July 5, 2011

Launch Of New Site

Hi,

From past few days, I was busy with the designing of my new site. Finally its come and wait is over.

URL of my new site is

www.techbizresearch.com

I will be posting more interesting articles on my blog and will make sure that you get the correct information in more detailed way.
Request you to add the site as favorite and subscribe to the feeds of the site.

Will keep you posted.

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Hardik Upadhyay

June 15, 2011

Google - Back in Action to Save Internet

Google was born with internet, thrived with internet and has grown to this mammoth size with the help of internet.

Internet has become bread and butter for Google to gain more revenue. In an interview by Eric Schmidt on Emerging technologies at Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, he focused more on the rise of few things which might shape the future.

He started with the Moore's Law description and said that this law was useful to design the future and will help us to find the right path.
As a member of board of directors in Apple and CEO of Google, he had enough experience to make some right moves.

But this all boils down to one thing. What will Google do next?

Now obviously, we dont have much answers for the question. But what I do have is a rough idea about the direction of Google.

As I said, Google wants to focus on Internet as it is getting around 60% of its revenue from online search ads. Now this brings to only way, that more browsing people do, more money google gets from ads.

More faster the internet more work can be done in less time. More and more ads will be clicked and navigated. This will help google in a big way to ask some hefty money from its advertisers.

So Google launched a campaign to host its own DNS Servers which will help user to navigate the internet world. This obviously will be much faster than the existing DNS servers.

But the thing is most of the people believe that Google will try to cut out the possibilities of open navigation and will try to play some dirty game.

Anyway, I am leaving politics aside. Next thing they did is to lie down fiber optics at user's doorstep which provided them around 1Gbps connection.

After all this they are planning to start up a new thing in internet which will be like a layer on their existing DNS protocols.

They launched SPDY, a transmission protocol which will help the web page to load faster and reduce the amount of data transfered.

To believe and use this protocol, one should trust Google DNS engines which will route your request to the desired domain without any hiccups.

But if this SPDY protocol is implemented, it will do wonders to google as well as the customer

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Hardik Upadhyay
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June 14, 2011

Microsoft - Voice Based Communication Approach


I am not the big fan of Microsoft but there are things about Microsoft which brings lot of things from the business perspective and has ability to cash the series of product line launched by them.

They have set of products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Operating System which is dominating till date despite of the futile attempts from Google to take over the office market from Microsoft.

The perspective of Microsoft is on the next generation users.
This includes
  • Youth from age 15 to 25 – Teenagers and adolescents who are tech savvy and want everything available at ease
  • Working class people – 25 to 35 years of age – this group has tendency to  follow the trend set by the youth and then adjusting it according to their needs. This mostly caters to the dependency of them on gadgets and technology
Now Microsoft has identified this thing and are coming up with the series of product using which they can survive for the next decade.

They have ruled the market from a longer time and they are identifying threat from Google and Apple. 

The only way to defend them is to come up with something out of the box.

So they have started propagating through their best selling product for youth XBOX. This magic box has created wonders for Microsoft and thy are trying to use it further and make it smarter in a way where a user can control things based on the Xbox Kinect.

Microsoft is going to use the voice based commands which will be fed to the Kinect and which will eventually flow to the Xbox system.

Microsoft can do wonders based on this if they put it and propagate it in the best way. Example they can make the system a hub for unified communication and can control lot of things based on this. 

They can also incorporate this technology on their upcoming windows 7 smart phone which will act as one more medium to connect from human to the device.

All this boils down to the way Microsoft use this technology in their existing product line.
Let us see what Microsoft has in mind to rule the market for the next decade.

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Hardik Upadhyay
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April 25, 2011

Next Era of Content Licensing

Hi Friends,

I still remember the time when I paid around Rs. 12000 ($ 299 ) for getting one XP license for my PC. I also paid around $500 for other software like adobe photoshop and office. I was more than happy to use the licensed software which was handy and usable. But later the sad part was it was based on the number of installations which are done by that particular key.

I used to wonder, why they are tagging software to the machine in which it is installed. I have got rights of the software, I have purchased it then why am I deprived of using the software on multiple machines.

