Top 6 Disruptive Trends: Shaping the Future of Public Cloud

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Talking of public cloud, provisioning storage, launching VMs and configuring networks are no more cutting edges. New IaaS capabilities enable enterprises to operate their workloads in the cloud. Innovative Cloud services are helping organisations drive transformation through agility, cost effectiveness and reduced IT complexities. With IaaS evolving at a rapid rate, the public cloud is seemingly gearing up to the next level.

Cloud providers have already started investing in emerging cloud technologies that will deliver managed services to the customers. Here are six disruptive trends that are shaping the future of the public cloud.

Serverless Computing:

Serverless Computing or more precisely, FaaS(Functions as a Service) focus on code instead of infrastructure – delivering what PaaS promises. It enables developers to write modular functions that perform one task at a time. By writing and executing multiple such functions, a meaning and complex application is built. The best part is, it allows developers select framework, language and runtime of their choice instead of using a particular platform. This implies, each developer has liberty to choose his preferred language and deliver a module.

Serverless Computing or FaaS is rapidly becoming the most preferred way of running code in the cloud.

Blockchain as a Service:

Bitcoin is considered dead long ago, but the technology behind it is alive and kicking to make public cloud all the more powerful. Blockchain is a cryptographic data structure used to create a digital ledger of the transaction happening across distributed networks of computers. It eliminates the need for central authority as cryptography is the only medium to manipulate ledger. However, in this environment, transactions are immutable meaning operations once made cannot be modified. Transactions are verified by the parties involved in the transaction.

Blockchains have many use cases in the domains spanning across manufacturing, finance, healthcare, supply chain and real estate.

Cognitive Computing:

Cognitive Computing adds human senses to the computers. It simulates human thoughts by applying latest technologies like natural language processing, machine learning, neural networks, deep learning and of course, artificial intelligence.

Multiple factors fuelling the trend of Cognitive Computing are affordable hardware, abundant storage, seamless connectivity and compute capacity.

Heavy lifting needed to process the inputs for cognitive computing is handled by deep-pocketed cloud providers. Only the simplest of APIs are exposed for the developers to comprehend and build compelling interfaces for applications.

Data Science as a Service:

Managed NoSQL and relational database started data revolution in the cloud but Hadoop and Big Data empowered the public cloud.

Public Cloud Data Platform takes care of everything spanning from data ingestion to processing, analysis and visualisation. Machine Learning for data enables organisations to tap the power of data analysis and execute predictive analytics.

As organisations are shifting data to the public cloud, they will be catered with an end-to-end approach by the cloud providers for more actionable insights to customers.

Verticalized IoT PaaS:

Internet of Things – the next big thing that is taking distributed computing network by storm already is deployed by organisations for device management capabilities, predictive analytics, data processing pipelines and business intelligence.

Mainstream cloud providers are reaping the benefits of IoT to drive device management, data processing capabilities and cloud-based M2M connectivity.

It is expected that going forward; the cloud providers will use IoT platforms to target automobiles, retail, manufacturing, healthcare and consumer markets. It is soon going to become the prime enabler for Data Science as a Service.

Containers as a Service:

Containers have already buzzing in the cloud market. Though it is as young as two years old, enterprises are readily using containers alongside VMs.

New categories like orchestration, logging, security, monitoring and container management are evolving rapidly. However, when microservices and container workloads become mainstream, they will increasingly dominate the public cloud deployment space. It is poised to be the fastest growing delivery model in the arena of the public cloud.

In conclusion, it is inferred that future of cloud is dictated by the data driven applications powered by Blockchains and IoT. Containers, Serverless Services and the Microservices will be used to deal with the abundance of data hitting the cloud!

The 7 Most In-Demand Programming Languages of 2016

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As technologies are gaining momentums by each passing day, there is a growing demand of developers having strong commands in programming languages worldwide. Web programmers and developers should stay current with the newer emerging programming languages and stay competitive always in the market. Presenting to you top 10 programming languages that you should keep yourself updated with.

