per month for its Creative Cloud for Teams (CCT) offering targeted at teams and SMB customer base. The regular pricing for CCT would work out to be approximately INR 4,040 per month once the promotions end on April 30, 2013. Additionally, the members also get cloud storage of 100GB (per CCT user) along with the ability to sync to any device enabling them to access files anywhere anytime.
Available immediately, Adobe CCT is tailored for the small and medium businesses. It offers all the features in Creative Cloud, plus administrative tools, increased storage capacity, and expert services. It includes tools for easy management of virtual workgroups, expert support services, centralized administration for quick and easy deployment of new seats, centralized billing and efficient license management.
The company also announced its plan to launch the Creative Cloud for Individuals (CCI) offering in India in the near future through its online store. CCI users will be able to avail monthly/annual membership and get 20 GB of cloud storage along with all the major features of Creative Cloud.
Speaking at the launch, Bedi said that since its release in the USA in April 2012, the creative sector has responded enthusiastically. “We’ve seen an incredible uptake, with more than one million individuals in the US and globally joining Adobe Creative Cloud. Our goal is to now make Creative Cloud the ultimate hub for creative professionals in India, where they can access the world’s best tools; store and collaborate across their workplace and ultimately showcase their creations. We are excited by the immense potential this holds for a country like India.”
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Seven myths which prevent success of Cloud
Cloud is on the verge of becoming a mega trend and it is necessary we debate this topic to a great depth and discuss it openly to remove any confusion and look at cloud from a different window of opportunity. I have tried to capture here some of the myths which exist around cloud for a healthy debate in my endeavor to demystify. I am sure there are better opinions and views which are available than what is being presented here and it will be a pleasure to debate them on this forum.
1. Cloud brings significant cost savings
This is debatable and this may not always be true. There could be situations where a cloud could be more expensive. We often overlook several associated costs to compute the cloud expense. More often this myth is created as rhetoric by product vendors to make a business case for cloud computing. If you are going for an OPEX model with public cloud, your accounting becomes simple but this also comes with an overhead of additional charges. The logic is same as buying a car and renting a car where renting over a long period is more expensive.
If you are having an environment where the resources are largely underutilized with occasional or seasonal peaks, the cloud option could bring cost advantage. The cost benefit analysis should incorporate the bandwidth usage, any license fees, cost of hosting etc vs server cost, maintenance, electricity/fuel, datacenter charges, staff salary and communication/connectivity, network charges etc. which will help us identify true benefits. The holistic benefits of depreciation, amortization, tax advantages and other financial parameters should also be factored in for exact calculation of possible advantage we are expected to get from cloud computing over a period of time and should be compared not in isolation.
2. Cloud will make CIO and existing IT team redundant
This is partially true for cloud. Everything depends on how you implement cloud. Most often for enterprise IT, the hybrid model is adopted as the best bit. This would mean you still may need to manage things internally but yes it may bring some amount of optimization necessary. In addition, this depends on level of cloud adoption happening for example SAAS, PAAS or IAAS. For SAAS, the dependency on IT team is lowest and for IAAS, it is highest. For large IT setups, we are yet to see full SAAS to come and possibly it may not happen in near future. But for SMBs, yes cloud has the capability of reducing the size but this would mean growth of cloud providers who will hire those skill sets which it is replacing elsewhere.
As regards to CIO, his/her role could be more important than what it is today as he/she will have more power in hand to support business. It only depends whether the CIO is business focused or technology focused. But chances are remote that it will have impact on the role of the CIO as you may still need someone to be managing your IT environment and deal with business demands.
3. If I am done with virtualization, there is not much benefit from cloud
This could be incorrect as cloud will open additional window of opportunity for optimization which is untapped through the virtualization. Most of the cloud computing platforms run on top of the existing virtualized environment to pull together the resources. Virtualization is a technique that allows you to run more than one server on the same hardware box. Cloud computing is not associated with a single box but it can run on several boxes to pool and glue them together to form a service. It has been developed as a concept which allows you to use the infrastructure as a service and extend it further to platform or software as a service.
4. Cloud implementation is expensive and comes at a cost
One has to be informed about various options. Yes some COTS products can cost a lot but there are cheaper enterprise level options and open source cloud platforms available in the market. Some of the popular names which come are eucalyptus, Nimbus, OpenNebula, OpenQRM, CloudStack, OpenStack etc. Mostly the product vendors at times tend to confuse consumers. Due diligence is necessary before finalization of products to build the right perception about the cost, control, security and efficiency. Hiring a cloud consultant at times is a wiser idea in taking right decision before cloud adoption.
As far as running costs of cloud is concerned, the pay as you go services need a careful evaluation. Amazon public cloud comes with an option of providing EC2 reserve capacity which gives advantage of lower price than “pay as you go” option. Knowing consumption patterns will help in reducing the costs by making combination of reserve instance and pay as you go services in a manner that costs are optimal. In addition one needs to compare apple with apple as just comparing the server costs does not help. One has to compare overall DC, power, infrastructure, network, fuel, support etc into account when making cost benefit analysis of cloud computing.
5. Public cloud has significant security concerns
The same dilemma existed during outsourcing and we are discovering the wheel again. Most established cloud providers are using security standards which can be trusted and at times far higher than the consumers. You can check for security and compliance standards of the provider and choose the right provider who is closer to expectations. Not all cloud providers may have similar standards but there could be few who can truly address the level of security and control standards need to be followed.
The success of Salesforce has to some extent busted this myth. Moreover organizations have been sharing the sensitive payroll data with outsourced partners for decades. Outsourcing has allowed partners to manage the internal data as well and this has been there for some time. The resistance due to concerns of security over cloud is expected to fade away in time.
6. Cloud will cannibalize existing hardware business
I was reading an interesting news on crn.com which states “IBM expects the adoption of cloud computing to add significant growth to its business over the next five years even as it cannibalizes much of its existing business.” The growth of cloud will lead to growth of overall IT spends and if this continues, there will be more computing power needed. There will be some realignment of smaller business who survived on supporting and repairing the hardware and the traditional sources of IT revenue will undergo some course corrections but at an overall perspective, the cloud will help the growth of business of hardware manufactures as demand may go up.
7. Anything or everything can be pushed into public cloud
Not everything is a candidate for public cloud immediately. The overdrive to put everything using a big bang approach should be reviewed with great caution. Often we see overdrive to put applications which consumes most resources towards public cloud but that could be counterproductive as we should look at those which consumes least and idle time is high.
In addition highly integrated business critical applications are not the right candidate for cloud immediately. From the practical perspective while small and medium business can have 100 percent public cloud implementation, large business will find combination of public and private cloud more interesting from both business and financial perspective. A thorough due diligence by consultants would be necessary before a decision is made what can move and what cannot move onto the cloud.
Many of these myths have been addressed on different forums and blogs by experts and eventually they will become history as the resistance to change becomes weaker over time.
- The author is Founder & Managing Consultant, CIO Specialist
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‘Social interaction fosters a long-lasting customer loyalty’
Aspect Software, a global provider of customer contact and workforce optimization solutions, organized its annual event Aspect Customer Experience (ACE) India 2013, at Taj Fort Aguada Hotel in Goa. Held from 6-8 March 2013, ACE India 2013 focused on leveraging the power of social, mobile, and cloud technologies to keep pace with growing customer expectations and enhance customer experience and engagement.
He said that today the widespread movement to retain customers and increase the customer base is compelling enterprises to understand the customer behavior and interactions. “Contact centers are a primary customer engagement point and increasingly a customer satisfaction vehicle, which automatically converts into a revenue generating engine for an enterprise. However, poor and latent connected contact centers and telephony infrastructures can negatively impact customer service and result in missed sales opportunities, causing potential damage to a company’s image," said Narendran.
He said social media sites are emerging as a great platform to improve customer experience and increase their engagement. He said that social media sites allow a two-way conversation, channeling a particular inquiry to those best equipped to respond to that query. “Today, consumers are tech-savvy and use mediums such as Twitter and Facebook to register complaints. If we do not engage with customers through social media then the consumer retention rate is bound to be low and an enterprise may lose upon its customer base. Social interaction fosters a long-lasting customer loyalty and helps grow bottomline for an organization,” added Narendran.
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Cisco launches cloud-based remote education platform for Indian classrooms
Creating a milestone in the Indian education market, Cisco today announced the Cisco Education Enabled Development (CEED 2700) solution. This collaborative, cloud-based video interaction solution will enable efficient delivery of education and skills development courses across the country, facilitating inclusive growth and empowering rural India. Codenamed ‘Dwara’ (after the Sanskrit word for portal to signify a doorway to a new future), the product is the first of Cisco’s ‘Internet of Everything’ solutions from India. Helping connect the unconnected, this solution will enable vast rural populations to access expert teachers and master trainers. Such training is nearly impossible in many areas outside urban centres.
‘CEED' is the second product to be launched from Cisco's India site with the intent of driving innovation from India to the rest of the world. With successful international compliance certified under FCC, CE and UL Labs, Cisco is fulfilling its vision to help transform education for the unprivileged by bringing down the cost of technology in education to about USD 1 per child per month.
Aravind Sitaraman, president, Inclusive Growth, Cisco, “CEED is Cisco’s first step towards bringing inclusive growth to rural areas using the latest technology at extremely affordable prices. It has the potential to revolutionize learning and skills development in this country and help the nation leapfrog several generations to realize its dream of becoming a developed nation by 2050. For a fast developing nation like India, inclusive growth is key. We are probably the first company in the world to have a business unit focused on creating technologies and solutions to bring inclusive growth to under-served populations. We are very proud to have developed this product from our site in India and simultaneously realize our vision to bring cost of technology in education down to a very affordable USD 1 per child per month.”
‘CEED’ is a comprehensive integrated and open learning platform designed to utilize Cisco Collaboration suite to deliver cloud-driven live and hosted video and other content. With the enablement of remote teaching and learning, every rural school can now offer the same level of expert teaching that is available only to children in cities. Similarly, the solution brings the skills of master trainers to youth in remote areas. An expert teacher or master trainer can bring in multiple classes in remote areas and teach them complex concepts as if he or she were right before the classes. The students can also ask real-time questions as if the teacher is in the class before them. By preserving this real-time interactive user experience, ‘CEED’ is an apt vehicle to bring advanced education and critical livelihood---generating job skills to populations in remote areas.
The CEED hardware is ruggedized and designed for harsh environments where temperature and dust can be high. It is energy efficient, using 40 percent less power and thus proving ideal for rural environments. With a built-in router that also acts as a Wi-Fi access point, a computer, and projection device, this solution allows multiple students using devices like the Aakash tablet that the government of India (GoI) is trying to develop, to share a single Internet connection. It can also facilitate connections to well-known education portals such as the one produced by GoI’s National Information Centre (NIC).
By virtualizing expert teachers and master trainers and making them available to under-served populations, Cisco believes that CEED is an ideal vehicle to achieve inclusive growth and therefore bridge the rural-urban gap. Read More
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Global public cloud services market to total USD 131 billion in 2013; IaaS continues to be fastest growing segment
The public cloud services market is forecast to grow 18.5 percent in 2013 to total USD 131 billion worldwide, up from USD 111 billion in 2012, according to Gartner. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), including cloud compute, storage and print services, continued as the fastest-growing segment of the market, growing 42.4 percent in 2012 to USD 6.1 billion and expected to grow 47.3 percent in 2013 to USD 9 billion.
Cloud advertising continues to be the largest segment of the cloud services market, comprising 48 percent of the total market in 2012. Gartner predicts that from 2013 through 2016, USD 677 billion will be spent on cloud services worldwide, USD 310 billion of which will be spent on cloud advertising.
"The continued growth of the cloud services market will result from the adoption of cloud services for production systems and workloads, in addition to the development and testing scenarios that have led as the most prominent use case for public cloud services to date," said Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner. "Evidence of this growth is found in the increasing demand for cloud services from end-user organizations, met by an increased supply of cloud services from suppliers."
Although there is wide variation between cloud services market subsegments, strong demand is anticipated for all types of cloud services offerings. The cloud business process services segment (BPaaS) is the second-largest market segment after cloud advertising, comprising 28 percent of the total market in 2012, followed by cloud application services (software as a service [SaaS]) at 14.7 percent, cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) at 5.5 percent, cloud management and security services at 2.8 percent, and cloud application infrastructure services (platform as a service [PaaS]) at one percent.
