IoT – Who shall win The Gold Rush?

Everyone is talking about the Internet of Things. So what’s great about this fuzz and how it impacts our life, work and the way we conduct business. A survey shows that there are estimated to be more than 50 billion connected devices by 2020 with an approximately spent of $7 trillion. Looks like non-achievable figures, however the reality shows that this is pretty much doable with the present set of technological advancements in every area including cloud data and big data as the core and availability of hardware semiconductor chips on very inexpensive prices. While this is a prediction and we hope to see the reality, how we can get benefited by creating new revenue streams to harness this business opportunity.

IoT is actually a connection of varied set of devices talking to each other. Although IoT is a giant interconnection of devices and technologies around these devices, At the core of IoT, it’s not about the connected devices rather it is about the data collected from these devices and converting this into meaningful information after intense analysis and monetizes the same to win the IoT race. We are not far away when shopping malls and showrooms will be flooded with IoT devices whether you talk about a toy, home appliances, cars and many other accessories. Our real concern is to find out the monetisation opportunities. Let’s understand this with a small model:

In the whole IoT gamut, an outcome is provided to the end customer who is actually the final recipient and is ready to pay for the IoT products and services. The above model shows various elements in the value chain that combined together provide a desired outcome to the customer in an IoT ecosystem. Let’s deep dive into this model to understand where we as an organization fits into and get the major portion of benefits:

• The start point for IoT to work efficiently is sensor embedded into existing or new appliances. These sensors collect the data in various data points based on the appliance usage patterns and customer behaviour. The data is send to a designated location based on the connectivity choices provided.
• Carrying data from sensors to the designated locations require an ecosystem of network consisting of physical network elements (wires, adaptors, switches, routers and many more backbone elements) and logical network elements (protocols and security layers). A set of protocols are used to flow information between devices on a secured network.
• These small sensors data require massive databases to store the contents. According to estimation, if there are 50 billion devices are going to be interconnected, we must have scalable databases to store these billions of records.
• Then comes the real task i.e. analysing the collected data coupled with support services and converting this into meaningful information so that business opportunity can be realised. This is the area that we can explore more where the actual business exist for majority of the companies who provide support services to its clients.
• Some of the information is shared with the customers and other information can be used for machine learning, marketing campaigns and cross selling etc. without compromising customer’s personal information.

If we analyse the above IoT ecosystem model, we can identify the areas where maximum ROI can be achieved in minimum Capex and timeframe. 

Connected Devices à This is the most sought after area in IoT space, however if we observe closely; every big and small player is betting on this. We see a lot of devices now a days that are known as smart devices or the devices which have embedded microchips with the capability to be connected with other devices. Producing these devices and microchips require a huge Capex and the ROI window is comparatively high and introduces many challenges in terms of competition with the other major players.

Network Protocols à It provides the backbone to IoT for a seamless interconnection between heterogeneous devices. It may include new set of protocols and procedures for a secured, scalable and uninterrupted communication between different entities of IoT i.e. devices, semiconductor chips, wireless connection, wired connections, databases, applications and operating systems etc. ROI is comparatively long term with a maximum spent on research and development; however the returns are huge once everything is in place.

Network Elements à This is an area which is already flooded with a lot of network elements like routers, switches, networks and other hardware components to run a network of devices. Just like connected devices, this also requires lot of investment. The ROI if really good, however it’s a long term investment and the returns are not quick.

Apps, Databases and Cloud à All the communications between devices require three basic elements of human interaction with devices i.e. Presentation Layer, Logic Layer and Data Layer as a minimum. Other layers can be added as per the individual requirement. This is the area which is going to be the core innovation hub where individual contribution will be more important for the new ideas. People need to be extra cautious while designing these applications along with the business logics and databases so that maximum information can be collected with minimum user interactions and provide concentrated insights into the information for an effective business decisions. ROI is much faster for the worthy applications with a minimum Capex and Opex. The current trend in this area is restricted to specific interactions with specific devices that need a lot of improvements.