I think that Apple might also have thought on my lines... By the way not on my lines exactly (trying to be modest).. but on the customer sentiment and their marketing strategy. They decided to find the way around this problem. They did this before also while launching App Store where they started selling single song to the users. Users were more than happy to pay price for their favorite songs among lacks of songs.

Now this time apple is back with new thing.

Apple changes the fundamental way of software license by launching the app store for Mac.

Features of this process:
There is totally different approach to this solution where a software is not tagged to a machine but to the user.  Here a user downloads the software and he is given the liberty to download the software again on any other new mac. This makes it simpler for the user to utilize his rights of software purchase and use it to the maximum potential. Now this has lot of impact on the mindset of the customers. This give them chance to utilize the software even after the system is formatted.

There are no limitation for the machine tagging. User can also transfer rights of the particular software to some other computer. They have actually given the power of software usage to the customer itself without any limitation.

Impact on the Gray Market:


This move from apple will support a lot to the general market who want to use pirated software. They will be happily using the software on the machine which they want. They will not be inspired to use the software without updates rather than the software which can be controlled by then. Software which gives them the pride of ownership.

Hopefully, this strategy will help Microsoft to learn something from Apple.

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Hardik Upadhyay
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February 9, 2011

Broadband Game Changing Strategy : BB over PL

Hi Friends,

As the technology improves, we get to see lot of new things around us. Things those are hard to imagine. Things those are unbelievable. We have seen lot of revolutionary products in 21st century and will be seeing more in coming years.

One of the things which caught my attention is the new IEEE standard for broadband connectivity. I think that it will solve lot of our problems and will create new ventures for the business and technology.

IEEE Standard for Broadband over Power line

IEEE standard - 1901-2010 – [IEEE Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks] has finally helped us to reach those frontiers where we always imagined but never captured.

They have launched a totally new communication model. This is going to be a business opportunity for most of the power grid companies in India and all over the world. India has for long time tried to rope in rural market for better broadband connectivity but has failed most of the times. There were number of reasons for it

Reasons for Broadband connectivity to fail in Rural India
  • Lack of awareness of internet among the rural market
  • More usage of mobile compared to PC
  • Lack of basic amenities like electricity are missing
  • Low purchasing power
  • Dearth of quality education and information

Due to this there is reduction of broadband market penetration rate in India. Current broadband penetration rate in India is only around 2% in early 2010. This might be shocking in compared to the 8.6% growth rate of India. But this is reality. Now to face this kind of issues, IEEE has come up with the new communication model to reach mass market with ease.

Features of New IEEE Standard


By the help of this new standard, the companies can adopt this model more easily as it has lot of advantages which easily distinguish it from the existing Ethernet standard.

At present, broadband connection has a speed of 100 MBPS, but broadband over standard AC power lines promises 200 MBPS and an easy-to-use connection within 30 minutes. This is more than enough from the rural market’s perspective.

Apart from this, the interference between the radio waves and the electricity field will be reduced to a larger extent.

Opportunities for Big Companies


In the transportation sector, for example, the standard’s data rates and range make it possible to deliver A/V entertainment to the seats of airplanes, trains and other mass transit vehicles.

Electric vehicles can download a new entertainment playlist to the A/V system while the car is charging overnight. In the home segment, PLC will complement wireless LANs by providing a link through walls and other RF impediments as well as over distances beyond the normal range of wireless networks.

It will also complement wireless networks in travel and hospitality industry where in, hotels and other multistory buildings carry multimedia data over the longer distances and allow wireless to complete the communication link over the last few meters by the help of this standard.

 IEEE 1901 will also benefit utilities, service providers, and consumer electronics companies – anyone with a stake in smart grid technologies – as well as smart-meter providers and home appliance manufacturers.


February 5, 2011

Interesting thing about Android and Trend Micro

Interesting thing about Android and Trend Micro – Smart Bonding of OS and Antivirus

Couple of weeks back, trend micro spread a warning to all the android users that the android OS is not secure to save your data and to protect it from the hackers. Interestingly, just after a week trend micro released antivirus for android OS.


Now some might think that it’s a marketing gimmick to sell more antivirus and to generate a more powerful channel to sell antivirus on an exponentially increasing mobile OS platform.

