By looking at the potential in the cloud computing segment, Wipro, an IT services company has joined hands with Oracle, a global business software firm to offer a service that software firms can use to deliver products through the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. The service called w-SaaS will enable software firms to offer their existing applications as SaaS in a multi-tenant model.
The service runs on Oracle's grid computing technologies, which includes Oracle databases, middleware and virtualization software. According to Wipro, this model is expected to result in savings of up to 50 percent of effort for SaaS enablement of existing applications, resulting in up to 10-20 percent savings in the total cost of ownership. "Our relationship with Oracle enables us to provide independent software vendor's (ISV) and joint customers, a powerful platform that allows them to improve their revenues in a cost effective manner," said Srini Pallia, Senior Vice-President and Global Head, Business Technology Services at Wipro.
This announcement from Wipro comes at a time when cloud computing is eating into the profits of several outsourcing companies by offering many similar benefits like reduced IT costs, less internal development of software and reduced management of applications and hardware. According to analyst firm Gartner, the market for worldwide software as a service (SaaS) is forecast to reach $8 billion in 2009, a 21.9 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.6 billion.
Wipro expects opportunities for this offering in North America, with growth potentials in the emerging markets of Latin America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe. Energy and utilities, retail, transportation, healthcare and manufacturing sectors will be focus verticals.
Agencies
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Did Google's Gmail really goof-up?
It's too bad the National Transportation Safety Board can't investigate Google to find out just why Gmail crashed Tuesday as Google's explanations for its outages (via its dashboard) are short and kindergarten-like.
The NTSB would seek out the root cause of the outage, hold hearings and issue a report with recommendations for fixing the problem. But Google follows the standard operating practice of cloud and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers, and that is to tell customers as little as possible about an outage. They treat their customers like dumb bunnies.
A Gmail outage isn't on the scale of a contaminated food supply incident, the discovery of lead paint on children's toys, or a plane crash—all events that trigger a federal investigation and detailed reports that flesh out causes and remedies.
But what happens if Google wins contracts to provide applications and mail services for Los Angeles and other government entities?
Cloud and SaaS providers increasingly want to manage critical services for government. And in time, outages that are now annoyances may have critical implications to them. Los Angeles' IT department is recommending the city move to Google Apps and says the company's services "often exceed the current city level."
That's a plus for Google but if something goes wrong with LA's IT systems, at least there is still a clear line of accountability to the managers responsible and an opportunity to probe.
But along with telling customers as little as possible, hosting, cloud and SaaS providers indemnify themselves as much as possible from any business losses resulting from an outage.
In theory, the accountability is provided by the market: a customer can move to new service provider. But a migration to the cloud may be a path of no return. LA, in its assessment of cloud services, said that if it ditches its current infrastructure, "it may be cost-prohibitive to return to the city-owned and operated structure."
Today, the harm is mostly economic. When eBay Inc.'s PayPal service crashed last month, it was just something customers had to deal with it.
PayPal blamed the failure on a "back-end router" and some redundancy issues, and left it at that. That meant the companies like Sailrite Enterprises Inc., a sailing supply company, which relied exclusively on PayPal, were unlikely to learn what happened and had to suffer the loss.
But if cloud and SaaS providers manage government services then it's unlikely that an informed public will settle for incomplete explanations about outages.
If the service is critical, they will want to know what went wrong. Was the equipment upgraded, patched? Was staffing at proper levels? When was the last time someone tested the emergency generators? And so on.
Answers to fair and legitimate questions will be sought and little "dashboards" aren't going to cut it.
Agencies
The NTSB would seek out the root cause of the outage, hold hearings and issue a report with recommendations for fixing the problem. But Google follows the standard operating practice of cloud and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) providers, and that is to tell customers as little as possible about an outage. They treat their customers like dumb bunnies.
A Gmail outage isn't on the scale of a contaminated food supply incident, the discovery of lead paint on children's toys, or a plane crash—all events that trigger a federal investigation and detailed reports that flesh out causes and remedies.
But what happens if Google wins contracts to provide applications and mail services for Los Angeles and other government entities?
Cloud and SaaS providers increasingly want to manage critical services for government. And in time, outages that are now annoyances may have critical implications to them. Los Angeles' IT department is recommending the city move to Google Apps and says the company's services "often exceed the current city level."
That's a plus for Google but if something goes wrong with LA's IT systems, at least there is still a clear line of accountability to the managers responsible and an opportunity to probe.
But along with telling customers as little as possible, hosting, cloud and SaaS providers indemnify themselves as much as possible from any business losses resulting from an outage.
