Category Archives: Technology

The Impact of the Internet of Things on the Big Data

As we all know that the Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming the next technological revolution. By 2020 the revenue generated from IoT products and services will be exceeded $300 billion as per the Gartner.

Considering the huge amount of revenue and data the IoT will generate, its huge impact will be felt across the entire big data universe, compelling maximum companies to upgrade current tools and processes.It also compelling technology to evolve to accommodate this extra data volume and take advantage of the insights all this new certainly will deliver.

Have a look at the different ways in which the IoT will impact big data:

Data Storage

When it comes to IoT, the first thing that comes to mind is a huge and constant stream of data hitting companies’ data storage. It is a must that data centers must be equipped to handle this extra load of heterogeneous data.

Giving a reply to this direct impact on big data storage infrastructure, a lot of organizations are moving toward the Platform as a Service model rather than keep their own storage infrastructure, that would need constant expansion to handle the load of big data.

As you know that PaaS is a cloud-based managed solution, which delivers scalability, flexibility and compliance and a classy architecture to store valuable IoT data. Cloud storage options comprise private, public and hybrid models.

If all the companies and organizations have sensitive data or data, which is subject to regulatory compliance needs that require heightened security, a private cloud model that might be an excellent option. Instead of this, a public or hybrid model can be chosen as storage for IoT data.

Data Security

Different types of devices, which make up the IoT and the data they make will vary in nature – raw devices, varied types of data and communication protocol. It transmits intrinsic data security risks. However, the varied IoT world is completely new to security professionals and insufficient experience boosts security risks.

Any kind of attack can threaten more than just the data – it could damage the connected devices themselves. Moreover, IoT data will need different organizations to make some important changes to their security landscape. Such type of devices will be of different shapes and sizes and situated on the outside of the network.

Thus, it is a must that every single device has a non-reputable identification for authentication purposes. Enterprises should get all the detail information about these connected devices and store them for audit purposes.

So, for developing trusted connectivity between public and private networks, all the internal and external core routers/switches must be instrumented with X.509 certificates.

Big Data Technologies

At the time of choosing the technology heap for big data processing, the wonderful influx of data, which will be delivered by IoT needs to be kept in mind. It is essential for organizations to adapt technologies to map with IoT data. Computer power, network, and disk all will be impacted and need to be planned to take care of this important data.

Looking at this from a technology perspective, the essential thing is to get events from IoT-connected devices. Using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and another technology, devices can be combined to the network; however, it must be able to send messages to a broker using some well-defined protocol.

Message Queue Telemetry Transport is the most widely used protocol today whereas Mosquitto is a popular open-source MQTT broker. If you once receive the data, the next thought is the technology platform to store the IoT data.

Enormous companies make use of Hadoop and Hive to store big data, but when it comes to IoT data, NoSQL document databases like Apache CouchDB are more suitable as they deliver high throughput and low latency.

Such kinds of databases are schema-less that supports the flexibility to add new event types a lot easily. Some of the other well-known IoT tools are Apache Kafka for intermediate message brokering and Apache Storm for real-time stream processing.

Big Data Analytics

Basically, IoT and big data are two different sides of the same coin. When it comes to managing, and extracting value from IoT data, it is the biggest challenge that most of the companies are facing. However, organizations need to set-up a proper and accurate analytics platform/infrastructure to analyze the IoT data. And you should remember that not all the IoT data is essential.

Performance, right-size infrastructure, and future growth are the three parameters of proper analytics platform that should be considered. For rich performance, a bare-metal server and a physical server dedicated to a single customer is the best fit. However, the hybrid is also the best approach for infrastructure and future growth.

Hybrid placements that consist of cloud, colocation, managed hosting and dedicated hosting, covering excellent features from multiple platforms into a single optimal environment. Moreover, managed service providers are also working on their platforms to handle IoT data. To shelter the whole IoT domain, MSP vendors are mainly working on the infrastructure, performance and tools.

IoT devices are known for making constant streams of data in a highly flexible way and there are lots of companies that need to handle the huge stream data and perform actions on that data. Developing an analytics solution to manage the scale of IoT data, it must be done with these differences in mind.

