qubit magazine

Qubit Magazine • www.iims-bitesys.in • 1

2 • Qubit Magazine • www.iims-bitesys.in


CONTENTS

Topic Page

The big deal about Big Data 2

COVER ART I C LE :EVOLUTION OF M USI C P R ODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTI ON I N T HE DI G I TAL ERA

6

NEWS EVENTS 11

Biometric methods and their applications in E-Governance 12

3D printing: Automating Manufacturing with help of IT 16

Valuation of WhatsApp-Facebook deal for $19 billion Is it justified? Will Entrepreneurs concentrate more on IT ?

19

Automation Innovation in the Agriculture Industry 22

Issues with Information security 25

Selling on Cyberspace 27

Interview with Mr. Soubhagya Sahoo, CEO & Co-Founder of Gray Routes Innovative Distribution LPP

31

APP REVIEW 33C

ON

TE

NT

S


just structured but also semi-structured like XML and EDI Documents and unstructured like Text, multimedia etc. Big Data analytics is the strategy of using this huge amount of data which is now accessible through internet, mobile messages and various other platforms, to extract useful informa-tion , that can be further analyzed to help in the decision making process. In this article we explore the various trends and applications in this technol-ogy to answer the big question- “Is big data just a

passing phenomena or is it here to stay?”

EVOLUTION OF DATA ANALYTICS IN

BUSINESS The relational database management systems (RDBMS) can be considered as the first step to modern data storage and analy-sis. The goal of this system is characterized by

ACID properties (Atomicity, Consistency, Isola-tion and Durability) of data stored by RDBMS.

The 1980’s witnessed the emergence of one of the most widespread technology as well as management strategy- Enterprise Re-source Planning (ERP). ERP software necessi-tated the transition from existing operational databases to the data warehouses where histori-cal and archived data were transformed and ana-lyzed using tools like Hyperion, Cognos etc. While the enterprise data warehouses are used by majority of the organizations till today for data mining to achieve business needs, the huge pen-etration of the Internet technology and the social media revolution has generated phenomenal quantity of unstructured data which cannot be pro-cessed by the traditional ERP systems. This brings us to the edge of a new technological revolution that corporate world is witnessing- the Big Data

“Big data”– a term that has become the phrase de-jure of the corporate world is no longer confined to the sphere of technology. It has become an integral part of business and is providing solutions to long-standing business challenges for organisations across the world. It refers to data available in various forms – not

Source: Analytics: The real world use of Big Data, IBM 2012

Most organisations are developing big data strategies; very few have actually embedded it into their operations


Analytics based mainly on Hadoop architecture.

TRENDS IN BIG DATA ANALYTICS It is believed that 85% of the data comes in unstructured form. Facebook operates on around 500 terbytes of text data and similar amount of image data every day, more than 28000 multimedia mes-

sages are sent every second, while Boeing Jet en-gines produce10 terabytes of information for every 30 minutes of operation. The organizations today realize the importance of the information that can be garnered through this amount of data readily available to them. Following are some of the key trends in application of big data in the industry:

• Most organisations engaged in developing big data roadmap: Just like various approaches to ERP implementation, analysts are now working on the effective strategies of implementing Big Data, most common of which is the 4 phase approach conceptualized by IBM- Educate, Explore, Engage, Execute. The figure below explains the different stages and showcases the results of a recent survey of IBM on the status (stage) of big data implemen-tation by global organizations across all industries.

A similar survey by Gartner in 2013 shows 64% organizations worldwide have invested or were planning to invest in Big Data with 30% already invested, 19% to invest in 1 year and remain-ing 15% planning to invest in next 2 years, but less than 8% have actually deployed Big Data.

• Internal Data as the primary source of Big Data: Big Data analytics is still at its nascent stage where most companies are using it on sourcing

SINJANA GHOSH | VGSOM

FE

AT

UR

E


and analyzing internal data to explore the huge untapped value locked in the existing internal system. This consists of the machine generated transactional and log data, which though avail-able in structured and semi-structured form are too large in volume and velocity to be stored and analysed by traditional systems. The most widely used unstructured form of data is text available in news media, social media, emails and other free-form text sources. Various text min-ing tools like system T, twitter and tm package in R are being used extensively by organizations to extract valuable insights from these sources.

• Major areas of application of Big data: Most organisations are investing in big data to gain bet-ter consumer insights through data obtained by surveys, social media forums, recorded calls in cus-tomer service centers and other sources. Another area where big data finds extensive application is in risk analytics and fraud management, especially in high risk businesses like the banking and in-surance industries. It is also being used to achieve operational optimization to increase efficiency.

• Data Visualisation: It is ways of presenting data in a form that is understandable to all and help derive business insights easily even by non-technical staff. Outburst of infographics in news and social media to explain every event be it elec-tion results or prediction of a match’s results shows that organisations widely acknowledge the effec-tiveness of data visualization and this is expected to be one of the key trends in business this year according to Forbes. R, SAS visual analytics and tableau provide great scope of data visualisation.

COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF BIG

DATA The tremendous value that big data ana-lytics generate is expressed by tech-pundits in tens and hundreds billions of Euros per year,

however, any big investment decision is based on the economic value of the investment, i.e. the potential benefits minus the costs incurred.In a recent WinterCorp report, a Total Cost of Data (TCOD) framework has been proposed to estimate the total cost of a big data solution.The components of cost are as follows:• System cost includes cost of acquisition, maintenance and up-gradation of the big data system architecture- both hardware and soft-ware, plus the cost of power, space and cooling

• System and data administration costs in-clude cost of experts for administering the system

• Software development and maintenance cost include cost of data integration which requires developing or buying and ETL (extract, transform, load) solution to prepare the data for analytics, cost of developing queries and procedural pro-grams for advanced analytics and cost of develop-ing or acquiring analytic applications for specific business needs like credit risk analysis for banks.

While system cost (cost of technology) signifies CA-PEX which decreases with time the remaining cost heads are mainly management related costs which roughly signifies OPEX that will continue to increase over time. Here lies the main strategy- how well can you leverage big data as long as you can afford it?

The benefits of big data analytics in achieving productivity and achieving competitive edge:• Big data can increase operational efficiency by making information transparent. The biggest advantage comes from combining different pools of data each of which is managed separately in a business, and generating insights that help in opti-mization of resources and increasing productivity.• With data becoming cheaper and more readily accessible than ever before, organizations relying only on proprietary data as a source of competitiveness faces severe threat from those


that are torturing data from all possible sources to make better forecasts through predictive ana-lytics. Big data thus helps in formulating business strategy and even changing the business model in response to changing macroeconomic conditions.• It leads to remarkable increase in supply chain surplus in the advanced manufacturing industries, e.g. automobile com-

panies which can integrate, maintain and effi-ciently analyze information from various suppliers of the numerous components that it procures.• Big data analytics has a huge opportu-nity in uncovering hidden trends and suspicious activities by straining massive volumes of un-structured data to detect and prevent frauds.• Defining pricing and marketing strat-egy has never been easier than through social

media analytics, text mining and other forms of market engineering activities through big data. Marketers leverage this technology hugely to improve customer service, identify new needs and develop new products, identify new markets and enhance customer experience.• It has a huge potential in revolution-izing risk management in banks and financial institutions, help in managing large diverse portfolios and achieving regulatory compliance.

CONCLUSION Thus, it can be safely concluded that big data is here to stay and with its tremendous po-tential in providing business insights will lead to a transition from the decision support systems to decision making systems in large organizations. However, the increasing operational expenses related to big data solutions is a major cause of concern for organizations which intend to use it as a competitive asset in the long run. So, organiza-tions have to define specific goals they want to achieve through big data, and find ways to filter the useful knowledge relevant to the goal from the large flow of data and discard the rest. Success of organizations will thus depend on their ability to identify the information to be extracted and the ones that they can let go of, keeping potential future benefits in mind, given an estimated cost structure.

