EDITION : JULY FIRST EDITION 2013-14

Information, systems and technology magazine of IIM Indore

Alumni Interview
Opportunities in IT management

Stay Updated
IT updates of the month

So u think u know IT?

Quiz

Knowledge+
Everything you wanted to know!!

IT STARTUP
of the month.....

IT Launch

....see the future now

B Nirun | Bismayy Mohapatra| K Goutham| Kavinkumar R| Navneet Kaur| Prabhu Kiran| Ramji H| Sabornee Jana| SatheeshKumar| Shivang Gupta| Vishnu V. A

IT Updates of the month

Stay Updated
Mini-CFO structure in Infosys
Infosys is creating a mini CFO structure that gives greater autonomy to finance heads within business units (BU). The mini CFOs attached to the BUs act as finance controllers complying with the framework set by corporate finance. Agile, increased accountability and to enhance corporate CFOs attention on strategic issues are its aims.

Foes become friends!!!

The long-standing rivalry between the technology giants Microsoft and Oracle seems like it has been compromised when Microsoft said that it would support Oracle software on its cloud-based platforms, a tie-up aimed at improving the rivals' chances against nimbler Web-based computing companies chipping away at their traditional businesses with cheaper services. To Know More, please visit http://bit.ly/13de3Vc

To Know More, please visit http://bit.ly/14Tpzox

India among top 10 countries impacted by malware

NetTraveler, which is a family of malicious programs used by Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actors, which has been active since 2004, has infected victims across multiple establishments in both the public and private sector. Its main domains of interest for cyber espionage activities include space exploration, nanotechnology, energy production, nuclear power, lasers, medicine and communications. Attackers infected victims by sending clever spear-phishing emails with malicious Microsoft Office attachments To Know More, please visit http://bit.ly/15Hbmw3

Citadel botnet attack

Microsoft describes the internationally-organised assault as our most aggressive botnet operation to date which carried out in more than 80 countries in around 5 million computers to steal data, recording logins and passwords before emptying individuals online accounts, is responsible for stealing more than $500 million (323 million) from bank accounts. Microsoft and the FBI have freed at least 2 million PCs infected with a virus.

To Know More, please visit http://bit.ly/10W7YM7

Transition in pricing model of Software service providers

Traditional model of charging for labor is giving way to "outcome-based model" of paying for predetermined business results because of popularity of cloud-based delivery of services over the Internet. It indirectly also transfers some of their risks to service providers. For an industry that was built on labour arbitrage made possible by the abundant supply of inexpensive engineering talent, now for defined business outcomes, the IT providers must have engineers with excellent domain expertise and salesmen capable of identifying gaps in clients' existing systems and pitching improvements To Know More, please visit http://bit.ly/144bjvd

Alumni

Speak

Himanshu Swaroop (PGP Batch of 2006-2008) , is a consultant at Accenture with experience in Capital Markets, Corporate Banking and Retail Banking in areas of operations consulting and strategic planning. He expertise in capital markets operations, retail banking risk, retail banking sales incentives and corporate banking products. Key skills include target operating model design, business case formulation, project management, problem solving and strategic analysis. Also IIT-Roorkee alum, Himanshu takes a keen interest in science and history. Here are the excerpts, of a chat in which he shares his opinion about IT sector and jobs, skills required to succeed in consulting roles and advice to all us readers. Himanshu Swaroop (batch 2006-08 IIM I), Consultant, Accenture

1) What are the must-have skills in client-facing roles?

In any kind of consulting job, the first and foremost skill is adaptability. Each assignment comes with a fresh set of challenges requiring diverse competencies and skill-sets. The kind of results expected out of each project has a lot to do with the nature of clientele. The focus could be on analysis, detail and how the dots connect together. The key difference between roles offered in consulting and industry lies in the industry itself, say banking, you acquire competencies in different functions like treasury, risk management. Consulting, however, calls for an entirely different dynamics as the roles require you to work across industry sectors, geographies, products and services. Once you have an in-depth understanding of the work situation and your client expectations, you are all set to go. Second on the radar, is communication coupled with collaboration. Today, theres a great many number mediums of communication thanks to the proliferation of technology. However, the key lies in delivery of the right message at the right time. Here, right message encompasses not only your perspective but your entire teams intellectual inputs that went into generation of the idea. And last but not the least, its your attitude that counts- your enthusiasm to keep learning new things and reinventing yourself. Coming up with new ideas and taking initiative will take you a long way. I will share one of my experiences here. I was working for an investment-banking client, based out of London. This was somewhere in 2010, when investment-banks had hit rough weather. The culture and work practices were being questioned. We collaborated with our colleagues at Spain, working with a nuclear energy client and together we organized a workshop that translated some of the best practices-related to people and processes- in the nuclear energy sector in the investment- banking industry.