Java:
Java is currently ruling the list of top 10 programming languages to learn with No. 1 position due to its usability in mobile based applications, creating desktop applications, enterprise level purpose and establishing Android apps in tablets and smart phones.
Beginners’ friendly Java is simple to use, easier to maintain, shows optimized performance and faster to deploy. It is the third most demanding language in Angel list as top tech giants like Google and Amazon use Java to develop backend of their websites.
The interest learning of Java in 2015 grew by 22.4% implying it is being adopted by new blood and is going to stay here for years to come!

PHP:
80% of top 10 million websites uses PHP. PHP is designed for the web and “Facebook” stands the best example!
5 reasons that make PHP as the favourite pick for leading companies worldwide are:
• Results faster site loading
• It is an open source programming language, hence less expensive
• It requires a LINUX server to run which is easily available through various hosting providers, hence less expensive to host too!
• It supports all major databases.
• Websites built with PHP are easy to customize.
Given that PHP is so widely being adopted globally, the career prospects of a PHP developer are bright! If you a programmer, looking to fuel your wings and warm up your bank account, PHP is the language for you!

Javascript:
Javascript helps you build interactive websites and is an essential web technology alongside CSS and HTML. Further, Javascript is now used for mobile app and desktop app development too. Few more reasons to demonstrate why Javascript is widely and rapidly being adopted are:
• It is easy to pick up as it is higher level language which means it shields the complex details of the machine.
• It is Fun to work with Javascript as it is primarily used for front end development and has various tools that allows to easily get a working prototypes.
• With new nifty tools emerging quite frequently to use Javascript, it has become GitHub’s most-tagged language.
• TIOBE Index ranks it as 6th most popular language with interest in learning Javascript grew by 22.3% in 2015.
Javascript shows growth stability in terms of adoption rate. Have you started adopting it yet?

Python:
Python is a general purpose language meaning it can be used to build anything. It is made easy with its line of right tools and expansive library.
It finds more utilization in backend web development, artificial intelligence, and scientific computing and data analysis. Productivity tools, video games and desktop apps are also built using Python.
Why Python is developers delight? Few points to advocate:
• It’s easy to understand
• Being a dynamically typed language, Python is highly flexible.
• It is 4th most used language in GitHub
• 4th most popular language in TIOBE index.

Objective – C:
C is the mother of all languages. Since the time C compilers fell into the hands of experts, innovations took flight! Compared to other programming languages like COBOL and FORTRAN, C offers more efficiency and performance.
How C empowers the technology world?
• Microsoft Kernel is C coded.
• Linux is mostly written in C.
• Mac Computers operates on C. The OS X kernel is written in C due to which every program and driver in Mac runs on C.
• iOS, Windows and Android Kernels are developed with C.
• World’s leading databases Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL are coded in C.
• 3D movies are developed using applications written in C and C++.

Swift:
If you want to build native iOS or Mac OS apps, you need to learn Swift. Native apps outperform cross platform hybrid apps while the built-in SpriteKit makes 2d game building ever easier with Swift.
Inspired by Python and Ruby, Swift is beginner’s choice which helps in terms of motivation. Few perks of Swift:
• It is a statistically typed language where xCode checks error prior to building of app, implying it being easier to track down.
• It is faster than dynamically typed language ensuring efficient app executing without wastage of phone memories.
• Swift uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) which track and manage app memory in real time ensuring not much memory space is eaten up.

Ruby:
Ruby is a very high level language meaning it abstracts away – it handles for you! It helps you develop anything from scratch faster with less lines of code.
Why should Ruby be your ultimate pick?
• It was designed to make programming fun. It reads English making it highly easy to get started with for beginners.
• It is a dynamically typed language and hence it doesn’t have any hard rules on building features. It is, thus, highly flexible and forgiving of errors meaning you still will be able to run your program before hitting the error code.
• It is 3rd most tagged language in GitHub.

Emerging Trends and Challenges of IT Staffing Services Globally

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Comprehending the latest staffing trend is critical to the development of client base, recruiting top talents and boosting business growth. While the key priorities of a business should be adding new clients, hold strategic business partnerships and improve sourcing strategies, focus needs to be given on recruiting best talents too! Businesses need to spend a little more time than usual on building relationships with clients and colleagues.

Latest Trends in IT Staffing

Promote Branding:
2015 saw the growth of staffing and recruiting firms worldwide by 71% which is expected to grow by 91% by the end of 2016. But what exactly is driving this growth?

