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JANUARY 2012
Celebrating
Convergence
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Vol. 8
Issue # 8
TELEPRESENCE
Demystifying Geographies 100 95 75
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Mobility Exclusive
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MOBILITY
ELECOM Marks its Foray into Indian Market
Trends in Enterprise
Internet Showing Path to Glory for BSI www.mobilityindia.com
Balance for Surveillance Mobility January 2012l.indd 31
Mobility Enterprise
FDI in Retail holds big January 2012 | 31 Potential to Boost India’s IT Industry 1/22/2012 11:50:21 PM
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Content
Mobility Voice
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Mobility Interview
Mobility News
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Shyam Networks — Addressing the Next Frontier of Security
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Iowa improves services uptime with Oracle Solaris.. IBM thrusts on analytics education... Intel announces new MD... Tablets to guzzle up 40 million mini-laptops by 2012 India to launch spoken web service for farmers New tech looks inside live viruses HP targeting the small business segment in UP
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Mobility Analysis
Enterprise Trustworthy Technologies for 2012
LightPad pico projector turns iPhones, Android.... Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Grow....
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Mobility Analysis
CES 2012: Gadgets Celebrate Convergence 6 8
COVER STORY
Harnessing the Power of Ethernet
Smart Enterprise
Business Intelligence Enabling Enterprise knowledge
Telepresence Demystifying Geographies Mobility Exclusive ELECOM Marks its Foray into Indian Market
MOBILITY
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Mobility Enterprise Winning with Virtualization
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Mobility Review 13
Lenovo Thinkpad—Elegant Companion Sony Tablets S — The Style King Fly Vision Tablet — The Smart Choice Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101G... Nokia Lumia 710 - Beauty and Inteligence Samsung Galaxy Note - Elegance with Panache Maxx MTP9 Focus Motorola DEFY+ In its Won League
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Mobility News
Editorial Front Editor Chief Editor Asst. Editor
: Swapan Roy : Manoj Jha : S. Goswamy
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Anit Kumar
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Sandip Sarkar
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Tridip Dey Pratap Biswas Tenzin Kunkey S. Dutt Raj Kumar P. Biswas Ashish Ghosh Ashok Paul Ajay Biswas
H.O.: Delhi / Editorial Office Roy Mediative S-39, 1st Floor, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-II, New Delhi-110020 (INDIA) Mob: 09810380882, 09811346846 Ph: 91-11-41602841, 65683896, 40536384-87 Redg.Off.: 38-B / 56 Block, C. R. Park, New Delhi-110019 (India). Branch Office: Mumbai: E-mail: roy@ mobilityindia.com Kolkata: 105/12B, Dum Dum Road, Sil Colony, Kolkata-74 Contact: 09330922965; 09903392620 E-mail : roy@ mobilityindia.com Orissa: Krushna Nagar, 5th Lane, Lalji Palli, Berhampur-760008 (Orissa) (India) Contact : Raj Kumar-09338410809 Email : info@mobilityindia.com ncn_reporter@yahoo.com Mobility monthly News Paper, Printed, Published & Owned by Swapan Roy at 38-B / 56 Block, C. R. Park, New Delhi-110019 (India). Printed at Pushpak Printer, C-96, Okhla Industrial Area-I, New Delhi-20. Retail selling price of News Paper Rs. 20/-. Annual subscription Rs. 240.
VOICE Enterprise Need to Embrace IPv6
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s the global pool of available IP addresses is fast going down in a big way, governments around the world are planning to migrate their country’s Internet infrastructure to the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) protocol, that offers billions of new addresses. Acting swiftly in this direction, the Government of India has set a deadline of March 31, 2012 for all service providers to transition to IPv6. And the Government of Karnataka (GoK) has taken this initiative very seriously to help the enterprise community in making this transition in a smooth manner, through a public-private project. It has signed a partnership agreement with the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) and technology vendor HP to conduct a pilot project that will help organizations in Karnataka through a smooth transition to IPv6. The current IPv4 protocol is a 32-bit addressing system and has a theoretical limit of four billion IP addresses -- the last of which have just been distributed to the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Migrating to the 128-bit IPv6 means billions of new IP addresses will become available. The new Internet Protocol is also more secure and offers the promise of speed; it is 10 times faster. This is going to be a big boost for the enterprise world, as the demand for IP addresses is fast increasing with more consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets and now, Internet-enabled TVs, connect directly to the Internet and in addition to this, the users are also bringing their mobile devices into the enterprise and connecting these to corporate networks. For enterprises in India, transitioning to IPv6 is essential to keep up with the current Internet growth, as well to develop new Internet applications, new markets and to serve citizens in new ways. This will surely help them move up in a fast and swift manner and start the year 2012 on a positive note. Swapan Roy
Editor : edit@mobilityindia.com roy@ mobilityindia.com Marketing : tridip@mobilityindia.com marketing@mobilityindia.com Info : info@mobilityindia.com Subscribe : subscription@ mobilityindia.com Web : www.mobilityindia.com 2 | January 2012
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Mobility News
Iowa improves services uptime with Oracle Solaris
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nternet service provider Iowa Network Services announced that it is using Oracle Solaris operating system on Oracle’s Sparc T-Series servers, to improve services uptime and create virtual servers to help consolidate its data centre and phase out older hardware. The company claims, in a release, that with Oracle Solaris, it has substantially improved the availability and reliability of its services, achieving close to 99.999 per cent uptime. “Oracle Solaris on SPARC servers is a key component of our infrastructure. With Oracle Solaris Containers, we can create multiple private execution
environments within a single instance of Oracle Solaris,” said Steve Guntly, Manager, Systems Administration, Iowa Network Services Inc. “We are
Intel announces new MD
and features on the SPARC T3-1 server and leveraging the improved software and hardware integration and expanded virtualization capabilities, with hopefully even better performance and reliability.” Using the built-in virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris Containers, Iowa Network Services initially ran 130 virtual servers housed on 36 physical servers, reducing hardware management needs, equipment costs and space requirements, increasing the ntel has announced the flexibility of server resources appointment of Debjani Ghosh and providing a 25 per cent as its new managing director, sales performance improvement from and marketing for the company's consolidation of services. South Asia region, effective January 1, 2012. In this role, Ghosh will replace R. Sivakumar, who will be moving to a new role within Intel, said the company. Having worked at Intel for 17 years now, Ghosh most recently served as director of sales & marketing for Intel's South East Asia operations. "I am excited about this opportunity and look forward to coming home to India," she said. "I also look forward to working with governments and industry to advance our shared objectives of increasing opportunities through technology." she concluded. "During Siva's more than five years of leadership, Intel's sales and marketing organisation in South Sahadeb Sarkar, professor, operations Asia oversaw a doubling of PC management group, IIM Calcutta penetration in India. Siva has been and thinking on how advanced a tireless voice in making the case analytics can be applied to for expanding India's broadband tackle complex business and infrastructure," the company said societal challenges. in its release. According to the 2010 IBM "I've twice had the privilege Institute for Business Value of working in this exciting region and MIT Sloan Management during my career at Intel," said Review study of nearly 3,000 Sivakumar. "I am confident that executives worldwide, the under Debjani's leadership Intel will biggest challenge is the lack continue to connect more South of understanding in how to Asians to exciting opportunities use analytics to gain insights through technology. We are that can improve business fortunate to have a strong and stable outcomes. In response to leadership team with a tremendous market demand, universities vision for growing this market and are incorporating analytics an execution track record that's the curricula and courseware into gold standard in the industry. I have a variety of degree programmes great confidence in what the future to educate college students in holds for this team as Debjani takes over the rein. this growing field.