In theory, the accountability is provided by the market: a customer can move to new service provider. But a migration to the cloud may be a path of no return. LA, in its assessment of cloud services, said that if it ditches its current infrastructure, "it may be cost-prohibitive to return to the city-owned and operated structure."
Today, the harm is mostly economic. When eBay Inc.'s PayPal service crashed last month, it was just something customers had to deal with it.
PayPal blamed the failure on a "back-end router" and some redundancy issues, and left it at that. That meant the companies like Sailrite Enterprises Inc., a sailing supply company, which relied exclusively on PayPal, were unlikely to learn what happened and had to suffer the loss.
But if cloud and SaaS providers manage government services then it's unlikely that an informed public will settle for incomplete explanations about outages.
If the service is critical, they will want to know what went wrong. Was the equipment upgraded, patched? Was staffing at proper levels? When was the last time someone tested the emergency generators? And so on.
Answers to fair and legitimate questions will be sought and little "dashboards" aren't going to cut it.
Agencies
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Major slice of Web ads goes to social networking sites
About one of every five Internet display ads in the United States is viewed on a social networking Web site like MySpace and Facebook, according to a new report.
The report by analytics firm comScore underscores the increasing prominence of social media sites in the Internet landscape and broadening acceptance of the sites by brand advertisers.
It also illustrates the increasing competition between social media sites and established Internet companies like Yahoo Inc and Time Warner Inc's AOL which have long billed themselves as the top online destinations for brand advertisers.
The study by comScore, released on Tuesday, said social media sites represented 21.1 per cent of US Internet display ads in July, with MySpace and Facebook accounting for more than 80 per cent of those ads.
"Because the top social media sites can deliver high reach and frequency against target segments at a low cost, it appears that some advertisers are eager to use social networking sites as a new advertising delivery vehicle," said Jeff Hackett, senior vice president of comScore.
According to comScore, AT&T Inc, Experian Interactive and IAC/Interactive Corp's Ask Network were the top three advertisers on social networking sites in July.
While social media sites have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years -- Facebook is now the world's fourth-most visited Web site -- some observers have questioned whether the sites can be effectively monetized.
Because the content on social media sites is created by users, and could therefore prove racy or offensive, some have questioned the willingness of marketers to place their brands alongside that content.
"They are sensitive to some extent, but nowhere near to the extent you might think," Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay said of advertisers.
The price of placing ads on social networking sites is significantly less than on a Web portal like Yahoo or AOL, said Lindsay. The vast amount of Web pages available on social networks means that advertisers can purchase a massive volume of ad impressions at bargain prices.
The strategy may not be ideally suited to smaller marketers, or advertisers seeking a direct response from their ads, said Lindsay.
"For big, national brands it works just fine, just like TV," said Lindsay. "It's a huge, huge volume game."
Agencies
The report by analytics firm comScore underscores the increasing prominence of social media sites in the Internet landscape and broadening acceptance of the sites by brand advertisers.
It also illustrates the increasing competition between social media sites and established Internet companies like Yahoo Inc and Time Warner Inc's AOL which have long billed themselves as the top online destinations for brand advertisers.
The study by comScore, released on Tuesday, said social media sites represented 21.1 per cent of US Internet display ads in July, with MySpace and Facebook accounting for more than 80 per cent of those ads.
"Because the top social media sites can deliver high reach and frequency against target segments at a low cost, it appears that some advertisers are eager to use social networking sites as a new advertising delivery vehicle," said Jeff Hackett, senior vice president of comScore.
According to comScore, AT&T Inc, Experian Interactive and IAC/Interactive Corp's Ask Network were the top three advertisers on social networking sites in July.
While social media sites have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years -- Facebook is now the world's fourth-most visited Web site -- some observers have questioned whether the sites can be effectively monetized.
Because the content on social media sites is created by users, and could therefore prove racy or offensive, some have questioned the willingness of marketers to place their brands alongside that content.
"They are sensitive to some extent, but nowhere near to the extent you might think," Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeff Lindsay said of advertisers.
The price of placing ads on social networking sites is significantly less than on a Web portal like Yahoo or AOL, said Lindsay. The vast amount of Web pages available on social networks means that advertisers can purchase a massive volume of ad impressions at bargain prices.
The strategy may not be ideally suited to smaller marketers, or advertisers seeking a direct response from their ads, said Lindsay.
"For big, national brands it works just fine, just like TV," said Lindsay. "It's a huge, huge volume game."
Agencies
New Internet browser from Opera
Norway's Opera Software released on Tuesday a new version of its browser, Opera 10, promising faster downloads, new design and new fea
tures.
Opera battles for the spot of third-largest browser maker with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, but is far behind Microsoft and Mozilla Foundation.