Majority of the growth is reliant on existing client relationship. Last year businesses reported that revenue was largely incurred through repeat business. Expanding the client base and reaching out to new potential clients was back listed by lower priority levels.

Client base expansion needs to be knocked with a wakeup call. They have to bring new clients into their eco system and to do so; they have to get their brands out there. Leading social media networks and professional connects like LinkedIn will remain the matchless path to promote business, but IT staffing firms will have to up the ante if rising above competition is their ultimate goal. Extensive networking and brand management will remain the top priority for all IT staffing services for years to come!

Flexible Staffing Model:
Sadly, only 22% of CIOs plan to higher full time employees to increase the size of team while other 78% are eager to maintain their existing team size or even reduce it, if possible. But still we see the demand for seasoned professionals continue to grow. So, how does one reconcile the two different objectives in hiring trends today?

Hiring full time employees is expensive but it is imperative to hire new talents as they fuel the growth of technology initiatives in a company and contribute in raising the company above the competition. We see companies welcoming flexible staffing model. Flexible staffing model help companies have full time staff levels for average workloads and hire subject matter experts to augment their existing staff strength during peak workloads and fill skill gaps in teams when required. This approach is highly cost effective while being nimble as technology initiatives pass through typical phases of planning, support and implementation.

Hiring Passive candidates:
No wonder, the best talents in the industry are already employed. Relying on traditional hiring processes leaves IT staffing services wad on a shallow pool of talents. Hiring passive candidates are their ultimate solution. These are those candidates who are not looking for change but if given a chance with better offers will surely leap the opportunity!

Unfortunately, in-house staffing team have no time to identify the passive candidates in the market. According to LinkedIn, only 22% businesses make passive staffing their priority. Hiring Passive Talents seems to emerge with full strength in upcoming years.

Challenges in IT staffing

Strike balance between quality and quantity of resources hired:
While 62% IT staffing companies reported that placement total remained their top revenue driving source, businesses are still failing to identify the gap between quality and quantity of resources being hired. The foremost challenge that IT staffing services face – the lack of quality candidate. Nearly 1 out of 4 businesses report there is an extreme skill shortage in their company because of which they recruit repeatedly for same position year after year.

According to a 2015 report, businesses still struggle to decide on best resources for their positions. A greater focus on data intelligence stemming out of CRM software might help to reduce the concern a bit! It can show which hiring processes are performing well for company growth and the processes which are proving to be non-performing!

Concerns on Employee Retention

A survey conducted by Careerbuilder & Sologig.com suggests 34% employers are concerned on their smaller team size and fear retention of existing employees. Most talented and experienced employees are attracted with better lucrative offers – ever reducing the team size and impacting company’s growth and innovation! This clearly suggests only those who incentivize and scales up salaries regularly are top market players.

Other challenges include:
• 26% businesses agree deficit in implementing new technologies and software to recruit resources effectively and efficiently.
• 8% say more improvements need to be done on implementation of data intelligence and analytics.
• 29% felt the need to increase pipeline quality.
• 30% felt their open positions aren’t been filled with quality.

7 Free Online Tools Every Entrepreneur Must Use Today

Online Tools Every Entrepreneur Must Use Today
Whether you are a novice business owner or an established business person, you know what it takes to draw footfalls for your services and/or products. While sticking to your core competency and executing it with proficiency is critical to business growth, marketing is equally important for your business to emerge into prominence.

Digital Marketing offers robust platform for producing lasting relationships between businesses and customers, reach markets beyond boundaries and create hardwired brand awareness strategies. Lately, there has been an insurgence of free online marketing tools that are helping businesses and entrepreneurs reap the benefits of digital marketing and impact their business.

Below are 7 free online tools which are worth considering for influential market presence and steadfast business growth:

Buffer – Social Media Management: The role of Social Media in creating effective branding and driving sales can never be argued upon! Buffer is one such online marketing tool that empowers businesses to exploit the potentials of Social Media. The tool leverages the power to expand your customer base, engage your audience and build an unprecedented brand for your business.