Market dynamics vary substantially when considering the cloud services market size and market growth across the different regions of the world. In general, the emerging markets in Asia/Pacific, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa show the highest growth rates, while representing the smallest overall markets. China is the exception, being both a large and growing market. Likewise, the mature markets of North America, Western Europe, Japan and the mature Asia/Pacific countries constitute the larger, but slower-growth, markets.
"Although forecast growth is generally high across all regions, the adoption of cloud services varies significantly by country. Providers should not assume that a generic strategy applied to specific countries or regions of the world will produce the same outcome when applied to other countries, even countries with similar market characteristics," said Anderson. "Local economic factors, regulatory issues, the local political climate, the diverse landscape of global and local providers, including noncloud providers, and other country-specific factors ensure a unique marketplace in each country and region."
North America is the largest region in the cloud services market, accounting for 59 percent of all new spending on cloud services from 2013 through 2016. Western Europe, despite the growth challenges in the region, remains the second-largest region and will account for 24 percent of all new spending during the same time period. However, the highest growth rates for cloud services continue to come from the emerging regions of Emerging Asia/Pacific (led by Indonesia and India), Greater China and Latin America (led by Argentina, Mexico and Brazil).
"IT services providers, particularly those focused on delivering cloud services offerings or related services, must consider these disproportionately large mature markets if they want to play a leading role in cloud services growth worldwide," Mr. Anderson said. "Similarly, markets in Emerging Asia/Pacific, Greater China and Latin America should also be important considerations for IT services providers that want to capitalize on the high growth of these regions, particularly Latin America and Greater China."
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World’s first cloud-based policy management solution for mobile network operators launched by Tata Communications
Tata Communications, today announced the world’s first cloud-based policy management solution that enables mobile network operators (MNOs) to create differentiated mobile data services quickly and with significantly less capital investment.
As mobile broadband subscribers increase, the service brings more efficient network optimization for a higher quality user experience. Developed in partnership with Allot Communications and Openet, Tata Communications’ Hosted Policy Engine allows MNOs to move beyond flat-rate data packages to deliver targeted data service offers for new revenue streams.
The Hosted Policy Engine is a pre-integrated policy management solution, which enforces traffic optimization and monetization policies in real-time, based on subscriber usage patterns across 2.5G, 3G, 4G and WiFi networks. This allows mobile operators to create targeted service packages to optimize network resources and revenue through tiered service plans for customers. The capital investment needed in a dedicated policy management approach has proved either cost-prohibitive, or lacked the flexibility needed to keep up with mobile broadband demand. Consequently, a large number of MNOs do not have effective policy management tools in place. Based on Openet’s Policy Charging and Rules Function, and Allot Service Gateway, the Hosted Policy Engine means MNOs can now implement policy management cost effectively.
“Mobile operators are under increasing pressure to maximize ROI on the mobile broadband solutions they deploy for their customers, but the sheer complexity of the mobile environment can mean that managing these services is overwhelming both in terms of volume of transactions and scale of investment needed,” said John Landau, Senior VP, Technology and Services Evolution, at Tata Communications. “Our goal with the Hosted Policy Engine is to provide a pre-integrated best-of-breed policy engine that delivers economies of scale for MNOs thanks to our cloud-based approach. It offers the benefits of market leading solution components, but with significantly less capex investment and no support requirements, opening up this solution to a large number of MNOs currently without satisfactory policy management.”
Said Shira Levine, Directing Analyst, Infonetics, “While the benefits of investing in next-generation policy management are clear – including more efficient use of network resources and the ability to create and deliver more innovative, personalised services – the cost and complexity of implementing these solutions remains a deterrent to many operators, particularly those in markets where capex spending remains constrained. A hosted solution offers a faster and more efficient way to get new services to market while also providing a more predictable cost structure. This is an appealing proposition to those operators that lack the resources or the budget to embark on a more traditional deployment of policy control and enforcement solutions.”
The industry-first policy management solution provides operators with a simple way to define and share policy application best practices, and to establish policy hubbing and consistent policy applications for roaming subscribers, thanks to its common platform and library of policy capabilities.
“Policy management has matured from being an access control function to a key platform for mobile broadband monetization and service innovation,” said Niall Norton, CEO at Openet. “Tata Communications’ Hosted Policy Engine brings the benefits of the industry-leading policy solution to a wider audience of MNOs through a new model with reduced deployment complexity, a lower cost of ownership and faster time to market.”
“Allot Communications is pleased to be providing a flexible, 3GPP standards-based PCEF solution that allows MNOs to match service plans and policy enforcement to the digital lifestyle of their customers,” says Vin Costello, VP & General Manager of the Americas at Allot Communications. “Using Allot Service Gateway, Tata Communications’ Hosted Policy Engine is able to leverage the business intelligence in MNO networks in order to shape the digital lifestyle experiences of their subscribers and to capitalize on the network traffic they generate.” Read More
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Evolution from PC to personal cloud will drive invisible sensor-enabled devices
Consumers' digital lives have transitioned from the PC to a personal cloud-driven world that is driving a new type of interaction between consumers and their connected services, according to Gartner. Consumers will use and interact with a multitude of connected, sensor-enabled devices driven by applications and services to create cognizant ecosystems independent of a platform or operating system.
"Cognizant computing evolves the connected device and personal cloud service into an activity of seamless and frictionless integration connected to sensor-driven 'invisible' devices that are optimized for a particular set of functions," said Michael Gartenberg, research director at Gartner. "This data and information can then be tied to other services across larger ecosystems, platforms and operating systems."
While cognizant computing is not a new concept, it is the natural evolution of a world driven not by devices but rather collections of applications and services that extend across multiple platforms and exist outside the realm of connected screens, such as phones, tablets, PCs or televisions.
As a result, applications are now 24/7 aware of action or inaction, need not be turned on or off and ultimately provide a greater amount of relevant information that can eventually drive behavior change. This is something that is not possible in stand-alone applications or devices. Consumers also don't have to adopt or make a commitment to a platform or service in total and can adopt through long-term interaction and purchases that are driven by short-term task-driven functions.
"One of the defining experiences of cognizant computing is that the devices that drive the experience fall into what we refer to as the invisible space. We define this as the combination of devices and services that unite to form an experience that is below the daily threshold of awareness," said Jessica Ekholm, research director at Gartner. "In practice, consumers will forget the devices are being carried, worn or used until they need to interact with them for control or to obtain feedback in terms of data or information."
Invisible and cognizant devices that range from wristwatches, key fobs, thermostats and shoes are the digital equivalent of undeveloped property that can become extraordinarily valuable to the user when linked to the appropriate services to extend their use. Although the ideas behind today's cognizant devices have been around for more than a decade, wearable technology, such as smart watches have, for the most part, failed to gain any traction with the consumer due to high costs, little perceived value, an emphasis on technology over form and the need for them to exist as stand-alone products and services that did not and could not tie into a larger ecosystem or platform.
"Personal cloud services and ecosystems are now the center of the digital consumer experience," said Gartenberg. "Combined with increasingly ubiquitous connections, cognizant devices offer new opportunities to drive new device adoption, grow personal cloud services and act as a tipping point for consumer platform adoption. As new digital devices decrease in size, tie into existing applications such as home automation and personal fitness, and increase in perceived user functionality as well as overall form, we will see an increase of multiple devices throughout the home and person that will trend into the invisible space." Read More
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Amazon set to disrupt data warehousing market with cloud-based Redshift
Amazon Web Services recently announced the limited preview of Amazon Redshift, a fast and powerful, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud. Amazon Redshift enables customers to dramatically increase the speed of query performance when analyzing virtually any size data set, using the same SQL-based business intelligence tools they use today.
With a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, customers can launch a Redshift cluster, starting with a few hundred gigabytes and scaling to a petabyte or more, for under USD 1,000 per terabyte per year – one tenth the price of most data warehousing solutions available to customers today.
Self-managed, on-premise data warehouses require significant time and resource to administer, especially for large datasets. Loading, monitoring, tuning, taking backups, and recovering from faults are complex and time-consuming tasks. And, the financial cost associated with building, maintaining, and growing traditional data warehouses is flat-out expensive. Larger companies have resigned themselves to paying such a high cost for data warehousing, while smaller companies often find the hardware and software costs prohibitively expensive, leaving most of these organizations without a data warehousing capability.
Amazon Redshift aims to change this quagmire. Amazon Redshift manages all of the work needed to set up, operate, and scale a data warehouse, from provisioning capacity to monitoring and backing up the cluster, to applying patches and upgrades. Scaling a cluster to improve performance or increase capacity on Amazon Redshift is simple and incurs no downtime, while the service continuously monitors the health of the cluster and automatically replaces any component needed. Amazon Redshift is also priced cost-effectively (a fraction of existing data warehouses) to enable larger companies to substantially reduce their costs and smaller companies to take advantage of the analytic insights that come from using a powerful data warehouse.
“Over the past two years, one of the most frequent requests we’ve heard from customers is for AWS to build a data warehouse service,” said Raju Gulabani, Vice President of Database Services, AWS. “Enterprises are tired of paying such high prices for their data warehouses and smaller companies can’t afford to analyze the vast amount of data they collect (often throwing away 95 percent of their data). This frustrates customers as they know the cloud has made it easier and less expensive than ever to collect, store, and analyze data. Amazon Redshift not only significantly lowers the cost of a data warehouse, but also makes it easy to analyze large amounts of data very quickly. While actual performance will vary based on each customers’ specific query requirements, our internal tests have shown over 10 times performance improvement when compared to standard relational data warehouses. Having the ability to quickly analyze petabytes of data at a low cost changes the game for our customers.”
Amazon Redshift uses a number of techniques, including columnar data storage, advanced compression, and high performance IO and network, to achieve significantly higher performance than traditional databases for data warehousing and analytics workloads. By distributing and parallelizing queries across a cluster of inexpensive nodes, Amazon Redshift makes it easy to obtain high performance without requiring customers to hand-tune queries, maintain indices, or pre-compute results. Amazon Redshift is certified by popular business intelligence tools, including Jaspersoft and MicroStrategy. Over twenty customers, including Flipboard, NASA/JPL, Netflix, and Schumacher Group, are in the Amazon Redshift private beta program.
"At Netflix, we deliver personalized recommendations for our millions of subscribers by analyzing large volumes of data, and are always looking for ways to improve our service," said Kurt Brown, Director, Data Science & Engineering Platform at Netflix. "We're very excited about the cost-disruptive and cloud-based model of Amazon Redshift. It's sure to shake up the data warehousing industry."
"We are excited about being able to use this new service to take our cloud usage even farther and run a large scale data warehouse in the cloud for our engineering, science, and IT data,” said Tom Soderstrom, Chief Technology Officer, Office of the CIO, NASA/JPL. “We're delighted to have a new, fast and low-cost option for analyzing massive amounts of data. This new service will also allow us to create new types of Big Data analytics that will lead to new discoveries."
“The Amazon Enterprise Data Warehouse manages petabytes of data for every group at Amazon. We are seeing significant performance improvements leveraging Amazon Redshift over our current multi-million dollar data warehouse," said Erik Selberg, Manager of the Amazon.com Data Warehouse team. “Some multi-hour queries finish in under an hour, and some queries that took 5-10 minutes on our current data warehouse are now returning in seconds with Amazon Redshift. Early estimates show the cost of Amazon Redshift will be well under 1/10th the cost of our existing solution. Amazon Redshift is providing us with a cost-effective way to scale with our growing data analysis needs."
Amazon Redshift includes technology components licensed from ParAccel and is available with two underlying node types, including either 2 terabytes or 16 terabytes of compressed customer data per node. One cluster can scale up to 100 nodes and on-demand pricing starts at just USD 0.85 per hour for a 2-terabyte data warehouse, scaling linearly up to a petabyte and more. Reserved instance pricing lowers the effective price to USD 0.228 per hour or under USD 1,000 per terabyte per year – less than one tenth the price of comparable technology available to customers today. Read More
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Growth of digital consumerism will drive the convergence of new-age technologies: KPMG report
Rise in digital adoption by consumers in going to inevitably lead to the convergence of new age technologies indicates the KPMG report launched at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum 2013 at Grand Hyatt today.