FE

AT

UR

E


EVOLUTION OF MUSIC PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION IN THE DIGITAL ERA

It connects cultures, it defines them in some cases, techni-cally just a set of sound waves but has the ability to evoke and control emotions which is the core aspect of humanity; it is music. This article aims to establish connections between technological innovations and, music production and distribution. This article should hopefully also give you a glimpse into the world of music artists from the past to the present IT Era.

A PEEK INTO THE WORLD OF ARTISTS

PRANAV J | IIM SHILLONG


THE ANALOGUE AGE It all started with Edison who first introduced the world to the phonograph. It was a very simple device what would cap-ture sound onto a tin foil or wax cylinder. It was popular form of music distribution until the 1950’s. During the 1950’s the Vinyl was invented. It spun a lot slower than a phonograph and the grooves used for recording were smaller, therefore it could hold a lot more content than a phonograph. The Vinyl was very popular during the 1960’s and

the 70’s. Vinyls are still popular today as vintage items.

THE TAPE To overcome the disad-vantages along came the tape which took analogue signals and transferred them to mag-netic signals. The Tape brought two major advantages to the table – Manageable recordings and Effects addition. Multiple tracks on different tapes could be mixed and put on a single tape. This made recording ses-sions much more manageable because all artists didn’t need to

be present, they could perform individually and then these in-dividual tracks could be mixed into a single track. The individ-ual tracks adjusted by increas-ing or decreasing volume and adding effects like delay, echoes, flanging, phasing etc. The final master tape was made by com-bining the tracks onto a single tape. The end consumers (Music Listeners) also had advantages, the tape players were smaller when compared to the Vinyl and they became cheaper as they gained wide spread acceptance. .

INTO THE DIGITAL ERA OF MUSIC

CO

VE

RS

TO

RY


THE DIGITAL ERA In all the previous technologies mentioned the sound was recorded or reproduced continuously which is why we call it analogue sound. The digi-tal era started in the 1980s with the Compact Disc which contained “sampled” music. Digital Music is sampled at very high rate and each acoustic slice is given a distinct identity using binary code. Digi-tal reproduction does not make continuous sound but tricks us into thinking it is continuous because of the high speed at which the small bits are be-ing played back. By 1984 the Portable CD player was launched in the United States and a year lat-er the Album Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits be-came the first album to sell 1 million copies on CD. Soon players were made for Cars and it became to mainstream media for distribution of music.

INNOVATIONS IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRYIn the subsequent section are a few innovations that have caused a paradigm shift in the music industry.

NAPSTER – THE FILE SHARING PROGRAM The Launch of Napster, which was founded as a peer-to-peer file sharing internet service, cata-

A MUSIC STUDIO IN THE

1970’S

pulted the reach of music content on the inter-net. It also led to the creation of similar services like Limewire, Madster etc. However these sites did not restrict users on the content that they

were sharing and pretty soon this led to a lot of legal problems as piracy crept in the industry.

IPOD AND ITUNES STORE This elegant music player started Apple’s decade of disruption. It eliminated the need for CD’s and with the launch of iTunes, Apple proved that people would pay for music if the price was right and the interface was simple and el-egant. One major advantage of the iTunes for the user was that they didn’t have to purchase the entire album, they could pick and choose a particular song which they liked, pay only for that and download it to their computer or iPod. For artists it meant they could come up with one song albums and still be able to release them to

SOFTWARE DAW - GARAGE BAND


the public. One song albums did exist before but this model of distribution increased its popularity.

THE SOFTWARE DIGITAL AUDIO

WORKSTATION (DAW) Garage Band was the first mainstream Digital Audio Workstation that allowed small time artists to create music of their own using just a Macintosh PC. The digital audio workstation ex-panded the horizon for a lot of small time artists who didn’t have million dollar budgets to produce music. Soon competition up came in with soft-ware like Fruity loops, Reason, Cubase, Albelton live etc. The software gave musicians access to digitally sampled sounds from various instruments which could be used to create their own music. Main stream musical instrument manufacturers

like Yamaha and Korg have started integrating DAW capabilities in the synthesizers like record-ing and looping from external sources, ability to load and modify new as well as existing sounds, arrange recorded loops etc. Korg is said to have a slight edge since it employs touch screens in its devices which makes korg instruments very user friendly. Currently Fruity loops is said to be the most used software by small time musicians.

YOUTUBEStarted in 2006 it went on to become the most successful video sharing website in the world. It gave small artists a chance to portray their work to the entire world. Artists like Justin Bieber, Greyson Chance and The Gregory Broth-ers got a shot at fame because of YouTube.

SOUND CLOUDThe Swedish company which started as a ser-vice that allowed musicians to share recordings of their session with others soon became a full publishing tool that allowed musicians to dis-tribute their music tracks. Sound Cloud also le-verages heavily on the Mobile platform to gain

CO

VE

RS

TO

RY

A MODERN DAY BEDROOM MUSIC STUDIO


wide spread acceptance amongst the users.

THE PRESENTHere’s how a typical recording ses-sion at a studio looks like today: Individual tracks are arranged in software. An entire band need not even be present for recording, the creator/director can replace people with software plugins that

get the job done just as fine. If a few notes are re-corded wrong it can be corrected within the Asoft-ware. And this correction not just restricted to in-struments, even if a person sings in the wrong scale or sings wrong notes it can be fixed using software.Digital audio workstations have enabled normal people to learn the art of music creation. With a basic knowledge of music notes, computer liter-acy and interest a normal person would be able to produce one’s own album and release it within a few days as opposed to few weeks or months in the earlier days. Companies like Sounda-tion, Ohm and Audio Sauna have brought all re-sources online, therefore the user need not even have a very powerful computer to create music.

PIRACY AND COPYRIGHTS With the increase in commercialization of music and digitization with internet song swap-ping, piracy problems have become rampant. The Congress of United States passed the Digital Per-

formance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995 (DPRSRA) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). This act entitled songwrit-ers and recording artists to get compensation for subscription and on-demand transmissions of digital music. The movie industry has also joined the music industry in suing major internet portals

which allow peer to peer sharing and ob-

tain relief from them. Since these laws are not followed strictly outside of United States, pi-racy still continues. The monopoly of major re-cord labels has ended and the music industry structure has become oligopoly with members of music industry tying up with internet portals to create on demand subscription based models.

THE FUTURE: Music production is also moving online with companies like Soundation, Ohm, Audio Sau-na creating fully online platform where users can collaborate online with other users to create and share music. Although the big players are yet to enter, the era of online music production has be-gun. Some may say that the art and skill of cre-ating music has been lost with software taking some of the difficulty out of it. However, creative expression through music is no longer the pre-rogative of only the highly trained profession-als, it is a luxury which anyone can indulge in.


PHISHING FRAUDS THIS FOOTBALL

SEASON

The Football World Cup provides a window of opportunities to the criminal minds in the form of online frauds like phishing. During such times, the targets receive a barrage of World Cup related solici-tations which they are excited to click. But little do they know that these frausters have nefarious ulterior motives and they would be interested in identity theft, stealing credentials and financial information. The severity of the punishment for phishing -- and most cybercrimes, depending on the country -- are low and so the risks to the criminals is low. There are a lot of technical and non technical controls that can reduce this phishing attack even though these are not full proof. By following these methods, the phishing business can be made less lucrative by negatively impacting the revenue stream.

GOOGLE UPDATES FOR WEARABLES

ON ANDROID

Google software latest update, Google Play Services 5.0, will help the developers by making the transition to wearable applications easy. The tech giant showed off its Android Wear software for smartwatches made by Motorola, Samsung and LG. Smartwatches have to be paired with mobile phones for them to connect to the internet. The new app increases the sync between the phones and the wearable items. The company last week unveiled its newest version

of Android, nicknamed L. The version L is meant to

give all devices that run on Android a similar look and feel.

QUALCOMM BUYS WILOCITY

Qualcomm, the dominant mobile player on Wednes-day announced its acquisition of a startup Wilocity which will help in providing a speedier wireless technology in the devices. Wilocity develops chips using a newer type of Wi-Fi called WiGig that runs on a higher radio frequency at 60 gigahertz. Wiloc-ity’s chips enable speeds of 4 to 5 gigabits per sec-ond, while traditional Wi-Fi provide speed of some hundreds of megabits per second. The only backdrop of the technology is that it is effective for shorter distances as compared to Wi-Fi. The financials of the deal has not been disclosed by the company.

