IIM Indore

October 2012

IT BYTES
Infinit-I
The Technology and Systems Club

Contents
What is in News?

2
Starting new web services software enterprises: Is Content Management System sufficient?

3
LEAN Methodology: Transforming IT

4
Implications of advancement in data mining

6
As Classrooms Get Digitised, Will This Lead To Better Education

7
Quiz, Quotes

9
Mergers and Acquisitions

10

What is in News?
Google releases images of giant data centers
Google has publicly made available a series of photographs, a video and a Google Street View map from its data centers, which are located in the US as well as in Europe and Asia. The images may be of cooling racks, steel beams, server rooms spread over thousands of square feet and miles and miles of wire, but there is a certain romance to knowing these are the physical spaces through which our search queries pass. The full set of photographs is available on Google's own website. A few of them are shown in the right.

Perceptual computing may be the next big thing

Intel Capital Global Summit witnessed a slew of futuristic reflections dubbed as Perceptual Computing. The use of natural and immersive interaction with devices including touch, facial recognition and voice has already started to change the way users operate their mobile phones and computers. Intel thinks voice will emerge as a mega trend over the next few years.

Cloud, Mobility and Open Source will drive Indian application development market: Gartner
Gartner believes that the Indian application development software market will reach more than USD 227 million in 2012 translating into an increase of 22.6 percent over 2011. Evolving software delivery models, new development methodologies, emerging mobile application development and open source software will drive growth.

Start-up ventures emerge as an attractive career option in the sluggish job market
In a scenario where most high-volume and key industries struggle to sustain growth momentum in the prevailing global downturn, start-up enterprises are emerging as an attractive option for talents from leading B-schools. Students from premier B-schools are moving into nimble start-ups such as FlipKart, Myntra, InMobi for more challenging career opportunities signaling an inflection point in talent movement in the so far stable talent landscape in the Indian IT/Telecom industry. According to a survey, attractive monetary benefits coupled with greater involvement in the organizations business process, better work-life balance, challenging projects in an emerging market given by these start-ups are sufficient enough to entice the job seekers. IT-Bytes Page 2

Starting new web services - software enterprises: Is Content Management System sufficient?
- Saurav Demta After a decent technology boom in Indian IT industry there has been gradual slowdown due to recession. This has led to hordes of layoffs and unemployment. Entrepreneurship A new trend, seems to be a new mantra to cope up with the problem. It is everywhere throughout the world, people sitting in their home have started becoming creative with ideas to start a new business. Any business requires marketing and communication, and a preeminent and cost effective channel could be an e-portal or online portal. This trend and emergence of resource sharing online platforms like freelancer, elance, odesk etc. has led to rise of many freelancers. Technology sharing has become easy and cost effective due to bidding processes involved. Also, there has been a rise in content management system (CMS) frameworks, which have revolutionized the world of web design and development. Frameworks like wordpress, drupal, moodle, joomla, magento, opencms, etc. have simplified development of systems like enterprise application integration systems, document management, e-commerce, intranet groupware, knowledge management, virtual/managed learning environments and many more. The task is easy content creation, content management, publishing and presentation.

CMS has simplified development of systems like enterprise application integration systems, document management, ecommerce, intranet groupware, knowledge management, and virtual/managed learning environments.

Availability of these open source technologies has led to emergence of many small companies offering services based on these technologies. There are many companies in India especially in cities like Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which cater to web services needs throughout the planet. There is steady fluctuation in the ratio of these companies, the reason being instability to maintain the business. The major challenge faced by these companies is not to get the right project, which aids in business development but to get the right set of resource to execute the project. Also, a novice player in this market could be trapped in identifying right channels for business development. Financial constraints could be another challenge to hire right pool of resources. Usually companies start hiring fresh recruits or inexperienced developers to strengthen their manpower. The concept is to build them into perfection, but another form of evil in IT industry is attrition which engulfs this conception. Even though a company manages to gather a perfect team for project execution and start with easiest option i.e. using CMS, there still remain pitfalls. CMS frameworks come in packages and require lots of customizations. There is good amount of unlearning than learning. There could be complexities in customization, version compatibility, integration, and support and design issues. The packages are flooded with various features, which could be needed to eliminate as per the project demand. All these could lead to customer dissatisfaction and eventually loss in business and issues in customer retention. CMS could seem as a lucrative option to start an enterprise but there still remain challenges in streamlining ones own processes in the organization. Correct requirement gathering, identifying the right CMS, setting a right team and overall value addition to customer requirement will lead to success in project completion and eventually success of the enterprise. IT-BYTES Page 3