With the constant development of the IoT, it messengers a new technology and companies wish to participate in this new era to change the way they do things to accommodate new data kinds and data sources.

Are You Ready for The Revolution in Financial Market?

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Recently, I came across to the latest news about Mr. Nandan Nilkeni, a founder team member of Infosys and generator of the concept of Aadhar.

While surfing news, I found his made presentation on the impact of this Aadhar linked cell phones that will surely make and transform the market in general as well as finance market.

After watching his presentation, I was completely amazed and astonished as for how the technology will bring transformation in the world and will change the entire way we live in this world. In his presentation, he showed how technology will impact our daily lives that never happened in the entire history of mankind.

Have you checked his presentation? In case, if you have missed that essential presentation, let’s a have a quick look on the highlights of it:

The telecom revolution has transformed the desktop-based environment into the mobile internet-based environment.
The presentation also showed that there will be a gigantic disturbance in financial services on the back of technology revolution.
The other important highlight is “WhatsApp Movement” which is the concept to comprehend the revolution as there are more than 30 billion messages in a day that passed through WhatsApp in the world, surpassing the SMS by a large margin. This movement will surely take place in the world of finance, making the whole concept of traditional banking and lending go away.
As we all know that gradually, we all are moving from cash-based society to cashless and digital society. Currently, India has 900+ million mobile users that are a record in itself. When we linked the Aadhar with the mobile set with IRIS authentication, it will change the whole world where we live.
Moreover, electronic clearing service “NEFT-RTGS and IMPS have overtaken traditional payment system. A big trend is ongoing with more than 900 billion mobile users that we all are unable to catch. In short, we can say that every single mobile user will be an ATM.
In addition to this, when the IRIS authentication will begin, all the 900 million mobile users will be allowed to have online KYC, online payment, online receipt, online authentication and more. In future, the smartphone will take place of debit and credit cards, and the systems like Paytm will be completely operational. One of the best things that will happen is physical cash will turn into digital cash and digital cash to physical cash will take place. Moreover, the security system will be revolutionized by the digital wallet and digital locker.
There will be a completely new process, leading the innovation and it will also give birth to many new ventures and death of many businesses can also be expected. In next five years, India will surely become data scare to a data-rich country on both consumer as well as the business side. The presentation also highlighted credit process and credit appraisal that will become outdated, and online loan payment will become possible. Just give one though on 900 million people, who will come on one platform and remain connected. Most of the functions of government, back and taxation department will be done by Aadhar linked phones.

Well, all these things are not so far as the IRIS authentication on the smartphone will be started soon practically and it will also become a mass reality soon. Let’s prepare ourselves to live in the digitalized India, where there will be no paperwork and everything will be transparent and digital.

Top Strategies of Mobile App That Improves Revenues for Small & Mid-Sized Businesses

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These days, mobile applications become the must have for businesses of varied industry according to Global mobile traffic that represented roughly 60% of internet traffic. However, consumers progressively expect an “Amazon-like experience” online.

There are many small businesses, who have not yet come up with an interesting approach for the mobile app; they need to build a great one. Moreover, the fault dishonesties at least partly with small business owners. As per the Research by Clutch, it has been known that less than a quarter of small businesses have a mobile application, and approximately a third are doubtful to build one.

Mobile Strategies of Field-Tested

Do you know that it is a mistake if you see what mobile applications have done for some small businesses? A Pennsylvania-based consignment store ‘Mommy’s Lil’s Rascals has launched an adopted Total Loyalty Solutions mobile application, allowing customers to access a loyalty card program, special events, and exclusive mobile offers.

Providing more information, the company has been rewarded with 1000 downloads, comprising 223 downloads in the first 24 hours – 350+ redemptions, $12000 in revenue and a repetition of sales while their fall sales event.

Elizabeth Sowers, an owner of Mommy’s Lil’ Rascals, says “For us, what really worked were in-store promotions. She also added, “We set out a challenge to employees on who could get the most apps downloaded in one day. Every time someone came to the register, employees would ask customers to download the app. By doing this, we were able to get quite a few downloads for the app each day.”