Business Intelligence and Support Desks à When everything is in place for IoT i.e. things are ready to be connected to the other things, we need to provide a state of the art support service that is not limited to devices only rather a mix of devices and IT support to run the comprehensive IoT ecosystem. A traditional support system may include expertise in one area only i.e. either on the devices (washing machines, fridges, Air-Conditioners etc) or on the IT service (applications, networks, IT gadgets only). For IoT, we need people who are experts in supporting smart device which is a combination of devices embedded with a semiconductor chip or sensors that help these devices to connect with other devices. People in the support area need to be extra cautious as there will be a very thin line between the appliance’s IT and hardware support. The support desk need a makeover and will need BI and Cloud as integral part of their IT infrastructure. Analysis of data collected from these devices and concluding meaningful information for business growth can be another selling point for the support services. This is a very big opportunity for a good business model. By investing very nominal money, huge ROI can be achieved.

Everything comes with challenges, so is IoT. Here are some of the challenges:

•  Data proliferation due to huge number of sensors on almost every object on this planet.
• Breach of personal information if stored on these device sensors.
• Legal and regulatory requirements for devices that are located across geography and vary from one area to another.
• Technical standardisation across geography which is currently fragmented.
• Security is a major concern when this enormous data is flowing between devices using multiple protocols.
• Rapid innovations are also a challenge for the governing authorities.
• Interoperability between different set of devices.
• Testing of sensors in extreme conditions of these devices.

To conclude, there are immense opportunities available in IoT space for all type of organizations. We can tap the opportunities for future business growth by just not slapping sensors to every object in this world but to only the designated devices that can provide potential business value to the maximum stakeholders.

Smart Phones – An Addiction or Essential

According to a recent study held in January 2016, approximately 2.3 billion people are using smart phone which accounts to more than 30% of total 7.3 billion inhabitants on earth. Among variety of available apps on smart phones, social media tools like twitter, WhatsApp, Linkedin, Instagram and online games etc are the ones where majority of people spend their time. An average user spent more than 5 hours in a day on their smartphone especially Facebook in the overall social media application space. Excess use of smartphones for everything and Interactions using these social applications has both noble and evil effects. Personally, I believe there is a very thin line between using these tools for majority of your day to day operations and being slaves to the technology. Not before long, one instance in my life inspired me for a thought on this issue and here are some points that may prove to be a real eye opener for all of us. So let’s ask ourselves:

• Am I being online 24 hours a day on my smartphone or being available on demand whenever required to someone when needed?
• How much time I am spending on my smartphone for some real cause and not doing Facebook, WhatsApp or gaming?
• Am I consuming Gigabytes of internet bandwidth on my smartphone(s), laptop(s), Smart TV(s) or am I really using this time, money and efforts to be socialize by meeting people, visiting relatives, talking to family members and understand their real needs?
• Am I limited to spending much of my time on watching some good informative videos and sharing only or am I watching, learning and implementing a message out of these videos, PPTs or other good articles?
• Am I still looking for directions to reach to my favourite destinations where I had been multiple times or I remember my favourite destinations?
• Am I texting a birthday, anniversary or other important event wishes to my friends, relatives and other knowns or am I personally visiting to these family and friends and be a part of their happiness or at least calling them on these days to make them feel important?
• Am I on my phone texting someone, playing game, checking emails, or doing other stuff when I am in a public gathering or I am talking to real people surrounding me (This is really the most important point I feel)?
• Am I on my smartphone when my kids are with me or I am just busy watching some news feeds on my smart phone, playing my favourite game and using WhatsApp, Facebook etc? 
• When was the last time when I helped someone in need or I am just being sad looking something on a social media and doing nothing but share or like the post?
• Am I still searching a mobile phonebook to look for a contact number or I remember number of at least my closest ones?
• Am I still going to the market to make my day to day expense and get a chance to speak to unknown people and understand them or I am just purchasing everything on my smartphone applications?
• Am I a part of those groups of people who without any research share the contents which is actually a hoax. This becomes more important for the posts that spread hatred contents?

There are many examples that can be quoted here. The only point I want to make here is that we need to see if we are being addicted to the technology or we are really living a decent social life in the era of smartphones. We definitely need to stop being addictive to smartphone revolution before this becomes an incurable decease.  Let’s do some introspection and ask ourselves where we are heading and what corrective actions can we take to make our life good.

Data Proliferation – Cause, Effect and Control

Data Proliferation refers to a massive amount of structured and unstructured data that is growing day by day and introduces challenges before business and government bodies for storing and managing this data. The issue refers to both physical (paper files) and logical data storage (Primary and secondary storage). The challenges may include additional storage space, network speed, hardware cost, data access speed etc.  An average computer user have much more memory for his storage need, however when it comes to businesses, governments and other entities collecting massive data on a daily basis, the problem of data proliferation may manifest. Data proliferation has been documented as a problem for the U.S. military since August 1971, in particular regarding the excessive documentation submitted during the acquisition of major weapon systems. Efforts to mitigate data proliferation and the problems associated with it are ongoing. Let us see what industry statistics says about massive amount of data produced on routine basis.