“A rapid increase in Digital Consumerism will be seen in the coming decade and we are already witnessing micro-segmentation of customers and product and services being tailored at individual level,” said Pradeep Udhas, Head IT/ITes, KPMG in India. IT vendors need to work closely with their customers and come up with platforms that can take advantage of the convergence of the technologies, said Udhas.
“IT vendors really need to listen to the end customers while innovating or developing solutions and products. The emphasis needs to be on tapping inputs from various channels, mediums and devices and using these as critical inputs for new solutions and incremental innovations. Industry bodies can also play a vital role in this, and increase awareness about convergence of technological trends,” he said.
Digitally active consumers have embraced the Internet, telecom, media, and social space; changing the way they communicate, transact and make purchase decisions, thus leading to the birth of an era of digital consumerism, says the KPMG in India report. The rise in the number consumers who shop online, seek recommendations and interact with brands presents a tremendous opportunity for companies. As per the report, by 2020 business transactions on the Internet, B2B and B2C, will reach 450 billion a day. The report also predicted that mobile technologies can be used to cut the cost of a financial transaction by up to 80 percent.
KPMG in India has identified and analyzed six major disruptive technologies, which will have a significant impact on key industries, and will lead to the next wave of innovations. These technologies are embedded systems, augmented reality, mobility, social media, cloud computing and Big Data.
While technologies such as Big Data and cloud have been dominating the imagination of enterprises for the past couple of years, new disruptive trends like augmented reality and social media have only now started having a tangible presence. The maturity curve of these technologies is estimated to increase at a rapid pace over the next decade, with Big Data and cloud estimated to reach a market potential of tens of billions of dollars.
KPMG in India estimates that the future of IT-ITeS players in India and globally is dependent on how fast they adapt to the changes in customer demand. There needs to be a strategic shift in solution offerings and supportive ecosystem going forward, wherein vendors provide not just the standard core industry platforms, but also think ahead of the curve.
The report identified select key sectors like retail, healthcare, telecom, financial services and government, which account for a significant portion of it vendors’ revenues and are also among the most promising sectors in terms of growth.
Across the world, the retail industry is at the centre of a major shift in the way consumers shop and interact with their retailers. After almost a century of customers “going to the store,” the store is now coming to the customer. Embedded systems are changing every point in a retailer’s business, from sourcing of goods to their distribution to display in stores and finally, checkout. This disruptive technology is enabling a connected ecosystem of devices that allow a retailer to have a real-time view of every step in its value chain.
It is no longer enough for retailers to stock their outlets with the latest products; the popularity of Smartphone’s has given genesis to a new mobile shopping culture altogether. Augmented Reality (AR) is also used to explore synergies in print and video marketing. Augmented Reality (AR) technology has made it possible for phones to become barcode scanners that offer extra information and online prices. It is estimated that AR-based apps will generate close to USD300 million in revenues globally in 2013 as brands and retailers increasingly show appetite for such features.
“Augmented reality is expected to be the game changer for the retail industry. Businesses are increasingly are using augmented reality to enhance virtual shopping experience which will lead to significant investments in augmented reality applications in the near future, especially in the western world,” said Udhas.
The sheer size of the government sector can drive the growth of emerging technologies and since the government interacts with almost all the stakeholders in an economy all the disruptive technologies find utility in one way or the other. However, KPMG in India believes that technologies like mobility, social media, Big data and embedded systems, which can help in reaching out to the masses in a more effective way, will have the highest impact on the sector.
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Microsoft launches Office 365 Home Premium for consumers
Microsoft Corporation announced the availability of Office 365 for consumers, a reinvention of the company’s flagship Office product line. Families can now subscribe to Office 365 Home Premium, which includes the latest set of Office applications. It works across five PCs/Macs and five mobile devices, and comes with extra SkyDrive storage.
“This isn’t just another version of Office. This is Office reinvented as a consumer cloud service,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corp. “Together with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Office 365 gives you the freedom to do things when and how you want.”
Microsoft also announced it will now deliver many new features and services to the cloud first, transforming the company’s traditional three-year release cycle. Now, new features and services stream to subscribers as soon as they’re ready, eliminating the hassles of upgrading and keeping subscribers always up-to-date.
“This is a major leap forward,” said Ramkumar Pichai, GM - Microsoft Office Division, Microsoft India. “It’s a service designed to help you manage the tasks of your work and home life, wherever you are, whenever you need, online or offline. Also, it’s a perfect fit for busy families and individuals who can connect multiple devices with a single subscription.”
Office 365 Home Premium will be available for purchase in India at an annual subscription of Rs 4,199. Simultaneously, Microsoft also announced in India the availability of the updated FPP version of its traditional Office suite for consumers – Office Home and Student 2013.
To help people find more time to do the things they want, Microsoft is introducing Time to 365 (www.office.com/timeto365), a new crowd-sourced website, where people can find and share tips, tricks, ideas and inspiration from around the world. Tips on the site include, for example, an idea for organizing your grocery list with OneNote on your phone, a pointer on how to pick the right sized TV for your living room and ways to use Office applications to plan a child’s birthday party.
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5 areas CIOs must examine before moving to the cloud
Cloud computing is about delivering massively scalable IT-enabled capabilities, as service to external customers using Internet technologies. Instead of saying that Cloud computing is a hyped tech-trend, I will say it is a buzz word today and still many service providers actually interchangeably use SaaS and Cloud Computing in their discussions.
Not all SaaS solutions leverage cloud-based computing and cloud computing is not another term for SaaS. In fact it is a broad technological concept where some types of SaaS offerings could qualify for to be included under cloud computing. That is, if the IT application being delivered under SaaS concept is one which is highly scalable; it could qualify for being considered as a cloud computing application.
Will Cloud Computing really take off? I think yes, it is poised to grow - and not just private cloud but public cloud also. There are lot of people who say that large companies will take private cloud route while SMEs will take public cloud route. But I feel that even large companies will benefit a lot from public cloud route and many enterprises have already ventured out on this path.
However, as I see today, before taking a decision whether to move forward on cloud computing or not, each CIO has to evaluate certain key areas, which are as follows.
1. Firstly, fully understand the concept and implications of cloud computing before taking a decision whether to maintain an IT investment in-house or whether to buy it as a service through the cloud - and for that to happen even the service providers need to understand the concept fully.
2. Look at the overall ROI and understand short term costs versus long term gain, comparing not just hardware, software, implementation and maintenance costs but also bandwidth and related costs, especially in case one is moving enterprise applications to cloud and one may need to enhance internet bandwidths significantly.
3. Evaluate the service levels being offered by providers – in terms of uptime, response time, performance etc.
4. To understand whether implementation time will be more efficient -- in terms of time to deploy or scaling up an application infrastructure – by going cloud computing way or one has in-house capabilities.
5. Lastly, I think culture and mindset has to change, and this could be perhaps the most difficult barrier in adoption of Cloud computing. The mindset in the organization – not just IT managers -- needs to be aligned to the fact there will be a transition from on-premises to off-premises computing.
This is not easy. e.g. While there are obvious advantage in terms of the fact that someone else is managing my day to day technology issues but this has to be weighed against the fact that we are leaving the business-critical information resources in the hands of third parties.
I strongly feel that not everything can become cloud computing – as each one of us has specific requirements – whether on functionalities, performance, or even security and privacy needs which may be unique to the organization and may not be supported through public cloud. Secondly, I guess we need to start small by first understanding the concept from a practical perspective and then deciding whether to go ahead or not.
As told to Amrita Premrajan
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3 ways the cloud can complement virtualization
Most IT professionals correctly refer to the internal cloud as their virtualization project, and often roll their eyes when a vendor refers to it as a cloud.
Nevertheless, virtual infrastructures can benefit from the actual public cloud to augment what they are doing. The public cloud can help provide smaller businesses a place to send data for off-site backup storage, a place to recover in the event of a disaster, and even a place to move applications when peak loads have exceeded the capabilities of the internal data center. Let's look at the possibilities.
1. Public cloud as off-site backup
One of the earliest and most frequent uses of cloud storage is as a backup target. First, it was used to back up laptops and desktops, but now it is being used to protect physical and virtual servers. Using cloud storage creates an ideal separate location from the data center, and most providers have multiple geographically dispersed facilities as well. The farther your data is away from you the better protected it is from a regional disaster.
The challenge, though, for many virtual backup processes is that the use of cloud storage is not integrated directly into the virtual backup software. It has to be added on as an afterthought via some sort of gateway appliance. This separation reduces efficiency and increases complexity. Integration with the cloud is critical for virtualized backup applications going forward. It should be just another checkbox within the backup software.
2. Public cloud as disaster recovery site
Several data protection suppliers and cloud providers are beginning to leverage the fact that they have your virtual machine images in the cloud to provide disaster recovery in their facility. As I discussed in the article "Hybrid Cloud DR", this capability is ideal for the small- to medium-size business that does not have a fully staffed second site that can be used for disaster recovery. It allows cloud providers to add value by becoming more than just a storage tank at the end of an Internet connection -- they are providing full-service recovery.
3. Public cloud as bursting option
Finally, you can use the cloud for more than just backup and disaster recovery. You can use it as a destination point for applications when peak loads hit the data center. The concept, called cloud bursting, allows for additional instances of an application that can be started in the cloud or less active applications can be moved to the cloud temporarily to accommodate a peak load. The challenge has been how to integrate the move to the cloud with the existing virtualization investment. Bridging the gap between a local hypervisor and a cloud compute environment can be complex and expensive. But help is on the way. Companies such as HotLink are providing the capability to integrate multi-hypervisor management, including cloud compute, into the vCenter infrastructure.
The cloud can offer many benefits to data centers of all sizes, but its benefits can be especially useful to the medium-size business. These data centers need to start considering the cloud for more than off-site data storage. Cloud-hosted disaster recovery and bursting are now within the reach of these companies.
- George Crump is lead analyst of Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm focused on the storage and virtualization segments Read More
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Red October claims 14 victims in India, says Kaspersky
Kaspersky Lab recently published a new research report which identified a huge cyber-espionage campaign targeting diplomatic, governmental and scientific research organizations in several countries, including India. What’s surprising is the fact that the attackers managed to evade detection of most antivirus products for more than five years.
Red October virus is sent through spear-phishing emails, and the e-mails are customized. Also, malicious e-mails included customized trojan droppers. The malware has unique features that enable the attackers to “resurrect” infected machines. The module is embedded as a plug-in inside Adobe Reader and Microsoft Office installations, and provide the attackers a foolproof way to regain access to a targeted system if the main malware body is discovered and removed, or if the system is patched. Additionally, it enables the attackers to steal data from mobile devices.
Today with the proliferation of mobile devices and adoption of cloud computing technologies, there could be potential vulnerabilities. “The cloud comes with its own share of security issues and there lies potential risk,” says Cheung. In the mobile space, android based phones are more vulnerable to the attacks. Cheung says that enterprises must deploy updated antivirus software, patch operating systems, and use spam filtering and IPS.
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Vaultize introduces Data Privacy Option in its File Sharing and Endpoint Backup
Data security has been the primary inhibitor preventing enterprises from adopting cloud solutions. Aiming to address this issue, Vaultize recently unveiled a Data Privacy Option (DPO) for enterprises, helping them comply with various data privacy, data residency and data protection regulations –hence further strengthening cloud adoption.
DPO is an innovative concept through which Vaultize lets its enterprise customers retain the full control over encryption keys. With DPO, the encryption keys are never stored on any infrastructure that is not under enterprise control, ensuring that the customer is in complete control of data. The data is thus completely secured from any unauthorized access while in motion and at rest in the cloud, and the ability to access useable data remains solely with the enterprise customer as it only has the encryption keys.
"Cloud service providers often store customer data across various geographical locations to ensure resiliency, scalability and efficiency. But regulations put restrictions in terms of where and how to keep data that is sensitive in nature,” said Ankur Panchbudhe, CTO and Co-founder of Vaultize. “DPO option lets our customers take the full control of the encryption keys. Our at-source encryption technology ensures that the data, while in motion and at rest, is secured from any unauthorized access. Moreover, to achieve this Vaultize does not require any special software or any hardware on-premise.”
DPO is available with all the deployment options of Vaultize - public cloud (hosted in Rackspace), private cloud (hosted on-premise or with any cloud provider of customer’s choice), and “Cloud-in-a-box” appliance.