She came to know that how important it is to have an application for reaching out to her customers. After some time, she let her all customers aware of Mommy’s Lil’ Rascals application through her social media page and Facebook page. She explains, surely, I would commend businesses to make use of push notifications within their application in order to stay in touch with the customer.

There is one restaurant in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania that named the Caddy Shack supervises the Armitage Golf Course, introducing the application with Total Loyalty Solutions was the answer.

Karen Blazina, a restaurant manager, says “Were in a bit of an unusual situation in that we are a restaurant overlooking a golf course”. He also added, “We are constantly busy — especially when the weather is nice — and the app has really helped customers know about changes to the menu. For example, when we have a seafood bash, we can add the whole program to the app.”

About using an application, he also cultured some essential lessons. “One piece of advice I’d give to business owners launching an app is to definitely open up with a coupon — this gives a true actual response rate. And, make sure to put the time into the app to make it successful and make sure people know about the app.”

About testing their applications, both the companies have learned important lessons. Blazina of the Caddy Shack explains, “When it came to testing the app, we only did testing internally. Our management and staff checked to see if everything was entered correctly and was functioning right.”

It helped a lot, but that was not enough still. There were some bugs and mistakes, which could have been fixed by testing with an outside vendor.

Sowers of Mommy’s Lil’ Rascals checkouts a similar story. “We found some issues with some different network providers — some were a bit slow and it was a time-consuming process or the app would sometimes unexpectedly close out.”

She said that it should have been a lot better in order to test the applications on varied of network providers before launching it. With an increasing number of businesses, who have been launching these mobile applications and testing for errors and bugs, it becomes essential for businesses as small business owners look for outside suppliers to deliver those testing services. As like they require outside accountants to do their taxes or outside vendors in order to look for insurance.

Matthew Cordasco, a CEO and Head of Product at MyCrowd QA, says “Small businesses may not always have the resources to hire a full-scale QA team, that’s where we come in. He also added, “With our platform, businesses can root out their bugs at 50-75 percent of the cost of doing it in-house, boosting both the speed and quality of their testing.”

With increasing demand for smartphone and smartphone apps, it is must have a well-developed and well-tested application that turns into a highly effective marketing strategy, giving results.

Self-driving Cars – How It Changes the Economy?

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Still self-driving cars are not on the road, but when they will make their entry in the market, they will surely give a huge impact on the economy and society as a whole. It is expected that Uber’s self-driving will hit the road this month that is the biggest surprise for all the people unless you are a driver. However, they are not the only ones that are affected by the penalties of robot-induced unemployment could ultimately through the rest of the economy.

If Uber will launch its self-driving cars, what will happen to Uber’s 1 million drivers? And what about 3.5 million truck drivers in the US? There are enormous delivery, bus, taxi and other drivers across the world, so what about them? All these jobs are not going fade in just one single day. It could take 20 years, but if we will not plan for it, it can cause mass hardship for some while delivering mass convenience to others.

Undeniably, self-driving cars are the future of the self-driving economy, and it is also expected that it will be safer and relaxing for travelers. Moreover, it will also decrease the traffic and carbon emissions. For knowledge workers, they could also free up productive time, which used to be spent stuck behind the wheel. It will be a lot cheaper compared to paying a person to pilot the vehicle.

Bloomberg writes, “Trips will be free for the time being, rather than the standard local rate of $1.30 per mile. In the long run, [Uber CEO Travis] Kalanick says, prices will fall so low that the per-mile cost of travel, even for long trips in rural areas, will be cheaper in a driverless Uber than in a private car.”

Uber have also declared that it has acquired a self-driving truck company.

Dropped Off

When it comes to talking about the problem, it establishes the core form of low-skilled labor along with the cashiers and fast-food prep. For all of them, robots are coming very soon; however, some people are arguing that technology will produce new jobs for these people.

Many people are arguing that technology will not create new jobs for these people. Possibly, they will not be attainable by those losing their low-skilled ones but it may create new job opportunities.

When cars first invented, they threatened the low-skilled laborers, which used to bring people and objects across horses. The idea is that the better and wonderful technology will create better jobs for horses as rested out by this fanciful Humans Need Not Apply video.