2) What are the defining IT paradigms that would shape the business landscape in the coming future?
Though, I am into core IT, but looking at it from an external, independent perspective, there are a few observations that are striking. For instance, we need to take into account the fact that the customer is changing and educated, informed and increasingly mobile entity with access to technology. To satisfy this entity, we need smart customer service. For example, the treasury head of a Corporate Bank would be interested in cash forecasts to deal with working capital management. He would like the data to be available in his smart-phone. So a technology product with mobile support would meet his requirements.

Next up, there is big data analytics. With so much talk about big data doing the rounds, making sense out of this high variety, high volume data and appropriate application of it in business would provide an edge. The idea of a business-rounded CIO is getting prominence as technology is getting integrated with the business function. IT is no more a silo function; it is very much a defining element in the business agenda of todays organizations.

3) What is a typical day in office like?

Well, frankly speaking, theres no such thing called a Typical day . Each day, comes with a distinctive flavor of its own. However, there is some regular stuff I do on a daily basis. Like, first things first, I have my breakfast at my desk. (Yes, Accentures quite liberal that way!). And since presently I work for a UK-based client, I am at office at 7:30 AM, sharp. Then, plan for the meetings scheduled next week. For the days meetings, I keep all the files, presentations readied and catch up with client teams on work progress. And if I am working for more than one client, I divide my work accordingly. After that, I sit with my team to discuss how to go about our targets and individual responsibilities. And in the end, comes the fun at work part. We keep having get-togethers, town-hall meets and socials from time to time. At times, I organize these and its great fun. So all in a days work. P.S- I do a bit of travelling too but not that much as is generally expected from consultants. As of now, I fly to Edinburgh, Scotland every fortnight.

4) A word of advice for IIM-Indore participants gearing up for a career in the IT world.
See, I dont have any hiring experience so cant really talk on that aspect. But for general gyan, do your homework about IT industry and the firms in it. At present, due to cost pressures, firms require people to come up with innovative and implementable solutions. And dynamic leaders who can think differently are the need of the day. So try and be innovative in your approach to problems, analyze them from multiple standpoints and do the best you can every single day. The rest will follow

Infograph of the month

Read more about BIG DATA in this edition of IT BITS and http://monetate.com/infographic/the-retailers-guide-to-big-data/

Hot IT Startup

BOD 1)Satyen V Kothari Managing Director/Founder. 2)Mohit Bhatnagar Board Member. 3)Jitendra CEO/Founder

INTERNAL TEAM 1)Yadvendra Singh Tyagi Director Business Development 2)Sourabh Chowdhuri Director Sales

Citrus Payment Solutions Pvt Ltd, based in Mumbai, was founded in 2010 by a Silicon Valley engineer turned entrepreneur Satyen V Kothari. Before his return to India in 2010, Satyen was with Apple Inc. A postgraduate student from the prestigious Stanford University, he was always into Creating new things as it was his childhood passion. Prior to founding the company, he used to work for an American company in India, specifically in the online payments domain. That is when the idea of Citrus struck him. According to Satyen, nearly 30 per cent of all transactions online in India fail for various reasons the user tires of entering so much information, distraction, a slow Internet connection, or the payment gateway. To prevent all this, Citrus has developed a software that protects a transaction at four different levels. Citrus tells its merchant customers that they have spent so much time and money in getting their customers on to their site, before the transaction fails.. We have removed every other technical reason, reduced the psychological steps needed to finish it. And our merchants love it. They are seeing a 10-15 per cent uptick on their top-line because of the number of transactions we save , says Satyen. An entrepreneur at heart, Satyen has always devoted his time to creating ideas and taking them to fruition. What Citrus has been able to do since it launched its first set of products the payment gateway in November 2011 and full software solution in July 2012 , is it has already been able to rope in 550 customers for the payment gateway and about 250 merchant customers for the software. What started off as an office in a basement, Citrus is now 35 strong and has Lakhs of people using the software products today. Recently, Citrus has got a $2 Million funding from Sequoia capital. The company plans to use this money to fund recruitment, and to invest in research for further developmental activities. An entrepreneur at heart, Satyen has always devoted his time to creating ideas and taking them to fruition. What Citrus has been able to do since it launched its first set of products the payment gateway in November 2011 and full software solution in July 2012 , is it has already been able to rope in 550 customers for the payment gateway and about 250 merchant customers for the software.