LEAN Methodology: Transforming IT

- Vipul Singh Lean principles are primarily associated with manufacturing or to a lesser degree to services, but implementing its principles in IT industry is the new strategy that companies are adopting to increase their efficiency, agility and competence. Implementation of Lean in IT can help companies to come closer to their clients by becoming more flexible and reactive, increase their efficiency, both from an operational and financial point of view, and develop the internal competencies to become a learning entity that can continually perform at a level of excellence. Lean methodology implies increasing the output or creating value by eliminating waste. As lean develops itself as a management discipline, it is high time that companies should adopt lean in their IT management. But, implementing lean to IT is very much different from being applied to manufacturing as in IT organizations the waste is mostly hidden and the products are typically unique requiring a relatively advanced decision making. By implementing lean properly organizations can easily cut down their project cycle times, reduce their amount of rework and can optimize their standards for drawing out a strategic plan. As part of implementation, companies should adopt a bottom-up approach in order to increase the adaptation rate. Operational managers should be trained in lean principles and approaches so that they easily identify the obstacles in the implementation process and determine the way forward. Beside this, managers should receive training in the change management concepts basically covering the diagnostic, analytical and cultural levers required to bring about a change in
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peoples behavior. It will help companies to transform their managers into professionals that will provide long-term benefits to the organization going forward. The next step forward for organizations is to ingrain the principles of change and continuous improvement in its strategic design. The implementation of lean initiatives is likely to receive resistance from the employees. Thus, it is quite essential that organizations should properly leverage the HR function. They should measure the progress correctly while communicating clearly and regularly on the status of transformation to counter the skeptics and keep the people engaged and informed. Lean IT is the new standard being formed in the industry and thus the CIOs should keep a close watch in its adoption and implementation process. Organizations adopting lean methodology in their processes should utilize their internal capabilities while enhancing their understanding about their external resources so as to develop a powerful methodology, which can increase its efficiency and competence in the highly competitive market.

Implementing lean properly organizations can easily cut down their project cycle times, reduce their amount of rework and can optimize their standards for drawing out a strategic plan

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Implications of advancement in data mining

- Ragavendran K YouTube has been one of most popular platforms for sharing videos online. It has been so successful because it is free and anyone can share the videos without any restrictions (barring the disclaimer regarding the ownership of the video). Users specify tags while uploading the videos. At present, YouTube relies heavily on these tags to pull the videos when they are searched. What is the problem with this approach? Well, at the bare minimum, there could be a mismatch between the tag entered and the corresponding video; YouTube is virtually blind to this fact. Another implication of this limitation is that if I am interested in watching a video with a particular content, I wouldnt be able to search precisely for those videos unless I know the tags that were originally used. Processing video would unquestionably be much more complicated than processing plain text. Yes we are indeed talking about data mining of videos. Once such data mining capabilities are developed, the marketers will be able to harness the wealth of information available in the social media websites to craft and deliver the most effective campaigns, promotions and offers. In general, businesses will be undoubtedly benefited with such superior technology. Will it not be a blessing to the medical practitioners in treating the patients? It has a great potential for delivering painless surgeries and cost effective treatments. With the advancements in the data mining technology, if we could decode and understand the DNA patterns, chances of discovering drugs for many killer diseases like cancer, AIDS etc. would undeniably be very high. We would also be in a better position to forecast the weather by understanding flawlessly the satellite pictures and videos and what not; Government, farmers and public can thus be better prepared to face the natural calamities. Thus, it is evident that the data-mining field will be the torchbearer for many other fields and any innovation in this field would invariably result in the overall betterment of the society.

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As Classrooms Get Digitised, Will This Lead To Better Education?