NE

WS


BIOMETRIC METHODS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS IN E-GOVERNANCE

SANYA SEHGAL | IMT GHAZIABAD

Biometrics Technology is an up and running field in the area of Information Technology that deals with use of Biological personal data of the user to ascertain identifying measures for different uses. It has been widely used with a very limited implementation in the management world. Even though there are many Biometrics technologies available and known, still more are in pipeline. But the wide acceptance has been very limited to fingerprinting, which is used for identification in different industries like Banking, Hospitality etc.

BIOMETRIC AUTHENTICATION METH-

ODSThe common types of Biomet-rics technology is described below• Facial Recognition – Uses the unique-ness of facial features to identify the users• Fingerprinting – Uses the scanned fin-

gerprints of the user and matches them with the records to make an identification• Hand Geometry – User data is stored in the form of the length of the user’s finger, the web lines on user’s palm etc. and are matched for identification• Retina Scan – Uses the data on size of user’s eye retina to establish user identity• Palmprints – Famously used by law enforcement agencies. A palmreader uses infrared to match user’s vein pattern with the recorded identification• Voice/Speech Recognition – It converts the speech into digital signal and compares the tone and pitch with the recorded data to es-tablish identity. It works well over long dis-tance unlike other biometric technologies

MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE OF BIO-

METRICSGetting to know about the technical side of any scientific device will be of no use until and un-


less one has a look at the managerial perspec-tive of it. As mentioned earlier there are a lot of things which a manager should be looking at before coming to a decision as to whether he/she should go for that technology or not. The im-portant factors among them are as given below:• Security threats and measuresNo technology is completely fool proof and so as a manager one should always look at the security threats which the company or any individual of that company may face in the future if that technology is being implemented in the company. This is a very important because a security threat ignored may sometimes even lead to leakage of crucial in-formation which is not from the company’s point of view. Some common issues relate with storage of user’s personal information, loss of privacy etc.• Giving better access controlsAccess control means controlling the access that is to be given to the users of the system i.e. limit-ing the features of the system as per the different users. Access needs to be controlled because the system should be designed in such a way that the lower management employees should not be able to change any changes made to the system made by the higher level management employees. Better access control measures help the manag-ers in many ways. It makes the work much easier and less complex and two there is a transparency maintained in the entire system and also the secu-rity is enhanced and data integrity is maintained. • Understanding the common aplica-tions of biometric systemsAt the managerial position, one must have a clear understanding about the different ways in which a biometric system can actually fit into the company’s system. This is because a better understanding helps the manager to think ac-cordingly and then apply it to reap the maximum benefits from the technology to the company.• Coming up with a final planThe last step would involve coming up with a final plan so that the technology is all set to be imple-

mented. The following steps should be considered before introducing a biometric authentication system in our organization – set up a security committee which reviews and assesses the vari-ous risks that may be involved in implementing the technology and come up with counter mea-sures for the same. Next step would be to conduct the risk analysis and calculate the ROI involved with the project, which is then followed by defin-ing the organizational needs and find a suitable supplier who is trustworthy and who can sup-ply the system as required by the organization.

APPLICATIONS IN INDIAN E-GOVER-

NANCE

UIDUnique Identification or better known as UID, which is being issued by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is a part of a scheme of the planning commission of India. The main aim behind this authority is to provide a Unique Identifi-cation number “AADHAAR” to the residents of India.This agency was established in the year 2009 and it owns and also operates the Unique Iden-tification Number database. The database con-sists of all the details that were taken during the procedure of applying for an Aadhaar card.

The following steps are involved in the issuing of AADHAAR cards• Collecting thumb fingerprints: In the first step after checking the address proofs and identity proof, the authorities then collect the thumb finger prints by using a fingerprint scanner. The scanner is cleaned with the help of a clean cloth before and after the fingerprints are taken, so that there will not be any errors arising in the future. The picture below shows a person giving the thumb impressions by using the fingerprint scanners.• Collecting the fingerprints of each and ev-

FE

AT

UR

E


ery finger: Once the left and right hand thumb impressions are taken, the next step involves, scanning of the fingers for the fingerprints. This involves the person to place all the four fingers of every hand on the scanner so that the fingerprints can be recorded. Also like the initial step, the

scanner is cleaned before and after the finger-prints are taken to avoid any possible errors.

• Recording the IRIS pattern: Once done with col-lection of thumb impressions and fingerprints, the next and the final step involves recording of the IRIS patterns. Every person has a very unique IRIS pattern and it is not possible for any other person to have the same pattern as someone else. And this is the reason why even IRIS patterns are recorded by the UIDAI. An IRIS scanner is being used by the authorities to record the IRIS pattern. All a person has to do is directly look into the device and it re-cords the patterns accordingly. The picture below shows how exactly, the IRIS pattern is recorded.Finally the other cards are issued to the people who have enrolled for the cards, once their details are checked for validity.

DIRECT CASH TRANSFERS AND PEN-

SION SCHEMESCash transfers are usually the direct transfer pay-ments of money to the people who are eligible for it. Direct cash transfers are usually provided by the governments. Cash transfers these days are being extensively used by the developing countries and also the development agencies to cater to a large range of social and economic

problems which include human investment.There are a lot of cash transfer mecha-nisms available and any of these methods should definitely include two elements: 1. Unique personal identification2. System for making paymentsThe unique personal identification is done by the use of fingerprint scanners and other bio-metric authentication devices such as IRIS scanner etc. In a country like India where there is high level of corruption, having a biometric authentication system helps the government in reducing the corruption levels. Also usage of biometric authentication in these services re-duces the manpower involved thereby cutting the cost and at the same time saves a lot of time.It is also observed and calculated that linking of Aadhaar cards to direct cash transfer helps them to save about 0.5% of the Indian GDP. Though this process takes some time but still this helps in saving a lot of money which is a very important as in developing countries like India each and every rupee saved counts a lot.

It is found that as of date about 15% of the Aadhaar card holders have already linked their numbers to their bank accounts, so that any cash transfer in future would be done in a relatively quicker time.The same system can also be modified a bit and then even be applied to the pension schemes as well. Instead of a person waiting in long queues for authentication and then get his/her pension money, it is better to use biometric system for authentication which not only saves a lot of time but also improves the efficiency.


FUTURE SCOPE OF BIOMETRICS IN E-

GOVERNANCE IN INDIAVoter Registration – Biometric Voter Registra-tion is an upcoming field wherein first time vot-

ers are registered on the basis of their accurate biological statistics like fingerprints, retina scan etc. It is prevalent in countries like US and other western nations. Newly adopting the ways of the world, many African and Middle Eastern countries

like Kenya, Yemen are also going for Biometric registration kits for registering their voters. Since India is world’s second highest populated coun-try, the scope for using this technology for voters is tremendous. It is an area where the govern-ment should look for implementation in future.

CONCLUSIONBiometrics has been used in its various forms throughout the world. In India, it has become pop-ular very recently with the advent of fingerprinting to record employee attendance in the corporate. It was also used in the government of India’s initiative to provide unique identification to the people of India. Even though the programme has not been hugely successful, the potential of use of this technology is still enormous. The survey conducted to ascertain the end user experience and expectation also highlights the similar facts. The technology is there, it just needs to be used in the right way to reap out its maximum benefits.