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Icertis enters into strategic partnership with Prasanna Purple Mobility Solutions
Prasanna Purple Mobility Solutions announced that it will roll out Icertis Public Transport Management product. Leveraging the latest advances in cloud technology, Icertis PublicTransport helps city and inter-city bus operators optimize efficiency and maximize revenue.
The advanced technology of the product will provide Prasanna Purple Mobility Solutions with a centralized bus network planning capability to optimize routes, schedules and driver utilization, as well as a fleet management and maintenance platform, said company’s media release.
The partnership will also offer world class in-bus information and entertainment services. In-bus infotainment as a service has never been fully available to bus passengers in India. The new infotainment systems will provide travel and location specific information to passengers, such as popular tourist attractions, historical facts, shopping avenues, advertisements, and so on, in addition to transmitting social and security related messages.
The two companies will also collaborate to deliver a hi-tech and contemporary travel experience to passengers, who will soon be able to check bus schedules, route details, estimated travel time and fares, bus timings, as well as traffic information both online and on mobile devices, all in real time.
Prasanna Patwardhan, Chairman and Managing Director, Prasanna Purple Mobility Solutions said,“The strategic alliance with Icertis marks an important milestone in our long term commitment to the development of an effective, reliable, and engaging bus transportation system. We are excited about harnessing the power of this next generation of information technology product to transform our people transportation operations into the best network in India.”
Srikanth Karnakota, Country Head for Server and Cloud Business at Microsoft Corporation, India, said, “The Windows Azure Cloud platform empowers businesses to increase their operational efficiency and run applications with unbounded scalability and ease of use. Icertis PublicTransport Management built on Windows Azure is a perfect illustration of how cloud computing can change the operating dynamics of a very important sector like public transportation.”
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Dell sees big potential in Indian healthcare sector
A big domain player in the global healthcare segment, Dell believes that it has the potential to repeat its success in the Indian market too. With a growing Indian middle class and rising disposable income, patients are demanding better quality healthcare. Healthcare service providers are looking at investing in IT to automate paper-based processes and improve customer satisfaction.
“The Indian healthcare segment is highly fragmented in nature, and has relatively low exposure to IT. As compared to other countries, the percentage of IT spending on healthcare with respect to GDP is quite low. Hence, the potential to transform existing processes using IT is huge,” says Sid Nair, VP and Global GM, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Dell Services.
Independent market research reports corroborate this huge potential. Market research firm, Zinnov, estimates that the annual IT spending within existing hospitals in India is expected to reach USD 1.5 billion by 2020. Larger hospital chains specifically are looking at automating paper-based processes by deploying solutions for automating back-office functions and digitizing patient records through Electronic Medical Records (EMR). A case in point is the deal Max Healthcare signed with Dell Services. Nair believes that over the next few years, hospitals will significantly upscale their IT investment.
Can cloud aid healthcare?
Dell also sees a huge role for services related to cloud computing in the segment. For example, a study by Zinnov estimates the total addressable opportunity for cloud solutions in the sector to be approximately USD 600 million by 2020. Zinnov also believes that the cloud can potentially address close to 40 percent of the total annual healthcare IT spending in India.
“In a country where there are large number of individual practitioners and mid-sized hospitals, the cloud is a natural fit. Usage of the cloud can eliminate paper-based processes, help save costs, enable best practices and improve efficiencies,” states Nair.
For example, with the growing usage of digital records, storage and archival needs are growing at a fast clip for hospitals. Hospitals perform thousands of radiology tests every year, which require enormous storage capacities. Electronic Health Records are also growing at an equally fast pace. This is creating a unique market, where hospitals need to share image information to better coordinate patient care. However, with images lying in isolated systems, physicians and hospitals struggle to share this information.
“The percentage of IT spending on healthcare with respect to GDP is quite low in India. Hence, the potential to transform existing processes using IT is huge”
Sid Nair, VP and Global GM, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Dell Services
Nair believes that India offers a similar opportunity, primarily because of a large network of entrepreneur driven clinics and hospitals that are looking at being at par with large hospitals, but at lower costs.
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Cloud shines bright in Infosys’ Q3 results
The latest Q3 results of Infosys show that the focus on cloud continues to yield results. Infosys said in the press release that the business has more than 190 engagements and 3,500 experts. Over the last quarter, it won more than 15 engagements across cloud services, Big Data and Security.
Infosys said, “Our vision of being a Cloud Ecosystem Integrator has gained increasing acceptance with clients and we are working with more than 30 partners to help clients create and manage their unified hybrid cloud environments.” Read More
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SAP taps niche areas in cloud to grow beyond traditional base
The immense potential of the Indian SMB market is well known. Market research firm, Zinnov, says that with over 50 million units, India has the largest number of SMBs across the world. While a majority of SMBs in this sector have global aspirations, they are way behind in technology adoption – a vital parameter for competing against global players.
While this sector wants to use technology, a majority of SMBs seldom adopt technology as they are either too expensive or too cumbersome to deploy. The cloud is a perfect technology for SMBs as it gives them the ability to conserve cash, and scale without technology infrastructure restrictions.
Like other mainstream enterprise application vendors, ERP giant, SAP, has been quick to recognize the potential of this market, and has accordingly started offering a slew of options using the cloud route.
The firm initially started offering solutions using the Business ByDesign (BYD) model and Business Intelligence (BI) model designed for the SMB sector. Today, as the demand from this sector has grown rapidly, SAP is expanding its cloud solutions portfolio. The firm has launched a new range of offerings including CRM OnDemand, Financials OnDemand and SAP Social Media Analytics.
"Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool and can be used by sales and marketing departments to better analyze customer sentiment and use this intelligence to launch or co-create products with customers"
- Rohit Madhur, Director- Cloud, SAP India
Explaining the positioning of the cloud solutions portfolio, Rohit Madhur, Director- Cloud, SAP India, states, “We have structured our cloud portfolio into four major pillars – People, Money, Customers and Suppliers. All solutions under each pillar will be tightly integrated with each other. Customers also have the option of using these solutions as standalone offerings.”
This strategy is in line with SAP’s thinking that enterprises may want to use new cloud-based applications in only one or two functions – such as HR or sales. These companies may want to use niche-based applications wherever there is a requirement. This positioning has helped SAP gain market share in several niche areas, where there is huge potential. For example, consider a simple solution such as TravelonDemand. The solution lessens the pain of business travel by providing an easy and efficient way to manage business travel, and easily manage travel from the pre-trip approval to the expense reporting stage.
Madhur says that this is an area, where a lot of large and even small companies do not have visibility. “Many large companies are surprised to see their cash flow being impacted, when suddenly employees file their expense reports in the last quarter. If an organization has a cloud-based travel expense model in place, then it can better predict the cash flow. For some companies, this can make the difference between a profitable and loss making quarter,” states Madhur.
Social power
SAP also sees huge potential in the sentiment analysis space. This solution lets users analyze customer sentiment from social networking sites, communities, wikis, blogs, and other sources, and combines the information with CRM. “Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool and can be used by sales and marketing departments to better analyze customer sentiment and use this intelligence to launch or co-create products with customers,” states Madhur.
Madhur says that as social media offers an opportunity to get unsolicited and genuine responses, organizations can get qualitative data at a fraction of the cost of doing traditional surveys. For example, a media organization can write a story on a hot trending topic on social media. Similarly, a product company can better understand the different ways their products can be used or the new categories that customers are expecting products. In this space, SAP has already signed on names such as HT Media, Luminous power and Zee Interactive.
In addition, SAP sees a lot of potential in SMBs which have not adopted technology solutions and are the right target for its full suite of ERP solutions. The firm already has a list of customers in this space such as Genotypic Technology, Ace Data Devices, Zinnov, iSat Network, Mithila Cars India, Yashas FRP Manufacturing and Asian Oilfield Service.
With a huge base of installed customers to which it can sell niche cloud-based solutions such as TravelOnDemand, and a growing list of SMB customers which Gartner estimates to be around 30 percent of the USD 79.8 billion IT spending market in India, SAP is well positioned to be a serious player in the cloud computing market in India. Read More
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1.7 million open cloud positions just waiting to be filled, says IDC
A recent Microsoft-sponsored IDC report claims that currently there are 1.7 million open cloud jobs worldwide that organizations are having a tough time filling.
"Despite modest growth in the IT sector overall in the U.S., cloud-ready jobs are increasing as we head into 2013," said Cushing Anderson, a program VP at IDC, in a statement. "With this increase comes the harsh reality that workforces around the world are steps behind when it comes to attaining the skills necessary to thrive in the cloud computing industry."
The study's authors contend that cloud computing will drive demand for individuals with a hard-to-find mix of business and IT skills, given that many of the new jobs will involve architecture, design, advisory, and transitional services as opposed to just hands-on tech functions.
"Unlike IT skill shortages in the past, solving this skills gap is extremely challenging, given that cloud brings a new set of skills, which haven't been needed in the past," said Anderson. "There is no one-size-fits-all set of criteria for jobs in cloud computing. Therefore, training and certification is essential for preparing prospective jobs candidates to work in cloud-related jobs."
The study found that worldwide, almost two-thirds of businesses plan to implement, or are already using, cloud technologies in their operations, with the U.S. accounting for 62 percent of spending on public cloud infrastructure. It also found that lack of training, certification, and experience are the top three reasons cloud positions are not being filled.
To address the problem, Microsoft recently announced that it has revamped many of its certifications to take into account cloud computing technologies and methods, including forthcoming certifications for Windows 8 specialists. Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are designed to work in concert with Microsoft cloud services such as Azure and Office 365.
The study is bound to create some controversy. Microsoft has long claimed that there are worker shortages in a number of key IT areas, and has been pushing the U.S. government to increase the number of H-1B visas available to foreign tech workers. Currently, the number is capped at 65,000, with an additional 20,000 available to foreign graduates of advanced STEM programs at U.S. colleges and universities.
Redmond also wants Congress to pass legislation that would make it easier for U.S. companies to procure permanent resident status (or green cards) for foreign tech hires. Under one plan floated by Microsoft, private businesses could pay up to USD 15,000 to procure green card approval for a foreign hire.
Critics of such proposals, including The Programmers Guild, argue that U.S. tech companies should focus on retraining older IT pros, many of whom have been laid off in recent years, in cloud and other new skills before hiring foreigners. Read More
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5 cloud app trends to expect in 2013
Some of the trends we'll see in cloud-based enterprise applications in 2013 are obvious, while some might surprise. Here's my take on five trends to expect in the new year, along with examples and advice on how to ride each wave.
Mobile options multiply. This is one of the obvious trends, as it's clear that tablets and smartphones are the preferred interface for executives, salespeople, managers and even not-so-mobile employees who accept that there are no longer barriers between work life and home life. Every credible cloud apps vendor is addressing mobile, but one standout is Salesforce.com, which offers native apps as well as growing HTML5 support.
There's no single right way to support mobile, so look for options. Does your vendor (or prospective vendor) have separate native apps for tablets and phones that do justice to each form factor? If not, has the vendor progressed to HTML5 content that adapts to a range of devices? If the vendor relies solely on Web-based access, has it at least designed with mobile browsers in mind? If you still see scrollbars and tiny buttons that were designed for mouse-and-keyboard interaction, it's not mobile-friendly. Try before you buy.
Embedded analytics proliferate. Here's another established trend that's sure to keep growing in 2013 because users naturally want reporting and dashboarding options right in the context of the apps they use every day. One standout on this front is Workday, which offers particularly deep and configurable embedded analytics.
What should you look for? Start by considering the out-of-the-box options for reporting and dashboarding. Next, consider the configurable options. Can you bring external apps and data sources into the mix, or is it a stovepipe of analysis of data generated within the app? What's the latency of the data -- will the reports and metrics show up-to-the-minute data, up-to-the-hour data or yesterday's information? Don't forget to consider the analytics embedded in mobile apps. Can your phone truly be smart if it's not serving up metrics and dashboards? When it's mobile, it really should be up-to-the-minute data.
The need for insight usually goes beyond the confines of a single app, so it's important to consider partner offerings and options for working with well-known BI systems and data warehousing platforms. Salesforce.com has a panoply of partner options, while Microsoft (with Dynamics CRM Online), Oracle (with Fusion Apps, Taleo, RightNow and so on), and SAP (with SuccessFactors, Business ByDesign and other cloud options) offer ways to work with their popular respective BI and data warehousing platforms.