Buffer allows you to connect with multiple social media accounts, manage and monitor them through a single dashboard. It helps you run campaigns and analyze the results; followed by generating reports for the same. Buffer’s free version is suitable for entrepreneurs who are new to social media platform and want to grow their fan base, however, to unleash the full power of Buffer, you might have to upgrade to its paid premium version.

Space’s free logo maker: When we talk of Branding, the first thing that pops into our mind are business logos! With Space’s free logo maker, you can now demonstrate your vision on your logo by yourself – with no dependency and expenses on designers!

Using its highly populated library – those filled with over hundreds of icons, fonts and frames, you can create logo all by yourself without having to burn your pocket on expensive designers.

Canva – Graphic Design: Visual Content is ruling the online media. As it goes, ‘a picture replaces thousand words’, so posting one compelling picture can let your profile page have thousands of fan following over night.

Canva brings to you an intuitive and interesting graphic designing platform that’s loaded with a number of templates, illustrations, fonts, images, backgrounds, etc. The easy to drag-and-drop facility and the pool of graphics in Canva helps users create attractive flyers, posters, infographics, social media images, brochures and more to drive online engagement & traffic.

Evernote – organizing IdeasL: An idea can spring up at any time of the day or anytime of the night. Taking a note on it is critical as it might lead to innovations! Evernote helps you organize your ideas in one easily accessible platform. It can be later accessed via any device like smartphone, tablet or a laptop and store content ideas, do market research, competitive analysis and more.

Survey Monkey – secure customer feedback: To know whether your services are really pleasing your customers or not, feedbacks are important. Survey Monkey is one such free online tool that helps you collect feedback from your valuable customers – which helps you engage your customers, know their choices and secure tangible insights that are imperative for improving your products or services. The tool is incredibly simple to use and helps you design questionnaire in just few minutes!

Scrapper – Content Extractor: Scrapper helps you pull content from any target web page and export it to excel sheets. This can be a wise way to pull contact information from competitor’s data and create cold-email lists and other target marketing collaterals.

Sniply – Call-to-action integration: Sniply helps you attach call-to-action on any content that you want to share in social media and boost interaction. It lets you put an inbound button or CTA onto the frame where the article sits in and pull traffic from any non-affiliated content that you share.

Gigaom Change | WED, SEP 21 AT 3:00 PM, AUSTIN, TX, UNITED STATES

Gigom Change
Date : Sep 21-23 2016

Location : Austin, TX

Venue : AT&T Conference Center

Gigaom Change is summit of business leaders that is designed to connect 300+ innovative minds with 20+ global experts who are at the forefront of the biggest technological advances set to change everything:

Robotics, AI, Nanotechnology, VR + AR, Cybersecurity, 3D+ Printing, Human-Machine Interface

Over an immersive 2.5 days, we will explore together the current state of the art, how these are transforming industry and why this all matters. You’ll emerge with a greater understanding of the exponential technological changes occurring around us, and the confidence to accelerate tangible next steps.

[Know more about the Conference]

Top 7 Technologies to Unleash the Full Potential of Big Data

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When I was wondering “how big is ‘Big Data’?”, I stumbled across an excellent description saying, “A Big Data can be as big as a million of exabytes (1,024 petabytes) or a bazillion of petabytes (1,024 terabytes) containing billions and trillions of records from people worldwide”. And that’s amazing!

Big data is massive and exploding!! Hundreds of companies worldwide are springing up with new projects to extort the full potential of Big Data – that of rapid extraction, loading, transformation, search, analysis and share massive data sets.

Here we go top 7 open source technologies to bring out the best of Big Data that you should start adopting today.

Apache Hive 2.1: If you want your applications to run 100 times faster, Apache is your solution. Apache Hive is Hadoop’s SQL solution. The latest release features performance enhancement keeping Hive as the only solution for SQL on petabytes of data over clusters of thousands of nodes.

Hadoop: One of the most popular MapReduce platforms, Hadoop is a robust enterprise-ready solution to run Big Data servers and applications. For this, you need YARN and HDFS for your primary data store.

Spark: Yet another no—brainer, Spark offers easy-to-use technologies for all Big Data Languages. It is a vast ecosystem that is growing rapidly providing easy batching/micro-batching/SQL support.