FE

AT

UR

E


Automation is a decades old concept, first popularized by General Motors in 1947, when they established an Automation Department, us-ing feedback controllers introduced in 1930s. The benefits of automation has not been limited to cost cutting only, by saving labor, materials and energy, but also extends to a far superior quality, accuracy and precision in the resultant product. As

a result, over a period of time in recent history, we witnessed many industries undergoing complete transformation with the help of automation, namely, retail, mining, video surveillance, highway systems, waste manage-ment, industry, agriculture et al. This transforma-tion has generated immense wealth for the busi-nesses by increasing productivity manifolds, while at the same time bringing many products within purchasing power of millions of people. This all-pervasive change brought about by the power of automation also stimulated development and

growth of many other allied industries and sec-tors which further underscored the need of consis-tent improvisation and innovation in automation of business processes to maximize gains for both businesses as well as their clients/consumers. Going forward, we expect this phenomenon would continue with the same pace and would continue to bring more and more processes under the ambit

of automation, even though certain processes like hairdressing, psychoanalysis etc. would continue to need specialized human in-tervention unless unprecedented strides are made in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Several new business processes would also emerge to enable others but, one factor that would continue to hold its stead and be the catalyst of this ongoing trans-formation would still be Information & Technology (IT). The concept of leveraging IT to enable busi-ness processes to be automated has made itself a 3 trillion USD+ industry today, and now this indus-

3D PRINTING: AUTOMATING MANUFACTURING WITH HELP OF IT

RAHUL SHARMA, DIPANJAN BISWAS | IIFT KOLKATA

3D Printed Model of City


try like, all other industries in the past and pres-ent, is looking at itself (IT) for automating inter-nal processes to cut waste and save on resources.In the following article, we analyze the advent and growth of 3D-Printing - one of the most up and coming automation process in manufacturing – which can throw open a plethora of opportunities in manufacturing sector by applying IT tools and make them more efficient. As far as negative ef-fects of automation are concerned, we are of the view that decrease in unskilled labor is more than compensated by increase in skilled labor to oper-ate automated processes incentivizing labor mar-ket to move towards more efficient skill-set. This theory was also empirically established by the famous economist Gilles Saint-Paul at Toulouse University and could be verified by real world ex-amples as witnessed over the past few decades.

3D-PRINTING – THE LATEST AUTOMA-

TION BEAST3D-Printing or Additive manufacturing is a process of creating solid 3D objects of any shape and size from digital models. 3D-Printing is achieved using additive techniques of putting over successive lay-ers of material of different shapes. It is distinct from the conventional machining techniques in the sense that the traditional methods rely on subtractive method of removal of material to prepare a product (say a machine job). Though, the concept has been around since three decades, when Chuck Hall of 3D

Systems Corp. created first 3D printer, it has been only recently that the idea has gained traction due to increasing economy of scales of production (gained due to liberalized trade and globalised buying patterns) and falling costs of making these industrial bots. 3D printing which was a 2.2 Bn USD industry in 2012, is poised for an exponen-tial growth in near future as more and more in-dustries switch to this platform to save costs and time, cut wastes of energy and labor and achieve

highest levels of precision in the finished products.Numerous manufacturing processes have been dabbling with 3D printing for past many years, but initially it was only used for prototyping to save any wastage from making a flawed final prod-uct. On the contrary today, with improved and smarter printers, 20% of the products made by 3D printing are final products which are expected to reach up to 50% of the output by 2020. One industry which is exclusively applying 3D print-ing for a variety of purposes is Aviation Industry. Researchers at Filton, where Concorde building facility is located, are using 3D-Printing to ‘print’ titanium landing gear bracket for Concorde su-personic airliners, which otherwise would have to be laboriously cut and shred from a solid piece of metal. In near future, they hope to create an entire wing of the airliner. The technique of 3D-Printing has taken customization to the next level in avia-tion. Seats customized to the body size of the as-tronauts are being prepared in China. Soon, gone would be the days when thousands of products were to be manufactured to recover fixed cost as this component is increasingly falling due to saved resources. For aviation, lightness of aircrafts is a very critical component as 1 Kg of reduction in weight of the airliner will save 3000 USD worth of fuel every year and almost the same extent of Carbon Dioxide emissions. 3D-Printing can thus help in not only making efficient aircrafts but also more greener for the environment, if more and more of parts could be finely printed with minimum material required. Latest breakthroughs have been possible due to development of print-ers which can print final jobs with powdered form of input materials. For eg. in the example of land-ing gear bracket given above powdered form of Titanium, quite aptly called “ink”, is spread in lay-ers of thickness 20-30 microns and is then fused into solid with the help of an electron beam or laser. These developments have thrown open a multitude of opportunities where people can just download the 3D parameters of products they

FE

AT

UR

E


want to have and print them in any form (plastic, metal etc.) they want to have with required ink.

OPPORTUNITY FOR THE IT SERVICES

INDUSTRY3D-Printing, which relies on software for its genesis as a practical idea of produc-tion, has some key principles emerging which can immensely influence the IT ser-vices industry. They are identified as follows:Emergence of Automation; which can take over the idea of commoditized products.• Concepts like mass production, recovery of fixed costs and economies of scale not a must anymore for a healthy top-line and bottom-line – analogous to pyramid model of Indian IT industry where busi-ness model is linear and to achieve an increase of, say 1 Bn USD 20000-30000 employees are added.• Final product/job (outcome) to be the face of business process (not what all goes into making that product) – Outcome based pricing models can be the norm rather

than exception in IT services industry, where pro-cess costs are paid for (and that too, in advance) just like all the process costs are paid for in a typically manufactured product. 3D-printing has made the intermediary process costs (like assembling, qual-ity check etc.) disappear, as only ink is to be paid for.• Individuals can be targeted as the new consum-ers instead of only businesses. In fact, individu-als may soon bypass businesses for the products they need. For eg. one can simply print a plastic chair, instead of having to buy it from the local furniture house, with a 3D printer. A 1000 USD might not look a prudent investment to buy a typical 3D printer for home, but it can certainly be rented from a local 3D printing house. Howev-er, in near future the prices are predicted to crash as printers become able to print themselves.• Customizable solutions are the new favor-ites – for both individuals and businesses. Tak-

ing the chair example, if one doesn’t like the default Green color of the changes she could get it changed for Blue or Orange by just changing the parameters. In fact, ability to churn out customizable products is what sepa-rates 3D printing from plain mass production. • Firms like IPSoft and Blue Prism are doing won-ders by specializing in the area of autonomics. These firms pose a serious challenge to tradition-al software exporters. More so, firms are forced into revenue sharing agreements to not lose out to this new competition. A decade down the line automated solutions could be the new normal.As we move further in the 21st century, tech-nology would continue to blur boundaries be-tween processes, 3D printing being the one prime example of augmenting manufacturing with IT. This will open new spaces to create busi-nesses and make life even better for mankind and world, at large. We just need to keep tab.

NEWS UPDATES

BEWARE!! RANSOMWARE MAY AT-

TACK YOU SOON

Ransomware is traveling from East to Kazakas-than, showing signs of dangers for the Asians. Ransomware is where someone pretends to be a local policeman or immigration officer and de-mands for some ransom to the creators of the malware in order for the restriction over the sys-tem files to be removed. People should be aware of the threat of Ransomware and best practices on how to help protect against themselves from the malware. Some basic rules that must be known to the people are : Don’t pay the fee! Pay-ing the ransom does not guarantee the files will be returned or that the attacker will restore the affected computer to a usable state,Back-up your files and Think before you click - don’t click on links or open attachments from untrusted sources.


Valuation of WhatsApp-Facebook deal for $19 billion Is it justified? Will Entrepreneurs concentrate more on IT ?

ANUJ NAGPAL | DMS PUMBA

A year back, a SMS pack of 750 messages used to fall short, backspace of the smartphone was used excessively trying to fit the Diwali sms in 160 char-acters and then the TRAI regulation to send only 100 a day. Text was the only way I could tell my girl-friend how much I loved her (MMS was like Moham-mad Kaif of India Cricket Team, you knew he was good, but accommodating him in the scheme of things was difficult) and then the delay in her reply made me wonder if she fell asleep, has she read my sms, if yes, why there is a delay and the melodrama continued.Today, the sms pack is being replaced by a In-

ternet pack of 1 GB, I wonder if backspace ex-ists in my mobile even if the characters are ex-ceeding, Diwali wishes no longer talk about firecrackers in text but animated videos allows celebrations to the next gear and Lord Lakshmi showers blessings are felt more closely. The re-lationship with my girlfriend has grown multi-folds with smileys and ofcoarse its easier to get a smile on days when she is upset. “Last seen at” and “online” have made our relationship stronger.The above story is not an exclusive story which was designed for me. We all have been actors and actresses of this movie in a large way. Our Director Jan Koum had directed it so well that the subscrib-

ers kept increasing and continue to do so. But buying it at $19 billion dollars - was it justi-fied? In my opinion it’s like Coca Cola buying Pepsi and its just you on the field now. You play the game, specta-tors watch you and the ticket price: You decide it and they pay for it.Well, The deal is justified and

I lay down some point to support the same.

