Since the 1960s, computing power has been on an exponential trajectory in performance, keeping pace with business needs neatly as 'Moore's law', which effectively states that computing power doubles every 18 months or so, has held absolutely and irrefutably to be true. Storage, which is as essential to enterprise IT as computing power, has, however, held to a much slower performance improvement trajectory for the best part of two decades. Businesses have found, as their applications grow more demanding, that it has been harder and harder to get the storage piece to keep pace with the speedier compute capacity they install every year.Imagine the following contexts: a financial services institution needs to clear a large number of payments in short order, or face regulatory fines. A social network needs to run real-time analytics on advertising effectiveness to remain competitive. A law firm needs to roll out virtual desktops to maintain confidentiality of data whilst enabling a mobile workforce and a bring-your-own-device strategy. All of these applications of enterprise IT face a serious and critical performance bottleneck in traditional disk-based storage, which simply can't keep up with the volume of interactions called for by these applications within acceptable performance parameters.Over the last year flash storage has emerged from use primarily in mobile devices and laptops to the corporate data center, where this burning need for faster storage systems has long been felt. While racks, or arrays, of traditional disk drives are still by far the dominant storage media in the data center, the use of flash continues to grow.However, preconceptions over the historically high cost, apprehension about its scalability and the lack of a track-record of reliability for first-generation all-flash appliances occasionally raise undue concerns with finance chiefs and technologists. Here we debunk three Flash myths that every forward-looking CIO should be aware of:Myth one - Flash costs moreo The absolute cost of flash storage has been coming down, significantly over the last few years that makes the relative cost per TB of storage more attractive than ever in a Flash vs. traditional arrayo Flash arrays have a higher performance throughput, which allows you to use fewer arrays to manage the same workloads, especially when you run sophisticated in-line (with no performance impact) data reduction technologies which identifies and removes unnecessary multiple copies of the same information. Traditional disk doesn't have the performance to run this sort of de-duplication software in real-time so you need more capacity to support the same amount of data.o Additionally, as workload capacities demand higher throughput rates (measured in inputs/outputs per second or IOPS), many enterprises are finding their workloads are perfectly positioned for flash's cost-to-performance ratio.o As well as reducing the need for storage over provisioning, Flash-based SSDs require much less power, cooling and physical space than HDDs, especially once you've run de-duplication and installed less capacity to begin with. With power in the data centre usually in the top three IT operating costs, alongside people costs and datacentre space, any reduction in these generates significant savings to the business. Hitting all of them at once, as you can with Flash, brings manifold returns.o Deploying Flash within storage arrays built significantly to take advantage of flash based media will result in lower storage administration. Revolutionary internal architecture completely eliminates complex set-up and tuning steps, while inherently delivering maximum performance. Given that a single tier of flash based media will be deployed there is no more management of storage tiers and the 'chasing of performance hotspots'.There's more to the enterprise use of all-flash storage arrays than just TCO and OPEX, however; making the financial aspect work simply removes a reason to not consider the change.Myth Two - It is not field-tested, and represents a bigger risk than traditional storageWhilst on the face of it, this is true: enterprise use of Flash is newer than traditional storage platforms, however EMC has been using flash based media in its arrays since 2008. When examining any new technology for deployment you have to evaluate the underlying principles, not its 'newness', or no innovation would ever happen.So, to those underlying principles:o Flash has no moving parts. Physical wear and tear is a key cause of failure in traditional disk. In stress tests, Flash disks failure rates are much lowero The lack of moving parts also makes them less vulnerable to changes in environmental factors, such as temperature, moisture, and so on, which are key points of vulnerability for traditional IT systems. It also makes it better suited for use in more varied scenarios - on 'mobile' computing resources, hence its rapid adoption in mobile phoneso It's higher rate of performance also reduces the risk of in-flight data corruptiono Every bit of the architecture, algorithms, and software implementation is designed to minimise write amplification and write operations to flash, and ensure optimal wear leveling (the process designed to extend the life of solid state storage devices).Myth Three - The performance isn't worth the investment:It should already be clear that there are few applications that would not benefit from the increased performance Flash has to offer. Given that current generation SSDs gives you perhaps 100 times faster performance, it gives you huge flexibility in how you make use of the increased performance.o First, you can use the increased performance to support 'next generation workloads': applications that require extremely responsive systems, running at low latency or high throughput. This could include High-Frequency Trading Systems, Exchanges, Gaming Platforms, Social Networks, virtual desktop infrastructure in any industry, online commerce platforms, mobile banking platforms, data analytics platforms and so on.o Second, you can re-architect your second platform applications for far greater efficiency and performance. The higher throughput means you can run deduplication to good effect, and fit more into less storage and physical space, and bring down your operating costs accordingly.o Thirdly, flash offers unparalleled levels of flexibility. Organisations of all sizes need to deploy new platforms to deal with the abrupt changes they face. They need to ensure that work is delivered at an affordable cost, without leaving them open to uncomfortable risks. Weather they decide to scale up or scale out or both, storage needs to be able to adapt with that change, Using flash minimises the impact and disruption upon the whole IT ecosystem.While these are the three most common misconceptions I hear when talking to customers around EMEA, it's increasingly hard to doubt the argument that flash storage arrays are already presenting new opportunities to businesses that embrace the technology. Put simply, the move to flash is just too logical and attractive. We're entering an era where storage will be software-defined, flash focused, automated and simpler to manage. This will unlock a world of opportunity for businesses, and turn IT from an operational necessity into a strategic function.We are seeing a huge acceleration in interest in the technology from both those needing support with next generation workloads and those grappling with the challenge of operational performance and efficiency from more traditional workloads against a growing data deluge.In my role it's easy to get over excited when we see disruptive technology asserting itself in the industry, but all-flash arrays genuinely have paradigm shift potential. It will transform tomorrow's business, and with advances in software that make flash easier to manage and protect, this transformation is gaining even more support from forward-looking CIOs.The author, Syed Masroor, is Sales Director - Flash Storage Sales India at EMC
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Mobile app company, hike messenger, has launched over 5000 new stickers in 30 local Indian languages. The new sticker packs, which are available for free, are specially designed to make messaging fun and help express emotions better in our very own Indian way.Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder and CEO, hike messenger, said, “Messaging is undergoing a profound transformation with users increasingly looking at better ways of expressing themselves."The sticker packs have colloquial expressions, playful slangs, movie dialogues, popular expressions used in social occasions, greetings, wishes and much more. The stickers have been bucketed under more than 25 categories including region specific lingos such as Punjab Di Shaan, Hyderabadi Aashiqui, Dhakad Haryana and for various social conversations & age-groups with sticker packs like Prem Amar, Heer Ranjha, O womaniya, Smarty Pants, Hostel Masti, Office Office, Gharwalo ke Taane, Yaariya, Bahanebaazi; making messaging a fun, addictive and really playful experience.Hike has also launched automatic Sticker Suggestions in its latest update hike 4.0, which recommends the perfect sticker for every moment based on what users type making it extremely easy for consumers to discover and use stickers (Watch how it works). Furthermore, the technology for exchanging stickers has also been designed in such a way that sending stickers is consumes minimal data and works extremely well on 2G, making it super data efficient and an attractive proposition for consumers across the country.Mittal adds, "With Sticker Suggestions its takes milliseconds to find the perfect emotion in any moment and with stickers optimised for 2G, more people can enjoy new ways to express themselves in their local ways.(BW Online Bureau)