Configuration options abound. Configuration options are quickly replacing the need for customization across all applications, whether delivered in the cloud or on-premises. That's because most organizations want to avoid developing and maintaining custom code. In the configuration approach, the vendor supplies menu- or wizard-driven interfaces that let you expose industry-specific functionality or set company-specific controls. Workday, for example, uses configuration to deliver features designed for colleges, universities and government agencies.
It's not that configuration is easy; it's a setup step that will likely have to be handled by deep technical experts during an initial deployment. But at least you won't have to worry about tweaking and testing code every time the application gets an upgrade. When you're using custom code, there's always a chance it will have to be redeveloped when changes are made to an underlying application.
There are cases when custom development can be a big help, particularly when you need functionality that the vendor just doesn't offer. That's why Salesforce.com, for one, offers the Force.com development platform while NetSuite provides SuiteBuilder customization tools and a SuiteFlow workflow engine. Consider both configuration and customization options when choosing a cloud app, but customize only when there's a clear return on the ongoing investment required.
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Financial apps emerge in the cloud. Cloud-based financial apps are growing in number and seeing healthy demand. Cloud suite vendors Workday and NetSuite provide the general ledger and accounting functionality associated with ERP systems. The same is true of FinancialForce.com, minority owned by Salesforce.com and majority owned by European ERP firm Unit4.
On-premises giants Oracle and SAP seem to be waking up to the threat. Oracle introduced cloud-ready Oracle Fusion Financials in late 2011, and SAP released Financials OnDemand in November. The latter is based on functionality from the SAP Business ByDesign suite, and it's likely to be paired with SAP SuccessFactors human capital management applications to answer the competitive threat from Workday.
For a deeper level of planning and budgeting functionality in the cloud, look to pure-play financial performance management vendors such as Adaptive Planning, Anaplan, Host Analytics, and Tidemark. Adaptive Planning, founded in 2003, has more than 1,200 customers and 30,000 users, and in 2012 it acquired cloud business intelligence vendor MyDials to bolster its dashboarding capabilities. Host Analytics, founded in 2000, has deep CFO-oriented functionality, including consolidation, and it's the second-largest vendor in this group, with more than 800 customers and 14,000 users. Anaplan and Tidemark are fast-growing startups. SAP and Oracle are just starting to bring performance management functionality into the cloud, so check their roadmaps if you're inclined to stick with your on-premises software vendor.
Financial apps may never become as pervasive as CRM in the cloud, but the increasingly global nature of even midsized organizations -- with income streams and financial management needs on several continents -- makes cloud-based deployment an attractive option.
Big data adds benchmarking value. A few cloud vendors have recognized that they're sitting on an incredibly valuable asset: the data generated by their many customers. The trick is aggregating this information in a secure, de-identified way such that it can't be traced back to a particular customer. This idea is not new. ERP vendors and user groups have collected and aggregated data for years in order to compile benchmark statistics. It's usually a data-swap affair in which you agree to provide your own data to the aggregated pool in exchange for access to the average and best-in-class statistics across your industry.
SuccessFactors jumped on the benchmarking bandwagon even before it was acquired by SAP, tapping into aggregated data from thousands of cloud customers to deliver by-industry employee, departmental and total-workforce metrics such as operating profit per full-time employee, the turnover rate among top-performing employees, internal hiring rate and voluntary termination rates. Workday recently announced plans for a Workday Big Data Analytics offering, set for release in the second half of 2013, that will bring third-party data sources into the analysis without complex ETL requirements. The more data you can bring to an analysis, the more accurate it's likely to be, so we like the idea of big-data-enabled benchmarking.
These are five cloud apps that we'll be watching in 2013, and given Oracle's plan to acquire Eloqua, announced recently, there's one more trend to watch in 2013: continued acquisitions of cloud-based marketing automation and marketing analytics companies. That trend started with IBM's purchase of Unica a few years ago, and since then SAS, Teradata, Oracle, Salesforce.com and others have jumped on the bandwagon. As we see it, most of the demand for marketing applications is in the cloud.
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‘The world will be surrounded by intelligent social machines by the end of 2013’: Atos CTO
In movies like Matrix, and Terminator, we have seen imaginary machines which can learn, now we will be seeing this in reality. This will be done by four key enablers namely social media, cloud, mobility/ machine to machines (M2M) and location powered with Big Data, which will bring a lot of business opportunities.
Trends of 2012
Let's go back to see what happened in 2012 when cloud computing started maturing. Lot of enterprises started embracing cloud for non-critical business like e-mail etc. Enterprises found log benefits in doing so reducing the CAPEX and going to OPEX.
Meanwhile, with evolution and adaptability of smartphones, enterprise started exploring "smartphones apps" for business purposes. It started with very simple applications like approvals which could be easily done through mobile phones, this actually helped business to go beyond approvals to mobile banking etc. We saw somewhere functionality of laptops coming on to smartphones/ tablets.
On the other hand, we saw huge success of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc., outside the enterprises. There was a thought leadership going in IT industry to see how this concept could also bring in advantages inside the enterprises (enterprise social networking).
Enterprises have collected data over years now; however they were not able to bring out substantial information from this data that will help them make mature decisions and bring in new strategic path for business to evolve. This is where new concept called "Big Data" came where enterprises started doing small proof of concepts to find patterns.
So as to say, 2012 was an exploration stage where IT companies were coming up with new tools and methodologies to bring in efficiency and at same time enterprises doing proof of concepts around those tools and methodologies to see how it could benefit them and enable smarter way of working. In 2013, we will see the roadmap of IT companies converging around the above concepts and providing focused solution which will bring in new business opportunities.
Road Ahead – 2013
Going forward, a Nexus of converging forces – Social, Cloud, Location and Mobile powered by Big Data will transform user behaviour, creating new business opportunities.
Location will be a King and will be most important aspect of context aware computing. It will be at centre where companies will be providing location based services on cloud. Location will be captured either through a mobile or through a M2M. Social will be the enabler in making collaborative decisions/discussions.
Let’s take the case of a Connected Car. Imagine you driving a car and fuel level is going low, through a machine inside the car, it alerts user on the mobile. Mobile will then take the location of the car and will alert the connected ecosystem of partners connected on cloud which could be petrol stations, malls. Taking this information, the partners will try to provide best services for this customer; this will be enabled through Big Data, which will help partners identify which will be the best service for the customer. Social media will then be used by the customer to help him make a decision.
Mobile devices will become an integral part of social media, collaboration will define a new way of working and cloud will enable delivery of information and functionality to users and systems. The power of social and mobile will bring in acceleration in business process and way of working and at the same time mobile and cloud will bring in distributed workforce, and cloud and social will bring in collaboration.
Hence, it’s of key importance for the enterprises to strategize this as one rather than having independent strategy for cloud, mobility etc.
This will also bring in lot of challenges:
Cloud
The business processes will not be confined in a single cloud environment but span across multiple clouds demanding for hybrid cloud situation. Further, the business processes will start connecting and communicating with smartphones, devices, sensors, electronic appliances and social media demanding following challenges to IT industry a) device agnostic messaging, b) cloud portability c) standardization.
Once these challenges are addressed, this will enable contextual information from virtually any relevant source to be directly integrated into the dependent data sources. With standardization of services, analysis is that in future the customer will get best commercial pricing based on context (Quality of Service, SLA, service pricing, choice of cloud service providers). The analogy of this is a travel agent who can provide the best offer to the customer based on the context (Weekend, time of day, vacation time, season and special offers).
More and more vertical or industry specific Platform as a Service (PaaS) services will emerge.
Mobility
Employees are already tapping on the nexus of social, cloud and mobility at the office – opting to buy their own smartphone over the company issued devices using online storage for corporate documents needed from home without the hassle of VPN – these are inevitabilities of today’s social and mobile workforce. Enterprise firewall strategy had to be thought of.
Big Data
Further, with enablement of new services, more and more data will be generated. Emphasis on tools and applications for pattern analytics and association will increase. The power will be in how close to real time are you to identify the data against this pattern and this will be achieved by making use of cloud.
Social, cloud, location and mobile will revolutionize the way of working in a big way and truly the convergence of social, mobile, cloud and location will open new avenues of doing business and will eventually revolutionize business and society.
The author is CTO, Atos India
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Top 4 technology trends for 2013: Intel
Technology and computing experiences today are pervasive – increasingly integrated into the fabric of our daily lives and our expectations and human desires for technology. The need to express ourselves, create, share, learn and protect our personal information is growing.
We are at the beginning of what is another significant transformational moment for the personal computing experience as we move into 2013. Intel foresees a renewed vigor in computing in 2013 with the emergence of a highly connected multi-device world landscape. Some of the key technology trends that Intel predicts for the year 2013 are as follows.
Cloud computing
2013
will be a turning point for cloud deployment in the APAC region. Cloud
users will begin to demand standardized, open, interoperable platforms
for cloud computing. As businesses begin to rely on the cloud for
general business operations, the demand for unrestricted use - bringing
data in and out of the cloud - will become a focus in 2013.
Big Data analytics
A trend that is fast being touted as the ‘next big thing’ that will help the industry move forward is Big Data. Storing and analyzing the massive amounts of user data to give near real time insights into customer behavior to tailor products and services to exceed customers’ expectations will gain momentum in 2013.
Compute experience reinvented
The new generations today are experiencing computers for the first time, using intuitive input methods such as touch. And the Indian market has shown a lot of potential for mobility devices and tablets and this has, in particular caught the fancy of the young consumers.
Intel believes that traditional input devices such as keyboards and mouse will be challenged by new input methods like voice and gesture recognition. Tablets, convertibles and new devices will enter the market blurring the boundaries between PCs and tablets.
Online collaboration
The increasing internet penetration means that in 2013 there will be new populations coming online who will look for newer ways to connect and share amongst themselves. Enterprises will also experience resurgence in connectivity, as employees look for better ways to create connections and work efficiently with colleagues.
Read More Big Data analytics
A trend that is fast being touted as the ‘next big thing’ that will help the industry move forward is Big Data. Storing and analyzing the massive amounts of user data to give near real time insights into customer behavior to tailor products and services to exceed customers’ expectations will gain momentum in 2013.
Compute experience reinvented
The new generations today are experiencing computers for the first time, using intuitive input methods such as touch. And the Indian market has shown a lot of potential for mobility devices and tablets and this has, in particular caught the fancy of the young consumers.
Intel believes that traditional input devices such as keyboards and mouse will be challenged by new input methods like voice and gesture recognition. Tablets, convertibles and new devices will enter the market blurring the boundaries between PCs and tablets.
Online collaboration
The increasing internet penetration means that in 2013 there will be new populations coming online who will look for newer ways to connect and share amongst themselves. Enterprises will also experience resurgence in connectivity, as employees look for better ways to create connections and work efficiently with colleagues.
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Top IT agendas for 2013: Cloud, mobility and analytics
According to Symphony Teleca, the year 2013 will see a fundamental reshaping in the way commercial software and software related products are built and deployed in a rapidly merging environment of the cloud, mobility and analytics. Some of the key predictions for the year 2013 are as follows:
Computing becomes task-centric
There will be a shift to task-centric computing as user interfaces become truly multi-modal and content, services and applications grow to be pervasive, moving with the user across device types.
UI keeps leaning towards voice, not touch
There will be an increased emphasis on voice recognition enablement technologies such as ECNR as the next phase of UI is not keys or touch, but voice.
Consumers will control their digital personas
Consumers will demand federated control of their identities across platforms and devices as they seek to manage their digital personas not just on their own devices but across all.
Mobile continues to drive impulse purchasing
There will be growth in the number of consumers using their mobile devices to perform impulse or opportunity-driven purchases. Retailers will create a simplified transaction process leveraging desktop account credentials. Dynamic analytics using in-memory databases will enable targeted promotions from retailers and other B2C companies on mobile devices.
An industry of digital infomediaries will evolve
As companies look to leverage social media data, an industry of digital infomediaries will evolve that can provide syndicated, individual consumer level data that is current and actionable.
NFC has its day
Near Field Communication (NFC) will reach a tipping point. A tremendous number of people will have devices with NFC (in addition to RIM, Nokia, Sony, Google and many others are now shipping with NFC) - a critical mass of NFC-equipped phones just may be coming together and it may find a home in the enterprise as well.