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looking forward to testing Oracle Solaris 11 technologies
IBM thrusts on analytics education
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BM is collaborating with universities in India and the rest of the world to promote the teaching of analytics. Aside from India, the company's Academic Initiative has programmes in India, China, Ireland and Scotland. The programmes aim to help students keep up with the job market by acquiring skills in this field of technology. In India, IBM is working with faculty members from 500 universities to help more than 30,000 students develop skills in predictive analytics. As part of the programme, IBM will conduct a series of training programmes with business school faculty concentrating on predictive and business analytics, in 15 major cities throughout the country of India. The faculty members will complete a certification process in analytics at the end of the programme. Once certified they will begin to teach students about how analytics can be applied to their topic of study. The learning will involve access to predictive analytics technology and will focus on how to act on the results the analytics MOBILITY
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technology uncovers. “I have been using IBM predictive analytics technology in a number of programmes at Indian Institute of Management Calcutta," said Sahadeb Sarkar, professor, operations management group, Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM). “I hope this initiative will help teachers in universities to learn and include analytics in existing courses and design new curricula that will help students gain a top-notch education to meet the demands of today's businesses and government organisations." Data deluge Everyday people create the equivalent of 2.5 quintillion bytes of data from sensors, mobile devices, online transactions, and social networks; so much that 90 per cent of the world's data has been generated in the past two years. This amounts to more data than organisations can effectively use without applying analytics. The new programmes are providing students and faculty members, regardless of their course of study, with access to the latest software capabilities
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Mobility News
Tablets to guzzle up 40 million mini-laptops by 2012
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aiwan's Market Intelligence Centre director Shen Chu-san says that tablets and ultrabooks will erode the market share of netbooks, or minilaptops, next year. Tablet computers will eat into the miniature laptop market by 40 million units in 2012, the head of a Taiwanese research institute has said. Tablets and ultrabooks will “erode the market share of netbooks, or mini-laptops, in 2012," said Shen Chusan, director of the Institute for Information Industry's Market Intelligence Centre (MIC), a government-funded think tank, Xinhua reported. “However, sales of traditional notebook computers will not be affected by tablets and ultrabooks, as the latter two have no effect on traditional laptops", Shen said. Ultrabooks, as a new trend of personal computer development, consume low power, and are thin and light with long standby time. The number of tablets to be sold globally in the first half of 2012 is expected to reach 29.4 million, up 42 per cent year-on-year. According to the MIC, about 14 per cent of global mobile phone users were also smartphone users in 2011. Therefore, the industry aims at emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific, Middle East and African countries, and plans to develop mid and low-end smartphones to be sold at less than $300 in 2012. Such low-end smartphones will account for 17 per cent of mobile phone sales in 2012 and nearly 50 per cent in 2016, the MIC said. As a global information technology hub, Taiwan produces half of the world's chips for computers, mobiles phones and other electronics, according to the Taiwan Semiconductor Association (TSIA).
New tech looks inside live viruses
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he technique combines cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) — cutting-edge microscopy with 3D computer imaging — to image the internals of a virus no bigger than 15 and 200 nanometres. Scientists have developed a new technique which uses cutting edge technology to peer inside living viruses, the tiniest among micro-organisms, says a study. The technique combines cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) — cutting-edge microscopy with 3D computer imaging — to image the internals of a virus no bigger than 15 and 200 nanometres. A nanometre is a billionth of a metre. Cryo-EM by itself does not help visualize internal structures of the micro-organism, because radiation is used to image them. But by tweaking the process with computers, imaging is possible. 4 | January 2012
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India to launch spoken web service for farmers
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armers across the country can soon get their agriculture and weatherrelated queries answered quickly. The Indian government is planning to launch a spoken web service that will provide an interactive medium for the farming community. In a country where close to 60 percent of the 1.21 billion population still depends on agriculture for a living, the spoken web service can be a boon to farmers in distant areas. The Ministry of Earth Sciences has approached IT giant IBM to design a dedicated agromet (agriculture meteorological) service for farmers. The company has recently launched a similar service for farmers to connect them to Amul Dairy. The ministry already provides SMS and an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) service to farmers, giving them farming information, weather and climatic details to help them meet agricultural targets. Spoken web is a project where people can speak and interact with web information through voice. Farmers can dial a toll-free number and ask questions and get them answered. Specific questions would be recorded and later answered by experts. “Spoken web service will be of great use to illiterate farmers who are not technologically equipped," he said. The SMS and IVRS mode were launched in 2009 covering 5,000 farmers. It now covers 2.8 million growers and by 2017 the method would cover 20 million.
While the India Meteorological Department (IMD) dishes out the weather report, the Integrated Agromet Advisory Service — involving organisations like the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Ministry of Agriculture
(Central and State) and State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) — gives weatherbased agro advisories specifically meant for the farming community. The SMSs are being sent to farmers in their regional language on their mobile phones. The IVRS was developed keeping in mind illiterate people as they can listen to an automated message and get farming information. The short and timely alerts to farmers about the weather have led to economic benefits worth a whopping Rs.50,000 crore annually. According to a National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) report, roughly 24 percent of farmers in over 550 districts are either aware or using the Agromet services, while two million farmers are availing themselves of the mobile SMS service which started over a year ago.
HP targeting the small business segment in UP Technology major Hewlett-Packard (HP) India is eyeing the small business segment in Uttar Pradesh, which is home to over 3 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). Since UP is the second largest Indian economy, information technology (IT) was playing a major role in its social and economic development, the company said. “To reach out to our customers, HP would continue expanding to tier II cities with channel partners,” HP director, laser jet enterprise solutions, imaging and printing group, Nitin Hiranandani said here on Wednesday. “UP is an important market for us and we want to target the growing entrepreneurs, small and medium businesses (SMB) www.mobilityindia.com
and other emerging industries, which are leveraging latest technological innovations in taking on the local and global competition,” he said. Meanwhile, HP launched its new range of monochrome and colour laser printers for small office home office (SOHO) and SMBs in the state. HP LaserJet Pro P1108 is priced at Rs 6,599 and is touted as energy efficient, high speed and hassle free printer. India has a base of about 35 million SMBs growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4 per cent and investing in upgrading their IT infrastructure. “We have a strong service network of 350 outlets in 155 cities with 1,800 outlets for consumables,” Hiranandani added. MOBILITY
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LightPad pico projector turns iPhones, Android phones into laptops
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t is almost a magical product. LightPad pico projector has the capability to turn iPhones, Android phones, Windows Phones or any other phone for that matter into laptops CES 2012 was an occasion when a large number of products were showcased by tech companies from across the world. Though there were many hits, there were some misses as well. But right now we will not talk about the misses. A product that caught everyone’s attention during the high profile tech fair was LightPad G1. You will call it a big transformer. But don’t assume the Transformer Prime that has been launched by ASUStek. This is neither a smart phone nor a tablet or notebook. But this has capability to transform your smart phone into a laptop, almost. It works more finely than the dock that comes with the Transformer Prime. Lightpad G1 is a sort of projector that is used very dexterously with all smartphones. Thanks to
the pico projector technology, LightPad G1 can project contents of your phone on a large surface. This can also double up as a keyboard. So besides a big screen it also gives you a readymade QWERTY keyboard device. The best thing is that this device is very easy to take along with you. LightPad G1 is a device about the size of A4 paper that can turnyour phone into a notebook. QP LightPad utilizing technology Pico Projector in transferring the image onto a screen measuring 11 inches by putting the projector in the back. The device doesn’t discriminate between Android or any other operating system. It supports all sorts of smart phone, be it from Apple using iOS devices or Android smart
phones or for that matter from Windows Phone platforms. The LightPad G1 offers a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels for projection on your wall. Meanwhile, next gen LightPad G2 can provide 1280 x 720 resolution pixels.
Gartner Says Global IT Spending to Grow 3.7 Percent in 2012 Eurozone Crisis and Hard-Disk Drive Shortage Impacting Spending; Analysts to Discuss 2012 IT Spending Outlook During Gartner Webinar on January 10
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orldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.8 trillion in 2012, a 3.7 percent increase from 2011, according to the latest outlook by Gartner, Inc. In 2011, worldwide IT spending totaled $3.7 trillion, up 6.9 percent from 2010 levels. Gartner has revised downward its outlook for 2012 global IT spending from its previous forecast of 4.6 percent growth. All four major technology sectors computing hardware, enterprise software, IT services and telecommunications equipment and services are expected to experience slower spending growth in 2012 than previously forecast. "Faltering global economic growth, the eurozone crisis and the impact of Thailand's floods on hard-disk drive (HDD) production have all taken their toll on the outlook for IT spending," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. The Thailand floods, that left onethird of the country under water, are having serious implications for businesses worldwide, particularly with computer and storage purchases. "Thailand has been a major hub for hard-drive manufacturing, both for finished goods and components," Mr. Gordon said. "We estimate the supply of hard drives will be reduced by as much as 25 percent (and possibly more) during the next six to nine months. Rebuilding the destroyed MOBILITY
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manufacturing facilities will also take time and the effects of this will continue to ripple throughout 2012 and very likely into 2013." Although large PC OEMs will see fewer problems than others in the industry, no company will be wholly immune to the effects on the HDD supply chain. Gartner has reduced its shipment forecast for PCs, which has impacted the short-term outlook for the hardware sector. The impact of HDD supply constraints on HDD and PC shipments in the first half of the year
compound the cautious environment for hardware spending in general. Telecom equipment spending is projected to show the strongest growth, with revenue increasing 6.9 percent in 2012, followed by the enterprise software market, which will grow 6.4 percent (see Table 1). "With the eurozone crisis causing uncertainty for both businesses and consumers in Western Europe we have adjusted our forecast, and we expect IT spending in Western Europe to decline 0.7 percent in 2012," Mr. Gordon said.