Do you know what this shift to autonomy? What will it do and impact the economy of the replaced low-skilled laborers up to the owners and designers of the self-driving fleets? As it is a Marxist nightmare. However, the software has already been causing the similar effect; however, the explosion of autonomous robots will enable this revolution to grow beyond bits and invade the realm of atoms.

Kalanick and some of the other advocates of self-driving cars are discussing that they will make the road safer for self-driving cars. McKinsey&Company report also estimated that self-dependent cars could reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90% by mid-century.

Recently, there have been lots of high-profile accidents, comprising a fatal crash in May involving a Tesla Model S, which was in autopilot mode.

Kalanick said, “Google has been working on self-driving cars for eight years. And there’s a reason. A million people die every year in cars, from human error. People making mistakes when they’re driving. And there are tens of millions of people getting injured”.

He also added, “Then think of the trillions of hours that we spend behind the wheel driving. There will be a huge, huge positive impact on society when driverless cars become a thing.”

Neural Networks Used By Researchers to Turn Face Sketches Into Photos

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These days, we all are becoming crazy for the Prisma application that turns smartphone photos into stylized artwork. A newly launched application Prisma is an art filter photo editor that launched by Alexey Moiseenkov, a Russian programmer.

Talking about Alexey Moiseenkov, he is the leading programmer at Apple’s App Store ranking in Russia and many neighboring countries also, including Moldova, Latvia, Kazakhstan, Estonia, Uzbekistan and more.

At Radboud University, a team of four neuroscientists is occupied on one model for inverting face sketches to synthesize photorealistic face images by using deep neural networks. However, the results of the study first made obtainable in the online archive arXiv and have recently been accepted at the European Conference on Computer Vision in Amsterdam.

However, scientists also said that the applications of their designed model could also comprise fine arts in order to turn self-portraits into something more similar to a photo, but also in forensic to turn sketches based on eyewitness accounts into a photo-recognition tool.

Moreover, the article Yagmur and Umut mentioned to defined one tactic to reimagine a photo of the city of Tubingen, Germany, in the style of The Starry Night, an oil on canvas painting by Vincent van Gogh.

This is one such example that got us think about its inverse problem. That is what the artwork of Vincent van Gogh would look like as photos,” Güçlütürk and Güçlü wrote.

Below, you can see how Güçlütürk and Güçlü define how their software that uses an artificial neural network, works:

“Let’s say that I, scientist, want to teach you, artificial neural network, how to convert sketches (inputs) to photos (outputs). First, I construct a very large dataset composed of sketch and photo pairs. I give you the sketches and ask you to convert them to photos. Randomly, you choose a strategy and give it a go. At first, your photos would not look like the photos in my dataset. I compare your photos with the photos in my dataset and point out your mistakes. Based on my feedback, you adjust your strategy and give it another go. Gradually, the quality of your photos would improve.”

While teaching the model how to match sketched and pictures, repetition plays a very significant role.

“We repeat the last two steps over and over again,” Güçlütürk and Güçlü wrote. “Finally, your photos would look like the photos in my dataset. If everything goes well, you can use your newly learned skill to convert not only the sketches you have already seen but also the sketches you have not previously seen in high-quality photos.”

The scientists also used computer-generated sketched that based on the photos in the CelebA dataset, an online resource with 200,000+ celebrity images, and in the LFW dataset, a collection of 13000 images of faces from the web. In addition to this, the hand-drawn sketches are taken from the CUFS dataset.

The first things the two Ph.D. students did is converting some sketches of their own faces that drawn by Yagmur. They also tried to get some photorealistic representation of the face of the three famous Dutch artists, so all thanks to the algorithm.

Both the researchers now working to see that how they can bring their work among all people. They are looking forward at the apps in the fine arts and forensic arts in order to monetize their work.

“Our spinoff company, Neurant, is already working on such applications, and we hope to bring them to market soon,” Güçlütürk and Güçlü concluded.

What Sales Mistakes Do Enterprise Software Companies Make?

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Do you know that selling into the enterprise is hard for early-to-mid-stage B2B software and SaaS companies? It is much difficult for enterprise customers to pay for their solution on a lasting basis without seeing their sales growth stall out at $15-25 million ARR.