But this makes me think that whether the CEO has given warning seriously or not. Currently as per the article from PC world, Android Gingerbread (latest version) found a critical bug in the OS. The current OS has the capability to get the data from your micro SD card and can be exploited by some of the apps.

Now this is a matter of serious concern. Like this, there might be many other critical bugs which might come into limelight after proper review of the applications and the developers. But it might be too late by then.

Also the reasons for Android to be so much vulnerable to such critical bugs, is its Open OS architecture. Android was developed on open OS and this made its kernel level files open to hackers. Now it’s dangerous in certain scenarios. Apple has not revealed its kernel and shell files to the developers which have made it safe and more secure than Android OS.

Hopefully android will find some way around this problem in short time or else they will be regretting about this problem in the future.

Strategy of Android:
  • Android is currently trying hard to capture market share in mobile OS and releasing subsequent version in the market which are more and more stable and with added features.
  • Android is roping in more app developers currently to become more serious about its underlying security and to improve its app store.
  • Various tournaments(hacking and app creation) are organized to make sure that people are actively involved in android
  • Latest antivirus are getting added to the league of antivirus which are supporting the OS. 

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Hardik Upadhyay
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January 26, 2011

Future of Wireline/Baseline Business

Ethernet is gaining lot of traction for simplifying the usage of the customers due to which they are able to take the profit for sustaining longer time. The dependencies are creating lot of opportunities for the customers to get faster data at cheaper rate. But there is a bigger problem lying for the Fixed line operators like Qwest which is facing problem with the declining revenues and loss of customers.

Opportunities for Wireline Service Providers
Also, at the same time some future gurus are suggesting to go for LTE instead of the baseline internet. The amount of profit obtained from the same product will be far more useful for the Unified Access Operators and Fixed line Operators.

The other opportunity for the wireline providers is to go for IP based dialing on the same network. This helps them to go for more varied call scenario which will also help them to design the future. IP based calling is supposed to be the future for most of the companies. So the fixed line companies can switch over to this option to retain more enterprise customers and also to get more revenues from the existing customers.

Challenge for IPV6 Network
Challenge in second option adoption is to go through the pain of designating IP on IPV6 network which is still under experimentation. People are still adopting such technology for the usage. IPV6 is still under experimentation stage

Roadmap for Baseline Service Providers
They are creating lot of opportunities for the future world to choose their technology at a cheaper rate and at more ease. But this will take time. The window for getting this thing revamped is around one year as per Gartner and to make sure that LTE and IPV6 setup is done by the companies will take a year more. So eventually if the companies decides to take some drastic steps in changing their business models, then they will be able to do so only by 2013.

This leads to the selection of the product based on proper analysis by the technical team of the enterprise. Proper analysis is also required in doing such changes. Lets hope what all things are there in the bouquet of these companies in the future to sustain this aggressive telecom enterprise model change.

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Hardik Upadhyay
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January 25, 2011

Gartner Reviews on Enterprise IT budget

Gartner is true on various aspect (Although I am trying to be a Devil's Advocate) in recent times. Gartner is trying to show its expertise in the field of IT research.

In the recent survey of Gartner, it suggests that the use of technology is good for the business but the information management committee is spending more time in deciding which technology to use rather than trying to analyze its impact of business benefits.

IT management of the company is trying hard to adapt to the new futuristic technologies which are wooing them by their expert advice and cheesy consultants. Also the pricing is also competitive in the market.

But there is a bell of warning by Gartner in this kind of approach.

Ex. - IT management is trying to implement cloud computing, Database Management (Using SAP) or implementing Enterprise mobility tools (Afaria product of Sybase iAnywhere)

But these managers fail to understand and trace out long term or even short term benefit of implementation of these technologies. They are not able to quantify the benefits and just follow the tide.

Also, there is high amount of risk involved in this kind of approach. As the investment in these things is very huge and the IT service companies are increasing their margin, the SMB struggle to get profits and block their large amount of money.

I rather agree with Gartner to advice big companies to be cautious and measure their approach for IT management.

Please do not go for Technology but go for the business values and returns first.


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Hardik Upadhyay
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