Hot IT Launch!

Dont you think this name rings a bell with some merchant payment gateway options you have been using while typing your debit/credit card credentials during an IRCTC ticket booking / purchase of an USB drive? PaytmPayments, PayU, CCAvenue, Billdesk are the likely gateways you must have come across till now. So is this PayZippy launched on July 3, 2013 offering the same benefits to the merchants and customers like you or is it one of its kind? Lets check it out. In fact, PayZippy is the recent launch of Indias largest e-commerce company, Flipkart. It is an online payment gateways solution currently launched for all B2B merchants backed by an indigenously developed fraud detection system to enable secure, speedy and convenient online transactions. It is housed under a separate arm of Flipkart, as Flipkart Payment Gateway Services (FPGS) Pvt. Ltd. which will come up with a B2C version very soon. What it offers to B2B merchants? This B2B version of PayZippy enables card payments for domestic merchant websites and mobile sites. This solution is PCI DSS certified and has been tested on Flipkart.com for past 2 years before being officially launched for merchants. It boasts of a smart transaction routing and intuitive payment experience. Merchants now have an advantage to engage and retain customers to fill up their card details only once and make multiple purchases throughout lifetime. Flipkart is itself the epitome of success which uses PayZippy driving in higher success rates of transactions and lower cart abandonments during online purchases. As quoted from Mekin Maheshwari, head of Payments and Digital Media at Flipkart.com, The online payments ecosystem in India has been plagued by a number of problems, such as low success rates, delayed refunds and lack of transparency in the end-to-end transaction process. One in every three online transactions typically fails and the success rates are about 65-70 per cent. So PayZippy is set to solve this major headache for the merchants at the most competitive prices. Zero signup fee, no annual maintenance fee while providing 12 * 7 hours of customer support regarding payment issues. Its real time risk engine shall analyze every transaction across various risk parameters and notify the merchants about suspected fraudulent transactions by email/sms. What it means to B2C customers? How many times it has happened that you have entered your booking details on IRCTC site and you have also typed in your debit card details when you face a HTTP 404 page error? Yes, a good number of times and you have cursed the Indian payment gateways. Then, PayZippy is the ready solution to this transaction failure which has been proved to cut down failure rates by more than 10 percent of industry standards. For online customers like us who depend on slow internet connectivity, risky payment gateways for our frequent online purchases through the e-commerce websites, we can sit back and relax once we share our card details in our PayZippy account. Thereafter, we can avoid the cumbersome process of filling in details for every other purchase, just put in the 3 digit CVV number and get going. Our transaction time reduces and we are now less prone to errors. After all, Flipkart, a trusted ecommerce brand has built it!

Learn a concept

ITIL is a globally recognized collection of best practices for information technology (IT) service management. It is a is a set of practices for IT service management (ITSM) that focuses on aligning IT services with the needs of business. It provides businesses with a customizable framework of best practices to achieve quality service and overcome difficulties associated with the growth of IT systems. ITIL is organized into the following, the contents of which are available as books and online resources 1. Service strategy 2. Service design 3. Managerial transition 4. Service transition 5. Service operation 6. Continual Service improvement(CSI) Microsoft and HP are two businesses that use ITIL as part of their own best practices frameworks. In general, a mashup is created from modular components that the end user can assemble and reassemble as desired to serve current needs. An enterprise mashup is the integration of heterogeneous digital data and applications from multiple sources for business purposes Enterprise mashups are useful for integrating business and data services, as they mashups technologies provide the ability 1. to develop new integrated services quickly 2. to combine internal services with external or personalized information 3. to make these services tangible to the business user through user-friendly Web browser interfaces

Knowledge +
big data
Big data refers to datasets whose size is beyond the capacity of normal data management software set up by companies to capture, store, manage and analyse data. Thus big data is a subjective definition. Big data is also industry subjective. It depends on what kinds of software tools are available for that industry and normal size of datasets in the industry. The size of data to be categorized under big data has grown .It has grown from terabytes to few petabytes and expected to grow further. This change in target over years is due to improvement in traditional DBMS (Database management systems) technologies. Every day, we log about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data through Google searches, social networks, commercial transactions, GPS data and emerging connected fitness trend.

