SigmaWay Blog

The business world is eager to choose the right Digital Access Management (DAM) system so that vendors can provide the necessary technology to meet key business needs. Selection of a vendor can be a complex process and focusing on key elements will lead you to take a right decision. A successful implementation of DAM depends not only on new technology but also on sound digital strategy. This in turn ensures that assets generate revenues, increase efficiency and remain updated with emerging market trends. Digital strategy should be given the most importance. Strategy should be based on a well-established foundation. This foundation should include rich media collections, metadata, taxonomy and governance among other things. To know more, please follow the link:

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http://www.cmswire.com/cms/digital-asset-management/making-a-dam-decision-029041.php

"Your strategies and budget on business technology agenda-technologies, systems, and processes to win, serve and retain customers"- Kyle McNabb (Vice President of Research Strategy at Forrester Research). In the age of customer era, all B2C organizations need to find ways to meet the needs of the customers.  They are also forming customer-obsessed operating model which focuses on customer loyalty, innovation and growth.

In his article “Building A Customer-Obsessed Operating Model,” suggested some ways to make a customer obsessed operating model:
• Investment in new skills like analytics and big data.
• Rethink your process and try to apply agile in your entire organization.
• Re-engineer your systems.
• Modify governance.
• Transformation of organizational culture into more customer-oriented culture.
Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forrester/2015/05/26/building-a-customer-obsessed-operating-model/

According to Nitin Mehta (CIO of IT Enterprise Transforming India), Indian industries are going through technology transformation phase. Social, mobility, analytics and cloud (SMAC) are changing the way the organizations run. According to the Enterprise IT trends and investments 2015 survey report:

• 64% of the Indian CIO plan to increase their IT spending over 2014.
• Three in ten CIOs are planning to increase their IT spending by 10%.
• 25% of the IT budget is allocated to SMAC technologies.
• 50% of the respondents believe that social media is very effective in engaging customers.
• 57% of the respondents believe that cloud is being every significant.

Some observations are found, they are:

• CIO’s, IT agenda is mainly driven by internal factors, such as maturity and organization size.
• Companies IT spending is increasing.
• Social media is becoming an integral part of marketing strategy.
• Social media is transforming the relationship between stakeholders.
• Increasing usage of smartphones and internet, helping organizations in creating digital data.
• Prescriptive analytics is helping organizations in understanding the need of the customers.
Read more at: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/indian-companies-to-spend-moredisruptive-technology-ey_1391213.html?utm_source=ref_article

According to IT research firm IDC report, IoT market will grow by 19% in 2015. The increasing importance of the IoT in manufacturing and operations market, leads to the growth of the IoT by $56.6billion. Digital Signage market, which is used in the retail sector, will be the major driver for growth and IoT retail market will grow from $6billion to $35.7billion by 2018 in this market. The main reason for increasing demand for IoT is decreasing prices and technology advancement. Read more at: http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/iot-market-will-grow-19-percent-in-2015-idc-predicts/d/d-id/1320500

High speed internet network connecting villages across India; that's the dream PM Narendra Modi has been nurturing. A ministry appointed committee raised allocation for the National Optical Fiber Network. Estimated time is 3 years for laying down the fibers. It will help in linking 250,000 village clusters to the Internet which is an essential part to digitalize India. Higher spending potentially will expand opportunities for fiber suppliers and telecommunication vendors. Read more at:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-18/modi-mulls-11-billion-outlay-to-bring-rural-india-online

Do you think security questions are secure? Well think again. These questions meant to provide an extra layer of security. Google conducted a study collating hundreds of millions of these questions and their answers. It showed that these questions are neither secure nor reliable. They can be easily hacked or faked. A considerable percentage of the population could not even recall the questions. It was found in some cases that answers to some questions were similar for many people. Logic dictates that if anybody can guess the answer to a question, more security questions should be added. But this hikes up the probability that the user forgets them.  Researchers argue SMS backup codes, secondary email addresses should be used for authentication. Read more at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/21/google-study-shows-security-questions-arent-all-that-secure/?trk=pulse-det-art_view_ext

Researchers gave out warnings of a "full" internet or a capacity crunch which may arise as a result of exceeding the upper limit of information passed through the optical fibers. This is primarily due to the fast growth of online media consumption through YouTube, Netflix, etc.  The trick of increasing the capacity of the optical fiber by increasing the power of light beamed through them has hit a dead end as increasing the power beyond a certain point degrades signal quality. Thus, data rationing and other restrictions may be the only options if the researchers aren’t being able to commercialize the solutions they are coming up with like creating fibers with multiple cores or new techniques to compensate for distortion at high power.

