tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-297395712024-03-14T01:01:37.769+05:30Niche Technologies, Trends & GadgetsLatest in technology world; First-hand information on hottest technologies & gadgets; Latest research reports; Analysis of technology trends; Gartner; Forrester ReportsVinayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06032246090533047596noreply@blogger.comBlogger213125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-1268144303728394392008-07-22T11:14:00.003+05:302008-11-16T01:34:05.320+05:30Everything that would keep your online business running<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">As this title says, you must be wondering what am I gonna talk about “everything that your online business needs…”? Trust me; I had the same question when I first read this wonderful article on Aplus.net blog. It instantly took me by surprise and delight! It is one of those tidy and neat blogs who keep their reader hooked onto. It presents the latest happenings in the online supermarket – everything that one should know in order to expand one’s online footprint – starting from latest buzz on domains and latest applications launches to tips to choose right domain name to latest mergers and acquisitions. Phew!<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226082448394099186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px" height="161" alt="Aplus dedicated hosting" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SIbGTD9vGfI/AAAAAAAABxk/SfjoSTCN-Xk/s200/aplus+hosting.JPG" width="283" border="0" />The recent news – ICANN opens up new TLD’s – instantly hooked me onto exploring it further. On my exploration, I found that this site has content neatly organized in various sections with a neat look-and-feel and intuitive navigation. One can directly go to categories of one’s interest and can also avail some of the fantastic services offered by Aplus.net – like </span><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a href="http://www.besttofind.com/">web hosting</a></span></strong><span style="font-family:verdana;"> (many options like business hosting, </span><a href="http://www.besttofind.com/Computers-N-Technology/Web-Hosting/Web-Hosting.htm"><span style="font-family:verdana;">dedicated hosting</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> are available), professional web design, etc. Oh boy, you will agree with me that this is like one-stop-shop for all the handy tips that your online existence (not only business) will need to survive. Check it for yourself… </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-51338996002399061452008-07-18T07:42:00.000+05:302008-11-16T01:34:05.504+05:30Now your Maid will obey all your orders and will serve you all the time<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Those who have watched <strong><em>The Jetsons</em></strong> cartoon show might remember Rosie, the robotic kitchen maid. Now, scientists are working towards making her a reality</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><div align="justify"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SH9TffUCuYI/AAAAAAAABxc/q9RqXK5A-NQ/s1600-h/maid-to-order.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223985893219678594" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SH9TffUCuYI/AAAAAAAABxc/q9RqXK5A-NQ/s400/maid-to-order.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">In a new project, German scientists are providing a glimpse into the kitchen of the future; complete with a new robot that can keep track of the contents of the larder, and learn simple tasks. Their automaton, they say, could soon be making your dinner while you relax! According to the researchers at the Technical University of Munich, who are involved in the ‘Assistive Kitchen’ project, the B21 robot exploits the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on dishes and utensils to avoid some of the object-recognition difficulties that have plagued previous household robots. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><blockquote><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“If you want to interpret and understand everyday activities using vision data, it’s very complicated, error-prone, and resource intensive. But if you do the same with RFID tags, there is very little sensor information, but it’s highly correlated with the activities you are performing,” lead researcher Michael Beetz said.</span></p></blockquote><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The researchers say that not only does their robot know where everything is, but it can also learn simple tasks simply by observing the movements of the objects. Setting the table is very easily recognised from cups and plates disappearing from the cupboard and appearing on the table – and cleaning up later is characterised by the same objects disappearing from the table and appearing in the dishwasher. Robots would even search Web sites and use language software that convert natural language into robot-friendly instructions.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-15621025147808862322008-07-16T19:29:00.001+05:302008-11-16T01:34:05.663+05:30Brazilian company develops software to Unlock the new iPhone 3G<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">A Brazilian company is claiming to be the first to have found a way to unlock Apple’s new iPhone 3G, getting around restrictions that require users to sign up for calling plans with exclusive carriers, reports said on Tuesday.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SH9QjdV0WMI/AAAAAAAABxU/P403hPQQCf8/s1600-h/unlock+iphone.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223982662874847426" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SH9QjdV0WMI/AAAAAAAABxU/P403hPQQCf8/s400/unlock+iphone.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"></div></span><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Web site of Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo and other sites such as Digg.com and Gizmodo.com said the firm, <strong>DesbloqueioBr</strong>, hacked the phone by altering its firmware and by adding a special card add-on to the SIM chip. The results allow iPhone users to connect to any carrier, not just the one that has an exclusive arrangement with Apple in each country where it is sold.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><strong><u><span style="font-family:verdana;">It's an expensive affair!</span></u></strong></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">But the Brazilian hack doesn’t come cheap. DesbloqueioBr plans to charge between $250-375 to unlock an iPhone, which itself costs around $200 in its basic 8GB version in the US. However, there are some problems with the Brazilian fix, such as a drop in the quality of connection, and Apple’s ability to wipe out the hack with a software update.But one of the company’s partners, Breno MacMasi, said there would always be ways to circumvent the locks.“ Apple has made some big mistakes, so we will be able to come up with another hack. It’s going to be a game of cat-and-mouse,” he said.</span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><strong><u><span style="font-family:verdana;">Further reading:</span></u></strong></div><br /><ul><li><div align="justify"><a href="http://technology-nuggets.blogspot.com/2008/07/do-it-yourself-step-by-step-guide-to.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#ff0000;">Do It Yourself - Step-by-step guide to crack open iPhone 3G</span></a></div></li></ul>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-29965270162365665582008-07-10T10:33:00.005+05:302008-07-10T10:48:10.913+05:30Google Page Rank - How is it calculated???<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#ff0000;"><strong>The secret of Google Page Rank (PR) is finally out... </strong></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">And I feel proud to bring the original version, directly from the <em>horse's mouth</em> (i.e. from <strong>Amit Singhal</strong>, Google Fellow in charge of the ranking team at Google)!! </span></div><div align="justify"></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Google ranking is a collection of algorithms used to find the most relevant documents for a user query. We do this for hundreds of millions of queries a day, from a collection of billions and billions of pages. These algorithms are run for every query entered into most of Google's search services. While our web search is the most used Google search service and the most widely known, the same ranking algorithms are also used - with some modifications - for other Google search services, including Images, News, YouTube, Maps, Product Search, Book Search, and more.</div></span><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">There are basically 3 main philosophies behind Google PR: </span></div><ol><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Best locally relevant results served globally. </span></div></li><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Keep it simple. </span></div></li><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">No manual intervention. </span></div></li></ol><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">No discussion of Google's ranking would be complete without asking the common - but misguided question: "<strong><em>Does Google manually edit its results?</em></strong>" Let me just answer that with our third philosophy: <strong><u>no manual intervention</u></strong>. Isn't that a good news guys??!!!</div></span><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Visit the original post on </span><a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/introduction-to-google-ranking.html"><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;">Introduction to Google Ranking</span></strong></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> to know more... SPREAD the word.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-15397912835904861452008-06-28T23:29:00.007+05:302008-11-16T01:34:05.903+05:30New software allows blind people surf the Internet from any PC<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">US scientists say they have written new software that enables the blind to surf the Internet at any place. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216993550375021330" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SGZ7_kWbaxI/AAAAAAAABwc/bBaE8YFm2_I/s400/blind+students.jpg" border="0" width="65%"/></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></div></span><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Richard Ladner, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington (UW), revealed that the software – dubbed WebAnywhere – can read aloud Web text on any computer with speakers or headphones. “This is for situations where someone who’s blind can’t use their own computer, but still wants access to the Internet: At a cyber caf, a school, at a friend’s house, etc,” said Ladner. Doctoral student Jeffrey Bigham developed WebAnywhere under Ladner’s supervision. Unlike current screen-reading software, WebAnywhere is the first accessibility tool to be hosted on the Web – meaning it doesn’t have to be downloaded onto a computer.It processes the text on an external server located in UW, and then sends the audio file to play in the user’s Web browser.“You don’t have to install new software. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">So even if you go to a heavily locked-down computer, say at a library, you can still use it,” Bigham said.While testing, the researchers asked a few visually impaired people to use it to do three things – check email, look up a bus time table and search for a restaurant’s phone number. People using WebAnywhere – which, so far, works only in English – were able to successfully complete all three tasks, using a variety of machines and Internet connections. The free program and audio-visual demonstrations are available online at <a href="http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/">http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/</a>.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-49942314977604177972008-06-20T14:08:00.001+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.042+05:30Finally, a car that runs on ..... WATER!<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Skyrocketting fuel prices, adulterated fuel, long queues at petrol stations, often unscrupulous attendants out to fleece you - your cup of woes spills over everytime you need to fill the tank of of your car.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">But all this could be history if <strong><u>Genepax</u></strong> - a Japanese company -- is successful in commercialising its latest innovation: the '<strong><span style="color:#ff0000;">water car</span></strong>.'</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SGNVqTPuaSI/AAAAAAAABuE/5E_uVVvSYic/s1600-h/Car+on+water.JPG"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216106978634262818" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SGNVqTPuaSI/AAAAAAAABuE/5E_uVVvSYic/s400/Car+on+water.JPG" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Genepax unveiled the car in Osaka, Japan on June 12, saying that a litre of any kind of water would get the engine going for about an hour at a speed of 80 kmph, or 50 mph.