Explore IdeasThat Shape the Future.

Secured transactions, anonymity, real-time ledger, low cost record maintenance, etc, you must have heard about such terminologies while reading/learning about blockchain. Just like internet, it is free and open and everyone in the chain can see the detail of each record. Blockchain is offering multiple application but there are multiple blockchain myths you might've heard about. Here we will try to clear such misconceptions and everything blockchain is not!

Finance only?

Blockchain was introduced in year 2008 as Bitcoin, which tricked people into thinking that finance is the only use for Blockchain, which is the biggest blockchain myth out of other blockchain myths. Rather, blockchain can offer infinite applications. This technology is spreading its roots in various sectors including healthcare, education and agriculture, which can turn every sector digital and transparent. “Smart contracts” are another trend in blockchain which has the potential to deliver instantaneous transactions between consumers and vendors.

Public/private blockchain

Sure, it offers the transparency but it doesn’t mean all blockchains are public. Public blockchains have no centralized controls. But firms/organizations can opt for private blockchains also. This person or group can make deletions that cannot be made in a public blockchain. Anyone can set up a private blockchain among a specific group of people. But activities of private blockchains are not completely private as they can also be traced. The fact that it is operated over a public ledger makes it traceable to other parties or even the government clear another misconception about blockchain myths.

No trust required?

Yes, it is true that blockchain don’t require trusted third parties and users appreciate not having third-party oversight. But it raises the issue for group of users to collude to disrupt information. It’s possible that a group could prevent this step from happening. Trust in the process and in strangers allows blockchains to work.

Lightweight technology?

If you think that blockchain is a lightweight technology than you’re mistaken here. In fact, in early years, general computers couldn’t even process bitcoin. But today, using computers and older graphics processing units, GPUs, for mining is more wasteful of energy than the amount of money created. For meeting the increasing need for computing power and energy ASIC were introduced to keep up with the pace of increasing size of blockchains.

Legally binding smart contracts

Smart contracts are new buzz in the town as it enables agreement to bypass any third parties while conduction of transactions. But as it has “contract” in its name, users often mistake it with the legal documents. No they’re not legal documents and definitely not similar to the real life legal binding contracts.

So now I believe I have cleared all the misconceptions you might be having about blockchain technology, I hope you’re now able to make better decisions about investing and using this technology.

With the remarkable service delivery, Cloud has succeeded in attaining immense popularity. With three services models, IaaS (infrastructure as a service, Paas (platform as a service) and SaaS (software as a service), we always make a mistake of thinking that IaaS comes first in the evolution. But you’re wrong here! SQS (simple queueing service) was the first service offered by Amazon using cloud in 2004. Soon after, cloud PaaS became the most preferred choice of developers as it eliminates the hassles of managing IT infrastructure of business applications. Why PaaS? Lets consider the simple analogy to gain understanding of PaaS. Before developing an application, developers will analyze the need and functions of the application. They will have to study the platform they require for developing the application and other required equipments. If the developer find the integrated platform, he will code the application accordingly. Now, lets suppose you have an integrated platform equipped with all the underlying necessities. For developers, it was dream come true. It made developing applications more efficient, integrated and excited. Scope of PaaS over other models Despite, IaaS having the ability to allow exibility to the developers for deploying applications with full control, it comes with myriad of hassles related to infrastructure building and operations. On the other hand, SaaS limits the innovations as the developers’ role in SaaS offerings are restrained. Talking about cloud PaaS, it allows developers to innovate more frequently. All developers require is the details of environment such as region, deployment plan and language, the environment is ready and coding is set in action. Main reason of greater scope of PaaS is the costs. It enables developers with pay-as-you-go payment model. PaaS encourages the code over various chains of environments including test, staging, pre-production and production. PaaS platforms are quite resilient as more than one node serve the actual load to maintain high availability. Code and configuration can be replicated across facilities and regions to add the capability of recovery in disaster situations. Drawbacks of PaaS Even though PaaS offers multiple solutions, there are some pitfalls that needs to be addressed by the developers before going forward. Here are some limitations which comes with cloud PaaS:

1. Legacy applications are not supported by PaaS as they don’t quite fit with PaaS environment.
2. PaaS roles out the VMs or machine instances underneath its offering. There is a limit on these machines in terms of computing power such as memory and CPU. Hence, a challenge of application load to which PaaS can scale will have to be encountered.
3. One of the major inhibitors of PaaS is provider lock-in. Simple transportability of code amongst providers is far from reality. To replace the provider for performance or cost, you will need to plan and invest, as the code in one platform will not work in another.
4. It’s imperative that the enterprises follow providers’ service roadmap as strenuous situations could arise if the provider stops supporting specific language platform or associated tools.