Emerging application of big data

Emerging fitness check is a trend where applications are developed to mine big data from sensors in the body. These applications send any vital alerts or indications about the patient to physicians over the internet. These alerts are sent when the application finds any significant pattern change in data received from sensor compared to patients historical data. Ginger.io, a platform that enables you to combine patient data with passive data collected on ones cell phone is an interesting start up on big data analytics. Some adopters of big data analytics include major firms like e-bay, amazon, GE, Wal-Mart; Rent the runway, Birch box. These companies use the browsing behaviour of consumer on their websites (Internal data) as well as data from social networking sites (External data).

Returns from big data analytics

There is no straightforward measurement for returns on investment from big data analytics. Big data investments are often coupled with strategic changes in the organization. However they can be measured through monitoring performance parameters of organization.

Challenges for Big data analytics usage in organizations

There are some common challenges firms face while they try to tap into insights from big data. These challenges include both technological and cultural in nature. Some of them include ability to 1.make business units share make business units share information across organizations 2.decide what information to use (internal vs. external), attract and retain scarce qualified data scientists 3.decide which part of the firm should invest in big data 4.Process larger volume, higher velocity and wider variety of data While big data analytics looks all the more compelling to invest, there are major pitfalls that firms should avoid. The common pitfalls are decision to invest in big data without a business case, analysing data that lacks relevance, lack of data quality, lack of data granularity, lack of data governance and most importantly organization immaturity to invest in big data analytics.

Readers' Articles
IT in retail
The Retail industry is bound to witness a huge change in their mode of operations. With the ever increasing amount of data generated in Structured (Transaction, Address, and Name) and Unstructured form (Product reviews, Tweets) retailers are trying to harness the power of latest technologies to leverage the data. In the latest technology predictions for Retail 2013, a survey conducted among 15 Retail executives, Data Visualization technology is bound to bring new capabilities for retailers. One of the next big buzz words doing rounds in the IT domain is Data Visualization, which is the process through which data-based insights can be presented in an easily understandable manner. According to a survey The Data directive conducted by Wipro, 57% of the respondents feel that visualisation helps them to interpret data better and capitalize on potential opportunities faster than before. The Visualization software used in Consumer Packaged Goods Businesses provide interactive Treemaps, Heatmaps and time series visualizations on POS and Inventory management systems. Visualization helps to view inventory, pricing and sales data in one place driving for better pricing and purchasing decisions. It provides a virtual environment to test various business scenarios. For example, scenarios such as what happens if there is a raise or reduction in prices, or what is the sale by brands in various zones, etc. are easily answered by this technique. In the retail arena, it supports sales and profit analysis by channel and product, sales performance monitoring, sales force performance by divisions and product and store revenue analysis, etc. HANES brand uses Tableau visualization software for Store Assortment optimization. First, they developed a customer profile for one of their sports apparel. Second, they collected the customer details/profiles from target retail stores where they intend to sell the product. Third, they matched all the profiles with their apparels profile and determined the best stores to place the sports apparel. Doing so they were able to increase their sales per store by 300 to 400 percent and all this was made possible by Data Visualization. HANES was able to invest resources on stores with high potential but with low performance when compared to those with low potential and low performance says RESTREPO, Director, Business Intelligence and Analytics, Hanes brand inc. With the kind of information obtained retailers can offer more value to customers Data Visualization has already been accepted as a great way ahead. For example, GE has done great innovations and has already started benefitting from this. Thus, sooner or later, data visualization will end up becoming a necessity for an organization to stay ahead of its competitors.