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Mobile internet software and service provider UCWeb, has updated its mobile browser for Android users. Unlike any other mobile browsers in the market, UC Browser 10.7 for Android is the first of its kind to give its users complete freedom to personalise the way they discover and access web content.It redefines the role of a modern mobile browser as a content aggregator and distributor. The new browser also comes with a new selection of specially designed background images for an enhanced and classy browsing experience.Kenny Ye, Managing Director, UCWeb India, said, “This new update will transform the way nearly half of India’s mobile browsing traffic is consumed.”UC Browser now empowers its 100 million daily active users to discover and access the content with brand new customizable homepage offering various options - to make it easier and faster for users to discover and access content - through a manageable card system. They can rearrange the cards (in-app widgets) - such as Headlines, Top Sites, Jokes, Cricket Match, Cricket Topic, Top Free Apps, Opinion, Trending Video, Shopping, and more - according to their own preferences and pin their favorite one to the top.(BW Online Bureau)
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Zomato has tied up for Whitelabel Apps with about 100 restaurant brands, reports Mala Bhargava If Zomato is the one app you head straight to when trying to settle on a good place to eat, it's about to be the go-to service for ordering from restaurants in your city. Already dabbling in food delivery, Zomato has just launched a platform, Whitelabel, which will offer a full suite of technologies for restaurants to run their business on the internet. What the Whitelabel platform is intended for is to launch custom-branded native mobile apps as a bridge between restaurants and customers. With this, restaurants will be able to scale their internet operations, booking tables, creating offers, delivering food to customers wherever they demand it. The food-tech segment has seen a lot of action over the last year. According to a Tracxn report published in December 2014, this segment has seen a total investment of $1.2 billion in 2014 alone. While the dine-out and online ordering segments have seen a large chunk of this funding, internet-first restaurants have also seen their fair share of interest from investors. Currently, most of the internet-first restaurants primarily function on a 'no/own kitchen + own delivery + on-demand' model. The industry is seeing early signs of this concept germinating in certain urban clusters. However, a vast majority of the industry is dominated by the unorganised sector of asset-heavy restaurants, and there is a huge untapped opportunity to get them online, build innovative services, and drive more delight to customers. Zomato's introduction of Whitelabel Apps aims to capture this opportunity. It is a plug-and-play platform which will power a restaurant's digital identity enabling restaurants to spend more time focusing on their core business of food, translating directly to better dining experiences for users. Ashish Goel, Chief of Product & Design, Zomato said "While speaking with a lot of restaurant owners, we realised that most of them do not have an app or digital presence and they want to harness the power and distribution of the internet and mobile to grow their business. And that there is no one single service provider for restaurants which can give them the entire suite of technologies required to run an internet presence closely integrated with the operations of their business. We see this as an opportunity to have a larger impact on the food-tech ecosystem, as well as create a larger overlap between tech and food." Today, for the majority of restaurants, there's a website where customers log in and look around and then order something on the phone. What Zomato will do is to use the same basic skeleton to create custom apps for any restaurant and offer increasing number of features to the client restaurant. This includes targeted push notifications, real-time information and menu management, and marketing tools. The app is based on a subscription model that bundles Zomato's existing restaurant management app - Zomato For Business - into each subscription for free. These Whitelabel apps integrate with all the ancillary services Zomato offers, such as Online Ordering, Table Reservations, in-app cashless payments, loyalty programs and the upcoming Zomato Base (point of sales system). Zomato has already tied up for Whitelabel Apps with about 100 restaurant brands including Summerhouse Cafe in New Delhi, Miyabi Sushi in Dubai, and Shizuku Ramen in Melbourne. The Zomato Whitelabel Platform will be available to restaurants in all 22 countries Zomato is present in currently. Zomato also announced that it has raised $60 million in a fresh round of funding that is being led by Singapore investment company, Temasek with participation from existing investor Vy Capital and will use the investment to further grow its new business verticals. This takes Zomato's total funding to $225 million - it comes from a close set of only four investors - Info Edge, Sequoia India, Vy Capital, and now Temasek. Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, said, "We will use this round to make investments in our new businesses such as online ordering, table reservations, point of sales, and our newly launched Whitelabel platform. With this round, and with some of our markets turning profitable recently, Zomato is well capitalised for at least two years. We are also stoked to have Temasek partner with us, and are looking forward to building one of the largest food-tech companies in the world."