Table 1 Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars) Computing Hardware
2011 Spending 404
2011 Growth (%) 7.6
2012 Spending 424
2012 Growth (%) 5.1
Enterprise Software
268
9.6
285
6.4
IT Services
848
6.9
874
3.1
Telecom Equipment
444
7.7
475
6.9
Telecom Services
1,701
6.1
1,740
2.3
All IT
3,664
6.9
3,798
3.7
Source: Gartner (January 2012) www.mobilityindia.com
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Mobility News
CES 2012: Gadgets Celebrate Convergence
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Convergence of Phones, cameras, computing, TV, gaming and more thinnest chassis on the market. It's only 6.68mm thick.
unning until 12th of January 2012, the show sees the entire tech world descend on Las Vegas. It covers more than 1.8 million square feet and has more than 140,000 attendees from across the globe. The biggest names in technology are there to talk about their plans for 2012. Here are our CES 2012 highlights‌ CES 2012: Tablets Without an Apple presence at CES, it's a chance for other manufacturers to shout about their tablet devices. But there's not the mad rush of iPad rivals that you might expect. Poor sales of Android tablets seem to have made the big electronics giants more cautious. Toshiba has also jumped back into tablet waters with the new Excite 10, a stylish 10.1-inch Android slab that boasts a 1.2GHz dual-core TI processor and a 1,280 x 800 pixel display. But it's Lenovo that has turned heads and widened eyes with its two new tablet models. There's the Asus Transformer-alike IdeaPad S2 running Ice Cream Sandwich and the quad-core Tegra 3-powered IdeaPad K2 (see below), which looks like a supercomputer pretending to be a clipboard. Lenovo has also been showing off the IdeaPad Yoga, a 13.1-inch laptop/tablet that has been described as "like Microsoft's vision for the Tablet PC from 2002. Only good." We've also had a play with the ViewSonic ViewPad E70 and the Aigopad m803. While the feisty, quad-core Asus MeMo has Amazon's Kindle Fire firmly in its sights. CES 2012: Phones While most manufacturers will be saving their big phone launches until Mobile World Congress in February, several new smartphones have been been 6 | January 2012
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spotted on the plush Vegas carpets. Having absorbed Ericsson into the Sony hive mind, the newest Xperia handsets are the first to break cover without any Ericsson branding. The Sony Xperia S (pictured above) is essentially a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc with HD - a 4.3-inch Reality Display (1,280 x 700 pixels), a 12MP camera and the promise of an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade in Q2. Elsewhere, HTC has upgraded the Titan for duty on AT&T. The HTC Titan II is the same 4.7-inch, 1.5GHz Windows Phone that you might be indifferent to. But it's been souped up with a 16MP snapper, wide angle lens, dual LED flash and LTE support. The US also gets the Nokia Lumia 800 dressed up as the Nokia Lumia 900. What's new? It's LTE-powered, larger screened (4.3 inches) and has a better front camera. The LG Spectrum also catches the eye with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD that rivals the Retina display on the iPhone 4. While the the Huawei Ascend P1 S and Ascend P1 trumpet Super AMOLED screens and the www.mobilityindia.com
CES 2012: Laptops Think the laptop is dead? Far from it. Acer launched the 13.3-inch Aspire S5 during its CES 2012 press conference and promised Windows 8 Ultrabooks in the second half of the year. Forget netbooks, chromebooks and desktop replacement systems. Ultrabooks that pay design homage to Apple's skinny Macbook Air are the new laptop form factor of choice. Without any other stand-out gadgets, they've quickly become one of the stars of the 2012 show. Intel believes that tablets can't replace laptop computers and that we'll be even happier with a convertible Ultrabook that runs Windows 8 (and is powered by Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs. Obviously). HP's Ultrabook effort is the good-lookin' Envy 14 Spectre, which incorporates a roomier 14-inch (1,600 x 900 pixel) panel and is only 21mm thick. Under the hood there's an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor, and a 128GB hard drive. Samsung, meanwhile, joins the Ultrabook club with its Series 5 devices, which will be availble in 13- and 14-inch variants with 2nd generation Intel Core i5 engines and Radeon HD graphics. CES 2012: Gadgets What else have we been impressed by at this year's CES? Sure there have been novelty USB sticks, remote-controlled iPhone-copters and Microsoft had a tweet choir during its keynote. But here are the gadgets that have really caught our giant, Sauron-esque eye... For a peek into the future of cloud computing, look no further than the OnLive Desktop for iPad. Want to use the Microsoft Office Suite on your tablet? MOBILITY
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Mobility News
A Tablet PC, or simply Tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen. It often uses an onscreen virtual keyboard, a passive stylus pen, or a digital pen, rather than a physical keyboard and running a standard (or lightly adapted) PC operating system like Windows, Android or Linux.
Email: sales@simmtronics.com
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Cover Story
Telepresence
Demystifying Geographies It has given a new amplification to reality, and practically proposes zero distance between two geographical points, today’s Telepresence solutions have surely come off age and are helping the CXO and the CIO or the IT decision maker community and providing them a great way to reduce on the rising OpEx as well as CapEx.
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Cover Story
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elcome to the TelePresence world. Today, we are living in a world where it is not important for someone to be physically present in order to make his or her ‘presence’ felt. Thanks to technology up gradation, today TelePresence can ensure that imagery (with high-end sound) of your physical self travels with the help of high definition quality video and deliver a unique experience to the users. As high definition option comes to the fore with TelePresence, it gives a far superior quality than conventional videoconferencing, as the resolution of images transmitted is high, without any picture drop. For instance, doctors can actually check X-rays or MRIs of patients, as the images are crystal clear. This is the power of TelePresence. Now just imagine walking into a comfortable, luxurious meeting environment, taking a seat and starting a live conversation with your counterparts from across the world. There is no technology in the way, no snags, no hiccups, just you and your colleagues from the rest of the world. This is what real presence experience of high definition means. As far as big or even small enterprise is concerned, experts close to the industry see a clear movement towards HD and telepresence technology. It is just like how LCDs have become mainstream because of greater image quality. India’s positioning According to Kshitij Mishra, Head Unified Communications, & Collaboration (India Region), Huawei Enterprise, Telepresence used to be an emerging technology, however it is tuned into a key business tool which reduces travel & enhances effectiveness of meetings. “As per the data given by global research firm, Frost & Sullivan telepresence is expected to grow to a $4.7 billion market globally by 2015. Asia-Pacific region contributes to approximately one third of the global business space. In India the telepresence or TP market is expected to be more than $ 45 million in 2013 and growing at a rapid pace. As one of the key telepresense vendors, globally as well as in India, we foresee a sustainable growth in this space. We look forward to challenge the existing technologies through our solutions and make our presence felt,” he explains. As Minhaj Zia, Director- Collaboration, Cisco India & SAARC puts it, organizations MOBILITY
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are increasingly looking at achieving a balance to create a cost reduction strategy that maximizes efficiency without the loss of valuable head count and intellectual capital. “According to Infonetics Research, Global enterprise video conferencing and Telepresence system revenue is expected to double and reach $5 billion by 2015 and we expect revenues from India to increase significantly over the next couple of years. The Telepresence market has evolved since 2006, when it was first introduced. Today, enterprises across the globe including India are experiencing the transformational impact of faster decision making, stronger working relationships, cost control and improved productivity delivered by Cisco TelePresence,” he adds on. And of course, any talk of HD videoconference would be incomplete without a mention of 3D HD. Vendors see
Use of video has percolated across the rank and file of companies – in Cisco’s own experience; we were able to cut down travel expenses which resulted in cost savings of $835 million, and an average of over 900,000 TP meetings a week. Minhaj Zia Director-Collaboration, Cisco India & SAARC
this as the future of videoconferencing, as this technique guarantees natural representation of all participants in virtual space to give a great quality. Clearly one surely gets mesmerized, when you actually go through the experience of real time HD focused telepresence for the first time, but is it easy to deploy? Its an important question, which lingers on. What is more important is the blues that are associated with the whole technology of telepresence. According to Judith Tse, Marketing Director, Asia Pacific, LifeSize, India is a key market and its growing broadband industry has been given a huge boost by the recent launch of the 3G services. As such, India is on the cusp of a new revolution with the emerging technology platform to deliver high-speed data and voice on a single network. As voice traffic growth stabilizes, data and video are set to become the core focus areas. One of the key factors responsible for this change is the growing penetration of Smartphones and data devices - iPhone, Android phones, iPad, and Tablets - and most importantly, the services offered on these devices. “The potential of the India market is one of the reasons why we have our R&D Centre, here in Bangalore. With the advances in infrastructure rollouts across India that is accelerated by broadband, we are seeing a lot of growth in Unified Communications (UC). The key trends in UC are truly global, where any form of communications is just a click away; delivered at much lower costs and increasing the productivity factor in businesses. Mainly we're seeing cloud solutions, mobile/tablet and virtualization as the key trends in Unified Communications today. Much like most other facets of the tech industry, the UC space is one that is evolving at a rapid pace. What won’t change are us leveraging UC as a catalyst to drive adoption of video communication and continue to move it toward ubiquity. We’ve made announcements certifying our products for both Skype and Microsoft and we have ongoing UC partnerships with companies like Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, VBrick and others,” she explains. Active Segments in India Over the past few years a lot of Indian companies are going global, especially in the IT and ITeS segment and they have been the primary adopters in this space.