• Approx. 72% of all internet users are active on social media sites with a majority of these users on Facebook spending 12-16 minutes each day.
• Over 2.7 billion likes are clicked each day which is the easiest thing to do on Facebook.
• 300 million images are uploaded every day that constitutes about 75% of posts; adding more than 500 terabytes of data on Facebook.
• Amazon sales more than 200 million products every year throuout the world.
• A single product on Amazon contain a lot of additional artefacts apart from the basic information like product images, associated reviews, alternate products, up sale and cross sale product information etc. This includes both structured and unstructured data and requires a massive data storage space.
• A single query on google has to travel more than 1500 miles to fetch the information and return back it to the user from a data centre taking an average time of 0.2 seconds.
• Approx. half a million tickets are booked everyday on IRCTC (Indian Railways Tickets booking site). The site serves more than 0.10 Million concurrent connections where users book their train tickets.
• 790 out of approx. 900 Million mobile subscribers in India are active connections as on March, 2014. A huge amount of data is stored on servers for data related to customers, calls, SMS etc.
• Global smartphone audience has surpassed 1.5 billion mark. These Smartphones are very resource hungry and require further storage needs to download, use and execute various applications like Facebook, WhatsApp, twitter etc. in some cases.

Apart from the above stats, there is massive data in government organisations that is sensitive and cannot be shared on internet; however it is assumed to be in petabytes. So it is evident from the above facts that we have a lot of data lying on servers adding to proliferation and the driving factors for this huge data may include but not limited to a good internet speed, affordability of cost per GB and more and more resource hungry devices and applications. This huge data comes with a lot of implications if continued to generate at this speed. Some of the major impacts may include:

• More storage space for computers require more cooling which in turn result in additional need of water, energy and space which is negatively impacting the environment.
• Although the results are faster, there is an increase in time spent on searching the relevant material on search engines. This is because of a huge amount of data that a web crawler has to look for to get the desired outcome. This eventually increase search cycle time.
• The cost of storage per Gigabyte is drastically coming down for 3 decades from thousands of dollars to merely some cents per Gigabyte; however cost spent on infrastructure, software, associated maintenance, floor space along with IT staff to keep the scalability and performance of the systems is increasing multi fold.
• More expansion of data footprints means more security threats. All this data stored on company networks requires additional tools, applications and expert staff to enforce security measurements on this data. Any small glitch in the security may prove to be a big compromise with the credibility of the company’s goodwill and may impact the business. 

Analysis on obsession of data shows that popularity of rich media on internet, getting free space on cloud, e-commerce sites and social networking are some of the driving factors that cause massive storage of structured and unstructured data on internet. Unstructured data includes excel sheets, presentations, PDF and word documents, pictures, videos and audio files. On the other side, high usage of registration activities on websites, new entrants in the e-Commerce space leads to structured data. Corporates and government authorities need to define strict policies for data retention. A better information management system is a backbone for any organization that helps them to draft various policies, take effective business decisions and take timely action to name a few. So let us see how we can minimize the adverse impacts of data proliferation.


As an individual 

• Store only relevant data on secondary storage media. There are instances when people keep collecting a lot of raw data while preparing a final document; however this raw data is also copied which might not be needed while performing a system backup. Remove duplicate data. In absence of time, most of people tend to simply copy data to secondary storage by making new folders which is not an ideal way, instead storing the data in the same folders by overwriting or using some good version control tool if it is really needed to keep control on the data.
• Use backup utilities which are an effective way of reducing waste data in the form of redundant files. Whenever needed, use incremental backup instead of simply creating copies of the same file prefixed or suffixed with date. This will make sure that only the changed contents are replicated in the destination folder.
• Limit upload of pictures and videos on internet especially on social media sites. Market is flooded with high resolution digital cameras and smart phones targeted for people who are obsessed with taking snaps. These cameras and phone produce a considerable size of photo sometimes as big as 3-4 MBs. And also, all these pictures are not worth keeping. By keeping all these unwanted pictures, we are moving towards Data Proliferation.
• Use designated tools to get backup of your smart phones so that you can keep track of your contacts, emails or media. These tools are very efficient and help taking incremental backups of all the data on your phone.
• Avoid backing up all the forwarded pictures and movies received on Facebook, WhatsApp, viber, telegram etc. These forwards are neither useful nor solve any purpose for many years to come.