NFC tags will enable consumer lifecycle engagement
NFC tags on individual consumer products will allow companies to engage and maintain a relationship with individual consumers throughout the lifecycle of the product.
Consumers start to pick a car for its infotainment system, not its horsepower
The auto industry will see a buying trend around infotainment capabilities and rear-seat features versus historic qualities of evaluation such as engine size or cabin room.
The car becomes the new smartphone
The auto industry will realize that they're facing the same challenges that phone and tablet developers faced in the last few years and will start to adopt similar approaches to their software development problems.
Tablets become workstations
There will be continued growth of tablet use in the enterprise as well as a more enterprise apps developed for tablets in particular. Companies will start to consider the devices and technologies necessary for increased collaboration where employees can not only access material via the tablet but can also use it as a mutual working station.
Homes get connected with second devices
There will be increased sales of the second-screen devices at home. Lower price point tablets like the iPad Mini and Samsung Galaxy will see growth as families will only want to spend USD 300-USD 400 on a second tablet device for their home.
Same platform, all devices becomes the new normal
There will be a rise in the “all-screen strategy” – using the same platform across device categories, including TV sets.
ISVs tap new markets with partners
Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) will see new profits generated from aggressively adapting their solutions for new markets. To do this, ISVs will continue to work with innovation partners to reduce time to market including product ideation sessions.
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5 key enterprise technology trends for 2013: Brocade
The Year 2012 will be remembered for many remarkable events, including the Summer Olympics in London that not only showcased the best in human achievement and global collaboration, but also illustrated how technology-obsessed the world has become. More than 4.8 billion people watched the event, with digital viewers outnumbering traditional television viewers for the first time in history.
While 2012 was a breakthrough year for broadcasters, enterprises and consumers, let’s see what 2013 holds:
1. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) deployments begin
The Olympics proved that consumer demand for information accessibility shows no sign of abating. However, as service providers try to meet said demand, and juggle the complexities of running a profitable business – for instance, to reduce CAPEX (capital expenditure) and OPEX (operating expenditure) and increase service responsiveness – they are looking for technology alternatives that will streamline service creation and foster innovative applications and services. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) offers a means of doing this.
SDN links networks and applications, enabling direct programmatic control of both networks and orchestration layers in line with end-user application needs, rather than programming around the network, as is done today. IDC predicts that by 2016, the market will be worth USD 2 billion a year, up from just USD 168 million today. With the promise of SDN architectures radically decreasing total cost of ownership (TCO), and vendor innovation/support continuing to increase, I predict that we’ll see pockets of actual SDN service deployments across the globe, primarily in the U.S. and Japan. The year 2013 will see the start of great things for this technology.
2. Death of the “Transaction-Based” user
A “transaction-based user” is an individual that will connect to the Internet to conduct an activity (such as to make a purchase or to stream content), and then log off. The premise is that the user will sparingly use bandwidth and not rely on connectivity for every aspect of their life. With the roll-out of higher-performing networks (such as 4G and LTE) and devices that offer seamless connectivity, I predict that 2013 will be the year that we see the decline of the “transaction-based” user and the rise of the “always-connected” user.
Operators will vie for consumer loyalty by offering attractive pricing models, fuelling the trend for 24/7 connectivity. Businesses will leverage this phenomenon and increasingly turn to social media and communities to host a larger portion of their customer experience and support processes. While this will transform engagement models; to be successful, operators and business will need to ensure that their back-end networks can meet user expectations. In situations such as this, even one service disruption could be fatal to the customer relationship.
3. Cloud under the microscope
Last year Brocade predicted that non-IT organizations would move towards “Cloud Service Provisioning” in order to uncover new ways of optimizing and monetizing cloud and service provider networks. For the next 12 months, I see this trend continuing, but in an evolved state.
First, businesses will scrutinize the impact of the cloud, its benefits, usage and ROI more than ever before. For example, are deployments delivering the agility and cost savings predicted? Are users benefitting? How can one measure cloud ROI when, by design, the assets are not owned by the organization? With this in mind, I predict that IT organizations will attempt to take back control of their own assets and budgets and the deployment of private cloud architectures will accelerate during the second half of the year.
IT organizations will also challenge the new breed of service provider by offering competing hosted services. This strategy will help them to bolster revenue opportunities from a market that will be worth USD 73 billion by 2015. This will be good news for users, but will need to be accompanied by a thorough evaluation strategy to ensure that performance, resilience and cost models meet organizational expectations.
4. Customers bite back on vendor lock-in
As consumers, we don’t like being shackled. More generally, “product de-siloing” is a clear macro-trend. Whether it is the flexibility to personalize apps on our phone, or select the optional extras on our vehicles, choice is paramount. Within the networking space, choice is even more imperative. As alliances ebb and flow, and integrated offerings continue to break into the mainstream, the importance of open architectures and multivendor solutions will become more prevalent in 2013.
Trust is essential when building a network to support mission-critical applications, and enterprises will turn to trusted vendors to deploy flexible and scalable solutions. As such, those vendors not able to coexist in multivendor environments will struggle in this more demanding, and competitive, landscape. Only the agile and collaborative will prosper, and I expect at least one major vendor casualty in the coming year.
5. Technology will begin to overcome human shortcomings
I remember when desktop icons did not exist; a time when a user had to manually type the name of an application in a shell-like text window to access applications. This was time-consuming, error-prone and frustrating, but the desktop icon revolutionized the user experience.
Innovations such as this overcame human shortcomings and simplified the user experience, and I predict more such innovations over the next 12 months. Think of voice-command devices and the fact that modern smartphones can deliver communications, content and compute services in a single form-factor. This kind of human multitasking would not happen, but technology has innovated to such a degree that it is now second nature to even the most basic user. I expect more breakthrough advances this year.
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L&T Infotech targets SMBs with App Shop
Research firm, Zinnov, estimates that with over 50 million units, India has the largest number of SMBs across the world. While more than one-third of India’s GDP is attributed to the SMB sector, most SMBs are still struggling to compete with large players as most of them do not adequately leverage information technology.
A large number of SMBs have still not looked at using IT as a catalyst for driving growth, as they have traditional challenges such as skill set availability and affordable and customized IT products. This market is up for grabs as ambitious SMBs who are increasingly getting connected to their global counterparts, are now looking at using technology to improve their efficiencies and productivity.
Not surprisingly, a host of vendors, system integrators and pure play cloud startups have started tapping this attractive market by offering a host of customized solutions. The latest one to announce plans for tapping this huge market is L&T Infotech.
L&T Infotech has ambitious plans for making a mark in this segment in the next one year, and has accordingly chalked out a detailed strategy. Explaining the positioning, Abhay Chitnis, VP & CTO, L&T Infotech, says, “Ours is a uniq
The goal is to create a platform which can support multiple domains based communities like discrete manufacturing suppliers, pharma distributors, healthcare and educational institutes.
The company has also smartly decided to target the extended arms of companies, which are huge in number, but are not mature in terms of processes and technology, as the clients they provide services to. This includes suppliers and distributors of large companies who need to have the necessary processes in place but cannot afford technology.
With this objective, the firm has launched L&T Infotech App Shop (called LTI App Shop). The LTI App Shop currently has apps such as Payfast – a cloud based payroll system, Shiksha cloud (ERP platform for education sector), Planning and Procurement, cEMS (request based system to manage admin processes) and Sapphire (Social media analytics) along with value added services like email, helpdesk, office and collaboration apps. L&T Infotech will also host apps from other partner vendors, backed by a unified billing and single sign on feature.
With a well targeted strategy and a portfolio of need-based apps for SMBs, L&T Infotech is well positioned to carve out its own unique identity in a crowded cloud market.
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Google links Gmail to drive for huge attachments
The first automatically encoded email attachment was sent over 20 years ago, on March 11, 1992, by then Bellcore researcher Nathaniel Borenstein, using what would become the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) protocol. It was 406 KB, or thereabouts, assuming the .wav file posted on Borenstein's website is unaltered.
Since then, files have put on weight. Graphics files, music files and video files today are routinely measured in tens or hundreds of megabytes, even gigabytes. Internet users, however, still want to send files via email. ISPs, in an effort to prevent overloaded networks, tend to impose limits on email attachments. These limits vary, but tend to be in the 10-25 MB range, with a few services allowing larger files.
Google however wants to appear more generous still: It is offering Gmail users a way to email files of up to 10 GB.
"Have you ever tried to attach a file to an email only to find out it's too large to send?" wrote Google product manager Phil Sharp in a blog post. "Now with Drive, you can insert files up to 10 GB -- 400 times larger than what you can send as a traditional attachment."
However, Google isn't actually changing the mechanics of email attachments. It is integrating Gmail and Google Drive so that the process of attaching a file using Gmail saves the file in the user's Drive storage space. So when the user sends the attached file, he or she ends up sending a pointer to where the file resides in Google's cloud, a URL. Message recipients can then access the file, using the emailed URL to download it from Google Drive or simply to view it in a browser.
For Gmail users, the distinction between MIME attachments and Drive attachments isn't likely to matter. It would only come into play if, for example, if the recipient of an email with an attachment immediately went offline. A traditional attachment, within allowed size parameters, would be downloaded automatically by an appropriately configured mail client and would thereafter be available without an Internet connection. A Drive attachment, being just a link until accessed, would be inaccessible if the message recipient was offline.
Google isn't doing anything particularly new here: Cloud storage services like Dropbox and Box handle file sharing in a similar way. But Google has made Gmail more useful as a business tool, given that email remains the preferred collaboration application for many people. It has made Gmail into an alternative interface for Drive. In so doing, Google may gain a competitive advantage over standalone cloud storage services -- the popularity of Gmail is likely to encourage more use of Drive, potentially at the expense of other cloud storage competitors. Read More
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CA Technologies Reaches VCE Product Certification Milestone
25 offerings now certified to run on Vblock infrastructure platforms
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Virtualization brings major benefits to Wonder Cement
The company has achieved 98.5 percent business uptime and 60 percent power savings by implementing Citrix solutions for server, desktop and application virtualization
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Tata AIA Life Insurance deploys VMware vSphere for building cloud infrastructure
The VMware deployment has helped Tata AIA Insurance company to consolidate its IT infrastructure from more than 90 servers to only 10 servers
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Indian SMB space holds huge potential for server and desktop virtualization, says AMI
With only a small percent of organizations in the SMB space opting for virtualization, the potential for adoption is huge
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Unified architecture helps KPIT Cummins improve data center efficiencies
By choosing a unified architecture of networking, storage and computing, KPIT Cummins has significantly enhanced the efficiency of its IT infrastructure
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Enabling virtual machine security in unified cloud environments
As virtual machines grow in number, the challenges to secure them will also increase at an exponential pace. Raghuveer Krishna, Technical Director, MindTree explains the key security concerns
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Security drives majority of desktop virtualization deployments
92 percent of the organizations are adopting desktop virtualization to improve information security, according to a global research commissioned by Citrix
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What will eat your IT job?
HCL says virtualization and cloud technologies are automating the roles that it used to fill with lots of H-1B workers
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Virtualization helps K Raheja Corp cut energy costs, boost efficiencies
By consolidating and virtualizing its servers, the firm has achieved a drastic reduction in power consumption, with added benefits of improvement in performance and manageability
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Citrix rides desktop virtualization wave by signing up 1 lakh seats in 10 months
Major Indian clients who have adopted desktop virtualization solutions include Essar, Geometric and Perfetti Van Melle India
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Tiding over downtime challenges in a virtual environment
Virtualization has the capability of radically transforming computing by reducing costs and increasing agility. However, an effective downtime management strategy is crucial to fully reap these benefits
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Will Dell lead the x86 data center market?
Can Dell's vStart virtualized rack systems that integrate servers, switches, and storage lead a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars?
