Friday 29 May 2015

Now is the right time for Indian telcos to adopt Hadoop

These are exciting times in the Indian telecom sector. There is optimism in the air, thanks to an enabling environment and a surge in data adoption by consumers. In fact, in the past couple of years, the rise in data services has outsmarted voice services, and this is where the big opportunity for telecom operators lies. The ambitious bids (well over Rs 1 lakh crores) that we saw for 1800 MHz spectrum prove that companies are bullish on 4G services, and they have their reasons. As PwC’s predictions for Indian Telecom points out, “Indian subscribers will adopt 4G wholeheartedly to satiate their need for mobile data. We expect 4G LTE subscribers to reach 10 million to 15 million by December 2015 driven by competitive pricing, superior network experience and affordable Smartphone’s.”

In addition to the surge in mobile data use, the government is also getting involved in the form of the Digital India initiative, which provides public WiFi in 25 cities. This increase in public WiFi enables users in these cities to do much more with their mobile devices. Smartphone’s are also making significant inroads in non-conventional customer segments such as rural customers and senior citizens. Smartphone’s are now becoming synonymous with convenience—convenience to explore, learn, share and transact. The government has also announced its plans to link 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats (self-government village offices) and build broadband highways over a three-year period.

The surge in data use, along with improved WiFi/broadband infrastructure, translates to a huge opportunity for the telecom sector. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, the telecom industry needs to be armed with the right technologies to analyse, understand and act on insights from mobile data—and this means exploring the power of big data analytics.

Evolved Customer, Informed Choices

There is no doubt that consumers today are more informed than ever before, and demand more bang for the buck. They have come to expect uninterrupted connectivity, data security, ease of transactions and above all, and round-the-clock responsive customer service. As their usage increases, so do their expectations and they expect customer service operators to intuitively understand their needs and particular requirements?

Since exit barriers are low, given MNP (mobile number portability) and easy access to pre-paid services, customer service professionals face serious customer retention challenges. Churn rates can reach 59% in the prepaid mobile segment, with slightly lesser churn rates in the post-paid mobile market. Mobile operators also have to spend more money on new customer acquisition in order to thrive in such a competitive environment.

In this era of evolved and sophisticated customers, it’s important that telecom service providers learn to exploit big data in order to increase revenue and proactively manage customer experience and churn.

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Analyse, Understand, Act, Win

The terabytes and petabytes of customer data that are generated every minute is wasted if not analysed at the right time. By using a big data and analytics platform, telecom operators are able to capture, manage, process and analyse this mountain of data. The main benefit is that they are much better equipped to analyse subscriber usage and digital behaviour. This enables telecom operators to personalise customers’ experiences, resulting in reduced churn, increased customer loyalty and an increase in overall marketing efficiency.

Globally, analytics adoption is increasing at a steady pace, with Gartner predicting a 65%increase in investment in analytics services and technologies. Indian companies, especially Telco’s, cannot afford to stay behind. Opportunities abound for telecom operators who are able to deploy big data solutions in order to gain business-impacting insights.

As I mentioned earlier, the Indian consumer is a value seeker; he will quickly change his mind if he finds that his current service provider is even slightly falling short of his burgeoning expectations. The trick is not to give him the headroom to manoeuvre, but to be one step ahead of him; to be able to use big data analytics to understand his moods and behaviours and be cognitive of his preferences.

Big Data Analytics Can Deliver Big Results

Currently, many enterprises understand and appreciate the need to invest in big data analytics technology. However, many companies in India hesitate to do so, as they fear high software and training costs.

Fortunately, Apache Hadoop is a tailor-made solution that delivers on both counts, by turning big data insights into actionable business enhancements for long-term success. In order to provide data-driven intelligence across the enterprise, the big data solution must enable interactive, self-service ways of working with historical and near real-time data. Hadoop has already solved many of the fundamental (legacy) Big Data access and availability problems, and with the addition of standalone query engine Apache Drill, data analysts finally can follow their data queries easily across multiple data sources, on demand.