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Genepax president Kiyoshi Hirasawa, in a mission statement published on the company's official web site, said, "Our mission is to develop technology and products for efficient production and use of energy. By 'efficient,' we mean ecologically and economically efficient. Ecological and economical energy is our business. Our goal is to create energy that is not taxing on our natural environment."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The water needed to run the car could be tap, rain or sea water, the company clarified. Once the tank (which is at the rear) of the Genepax car is filled with water, a generator would extract hydrogen from the water using, what the comapny calls, its Water Energy System, or WES, to produce electricity that the car runs on. As opposed to the hybrid cars which emit water, Genepax's invention consumes water.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">Whether the car is a commercial success or not remains to be seen, but Genepax said it had applied for a patent and is planning to collaborate with Japanese auto manufacturers. "Energy made from water," as Hirasawa says, "is not a dream story anymore We hope many people will join us in our challenge to promote the use of our WES, for the better future of the earth," he added in a statement.</span><br /></div><blockquote><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">We've seen plenty of promises about water-powered cars (among other things), but it looks like Japan's Genepax has now made some real progress on that front, with it recently taking the wraps off its Water Energy System fuel cell prototype. The key to that system, it seems, is its membrane electrode assembly (or MEA), which contains a material that's capable of breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen through a chemical reaction. Not surprisingly, the company isn't getting much more specific than that, with it only saying that it's adopted a "well-known process to produce hydrogen from water to the MEA." Currently, that system costs on the order of ¥2,000,000 (or about $18,700 -- not including the car), but company says that if it can get it into mass production that could be cut to ¥500,000 or less (or just under $5,000). Head on past the break for a video of car in action courtesy of Reuters.</p></span></blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-13764866800361883652008-06-15T12:54:00.001+05:302008-06-20T12:58:21.698+05:30Creating diamonds from............. Tequila!!<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Mexican researchers at the University of Nueva Leon have discovered a new way to make a type of synthetic diamond using ............. tequila!!!</span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The scientists found that when the potent Mexican spirit is heated under pressure, it produces diamond structures, which are able to conduct electricity. The crystals used to make diamond film have previously been made from a number of different chemicals, often including nitrogen. However, the experiment is believed to be the first time that researchers have proved that any type of alcohol can be used to produce synthetic diamond. Diamond film is tougher than silicon, so it could be useful for devices that must operate at high temperatures or under other harsh conditions. However, diamond films are expensive and difficult to make. Now, researchers from Mexico have shown that the crystals can be created by heating the country’s national drink. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">For the experiment, the boffins heated 80 per cent proof ‘tequila blanco’ which has a short aging process and is bottled soon after distillation in a low-pressure chamber. The drink formed into crystals which tests later confirmed had a diamond structure and were able to conduct electricity. “Some kinds of tequila seem naturally to have the right mix of atoms (to create diamond),” lead author Javier Morales said. Experts think that the use of alcohol to create diamond could have potential. “The result is certainly funny, but the process seems reasonable. I don’t know of any previous attempts to make diamonds from drinks,” said Rudolf Pfeiffer, professor of Physics from the University of Vienna in Austria.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-3781364211058150572008-06-08T11:24:00.002+05:302008-06-20T12:59:00.340+05:30New Firefox 3 browser set for release on June 17<p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;">A new version of the open-source Mozilla Firefox Web browser is scheduled for release on Tuesday, June 17, with improvements in security, speed and design. Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new “Places” feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged, and pages they visit frequently.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;">There’s also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list – similar to what’s already available on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 browser. Other new features include the ability to resume downloads midway if the connection is interrupted and an updated password manager.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;">In a nod to the growing use of Web-based email, the browser can be set to launch Yahoo’s service when clicking a “mailto” link in a Web page. Previously such links could only open a standalone, desktop email program. Firefox will also block rather than simply warn about sites known to engage in “phishing” scams that trick users into revealing passwords and other sensitive information.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:100%;color:black;">Microsoft is currently testing Internet Explorer 8, while Opera Software ASA recently released Opera 9.5.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-79733738174674022212008-06-01T04:22:00.000+05:302008-06-01T08:37:43.207+05:30Niche techniques in SEO marketing<p style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> is a technique used by professional who want to get your web page ranked high on the search engines. When you choose to implement to your web page with the proper <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> techniques, you will quickly see the improvements to your customer base and your business. Follow the step by step guide that many <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> teams supply you and soon you will find that you have the high ranking web page that brings you the business that you want. Professional SEO Marketing Choosing to upgrade your web page to a highly optimized advertising machine is something that many business owners strive for. In order to do this, you should always get the best advice possible. By working with the professional <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> team you find here, you will be able to gain the level of web presence that you need for optimal results. <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/"><br /></a></p><p style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> works on a number of different levels. Educating yourself about some SEO Marketing will help you when it comes time to ask questions. Asking the right ones will allow you to be more involved in the process and getting the right SEO plan for you. SEO Marketing Get the <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO marketing</a> that you need when you sign up with a marketing firm that brings you the right information and the end product that you want right on time, every time. When you are ready to build your client base and raise your level of visibility on the search engines, you can do so by getting the right <a href="http://www.seomarketingprof.com/">SEO Marketing</a> firm to back you. Check out the information that you see before you right here.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-28378164003360311972008-05-31T22:41:00.001+05:302008-06-01T08:45:20.517+05:30Technology To Make Love Life Simple & Hasslefree<p style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dating is easy when you sign up for a membership in a <a href="http://www.onlineprodating.com/">dating</a> site. With technology as fast and easy as it is, you can find the love or your life, or at least a solid friend, when you allow yourself to meet new people. Dating has never been easier and when you check out the services that are provided to you on this site, you will be able to increase your chances of meeting that special someone now.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dating sites have changed <a href="http://www.onlineprodating.com/">Dating</a> sites have changed. Now, more than ever, you can option to sign up without having to commit to a relationship. Many people are simply looking to meet someone that they can connect with, be it a romantic level or platonic. Get the information that you want when you are seeking the right person for you. On this <a href="http://www.onlineprodating.com/">dating</a> site, you will gain the information that you need. Safety, efficiency, and privacy are all important when seeking the right kind of mate.</span></p><p style="font-family: verdana; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Dating online Increase your chances of meeting that special someone right now. <a href="http://www.onlineprodating.com/">Dating</a> has never been easier and when you check out the services that are provided to you on this site, you will find that you are more than satisfied with the outcome. Get the information that will protect you and give you opportunities to date the right type of people for you. Get started today.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-39743857810657780502008-05-29T20:57:00.004+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.243+05:30Technology Transfer Services Immortalized<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In recent times, the world's leading technology universities are opting in for a different business model, for the sole need of survival. Earlier they were involved only in research & development, and were least focused on the business front. The things started changing when investors in these institutions reduced their investments and hence these R&D centers started looking concentrating on business as well. That's why you'll see many R&D institutes going out in the market selling their research. Many leading technology institutes are in this league. However, in my opinion, Yissum - the <a href="http://www.yissum.co.il/">technology transfer services</a> company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem - is in the lead position through its highly appreciated <a href="http://www.yissum.co.il/">university technology transfer</a> programs. It is responsible for marketing the inventions and know-how generated by the University's renowned researchers and students.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><img style="margin: 0pt 4px 4px 0pt; float: left;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SD-svJq2h-I/AAAAAAAABng/aUuWAZ1iym4/s400/yissum_logo.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206069620313065442" border="0" />It has expertise in diverse domain from nanotechnology to medicine and pharmaceuticals, agriculture and nutrition, water and environmental technologies to computer science to homeland security. Speaking in terms of numbers, Yissum has granted 400+ technology licenses and is responsible for commercializing products of over $1 billion in worldwide sales every year. Over the past 40 years, Yissum has churned out many popular products like Exelon, Doxil, Superior ceramic ink, UV pearls, Sumo - louse repellent, and Ram onion. There are many successful companies that are born at Yissum including Algen Biopharmaceuticals, Avian Tech, Ester Neurosciences, HumanEyes Technologies, and many more. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Yissum has won many patents (and many more are pending) on various technologies namely Single Image Dehazing, Prevention of Age-Related Retinal Deterioration, New Biosensor for Nerve Gases, Drought-Tolerant Trees, and Process for Producing Organic Ultra Thin Films. I am mesmerized by the wide array of their research in technology field - Improved Cache Performance with Reduced Energy Consumption; Compiler Aided Ticket Scheduling; Markov Model Application for DNA-Arrays and Gene Identification just to name a few. If you want to involve yourself in the world's leading technology institution and contribute to the award winning technologies / products, I recommend Yissum - a true <a href="http://www.yissum.co.il/">technology transfer</a> company.</span> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-71730251262918732742008-05-25T10:40:00.003+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.384+05:30Now Robots Can Walk... Howz That?<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >In a world first, researcher builds a robot that moves like a human; may help create rehabilitation techniques for those who can’t walk.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SDj1A5q2h1I/AAAAAAAABmY/7X21IZ4AzrM/s1600-h/robot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SDj1A5q2h1I/AAAAAAAABmY/7X21IZ4AzrM/s400/robot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5204178765255968594" border="0" /></a><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >In the world of science fiction movies, robots move around with ease as they walk, run and jump, just like humans. However, in reality, getting an automaton to emulate man’s gait is a very complex activity.