Opera said the new browser is significantly faster on resource-intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook, and adds features like full thumbnails of all open tabs.
Opera said its Turbo feature for slow connections, which packages web pages, makes the browser up to eight times faster than rival browsers in low connection speeds.
"We have worked a lot on Opera Turbo technology and have also made major improvements on the overall product stability. This is the most stable Opera browser yet," the company said.
The companies usually release several successive test versions of their browsers so they can incorporate user feedback in a series of improvements before their final launch. Microsoft launched its latest IE8 browser in March after a year of public beta testing.
Opera unveiled a public test version of the browser on June 3. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used for about 60 per cent of global Internet traffic, and Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 per cent, with usage of Opera, Google and Apple all around 3 per cent each, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.
Opera has a small share of the global desktop browser market, but its browser is the most popular in countries like Russia or Ukraine, and its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets.
Agencies
tures.
Opera battles for the spot of third-largest browser maker with Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, but is far behind Microsoft and Mozilla Foundation.
Opera said the new browser is significantly faster on resource-intensive pages such as Gmail and Facebook, and adds features like full thumbnails of all open tabs.
Opera said its Turbo feature for slow connections, which packages web pages, makes the browser up to eight times faster than rival browsers in low connection speeds.
"We have worked a lot on Opera Turbo technology and have also made major improvements on the overall product stability. This is the most stable Opera browser yet," the company said.
The companies usually release several successive test versions of their browsers so they can incorporate user feedback in a series of improvements before their final launch. Microsoft launched its latest IE8 browser in March after a year of public beta testing.
Opera unveiled a public test version of the browser on June 3. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is used for about 60 per cent of global Internet traffic, and Mozilla's Firefox has about 30 per cent, with usage of Opera, Google and Apple all around 3 per cent each, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.
Opera has a small share of the global desktop browser market, but its browser is the most popular in countries like Russia or Ukraine, and its mobile browser is the most widely used browser on handsets.
Agencies
Will EBay sell off 65% in Skype for $2b?
EBay Inc agreed to sell 65% of its Skype Internet-calling unit to an investor group led by Silver Lake for about $2 billion to focus on reviving sales at its main e-commerce site. The buyers will pay $1.9 billion in cash and will also give EBay a $125 million note, the company said in a statement on Tuesday. Ebay, which had planned an initial public offering for Skype, will retain 35% of the business.
The sale lessens CEO John Donahoe’s dependence on a unit that he has said doesn’t fit with the rest of EBay’s operations. The company is improving its Internet-retail operations to stem customer defections to Amazon.com Inc. Donahoe’s predecessor bought Skype for about $2.6 billion in 2005 and wrote down its value the following year.
The buyers also include Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm headed by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, and Index Ventures, a firm that invested in Skype before EBay acquired it.
Skype, started in 2002, lets people make calls from their computers to land lines and mobile phones, as well as other computers. It makes money when users call regular phones, set up voice mail and use text-messaging services.
Donahoe said in May that Skype’s value in an IPO could be over $2 billion.
Agencies
The sale lessens CEO John Donahoe’s dependence on a unit that he has said doesn’t fit with the rest of EBay’s operations. The company is improving its Internet-retail operations to stem customer defections to Amazon.com Inc. Donahoe’s predecessor bought Skype for about $2.6 billion in 2005 and wrote down its value the following year.
The buyers also include Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital firm headed by Internet pioneer Marc Andreessen, and Index Ventures, a firm that invested in Skype before EBay acquired it.
Skype, started in 2002, lets people make calls from their computers to land lines and mobile phones, as well as other computers. It makes money when users call regular phones, set up voice mail and use text-messaging services.
Donahoe said in May that Skype’s value in an IPO could be over $2 billion.
Agencies
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Forty glorious years of Internet history
Goofy videos weren’t on the minds of Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they began tests 40 years ago on what would become the internet. Neither was social networking, for that matter, nor were most of the other easy-to-use applications that have drawn more than a billion people online.
Instead the researchers sought to create an open network for freely exchanging information, an openness that ultimately spurred the innovation that would later spawn the likes of YouTube, Facebook and the World Wide Web. There’s still plenty of room for innovation today, yet the openness fostering it may be eroding. While the internet is more widely available and faster than ever, artificial barriers threaten to constrict its growth.
Call it a mid-life crisis.
A variety of factors are to blame. Spam and hacking attacks force network operators to erect security firewalls. Authoritarian regimes block access to many sites and services within their borders. And commercial considerations spur policies that can thwart rivals, particularly on mobile devices like the iPhone.