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Cover Story
“Today, we are seeing a lot of interest in verticals beyond ITeS; there is an increased usage of TelePresence solutions in the public sector, hospitality judiciary, healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry. There is also a demand from SMBs to adopt “Presence” technologies. Cisco is the leader in TelePresence. Several large corporations, have already set up Cisco TelePresence solutions within their offices across the globe including India. These include companies such as EMC, Yahoo, Thomson Reuters, Tata Teleservices, Bharti Airtel, Tata Steel, Wipro Technologies, ANZ IT, Accenture, Mahindra & Mahindra,” Zia informs. In addition to this, Cisco has also signed an agreement with CII and Tata Communications, whereby multiple pay per use centers were set up within CII’s facilities for the benefit of its members. These centers would also be added to a larger network of centers that will be established by Tata Communications across the country. “With the arrival of public TelePresence rooms by Indian Hotels, Marriott International & Starwood Hotels, business travellers and individuals have now adopted these services and enjoy the flexibility to pay on an hourly basis to avail Cisco’s TelePresence services. This allows the hotel to provide guests with highquality business solutions,” Zia adds on. According to Huawei’s Kshitij Mishra, off late, Tele-Presence solutions have been perceived as high CapEx & high OpEx solutions. This has been a key deterrent in the Indian market place. “However, today, businesses see a
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strong value in Telepresence, even though buying decisions are yet influenced by the price. One of the key reasons is that the TP endpoints are clubbed with the room décor and also use high bandwidth to communicate. This overlay on room décor and uninterrupted high bandwidth result in high CapEx/OpEx & provide a little rooms to the customers for cost control. In their bid to have control on the cost, end customers with sites in multiple countries started opting for hosted TP solutions,” he explains. Talking about the unique value proposition being given by Huawei, Mishra says that Huawei has introduced TP endpoints starting from room based TP with 40’’ screen to large TP endpoints that
can cater to 18-20 seats, thereby giving better and affordable options for the end customers. “We have left the room décor to the customer to decide however we help them with the minimum requirement that could reflect appropriate TP experience. Huawei’s advance video codec offers at least 25% to 30% less bandwidth than any other similar technology in the market. It helps customer reduce their OpEx to a large extent,” Mishra from Huawei adds on.
Experience Matters Most of the IT managers worry about the issue of interoperatibility when it comes to actual implementation of telepresence. But today there are specific standards in HD Gartner Research Vice President Scott videoconferencing which Morrison predicts that “more than 200 do allow interoperability of differing products from million workers worldwide will run multiple vendors in a much corporate-supplied video conferencing smoother manner than ever before. from their desktops by 2015, compared With so much optimism around videoconferencing, to 7 million in 2008.” In addition the robust activity of “Spending on corporate-sanctioned v i d e o c o n f e r e n c i n g and service video conferencing to the desktop vendors providers is not without its will grow from 13.9% of IT budgets, justifications. Of late though, videoconferencing has gained to account for one-third of corporate a whole new avatar that of a real life and all pervasive spending on video conferencing.” telepresence, which seems Judith Tse, to have renewed the interest Marketing Director, Asia Pacific, Lifesize in videoconferencing all over www.mobilityindia.com
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1/22/2012 11:50:37 PM
MO
Cover Story
again. Not only has it given a fresh vigor to vendors, who are going all out with innovative products, it has also captured the industrys imagination while delivering larger than life experience towards its enterprise set of users. As Kshitij Mishra from Huawei puts it, Telepresence is seen as a solution for CXO community and is being positioned in large enterprises & government organisations. “As the business growth & technology is taking a new shape, our strategy is to bring out the TP from the board rooms to the meeting rooms and personal rooms within the corporate realm, so that even a SME/SMB can find value in this technology. We anticipate a lot of demand from BFSI, Education, Media/ Entertainment & various govt. & public sector companies. We have Huawei RPX series & Huawei TP 1000/3000 series solutions which can be positioned across the industry & management hierarchy,” he explains. According to Minhaj Zia from Cisco, TelePresence comes with a host of benefits – while it involves an initial capital expense, the trickle effect on reduced travel costs, better collaboration, and increased levels of productivity, makes it an ideal tool to bring down operating costs for organizations. “In fact, the return on investment (ROI) from TelePresence has drawn the attention of IT decision makers and has been a key factor in its adoption. According to statisticians, over the last five years, globally dispersed organizations have reaped a return on investment (ROI) of 47% or more (data from a 2009 Forrester report); travel reduction provides for the major cost savings. However, TelePresence users also cite increased collaboration for faster decision-making, improved work/ life balance, increased productivity, and contribution to greening of the environment as other major benefits,” he adds on. As Judith Tse from LifeSize aptly puts it the video revolution has only just begun. Video is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our day to day communication, and as a result we are seeing the new generation of professional workers who will expect to have access to video, who regard it as an essential everyday communication tool. “We’ll surely see the lines between enterprise and consumer video consumer increasingly blurred as the technology evolves and tech savvy workers push for greater convenience and choice. Users will demand greater flexibility, accessibility and quality from video conferencing providers MOBILITY
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“Currently
Huawei Telepresence requires we are at the tipping point lower bandwidth to deliver of the market true HD experience to an end transition customer. It's cost-effective a r o and u n d video, where saves OPEX for the customer. fundamental Most of the systems in the b u s i n e s s market today need 4Mmodels per screen are being if 720p meeting is required. So built around these the 3 camera systems need 12M new video to have one meeting through e n a b TP. l e d endpoints. However Huawei TelePresence V i d e o system can deliver the same or conferencing better quality video at /2MBPS TelePresence is a critical per camera. component
Kshitij Mishra, Head Unified of the Cisco Collaboration Communications & Collaboration and (India Region), Huaweistrategy Enterprise as they push new boundaries with the way video conferencing is used to enhance an organization’s interaction with its customers and stakeholders,” she explains. Making inroads inside Indian market Telepresence and HD Videoconferencing has now become the answer to escalating travel costs, travel time and long commuting hours. Besides all this, telepresence has actually demystified the geographies and has virtually made possible the eternal wish of the most busy executives, that of being present at multiple geographic locations and multiple time zones at the same time. Given its cost benefits, it is increasingly being adopted by the government sector. The government in fact is at the helm of the telepresence adoption, as it alone buys around 40% of the HD videoconferencing endpoint equipment. The industry, especially the large and medium businesses have also shown a lot of promise towards adopting HD videoconferencing in the last two to three years. While the IT/BPO market leads the corporate scene, the rest of the segments are fast catching up. Global networking major, Cisco’s goto-market strategy continues to rely on its healthy channel partner network to access the market. Cisco partners with global and regional service providers to offer intercompany TelePresence and public services. www.mobilityindia.com
portfolio, w h i c h represents a $35 billion opportunity for Cisco and partners globally. In order to tap into this potential market, we launched the Cisco Collaboration Architecture Specialization in March 2011 for partners. This Collaboration architecture specialization serves a clear link between Cisco solutions and customer business needs and enhances the chances for partners to successfully offer end-toend communications and IT solutions or 'architectures’ to customers. The new Cisco architecture specialization recognizes and builds on our partners’ capabilities, enabling them to evolve their business, drive profitable growth and become more relevant to their customers. To ensure that the value, margins and differentiation factors for the specialization remains cost effective for partners, we have introduced discounts/incentives and also reduced the amount of time required for training,” Zia affirms. On the video front, Cisco has introduced a channel initiative that aligns the Cisco and Tandberg partner communities into a single channel program in 2010. The TelePresence Video Authorized Technology Provider (ATP) designation has tiered specialization levels: Express, Advanced and Masters. The Cisco Authorized Technology Provider (ATP) Program develops global market opportunities for advanced and emerging technology solutions through qualified Cisco channel partners while ensuring high January 2012 | 11
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Cover Story