- Sudeep Tripathy

The knowledge or skill obtained by the process of learning is called education. This process of learning, as we experienced it, in our school days was that of a teacher using chalk and blackboard or at best a white board and a marker as the only teaching tools in the classroom. Today, digitisation is set to change the look and feel of these classrooms. A typical digitised classroom would have projectors, screens, computer aided presentations, simulations and academic curriculum on digital platform and audio-video format. Students can derive best results if they are attentive in the class as well as assimilate most/all of what is being taught in class. With a typical school student trying to read, write and understand what is written in the board at the same time, it is only natural that he skips most of what the teacher is delivering. Over the course of time, education reformers have brought in a lot of interesting changes into the school curriculum. For example, students are to carry crafts and drawing books apart from normal course materials lending their backpacks very heavy for somebody of their age. There are other more deep-seated problems in the education sector in India. There is a requirement of over more than one lakh schools to cater to primary education itself. The existing schools dont have qualified teachers to impart quality education to the students. Certain schools function out of make-shift houses that give way to rain, wind and sun. Consequently, these schools would shut down till repairs are done which takes eternity. Whenever there is a debate surrounding Indias development, we talk of its demographic dividends. But with this pitiable educational state of large sections of Indias population, it might not prove to be an asset. In order to bring about a standardisation of curriculum that is imparted across schools, they need to digitise. Digitisation shall further enable a more dutiful and skilled teacher towards his/her students. Be it Micromaxs funbook or Amazons kindle or Harness Handitouch, all these platforms shall not only ease studies but also make it more fun and engaging. Harness Handitouch is coming up with a technology that shall equip students and teachers with hand-held devices. All that they need to do is listen to what the teacher says in the class and understand. They can go back to their homes and playback the records to revise the concepts. The administration of quizzes shall also be online and the teacher can evaluate the students on a real-time basis. The device is also programmed to enable the teacher to pay special attention to any student she desires. This kind of technology shall also be of great help to students with vision problems as they can hear and learn.
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E-content in the classrooms shall help students in understanding subjects where it is important to use ones imagination and visualisation. For instance, students of 3-D geometry and mechanics preparing for IIT-JEE shall find demonstrations and illustrations very useful. Kids in kindergarten medium can be shown cartoons and asked to recollect and reproduce what they were shown. This shall not only help them improve their retention power but also enhance their creative abilities. Students interested in taking guitar lessons can be provided with video-taped lectures by the school showing step by step procedure to learn. As far as feasibility of mass scale digitisation is concerned, there is concern over the reach and affordability of this technology. As of now, there were only 2 major players in Educomp and Pearson. Recently TATA Information Systems and Birla Shloka Edutech have entered into this Classroom ICT industry. Birla has provided ICT solutions to 542 tribal schools across Maharashtra and is planning to build 100 schools equipped with digital classrooms. TIS is looking at digitising schools in every district of India. As of now, they have started getting 50% of their revenues from tier III and tier IV regions. In a situation where availability of decent teachers is a concern, it is only logical for parents and schools to adopt these solutions.

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Quiz
1. This game system from Microsoft is hands-free and equipped with a camera that detects and reacts to your every move. What is it? 2. What is the name of the free application from Google allows users to take a picture of just about anything and, within moments, returns a search-result page for the item. 3. Longhorn, Whistler, Blackcomb, Memphis What are these? 4. What is the fraud tactic called which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser to lead them to an alternative website rather than to the intended popular website? 5. It is an open API developed by Pixar Animation Studios to describe three-dimensional scenes and turn them into digital photorealistic images. What is it called?

Quotable Quotes
1. In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average. William J. Clinton 2. The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential. Steve Ballmer 3. Not all problems have a technological answer, but when they do, that is the more lasting solution. Andrew Grove 4. The demographic weight of countries such as China and India exercise a massive pressure on our wages and salaries. They have accomplished massive technological advances and the revolution in information technology has reduced the costs of transport. Laurent Fabius 5. It A variety of national and international studies indicate that the broad-based deployment of information technology can have a substantial impact on our nation's economic productivity and growth as well as the educational and social success of our citizens. Tim Holden Answers to Quiz: 1. Kinect 2. Google goggles 3. Codenames of various Windows OS 4. Typosquatting 5. RenderMan Interface Specification

Merger and Acquisition

1. Tech Mahindra acquired 51% stake in Bharti Group-owned mobile value-added services (VAS) provider Comviva Technologies for Rs 260 crore. 2. Infosys acquired Swiss Consulting firm Lodestone Holding AG for 330 million Swiss Frances. 3. Tech Mahindra acquired privately held Hutchison Global Services for USD 87.1 Million. 4. Google acquired photo-editing platform Snapseed (very similar to Instagram). 5. Apple to acquire Mobile and Network Security provider AuthenTec for USD 356 Million. 6. HCL Infosystems acquired educational content provider Edurix to improve its offerings for Digischool solutions through its tablet PC MyEduTab. 7. TCS acquired Pune-based Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) for Rs 188 crore. 8. Wipro acquired premium personal care brand Yardley's UK business.

Did you know???

The first commercial Internet domain name was registered in the name symbolics.com on 15th March 1985 by Symbolics Inc., a computer

systems firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Around the globe, average number of email messages sent per day is 300 billion. 90% of them are spam.

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