Pheonix: An SQL skin on Apache HBase, Pheonix is ideal to support Big Data use cases. It replaces regular HBase client APIs with standard JDBC APIs to insert data, create the table and send queries to HBase Data. It reduces the amount of code, allows transparent performance optimisation to the user, integrates and leverages the power of several other tools.

Zeppelin: It calls itself a web-based notebook empowering interactive data analytics. You can just plug in data/language processing back end into Zeppelin that supports interpreters like Python, Apache Spark, JDBC, Shell and Markdown.

Kafka: Kafka is a fast, durable, scalable and fault-tolerant subscribe and public system. It often replaces message brokers like AMOP and JMS as it features higher throughput, replication and reliability. It is combined with Apache HBase, Apache Storm and Apache Spark for streaming of data and real-time analysis.

NiFi: NiFi maximises the value of data-in-motion. It is designed and built to automate the data flow between systems and create secure data ingestion. Two key roles of NiFi are:
• Accelerate Data Collection and enhances movement for ROI on Big Data
• Collect, secure and transport data from IoT.

Idexcel Big Data Services is focused on dealing effectively with technologies & tools that enable efficient management of Big Data Volume, Diversity and Velocity. With massive and active client engagement spanning several verticals, we help businesses in building data analytics decision within the organisation.

That said, would you like to be another name enlisted on our happy customer directory?

Cloud Computing in Banking Environment

Cloud is a distinct IT environment that remotely provides measured and scalable IT resources, and relies on a pool of shared physical and virtual resources rather than deployment of personal or local software and hardware. Cloud deployment offers great choice in choosing the management required and level of security, and hence is suitable for almost any business. Although there is no magic bullet that can meet all the requirements, cloud computing offers several advantages to the financial institutions. These benefits include:

Cost-saving– The large up-front capital expenditure can be turned into ongoing, smaller operational cost without any bulk investments in new software and hardware.

Business continuity– In cloud computing, the service provider manages the technology, and banking firms can have higher levels of fault tolerance, data protection and disaster recover. Cloud computing also offers a high level of back-up and redundancy at lower cost.

Usage-based billing– Institutions can pick and choose the services based on pay-as-you-go basis.

Business agility– As the cloud is available on demand, the infrastructure investment is minimized, saving the time for initial set-up. The development cycle for the new products is reduced, leading to more efficient and faster response to the customers.

Business focus– Financial firms can move non-critical services such as software patches, maintenance etc. to the cloud, and can focus on their core business areas, not IT.

Green IT– Transferring banking services to the cloud reduces carbon footprint and energy consumption, and there is minimized idle time with more efficient utilization of computing power.

Cloud Service Models

Cloud computing offers more flexible business models to the financial institutions which lowers operational costs. However, it is essential to select the cloud service model that best matches the core business requirements. These models are:

BPaaS– Business Process-as-a-service- Used for general processes such as payroll, billing, human resources etc.

SaaS– (Software-as-a-service) – Users can access the software and data from their browser, and business software and related data are housed by the cloud service provider. Accounting, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relation management (CRM), human resource management, invoicing, service desk management and content management software can be delivered using this model.

IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-service) – Rather than purchasing software, servers, network equipment or data centre space, the businesses can buy these resources as fully outsourced services.

PaaS( Platform-as-a-service) – In this model, the cloud service provider offers a complete platform to the businesses to develop , run and manage their applications without engaging in the infrastructure complexities associated with application development and launch.
visual-model-of-cloud-computing
There are three types of commonly deployed clouds. Private cloud is operated specifically for a given company and is most secure of all options. The company may exist on or off the premises, and can be managed either by the company, or by a third party. Public clouds are for a large industry group or for the general public, and ownership lies with the cloud service seller. Hybrid infrastructure consists of two or more public or private clouds that are linked but remain unique entities.

Banking on the Cloud

Banking industry needs to address the ever-growing data input demands, and there is a need to explore the systems that do not rely on like-system migration so that infrastructure can be modified without any disruption. Banks have been slow in adopting cloud computing as there are apprehensions regarding lack of control and environment sprawl which can lead to reliability issues and security risks. Banks also want their financial data to be secured with controlled access. Public clouds come with the issues such as location, regulation, recoverability and liability, and this has led to slow adoption and deployment of cloud computing in the banking sector.