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Apple has ramped up its hiring of artificial intelligence experts, recruiting from PhD programs, posting dozens of job listings and greatly increasing the size of its AI staff, a review of hiring sites suggests and numerous sources confirm. The goal is to challenge Google in an area the Internet search giant has long dominated: smartphone features that give users what they want before they ask. As part of its push, the company is currently trying to hire at least 86 more employees with expertise in the branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, according to a recent analysis of Apple job postings. The company has also stepped up its courtship of machine-learning PhD's, joining Google, Amazon, Facebook and others in a fierce contest, leading academics say. But some experts say the iPhone maker's strict stance on privacy is likely to undermine its ability to compete in the rapidly progressing field. Machine learning, which helps devices infer from experience what users are likely to want next, relies on crunching vast troves of data to provide unprompted services, such as the scores for a favorite sports team or reminders of when to leave for an appointment based on traffic. The larger the universe of users providing data about their habits, the better predictions can be about what an individual might want. But Apple analyzes its users' behaviour under self-imposed constraints to better protect their data from outsiders. That means Apple largely relies on analyzing the data on each user’s iPhone rather than sending it to the cloud, where it can be studied alongside information from millions of others. "They want to make a phone that responds to you very quickly without knowledge of the rest of the world," said Joseph Gonzalez, co-founder of Dato, a machine learning startup. "It's harder to do that." BEYOND SIRIThe Cupertino-based tech titan’s strategy will come into clearer focus on Sept. 9, when it is expected to reveal its new iPhones and latest mobile operating system, iOS 9. Apple has promised the release will include a variety of intelligent reminders, which analysts expect will rival the offerings from Google's Android. While Apple helped pioneer mobile intelligence -it’s Siri introduced the concept of a digital assistant to consumers in 2011 - the company has since lost ground to Google and Microsoft, whose digital assistants have become more adept at learning about users and helping them with their daily routines. As users increasingly demand phones that understand them and tailor services accordingly, Apple cannot afford to let the gap persist, experts say. The iPhone generated almost two-thirds of Apple's revenue in the most recent quarter, so even a small advantage for Android poses a threat. "What seemed like science fiction only four years ago has become an expectation," said venture capitalist Gary Morgenthaler, who was one of the original investors in Siri before it was acquired by Apple in 2010. PLAYING CATCH-UPWhile Apple got off to a slow start on hiring for machine learning jobs, it is closing in on its competitors, said Oren Etzioni, who is CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and a professor at the University of Washington. "In the past, Apple has not been at the vanguard of machine learning and cutting edge artificial intelligence work, but that is rapidly changing,” he said. “They are after the best and the brightest, just like everybody else.” Acquisitions of startups such as podcasting app Swell, social media analytics firm Topsy and personal assistant app Cue have also expanded Apple’s pool of experts in the field. Apple does not reveal the number of people working on its machine learning efforts. But one former Apple employee in the area, who asked not to be named to protect professional relationships, estimated the number of machine learning experts had tripled or quadrupled in the past few years. Many of the currently posted positions are slated for software efforts, from building on Siri’s smarts to the burgeoning search features in iOS. The company is also hiring machine learning experts for divisions such as product marketing and retail, suggesting a broad-based effort to capitalize on data. Apple’s hiring mirrors a larger hunt in Silicon Valley for people who can help companies make sense of their huge stashes of data, said Ali Behnam, managing partner of Riviera Partners, an executive search firm. Data scientists are the most sought-after experts in the market, he noted. Asked for comment about Apple’s strategy, a company spokeswoman pointed to statements from Craig Federighi, senior vice president of Software Engineering, who described the release at a developers’ conference in June as “adding intelligence throughout the user experience in a way that enhances how you use your device but without compromising your privacy, things like improving the apps that you use most.” But Google and others have an edge in spotting larger trends, meaning Apple's predictions may not be as good, said Gonzalez, echoing a commonly held view among machine learning experts. What’s more, there are some features for which Apple has yet to find an answer, such as Now on Tap, which Google will release this fall. When users press the home button, Google will scan their screens to deliver helpful information – a user reading about an upcoming movie, for example, might receive reviews or a list of showtimes. It would be difficult to deliver such services without sending data to the cloud, experts say. ACCESS TO DATASome techniques Apple and Google are investing in - such as deep learning, a hot field of machine learning that roughly simulates the human brain so that computers can spot patterns and classify information – require massive amounts of data that typically cannot be crunched on the device alone. For machine learning experts at Apple, access to data complicates the work at every turn, former employees said. Siri enjoys some of Apple's most liberal privacy policies, holding onto user information for up to six months. Other services, such as Apple Maps, retain information for as little as 15 minutes, the former employee said. Machine learning experts who want unfettered access to data tend to shy away from jobs at Apple, former employees say. But Apple is strengthening ties to academia to find the talent it will need, attending more industry conferences and discussing its use of tools emerging from university labs, academics say. "They are gradually engaging a little more openly," said Michael Franklin, who directs UC Berkeley's Algorithms, Machines and People Lab, which Apple sponsors. And some machine learning experts might be enticed by the challenge of matching Google's smarts amid privacy constraints, suggested John Duchi, an assistant professor at Stanford University. "New flavors of problems are exciting," he said. If Apple succeeds without compromising privacy, its Mountain View rival may face questions about its approach to analyzing users' data. "People might start to ask Google for more privacy," Gonzalez said.(Reuters)