customer satisfaction. By incorporating the best aspects of Tandberg and Cisco channel programs, the initiative accommodates all levels of video expertise to help drive profitable growth opportunities for channel partners. What ‘s more is that, Cisco is also providing financing options to partners offering TelePresence solutions with Cisco Capital option. On the other hand, China based ICT powerhouse, Huawei is approaching the market through its partner echo-system which is fairly spread across the country. “Huawei Telepresense operates on global standards, open architecture and deliver unprecedented interoperability to an end customer. In addition to this, one if the biggest advantage with Huawei is the fact that our Telepresence system can work with legacy videoconferencing system, IMS system and other standards based Telepresence system as well. Secondly, our TP has higher QoS (quality of service) tolerance ability. In case if network is not stable and suffering from packet loss. Most Tele-Presence systems usually deliver very low quality video when the packet loss is even 1%. Delivering superior quality of service and powered by SEC (super error correction) technology, Huawei Telepresence system can work without impact when the packet loss reaches 3% and provide affordable video quality even when packet loss even reaches up to 5%. Looking at delivering HD level videoconferencing collaboration, LifeSize firmly believes that the video conferencing industry will push further into “on demand” video and witness corporations requiring all devices to be compatible with unified communications; ultimately becoming integrated into the fabric of 12 | January 2012
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business communications. “In response to this, we are expanding our product range based upon these expectations, Logitech’s acquisition of Mirial in July, LifeSize has been working to extend open, interoperable video collaboration solutions to anyone, anywhere, on any device. LifeSize leads the industry in bringing enterprise-class mobile video to market and driving adoption, with video calling apps available today for a wealth of iOS and Androidbased mobile devices from Apple, Dell, Google, HTC, Motorola and Samsung. As a result, LifeSize is now the only vendor in the enterprise video conferencing market to offer natively interoperable video calling from the conference room to the PC and Mac as well as to iOS 5 and a broad range of smartphones and tablets,” adds Judith Tse from LifeSize. Telepresence Challenges in India Although telepresence is a relatively new phenomenon in our country, the trend seems to be picking up fast. So far, verticals that have been keen in adopting telepresence are the enterprises, which have offices on multiple geographic locations, nationwide, or around the globe, and can find it easier to justify the RoI of the telepresence solutions while considerably reducing the travel costs. However, the growth path for telepresence is not without its impediments. The exorbitant cost attached to telepresence solutions is a factor, which has hindered its adoption by the consumers. The list of infrastructure required to set up a telepresence facility is relatively long. A studio with HD plasmas, sound quality systems and ready availability www.mobilityindia.com
of bandwidth are some of precedents of a telepresence system. And we strongly feel that vendors would have to come up with innovative ideas and solutions in order to address these challenges on the long run. In addition to the above, another major glitch for telepresence is the availability of high bandwidth for it to function efficiently and smoothly. Telepresence requires a minimum of 224 Mbps to run smoothly. And in India, bandwidth is still not universally available, and performance gaps in networks often become too obvious and embarrassing. Also, another factor is that higher bandwidth in India is available only on Wirelime, a luxury that only the leading metros of the nation can boast of. The road ahead Telepresence is surely the way forward and holds immense potential for future deployments. The difference in the form of in-person meeting experience over the converged network is making a big difference today. As it delivers real-time, face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives, using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies, TelePresence will be a key enabling technology that will connect people and help them towards collaborating in real-time. However, vendors do need to reduce on the pricing factor for SME level organizations to seriously look towards TelePresence side of things. And it will surely present a big test for global vendors to address the challenges but those who come off with flying colors will be the true champions of telepresence solutions of tomorrow. MOBILITY
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Mobility Exclusive
ELECOM Marks its Foray into Indian Market ELECOM opens ‘Experience World’ Retail Showroom in India
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apan based ELECOM has forayed into the Indian market with establishing its presence in India. The company has opened its retail focused showroom “Experience World” in Asia’s biggest IT hub – New Delhi’s Nehru Place. ‘Experience World’, is a combined shop and showroom, was opened in Nehru Place, with an aim to increasing brand recognition and expanding the company’s business opportunity in Yutaka Yamamoto, MD, Elecom India. It is ELECOM’s first showroom India Pvt. Ltd. with its brand name. Established in 1986, ELECOM has been leading the PC and AV Accessory & Peripheral market in Japan for years. Headquartered in Osaka, Japan, and with subsidiaries across Europe and Asia, ELECOM has gained a reputation for high quality and unique products globally. On this occasion, Yutaka Yamamoto, MD, Elecom India Pvt. Manjul Agarwal, Director, Elecom Ltd. said, “By opening a showroom India Pvt. Ltd. in India, we will be able to showcase our products, which perfectly combine design and functionality, to a large segment of Indian consumers, and let them experience ELECOM’s quality. ELECOM expects, with this, not only to do a great deal of business in India, but also to secure the brand status and gain a foothold for future business expansion. The brand ELECOM is all about and our products speak for themselves. We have not only IT product but its life-style product. Our product’s design, color and quality mark the unique product in the market. Our R& D team is based in Japan and manufacturing unit is set-up at Taiwan and China. We wanted to focus in the Indian market in a big way, so we wanted to push our product directly. “We are coming with different strategies in the market. We wanted to place our product in the niche market and start the outlet first in all metro cities and the B & C class cities of India. We plan to launch 400+ products in the initial phase, which will include a wide range of Accessories & Peripherals for PCs, Laptops, Smartphones and Tablets. Our product is excellent which combine design and functionality. In the first phase, we wanted to focus in consumer and retail segments and in the second phase our focus is in channel. We have massive plans to further expand the lineup in the future,” said, Manjul Agarwal, Director, Elecom India Pvt. Ltd. MOBILITY
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www.mobilityindia.com
January 2012 | 13
1/22/2012 11:50:44 PM
Trends In Telecom
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www.mobilityindia.com
MOBILITY
1/22/2012 11:50:47 PM
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Mobility Interview
Shyam Networks - Addressing the Next Frontier of Security The next most happening thing in the country will emerge with IP surveillance addressing the critical security issues in every sector like City surveillance, Enterprise, Oil, Gas, Petroleum, Borders, Sea coast and many more such segment that need to be secured. Shyam's indigenously manufactured next generation IP surveillance Solution address a number of India centric IP surveillance issues. Mobility speaks with Nafis Kazim, Senior Vice President, Shyam Networks Limited about the company's current plans and future strategies for India. Q) What are some of the biggest priorities for Shyam Networks as of today? Keeping in mind the next generation requirements coming from the IT decision maker community, Shyam Networks is providing state-of-the-art networking, surveillance, and security solutions and services for diverse corporate enterprises, governments, educational institutions, offices and residences in India. Our products can bring an enterprise an enhanced internet experience. Whether it is high end enterprise network solutions or wireless broadband connectivity to simple broadband access for homes, Shyam ensures speed, capacity and range for both outdoor and indoor applications. The biggest priority right now for Shyam Networks is IP Cameras & we have a wide portfolio of products and solutions to support our channel partners and help them towards solution selling for their end customers. Q) What kind of products and solutions are being pushed by Shyam in India? We at Shyam Networks are offering end-to-end solutions for homeland security, industrial security, and mission critical, sensitive sectors. We also offer a range of products that can bring an enterprise an enhanced internet experience. Currently the focus is on Government segment for IP surveillance solutions. We also understand the ever evolving networking needs of our customers as they evolve in a dynamic environment and manage them with cost effective, innovative solutions. Q) What is your go to market strategy for pushing your product range in the country? We believe that channel partners play a very important role in terms of realizing the full potential of technology solutions as well as creating brand value for the organization when it comes to targeting specific verticals like BFSI, hospitality or manufacturing. MOBILITY
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Keeping this in mind, we intend to place our products through retail box selling as well as with the help of System Integrator partnerships for different project requirements. Q) Convergence of devices and technologies is the order of the day when it comes to catching the eyeballs for the end user. How does Shyam look at today's convergence times? We are closely looking at this exciting space of convergence. As a company with strong values, Shyam firmly believes in manufacturing products in India & creating a large pool of Intellectual Property. We have completely aligned ourselves to making available the latest technology for our end customers and there is no doubt that convergence is playing a very important role here. Q) How many channel partners do you have at present? what is your plan on this front? We are aggressively moving ahead in the Indian market and have firm plans to further consolidate our position. At present we have 12 channel partners and we are planning to scale the number of partners to 30 in the coming months. Q) What kind of service and support network does Shyam has at present and what are your plans for the same in the
near future? We believe that it is the service and support that finally wins the hearts and minds for the end customer and keeping this though in mind, we have set up a pan India foot print for support & services of products & solutions. In addition to this, we also have a dedicated team at HO for pre sales and tendering process. Q) What kind of revenues are you expecting from India? We are looking at a revenue stream of Rs 50 crore for the next fiscal year.