Readers' Articles
project loon balloon-powered internet access

Internet has transformed our lives but about two thirds of the population do not have access to internet in the world. For Google, whose business model is based on internet, this means a lot of untapped potential. Project loon is a project started by Google to provide 3G like internet access to remote areas. It uses high altitude solar powered balloons at an altitude of 20 km where winds flows in fairly consistent and predictable directions. Each one is pre-programmed with an algorithm that allows it to use the wind to negotiate the elements, raising or lowering itself to achieve the desired wind direction. Each balloon covers around 25 miles. Users can connect to this balloon using a special antenna attached to their building and the signal travels from balloon to balloon and finally to an ISP. It would allow countries to avoid using expensive fiber cable that would have to be installed underground to allow users to connect to the Internet. Google feels this will greatly increase Internet usage in developing countries in regions such as Africa and Southeast Asia that can't afford to lay underground fiber cable. The system can also be setup quickly which will make internet access after a natural disaster. There is currently no word on the cost of a Project Loon subscription for those of us on the ground. But the whole system is powered by solar panels and is inexpensive to run compared to the cost of putting a satellite into orbit. Balloon powered internet is currently being tested in New Zealand. Last month Google launched a set from the countrys south island. Thats 750 miles of potential internet coverage, for the next 100 days, set up at minimal cost. Of course Google is not doing this for altruism. In 2012, Google searches averaged 5.1 billion a day. If Google can provide internet access to everyone in the world then this figure will increase dramatically and will increase Google revenues. But there are considerable challenges in making Google Loon a success. Same network will be floating over all the countries (allies and foes) for which the world leaders might not agree. Since Loon will use radio waves, it will have to use spectrum, which is tightly regulated by the worlds governments. It will have to convince hundreds of different regulators to agree on a unified band or ride over an existing one such as the unlicensed airwaves used for Wi-Fi. But the scope and range of Googles Loon network will likely require dedicated airwaves. If Google succeeds it will be able to offer the world's entire population all the benefits of a global satellite network at a fraction of the cost. Google has other projects also in line, like Google Fiber, an ultra-high-speed internet connection at low prices. It is in the test phase and is expected to provide gigabit speeds at $70 per month, 100 times faster than its competitors for the same price point. This means, in the future, there wont really be a need to download anything at all, with movies and music instantly streaming in high definition. For Google, this will create a world where you can be constantly connected to all its services. Everything it has to offer can be delivered immediately. It will mean a better experience for the customer, more time spent browsing the web and more cash generated. This may be exciting but in reality it is a long way off. Technology as advanced as Fiber requires a whole new infrastructure and cables.

So u know IT?

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Across Down
4 When you send a letter to someone 1 Tell the computer to create a file on disk that has the information 6 Allows you to organize files and other folders. you've put into the document (usually typing). 8 Give the file a name and/or store the file in a certain place. 2 The most widely used operating system for personal computers 9 Instructions that tell the computer what to do from Microsoft. 10 To select an object by pressing the mouse button when the cursor 3 A program that you use to view pages on the Internet. is pointing to the required menu option, icon or hypertext link. 5 This stands for MegaHertz. 12 To quit all applications and turn off the computer. 7 A general-purpose machine that processes data according to a set 13 To remove an item of data from a file or to remove a file from the of instructions that are stored internally either temporarily or disk. permanently. 16 One of the major browsers that is used on the Internet. 10 This kind of Internet connection is much faster than dial up 18 In a graphical user interface (GUI), a small, pictorial, on screen Internet access. You can also watch tv on it. representation of an object, such as a document, program, folder or 11 Abbreviation for Internet Service Provider disk drive. 13 An on-screen representation of a desktop such as used in the 19 Abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator, which is an address on Macintosh and Windows operating systems. the World Wide Web. 14 To make a change to existing data. 20 To close a window that has been opened for viewing and / or 15 Displays a list of commands, some with images next to them. editing. 17 The name of the arrow (or other shape) that tracks across the 21 Place where you put files and folders that you want to delete or screen as you move the mouse (or other pointing device) around get rid of. 20 Your computer or application no longer works correctly and so 24 the main chip on the computer that makes everything go. you 'loose' all the work you've done since the last time you saved. 25 A file or program that can be uploaded to your computer from the 22 Allows you to move around through your document. Internet or disk. This file or program is uploaded without your 23 To move an object on screen in which its complete movement is knowledge and is intended to do damage to your computer. visible from starting location to destination. 26WWW stands for the World Wide

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