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Now, researcher Daan Hobbelen of Netherland-based Delft University of Technology (TU DelfT) has developed a new, highly-advanced walking robot: Flame. This type of research, for which Hobbelen will receive his PhD, is important as it provides insight into how people walk. “This research could help people with walking difficulties through improved diagnoses, training and rehabilitation equipment,” Hobbelen notes in his study. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><strong></strong><span style="font-weight: bold;"><u>Energy Efficient & Stable</u></span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >If you try to teach a robot to walk, you will discover just how complex an activity it is, the researcher says. While walking robots have been around since the 1970s, there are two strategies applied for them. The first derives from the world of industrial robots, in which everything is fixed in routines, as is the case with factory robots. Although this approach can produce excellent results, there are major restrictions with regard to cost, energy consumption and flexibility.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >The other method for constructing walking robots – which Hobbelen used – examines the way humans walk. This is really very similar to falling forward in a controlled fashion. Adopting this method replaces the cautious, rigid way in which robots walk with the more fluid, energy-efficient movement used by humans.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >What makes Hobbelen’s research unique is that this is the first time a robot has been demonstrated to be both energy-efficient and highly stable. Hobbelen’s breakthrough came in inventing a suitable method for measuring the stability of the way people walk. This is a remarkable feat, as ‘falling forward’ is traditionally viewed as an unstable movement. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Next, he built a robot with which could demonstrate the improved performance: <u>Flame</u>. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Flame contains seven motors, an organ of balance and various algorithms which ensure its high level of stability. For instance, the robot can apply the information provided by its organ of balance to place its feet slightly further apart, in order to prevent a potential fall. “Flame is the most advanced walking robot in the world, at least in the category of robots which apply the human method of walking as a starting principle,” Hobbelen says.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><strong></strong></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-46431195807739824572008-05-20T10:06:00.001+05:302008-05-25T10:10:00.924+05:30It's Out Now - Video games may improve creativity of pupils<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><strong>Washington:</strong> <span style="font-style: italic;">A US researcher has found that video games – with the power to energise players and induce a positive mood – may help increase a person’s creativity. </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >S Shyam Sundar, a professor of Film, Video and Media Studies at Penn State University undertook the study with a graduate student named Elizabeth Hutton with a view to understanding the value of video games as a vehicle for sparking positive social traits, such as creativity. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >During the study, 98 college students were asked to play a popular video game known as ‘Dance Dance Revolution’, at various levels of complexity. The students took a standard creativity test after playing, and the researchers also asked them whether they were feeling either positive or negative after the game. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >Upon a statistical analysis of the two emotional variables and the students’ creativity scores, the researchers found two totally different groups with high scores. The researchers noted that players with a high degree of arousal and positive mood were most likely to have new ideas for problem solving. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">They also observed that creativity scores were highest for players with low arousal and a negative mood.</span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >According to the researchers, their findings appear to show that either high or low arousal is key to creativity, and that medium amounts of arousal are not conducive to “thinking out of the box”. “When you are highly aroused, the energy itself acts as a catalyst, and the happy mood acts as an encouragement. It is like being in a zone where you cannot be thrown off your game,” said Sundar, who is also a founder of the Penn State Media Effects Research Laboratory. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >He says that a negative mood, especially when there is low arousal, brings a different kind of energy that makes a person more analytical, which is also crucial to creativity. Sundar also said that video games can be used in classrooms to energise students and improve their creativity, and in companies to improve corporate decision-making.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-67884321302957815292008-05-11T10:08:00.003+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.547+05:30Now we have a biochip that can detect cancer before symptoms develop<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory have developed a chip that can save lives by diagnosing certain cancers even before patients become symptomatic. A tumour – even in its earliest asymptomatic phases – can affect proteins that find their way into a patient’s circulatory system. These proteins trigger the immune system to kick into gear, producing antibodies that regulate which proteins belong, and which do not.<br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200830870052091250" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 4px 4px 0px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SC0QHwJXNXI/AAAAAAAABlg/xt9GLl_I1k4/s400/cancer+catcher.jpg" width="40%" border="0" /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">-- <strong><u>Picture</u></strong>: Argonne biologist Daniel Schabacker prepares to load a biochip onto a scanner. The biochip (below) contains grids of small wells or ‘dots’, each of which contains a protein, antibody or nucleic acid, which helps detect cancer. -- </span><br /><br />The new technology, known as a biochip, consists of a 1x1 cm array that comprises anywhere between several dozen and several hundred ‘dots’, or small drops. Each of these drops contains a unique chemical that will attach itself to particular proteins that could be cancer tell-tales. “Antibodies are the guardians of what goes on in the body,” said Tim Barder, president of US-based Eprogen, Inc, which has licensed Argonne’s biochip technology. “If a cancer cell produces aberrant proteins, then it’s likely that the patient will have an antibody profile that differs from that of a healthy person,” he added.<br /><br />In their hunt for cancer indicators, Eprogen uses a process, which sorts thousands of different proteins from cancer cells by both their electrical charge and their hydrophobicity or “stickiness.” The process creates 960 separate protein fractions, which are then arranged in a single biochip containing 96-well grids. Scientists then probe the microarrays with known serum or plasma “auto-antibodies” produced by the immune systems of cancer patients.<br /><br />By using cancer patients’ own auto-antibodies as a diagnostic tool, doctors could potentially tailor treatments based on their personal auto-antibody profile. What makes this technique unique is that scientists can use the actual expression of the patient’s disease as a means of obtaining new and better diagnostic information that doctors could use to understand and fight cancer better. Biochips have already shown promise in diagnostic medicine and are useful in rapidly and accurately detecting other diseases, said Argonne biologist Daniel Schabacker, who developed the technology.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-24300159084242981142008-05-05T17:55:00.001+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.767+05:30Next Generation of War: Flying saucers and tiny helicopters<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Emotion-detecting robot cars will face off against eavesdropping flying saucers in the English countryside later this year, as scientists and school children compete with their designs for the next generation of military equipment. It’s the British Ministry of Defence’s first ever “Grand Challenge’’, aimed at encouraging scientists, inventors and academics to turn ideas into machines for army use in urban environments. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197240057606303522" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 4px 4px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SCBOS9YN7yI/AAAAAAAABhY/zCQeop5bF44/s400/War+1.jpg" border="0" /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />It gave six finalists funding to build machine prototypes, such as mini-helicopters and disc-shaped flying robots fitted with heat and motion sensors that can be controlled remotely from a bunker. And the finalists, who each received 3,00,000 pounds (Rs 2.4 crore), came to London last week to display their models. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“This project has really allowed us to broaden our vision and look at what other work is being done out there in our field,’’ said Norman Gregory, business manager for the Silicon Valley Group PLC, a small research company in southeast Britain. His company teamed up with the Bruton School for Girls in Somerset to build an unmanned buggy that can analyse gunmen’s movements to determine whether they are angry or nervous. “We are a small company and would not have been able to put together a consortium to develop such a sophisticated system without this competition. The government made it clear it wanted consortiums to get schools involved, and since the Bruton school already ran its own robot design competitions, we asked them if they wanted to have a look at our research,’’ Gregory said. </span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197240061901270834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 4px 4px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SCBOTNYN7zI/AAAAAAAABhg/7QYhd_1Tcmw/s400/War+2.jpg" border="0" /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br />Another group, Swarm Systems Ltd, has built a set of tiny helicopters that fly in formation into a village, recording images and audio tracks to beam back to headquarters. Finalists will take part in a mock battle in August in Copehill Down, a village that was modelled on an East German one when it was built for military </span><span style="font-family:verdana;">training</span><span style="font-family:verdana;"> during the Cold War. Copehill Down is near Stonehenge, about 150 kms from London. The contestants will have their machines search for pretend gunmen and mock bombs, earning points for each find and losing points for hitting civilians or transmitting data too slowly. The winner gets a trophy made from the recycled metal recovered from a WWII fighter jet. The best designs will also get financial backing from Britain’s defence ministry.</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-71421147066527350172008-04-29T10:41:00.001+05:302008-04-29T10:43:41.292+05:30Open source BI stands to gain ground even in a tight economy<div class="Section1"><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The economy is headed into recession, if it isn't there already, and IT budgets are feeling the pinch. But that doesn't mean companies are putting their business intelligence (BI) plans on hold, especially if those plans involve open source software. Just last month, open source BI vendor <b><u><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">JasperSoft Corp.</span></u></b> recorded its <b><span style="color:red;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:red;" >80,000<sup>th</sup></span></span></b> deployment, making it the world's most widely used BI software, according to the company. Nearly 20,000 developers have accessed BIRT Exchange, the open source BI community site sponsored by Actuate Corp. And Pentaho Corp. recently raised $12 million in funding, indicative of investors' confidence in open source BI. <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">With the cost of a typical commercial BI software deployment reaching well into six figures, open source BI software is an attractive option for many cash-strapped businesses and offers them a less expensive way to tap into the power of their data. And with a community of developers regularly adding code, new and customizable open source features emerge more frequently than do those of their commercial counterparts. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="BACKGROUND: #339966"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;">But open source <b><u><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">doesn't mean free</span></u></b>, and companies considering it still need to set aside budget dollars to cover maintenance and support fees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">"Open source is coming on," said an analyst. "There's interest in it and companies are growing more comfortable with it. In fact, research we did last year showed that people didn't have any [reservations] with open source business intelligence." <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >Open source in a tight economy</span></span></u></b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">An economic downturn, in fact, may actually prove to be a boon for open source BI vendors. CIOs regularly highlight BI as a top priority, but with fewer resources, buying expensive software from commercial vendors like Business Objects and Cognos is difficult to justify. Investing in open source BI software, meanwhile, is a much easier sell. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">But the benefits extend beyond a lower price tag. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Downloading and installing open source BI software, for one, is usually a quick proposition. Actuate's iServer Express, an open source report server for its BIRT Eclipse reporting tool, can be deployed in under an hour, according to Vijay Ramakrishnan, marketing director for the San Mateo, Califoernia-based software maker's Java group. Just try that with a commercial BI offering. A large and active community of developers, both outside and within the vendors themselves, also means the upgrade cycle for open source BI software is significantly shorter than it is for commercial offerings, which sometimes last for years. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">And the open source model makes customization easier. A company can deploy an open source BI system, gauge user reaction, then work with its own developers and the developer community at large to reshape the software to satisfy its particular needs. Commercial software can also be tailored, but the process is usually more cumbersome, as the code needed to make changes is not open to outside developers and can only be customized by the vendors themselves.</span></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-11132305272279808702008-04-25T14:07:00.004+05:302008-11-16T01:34:06.893+05:30Take Your Office at Home with Revolutionary GoToMyPC<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">At home your family’s waiting… At work, your boss is frowning as usual… But you have not yet finished working on the file in your desktop. </span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">This is a quite a familiar scenario with most of the working people. How often have we heard them wish, ‘if only we could complete this at home’… Accessing from home the files which are saved in your office computer was just a dream till now. However, it is now possible to access files saved in any computer from any other computer!!! </span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/ga106nmvsmu9CBBBEHI9BACHDJDH?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gotomypc.com%2Ftr%2Faffil%2F2007_Q1%2Fproduct%2Fg25af_stnddlp%3Ftarget%3Dmm%2Fg25af_stnddlp.tmpl+&cjsku=GoToMyPC" target="_blank"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194532664841727586" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 4px 4px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="GoToMyPC" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SBav79YN7mI/AAAAAAAABf0/q79GUaDjEQg/s400/gotomypc.gif" border="0" /></a>GoToMyPC allows you to remotely access your computer (assuming it is connected to the Internet) from any other computer (connected to the Interner) in the world. This means that one can seamlessly access / send e-mails, work on projects, documents, or network resources, without physically present in that location! This site offers simple yet powerful software that has to be installed in both the computer you wish to access and the computer you would be accessing it from. The process of registration is quite simple and post-registration, you can choose from the personal, premium and corporate options. While the personal option allows you to access two remote computers, the premium enables access to five computers and you can access the whole office if you subscribe for the corporate plan. </span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The corporate account is a conscious effort by the company to help its employees access their office work from a remote computer. Don’t worry about the security! This software is quite secured and can be used with the existing firewall setup without disturbing its integrity. An access code resides on the host computer and is never saved onto the website’s servers, so no more leaks. You’d also get notified if someone is trying to break in. There is a built-in lockout protection where you can even disable the keyboard and screen in such cases. This is just like virtual private network (VPN) that has been in use in many companies. However GoToMyPC is the first third party VPN service that’s being used. It is a convenience tool that many software companies are using so their employees can look at their files from home.</span></p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Try </span><a href="http://www.kqzyfj.com/ga106nmvsmu9CBBBEHI9BACHDJDH?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gotomypc.com%2Ftr%2Faffil%2F2007_Q1%2Fproduct%2Fg25af_stnddlp%3Ftarget%3Dmm%2Fg25af_stnddlp.tmpl+&cjsku=GoToMyPC" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#ff0000;"><strong>GoToMyPC</strong></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> now!!!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-40013925920396432352008-04-22T13:12:00.004+05:302008-11-16T01:34:07.018+05:30Design principles for building efficient network architectures<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:130%;color:#009900;"><strong>Green networking = Efficient networking. </strong></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Efficient network design combines improvements in consumption and consolidation for increased manageability and lower lifecycle cost. Here you’d learn more about the specifics of efficient network design you can implement to keep your network green, as well as avoiding wastes of bandwidth, power and budget. </span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">In recent years, the call for "green" has grown louder. We hear it in the news and see it on billboards and in magazines - and, unfortunately, feel it in our pocketbooks (it cost $65 to fill up today). Regardless of your political affiliation or environmental beliefs, it's impossible to deny this fact: The cost of energy is increasing. As consumers, we feel the results of our inefficiencies in our daily budgets. As individuals responsible for designing network architectures, our employers feel those inefficiencies in their operating costs. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong><u>Why is that important? </u></strong></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">In the late 1990s, when the Internet bubble burst, the companies that survived were those that found a way to become efficient. These same businesses are now looking at ways to further increase their efficiencies without cutting their workforce -- and that includes every aspect of how they think and operate. In this article, I'm going to outline some elements contributing to this "green wave" as it relates to network design.</span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5193085299517681202" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SBGLkNYN7jI/AAAAAAAABfc/K4AgsG7e-iI/s400/Green+Networks.jpg" width="65%" border="0" /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></div></span><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong><u>The "green" factor<br /></u></strong><em>What does it mean to be green?</em></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">It depends on who you ask! Efficiency is a broad term, especially in network architectures, but there are several key elements: </span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><br /><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Each of these elements is related, and their synergies create the semblance of a "total system." The purpose is to show that there are in fact different shades of green, and though it may be possible to create a design that encompasses all of these factors, benefits can result from focusing on just one. </span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">From a design perspective, there are really two elements that can be thought of as inputs to network design:</span></div><ul><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Consumption</span></div></li><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Consolidation</span></div></li></ul><span style="font-family:verdana;"><blockquote><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">"Consumption" is the broadest of terms used most often to describe the power and space usage of network elements such as servers, routers, switches, firewalls and SANs. There are, however, other points that can be related to this term, but they aren't as easy to differentiate. </span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Consolidation is a distinct design option that can mitigate your consumption issues and provide an avenue for increased manageability - and subsequently decrease your cost of support. Here are a couple of technologies that consolidate infrastructure:</span></p><ul><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Virtualization (includes server, firewall, SAN, routers, switches, desktops) </span></div></li><li><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Chassis-based installation (FWSM, WSM, RSM, VPNSM, etc.) </span></div></li></ul></blockquote></span><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The true trick to "getting green" is applying the principles without sacrificing these factors, or you risk losing the gains forged within the design itself. </span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong><u>Results</u></strong></span></p><p align="justify"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Lower consumption through consolidation results in increased manageability and lower lifecycle cost - or a "green(er)" infrastructure! The desired result of instilling some of these principles into the minds of engineers is that organizations can start taking advantage of savings gained through efficiencies.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-69898037950888139192008-04-19T16:30:00.001+05:302008-11-16T01:34:07.111+05:30Sexy sells, does RFID?<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong>American Apparel makes RFID sexy...</strong></span><br /><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191652509895287410" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/SAx0c4GS4nI/AAAAAAAABfE/SnWAn4JwkJY/s400/EPC-RFID-TAG.jpg" border="0" /><br /><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Retailer American Apparel Inc., known for its risqué ads and "Made in Downtown LA" label, is putting radio frequency identification tags </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:verdana;">(RFID)</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> on every Boy Beater tank, Baby Rib brief, Cross-Back bra and Sleeve Ringer T-Shirt in its 17 New York metropolitan area stores. That's 40,000 items per store, each tagged with a high-tech chip, starting with the Columbia University location in Manhattan. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;">The company is using Vue Technology's TrueVue software to manage the RFID data, Motorola Inc. RFID readers and antennae to capture the data and Avery Dennison Corp. tags to locate and store that data at the item level. Los Angeles-based American Apparel is on an aggressive timetable to roll out the sophisticated inventory tracking system to an additional 120 stores in North America. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">The question is why. RFID tagging on crates -- never mind individual pieces -- is currently on the radar for only a handful of retailers, mainly behemoths like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and its legions of suppliers now under orders to adopt transponder tags or else. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">RFID is tricky, said John Fontanella, an analyst at AMR Research Inc. in Boston. "The use cases for RFID are not as obvious as some proponents would have you believe," he said. Automating a process like taking inventory changes the way people work, and that "requires a significant amount of re-engineering," Fontanella said, and up-front labor. There's little doubt of that, said Zander Livingston, RFID technology director at American Apparel. The manual tagging for a single store alone required multiple employees working three full days. But for American Apparel, with its numerous, nearly identical styles in a rainbow of colors, the technology makes a lot of sense. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">"The No. 1 reason is inventory accuracy," Livingston said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">American Apparel differs from a lot of other apparel companies, Livingston said, in that it displays one -- and one only -- of each size, style and color of a particular item on its sales floor. Each item in each of its color and size variations has a place on the salesroom floor, but the company does not load up the racks with multiples of the same kind. "So basically, as soon as an item has been taken off the rack to be tried on, or purchased or just carried around the store as the customer is browsing, the item is no longer available. We also have a lot of items that look similar to each other, and because of that a lot of items get misplaced," Livingston said. The high sales volume often means that more than 1,000 items a day are moving back and forth between stockrooms and salesrooms. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">"We'd have 10% of the items lost in the stock room that needed to be on the sales floor. Part of my goal was to make sure that we had a perfectly fitted sales floor, at 100% capacity," said Livingston, an old classmate of American Apparel CEO Dov Charney from their prep school days at the elite Choate Rosemary Hall, who was recruited by Charney to put RFID to work. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Accuracy was a big problem. Taking manual count of 10,000 items on the sales floor and the 30,000 stocked in the basement means having to ask employees to come early or stay late. Fatigued employees might glance at the tag in the collar, but because of the similarity in styles, misidentify the item. RFID accuracy is 100%. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Tom Racette, director of RFID market development for Mortorola's Enterprise Mobility Division, said RFID is becoming easier to implement. "A couple of years ago, this was all about the big challenging implementation, putting RFID across the supply chain. We are seeing more and more retailers, and businesses of all kinds, who are finding creative ways of implementing RFID in ways that are providing value," Racette said. Dr. Bill Hardgrave, professor of information systems and executive director of the Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Arkansas, said in a statement, "We've noticed an increasing trend among retailers that are implementing RFID at the item level, and American Apparel is a prime example of a retailer on the forefront of this trend."</span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">By deploying the technology in additional stores, American Apparel expects to increase sales and customer service by having real-time visibility into products at nearby stores, enhancing the intrastore transfer process to balance stock, Racette said. Furthermore, the retailer will be able to respond more efficiently to market behavior by using RFID to record and report on purchases, not only within one location, but also across a region of stores. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">For CIOs, they are looking at RFID and seeing that inventory accuracy is going from 80% to 99%, as it did in the American Apparel pilot, and that RFID is reducing the cost of managing inventory substantially, said Chris Schaeffer, director of RFID product marketing at Motorola. "CIOs are tasked with figuring out how to utilize the IT infrastucture to bring business value, and this can improve processes and efficiencies. It's good for a CIO to be able to say, 'See how this technology investment helped me do that,'" Schaeffer said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:verdana;">Livingston did not give out a dollar figure for the investment, except to say the cost was about equivalent to the salaries of two full-time sales employees per store. The project is not without challenges, he cautioned. The deployment takes a "little more human interaction" than perhaps initially anticipated to verify everything being transported from the stockroom to the sales floor. He had to re-evaluate certain work movements so RFID readers were not blocked. It can be difficult to read tags around metal, for example. Down the road, he wants to design portals to capture theft -- people walking out the door with stuff -- but the "gates" have to be "aesthetically pleasing" so they are not in odds with American Apparel's meticulous stores. Livingston said the next step is to cut down on the manual labor by tagging items at the manufacturing plant. "I'm not going to tag another item in New York until there is source-level tagging."</span></p><p align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:78%;"><em>Source: SearchCIO article</em></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-47072973876451266322008-04-15T17:37:00.004+05:302008-04-15T17:59:30.332+05:30Google as a disruptive technology - Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments?<div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Las Vegas</st1:place></st1:city>, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study.<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The two most interesting points were:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">1.)<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span>The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">2.)<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span>Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.5in"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><b><u><span style="color:white;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:white;" >Google’s “Data Layer” includes both internally stored and externally accessed sources</span></span></u></b><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"> </span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="font-size:78%;color:white;">(Source: SRS, Google Analysis by Gartner)</span></span><b><u><span style="color:white;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:white;" ><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows (almost) everything that is connected to the Web<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows 67% of all Web searches<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows 1% of what is sold on the Web<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows the traffic to over 1.5 million Web sites<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows the physical locations of many things<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows the status of your machine if you install Google apps<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google knows the behavior patterns of Google registered users<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #339966; MARGIN-LEFT: 0.75in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span><span style="color:white;"><span style="color:white;">..- Google is trying to know the physical location of any cell phone user who has installed Google apps or accesses Google services from the phone<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Google as a disruptive technology<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">This new study is being conducted by a team of 15 Gartner researchers, led by Hunter, and the full report will be published in mid-2008. The title of Hunter’s presentation at ITxpo was “What Does Google Know?” The answer to that question was even more sobering than I expected, as the slide below demonstrates.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hunter added that Google will know a lot more about what’s sold on the Web if Google Checkout takes off, and could soon know a lot about medicine and health patterns if Google Health Records gets adopted.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The Gartner researchers have estimated that Google technology can address 100 exabytes of data (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). “Their infrastructure has unprecedented scale,” said Hunter, “and what is even more impressive is their ability to connect vast quantities of information… Google is sitting on the biggest pile of information that has ever been collected in the world.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">The reason why Gartner chose to characterize Google as a disruptive technology - rather than just an Internet search engine company - is due to the ambitions that Google has for all of that data and the potential impact that those ambitions could have on the technology industry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Where the previous [computing] paradigm has been about my computer, my technology, my stuff … Google is trying to deliver any information, anywhere, to anyone in the world, on any device,” said Hunter.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Google’s paradigm is a different paradigm. It’s an open source paradigm… We’re about to see a war of paradigms.” Clearly, the leader of the “previous paradigm” and the counter-movement to Google is Microsoft.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">However, we also can’t forget that the Google paradigm includes massive privacy concerns. Hunter noted that Google continues to struggle to find the right balance between privacy, security, and its legitimate business interests. The more data Google collects, the bigger and more valuable target it becomes for electronic criminals. That will also make it a bigger target for governments, politicians, and citizen groups.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hunter stated, “We believe Google’s information security will be a political issue worldwide by the end of the year in 2010.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Here are few other interesting quotes from Hunter’s presentation, based on the study:<o:p></o:p></span></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo7"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Google transcends the limits of the traditional OSI stack.” <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo7"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“We don’t know how good Google’s information security is.” <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo7"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Google doesn’t worry about resources. Google’s always got more resources.” <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo7"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Ask not what Google will do to you. Ask what you can do with Google … Ask how much of your business you want to expose to Google.” <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo7"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Above all, move fast, because Google is moving fast.” <o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Google’s disruption to IT<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Google is disruptive and disruptive technologies produce big winners and big losers,” Hunter said, “One of the big losers is potentially traditional IT departments.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">As part of his presentation, Hunter specifically noted a number of ways in which the Google revolution would disrupt the IT industry in general:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Traditional database management vendors would be marginalized into handling only high value transactions <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Enterprises will co-opt Google’s approach to data management and Google could host the data <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Proprietary applications such as Microsoft Office would be “deeply threatened” <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Many application builders could start developing on top of the Google platform <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Collaboration services will take a big leap and Google could provide the platform <o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="mso-list: l5 level1 lfo10"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Companies will take major parts of the IT infrastructure (e.g. e-mail, storage, and business intelligence) and source it to Google. <o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">However, after the presentation I followed up with Richard to get further clarification on how IT departments could be significant losers in the Google disruption. Here was his response:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“Google has the potential to be the first-choice provider of many services that are now handled by internal IT organizations, starting with non-competitively-differentiating services such as email (which Google already provides to a number of enterprises), and ultimately including high-value-added functions and services such as business intelligence, mobile sales support, and others. Some IT organizations might consider it a boon to pass these functions on to Google so that the IT department can concentrate on very enterprise-specific competitively differentiating applications. IT organizations that measure their worth in terms of how much of the company’s IT needs they supply themselves will be less happy to see Google move in on their turf-and I do mean specifically that in many cases it will be an argument about turf, not enterprise value.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">“An important question is: can Google provide the quality (e.g. reliability, availability, security, etc.) that enterprises-a more demanding market compared to individual consumers-require from their suppliers? Consumers are satisfied when the potential provider says ‘Of course!’ Smart enterprises demand certification from someone besides the provider. Providing that certification will be something new for Google. On the other hand, many IT organizations aren’t mature enough to provide proof of their own capabilities in terms of value for money, and so will have a difficult time proving superiority over any external provider, whether or not it’s Google”.