1.What’s up with WhatsAppa)Market Economy: The TGFor every business, there are a set of cus-tomers that a company caters to. What-

FE

AT

UR

E


sApp customers are just the customers that Facebook would have liked to capture and they have just done that. Since its inception, Facebook has been able to register 1.2 bil-lion active monthly users but the progress has now halted. The challenge has been the countries like Latin America, India and Asia as a whole whereas USA and Europe have been major contributors. But when I see the users of Whatspp, it starts from my 12 std sister in Delhi and my uncle whose grandson will be turning four next year. So WhatsApp has occupied the icons on variety of phones of different demographics and wallpapers.

b)The new SMS Every Product has a Product Life Cycle. The SMS has reached its maturity in majority of the countries and telecom companies too are seeing the down trend in renewal of SMS packs. I would accept the fact that Facebook Messenger exists but whatspp operates on a different platform. It’s one of those applications which will replace SMS considering its attachment with the phone number and its uncluttered and user friendliness. WhatsApp can never pull the utility of Twitter, Skype, Instagram, etc.

c)Best PackageFacebook was initially targeting snapchat which had a small 30 million active users. Others were Skype , Yahoo Messenger and Google Hangouts, all were not up for sale. Even if they were, they come with a lot of restrictions which Facebook would have not liked to carry. There was Viber which caught my attention with a lot of TVC’s some months back but it’s one of those applica-tions which is a hit in the west which Face-book would not have liked to capture and would have resulted into redundant users.

d)EngagementWhatsApp is the sole app which has got highest engagement which is evident from the fact that 70% of the users are active on WhatsApp, higher than Facebook by 8%. These are the people who are excited and passionate about the platform and accept the new things easily. It’s hard to believe a user sending 20 pictures on SnapChat a day but a WhatsApp user can do that easily. This is because Twitter, Skype require a login Id and password whereas it’s just SMS and Facebook Messenger which can compete with those engagement levels. It’s quite understandable that Social media com-panies that have users who stay on their sites longer are worth more than compa-nies where users don’t spend as much time.

e)Per user PriceFacebook paid $30 per Instagram to buy the then service of 33 million us-ers and now Facebook has made it 150 million users. Compared to that, Face-book has spent $42 per WhatsApp user on the medium which is fast growing and capturing the market at a rapid pace.Compared to the above price, LinkedIn’s share price values that professional so-cial network at $153 per user. Twitter trades at $140 per user, and Facebook is at $123. Even at its latest $2 billion valu-ation, Snapchat trades at $50 per user. (And Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook last year.)

2.The RevolutionLooking at the hefty subscribers that What-sApp has gained over the last 4 years, it is evident that new users are getting and will get the first experience of the web on mobile that PC’s. These users will come from countries like India, Indonesia and


Africa. Now had Facebook not been the first choice on the mobile, the user could have been lost somewhere else. Now WhatsApp deal will ensure that the new user falls in the database of FacebookThe competitor of Facebook, Google is making its services count and has created them a centre of all in the smartphones. My Samsung Galaxy on Android already has a pre installed Gmail, Google Search, Google Calendar, Gtalk, Google+, YouTube and oth-er services. And it won’t be surprising to say that Android dominates with 80% of the total OS in mobile phones. Google has ensured that a new user gets a glimpse of the Google services since the beginning.In order to compete with this, I am glad to see that last month Airtel presented the offer of providing free access to Face-book allowing them to get used to the so-cial networking site. This will further go down to providing low cost internet ac-cess to emerging market consumers. Mark Zuckerberg has already partnered with more than 150 telecom companies to of-fer free or discounted access to Facebook on mobile. Carriers too benefit when such users upgrade to additional data plans. Of course, Zuckerberg’s plan to provide Facebook access to the remaining world is a long-term project. But if the project is On, Get ready to see the subscribers of WhatsApp soar to heights and the cur-rent 1 million increase of subscribers ev-eryday might increase to thousands more.

3. The Revenue Model : How to take it from Here?WhatsApp has grown faster than the other social networks and has taken Chatting to the other level. This has been purely due to embracing of mobile technology what Face-book failed to capitalize on. After 4 years of

entry in the market, Facebook had 145 mil-lion users, google Gmail had 123 million, Twitter had 54 million and Skype had 52 mil-lion users compared to whatspp 450 million. Further WhatsApp has not stagnated. It continues to make big in numbers add-ing 1 million new users per day. At this rate WhatsApp should hit 1 billion us-ers sometime next year. Now WhatsApp charges an annual subscription fee of $1 after a year which would translate into significant value for Facebook. The valuation will not be justified overnight or in a year but in due coarse of time

Closing ThoughtIn the end, I believe Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp is truly justified for 3 reasons: 1) Strategy: On a balance sheet, WhatsApp is an as-set and an investment now which will strengthens Facebook’s position in so-cial and mobile communication. I am talking billions of customers here.

2) Growth: WhatsApp has seen the most rapid growth compared to its counterparts consider-ing it was a mobile based app with a far-ther reach. It today holds 450 million customers, adding $1 million each day.

3) Valuation: Looking from the bird eye’s view, the value did seem astronomical but digging deep and evaluating the cost on per user basis, the val-uation seems reasonable and Facebook will be ready to become the social Superpower.I will rest my case here and Let Mark Zuckerberg be Online and “Last seen at” Facebook’s Office and not at whatsApp

FE

AT

UR

E


AUTOMATION INNOVATION IN THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY

KRITIKA KULSRESTHA, SHEEBA PATHAK | SIMS, PUNE

Roti kapda makaan. Rudimentary needs for all. Ever wondered how that “roti” actually reaches your plate and satisfies your palate? Farmers undergo immense amount of labour and toil to convert a seed to the roti on your plate. From processes involving the sowing of the seed to the amount of humidity required, the optimum amount of temperature condi-tions and the soil type: all play a pivotal role in leading to the finished good-the produce. 65% of India’s population is still dependent on the agriculture sector and thus it is a sec-tor that ought to be catered to. With the advent of technology and the immense amount of in-novations coming in play, the marriage of agri-culture and technology is the need of the hour. The agriculture industry contributes to 16% of In-dia’s GDP & 10% of export earnings. Yet, it is one of those sectors that is under-developed. From infrastructure to technology, farmers await it all. Technology has reached unknown zones wheth-er may it be in banking, infrastructure, pharmacy etc., however not much is observed in the agri-cultural sector. A simple act of threshing, or that of plucking fruits is laborious in itself, thus the need of the hour is to automate such processes thereby reducing the lead time for such tasks.A tractor in California is capable of eliminat-ing shoots and buds, all thanks to the “Letuce bot” that can flatten a lettuce field in the time it takes about 20 workers to execute it manually.Researchers are now designing robots for these delicate crops by integrating advanced sensors, powerful computing, electronics, computer vision, robotic hardware and algorithms, as well as net-working and high precision GPS localization tech-nologies. Most agricultural robots won’t be com-

mercially available for the next couple of years. With agriculture being so important for our sur-vival and also for the GDP of the country, there are numerous challenges involved and tagged to it. Though these challenges have been addressed by the government quite often, development in the agribusiness is still at a nascent stage. A couple of challenges have been resolved already but majori-ty are still left resulting in plight of the farmers and related people. Despite of the vitality of the agricul-tural sector, following are the problems faced by it:1. Small farm sizes, fragmented land and lack of land management2. Improper irrigation facility3. Short supply of technology related to seed, fertilizer, breeds and feeds4. Interest on credit is high5. Farmers incur high cost of production and hence, they are not competitive enough in nation-al and international market