Read more at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27536-the-internet-is-running-out-of-room--but-we-can-save-it.html#.VVq8ByuUcV8

IOT refers to sensors that communicate over the Internet without human intervention. According to McKinsey and the Global Semiconductor Alliance report, surveyed 30 GSA members who were senior executives at semiconductor companies, “IOT has potential, but it has several hurdles which can delay it.” These hurdles are:
• Security and data privacy
• Customer demand
• Limited consensus on standards
• Market fragmentation
• Elusive new revenue sources
• Technology shortcomings
To know more about these hurdles and how they can affect IOT implementation processes, read an article “Internet Of Things: 6 Obstacles” given in the informationweek.com by Thomas Claburn (Writer at InformationWeek) at: http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-devices/internet-of-things-6-obstacles/d/d-id/1320434

In today's competitive world, many organizations are planning to apply DevOps. DevOps is the practice of operations. In this practice, development engineers participate together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support and it is also the collision of two major related trends: Agile Operations and collaboration between development and operations staff. Continuous improvement in devops can help organizations to be efficient and innovative. Here are some practices used by DevOps professionals to turn monitoring practices into an important part of their fast-paced product delivery cycles. They are: Consolidate your tool set, Enrich data with contextual information, Rethink the reporting of operational problems, Automate what doesn’t scale, Applying knowledge based algorithms for monitoring data gives you actionable result. To know more about these practices and devops, follow: http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/17/4-ways-to-radically-improve-app-monitoring-with-devops/

In Software-as-a-service (SaaS) all the data, app and app meta data is managed by the vendor. This created the feeling of dissatisfaction among customers. To make the customers satisfied, a new technology is launched "Container-as-a-service" and with some improvement in CaaS, an upgraded software (CaaSi) Container-as a service for ISV (Independent Software Vendors) has been developed. In CaaSi the data is managed by customers and, app and app meta data by vendor. CaaSi model is the mixture of on premise and SaaS benefits. For example, automatic effects, network effect, scaling ease etc. benefits are from SaaS and Accounting (include Capex and Opex), data access, cost transparency, data ownership, direct integration etc. are from on premise. Cloud service providers like Google, Amazon and Microsoft added CaaS in their service list. To know more about CaaSi and CaaS, read an article "Goodbye, SaaS - hello, Containers-as-a-Service" by Peter Yared (Sapho) at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/09/goodbye-saas-hello-containers-as-a-service/

“Companies are pushing more sensitive and regulated data into the cloud. But, this journey is raising questions like 'security of data'.”

Applying software-as-a-service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) add on some more risk to the organizations. Ericka Chickowshi(specializes in information technology and business innovation) in her article “10 security questions to ask a cloud service provider” at Informationweek, discussed about 10 questions to be asked by companies from SaaS service providers before applying cloud. Some of them are:

·         Do you keep a signed audit trail of which users performed what actions when, both through their UI and API?

·         What is my role and your role in the protection of my data?

·         Do you encrypt all data transmissions, including all server-to-server data transmissions, within data centers?

·         What is your termination or ‘exit process’ for ensuring successful transition from services to an alternative offering?

·         Do you allow customers to perform scheduled penetration tests of either the production environment or a designated testing environment?

Asking these questions can help you to assess the risk. To know more questions and their reason for asking, visit the following link: 
http://www.darkreading.com/informationweek-home/10-security-questions-to-ask-a-cloud-service-provider/d/d-id/1320377

“Transferring data from your network to cloud includes processing and storing of the database and then processing for further use.”

Gerry Grealish (Perspecsys) in her article “Protecting the Data Lifecycle from Network to Cloud” at Informationweek, discussed about three phases for transferring data from your network to cloud and risk associated with them:

Phase 1# Data in motion: It is the term used for data as it is in transit. Risk is interference by third party. Cryptographic protocols, such as Secure Sockets Layer or Transport Layer Security can be used to protect data in this phase.

Phase 2# Data at rest: Data is stored in the form of file or database. Risk is reading of data by third party. Database solution can be used for protecting data like tools offered by CSP for encryption operations and there are various techniques like block level encryption technique.

Phase 3# Data in use: It is a data which is loaded into a process and is in the memory of the program that is running. And it is not protected by cloud service provider’s techniques like in-cloud based encryption techniques.