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Bottom line for IT leaders<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">What Gartner is arguing is that Google’s database and data center magic is creating a massive cultural movement and a competitive advantage that is going to sweep away businesses and industries and transform the technology world. In fact, Gartner sees Google becoming so large and powerful from a data storage and access standpoint that it is going to attract scrutiny - and potential regulations - from governments.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">While these predictions have legs, several of the trends are larger than Google. As far as IT departments go, there are two related trends that will transform IT over the next decade: utility computing and managed services. The utility computing model will allow IT departments to deploy only the computing capacity that is needed and to track it and charge it to the appropriate business unit, department, or project. That will allow IT to tie the value of technology much more closely to business decisions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Some businesses won’t want to handle that type of IT internally and so they will outsource it to providers like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, EDS, and Verizon Business. It’s unclear whether Google will want to get into the managed services business, but it might make sense for them partner with vendors like the four mentioned in order to offer services such as e-mail, storage, and business intelligence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">In terms of Google’s technical advantage - part of which is tied to its sheer data center capacity - let’s not forget that the other two big data center builders, Microsoft and Yahoo, could tie the knot soon and became a much more potent threat to Google’s vision. That could especially be the case if Microsoft allows its new technology leader, Ray Ozzie, to drive Microsoft in a much more Google-like direction centered around cloud computing. It’s also not a given that what Google has created in the world’s largest and most effective database isn’t something that Microsoft will eventually catch up to and co-opt.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Nevertheless, Google is obviously on the leading edge many of the trends that are powering the next breaking waves in the technology industry, and the effects of these trends will fundamentally change the way corporate IT departments are organized, operated, and financed over the next decade.</span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-9226760417139107322008-04-14T12:32:00.003+05:302008-04-21T16:41:53.972+05:30Buying business intelligence software: Top 11 considerations<div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: navy; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;color:white;" >Buying business intelligence (BI) software can be a frustrating, difficult process. Expert Mark Whitehorn offers up the top 11 things BI buyers should -- and shouldn't -- consider. <?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Buying business intelligence (BI) software can be hard -- with technical evaluations, prioritizing requirements, getting the funding you need and avoiding political landmines, there's a lot to consider. But in my experience, these are the most important considerations for business intelligence software buyers. OK, so eleven is an odd number -- but in addition to the eight things you should consider, I wanted to cover three things you should not consider. In my experience, some people give far too much weight to certain issues that have little or no relevance when choosing a BI system, so it seemed valuable to list these as well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >1. Return on investment (ROI)<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">ROI is king. It's top of the list because it's the bottom line (if you see what I mean). We don't implement BI systems because they are trendy; we don't do it because the technology is fascinating. We invest the company's money in a BI system because we expect to get more money back, in terms of income or savings, than we invest. Of course, calculating the income/saving is often a major challenge, but it must not be ignored. All the remaining points essentially follow on from ROI. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >2. User requirements<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">This could arguably be at the top of the list, but ROI got in first. There's no point building a BI system unless it delivers exactly what users are requesting/demanding -- so take the time to go through the requirements-gathering process with your business users, however painful it may be. Make sure you can deliver what people want, or just don't start -- a failed project helps no one (and certainly not your career path). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >3. Ease of use<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Traditionally, BI systems have been difficult to implement, set up, understand, drive – everything about them has been hard. The good news is that the situation is improving, so buy one that is easy to drive. Give serious consideration to ease of use for the end user, but also consider that the easier it is for your technical staff to build and deploy a BI system, the cheaper it will be to implement. The systems that are currently available vary hugely in ease of use -- so make ease of use a priority in all areas. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >4. Existing expertise within the organization<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Suppose your enterprise has a policy of using just one database engine and has developed a very experienced technical team on-site. If you buy your BI solution from the same vendor, you get double benefits. Almost certainly your staff will find the new tools easier to use, because of the family similarity that runs through products, and secondly, the staff will be happier. If you force them to use a product from a manufacturer they don't respect, they'll hate it on principle and blame it (and/or you) for everything that goes wrong. And they will make sure it does go wrong. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >5. Compatible technologies<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Notwithstanding the point made above, few vendors currently supply complete end-to-end BI systems. So, depending on your needs, you might not be able to source everything from one supplier. If that is the case, before buying any of the components, ask searching questions to ensure maximum compatibility with your existing infrastructure. All too often, individuals within the enterprise lobby for the purchase of a BI component without taking this into account. (I'm thinking here of, say, the finance officer who insists upon a particular analytical tool.) Compatibility lowers the cost of producing an integrated system (something that finance officer might appreciate, once you explain it). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >6. Killer functionality<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">It may be that one BI software product alone offers a single piece of functionality that outweighs virtually every other consideration except ROI. I have no idea what that might be for your particular enterprise, but you'll know it when you see it (or your IT team will tell you about it, long and loud). It might be support for spatial data types, for example, allowing you to incorporate GPS data for tracking deliveries, or perhaps decomposition trees for innovative data visualizations. But sometimes, that one killer feature makes the whole investment worthwhile, as opposed to trying to get another product to do something that it really wasn't designed to do. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >7. Data volume<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">How much data do you have -- and how much will you have in the future? If you're a large retail chain collecting point-of-sale data, you have lots of data. If you're a telecom company, you have lots of data. If you're NASA … and so on. Certain BI technologies do not scale well. In-memory querying is a case in point: It can be very effective with surprisingly large data volumes, but there are limits to what it can handle. Some software products (particular data mining algorithms, for example) scale badly. They may work well with a million rows, but with 10 million, they may run like a (slow) dog. Try to gauge data volume accurately and match it to software/hardware capabilities. Then make the vendor really prove to you that the software can handle it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >8. Hardware<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The hardware available for BI covers a huge range:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Commodity standalone boxes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Commodity boxes bolted together to form Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) arrays. <o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Dedicated MPP machines. <o:p></o:p></span></span></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Costs vary accordingly. If you under-specify the hardware or try to use the wrong hardware for your new BI software, your system will never perform optimally and the ROI will fail to appear. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: green; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;">The business intelligence software buying points that you should not consider: <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >9. Cost<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Cost isn't important; it's return on investment that counts. It's better to invest $5 million and reap $30 million than to invest $2 million and reap nothing. (Best of all is to invest $2 million and reap $30 million, of course.) With the right calculations and a convincing business case, you should be able to prove this to the money people at your company. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >10. Current source systems<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Existing operational systems such as the finance, CRM and human resources systems are typically underpinned by a database engine. Just because you're using Engine X for transaction processing does not mean you have to use it for the new BI project, for the simple reason that the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) tool essentially sits as a buffer between them. Any good tool will be perfectly capable of extracting data from any number of different source systems and transforming it into any flavor you like. This doesn't mean you should ignore the existing expertise in your company – see above – but, in terms of functionality, there is little need to consider the existing engine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >11. The sales pitch<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">I don't know how to break this to you -- but some salespeople make things up. They exaggerate, omit pertinent information and even lie. This is sad, but inescapable. At best, they often lack a technical grasp of the capabilities of the systems they are offering. It is essential to talk to technically competent people and get them together with your technically competent staff. In my experience, technical people are less likely to stretch the truth. This is not a hard-and-fast rule, simply an observation based on experience. I have, however, heard a technical guy say: "Don't use our Component Y – it's rubbish." I've yet to hear the same words from a salesperson. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; TEXT-ALIGN: right" align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Source: TechTarget report<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-67082325982341540322008-04-07T19:54:00.001+05:302008-04-21T16:53:47.739+05:30Strategies for Successful Multienterprise SaaS (Software-as-a-service): Gartner<div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; TEXT-ALIGN: right" align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:78%;">Source: Gartner report, 2008<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Software-as-a-service (SaaS) customers increasingly need to integrate their internal applications directly with the software functionality available from SaaS providers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Vendors should implement a portfolio approach to their multienterprise integration strategy to best meet the diverse needs of their target market.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >Key Findings:<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Multienterprise integration is complex and resource-intensive.<b><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS customers need to deal with SaaS integration just as they do for multienterprise integration with other external business partners.