What is digital transformation?

Process of using digital technologies for remaking a process in order to make it more effective and efficient is known as digital transformation. One thing we need to understand is that, it is not just about replicating the existing system in digital form. Rather, use the technology to transform the existing system into something way better. It can include various technologies but AI, Cloud, IoT, Big Data etc are some hottest technologies. Digital transformation is not just about technology as change in business and corporate culture are also vital to the success of digital transformation. These initiatives are often taken by large enterprises to establish effective system to help them gaining competitive advantage over other rivals.

What is the importance of digital transformation?

Every large, medium or small sized business organization is spending fair amount on digitization including software, hardware and services. It is a $1.3 Trillion industry as stated by IDC in 2017. With the immense emergence of digital transformation, it is predicted that this industry will reach $2.1 Trillion by 2021. Digital optimization makes the services even efficient and effective. Globalization is the result of digital transformation. Just over half (54 percent) said that their digital business objective is transformational, while 46 percent said the objective of the initiative is optimization. As suggested by executives, revenue of organizations are affected by 46% with it. According to a survey, CFOs are planning to increase their investment in technologies that speed business change. Four out of ten CFOs claims that they’re going to take initiative within 12 months.

What are the drawbacks of digital transformation?

As far the critics are concerned, they claim digital transformation as another opportunity for the vendors to rebrand their offerings. It is common for them to see systems and services being sold as the answer to their digital transformation. With this kind of over-selling of services and systems makes the digital transformation approach the trough of disillusionment. Tech workers also express cynicism about grand talk of digital. No technology worker spends their working day digitally transforming, rather than coding, programming, and developing. And the phrase can be applied so broadly that it becomes effectively meaningless.

What is the future of digital transformation?

The hottest trends in technology such ads big data, cloud, AI and IoT are helping entrepreneurs to develop new business models and disrupting their existing business model model and operations. Executives state that these technologies are making them able to see tangible value coming out of it by improving their optimization and productivity. They are now more confident while tackling business challenges and addresses them even efficiently. Start ups are also approaching the innovative ideas in order to thrive through their new ways of work. Traditional organizations and industries are also trying hard to get their head around digitization with integrated approach to advanced technologies.

If you’re also interested in optimise your business operations by developing web application or other services, kindly contact us.

Future software is flipping and is seen as no-code. Digital computers were not really useful at their early phase. Punch cards and command oriented functions made it even complicated to use a computer. They were far from powerful but devilishly hard to program. Assembly codes were used to instruct, which was not only difficult but was ridiculously time consuming. With the introduction to FORTRAN in 1950s, it started to change. Command statement replaced assembly language with command statements that compiled the lower level code into something roughly resembled English. Later, high level languages built on basic logic was being used and turned low-level code into something even simpler.

Now, influencing companies like Zudy, Mendix and Quick Base are taking initiative to transform code into visual interfaces. Although the basic logic will be same as FORTRAN but it will replace coding and can be represented more simply and is considered as future softwware. These no code programming systems are expected to disrupt how software power enterprises.

“Visual interface is the key to no-code programming platforms”

Earlier, technology was in favour of big enterprises only as it would take huge investments and equipment. Expensive consultants were appointed to design and construct the system accordingly. Also., once they were built, it was not possible to modify or upgrade them as the procedure was time consuming and expensive as well. Attitude of developers was “we built it, you should like it”. But cloud disrupted this legacy by availing powerful system to the medium and small sized organisation via internet. APIs (application programming interfaces) makes it possible to connect with other possible systems. It basically changes the technical landscape by deploying agile services to SMEs but no-code software platforms are making it even simpler for the firms to gain competitive advantage over their rival firms using future software.