To know more about these phases and risk associated with them, read on: http://www.darkreading.com/cloud/protecting-the-data-lifecycle-from-network-to-cloud/a/d-id/1320249

Big Data as a Service (BDaaS) means outsourcing various big data functions to the cloud, which includes supply of data, analytical tools to interrogate and analysis the data. Advantages of outsourcing your analytical activities are:

·         Organizations can save money spent on components and infrastructure and time.

·         Storing large quantity of information requires an ongoing investment of time and resources.  But by using BDaaS, organizations can concentrate on business only.

·         When data is stored on a BDaaS service provider server they are responsible for it.

·         Pay only for services you use on the basis of time used or the cost of compliance and data protection.
Read more at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2015/04/27/big-data-as-a-service-is-next-big-thing/

According to Brian Sutter (Director of Marketing, Wasp Barcode), small business owner need to think strategically for long term survival. They should know how to use employee's time and skills effectively. Business should use CRM software for accessing customer data and analyze performance and business metrics for spotting pattern and trends. Small business owner need business intelligence tools for quick decision making, analyzing business opportunities and threats and improve management of the business. According to a recent report, 56% of small businesses plan to invest less than 3% of revenue on marketing. But, small organizations should use email marketing for maintaining long term relationship with customers. Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245386

According to Jolanta Pilecka (Contributor), mobile users behave in a different way from desktop users. So, you need to add a little wizardry to ensure that it looks good on a mobile screen and different from desktop view. As mobile users want that with every step they reach to end goal and it should be quick, easy to access. Ways to optimize the mobile path:
• Don’t Shrink, Rethink
• Incorporate navigational cues
• Maximize native functions
• Incorporate Apps
• Get Your Data in order
 Therefore, for designing an app, you need to redesign your process from a mobile user perspective. Read more at: http://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/business-process-management-bpm/articles/don-t-shrink-rethink/

According to John Mills (Industry week), manufactures have less visibility than others and manufactures can’t wait for a longer period. In manufacturing companies conditions change frequently. In North America, factory activity has been trending down after the fall of 2014 and the Institute for supply Management said US index falling is falling since five consecutive months. Therefore, we need to predict the future of manufacturing firms by conducting some test quarterly. To know more about test read at:

http://www.industryweek.com/leadership/assume-nothing-5-tests-every-manufacturer-should-run-quarterly

Amazon launches new supply chain management technique “Dash Button” which allows the customers to order products automatically at the actual point of use.  According to Paul Myerson (Industry week), Amazon’s new launch Dash button puts pressure on the retailers, especially grocers who have very small profit margins (1-2%) and have a huge impact on the retail order fulfilment process.  This will bring a new concept called focusing on value to the customers and eliminating waste not only in the business environment, but now at the actual home of the customers. To know more about dash button read at: http://www.industryweek.com/inventorymanagement/amazon-dashes-make-consumers-and-their-supply-chains-leaner

According to Mike Dalton (Industry Week), innovation requires risk and the goal of a firewall is to identify that risk. The firewall block projects that score low on five feasibilities i.e. commercial, technical, manufacturability, regulatory and intellectual property. At the project charter stage, it is useful to identify all of the stakeholders and solicit their input on all the potential ways the project could fail and what the impact would be. A study of the telephony industry (Ogawa & Ketner, 1997) showed that bottom 80% performers cancelled nearly 30% of their projects late in the process and about top 20% top companies cancelled the same percentage of projects early. Read more at: http://www.industryweek.com/product-development/obstacles-new-product-growth

According to Travis Hessman (Industry week), the digital revolution will take us in the digital age from the information age. This will bring massive changes in our computing ability, our access to the internet and access to and proliferation of mobile devices. We use mobile digital technologies which allow us to stay connected to information and helps in taking decisions. We want to grow in this competitive world and move towards the fourth industrial revolution which opens up many opportunities.

Read more at:  http://www.industryweek.com/digital-revolution

Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. Cloud is powerful but many of us our in beginning stage. Here are some benefits of using clouds:
• It helps to your Manage Cash Flow
• As all new innovations are happening in Cloud so there are wider choices
• Automate and Drive Efficiencies
• Gain better insights into your business
• Cloud helps us to grow cost effectively
• With the cloud you can keep your IT equipment costs low, and minimize your hardware and software maintenance costs
Read more at: http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/04/reasons-to-move-to-the-cloud.html