www.mobilityindia.com
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Trends in Enterprise
Enterprise Trustworthy Technologies for 2012 Mobility is listing 11 key technologies that will greatly impact the enterprise world in 2012
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e are presenting the list of 10 key technologies that will greatly impact the enterprise world of India in the year 2012. As part of this initiative, we define a strategic technology as one with the potential for a significant impact on the enterprise sector in the next 3 years. Factors that denote a significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or business, need for investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with the potential for significant market disruption in the next 5 years. As such, these technologies impact the organizations long term plans, programs and initiatives. Companies should factor these top 10 technologies in their strategic planning process by asking key questions and making deliberate decisions regarding them during the next 2 years. The top 10 technologies for the enterprise in 2012 are: Ride on the Cloud Cloud Computing is already becoming big - Cloud computing related application and services exist along a whole range of spectrum from open public to closed private. The next 3 years will see the delivery of a range of cloud service approaches that will fill a lot of gaps that are left so far. Technology models like IaaS
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(Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), SaaS (software as a Service) will get evolved in the coming years. And vendors will offer packaged private cloud implementations that deliver the vendors public cloud service technologies and methodologies (ie, best practices to build and run the service) in a form that can be implemented for an enterprise customer. We also feel that many will also offer management services to remotely manage the cloud service implementation. Emergence of Media Tablets According to global estimates, by the end of 2011, 1.2 billion people will carry handsets capable of rich, mobile commerce providing an ideal environment for the convergence of mobility and the web. Mobile devices are becoming computers in their own right, with an astounding amount of processing ability and bandwidth. Organizations are seeing an increase in www.mobilityindia.com
the employee productivity and happiness that tablets bring to the business culture. But such rapid adoption of tablets can leave organizations vulnerable to data loss from insiders, both malicious and well-meaning. With tablets in hand, the concern has become insiders that fly under the radar of IT to access and send sensitive data, and in the case of the malicious insider, steal highly confidential intellectual property. Next Generation Analytics
Large amount of data being generated by big number of interactions done by the enterprise will result in the advent of next generation analytics. Increasing compute capabilities of computers including mobile devices along with improving connectivity are enabling a shift in how businesses support operational decisions. It is becoming possible to run simulations or models to predict the future outcome rather than to simply provide backward looking data about past interactions. While this may require significant changes to existing operational and business intelligence infrastructure, the potential for unlocking significant improvements in business results and other success rates exists. MOBILITY
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Trends in Enterprise
Social Collaboration As we see is today the impact of social media is increasing on a daily basis.
Social media can be divided into: Social Networking, social collaboration and social publishing – As part of social networking, Social profile management products such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Friendster as well as social networking analysis technologies that employ algorithms to understand and utilize human relationships for the discovery of people and expertise. Under the umbrella of Social Collaboration: Technologies such as wikis, blogs, instant messaging, collaborative office, and crowdsourcing. And Social Publishing involves Technologies that assist communities in pooling individual content into a usable and community accessible content repository such as YouTube and Flickr. In addition to the above we also have, Social Feedback: Gaining feedback and opinion from the community on specific items as witnessed on YouTube, Flickr, Digg, etc. In light of the above categorization of the social realm, we feel that moving forward, social technologies will be integrated with most of the ongoing business applications and companies should bring together their social CRM, internal communications and collaboration, and public social site initiatives into a coordinated strategy. Visuals and Video Video is already having a lot of impact in today’s internet interactions. Video is not a new media form, but its use as a standard media type as being used in nonmedia companies is expanding rapidly. Technology trends in digital photography, consumer electronics, web, social software, unified communications, digital and Internet based television and mobile computing are all reaching critical tipping points MOBILITY
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that bring video into the mainstream. As a result more and more enterprise will have to look at having a visual and video strategy in order to remain competitive. Over the next 3 years, video will become a commonplace content type and interaction model for most users; and by 2013, more than 25% of the content that workers see in a day will be dominated by pictures, video or audio. For product companies this would translate towards making available their product details in video format and for the enterprise segment this would surely mean that they would need video help in order to solve their application puzzles. Social Behavior Analytics S o c i a l analytics describes the process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting the results of interactions and associations among people, topics, and ideas. These interactions may occur on social software applications used in the workplace, in internally or externally facing communities or on the social web. Social analytics is an umbrella term that includes a number of specialized analysis techniques such as social filtering, social network analysis, sentiment analysis and social media analytics. Context-aware Computing In a world which is always changing, context-aware computing centers on the concept of using information about an end user or an objects environment, activities, connections and preferences to improve
the quality of interaction with that end user. The end user may be a customer, business partner, or employee. Driving on the change, a contextually aware system anticipates the user needs and proactively serves up the most appropriate www.mobilityindia.com
and customized content, product or service. Moving forward, more and more enterprise will be looking into this trend very closely. Storage Class Memory Experts close to the industry believe that there will be a huge use of flash memory in consumer devices, entertainment equipments and other embedded IT systems. It also offers a new layer of storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages like space, heat, performance and ruggedness. Unlike RAM, the main memory in servers and PCs, flash memory is persistent even when power is removed. In that way, it looks more like disk drives where information is placed and must survive power-down and reboots. Securing the Web W i t h availability of more and more information on the web, securing data b e c o m e s increasingly critical for an enterprise customer. With several security breaches in 2011, exploits, and notorious hacks, security professionals will only want to learn from the past events and future predictions. Surely, the explosion in sales of smartphones has captured cyber criminals attention and as a result, 2011 saw significant real growth in the amount of mobile malware. Emergence of Telepresense Even though the concept of telepresense is not that new in the market, t h e current scenario is likely to encourage enterprise customers in terms of seriously looking towards this communications-friendly technology that will deliver connectivity between two myriad locations and increase chances of profitability for an enterprise. January 2012 | 17
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Mobility Analysis
Harnessing the Power of Ethernet
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hen it comes to mission critical communications infrastructure, Ethernet has surely become the ubiquitous Enterprise LAN technology with over 90% of all data traffic terminating on an Ethernet port. The biggest and most important benefits of simplicity, flexibility and low cost have made Ethernet the natural technology choice for evolution beyond the LAN and
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into the metro network environment of the modern era. Connectivity services such as Ethernet Private LAN and Ethernet Virtual Private Line along with application services such as Ethernet Internet Access have emerged to provide the much needed advantages of Ethernet and at the same time deliver the following benefits into the Metro: • Flexible service scalability www.mobilityindia.com
• Economical scalability • Lower operational costs • Faster service delivery And these Metro Ethernet benefits can potentially deliver up to 70% savings over traditional Internet Access and Private Line service alternatives for an enterprise, and this is the reason enterprise segment is going gaga over the deployment of Ethernet technology. MOBILITY
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Mobility Analysis
Pressing Economic and business requirements are pushing the enterprises of all sizes to re-evaluate and reinvent their current IT networks. In the last decade, broad estimates state that LAN capacity has increased 100 fold and backbone networks have averaged a 300fold increase in capacity. One area where this is especially evident is in the metro area, where data services such as Private Line networking (using T1s or Frame Relay PVCs), Internet access, and legacy Transparent LAN are falling short of enterprise requirements for flexible and economic scalability. To demonstrate the economic advantages of Ethernet-based services, a business case was completed quantifying the annual metro data service cost savings generated by Ethernet-based Internet Access and Private Line services as compared to similar services over traditional networks. Metro Ethernet Services at a Glance Ethernet’s compelling value proposition for enterprise customers combined with its adaptability to run equally well over both native Ethernet on fiber or SONET transport infrastructures, has convinced service providers of all types to introduce high-value metro Ethernet services to complement their service offerings. These services typically include: • Ethernet Internet Access Services: This specific application service is an example of a turnkey dedicated Internet access service; Ethernet Internet Access provides an alternative to inflexible private line and Frame Relay methods. • Ethernet Virtual Private Line Services: This connectivity service is an alternative to present private line and Frame Relay services, Metro Ethernet Private Line services provide the same dedicated bandwidth and unparalleled security but over a simple Ethernet interface. • Ethernet Private LAN Services: This connectivity service is similar to legacy Transparent LAN services. Ethernet Private LAN services provide LAN-toLAN metro Ethernet connectivity over shared network resources. Taking care of the enterprise investment towards IT, these services have significant benefits over traditional metro data services by providing the following benefits: MOBILITY
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• Flexible Service Scalability: The flexibility of Ethernet enables service scalability from 1 Mbps to 1 Gbps in granular (e.g.: 1 Mbps) increments within the network. • Economical Scalability: Metro Ethernet services also provide far more economical service turn-up and scalability than traditional metro data services. Enterprises overall costs are immediately reduced with the elimination of substantial up-front capital outlay for expensive router or ATM access devices. • Lower Support Costs: Metro Ethernet services dramatically reduce enterprise engineering and operational support costs by eliminating much of the operational complexity associated with traditional metro data services. Because Metro Ethernet utilizes the same protocol, frame format, and frame size as familiar LAN Ethernet deployments, the need to maintain