As an organisation

• Use file systems that use effective metadata structures/tags so that a fast and relevant search result can be obtained. To a large extent this is already available with most of file systems available; users just need to use these metadata tags extensively. 
• Educate Employees on various negative impacts of data proliferation so that a self-motivated environment is created to control the data.
• Implement an effective Information lifecycle management so that the information should be kept for certain period else discarded. 
• Define and implement data retention policies for effective governance across departments in an organization so that the data footprints can be reduced. This will help organisations to keep track of their storage needs.
• Use network drives if more than one users are working on the same data or the data that needs to be shared between users. This will help to retain a single source of truth and help reducing data proliferation.
• Define and implement data archiving policy. Data that is used very infrequently must be compressed before archiving. 
• Integrate applications to minimize rekeying, manual errors and minimize query cycle time wherever possible.  

Conclusion
Let’s consider the above points and contribute to a better environment, an improved data in hand, quick and relevant search results and enhanced secondary storage space utilization. By implementing the above suggestions, we can help in various ways to disregard low or no value information at an early stage and keep only the relevant and high value information in long term secondary storage which is really quick and cheap to access. Delphix and Actifio are the tools among others that provide DaaS services helping control on data proliferation. 

References:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/growth-social-media-2-0-infographic/77055/  
http://export-x.com/2013/12/many-products-amazon-sell/ 
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/by-the-numbers-17-amazing-facebook-stats/  
http://gizmodo.com/5937143/what-facebook-deals-with-everyday-27-billion-likes-300-million-photos-uploaded-and-500-terabytes-of-data   
http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte 
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/crazy-e-waste-statistics-explored-in-infographic.html   
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Smartphone-Users-Worldwide-Will-Total-175-Billion-2014/1010536 
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/05/23/35-mind-numbing-youtube-facts-figures-and-statistics-infographic/   
http://storageioblog.com/data-footprint-reduction-part-1-life-beyond-dedupe-and-changing-data-lifecycles/

Bitcoin

Introduction

Emerged in 2009, Bitcoin is a digital cash (Electronic Payment System) that uses peer to peer technology with no central authority or financial institutions for issuing, regulating or managing its transactions. Satoshi Nakamoto is said to be the one who introduced bitcoins concept, however since 2010 there is not any traces of him. Now the whole bitcoins network is decentralized and no-one owns this network and this is controlled by the bitcoin users throughout the world. These Bitcoins need to be purchased using standard currency at Bitcoin exchanges and then you can use these Bitcoins to purchase anything similar to what can be bought using cash/plastic money in shops or online. Mt. Gox is a major exchange to buy Bitcoins, though there are many other exchanges also). Once you purchase the bitcoins, you can use these bitcoins in any part of the world where these are accepted by the merchandise. There are also a finite number of bitcoins in the world, with a limit of 21million bitcoins set.

 

This technology is open source and its design is available to everyone on http://bitcoin.org.

 

How it works

 

This section explains how to activate, purchase and use bitcoins:

  

• Download a bitcoin wallet from http://bitcoin.org.
• Purchase some bitcoins. From any exchange or receive it from any of other person who have bitcoins.
• Use these bitcoins to purchase items where these bitcoins are acceptable such as Namecheap or WordPress to name a few.

Bitcoin wallets come in three variants based on your usage patterns mainly: 

• Software Wallets – This is targeted for Laptops and Desktops.
• Mobiles Wallets (targeted for Smart Phones)
• Web Wallet (targeted for roaming users)

Users download a software meant for their desktop or mobile phone. This can be treated as a Bitcoin wallet. Now the bitcoins can be purchased and stored in this wallet. In the backend, the bitcoin network shares a public ledger “Block Chain” that contains all the processed transactions. These transactions are protected by digital signatures.  

   

Bitcoin Mining

 

It is the process of spending computing power to process transactions, secure the network, and keep everyone in the system synchronized together in a decentralized environment. All the operators are located geographically at different locations across the globe. Mining is also a temporary mechanism responsible for issuing new bitcoins. Anyone can process transactions using the computing power of specialized hardware and earn a reward in bitcoins for this service.