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Bluetooth earphones are not as common as one would expect them to be, somehow. I paid a hefty Rs 5,000 or so for a pair from Sony recently, not entirely satisfied with their sound but nevertheless compelled to pick them up because of the specific need to workout to music without disturbing anyone else. A new entrant to India, Brainwavz Audio, has just debuted with an in-ear Bluetooth pair of earphones for use with mobile phones and I decided to check it out. The Blu-100, as it’s called, is a lightweight set of little cans that go into your ear, connected by one wire between them, plus an inline controller for pairing, volumne and taking calls. You can even reject calls or dial the last number using that controller. And voice-dial. As usual, you can also skip songs as well. The earphones have to be charged first and here’s where the micro-USB slot has been hidden cleverly a the tiny space on removing a little flap on one of the earphones. You wouldn’t think it would fit in there, but it does. The flap hangs by a thread though and in time, there’s little doubt it’s going to fall right off. The BLU-100 phones are comfortable enough, though a bit big for my ears. There are extra soft rubber caps given along with the pair. You also get a tiny stiff red case to carry them in – along with the micro-USB cable. The Blu-100 is marketed as being “stylish” but I’m afraid there’s nothing stylish about two black blobs connected with a black wire. It’s just a plain-Jane pair, though there’s nothing wrong with that. Bluetooth 4.0 pairing was very quick and painless on these earphones. But I found the sound very wanting. There’s no bass to speak of and just a sort of hissy intimacy to the sound which made music sound like it was an intense whisper. It’s just short of tinny. While I wouldn’t use the Blu-100 for my listening pleasure, it’s still usable for calls without much discomfort, though with nothing particular to recommend it. The Blu-100 costs Rs 3,399.
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Lava International, one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile handset industry, launched Pixel V2 on Monday (7 September). The smartphone is the second product in their Pixel series. The Pixel V2 is a 4G device and has a vibrant 5 inch HD IPS display with a scratch resistant Dragon trail glass having a 5 inch screen size. The smartphone is powered by a 64 bit MediaTek Quad Core Processor coupled with 2GB DDR3 RAM. The device has a 16 GB internal storage that is expandable up to 32 GB. It is powered by Star OS 2.0 based on Android Lollipop 5.1 supporting dual 4G SIM slots (one 4G slot running at a time) with dual standby. It also packs a strong 2500mAh Li-Po battery. The phone has a 13 MP rear camera with dual LED flash and an 8 MP selfie camera with LED flash. The smartphone promises to capture best images because of the 1.4 micron large pixel size, F2.0 and F2.4 aperture of the rear and front camera, respectively, the company says. This will allow enhanced light intake per pixel helping in capturing brighter, clearer images with great detail. The aperture gives depth of field, better focus and great images in low light. The camera comes with 5 layer LarganTM lens in rear camera and 4 layers in front camera along with Blue Glass Filter that cuts off infrared light to help the sensor reproduce true colours. Commenting on the launch, Navin Chawla, Senior Vice President and head product at LAVA said, "the smartphone segment in India is growing exponentially, driven primarily by youth. They want to capture special moments in their life and share them instantly in their social circle. To enable them to capture those moments perfectly, we are announcing the second variant in the Pixel series with the best in class camera hardware and software features. With this, we aim to build a strong portfolio of smartphones and deliver on our mission of empowering people to do more.” The smartphone will be available in two colours, Icy White and Royal Black, across nation and multi-brand outlets. It will also be available online from September 15th, 2015. The phone has been priced at an MRP of INR 10,750.
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Compared to iOS, Android currently has a larger catalogue of free apps and games but today Google has raised the bar by announcing revised prices for a number of paid apps available on the Google Play store. This price cut comes right after Google’s announcement of drop in minimum purchase price for apps and games sold on Google Play in India. Earlier the lowest price was about $0.99 which amounted to about Rs. 60, but now the lowest price that an app or game can be sold is Rs. 10. Even the minimum purchase price for in-app purchases, mostly in games, has also been reduced. Games like Fruit Ninja, Talking Tom, Stick Cricket and more are now either free of cost or start at Rs. 10.This drop has allowed developers to lower costs of their apps, which is great news for Android users, but how much of a benefit will it be to the developers. Of course the price drop will lead to more downloads, but since a lot of apps now vouch on advertisement to gain revenue, there could be a possibility that we will end up with more advertisements in apps and games.
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