Challenges: 1. Agricultural sector needs to be a priority in the government fund2. Farmers are not well aware of the technol-ogy, if they are then there is not enough capital to use it3. Development of seeds, saplings and breed4. International market competitiveness needs to be established5. Quality control and safeguard of agricul-tural sector is very important

Looking into these challenges and issues faced by the agricultural sector worldwide, it is imperative to find a way out which can actually assist the farmers to improvise this sector. There have been measures taken by government and


authorities for the same but none actually has created a great impact for the benefit of agribusi-ness. For instance, The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) Dubai United Arab Emirates has recently installed an automated salinity logging system in a grass field irrigated with three water salinity levels. In these fields salinity sensors have been buried at 30 and 60 cm depths in different treatments. Initial obser-vations revealed that the dynamic changes of

soil salinity within an irrigation cycle are show-ing the effect of water salinity on the salt con-centration in the root zone and water suction and how this is constantly changing under irrigation.Agriculture requires strong systems to perform repetitive tasks in short periods of times. Thus, it is entirely dependent on the type of plants, soil, environment and terrain. Spatial variability in soil conditions, like texture, structure, soil moisture & fertility lead to variations in the local yield. It is said that agriculture primarily depends on six facets, also known as the Six Pillars of Agriculture: 1. Climate2. Peasants3. Seeds4. Soil5. Tools6. Water

However, a majority of the decision-making by the farmers’ is carried out sans logic: it is more of a gamble-in terms of climatic conditions and the current needs. Which crop is to be grown when and why, how much returns would one expect; is not much of a concern. Farmers follow the trend of the season, thus there are situations when there is surplus stock of produce and absolutely no place to store such produce. The produce ultimately rots in

warehouses and doesn’t reach the end consumer.To combat such situations, we propose a centralised system that would have the information of the type of crop, soil, terrain etc. This system would then use GPS/Satellite to map the current scenario in terms of climate. On the basis of data processing and the returns that the crop would yield, forecasts would aid in the decision-making process for the farmers.

Farmers expect this to combat labour shortages, lessen the unknowns of immigration reform, even reduce costs, increase quality and yield a more consistent product & hence are looking for-ward to this innovation of agro-bots.

While agro-bots are making way in Ja-pan’s horticulture, closer home ITC’s e-choupal is an automation innovation in it-self, transforming rural India’s landscape. E-choupal is an initiative taken by ITC to link the

farmers directly to the internet for procurement of agricultural and aquacultural products like beans, coffee, wheat, tea and many more. It aims to tackle the problems in the agribusiness which especially includes weak infrastructure. These programmes install computers in the rural areas and keep the farmers updated with what is new in this sector. This has increased the yield of the farmers, improved the quality of output, and reduced the transaction cost. A lot of other inventions have been made apart from the fact that the primary focus is to educate

FE

AT

UR

E


the farmers about the development in this sector, crop diseases, access to markets, how to manage it etc. On asking we also realised that there has been a mobile application created for crop farming which is most useful for farmer, tool manufacturers, and market people. The payment for the same is through farmers, tool manufacturers, and advertisers. A so-

lar cum manual irrigation system has been estab-lished consisting of tricycle, solar panel, floating pump, and pressure treadle pump. It irrigates 15-20 times more land compared to tin cane method.


ISSUES WITH INFORMATION SECURITYPARESH UPPAL

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

IIT MADRAS

Headquartered in California, Unites States, Google can answer everything related to me; it can tell you with whom do I connect via mail, what videos I watch and what do I browse over the internet. Now, if someone were to break into Google’s databases or Google were to sell all the information to someone; in a matter of seconds anyone can assume my identity and live his life in my name. This is the present world where we leave our information footprints wherever we go and whatever we do. The amount of informa-tion available in the public domain is more than enough to cause havoc for an individual or an organization. This leads us to the extremely im-portant area of Information Security.

Every hour, enough information is con-sumed by internet traffic to fill 7 million DVDs which if kept side by side would scale Mount Everest 95 times. The amount of data generated currently has scaled new heights and hence has brought new dimensions to Information Security; which was once considered a purely technical task and now is placed in their strategic plans. Consider the most phenomenal data leaks in the history of Information Systems – WikiLeaks. It has been widely acknowledged that WikiLeaks

was a result of too much information sharing and reckless use of authorizations within the United States Government. Bradley Manning, a low ranking member could access all sensitive information from the database SIPRNet because he was an intelligence analyst. His confidence to Adrian Lamo (a former hacker) resulted in disas-trous consequences for not only US but the entire world. Such is the present scenario in terms of Information Security and therefore the need to better systems and compliance management.

The Two Aspects: Information Security Operation-al Management and Information Security Compli-ance Management

This dimension of Information Security Operational Management has always been well understood and well defined. The major activi-ties inside this involve user management, firewall and software management and ensuring avail-ability of up-to-date security systems and proper backups. User Management encompasses defin-ing logical control access, password management and ensuring that users are disallowed accidental or unauthorized changes. Firewall and Software management deal with external threats such as

FE

AT

UR

E


virus, malwares and adware attacks. As these kinds of attacks become more sophisticated, so does the need to enhance protection. Cyber-crime has reached a stage where national security can be threatened and hence the need for security man-agement has been growing. These activities have been looked upon as purely technical until very re-cently, which is something that needs to change and has changed. Now, with the growing inter-con-nections has propelled management levels to take on a more strategic view leading to formation of Information Security policies and standards. User awareness, compliance and standards manage-ment in order to mitigate IT risks have caught man-agement attention which was definitely required.

As Solms puts it “The fact that an unenforced policy is not worth the paper it is written on, is a general-ly accepted fact”. Information Security Compliance should be housed within the same organization but as a different department just the way Finance and Audit co-exist. We cannot have the same de-partment reviewing what it is doing for the sake of good governance. This notion has steadily occu-pied the thoughts of major organizations and has reached an implementation stage. The prime tasks for the compliance department is to determine and define risks to the IT infrastructure and come out with means to mitigate them. If a particular soft-ware poses threat to the IT department then Com-pliance Department must identify a proper anti-virus software or consider an alternative software to perform the tasks. According to Solms, there is a significant need for every organization to adopt this dual departmental structure in order to en-sure best practices being followed and reviewed.

Implications for the Indian IndustryIn today’s world it is impossible to talk about In-formation Systems and leave India out of the context. India IT firms have put us on the global map and also contributed significantly to our own growth. Share of services in the GDP stands over

50% and IT services is the foremost contributor of the 50%. The highest growing firm in the last 2 decades has been the Indian IT major Tata Con-sultancy Services (TCS) and has continuously done well despite the economic scenario. The growth story of TCS and many other firms like Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Cognizant has been the phenome-nal business they have done in IT outsourcing and offshoring. With IT outsourcing has come anoth-er concern, the Information Security concern. The major Indian IT firms have indulged in offshoring and outsourcing projects of the biggest compa-nies of the world like Apple. Now, when Infosys is managing the software which manages the sup-ply chain of Apple and the data is mishandled, the consequences shall be catastrophic. It will lead to loss at both ends; disgrace to the legacy of Infosys and critical information leak for Apple.The Information Technology business has attract-ed a lot of innovation solutions in the services aspect. Consider the innovation in Cloud Com-puting where the asset-light model has gained attention and is a potential revolutionary tech-nology. The only concern with the technology is the Information Security aspect; which is the only deterrent. The fact that your company data resides on external infrastructure creates fear amongst the organizations. This is a typical case of risks due Information System Security being too high. Imagine a scenario where all these Se-curity concerns are dispelled, the growth for cloud based services would shoot through the cloud.