 

For new transactions to be confirmed, they need to be included in a block along with a mathematical proof of work. Such proofs are very hard to generate because there is no way to create them other than by trying billions of calculations per second. This requires miners to perform these calculations before their blocks are accepted by the network and before they are rewarded. As more people start to mine, the difficulty of finding valid blocks is automatically increased by the network to ensure that the average time to find a block remains equal to 10 minutes.

 

Bitcoin miners are neither able to cheat by increasing their own reward nor process fraudulent transactions that could corrupt the Bitcoin network because all Bitcoin nodes would reject any block that contains invalid data as per the rules of the Bitcoin protocol. Consequently, the network remains secure even if not all Bitcoin miners can be trusted.

 

Security

 

Bitcoin use strong protocol and crypto algorithm and since its inception, there has not been any threats reported so far. Some security flaws were identified at times and addressed accordingly. On the other side, as Bitcoins are just a digital representation of cash, there are couple of vulnerabilities associated with this. For example if you lost your cash or accidently damage your cash, the same can happen to your bitcoins. These are stored in the form of private keys in your wallet files, these files can be deleted, stolen or get corrupted by the file-system errors.

   

Some security features have quickly developed by bitcoin such as wallet encryption, offline wallets, hardware wallets, and multi-signature transactions. There is other concern about changing the bitcoin protocol, however this is not true. All the bitcoin clients need to use the same protocol and with a valid signature. This ensure there is not any double spending of the same bitcoin by the same user, not to generate the bitcoins out of thin air, spend other’s bitcoins or corrupt the entire network. 

 

This is the biggest distributed computing project in the world and till date this has not been hacked.

 

Challenges

 

Every new technology come with lot of challenges, Bitcoin is not exception, this also has it’s own challenges: 

• In principal, there is not any possibility to change the Bitcoin protocol, however a majority of miners could arbitrarily choose to block or reverse recent transactions. Because Bitcoin only works correctly with a complete consensus between all users, changing the protocol can be very difficult and requires an overwhelming majority of users to adopt the changes in such a way that remaining users have nearly no choice but to follow. Practically this is really very difficult to achieve as no-one want to mess with their money.
• A transaction fee is based on the transaction rather on the amount. This means if you need to transfer a big bitcoin amount, the charges will be comparatively less. On the other hand if you need to have many small denomination transfers, this may cost you higher. Looking this aspect, if we target the users who need to make routine transactions, using bitcoins might not be feasible.
• Too much wait time for a received bitcoin to be used. Bitcoins are received instantly, however it takes approximately 10 minutes before you can spend these bitcoins. The reason for taking this much time is that the transaction needs to be cascaded to public ledger to ensure that these bitcoins are not send to anyone else. Once the transaction is included in 1 block, it will continue to be buried under every block after it to decrease the risk of reverse this transaction.
• Volatility of bitcoin price. Since its inception, there is a huge variance on the bitcoin prices. It was less than $1 for a Bitcoin when started; now it’s more than $650 for a Bitcoin. These price swings may create a fear of accepting bitcoins as a currency although there are enough true believers in the concept and long-term promise of Bitcoin that it is unlikely to fade from the scene any time soon.
• Legality, Bitcoins are yet not legalized in many countries. Regulators from various jurisdictions are taking steps to provide individuals and businesses with rules on how to integrate this new technology with the formal, regulated financial system. Till the time I write this blog, there was not any formal legal regulations were available.
• Illegal Usage, Bitcoin is another form of money (called as virtual money), and money has always been used both for legal and illegal purposes. Recently a website silkroad has been shut down that uses bitcoins to sell drug-and-weapons. This raise a lot of questions; if this technology also gives me the same bad impacts, then what is the purpose of using it? 
• Cross Country Usage issues. Although it is said that this currency can be used in any part of the world, there are lot many other issues involved if I want to purchase something in one country and what it to shipped to a different country. This is only a single milestone achieved in the overall Supply Chain Management in cross borders.

 

Takeaway

 

I would still like to wait for some more time until this technology is fool proof against all odds and is regulated. 

 

Hope you like this article. Your suggestions are always welcome.

 

Refrences:

http://bitcoin.org

https://www.mtgox.com/

 

Cloud Computing

As the businesses are growing, we need more resources to run the day to day activities. IT is a major part of these resources. Almost 60-70 % of this complex IT infrastructure budget goes towards maintenance. This cost includes infrastructure, manpower, electricity, software cost, hardware cost etc. While the individual IT systems and applications in service are often well considered and expertly implemented, the sheer scale of the ongoing IT investment itself has emerged as the dominant concern. Even when best-of-breed technologies, open standards, market-leading vendors, and modern architectural practices like SOA have been employed pervasively, most enterprises now find themselves with too many platforms, too many technologies, too many domains of expertise, and too many vendors to coordinate and manage.