There are lots of companies like Workday, Salesforce, NetSuite, Athena health and much more that have already found long-lasting B2B sales success and crooked their companies into pillars of the enterprise SaaS ecosystem.

But the wide range of enterprise companies is facing this challenge. There are various factors that can slow a company’s B2B sales progress, comprising timing issues, competitive challenges, product deficiencies and more. According to me, a lot of private enterprise software companies are there that make big sales mistakes:

Are You Fully Deprived?

We all have competitors and they come in many different shapes and sizes. Recently, Mikkel Savne, a Zendesk CEO, says, “There’s an incredible variety of software products out there.” It is essential to read the “About Us” page of all the companies in your targeted market, and you can also study that how many of those view your space as theirs.

When it comes to talking about the competitors, there are various other private companies and big enterprises with huge sales organizations. You can also compete with customers own inside developed efforts that may be inferior, but can be tough to overcome given ties to their own solution.

Other competition also comprises services and reselling companies, which representing third-party vendors. Recently, I read one news of AppDirect co-CEO Daniel Sakes, who points out that more than 70% of on-premise software sales have usually been channel-based.

While speaking he also adds, “80% of on-premise software vendors operate a channel program to enable other companies to sell their products, while only 20% of SaaS vendors operate similar programs.”

This station and reselling obstacle have highlighted a competitive challenge for SaaS companies that are fronting off against traditional software vendors. Providing more information about the game, it is a zero-sum game among all the vendors; therefore, signing a customer means a loss for someone else.

A single step that frequently overlooked is simply engaging with customers about the competitive land, comprising potential and won/lost targets. It is essential to invest time in collecting important and observant information about competitors and adjust consequently.

Upright Product-market Fit is Not Acceptable

The President/COO of Alteryx ‘George Mathew’ says, “In today’s enterprise software market, it’s important to define a user experience that is 100 times better than the status quo.”

For this, enormous reasons are there like the fact that apathy, incumbency, and government are all working against. It means looking for a way to be exponentially better with fewer resources. Consequently, the focus is the key and ultimate thing.

David Sacks, a Yammer co-founder, spoke about this when he took over as CEO of Zenefits earlier this year. “Companies execute better when they ruthlessly prioritize and sequence their efforts,” Sacks wrote. “For us, that means hyper-focusing on the small business market where we have product-market fit.”

But does anyone know about hyper-focusing? Where have we product-market fit? It means chasing all those market sections for which your product has a sole and convincing solution. Various private B2B companies have already developed solutions, which are working for a subset of customers; however, there are still challenged with sales cycles longer than ideal.

Many a time, the market-fit problem with developing enterprise companies stems from inadequate focus. Well, cruel ordering as advocated by Sacks doesn’t come logically. Market fit can enhance from having the most ongoing dialogue with customers.

For targeted sectors, your solution only be just a nice-to-have service and not compelling enough to overcome distinctive enterprise barriers. With more attention, companies can get a sweet spot by developing an acute understanding of customers’ requirements in a particular segment that is more nuanced than the broader sector needs. Struggle the need to broaden your focus too much in order to succeed and then scale proportionately.

It’s really tough time – Out of Sync, Out of Luck

Timing can easily make or break a company with enterprise sales. Do you know this that bad timing in the B2B sales process can stalk from various factors? Below, you can find three common timing issues:

Issue no 1: You are behind the market, demanding curve with a not-exponentially-better product and losing to competitors or incumbents.

In case if you don’t give customers enough reasons to make a change, you will meet with too much apathy to close business. However, the default action of enterprise customers is to stick with the current solution.

Make sure that you being little hostile when you solve this problem by uncovering unique and urgent requirements and then believably addressing those. Additional target market focus and customer-driven product iteration can help you out in moving ahead of the curve.

Issue no 2:

You are misery under the weight of a long sales cycle and not closing enough deals instantly. Now, SaaS products and business models have condensed sales cycles in some sectors for various purchases in recent years. For all purchases, this is not true in all enterprise markets; therefore, comprising big purchases in regulated industries or many Global 2000 companies.

Do You Know How You Can Accelerate Slow Sales Cycles?