Some MeasuresWith the advent of IT, various measures have been taken to ensure the security of internet proto-cols. The HTTPS protocol is a result of the need for secure access for sensitive online transactions whether it be banking or private network sharing. This protocol provides a secure SSL/TLS proto-col over the HTTP protocol and majorly aims to prevent man-in-the middle attacks. Reserve Bank of India has been proactive in adopting security


measures for online financial transactions. Veri-fied by Visa (VbV) is another layer which has been added to the existing protection layers in finan-cial transaction which requires the credit/debit card user to register at their bank website for a unique password which shall be used every time the card is used for any sort of online transaction.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to resolve security issues and Information Systems. No two organizations can follow the exactly same com-pliances and ensure Information Security for the needs and objectives of two organizations greatly differ. No organization can feel that they are completely secure irrespective of the number of compliances they might follow. We cannot as-sume that latest hardware and anti-virus soft-

ware will cater to all the needs of Information Security for it depends upon the notoriety of the users of the Information System to exploit the weaknesses. Amazon’s single-click buy is an inno-vative solution to customer experience of online shopping but it also requires the user to save his credit card details with the company. What if a mischievous employee intentionally misuses the system to obtain these details? The issues with Information Systems Security are complex and require great expertise to be handled. Issues with Information Security are related in some way or the other to the employee behavior with the systems. As pointed out above, WikiLeaks may not have taken place had it not been for some non-complying employees to reveal their access to outsiders.

SELLING ON CYBERSPACEARIJIT GOSWAMI | PANJAB UNIVERSITY

Once was the time during the Industrial Revolution in Europe, when the companies had limited reach to their prospective customer base. The diameter of the circle of the company’s rec-ognition hardly used to transcend the geographi-cal boundaries of the nation of the company ex-isted in. But times changed and with the advent of Information Technology (IT) sector, a new era emerged where companies could reach out to people across continents and across oceans.The field of IT has ushered in a new paradigm in the realm of marketing. Marketing forms a very vital and integral part of business management. Without the study and application of marketing

strategies, a business organization resembles a ship without sails. According to Wikipedia, “market-ing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service. Marketing can be looked at as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, delivering and communi-cating value to customers, and managing customer relationships in ways that also benefit the organi-zation and its shareholders”. Let’s have a look at how IT helps to achieve these objectives of marketing.

The SIVA approach says that the follow-ing four P’s form the fundamental four pillars of

FE

AT

UR

E


marketing. These are:1. Product2. Promotion3. Price4. Place IT helps a lot in design-ing products as per the consum-ers’ taste. The concept of Big Data comes into picture here. Companies use business analytics to study the response of the public towards their product. It also helps them to study the parameters that give its rivals an advantage over their products. In a way, a business orga-nization today has the ability to arrive at a clear picture of how its products are performing in the market vis-à-vis its competitors, to identify the drawbacks in the products and to spot the com-petitive advantage their products have over the others. Let’s have a look at how marketing re-search is made highly efficient and easy by the IT sector. Enterprises le-verage all types from their structured as well as unstructured data stores. This data can also be collected from millions of devices connected through internet. Business analytics deals with establish-ing relations among conventional data sets and spotting new correlations, to gain useful insights which further help to comprehend the consumers concerns and to adjust the product ac-cording to the consumers’ needs.

Some web portals also help the consumers to de-sign their own products. These portals assisting in the delivery of customized products also have a

web application powered by IT. Alma Mater, online brand for customized merchandise and alumni memorabilia for schools, colleges and companies, is a perfect example for this. Let’s have a look at ‘price’ and ‘place’ before ‘pro-motion’ is discussed in much detail. The pricing strategy again a function of the value the product adds to the consumers, its advantages over its

competitors, its consonance with the current fashion and also the cost of manu-facturing the product in the industry. The online and offline surveys done by the companies help to assess the customers’ needs. The data analysts hired by the companies also help to look at the performance of other competing products

vis-à-vis one’s own product. Moreover, the data collected about the most popular items searched or most viewed advertisements online also helps the companies to gauge the drifts in the taste of the consumers.Coming to ‘place’, companies also need to keep manufacturing and keep their outlets full of stocks in demand. This demands an efficient supply chain management. IT practices help in


quick and assured delivery of products on time. Moreover, transactions can also be done in a hassle-free manner with facilities of IT in hand.[4] E-shopping or (e-retail) is a novel concept which has already be-come an essential core part of many famous ventures. Enterprises like Flipkart, Amazon, Myntra etc. have turned the entire idea of shop-ping upside down. One does not need to waste time going to shops and malls for purchasing items. From apparels to grocery to even books are accessible over the internet. Moreover, intelligent algorithms designed by IT compa-nies help advance, delay and cluster shipments to reduce logistics costs.What has further given an impetus to this lat-est tradition is the advent of online payments. Credit cards and debit cards help immensely in this regard. Moreover, the inception of Bitcoin has also made transactions fast and reliable. Services like smart transaction cards based on RFID and services like Airtel Money can help in this regard too. With the rise in the number of smart phone users with each passing day, more and more number of companies is making mobile phones their Point of Sale (POS). This is how the Internet of Things has revolutionized retail. Would all this have been ever possible sans IT?

Promotion is perhaps the area where IT has made its highest impact. The five major types of promo-tion are:1. Advertisements2. Sponsorships3. Public relations (PR)

4. Trade events5. Sales (contests, coupons etc.)Today, one cannot even imagine of appealing advertisements without the IT factor. The most

evident example is the advertise-ments flashed on websites, like the corner column of Facebook or Ad-Sense feature by Google. Moreover, IT applications also help to in-form the people about what their friends have pinned on Pin-terest or liked on Facebook. This helps the compa-

nies to reach out to a much wider audience than they could have targeted by offline marketing. Moreover, online contests and offers help to give boost to sales of products too. This way IT helps the companies to indirectly use their customers to attract more customers.QR codes flashed on television screens or in newspapers help the masses to access vital information about a product through a mere mobile app and internet. Digital Signage Promo-tion Project also aims to collect data on what sorts of people look at which ads at what times of day. Once that data is in, marketers could use the information to schedule their campaigns strategically.Immersive Labs recently introduced its smart billboard technology at TechStars’ Demo Day in New York.The software combines video analytics with environmental factors and Twitter and Foursquare information to decide what the best ad to display at that moment is.The web portals also help disseminate informa-tion about an upcoming or ongoing or conducted

FE

AT

UR

E


trade event. Websites of various famous events also help to spread a word about their sponsors. PR is also a critical business process, which de-pends on content marketing. The content posted online acts as the voice of the company for the customers. Moreover, the business organizations around the world have realized that it is just not sufficient to just have written content in fancy fonts over their web-sites. Images, infographics and video-rich content are also an elixir for ef-fective brand management.Some data analytics companies have also come with software to conduct thermal imaging of customers inside a supermarket. This assists in identifying the areas in a supermarket which are most frequented by the customers and the ones which are mostly unexplored. This further helps to optimize the areas and number of different products inside the supermarket. Moreover, mobile apps have come up in the markets which ask for the barcode of an item and then give a list of alternate products with prices for that item. What else? Mobile-based visual merchandising solutions provide a clear view of product placement in the supermarkets. Demand Chain Management software by Infosys help the enterprises to recommend orders to distributors by analyzing their sales history and inventory.This decade is certainly the era of digital mar-keting. Marketing strategies can no longer exist bereft of IT solutions. IT has changed the realm of marketing in more number of ways than one can think of and this has set a very good precedent for the times to come.

The web portals also help disseminate informa-tion about an upcoming or ongoing or conducted trade event. Websites of various famous events also help to spread a word about their sponsors. PR is also a critical business process, which de-pends on content marketing. The content posted online acts as the voice of the company for the customers. Moreover, the business organizations

around the world have realized that it is just not sufficient to just have written content in fancy fonts over their websites. Images, info-graphics and video-rich content are also an elixir for effective brand man-agement.Some data analytics companies have also come with software to

conduct thermal imaging of customers inside a supermarket. This assists in identifying the areas in a supermarket which are most frequented by the customers and the ones which are mostly unexplored. This further helps to optimize the areas and number of different products inside the supermarket. Moreover, mobile apps have come up in the markets which ask for the barcode of an item and then give a list of alternate products with prices for that item. What else? Mobile-based visual merchandising solutions provide a clear view of product placement in the super-markets. Demand Chain Management software by Infosys help the enterprises to recommend orders to distributors by analyzing their sales history and inventory.This decade is certainly the era of digital mar-keting. Marketing strategies can no longer exist bereft of IT solutions. IT has changed the realm of marketing in more number of ways than one can think of and this has set a very good precedent for the times to come.