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Cisco, Citrix do video via virtual desktop
Technology sends HD video point-to-point through a virtual desktop infrastructure, bypassing the data center and cutting CPU and network consumption
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VMware Project Octopus: Dropbox alternative
VMware's enterprise-grade answer to Dropbox aims to balance effectiveness and IT control
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End of Microsoft XP support accelerating desktop virtualization
With less than thousand days to go until Microsoft no longer supports Windows XP, organizations are migrating to Windows 7 and tying their Windows 7 upgrades with desktop virtualization initiatives
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The great myth of cloud computing
The tools are viable and the payoff is real, but it’s not happening because hardly anyone has the time or money to do it
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How to maximize virtualization benefits with effective storage resources management
By implementing appropriate storage resource management tools, enterprises can overcome new challenges that virtualization introduces in the storage realm
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A practical approach to virtualization
In the drive towards virtualization, organizations must take the approach which gives unbiased opinion about their current infrastructure
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Majority of SMBs not protecting data on virtualized servers
A Symantec survey has found out that many small businesses are neglecting to protect their virtual environments
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How to deploy end to end desktop virtualization within 60 minutes
At INTEROP Mumbai 2011, join Raj Dhingra, Global CEO, NComputing, as he explains how an organization can deploy desktop virtualization within an hour
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4 ways to avoid desktop virtualization ROI traps
As the number of viable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) increase, enterprises must pay close attention to four key areas when making a decision
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Geometric virtualizes 250 desktops in desktop virtualization initiative
The firm has announced a large scale desktop virtualization implementation based on the Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) architecture with Cisco, NetApp and Citrix
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VMware unveils vSphere 5
The virtualization specialist has also released a comprehensive suite of cloud infrastructure technologies
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Orbis Financial’s IT goes virtual
With virtualization the company has saved USD 50,000 on physical hardware costs, USD 13,000 per annum on power and cooling and USD 15,000 per annum on maintenance and support
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Virtualization and cloud computing cannot be treated in isolation, says Symantec
Symantec says that virtualization is the first step towards cloud
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Hexaware virtualizes its DC
The consolidation initiative has enabled Hexaware to gain close to 25 percent reduction in upfront costs
Read More ...
VMware introduces vFabric 5
vFabric 5 is an integrated application platform for virtual and cloud environments
Read More ...
Euronet adopts open source virtualization
The company implemented Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in a phased manner by initially moving less critical applications onto the solution
Read More ...
Big technology vendors form open virtualization alliance
Red Hat and IBM join with Intel, HP, BMC Software, Eucalyptus, and SUSE Linux to provide an alternative to VMware
Read More ...
Virtualization leads to better CPU utilization
Server CPU utilization level increased from 20 percent to 80 percent and savings of ` 30,00,000 by deploying virtual machines instead of physical servers
Read More ...
Virtualization helps PVM improve hardware utilization by 70 percent
Server virtualization freed server capacity to support long-term growth, minimized maintenance tasks and enabled resources to be allocated to applications as per requirement
Read More ...
‘To capitalize on 3G, telcos need to efficiently handle data traffic’
Anil Pochiraju, Managing Director- India and SAARC at F5 Networks tells Vinita Gupta how Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) can help enterprises manage emerging information access demands thrown up due to technologies such as 3G
Read More ...
2011 Outlook – Symantec
The number of applications and amount of data in virtual environments will grow significantly in 2011, says Anand Naik
Read More ...
Innovators will lead the market in 2011
In 2011, ICT would again gain prominence as a tool for economic productivity
Read More ...
Max New York Life insures itself with server virtualization
The virtualization initiative has helped in delivering a significant reduction in carbon emission — which is equivalent to the average emission of taking 64 cars off the road per year
Read More ...
Desktop virtualization helps co-operative bank reduce TCO by 50 percent
Using VMware View, the AP Mahesh Co-operative Urban Bank has lowered desktop maintenance costs by 75 percent
Read More ...
LG and VMware join forces to accelerate enterprise adoption of employee owned smartphones
Partnership targets new methods for businesses to manage employee owned mobile devices
Read More ...
How to maximize your investments in virtualization
What are the steps that a CIO can undertake to maximize investments made in virtualization?
Read More ...
Credit card transactions likely in future public clouds
The PCI Security Standards Council has recognized virtualization as a safe technology; can cloud computing be far behind
Read More ...
You cannot virtualize in a vacuum
Implementing virtualization without considering its impact on surrounding IT resources can lead to unexpected results
Read More ...
Red Hat upskills IT professionals for cloud computing era
Adoption in cloud computing and virtualization technologies across Asia Pacific drives demand for an additional certification
Read More ...
Energy is 12 percent of data center costs, says Gartner
Energy is rising faster than other category of data center expenses, and the rising population of servers is blamed. Can virtualization help?
Read More ...
Citrix refreshes XenServer virtualization platform
Storage efficiency and cloud integration features reduce desktop virtualization costs and complexity, according to Citrix
Read More ...
‘Virtual computing will enable consumerization of IT’
Mark Templeton, President and CEO of Citrix speaks passionately about everything from tablets to virtualization, virtual computing data centers and the company's efforts in these areas
Read More ...
'Organizations cannot run their IT infrastructure the same way for the next five years’
Steve Leonard, President, EMC Asia Pacific and Japan, shares his perspective on how organizations are
making their journey to the cloud
Read More ...
Virtualization leads server manufacturers to a new paradigm
As the number of physical servers decline, server manufacturers are now focusing on revenue per server than on the number of units sold
Read More ...
Telecom operators defying DoT’s Green Telecom Directive: Greenpeace
According to the organization, the telecom operators have failed to adhere to the deadline to publicly announce their carbon emissions as mandated in the Green Telecom Directive
Read More ...
SAP’s journey to energy-efficient data centers
Raghavendra Rao, Vice President – IT, SAP Labs, Bangalore, shares insights on the measures the company has taken to improve efficiency of its data centers
Read More ...
ITC Infotech unveils sustainability management solution
The product has been built with the aim of simplifying the process of sustainability management across the globe
Read More ...
IT and environmental management
Companies experience various problems when they try to implement an environmental program as adequate IT systems are not in place to collect the data
Read More ...
Organizations going green mostly to save costs
A survey by IDC and HP reveals that while most organizations have policies related to green printing and printers, few think green when it comes to procuring printing solutions. But the mindset is changing
Read More ...
Gartner report recognizes Fujitsu’s green initiatives
Fujitsu, the ICT-based business solutions provider, is one of the vendors driving initiatives to reduce Greenhouse Gases (GHG) of ICT, according to a report by research firm Gartner and WWF
Read More ...
Infosys BPO’s Jaipur building earns LEED India ‘Platinum’ rating
The first Platinum rated building for Infosys; will be the basis for all future Infosys buildings
Read More ...
IBM, IIT Madras and IIT Kharagpur to jointly develop smarter power grids
Researchers from the company along with students will develop network architectures to collect data as well as analytics tools to provide valuable information to the grid operators
Read More ...
Busting the Green Myth
Interop Mumbai 2010 got off to a 'energetic' start with a green session on Green IT
Read More ...
Why IT is key to carbon reduction
By using IT, organizations can identify inefficiencies and make fact-based decisions on the carbon cost of their business
Read More ...
MAIT lauds government for making e-waste rules draft public
The draft rules lay emphasis on producers to effectively manage and handle e-waste
Read More ...
Ford saves more than one million dollars by switching off PCs at night
Simple step of powering down laptops and desktop PCs will help Ford save USD 1.2 million and reduce its carbon footprint by 16,000 to 25,000 metric tons annually
Read More ...
Does Green IT make business sense?
Finding the right inflection points for “green” change is key for business success
Read More ...
Why sustainable ICT is a vital element for business success
Sustainable ICT solutions can not only save costs, but can also help in bringing about a transformation in business
Read More ...
BT Offers Tool for Tracking Video Conferencing Travel and Carbon Savings
Users document millions of dollars in annualized cost savings
Read More ...
Zenith Infotech’s PROUD May Redefine Enterprise IT
An ambitious Indian product company is attempting to break into the niche space of centralized computing. Zenith Infotech’s product has the potential to firmly etch India’s name on the global map
Read More ...
Switching to Power Saving Mode
Considering the inadequate power infrastructure in the country, a few solutions adopted at both the active and passive infrastructure levels can help organizations to actively address energy woes
Read More ...
In Economic Cloud, Infosys Sees a Green Lining
As the demand and costs for computing power soar, a core team at Infosys is undertaking a series of green IT initiatives that could help in raising the bar for Green IT practices in the country
Read More ...
Hardware Vendors Pledge Support for VMware's DPM Solution
Called Distributed Power Management (DPM), the solution is designed to lower power consumption in the datacenter by aggregating unused capacity and powering off unused servers without disrupting service levels
Read More ...
Unique data center design manages space constraints
With the company having launched a Direct Market Access web portal for its customers, there was a need to have a data center with high bandwidth infrastructure to provide the level of high availability that online stock trading portals demand. The company decided to deploy the data center within its premises, leveraging on the high speed LAN network. However, it was challenged to accommodate the data center within a height of 10 feet, while providing a full-fledged data center infrastructure
Read More ...
Plugging into a green future
Aiming to reduce its carbon footprint while reducing costs, improving productivity and overall efficiency, Applied Materials India launched ‘Operation Green.’
Read More ...
CtrlS crosses Rs 100 crore in annuity revenue
The milestone comes within 6 months of initiating operations at the Mumbai datacenter and 5 years of incorporation
Read More ...
Emerson and IBM combine software capabilities to tap USD 450 million DCIM market
IBM IT service management software integrates with Emerson Network Power’s Trellis platform
Read More ...
Can an Indian startup provide answers to global data center energy woes?
Using its patented software, startup VigyanLabs is trying to create a new market by promising its clients 30-40 percent reduction in power consumption
Read More ...
Mobile computing, virtualization and cloud driving data center complexity in Indian organizations: Symantec report
96 percent of organizations looking at information governance to address challenges
Read More ...
VMware, EMC shakeup hints at data center's future
VMware CEO Maritz moves up to EMC chief strategist role and Gelsinger becomes VMware CEO, as virtualization changes how data centers are run. Take a look at EMC's larger vision
Read More ...
How to not plan a data center
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency built a bigger data center than it needed. Now the potential federal IT boondoggle is being turned into a storage center for data generated by remote sensors and cloud computing.
Read More ...
A peek inside Wipro’s LEED GOLD Certified Data Center
Kiran Desai, VP and Business Head, Managed Services Business, Wipro Infotech, talks about the power management and cooling technologies deployed within Wipro’s LEED GOLD-certified Data Center in Greater Noida
Read More ...
Towards the data center without walls
A Data Center Without Walls benefits both the cloud service provider or carrier and enterprise IT customers by creating seamless workflow movement and greater resource efficiencies
Read More ...
Software-Defined data centers are future, says VMware CTO, Steve Herrod
VMware CTO Steve Herrod predicts that all data center resources will be virtualized and governed by a unified console
Read More ...
Netmagic and Spectranet enter into strategic partnership
India's first multi-location commercial Datacenter-n-Datacenter worth Rs 200 crore to be set up in four cities as part of the partnership
Read More ...
Acquisition by NTT Com will open up global market for Netmagic - Sharad Sanghi
Calling the acquisition a huge win-win deal for both Netmagic and NTT Communications Corporation, Netmagic’s CEO, Sharad Sanghi, says that this deal will help his firm access global markets
Read More ...
Andhra Pradesh Government launches State Data Centre
Spread across 9000 square feet, the Data Centre has a storage capacity of 50 TB
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Data centers, DR, and private clouds now ‘on-demand’
Want a data center? A company is now offering it ‘on demand’ and claims you can have it in a few weeks. It claims you can save significantly with their on-demand private cloud and on-demand DR site; resources can be self-provisioned much faster
Read More ...
Aircel reduces overall DC carbon footprint
The data center has helped in establishing service oriented architecture (SOA) that, in turn, has enabled fast rollouts pan-India without compromising on the flexibility to adapt to business requirements
Read More ...
'Cloud optimized networks can help organizations solve business challenges'
At the Brocade Technology Day 2011 event at San Jose, Dave Stevens, CTO, Brocade spoke to Vinita Gupta about Brocade’s ways of extending data center-class capabilities to the network edge
Read More ...
HP Networking becomes EAL 2 CC certified
HP is the first company in India to have leveraged the CC certification process, having met the rigorous security standards established by the CC framework, to ensure IT security
Read More ...
Cisco introduces portable data centers
The containerized data centers house 16 racks and include chilled water cooling systems for enterprises that need a quick, flexible, and mobile computing power
Read More ...