No-code platforms flipped the overall technical scenario, if we look closely. “A big part of the benefit to no-code or low-code platforms is that they let you access elements of a development environment visually rather than actually writing the code yourself. That accelerates development and improves quality at the same time.” visual interfaces are preferred because they are easy to understand and use for front-line managers and other non-technical people, not familiar to up-front technical programming. Visual interfaces enable them with better basic functionalities such as building their own screens, features and designs so that they can show developers what they want rather than try to explain it.

Now, computer systems are less high-tech and more user experience oriented. It offers more power to the users to utilise it for better use.

You must have observed that majority of organizations are moving towards data source outsourcing and must be thinking whether it is worth it? Will you have any operational or financial advantage by outsourcing the data centre? Embracing data centre will suffice your operational needs or not? Unfortunately, one yes will not suffice your concerns. Survey studies proves that most IT companies are moving to data centre outsourcing as it has various advantages to offer including low operational costs, access to servers, better utilization of available resources etc. But you are recommended to do some background check including available resources, available options, business perspective, budget analysis etc before deciding to outsource your data centres. Following are some facts which will give you a reason for embracing data centre outsourcing or not!

1. Higher scalability:There is great risk to the business agility as it can get compromised with the under or over utilization of capacities in an in-house data centre. However, outsourcing to third party means you can avail scalability, availability, flexibility and cost effectiveness, that too without having to worry about resource allocation and appropriate infrastructure.
2. Reduced operational costs:Considering that initial investment might be high but it will also save you from costs of IT labour, upgrades, equipment maintenance, physical space management etc. It companies are also offered with the option of moving their data centre operations to cloud. It doesn’t only reduces the cost of ownership but also reduces future equipment expenditure.
3. Better connectivity and latency:To improve the functioning of data centres, it is essential to ensure that the outsource providers are capable of offering better connectivity and latency when it comes to internet and other network related tasks. It will help organization to accomplish multiple-carrier offerings. Best offerings can help you choose from wide range of network carrier options.
4. Higher Uptime: Third party services are often governed by SLAs (service level agreement) which bounds them to contractual agreement. Stated services and state-of-art infrastructure will be offered by third party accordingly. They will make sure that they stick to their pre-defined contractual terms, meanwhile reducing the downtime and avoiding financial penalties as well. Which results in lowest possible downtime assured by  third party even during network delays or power outages.
5. Increased business focus: Firstly, outsourcing it will eliminate the need of building a new infrastructure as this responsibility is shifted to third party. Secondly, upgrades and maintenance is also offered by third party which will not only remove the overhead but will also help you focus on your business operations only. Immediate business goals can be focused and achieved in even better manner if organizations are more focused on their goals.
6. Speed and flexibility: Firstly setting up a data centre is time consuming and secondly it is expensive as well. Outsourcing data centre can be good idea as it offers better better services and eliminate the overhead of taking care of physical spacing and upgrades as it is the responsibility of third party. You will not have to worry about space or power challenges, rather you can have better speed and flexibility while considering an expansion.

Get in touch with us for more details and acquire data centre services.

 

As mobile phones has become inseparable part of business, it becomes necessary to adapt mobile application for business. Business apps can be as versatile as depending upon the business requirements. Industry is moving on a fast pace and has come a long way which enables mobile users to perform crucial tasks including check-in to their flights, generating invoices, keep track of their activities, keep track of their health and work out. Business apps also have many other tertiary benefits for users, while continuously improving their productivity and saving time and money. Right from an entry-level employee to the top management, today everyone is using a mobile business app to remain productive on the go.