“There is more freedom for the typical internet user to play, to communicate, to shop — more opportunities than ever before,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor and co-founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “On the worrisome side, there are some longerterm trends that are making it much more possible (for information) to be controlled.”
Few were paying attention on September 2, 1969, when 20 people gathered in Kleinrock’s lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to watch as two computers passed meaningless test data through a 15-foot gray cable.
That was the beginning of the fledgling Arpanet network. The 1970s brought email and the TCP/IP communications protocols, which allowed multiple networks to connect — and formed the internet. The internet didn’t become a household word until the ’90s, though, after a British physicist, Tim Berners-Lee, invented the web, a subset of the internet that makes it easier to link resources across disparate locations. Meanwhile, service providers like America Online connected millions of people for the first time.
That early obscurity helped the Internet blossom, free from regulatory and commercial constraints that might discourage or even prohibit experimentation. The free flow of pornography led to innovations in Internet credit card payments, online video and other technologies used in the mainstream today.
Already, there is evidence of controls at workplaces and service providers slowing uptake of file-sharing and collaboration tools. If such barriers keep innovations from hands of consumers, we may never know what else we may be missing along the way.
The journey of the Internet
1969 | On September 2, two computers at University of California, Los Angeles, exchange meaningless data in first test of Arpanet, an experimental military network 1972 | Ray Tomlinson brings email to the network, choosing @ as a way to specify email addresses belonging to other systems 1973 | Arpanet gets first international nodes, in England and Norway 1974 | Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn develop communications technique called TCP, allowing multiple networks to understand one another, creating a true internet 1983 | Domain name system is proposed. Creation of suffixes such as ‘.com’, ‘.gov’ and ‘.edu’ comes a year later
1988 | One of the first internet worms, Morris, cripples thousands of computers
1990 | Tim Berners- Lee creates the World Wide Web while developing ways to control computers remotely
1993 | Marc Andreessen and colleagues at University of Illinois create Mosaic, the first web browser to combine graphics and text on a single page
1994 | Andreessen and others on the Mosaic team form a company to develop the first commercial web browser, Netscape. Two immigration lawyers introduce the world to spam, advertising their green card lottery services
1998 | Google forms out of a project that began in Stanford dorm rooms. US government delegates oversight of domain name policies to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN
1999 | Napster popularizes music file-sharing and spawns successors that have permanently changed the recording industry
2000 | The dot-com boom of the 1990s becomes a bust as technology companies slide
2004 | Mark Zuckerberg starts Facebook at Harvard University
2005 | Launch of YouTube video-sharing site 2007 | Apple releases iPhone, introducing millions more to wireless internet access
World internet population surpasses
250 million in 1999
500 million in 2002
1 billion in 2006
1.5 billion in 2008
Agencies
Google continues to lead against Bing
Microsoft's Bing search market share in the US grew by just 0.23 percent in August to 9.64 percent, the slowest monthly growth rate since its launch, according to analysis conducted by web analytics firm StatCounter.
The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats also finds that Bing and Yahoo! combined declined slightly in August to 20.14 percent from 20.36 percent in July.
"Perhaps a little worrying for Microsoft is that when you analyse the weekly data, Bing peaked for the week 10th - 16th August at 10.98 percent and has declined since then," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. Google increased its search market share slightly in the US in August from 77.54 percent to 77.83 percent.
Globally Microsoft and Yahoo! combined took 8.42 percent of the search market in August, a decline of 0.35 percent on July's figure (8.77 percent). Google remains the dominant force in the global search market with 89.57 percent in August (89.23 percent in July).
Data is based on an analysis of 1.073 billion search engine referring clicks (272 million from the US) which were collected in July and August from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.
StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, is one of the largest web analytics companies in the world monitoring in excess of ten billion pageloads per month.
Agencies
The firm's research arm StatCounter Global Stats also finds that Bing and Yahoo! combined declined slightly in August to 20.14 percent from 20.36 percent in July.
"Perhaps a little worrying for Microsoft is that when you analyse the weekly data, Bing peaked for the week 10th - 16th August at 10.98 percent and has declined since then," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. Google increased its search market share slightly in the US in August from 77.54 percent to 77.83 percent.
Globally Microsoft and Yahoo! combined took 8.42 percent of the search market in August, a decline of 0.35 percent on July's figure (8.77 percent). Google remains the dominant force in the global search market with 89.57 percent in August (89.23 percent in July).
Data is based on an analysis of 1.073 billion search engine referring clicks (272 million from the US) which were collected in July and August from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.
StatCounter, which provides free website traffic analysis, is one of the largest web analytics companies in the world monitoring in excess of ten billion pageloads per month.
Agencies
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