Smartlink Network Systems sells Digilink to Schneider
Smartlink Network Systems Ltd (SNSL) today announced that it is selling its Digilink Business to Schneider Electric India (Schneider) for Rs 5,030 million, under Business Transfer Agreement (BTA). The transaction would primarily include the transfer of the “Digilink” brand and trademarks, part of the manufacturing facility at Goa, the distribution network and employees who served Digilink. The company has agreed to a non-compete condition for a period of 5 years for the passive networking business.
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Tech giants push smart networking standard
Rivals Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, along with Cisco and IBM to name a few others, are overlooking their differences to promote programmable networking
Read More ...
Juniper aims to flatten the network with QFabric
QFabric is Juniper’s vision of a single fabric to reduce network latency
Read More ...
Ethernet fabric switching solutions to ease data center bottlenecks
Brocade introduces VCS technology and the VDX platform for virtualized data centers and cloud environments
Read More ...
What will future data centers look like?
With the ability to add multiple cores in a single server, combined with virtualization capabilities, data centers of the future might be a fraction of the size they are today
Read More ...
Does SSD make sense in the small data center?
The small data center with two to three servers may be an ideal match for disk form factor SSDs
Read More ...
Emerging data center designs aimed at deriving highest compute performance per kilowatt
New data centers will be able to provide a 300 percent growth in capacity in 60 percent less space than existing data centers, according to Gartner
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Gartner survey shows data growth as the largest data center infrastructure challenge
More than half of respondents plan to expand capacity at existing data center sites by end of 2011
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“Dell will focus on standardization, simplification and automation of the environment”
Dell announced its Efficient Enterprise strategy last year, which is aimed at helping businesses reduce spending on IT infrastructure maintenance. In an exclusive interview with InformationWeek India, Jim Merritt, President, Asia Pacific Japan, Large Enterprise, Dell gave Brian Pereira an update on Efficient Enterprise
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Linux replacing Windows in data centers
A Linux Foundation survey found increasing preference for the open source operating system in new server deployments
Read More ...
Trimax wins Managed IT services project from Rajasthan Govt
As a part of the project, the company will manage end-to-end IT for various organizations of the State of Rajasthan
Read More ...
Emerson Network Power launches new data center management tool
The firm recently introduced Avocent Data Center Planner, a visual infrastructure planning and management software solution
Read More ...
Energy costs account for 12 percent of overall data center expenditures
Energy-related costs are the fastest-rising cost in the data center, say researchers at Gartner
Read More ...
40 GbE will be an important technology for the data center
Paul Hooper, Chief Marketing Officer, Extreme Networks shares his perspective on the evolution of the cloud and why 40GbE will prove to be a powerful solution in the data center
Read More ...
SafeNet teams up with NetApp to provide storage security
This collaboration will provide users with the ability to manage and protect on-premise, cloud-based and virtualized data storage
Read More ...
Virtual environments bring in real challenges
While adoption of virtualization is growing at a fast clip, Indian enterprises are discovering new challenges in the virtual world
Read More ...
Wipro launches data centers that can be set up in a week
Wipro Infotech announced the launch of FluidState data centers, which can be launched almost ten times faster than a conventional data center
Read More ...
Data center power can be reduced by 50 percent, says IIT Delhi professor
Dr Preeti Ranjan Panda from IIT Delhi is working on a project to reduce power consumption in the data center by up to 50 percent
Read More ...
IBM unveils Next-Generation mainframe
Big Blue calls new zEnterprise server a "data center in a box" that will appeal as much to CFOs as CIOs
Read More ...
HP delivers new collaboration and consolidation solutions for SMBs
New offerings include server and storage solutions that HP claims will allow upto 56 percent reductions in total cost of ownership compared to traditional IT infrastructures
Read More ...
10,000 cows can power 1 MW data center, says HP Labs
Research from HP Labs shows how the manure output of cows and the heat output of data centers can be combined to create an economically and environmentally sustainable operation
Read More ...
IBM bets on ex5 to propel x86 market share
The firm’s eX5 architecture will allow enterprises to scale the memory in their data centers without having to buy new servers
Read More ...
‘Systems are getting instrumented and increasingly interconnected’
If you were stumped by terms like ‘smart grids,’ ‘smarter
planet’ and ‘dynamic infrastructure’ and wondered how all this
would change the world, you’ve got to have a chat with Dr
P (Gopal) Gopalakrishnan, VP, IBM India Software Lab. Dr
Gopal has been tracking technology for years and contributes
to several major products from IBM in the areas of software
and systems. He told Brian Pereira about IBM’s Smarter
Planet and Dynamic Infrastructure visions and how these will
transform the data center
Read More ...
‘Application owners want the infrastructure to be secure multi-tenant’
As data centers become increasingly virtualized there are a
new set of challenges to be tackled. Brian Pereira caught up
with Rajesh Janey, President – India and SAARC, NetApp,
to discuss customer concerns, and how NetApp is addressing these issues through its storage efficiency drive and solutions
Read More ...
Are you neglecting your WAN?
Web apps and consolidated data centers are adding pressure, and video will bring more. It could be time to explore new options
Read More ...
How open source helped People Interactive save more than Rs 80 lakh
The firm that owns the popular Indian matrimony website Shaadi.com, has saved huge costs related to licenses and maintenance by deploying Ubuntu Linux on more than 800 desktops
Read More ...
SUSE to join Dell emerging solutions ecosystem
SUSE recently announced that the firm was selected to join Dell’s Emerging Solutions Ecosystem as an open source cloud solution provider
Read More ...
Cloud, Mobility and Open Source will drive Indian application development market
The Indian application development software market is expected to reach more than USD 227 million in 2012, says research firm, Gartner
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India plays key role in Red Hat’s global plans
Besides playing a key role in the firm's R&D operations, Red Hat's entire product line is supported from India
Read More ...
Amazon makes clever private cloud play
Partnership with Eucalyptus, the open-source purveyor of Amazon APIs, guarantees ongoing compatibility between public EC2 and private cloud operations
Read More ...
How to reduce your cost and improve time to market by using open source NextGen portals
At INTEROP Mumbai 2011, Bharati Lele, Head - Innovation Labs, L&T Infotech, will deliver a session on why open source portals represent a great alternative to commercial portals
Read More ...
Rains from private clouds percolate to SMBs
In India, a couple of small firms are demonstrating the true value of private clouds
Read More ...
No more technology lock-in
As much as 90 percent reduction in connectivity, power and other recurring costs
Read More ...
Adoption of open source infrastructure management tools on the rise
A growing number of Indian CIOs are considering open source network management tools to manage their infrastructure
Read More ...
Open source vulnerabilities paint a target on Android
With smartphone exploits on the rise, an almost-successful attack against Android devices hints at future dangers
Read More ...
Linux developers mull unified App Store
Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and other distros are working on a framework for a universal application installer
Read More ...
Indian CIOs open up to open source
Indian CIOs are opening up towards adoption of open source but it will not be a ‘rip and replace’ technology and will co-exist along with proprietary software
Read More ...
Open source project server hacked, software rigged with backdoor trojan
ProFTPD File Transfer server software compromised by attackers; anyone who downloaded it between November 28 through December 2 most likely at risk
Read More ...
Red Hat looks to strengthen its PaaS offerings with Makara acquisition
By integrating the JBoss Enterprise Middleware infrastructure with Makara’s Cloud Application Platform, the company aims to offer a more comprehensive PaaS solution
Read More ...
Microsoft supporting cloud open source code for Hyper-V
The software giant says its customers don't necessarily want a single hypervisor cloud, so it's supporting OpenStack
Read More ...
Actuate partners with Wipro to drive open source BIRT adoption in India
Wipro Infotech will promote the use of Actuate products including Actuate BIRT among organizations in India
Read More ...
Indian open standards policy for e-governance finalized
India's Department of IT (DIT) has approved a far-reaching policy on open standards for e-Governance
Read More ...
Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst says software industry broken
Jim Whitehurst believes all vendors, not just Linux distributors, need to embrace open source development methods to improve quality and reduce cycle times
Read More ...
mCarbon selects Red Hat Enterprise Linux for new infrastructure platform
Post implementation, mCarbon’s voicemail application has seen a steep increase in call attempts from 2 lakh to about 5 lakh in just two years without any drop in performance
Read More ...
Go green with Open Source
Industry is adopting Open Source because of its many benefits and going green is one of the major ones
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Informatica aids information management with Marketplace
Informatica Marketplace provides a central location for the community members to contribute mappings, mapplets, connectors, templates, dictionaries, vertical solutions and more.
Read More ...
Oracle releases 'Unbreakable' Linux kernel
Competition with Red Hat heats up with a modified Linux that Oracle says is best for running its software on its hardware
Read More ...
Microsoft goes 'open' with Windows Azure
The company has announced the availability of a new set of developer tools and SDKs for open source developers to build applications for Windows Azure
Read More ...
Symbian and Android to lead mobile OS market, says Gartner
The two operating systems will account for close to 60 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014
Read More ...
Red Hat Linux helps NCDEX achieve 99.99 percent uptime
With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, NCDEX has designed a high-performance and cost-effective IT infrastructure that has delivered 99.99 percent uptime for its business applications
Read More ...
Ubuntu 10.10 Linux released to beta
Distribution, codenamed Maverick Meerkat, speeds boot time, enhances cloud integration
Read More ...
Red Hat leaps on to PaaS bandwagon
A key component of Red Hat Cloud Foundations, Red Hat PaaS will leverage JBoss Enterprise Middleware for open choice in application development and deployment
Read More ...
Novell introduces cloud security service
The company is targeting more than 200 IaaS and 1300 SaaS and PaaS vendors with the service
Read More ...
The idea of version 2.0 of any software will be dead - Red Hat CEO, Jim Whitehurst
In an exclusive interview with Srikanth
RP and Harshal Kallyanpur, Red Hat CEO,
Jim Whitehurst details why the cloud can
be the mother of all lock-ins, why the idea
of version 2.0 of any software will be dead,
and why the new-world IT order will be led
by a different set of leaders
Read More ...
Red Hat joins hands with Wipro to deliver open source solutions
Both organisations plan to collaborate in building integrated solutions on Red Hat technologies through joint investments in Wipro’s CoE
Read More ...
Linux Foundation launches license compliance program
The non-profit foundation is trying to remove barriers to open source code adoption by easing compliance issues including providing code scanning tools that identify if open source code is linked to commercial code
Read More ...
Cloud APIs get open source treatment
Red Hat, Rackspace, and others are taking an open approach
Read More ...
How to build your own Linux cloud
Ubuntu lets you create your own Eucalyptus cloud computing infrastructure on commodity servers, plus it's interface-compatible with Amazon's EC2
Read More ...
Red Hat integrates server and desktop virtualization
Red Hat claims that Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 will provide a single infrastructure from which customers can manage their server and desktop virtualization deployments
Read More ...
Open source security solutions: An attractive alternative
Explore the pros and cons of adopting open source security solutions
Read More ...
Rackspace announces open source cloud platform
OpenStack counts Intel, AMD and NASA among participants in the cloud computing project that may boost competition for market leading Amazon Web Services EC2
Read More ...
SMBs lead Linux server OS adoption across India: Springboard
Constrained by limited budgets, Linux is proving to be the right platform for SMBs
Read More ...
Red Hat powers Just Dial’s IT infrastructure
Just Dial currently has more than 200 servers with its mission-critical Intranet and extranet applications running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Read More ...
Nine ways to avoid open source pitfalls
Follow these guidelines and avoid problems while still benefiting from what the open source software community has to offer
Read More ...
Pentaho launches on demand open source BI
Rapid-deployment option promises ready-to-run dashboards, metrics and reports within 72 hours
Read More ...
New open source OS will feature 'disposable' virtual machines
Invisible Things Lab building secure OS that better locks down the VM environment
Read More ...
Open source databases pose unique security challenges
Most open source database platforms aren't supported by third-party database activity monitoring and security policy tools
Read More ...
Linux proving disruptive in smartphone market
Android will run a third of the world's smartphones by 2015, and open source mobile operating systems from Intel, Nokia, and Samsung will also compete, says ABI Research
Read More ...
DLP gets an open source boost
A new agent-based DLP discovery tool has been released to Google Code called OpenDLP
Read More ...
‘We positioned Ubuntu as a version of Linux that was personal and non-technical’
Mark Shuttleworth, Founder, Canonical and Ubuntu
Linux on why he thinks Ubuntu will succeed on the desktop, where other equally famed competitors have failed
Read More ...
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