expensive, specialized IT staff versed in the configuration, management and maintenance of multiple protocols is reduced. • Faster Service Delivery: With the flexibility of software-provisioned bandwidth-on-demand, capacity can www.mobilityindia.com
change just as dynamically as business requirements. Ethernet Galore As greater number of enterprise move ahead to realize the full potential of Carrier Ethernet, experts opine that its market is likely to reach $9.7 billion by the year 2015. And with a number of metroarea and wide-area Ethernet services are easily being made available from all major data service providers in the country, the Carrier Ethernet market is expected to grow at a compounded rate of almost 25%, increasing from $3.1 billion in 2010 to reach nearly $9.7 billion by 2015. Specifically speaking, Ethernet is a frame-based computer networking technology which is being used in more than 90% local area networks (LANs). Globally recognized, Ethernet protocol defines the wiring and signaling standards for the physical layer and the method of network access (Media Access Control (MAC)) at the Data Link Layer. In today’s fast changing global as well as Indian scenario, Ethernet technology is increasingly being used in Metro Ethernet networks and WAN Ethernet networks to provide an alternative to other data network services. Metro Ethernet services are primarily used as an access method to connect to data centers or to replace point-to-point private lines. And this is prompting most of the enterprise end customers to go for Ethernet and putting their mission critical VOIP, video and other related applications on Ethernet communications infrastructure. In the past years, communications focused services were targeted to pricesensitive, geographically concentrated enterprise buyers only but in today’s context their demands have been upgraded by a far greater level of availability towards "carrier grade Ethernet" with improved service characteristics which make sure that SLAs and ensured and delivered as well. And as more and more enterprises move towards deployment of better end-user friendly applications and IT or communications infrastructure, they are increasingly finding it inclined towards Ethernet because of its feature-rich capabilities and delivery of critical SLAs on black and white. Moving forward, Ethernet technology is surely going to stay for sure and deliver to enterprising CIOs, the much needed flexibility and greater control over their technology investments on the long run. January 2012 | 19
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Smart Enterprise
Business Intelligence Enabling Enterprise Knowledge As enterprise segment looks for better information when it comes to making business critical decisions, BI or business intelligence applications are turning out to be the solution to all information and knowledge sharing based issues for an enterprise
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t a time when there is cut-throat competition within all the segments for an enterprise, the scenario automatically calls for the survival of the fittest, the IT industry is always looking for better optimization in a business environment. In this kind of scenario, Business Intelligence and Analytics has been considered as the topmost priority for a CIO according to several surveys and reports. Though in the past we have been hearing of globally well established vendors such as SAP, Teradata, Oracle, Sybase etc who have been focusing heavily on this market, we are now looking at a lot of start-ups that have emerged in India, which are solely focusing only on BI and Analytics segment. According to global research firm, 20 | January 2012
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Gartner, the BI and analytics market has evolved gradually over the years and will continue to evolve in the coming few years. There are key trends that will shape up the business intelligence and analytics market. For instance, the use of collaborative tools and social media has increased manifold over the past recent years and its application for all businesses across industries and verticals has become imperative. Moving forward this trend is likely to continue and more and more enterprise will come to open up towards social media. According to IDC, the Indian BI software market is set to grow at a CAGR of 35.9% during 2006-11 in India. CIOs and IT managers are increasingly being requested to invest in technologies that drive business transformation and www.mobilityindia.com
strategic change and BI is presenting one such opportunity to them. Smaller and mid-size organizations are becoming an important target market for BI vendors. Another positive driver is the use of BI functions in customer facing website applications as a value-adding service differentiator, using Rich Internet Application (RIA) techniques. While BI standardization projects are increasing, departmental projects are also on the rise, especially those provided by smaller horizontal analytics specialists and within emerging technologies, such as inmemory BI, search and visualization. Few companies that have been gaining ground in the recent past are Manthan Broadband, ActiveCubes, MuSigma, Enteg, Marlabs, Aditi Technologies, iCreate Software, and QlikTech who are now MOBILITY
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Smart Enterprise
giving a tough competition to companies such as SAP, Teradata, SAS Institute, and Oracle. We are also seeing a lot of consolidation happening in this space especially from companies such as IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and Teradata to strengthen its position in the market. The start-ups in India now need to really build breakthrough solutions and provide a value proposition to the customers in order to survive in this cut-throat market. What is Business Intelligence? Business intelligence or (BI) in short, refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes. BI technologies provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations. Common functions of business intelligence technologies are reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining and predictive analytics. Business intelligence aims to support better business decision-making. Thus a BI system can be called a decision support system or (DSS). The term business intelligence is sometimes used as a synonym for competitive intelligence, because they both support decision making, BI uses technologies, processes, and applications to analyze mostly internal, structured data and business processes while competitive intelligence gathers, analyzes and disseminates information with a topical focus on company competitors. Business intelligence understood broadly can include the subset of competitive intelligence. Often BI applications use data gathered from a data warehouse or a data mart. However, not all data warehouses are used for business intelligence, nor do all business intelligence applications require a data warehouse. BI & Analytics Trends If we closely look at the BI segment there are quite a few trends that are shaping up this segment within the country. Experts close to the industry believe that the idea of mobility will be an important trend in the BI space. It is expected that business ownership will increase with growth of mobility in the BI segment. Another key trend in business MOBILITY
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intelligence and analytics space is the fast understanding among the enterprise that BI and Analytics are 2 sides of the same coin, hence both of these technology focused applications go hand in hand. Another sign of BI inflow is that a lot of dashboards for an enterprise are evolving into huge information stores, hence giving rise of agile self service, real-time analytics, open source maturity, pervasive analytics where operational smart systems are back propagating, improved data visualization, and business intelligence with the help of mobiles and other convergence friendly devices. Moving forward, advanced analytics will be a key trend that will play a key enabler in turning data into insightful information and this will accelerate as organizations strive to move from running BI applications and solutions to being a comprehensive analytics competitor. Buoyed by the way enterprise segment is moving towards embracing IT and communications infrastructure, the market in India is expanding on account of increasing IT adoption across industry verticals, increasing competition and globalization. And as a result, Indian enterprises are adopting these solutions in an effort to overcome the challenges of competition and globalization and at the same time go for better profitability regime. It is interesting to note that noted trends in the BI and analytics space point to a steady transition from a technology oriented view to a business solutions and applications and enablement view; which basically translates to the focus being shifting from BI and analytical tools and technologies to vertical-specific solution. Hence in today’s scenario, Business Intelligence is more of a business driven decision and not IT driven decision for IT managers and CIOs. In-memory analytics, operational BI and dashboards, compliance, social media for BI, and fraud and security are few trends that will shape up the BI market in India for the coming months and years. BI Challenges in India When we talk about the Indian market, there are several challenges when it comes to adoption of BI and Analytics within the enterprise segment. At the basic level CIOs and IT concerned managers need to have a better grip upon the BI and analytics space, in order to device and formulate better strategies www.mobilityindia.com
for their enterprise. And once this is done, they will be in a better position to define what is needed and what kind of BI quality should be desired and expected from the application level. Today, enterprises still devote a lot of time towards grappling with the vital needs to get the right data to the right people at the right time. Mixing the right kind of diverse data needed for business intelligence, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and regulatory compliance remains largely an unrealized goal and this is where the industry needs to improve upon in order to better establish BI best practices in India. In addition to the above, cost of implementation, quality of data and adoption by end user are some key concerns for CIOs as well. BI on the Cloud As cloud is catching up with almost all the IT applications, BI is not left alone as well. As a result, today, BI on the cloud is a much talked about concept. Cloud computing centralizes common IT systems or applications, giving many different users access to these applications via the Internet or an internal corporate network - intranet. This way, users do not need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud that supports the IT system or application. Considering the fact that there is a huge amount of acceptance of the cloud based delivery model in India today, BI applications on the cloud is fast emerging as a big segment and enable orchestration of business processes in the cloud which would allow companies to further enhance their SaaS based solution offering by way of process automation, reporting, monitoring, analytics, which is termed as Process as a Service. The Road Ahead As more and more enterprise customers are looking at an integrated approach towards solving their data intelligence issues, BI and analytics is surely turning out to be an easy way to accomplish this. Keeping in mind the kind of IT penetration and traction that is happening at the enterprise level, global BI vendors along with their Indian counterparts are set to target this segment in a better manner and doe out focused BI applications and customized solutions that will immediately catch the eyeballs for an enterprising CIO. January 2012 | 21
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Winning with Virtualization W
ith enterprise segment continuously looking at reducing on their existing expenditures on IT infrastructure, global IT vendors are placing their virtualization card well and in this scenario, server/storage virtualization will find its way into production in a big way. The rising competition among infrastructure vendors is expected to result in market disruption, and consolidation over the next few years with the technology undergoing a sea change. For any CIO or an IT manager, centralizing administrative tasks and improving the scalability, and work loads has always remained a challenge, be it a large enterprise or an SMB. Virtualization as a disruptive technology has been able to address this issue. The competition is expected to rise, as several infrastructure vendors are now offering their solution on the virtualization platform. Some of the key players in the virtualization (server and storage) space are VMware, Citrix, Avaya, Cisco, Hitachi, NetApp, Red Hat, EMC, HP, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, Symantec, and Quest Software to mention a few, but the list is endless. Value of Vistualisation As more and more 22 | January 2012