Hadoop gives telcos the advantage of being able to analyse large sets of both structured and unstructured data, and will drive insights that will help them learn the key triggers for certain actions among their customer base. Armed with these insights, telcos can proactively track the tipping point and take corrective actions to retain customers that are in danger of switching to a different operator. By having the right insights at the right time, telcos can build loyalty by rewarding the customers and creating moments that matter. The stronger the connection is with the customer, the more likely you can win his trust and build a strong, long-term relationship.

Many telecom enterprises globally have already adopted Hadoop and are reaping huge dividends. In the changing dynamics of the telecom sector in India, it becomes imperative for the serious players to invest in the right big data technologies. Hadoop is their best bet, as it can be easily customized and adapted to the unique requirements of the telecom industry.

Monday 25 May 2015

Secure Azure as Microsoft meets NZ Govt cloud computing criteria

Tech giant demonstrates Microsoft Azure’s ability to provide secure cloud computing to Kiwi companies.


Microsoft New Zealand has demonstrated Microsoft Azure’s ability to provide secure cloud computing to Kiwi companies after meeting requirements set out in the 105-question New Zealand Government framework.

Based within the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs, the New Zealand Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) has responsibility for providing guidance on how Kiwi Government organisations should adopt cloud computing via a framework called Requirements for Cloud Computing.

As part of this effort, the GCIO published a document entitled ‘NZ Government Cloud Computing: Security and Privacy Considerations’, which comprises 105 questions focused on security and privacy aspects of cloud services that are fundamentally related to data sovereignty.

Consequently, organisations that fall under the scope of the GCIO’s mandate for providing Ministers with government ICT System Assurance must apply this framework when they are deciding on the use of a cloud service.




Furthermore, other New Zealand State sector organisations are encouraged to use this framework as a good practice guidance.

To assist its New Zealand government organisations in meeting these requirements and expectations, Microsoft New Zealand has provided information showing how Microsoft Azure meets the requirements set out in the 105-question government framework.

“This is a great step forward for us in being able to show both public and private sector customers how Microsoft addresses important security, privacy and sovereignty issues,” says Jaron Burbidge, Business Development Manager - Enterprise Cloud Solutions, Microsoft New Zealand.


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Friday 22 May 2015

Big data can be a great HR tool

As CEOs across the globe grapple with issues from talent acquisition and retention to the need for greater employee productivity, a study by KPMG shows that HR has a massive opportunity to drive significant business value. They can do this efficiently by using big data & technology. The global survey reached out to 375 executives, with C-suite executives comprising more than half of them. "A lot of cos in India are showing greater interest in evidence-based HR (data-driven HR) and putting the nuts and bolts in place to have a lot more information which is critical from a talent standpoint," says Nishchae Suri, partner and head of people and change advisory at KPMG in India. There is a greater interest in the use of data and analysis in HR function on the part of companies in the IT and BFSI space, he adds. 






Thursday 21 May 2015

Salesforce's CEO bashes SAP: 'They should try writing some software

Hot off another stellar quarter that beat on revenue and profits, Marc Benioff repeated his new goal to be "the fastest software company ever to $10 billion in revenue."
But he also added that his "dream" was to "beat" SAP. And he thinks doing that will be a cakewalk, he told Wall Street analysts on the quarterly conference call.

When Salesforce hits that goal $10 billion goal, the company will be the fourth largest software company in thew world, he said:

When that happens, we are really targeting one company to beat and that's SAP. Fortunately for us, their kind of lackluster growth execution and lack of innovation in their core product, we just saw in their product this quarter, they are an easy target.


... the $10 billion revenue run rate that's step 1. Step 2 is go past SAP. I think we can absolutely do that. I'm personally committed to making that happen. That's my dream.

And the trash talk didn't stop there. Later Benioff said, "The only innovation SAP has is in rhetoric. They should try writing some software."

He may have been referring to SAP CEO Bill McDermott's recent statements that that SAP isn't interested in buying Salesforce, nor does McDermott think any of his competitors would be willing to cough up the huge price Salesforce would command.
Its stock has been trading at near-time highs with a market cap of about $46 billion.
As to when this $10 billion dream will happen, Benioff won't commit. The $10 billion in "run rate" revenue is about double the revenue that Salesforce had when it wrapped up its fiscal 2015 last quarter.
But Benioff says Salesforce already has $9 billion under contract, $3 billion of it as deferred revenue and another $6 off the books, as un-billed deferred revenue.
As for chasing SAP, the biggest maker of application software in the world, Benioff isn't alone in that dream.
His old employer, Oracle, has been trying to beat SAP in the application market since 1999, Safra Catz recently said. Oracle is No. 2 and closing in, she's convinced.