Cloud Computing is making this infrastructure and services available on-need basis or in other words is "renting" or borrowing online software instead of actually purchasing and installing it on their own computers. It is the same business model as people using Hotmail or Yahoo mail services, except that cloud computing goes much further. Cloud computing is where entire businesses and thousands of employees will run their computer tools as online rented products. All of the processing work and file saving will be done "in the cloud" of the Internet, and the users will plug into that cloud every day to do their computer work. The Cloud will provide everything that includes hard disk, development platform, database, computing power or complete software applications. To access these resources from the cloud vendors, organizations do not need to make any large scale capital expenditures. Organization need to "pay per use" i.e. organization need to pay only as much for the computing infrastructure as they use. The billing model of cloud computing is similar to the electricity payment that we do on the basis of usage.

We can divide the services provided by cloud in three major categories:

• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) - includes service like computer infrastructure, storage, databases, hosting services etc
• PaaS (Platform as a Service) - cloud includes service like full or partial application development
• SaaS (Software as a Service) - includes service like a complete turnkey application, such as Enterprise Resource Management etc.

On the basis of usage, all the above services can be provided as:

• Public - In a public Cloud resources are dynamically provisioned on a fine-grained, self-service basis over the Internet. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is an example of public IaaS service.
• Private - Compu ting on private networks. This offer the ability to host applications or virtual machines in a company's own set of hosts. These provide the benefits of utility computing – shared hardware costs, the ability to recover from failure, and the ability to scale up or down depending upon demand. This is not a very widely accepted as users still have to buy, build, and manage this cloud and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on, however this is helpful for mission critical services where security is of very high concern.
• Community/Partner cloud - A community cloud is used where several organizations have similar requirements and seek to share infrastructure so as to realize some of the benefits of cloud computing. With the costs spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a single tenant) this option is more expensive but may offer a higher level of privacy, security and/or policy compliance. Examples of community clouds include Google’s "Gov Cloud".

How does it work?

When a user accesses any application/service from the cloud, it’s IP Address can be used to establish where the user is located. DNS services can then direct the user to a cluster of servers that are close to the user so the site can be accessed rapidly and in the user's local language. Users do not log in to a server, but they log in to the service they are using by obtaining a Session ID or Cookie. Whatever user sees in the browser usually comes from a cluster of web servers. The web servers run user interface software which collects commands from the user (mouse clicks, key presses, uploads, etc.) and interprets them. Information is then stored on or retrieved from the database servers or file servers and an updated page is displayed to the user. The data across the multiple servers is synchronized around the world for rapid global access.

Benefits of using Cloud Services

Need Based Availability

Users always have a choice to opt the cloud services as the need arise and later on if required, user can any time withdraw the services. It gives users flexibility to do his desired work with a very minimum spending and maximum utilization of the resources.

“Pay-Per-Use” Billing Model

This model is suitable for those type of business where the client want to commence a new business or want to revamp his current IT implementation. Client has to pay only for the required users with a flexibility of addition/deletion of these users any time and he will be charged on the basis of current working user accounts only.

In another similar model, users need to pay only for the services they have opted for i.e. where the vendor is providing number of services and client need to use only some specific set of services. For example in our mobile phones, we are being charged only for the services that we have opted for.

CapEx Saving

This is the most sought after option people look for cloud services. This is where client saves most of his spending. As already depicted, every business need to spend a large chunk of their budget on infrastructure, hardware, software and on support activities for IT to run their business. If they use the cloud services, a major portion of this budgeted amount can be saved and the same can be spend on other business activities giving business a huge CapEX saving.

Location Independent

When using Cloud services, location doesn’t matter. This means business doesn’t come to halt when there are some unforeseen circumstances arise in day to day life that is showstopper to continue business. Cloud services are geographically located on different location so business runs as usual without any impediment.

Zero Touch Automation

Client need not to do a lot of software development, purchase hardware, handling different SLA for s/w, h/w etc. All the services are located at one place so if any changes required, they can be implemented on servers only and no changes are required on client side.