Interview with Mr. Soubhagya Sahoo, CEO & Co-Founder of Gray Routes Innovative Distribution LPP

INT

ER

VIE

W

Gray Routes Innovative Distribution LLP, founded in March 2013, is an agile startup with a transformational agenda. Leveraging the im-mense power of GPS technology to unearth in-novative business models, Gray Routes provides distribution technology consulting and mo-bile application products to some of the larg-est FMCG, telecom, food services, e-Commerce and logistics companies transforming their sales and distribution management systems.

Founded in April 2013 by IIM Ahmedabad alumni Soubhagya Sahoo and Sapna Patel, the startup was among the top 75 businesses (out of 14,000-plus startups) at the Economic Times Power of Ideas 2012 competition. Prior to start-ing Gray Routes, Sahoo was national project manager (sales) at Hindustan Unilever and Pa-tel was vice-president (business development) at InOPEN Technologies. The startup currently op-erates from Delhi & Mumbai and has a team of 12, but it is looking to increase the number to 16.

Bitesys: What has been the story behind forming Gray Routes?

Mr. Sahoo: Gray Routes Innovative Distribution LLP is founded in March 2013 as an agile startup with an agenda of transformation and provid-

ing solutions. When I was working as a product manager in corporate sector, I came across a lot of issues pertaining to distribution and ERP in terms of data transparency and availability. I was in charge of designing a mobile application which was built to bridge the gap in distribution in rural area. Evolving technologies along with rapid affordability of smartphones and internet has changed the distribution and logistics do-main completely.

I wanted to provide solutions to efficient de-livery of goods and services. I was supported in this cause by the co-founder of Gray Routes [his spouse] in understanding the human psychology with regard to why people use and adopt technol-ogy from the grass root level. It was during this time in 2012 when Economic Times came up with their eminent competition named “ The Power of Ideas” which was a huge platform for start up to validate ideas and get going. We made it to the finals and emerged as the one among the Top 75 businesses out of over 14000 startups in India’s largest and most well-known startup workshop to start the journey of Gray Routes.

Bitesys: Can you please tell us about a few products of Gray Routes and your key area of Focus?Mr. Sahoo: Gray Routes has a portfolio of services


which includes mobility innovations, e-commerce services and distributed advisory. Gray Routes solves the problem of customer delivery which is the critical step in the last mile of distribution. One can ship products to either retailers or con-sumers .Coordination among the various stake-holders (manufacturers, distributors and retailers) is a major issue of concern. A delivery person has several responsibilities such as receiving calls from customers to locate them, scheduling the agenda in addition to orders from his manager. It is difficult to optimize all these task at the same time which lead to loss of time and business. This is where Gray Routes come up with their novel mobile application to coordinate activities such as handling traffic changing priorities to optimize cost for a company. It involves intelligent plan-ning of operations and automates simple tasks increasing their profit margin.

Some of the intelligent solutions include:•GRAYDROP Enterprise Delivery Force Automation •GEOVITAS Enterprise GeoVisual Tagging & Search•GOSTOCKY Retail ERP & CRM platform•GRAYWEB ERP-Integrated secure Solutions Suite with Big Data Analytics

The key area of focus has always been assisting all companies in their quest for internet domi-nance through a superior customer experience and to plug the gaps in their distribution channel to increase their return on investment.

Bitesys: What are some of the current challenges usually faced by an IT Startup?

Mr. Sahoo: The challenges faced by any IT startup is uncountable starting from managing infrastruc-ture to providing timely services. But to name a few, managing innovation with talented engi-neers is at times uncontrollable where one have a complex problem having different solutions and

too many tricky situation to find a solution. For efficient management, Innovation Process Man-agement (IPM) is a mandate for any organization where an online task sheet is maintained to pri-oritize task and activities on a regular basis. It will help in making the environment more flexible for providing solutions. Working on the latest tech-nologies and constantly adopting them is another hurdle that any IT startup has to deal with in their day to day operations. The last issue that any new organization faces is in finding the right talent to do their job. The skill required to do a specific job might not match the skill competencies that are actually present in an employee. The skill gap is another major concern that is encountered by an IT start up.

Bitesys: How is the landscape changing for using Mobile apps in business and how do you see the future of this sector?

Mr. Sahoo: Mobile applications have become a fundamental technology tool. It can be expected that by 2020, software ecosystem will be totally occupied by smartphones when apart from man-aging infrastructure, managing smartphones for consumers will become a major area of business in IT sector.

Bitesys: What message would you like to send to MBA students?

Mr. Sahoo: Explore the whole domain of distribu-tion which will undergo a phenomenal transfor-mation in the coming few years. Have a meaning-ful Internship experience which will help you in understanding the business and learn from it. And lastly, there is no right time to take the plunge.


APP REVIEW

MUST HAVE APPS FOR MBA GRADS

1)Dropbox: Dropbox is one of the applications that an MBA must have. It provides an easy access to all your files and fold-ers through various sources like your own PC (in the form of a desktop application) or your mobile phone. All you have got to do it upload your notes or files on your PC and it will be available on your Mobile phone whenever your want (and vice versa!!)

2)Evernote : Evernote is a practical multimedia info-capture application which allows photos, web screenshots, typed text and spoken information to be recorded and organized. It offers an interesting feature of searching text in photographs

3)Sleep Cycle: Sleep Cycle is an iPhone application that analyses your sleep cycle and wakes you up whenever you are in the lighest sleep phase.

4)Dragon Dictation : With this app, you can see the instant typing of what-ever you say into the device. You can type in text in text messt, an email, any social post or reminders to yourself. It is nearly 5 times faster than the normal keyboard. Perfect for people pursuing MBA!!

MOST INNOVATIVE APPSIf This Then That (IFTTT) When it comes to automation for internet based service this app has got it all. Wouldn’t it be great if someone tagged a photo of you the picture was automatically uploaded to your google drive or Drop box? Imagine if your phone automatically switches to silent mode if you are in office? You can do just that with this app. It works on simple recipes like If [Photo is tagged in Facebook - Trig-ger] then [upload to google Drive- Action]. You would first have to activate the channels which you want to use. This app allows interaction between 105 Channels.

Pocket (for the times when we wish we had internet) This app lets you save any article to your phone so that you can read/view it later. Although the idea sounds simple, it is a life saver in countries where we don’t have the best of internet connectivity.

AP

P R

EV

IEW


A PUBLICATION OF BITESYS, THE SYSTEMS CLUB OF IIM SHILLONG

Our vision is to provide a platform for seamless disseminationof knowledge between the corporate and students & to

provide professional opportunities beyond the traditionalavenues in the field of Technology & Systems Management.

The Team:Asad Ali | Debapi Golder | Mohit Sharma Nawal | Parsita Kundu | Pranav J | Shweta Jain

Editors: Debapi Golder | Mohit Sharma Nawal | Parsita Kundu

Design:Pranav J | Shweta Jain

Reach us at:E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.iims-bitesys.in Facebook: www.facebook.com/bitesys

Cam MeThe perfect app for the selfie lovers, it allows one to take self-ies from a distance. The app works on gesture control. To take a selfie one has to keep the phone at a distance, then perform a gesture with the hand and then smile to take a picture. There not much else that app can do, even viewing the photos as to be done by going to the phones gallery although it probably be fixed with future updates

Waze This Israeli GPS App is based on a community of users to provide live traffic updates to the users. Each user has to just install the app and drive around. The traffic information gets updated automatically as the user drives around. A user can also report traffic jams and road hazards through the app so that other users can take an alternate route. The Community in India us yet to grow to provide meaningful real time information.

qubit magazine

Documents

big data big data

big data analytics

archived data

durability of data

image data

data mining

data available

big data strategies