1. Mind-Mapping apps: For effective planning and creating diagrammatic representation, mind-mapping application are used. They can create diagrammatic relations between new ideas, concepts, use cases or other piece of information. These applications are useful in improving the overall learning efficiency. People spend hours on such business apps for improving their productivity and concentration during work hours. Drawing apps, puzzles, quizes, iMindMap etc are some common instances of such application.
2. Mobile payment apps: “Touch to pay” can be the most convenient option for the users to make payments. Cashless transactions have become new trend as it is convenient and almost not time consuming at all. Mobile payment has major impact in banking, e-commerce, grocery stores and other industries. Best thing about mobile payment applications is that allows users to make multiple transactions to pay at multiple outlet. Also exciting offers and cash-back schemes are a plus-plus for users. Mobile wallets including PayPal, aliexpress, Venmo, Visa QIWI wallet etc are some instances of such applications.
3. Communication apps: For any business, it is necessary to form reliable communication line and here comes the communication application in picture. Such applications are capable of enabling remote access, multiple channel communication, exchange of files and data from one node to another. Such applications includes social networking applications, meeting centres, video conferencing applications, instant mail or messaging systems.
4. Enterprise-specific apps: Enterprise-specific application are exclusively designed for specific business enterprise, suiting its business requirements in order to address the unique needs and requirements of the particular organization. Such organizations can be schools, business enterprises, retailers, public sectors , interest-based groups. Salesforce automation apps, ERP apps, CRM apps, helpdesk apps, expense tracker apps, Zendesk apps etc.
5. Office productivity apps: These are usually personal productivity application, dedicated towards creating information like electronic music, documents, spreadsheets, digital videos etc. Core requirement of such application is to contribute in the improved productivity of the performance of employees. These applications are used in majority of the companies for employee management and increase the productivity of employees right from entry to top management level. Some common apps belonging to this category include calendars, schedulers, business card readers, tax calculators, time and expense trackers, and workflow apps. However, these applications can be taken off-the-shelf or business industry can have it designed from scratch to meet their specific requirements.

With the transformation in the paradigm of web development, developers are more prone to make mistakes in developing websites. Also, with the recent surge towards mobile browsing, there are a lot of cool and unique designs available. With the wide range of options, it is possible to develop a website which looks perfect but need a lot of improvement. Some of the common mistakes made by the users are as mentioned below:

Forgetting about actual website design element: Most of the website developers are guilty of forcing over the top designing or just simply flattening out the designing component. Too many customization can also lead to too complex and complex designing of the website. Whereas, flattening out the designing of website can make the website look totally unattractive to the visitors. There should be balanced number of photos, videos, banners and other graphics as well. The overall designing must redirect the user towards the focused action.

Lack of responsiveness: With the increasing popularity of smart phones, forty percent of search is run upon smart phones or tablets which makes responsiveness an essential element. Responsiveness is making the website capable of responding to different devices with different screen sizes. Making the website responsive can make it suitable for different users despite of their device choice. However, recent estimates show that less than seventeen percent of the world’s 876 million websites have been created with responsive web design. Since Google introduced a search update that penalizes non-responsive sites in mobile searches, this is a major problem for those who generate leads online.

Lack of input forms: There are websites displaying too many ads whereas others spending a lot of dollars to redirect consumers over their website, only failing to capture the attention of consumer over the main content. But they miserably fail in attaining the lead and odds are against that missed consumers will return back to the website. This problem can be largely eliminated by creating a homepage opt-in offer that will appeal to your visitors and acquiring consumer information.

Adding unnecessary information: Some developers are also guilty of going completely over the board for developing website and forgetting the actual content to be placed in the website. There is a sole purpose behind developing a website and it must be focused on that purpose. But going over the top with designing elements can make it difficult for user to find the actual purpose of website. The number one ranking criteria for the search engines has always been the quality of the content displayed on websites. Yet, domain owners frequently spend thousands of dollars to build a sleek, beautiful site and then treat the actual writing as an afterthought. This affects far more than search results though, because it is also the number one way to engage visitors and increase conversion rates.

Out of date website: A lot can happen in one day and in digital era, a lot is changing on daily basis. There are amazing technical advances available out there, which also makes cybersecurity risks more threatening to businesses. Websites must be kept updates, not for adding new functionalities or technicalities but for also keeping it secure.

“Experience of the future” initiative is taken by McDonalds announced their plans to launch digital ordering kiosks by replacing cashiers in their about 2500 of locations. Company is about to extend their services in about 14,000 locations by deploying mobile ordering system, ultimately extending customer self-service. Now the question arises, where does the future lies in the age of robotics and automation. Well its nowhere near what we see in science fiction. We might picture robots as human like (credits to transformers) but they are actually different and look more related to functions or tasks they performs. In early stage, they were more of like big machines, with significant brawn and little else. They were dull, dirty and dangerous. But with passing time, they have became more portable and easy to handle. For instance, in 1980, robots transformed from being hydraulically powered to electrically driven.