Reduced Time to deployment

Most of the services are ready to use and available on the cloud, you just need to understand your requirement and need to tweak the existing services to make these suitable for your business. If there are any generic changes required on these services, it either doesn’t require any deployment or need a very minor deployment window. It helps in business continuity.

Scalable, Reliable & Sustainable

Scalability is accomplished through load balancing of application instances running separately on a variety of operating systems and connected through Web services. CPU and network bandwidth is allocated and de-allocated on demand. The system's storage capacity goes up and down depending on the number of users, instances, and the amount of data transferred at a given time.

Intelligent load-balancing in today's RAC nodes with faster connection failover gives client a feel of reliability. These cloud services provide a faster response time for enterprise applications that includes intensive database work.

Vendors are providing services for a mix of small, medium-size, and large companies with different options/services. These services start on a low-cost, fixed-priced model and quickly scale capacity. It provides a road map for these services so that these can be scaled across the IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS flavors with proper network capacity to consume all services and make these services sustainable for long.

Desktop feel in a browser

A client need a browser to access all the cloud services. Once the services have been deployed on clouds, users can access their desktop applications in browser itself.

Multiple protocol support including HTTP, SOAP etc

There is a support available for most of the protocols for using these cloud services so it doesn’t matter which product you want to use, just need to be sure that the product you are planning to use support the standard protocols used by your cloud vendor.

Usage of old/outdated hardware at client side.

As most of the processing is done on server side, client can use their old outdated hardware. It saves a lot of spending that is usually done when you want to implement a new technology in today’s world.

Challenges

• Proprietary APIs and different formats for importing and exporting data. As most of the cloud vendors have their own set of services/tools, it becomes somewhat difficult if we want to change the provider at a later stage.
• Companies who are far from the location of cloud providers could experience latency, particularly when there is heavy traffic.
• Resource Utilization – Though all the providers are using state of the art technologies to best utilize their resources, it becomes very challenging to provide the best resource utilization on economical prices.
• Encryption Algorithm – Many vendors has their own set of encryption algorithms to store the customer data. It sometimes become difficult when changing vendors so a care must be taken while choosing the vendors if they are using their own proprietary encryption algorithms or they are using some industry standard encryption algorithms.
• High Speed Internet connection is still a major issue in remote locations especially in developing countries.
• Data Security when it is available on Cloud. Though the provider use high level of encryption, a lot need to be look into for cross county data sharing as the customer do not know where his data is located.
• Better resiliency of resources is required so as to provide a 100% uptime to the customers.
• Software Licensing also need to be considered.

Augmented Reality - Beginner's Guide

CodeProject

Augmented Reality is one of the hot topics of today’s technical discussions. This term is coined for virtual reality that describes the duplicate of the natural environment or real objects in a computer system and then generating a combined view for the user that is the combination of the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer along with some additional information.

Unlike Virtual Reality, AR does not create a simulation of the real objects rather AR does add some contextual data to the real objects and present it to the user in such a way that it provides much more meaningful information for these real/natural objects. This can be understood by a very basic example: If you see some item in one of your friends’s cubicle in the office and it looks really beautiful and you want one for yourself also. There are two traditional ways to get the details for this product one is directly asking the person which may not be very comfortable based upon your relationship with that person or I simply take a photo of this sculpture and find it in a nearby shop. In the second way it is very difficult for me to check in each and every shop in my city (The situation becomes worse if the item has not been purchased locally). There is one more way and that is I will simply take a picture of this sculpture and use one application that uses AR and get all the required information like Stores where this item is available, it’s price, availability and reviews etc.

Like the above example there are number of ways this technology can help us as described in next sections of this document.

The AR can be implemented using four basic components: Internet Connection, Camera, GPS and AR Application. 

• Camera: This will be used to capture the photograph of the object. Usually a 2-3 Megapixels camera should be enough to make a decent AR Workable solution, however it should be noted that a higher megapixels camera may be required depending upon the result that we want. For example if we are creating a solution that require very minute level information of the object especially in medical or defense, we may require a high resolution camera.  
• GPS: The device should be capable of using GPS. This would be required by the AR Application for using Coordinates and finding the nearest available information on the objects. 
• Internet Connection: Though the AR Application can use its own internal repository to generate the information on the selected objects (This may be true for some medical and defense research applications), it is required to have an internet connection if we want to make our application generic. Also an internet connection will provide you the latest and updated information.  
• AR Application: This is the application that we require to make use of all the above components and produce results in desired format. This application will read the images taken by the camera and provide the maximum information from internal repository/internet. The GPS will help to calculate the co-ordinates and accordingly produce the relevant information. 