However, cloud computing can change the way consumers interact with banks, and migration to the suitable cloud computing model offer several benefits. Understanding the migration and entire process of migration can be quite beneficial in the long-term. The first step for the banking firms towards cloud computing adoption is opting for the private cloud as it gives banks more control, increased flexibility and reduced complexity. The banks can also alter their resource configuration to match the changes in the demand of their services. The risk of security breach in the private cloud is minimized as it is deployed within the firewall of the organisation. Using VPN (Virtual Private Network), the IT infrastructure of the company can be easily and quickly moved over a single private network. Using private clouds, banks can operate at high transaction volumes without slowing the processes and without overloading the network. The services become more efficient due to dedicated resources of each unit, improving the customer experience. Private clouds offer safety and affordability as the resources are rented, and not purchased. The total cost of ownership is reduced as the capital expenditure is converted to the operating expenditure. Private clouds are safe, affordable and enable easy transition in banking leading to long term success. Banking sector applications are very critical, private clouds provide increased security to ensure that the data is not misplaced or lost. Public clouds offer economies of scale, cost benefit and ROI, whereas private cloud offers high levels of security.

Given the concerns regarding control and security, banks can opt for incremental approach which involves using cloud computing to the non-core operations initially, and gradually move more and more operations and processes to the cloud depending on the benefits. Banks need to work on cloud reference architecture, and try to achieve business agility for business model transformation.

As there is no one-solution-fits-all option available, banks need to consider few key aspects. It is essential to thoroughly evaluate all the challenges and advantages associated with cloud computing with respect to their complete range of services- core and non-core. Additionally, geographic regulations, penalty clauses, business criticalities, interoperability and interface impact, audit requirement mandates, and technology are some of the aspects that must be thoroughly assessed. Choice of the cloud model must be evaluated based on the control of the governance and support provided by the service vendor. Non-core banking applications that do not need strict governance and stringent monitoring are suited for SaaS model, whereas IaaS is more suitable for the business critical applications that need to be closely monitored. Banks must keep in mind that the vendor must provide transparency in the security procedures and policies.

Conclusion

Banks these days offer a plethora of services, and hence they have varied requirements regarding the movement of applications to the cloud. Cloud computing can help banks create more agile and flexible business offerings for the competitive and growing markets, and help them transform their business processes. They can explore and grow into the new markets and sectors, and improve their services to the customers across different geographic locations, and integrate customer information and analytics.

8 Important Segments Of Testing eCommerce Websites – Idexcel Testing Roundup

1. 8 Important Segments Of Testing eCommerce Websites

In today’s world, I bet you won’t find anyone who hasn’t shopped online. E-commerce/Retail is a business that thrives on its online customers. Shopping in person vs. shopping online has many advantages. Convenience, time-saving and easy access to products worldwide, etc.

A good E-commerce/Retail site is key to its success. It must be a worthy counterpart to the storefront. Because, when you go shopping at a physical store, the customer has already made a commitment to visit and might give the brand a chance.

Online, choices are many. So, unless there is engagement from the beginning, the user might just leave. Continue reading…

2. Learn Agile Techniques to Become a More Valuable Teste

Are you an agile tester? Soon, there will not be a distinction; just being in the tester role will mean you need to have agile experience.

The World Quality Report 2015–16 says the strategic role of QA and testing is growing in tandem with the increase in adoption of agile and DevOps delivery. Agile continues to be on the rise, with many organizations that have been successful at the team level looking to scale their adoption. How many of you testers are able to state that you have practical application of agile techniques? Continue reading…

3. Planning for Mobile Testing Challenges

When you develop applications, it is hard to ignore mobile devices. Testing mobile applications provides however some additional challenges than don’t exist for desktop or web applications. In this article, Kostyantyn Kharchenko explains some of the specific challenges that you should include in your mobile testing plans. Continue reading…

4. Destructive Software Testing – Bringing Beta Testing To Your Desk

The earlier a bug is fixed the cheaper it is for your company to fix it, right?
One amongst many reasons, it helps to set a good reputation for your product, and that’s what all of us want. So we have trained testers to catch those bugs as earlier as possible. Continue reading…