Industrial robots currently at work

Currently there are about 1,000,000 functional unit of robots in the world and 50% of the number can be found in Japan alone, whereas US acquires 15% of them. In early stages, 90% of these robots are functioning in car manufacturing for the dirty work, typically in assembly line. But today, the ratio has slipped to 50% of robots in automobile plants, as it is spreading its roots in various other sectors including laboratories, energy plants, warehouse, factories, hospitals and other industries. Currently, robots are handling all the dirty and dangerous work including assembling products, spray painting, handling dangerous materials, cutting and polishing and inspection of products. Robots are also being used for most critical and dangerous tasks including cleaning sewers, detecting bombs, performing intricate surgeries etc. By observing the criticality of the tasks and productivity offered by robots, it has the potential to turn the technology upside down.

Attaining competitive advantage  `

Robots and automation not only increases the productivity but can also help organizations to gain competitive advantage. Take the example of websites with chatbots enabled. They can keep their clients engaged with the help of chatbots by offering them 24x7 services. It overcomes the communication barrier and tend to bring more business to the organization. General motors, with ability to bring more intelligence, is currently acquiring about 40-50k robots for utilizing and developing new utilities. Robots are offering them with significant new strategies to improve their productivity and manufacturing. The focus of robotic manufacturing technology is to minimize the capital investment by increasing flexibility. New robot applications are being found for operations that are already automated with dedicated equipment.

Envisioning future

Although experts envisions robots in human form by emulating human appearance with machine intelligence but it is not that simple and is not happening anytime soon. Despite a small number of industrial robots are integrated with machine vision systems, robot industry still has to cover a very long distance to reach that level. Industrial robots are currently integrated with machine vision, which is why they are called machine vision rather than robot vision. Today, simple pattern matching vision sensors can be purchased for under $2,000 from Cognex, Omron and others. The price reductions reflect today's reduced computing costs, and the focused development of vision systems for specific jobs such as inspection.

Process of executing the application or software to locate a bug or error is known as software testing. Programs are checked for the errors and mistakes in the system. It is possible that the syntax and grammar for the program is correct but the logic isn’t which may open doors for security vulnerabilities. With the software validation and verification of the program can be done using several tools by any human and the errors can be detected easily. It might seem like a single activity but rather a continuous process. It’s good to introduce software testing in the initial stage to make it error and mistake free.

Static testing

In static testing, the procedure identifies the error or mistake in the verification process and rectifies them without needing to execute any extra code. Usually static testing includes reviewing the documents and source code and static analysis. Walkthrough, reviewing, inspection etc are some common examples of static testing.

Dynamic testing

Dynamic testing is conducted to check the errors in the running program and rectifying the coding issue in the running process. It is conducted during the validation process. Integration testing, unit testing, system testing etc are its example.

Testing is important and after reading some of the historic failures, you’ll realize the importance of software testing:

• On April 26, 1994, 264 innocents were killed in China Airline Airbus A300 crash due to a software bug.
• Once, some of the Amazon third party retailers experienced 1p reduction in their product and they faced heavy losses just because of a software glitch.
• Due to software glitch in air bag sensory system, Nissan have to recall over 1 million cars from market. Two accidents were reported due to this failure.
• Bloomberg terminal in London crashed glitch in April 2015, which affected about 300,000 traders.
• In May 1996, nearly about bank accounts of 823 customers were credited with 920 million US dollars, courtesy to software glitch.

Benefits of testing

1. Software testing can be helpful in learning about reliability of the developed program or application.
2. Testing is required for offering various available facilities to users like delivering high quality software or program along with lower maintenance costs and reliable results in most accurate manner possible.
3. Testing is conducted to assure the clients or end users regarding the reliability and satisfaction of the system.
4. Testing is required as it is included n project plan, which helps in staying in business.
5. Testing is majorly conducted to understand the fault errors in software during the development phases.