Have you ever though what to do about those long and expensive sales cycles? “Selling to the consumer is all about selling positive emotions. Selling to the enterprise is about suppressing negative emotions,” says GoodData CEO Roman Stanek.

“Enterprise IT is not a culture of early adopters.” It is true whatever he said; however, there are some practical strategies, which can get slow-moving targets to move. Retaining best practices with sales and marketing processes is very much critical as many global companies have multiple groups of decision-makers, comprising IT gatekeepers, administrative, product users, executive groups, etc.

In reality, even if your product is B2B, possibly one of the biggest mistakes that companies or individuals forget is that their sales process is still P2P. While executives are making decisions for all types of reasons, which are not based simply on product features.

With big sales cycles, developing the link between different levels in the customer organization chart is judgmentally significant. Learning these softer P2P skills, which can help you out in increasing successful triangulation and back-channeling that mainly direct to more enterprise sales.

7 Unbelievable Things Exist in 2016 That We Dreamed of Before 3 Years

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From past couple of years, I have noticed that a lot of things have been changed. There are enormous technological things that were hard to imagine in 2013 for all of us, but now all those things are normal. These days, all those innovative things become inherent parts of our daily lives and have affected our lives considerably.

From purchasing groceries things to stay fit to clicking pictures. It becomes much easier for all of us as these technological things has revolutionized our daily lifestyle, enabling us to live quality and comfortable life.

Let’s have an instant look at the 7 most exciting and wonderful things exist in 2016 that we dreamed of in 2013:

Paying Bills Without Using Cards & Cash

Today, mobile wallets are like blessings for lots of people as these are getting huge popularity among the youth in India. Day-by-day, digital payments are moving ahead beyond recharges. Now, they can be used for paying everything from online food delivery to purchasing grocery items or booking a new home.

Fitness Tracking Watch

In the recent times, the smart watches have gained the huge attention of people as these watches can perform anything its developers ruling.

This smart watch can be easily connected to your smartphone and shows mobile notifications, displaying anything from text messages to social notifications and a lot more. These watches even allow owners to make calls and reply to messages using only their voice.

Clicking Picture in Which You are also Present

In the year 2013, selfie was just only a word, but it becomes viral within a year. Selfie pictures are clicked by many business leaders to celebrities to other popular worldwide personalities.

For clicking selfie pictures more accurately and perfectly, selfie stick has been introduced that allows people to position their smartphone beyond arms to click better pictures. However, in the upcoming year, selfie drones are also to become the next big thing.

Having an Experienced Without Being Present There

Computer-generated devices are highly fun-loving goggles. Initially, there were named as a gaming device; however, they have offered a lot of practical uses in the short time in the consciousness. For making the virtual experience more wonderful so that you forget the computer, VR headsets have been introduced.

In 2013, I have not imagined that something like that standing on Mars while wearing some intricate goggles. In addition to this, you can also take virtual tours of the places that you have been thinking for a while.

Downloading Videos at a Quick Speed

Over the last couple of years, download speeds become faster and faster, and we all know that the eventual speed nowadays is 4G technology. It not only increases your upload and download speed, but 4G also reduces the buffering time making streaming HD videos. 4G is 5 times faster than 3G services, so we all can imagine how drastic change it will be.

Talking or Chatting With Computers Through Spoken or Written Text

These days, bots are simply amazing artificial intelligence software that can reverse answer to your questions. Many of us have used chatbots at some point but don’t know about them. Have you ever used Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana for asking anything?

Unknowingly, you have conversed with a bot. Recently, Facebook has made its own bot news when it has been declared that the companies will ultimately be able to develop and launch their chatbots into Messenger to connect with customers.

In the upcoming years, bots will make people’s lives a much easier and comfortable, but a lot of things are there that need to be learned.

Sending Picture Messages That Delete Themselves Automatically

In the year 2013, you may take this idea as ridiculous, but it becomes extremely common these days. Among all the youngsters, Snap Chat becomes highly popular, enabling users to send photo message, which automatically delete themselves shortly after being viewed.

The application is kept itself updating and interesting by adding more features like picture filters, stories, videos, etc. Moreover, the application also keeps engaged users with the platforms discover channel that features content from renowned publishers.