Every object on this earth has it’s own history and context and internet is a vast source of information that can be used to identify information on these objects. Using AR along-with other technologies like GPS & Internet, we can definitely make a very good use of this technology. Given hereunder are some of the areas/fields where this technology can be used: 

• Gaming: There are a lot of games that are designed based on Augmented Reality. Top Trumps style card game for PlayStation 3 is an example. This game is AR enabled. Six beloved characters appears in 3D when the AR is activated. Others include a couple of Xbox Games with Kinnect Sensor; Dungeons & Dragons is available for iPhone. These are just examples; there are a lot more games available on internet. Try some goggling and your screen will be flooded with a lot of good results available for your computer, iphone, android based phones etc. 
• Security: AR has really a very good potential in this sector. We can install some cameras on busy public areas, airports, bus stations etc and track activities of various objects, If an object is placed for a long time, some alarms can be activated to alert the security staff to check if this is a lost baggage or any threat to the public. This way we can save a lot of efforts & money along-with enhanced tracking of unattended objects.  
• Education: This technology can take education to the next level. When the teacher is delivering a lecture, the words can be captured and associated articles can be fetched from the internet and displayed on screen. The same can be directed to the student’s laptops/tabs. For toddlers some real objects can be provided and AR technology can help to listen to related rhymes, poems stories etc. 
• Traffic Control: Here this technology can help to track various activities on the highways. If there is an accident on highway, this can be communicated to various channels like ambulance, rescue operation team, highway petroling party for their immediate action. Speed limits can be checked by pointing the device to that vehicle and can be notified accordingly. Traffic can be diverted to different lanes if there is a work going on one lane or alternate routes can be suggested if there is a lot of traffic on that route. 
• Farming: Water supply can be controlled based on the current weather, crop & soil etc. Once the crop is ready to reap, a notification can be send to the farm owner. There are immense possibilities that cab be done once the crop is ready to sell i.e. notify to the nearest buyer, transport agency etc. 
• Medical: Doctors can access the data as soon as the patients come to the doctor. AR application can track the basic information from social networking sites also to check their social behavior, personal record etc. Medical equipments can be connected to the intelligent sites/central repositories to provide the latest and updated information about the decease and its latest diagnose available. 
• Media & Entertainment: Television can control their colors, volumes etc based upon the surroundings. This can be further enhanced to show programs matching with the viewer’s current mood or surrounding activities. Terminator, Iron-Man and Robo-Cop are examples of some of the movies that uses AR technology to recognize various objects and their information. 
• Aviation: Pilots can be provided with a lot more data while landing on the destination. Furthermore if the weather is not in favor of flight landing, AR application can help the pilot to land properly and safely. Applications can be designed to notify the air staff if someone is not wearing belt or someone has not switch his/her mobile phone off etc 

Apart from the above, AR has a lot to do with other areas like e-governance, social & daily life etc where things can be improved a lot for a better life. The overall idea of the technology is to provide historical and current artifacts to any object and use this information to take decisions.

How this work:

We take an example where the user has a Smartphone having a Layered Browser, Camera, GPS-GPRS Connection along-with one AR application solution. When the user starts this AR application, the camera gets activated and get the current positional coordinates of the user location via GPS and accelerometer, the application server extract the data from content rich remote servers and web services and present this data using the layered browser over the captured picture to provide the user with the desired information. Argon, OpenMAR, GRATF & Goblin XNA are some of the tools that can be used to design various AR capable solutions for handheld devices.

Here are some good references that can help to explore this topic further:

http://mashable.com/follow/topics/augmented-reality/  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality  

CodeProject

Your Stars

Stars have an important part to role in our life. Fate of our life is very much influenced by these stars. If you want to know:

• How stars affect your personal & Professional Life?
• How the planets impact your life?
• When you will get married and whether your views will match with your partner?
• How compatible your future partner shall be?
• When you are going abroad?
• How much wealth you shall earn?
• What is your spouse or children future?
• What are your best carrier options ?
• Any other Questions?????????????………

Pick up your phone and call Riya Dhall +91 95610 36661 or email your details at vinod.riya@gmail.com to get all the answers.  All you need to have is your:

• Date of Birth
• Time of your Birth
• Place of Birth

and it will cost your as low as Indian Rs. 500/- Only to get your  queries answered along with the remedies.