Tuesday 12 May 2015

SAP Labs to hire 1,200 engineers this year

New recruits will work on technologies and platforms

SAP Labs India is all set to hire over 1,200 engineers this year; its biggest recruitment drive since its inception in 1998.

So far, the average hiring per annum across its Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Pune centres has been in the range of 600-800 engineers.

Second largest hub

SAP Labs India is the second largest and one of the four global development hubs of SAP that contributes to all areas of its product value chain, including research and breakthrough innovation, product development, global services & support and customer solutions and operations. The other three hubs are in Germany, the US and Israel.

India is among the fastest growing markets for SAP, which has been in business here for the last 17 years. With newer technologies like cloud, coupled with our industry leading platforms such as SAP HANA, we expect India to be one of the biggest growth markets for SAP globally.

“To enable this growth, we are hiring 1,200 plus engineers in 2015, our largest hiring numbers to date,” Bhuvaneswar Naik, Vice-President, Human Resources, SAP Labs India Pvt Ltd, told BusinessLine.

Of 1,200 hires, 600 engineers will be hired from the top 40 college campuses in the country for the Bengaluru, Gurgaon and Pune centres and the rest would be lateral hires with 2-8 years of experience.

The new hires will work on a variety of technologies and platforms, including analytics, HANA, cloud, business networks, user experience & design, suite engineering and custom development.




Explaining the contribution of the 5,000-strong SAP Labs India team, Naik said: “Bridging the gap between local market demands and SAP’s development organisation, SAP Labs has set standards for excellence in innovation, efficiency and reliability. For example, the development of SAP S/4 HANA, our recent new generation of business software suite designed to enable Indian customers run simple in a digital and networked world, was a global collaborative project that leveraged on the talent pool at India. The team contributed towards the development of the core architecture, Fiori user experience for mobile devices, applications and platform for S/4 HANA, which is key to get rid of all the complexity and redundancies to make the entire IT landscape simple for businesses.”

SAP Labs India has been maintaining attrition rates below 10 per cent. Ranked fifth in the Great Place to Work Institute’s annual Best Workplaces List – India’s Best Companies to Work for survey, SAP Labs India was also ranked as the second best in Diversity & Inclusion and third best IT company among 575 participating firms across 20 industries last year.

Peeing Android' forces Google to halt Map editor


SAN FRANCISCO: 
  
  Google has said it is sidelining its crowd-sourced map making tool to implement a way to prevent bogus edits, some of which have proven embarrassing. 

The Map Maker service will be "temporarily unavailable" beginning Tuesday, according to a message posted online. 

"As some of you know already, we have been experiencing escalated attacks to spam Google Maps over the past few months," Pavithra Kanakarajan of the Map Maker team said in a written explanation of the decision. 



"The most recent incident was particularly troubling and unfortunate -- a strong user in our community chose to go and create a large scale prank on the Map." 

Last month, the California-based internet giant began re-evaluating its user-edited online map system after the latest embarrassing incident -- an image of an Android mascot urinating on an Apple logo. 

The image, part of a crowd-sourced edit on Google Maps, appeared briefly at a Pakistani location before it was removed. 

In a statement to US media at the time, Google apologized and said it was working to step up verification of user edits on its Map Maker platform. 

Earlier in April, someone revised the map of the White House in Washington to include a new business called "Edwards Snow Den," an apparent effort to draw attention to former national security contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked a trove of secret documents on US surveillance. 

The pranks were done with map making tools that allow any user to edit online maps. Google let people modify maps in the spirit of tapping into intimate, local knowledge to make them more accurate and detailed. 

The mischief caused Google to suspend an automated edit approval process, shifting to manual reviews that take more time to conduct and have resulted in a backlog of proposed map modifications, according to Kanakarajan. 

"We have been analyzing the problem and have made several changes," she said. 

"However, it is becoming clear that fixing some of this is actually going to take longer than a few days."