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS vendors that choose a one-size-fits-all approach to multienterprise SaaS integration are more likely to fail to meet the diverse requirements of SaaS customers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS vendors can build or outsource their business-to-business (B2B) infrastructure.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >Recommendations:<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS customers should evaluate multienterprise SaaS integration from SaaS vendors the same way they evaluate multienterprise integration solutions from other vendors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS customers should ask SaaS providers for details about multienterprise SaaS strategy and pricing, and whether their preferred method of integration is supported.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">SaaS vendors should offer a portfolio approach to multienterprise SaaS integration; those that can't do this unilaterally should partner to accomplish this approach.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">When doing integration with multiple business partners, including a SaaS vendor, SaaS customers should implement a portfolio approach to multienterprise integration.<o:p></o:p></span></span></li></ul><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >The Multienterprise SaaS Integration Problem:<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Although some SaaS-based software functionality can be delivered via the ubiquitous Web browser, in many cases, direct application integration between the software functionality of the SaaS provider and its customer's internal applications and systems are required. We refer to this scenario as "multienterprise SaaS integration." As is the case for internal application integration, the particular type of integration problem you are solving for multienterprise SaaS integration can vary. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">For example, the problem you may be solving may be data synchronization, process integration or composite application integration (see "Three Forms of Interapplication Integration in Healthcare"). Regardless of which three integration problems you are solving for multienterprise SaaS integration, the approach can vary widely: for example, batch vs. real-time interaction; or flat files vs. electronic data interchange (EDI), XML or Web services. In addition to achieving basic multienterprise integration, SaaS vendors also need to support multienterprise process visibility (for example, a view of the business process spanning the SaaS provider's and SaaS customer's applications) and compliance (for example, monitoring and enforcing security and service-level agreements).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >Alternative SaaS Vendor Strategies for Multienterprise Integration:<o:p></o:p></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Whether large or small, SaaS vendors will ultimately choose one of three strategies for multienterprise SaaS integration:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><ul style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">One size fits all<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Any way you want it<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Portfolio approach</span></span></li></ul></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-70538180106216249742008-03-25T14:57:00.003+05:302008-04-21T17:02:14.349+05:30Analyst Report: IT Services Market in Asia Pacific to Grow to US$55.9 Billion by 2011<div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="BACKGROUND: #333399; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:white;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;color:white;" >India to remain the fastest growing IT Services country in the region, while Greater <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region> will represent the largest regional opportunity by 2011…<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">The IT<b><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"> </span></b>Services market in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will grow from US$37.5B in 2007 to US$55.9B in 2011, representing a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">10.5% from 2006 to 2011, according to the ‘Asia Pacific IT Services Market and Forecast, 2006-2011’ report by Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">. According to the report, the Indian IT Services market with a CAGR of 18.6% will remain the fastest growing in the region, although as a region Greater China will offer the largest market opportunity in dollar terms at the end of the forecast period.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">“The Asia Pacific IT Services market is arguably the global leader in terms of growth, supplemented with a mix of mature and emerging markets,” said <b><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Phil Hassey</span></b>, Vice President – Services Research at Springboard Research. “The markets of interest are not just the top four – <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Australia</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on">Korea</st1:country-region> – but the emerging ones like <st1:country-region st="on">Indonesia</st1:country-region> and <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Vietnam</st1:country-region></st1:place>, which will register significant growth going forward,” Mr. Hassey added. The report uses Springboard’s Market Attractiveness Index to rank countries and individual IT Services markets on the basis of growth opportunities. According to the Market Attractiveness Index, the top ten countries in the region are:</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p> </o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">1.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">People’s Republic of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">2.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">India</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">3.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Australia</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">4.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Korea</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">5.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Indonesia</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">6.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Vietnam</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">7.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Malaysia</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">8.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Rest of ASEAN<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">9.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Singapore</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-LEFT: 53.25pt; TEXT-INDENT: -35.25pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore">10.<span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="FONT: 100% 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span></span></span><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Philippines</span></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">“For <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>, local capabilities, offerings and presence is just the start of a list of essential requirements for success. On the other hand, existing relationships, marquee clients and strong partnerships can provide capabilities for expansion in markets such as Hong Kong and New Zealand with relatively limited opportunities,” Mr. Hassey added. According to the report, Application Hosting with a CAGR of 19.5% between 2007 and 2011, will register the fastest growth during the forecast period, although </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Enterprise Application Integration</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"> at US$ </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">7.8</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">billion will continue to be the largest component of the market by 2011. While </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Enterprise IT Outsourcing is the largest market in 2007, the reluctance of PRC firms to use the Enterprise IT Outsourcing model will reduce its relative size and weighting in the market by 2011. </span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">As part of the report’s overall assessment of the APEJ IT Services market, Springboard Research has several key outcomes and predictions for the industry in 2008. The report predicts that challenges in accessing and retaining IT Skills will accelerate the shift to external services providers, as enterprises will struggle to retain in-house key individuals and skill sets. Also, China will not challenge India as the home of offshore service delivery especially for English language requirements – as skill levels, quality, culture and governance are all more suited to India being a hub of global delivery against the PRC.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#003366;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#003366;" >About this report</span></span></u></b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Springboard Research ‘</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;">Asia Pacific IT Services Market and Forecast 2006-2011’ report offers an extensive and insightful perspective on IT Services market across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) region. It outlines 15 individual IT Services markets – including Infrastructure Support, Desktop Management, Enterprise Application Integration and IT Outsourcing - and 15 countries with respect to market size, key players and growth dynamics and forecasts demand and growth for each of them. The report also contains predictions for the IT Services industry for 2008.</span></span><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#003366;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#003366;" >About Springboard Research</span></span></u></b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></u></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a name="OLE_LINK1"></a><a name="OLE_LINK2"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:black;">Springboard Research is a next-generation IT market research and advisory firm. Springboard leverages its pioneering research model to deliver greater agility and flexibility in IT market research and helps its clients lead rather than follow market trends. Springboard works with the leading IT companies in the world in the software, services, telecommunications and hardware sectors. Founded in 2004, Springboard has a worldwide presence with offices in the </span></span></a><st1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><?xml:namespace prefix = u1 /><u1:country-region st="on"><span style="font-size:85%;">United States</span></span></span></st1:country-region></u1:country-region><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;color:black;"><span style="font-size:85%;">, <u1:country-region st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Australia</u1:country-region></span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;">, <u1:country-region st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Singapore</u1:country-region></span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;"> and <u1:country-region st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Japan</u1:country-region></span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;">, as well as global research centers in <u1:country-region st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">India</u1:country-region></span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;">, <u1:country-region st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Pakistan</u1:country-region></span></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;">, and <u1:country-region st="on"><u1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Morocco</u1:place></u1:country-region></span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-size:85%;">. Springboard has been acknowledged as an emerging leader and was recently named ‘Rising Star’ in the global IT market research industry by Outsell, the leading research and advisory firm for the information industry. For more information, please visit </span></span></span><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:purple;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:purple;">www.springboardresearch.com</span></span></u><b><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:#003366;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;color:#003366;" ><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-38535855017131906932008-03-18T13:26:00.004+05:302008-11-16T01:34:07.598+05:30Look who wants to read your emails - the Indian government!<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179019524449784306" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_cqGfGfi8SHY/R9-S0V-kUfI/AAAAAAAABeA/HxF37-ggc5Q/s400/Blackberry.jpg" border="0" /><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">When Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) launched BlackBerry in 1999, within no time the revolutionary mobile device that enabled users to browse the Net, read emails in real-time and send fax documents earned the nickname, CrackBerry, an allusion to its notoriously addictive features. Like all secure internet services, RIM uses an encryption code that scrambles the email messages sent out from a BlackBerry device and then unscrambles it again when the message reaches its target. Only, Blackberry uses a highly complex algorithm for the purpose — a 256-bit advanced encryption standard process. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) of The Government of India allegedly can decode messages with an encryption level of up to 40 bits. (According to cyber security experts, there’s a rigid decryption technology hierarchy in the world: The US has the most advanced software, Europe gets tech that’s one generation behind and countries like <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> have even older decoders.)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">So, if intelligence agencies cannot crack BlackBerry’s email code, they can still do one of two things — get the government to force RIM to scale down its encryption code to 40 bits, or better still, ask for the “keys” that will unlock the code. The Section 69 of the IT Act, 2000 does give the government the power to intercept electronic information, but such sweeping surveillance is clearly stretching the law. And, what impact will it have on ecommerce? People will be extremely concerned about sending business details through the Net. For instance, the licensing norms for ISPs in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region> were created in 1998-99. Accordingly, licenses issued to ISPs forbid encryption above 40 bits. Today, a 40-bit code can be cracked in no time. A browser like Internet Explorer 7 has a 128-bit code. So, any web provider using an encryption of over 40 bits has to provide the keys to the government. This means that the government has the means to track transactions and correspondences in these websites — an access it doesn’t have in the BlackBerry platform since the ISPs providing these services were, for some reason, never asked to hand over the encoding key.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Terror organizations are constantly changing their footprint and upgrading their technology. Today if we have tracked say, 555 web-pages linked to the terror network, tomorrow they may all disappear and return modified. It’s a nightmarish scenario for security agencies. However, the powers of surveillance can be misused. That’s a devil you have to live with. Unfortunately, the legal and political framework needed to check misuse of cyber-snooping by our politicians is lacking in the country. That’s a point many cyber experts are making. Can the intelligence agencies ensure fairplay? People may be willing to give up some of their civil liberties for dealing with the security threat to the country. But there should be a clear-cut policy framework and laws on what kind of invasion is lawful and what’s not. Clearly, there’s room for legislative action and transparency in cyberspace.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p><strong><u>SHORT CUT TO ENCRYPTION</u></strong></o:p></span></span></p><blockquote class="Section1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p><strong><u>What?</u></strong> – In IT, encryption is a software that uses advanced algorithms to scramble a message being sent out in cyberspace. The message is unscrambled when it reaches the recipient.<br /><strong><u>Why?</u></strong> – It’s a security measure to prevent internet data being read by unintended persons.<br /><strong><u>Who Uses It?</u></strong> – All web browsers, e-commerce, banking sites and email service providers use encryption software to ensure secure transactions and confidentiality.<br /><strong><u>Does It Change?</u></strong> – Yes, encryption technology is constantly evolving. A few years back, codes that were 40 bits long were considered safe. Now, 128-bit codes are default in most sites. BlackBerry uses a more advanced 256-bit algorithm.<br /><strong><u>Can It Be Cracked?</u></strong> – Software can be developed to crack encryption codes. Security agencies use these to monitor data flow in cyberspace. Obviously, longer codes are harder to crack.<br /><strong><u>What Is A Key?</u></strong> – This is the sequence of bits used by an encryption algorithm to scramble a message and put it back again. It unlocks the code.</o:p></span></span><br /></blockquote><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p><p class="MsoNormal" style="TEXT-ALIGN: right" align="right"></o:p></span></span></p><div align="right"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><em>Source: Sunday Times, March 16, 2008<o:p></o:p></em></span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29739571.post-39100914587352129442008-03-11T11:14:00.001+05:302008-04-21T16:59:35.301+05:30Local System Integrators Push SOA Penetration in Major Asian Markets - Springboard Research<div class="Section1"><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 /><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"><b><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:red;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italicfont-family:Verdana;color:red;" >China</span></span></i></b></st1:place></st1:country-region><b><i><span style="font-family:Verdana;color:red;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italicfont-family:Verdana;color:red;" > leads the pack with SOA integration dominated by local players…<?xml:namespace prefix = o /><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><st1:country-region st="on"><b><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >Singapore</span></span></b></st1:country-region><b><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" >, March 11, 2008</span></span></b><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">: Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry, today reported that local System Integrators (SIs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) are playing a significant role in SOA vendors’ ability to penetrate four major domestic markets in <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place>. This is especially evident in the Chinese market that is dominated by local players. These are the findings of Springboard’s latest research covering Asia’s Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) market, based on a survey of 354 CIOs and IT managers of large and mid-market enterprises in <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Singapore</st1:country-region>, and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“Local SIs and ISVs form an important part of the SOA ecosystem by integrating systems well, and by building customized applications on vendor platforms,” said Balaka Baruah Aggarwal, Senior Manager for Emerging Software for Springboard Research. “While international software vendors also offer integration and consulting services directly, ISV/SI partners are key providers of these services,” added Ms. Aggarwal.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The local ISV/SI partner landscape is very unique throughout most of <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place> because up until now, many multinational vendors worked in the region with their top tier global integration partners. However, the Indian market is a notable exception where global IT companies such as IBM, HP and Microsoft dominate mindshare as SOA players, despite the presence of home-grown IT giants like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Satyam.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“The Indian players are now beginning to expand both in the domestic market and neighbouring markets in the region. The case for Chinese integrators is just the opposite, as they have established their hold on the domestic market and are now on the prowl to expand their regional and global presence,” added Ms. Aggarwal. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Springboard has scanned the SOA partner landscape and identified some key vendors who are prominent in <st1:place st="on">Asia</st1:place>. These SOA local leaders include:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><ol style="MARGIN-TOP: 0in" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Kaz Group- <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Kingdee-</span></span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region></span></span></st1:place><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">TongTech-</span></span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> <st1:country-region st="on">China</st1:country-region></span></span></st1:place><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Patni Systems- <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Satyam Computers- <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">TCS- India<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Wipro-</span></span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region></span></span></st1:place><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">TmaxSoft-</span></span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"> <st1:country-region st="on">Korea</st1:country-region></span></span></st1:place><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">Samsung SDS- Korea<o:p></o:p></span></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">NCS- Singapore<o:p></o:p></span></span></li></ol><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“Integration skills of partners have a critical role in successful SOA projects as SOA involves bringing together disparate IT systems,” Ms Aggarwal explained. “The battle for SOA has extended from simply marketing SOA solutions to seeking out partners who have good integration skills and reach in the local markets. Ultimately it is good partners who will make the difference in vendors’ ability to woo customers,” she added.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">The study also found that price is not the number one reason for vendor selection. Important reasons for vendor selection are proven products and solutions, clearly defined roadmaps for deployment and vendor reputation. On the other hand, the perception of SOA being expensive emerged as the top inhibitor for SOA deployment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;">“As SOA is a strategic initiative, the process requires investment and a long-term organizational commitment. Further, since business managers typically control the budget in an organization, particularly for extended strategic projects, vendors need to target business managers along with technology managers,” said Ms. Aggarwal.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">About This Study<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been one of the IT industry’s hottest buzzwords over the past several years. IT vendors are evangelizing SOA and many organizations are looking at SOA to help them better integrate and leverage their existing and future software applications and infrastructures. SOA’s popularity lies in its promise to help organizations improve operations, cut costs, and boost efficiencies, while IT vendors see the technology as a way to tap into new revenue streams and acquire larger enterprise accounts. Springboard Research’s SOA Market Canvas is an ongoing research service that provides extensive SOA market coverage for the Asia Pacific region. The SOA Market Canvas examines key trends in the Asia Pacific SOA market and offers an array of SOA market data on an ongoing basis. Springboard’s Market Canvas service delivers a deeper level of research than other reports of its kind and assesses data from a granular level to help IT vendors formulate better SOA go-to-market plans.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><b><u><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold;font-family:Verdana;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">About Springboard Research <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></u></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 6pt"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Springboard Research is a next-generation IT market research and advisory firm. Springboard leverages its pioneering research model to deliver greater agility and flexibility in IT market research and helps its clients lead rather than follow market trends. Springboard works with the leading IT companies in the world in the software, services, and telecommunications & hardware sectors. Founded in 2004, Springboard has a worldwide presence with offices in the <st1:country-region st="on">United States</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Australia</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Singapore</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on">Japan</st1:country-region>, as well as global research centers in <st1:country-region st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Pakistan</st1:country-region>, and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Morocco</st1:place></st1:country-region>. Springboard has been acknowledged as an emerging leader and was recently named ‘Rising Star’ in the global IT market research industry by Outsell, the leading research and advisory firm for the information industry. For more information, please visit </span><a href="http://www.springboardresearch.com/"><span style="font-size:85%;">http://www.springboardresearch.com/</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com