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customers are realizing the importance of increasing their profitability while keeping a tab on their existing IT budgets, the use of static x86 server configurations is quickly becoming an outdated concept with the introduction of modern IT solutions based on blade architectures, which can offer both intelligent configuration and management and the ability to perform physical-to-virtual migration to promote uptime and efficient resource usage. And when this is combined with the quickly maturing x86 hypervisor technologies available from a variety of solution providers, the synergy of blade architectures and virtualization offers customers the ability to immediately increase utilization of their server investments, boost uptime, provide a more resilient and available infrastructure, and roll out new infrastructure and services more quickly. On the other hand experts close to this segment say that these same technologies can also lower costs both directly, through an immediate reduction in power and cooling costs, and indirectly, through a reduction in IT administrative costs associated with server hardware and the layers of infrastructure software management. But one big fact remains that there is a www.mobilityindia.com
huge potential to lower IT costs by moving to a virtualized infrastructure and that the savings can be quite significant and help the enterprise in terms of saving on their OpEx and CapEx. And most importantly, adopting a simple virtualized infrastructure can result in a reduction of up to 35% of total annual server costs per user compared with an unvirtualized static x86 server configuration. This starting point of virtualization refers to basic x86 server consolidation using virtualization software. It is commonly applied to test and development environments, along with at least some production use. And in this type of scenario, the use of more advanced virtualization technology, along with increasingly sophisticated systems management tools that manage both the guest environments and the virtualization engines themselves, can further extend the benefits of virtualization significantly. And according to the industry experts, an optimally managed or "advanced virtualization" infrastructure, described as an infrastructure that includes penetration of virtualized servers of more than 25%, storage virtualization, and the use of systems management tools, can deliver a total reduction of up to 52% per user per year. MOBILITY
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In today’s virtualization friendly world, integrated solutions from vendors such as HP, which offers the HP Insight Dynamics - VSE in conjunction with the company’s HP c-Class BladeSystem products, provides essentially all of the same benefits of a basic virtualization scenario through a hardware based solution. In addition, this solution can utilize a hypervisor to further extend customer benefits and, in that scenario, delivers some of the attributes that are quite critical for an advanced virtualization scenario. Changing Market Dynamics Experts believe that virtualization will become more of an essential technology for the enterprise this e rather than anything else for the year 2012. The virtualization market witnessed high growth rates, growing from a small base. The market potential to grow is still significantly huge. Customers are still virtualization a minority percentage of their data centers due to factors such as high price, less than bare-metal performance, security concerns, management hurdles, and issues in application transitioning. Other reason for not acceptance virtualization is the retraining required for new software, recertification of applications, and prohibitively high cost than the cost savings. As enterprises accelerate the need for more dynamic and converged infrastructure that is on a global scale and dimension, global vendors are pushing their IT solutions which are ideal for the Virtual Era. These solutions by global vendors are ideally suited to deliver Enterprise customers a transition to an open, cloud-like model that can help them in terms of standardizing, simplifying, and automating. In it very important to note that server virtualization market in India has gone past the initial hurdle of justifying its adoption at the enterprise level. It is now a matter of whether to put production of applications onto virtualization or not, and if so then what percentage of such applications should be virtualized and at what level. A comparision of annual server cost per user for three types of deployment: 1. Unvirtualized — physical x86 server/ physical OS usage/no virtualization and systems configured at less than 10% capacity 2. Basic virtualization — x86 server MOBILITY
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consolidation via virtualization without advanced functionality such as live migration and with limited automation and management applied selectively; systems achieve from 20% to 40% capacity utilization; common deployment for test and development scenarios, but limited production use 3. Advanced virtualization — widely virtualized infrastructure (>25%), including both server virtualization and at least some storage virtualization; use of management tools and automation tools such as workload redistribution and automatic workload migration — used both on live VMs and on cold OS images — for meeting servicelevel agreements and availability goals; systems achieve 40% to 60% or more capacity utilization Experts in the industry believe that organizations using x86 solutions should begin to adopt next generation solutions as quickly as product adoption timelines permit. By so doing, organizations will gain better utilization of server resources and reductions in acquisition, deployment, and power and cooling costs. Further, the reduction of staffing costs and increasing business agility translate into long-term benefits that for years to come will deliver ongoing returns on the investment required to put this in place initially. Server Virtualization at the Helm Since its global inception in the early 2000s, virtual machine and hypervisor software technology aboard x86 servers has quickly become one of the most talked-about new technologies in IT infrastructure. Interestingly, the ability to virtualize servers at will and reclaim excess capacity has caught the interest of datacenter managers who are facing difficult power and cooling problems, the need for additional IT capacity to react to market changes, and a lack of significant capital resources. In this scenario, the first phase of customer adoption of virtualization is really a continuation of a trend in the industry that began in 2000. Predominantly, this phase involved IT simplification. During the economic downturn that followed the dot-com boom, customers recognized the need for datacenter consolidation, physical server consolidation, and asset inventory controls. www.mobilityindia.com
It is interesting to note that by the year 2003 the market began to evolve toward a shift in the nature of the adoption of virtualization software on x86 servers. About 70% of all virtualization software deployments in 2003 were related to software development and testing — taking an emerging technology and applying it inside a sandbox of large organizations’ test and development labs for consolidation purposes. But by the end of 2005, the spending was predominantly shifting from consolidating software development and testing environments toward consolidating applications within the production part of the IT infrastructure of an enterprise. And hence, the focus was on securely encapsulating multiple applications to drive up utilization and drive down power and cooling expenses. Since then, the industry has transitioned to focus more heavily on production-level consolidation, which continues today as a primary motivator for customers bringing virtualization within their organizations. In the meantime, in their bid to eye this space, a number of competitive solutions entered the market, including multiple implementations of the open source Xen hypervisor technology, which has been integrated into both mainstream commercial Linux distributions and nonpaid Linux distributions and, in several cases, has been commercially packaged into a standalone product. The industry has seen other related developments that offer similar value propositions that in some cases can reduce the need for a hypervisor. But more often, these solutions will work in concert with hypervisors to deliver a higher overall value proposition. Most of the virtualization solutions include sophisticated blade-based designs that deliver some of the same attributes associated with pure hypervisor technology, including the ability to move workloads from one blade to another, to proactively move a workload based on an impending failure, and to restart a failed workload aboard a healthy blade. These capabilities augment and extend the value proposition offered by software hypervisor technology. Moving forward, this trend is likely to continue and virtualization will play a very important role in terms of taking the enterprise set of customers another notch up towards achieving better profitability and sustainability. January 2012 | 23
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Mobility Review
Lenovo Thinkpad — Elegant Companion L
enovo recently launched its IdeaPad and ThinkPad tablets. Like in the case of their laptops, the IdeaPad is targeted at the general audience, while the ThinkPad is skewed more towards office productivity. Design and Build Quality: The design of this 10.1-inch tablet is reminiscent of Lenovo’s Thinkpad laptops. The allblack shell with a soft matte finish on the back panel exudes class and lends a sturdy feel. On the other hand measuring 58.4 x 181.7 x 14 mm, it’s quite bulky for a 10.1-inch tablet. It’s not svelte like the Galaxy Tab 750, which makes it a bit uncomfortable to use handheld, but it doesn’t matter when you’re using it at your desk. A SIM card slot and an SD card slot are also present, but they’re hidden behind a plastic flap. On the opposite side, you have the volume rocker and a hollow compartment to store the digitizer pen that’s included in the bundle. The pen uses a single AAA battery and comes with two Rs 44,870 additional tips. The power button is placed on the longer side right above the camera and on the opposite side features a full size USB 2.0 port, which has been placed very interestingly indeed. The keyboard folio adds value to the tablet, but it’s an optional accessory that costs Rs 6,129. It serves the same purpose as the dock, which the Asus EeePad Transformer users, but this one neither features a battery pack nor a USB port. The tablet snugly fits into the housing and you can incline it at one of the three angles depending on your viewing comfort. The keyboard has large keys and the layout is standard with a row of keys on the top for commonly used functions, such as volume control, home, zoom, media playback, back and delete. Interface: The Lenovo ThinkPad runs Android Honeycomb 3.1 and the hardware that it uses is similar to that used in other 10.1-inch tablets of its class – 1 GHz dualcore processor, 1GB RAM and graphics powered by Nvidia Tegra 2. This tablet is available in two capacity variants – the 32GB model costs Rs.44,871 and the 64GB model costs Rs.47,871. Since there’s a difference of a few thousand rupees between the two capacities, it’s wiser to go in for the latter, if your budget allows you.
Sony Tablet S — The Style King S
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ony has made a debut in the flourishing tablet market with two distinctly designed devices – Tablet S and the Tablet P. The Tablet S sports a stylish and sophisticated look, while the Tablet P turns heads over its dual screen, clutch form factor. Bold and Beautiful: Sony devices are known for spewing stylish looks, for instance the VAIO range. The Sony tablet S isn’t an exception and sports a sophisticated look in black and silver. Crafted in a wedge shape, it offers an angle for better typing, the curvy upper edge with a grid pattern (plastic material covering more than half of the backside) stretches on to the rear side, making it look like a folded paper sheet. About 1.5cm at its thickest part, the rear grid-like design ensures a firm grip, even while holding it in one hand. The backside shows a 5MP camera and it also has a 0.3MP front facing camera. The power port is on the lower edge. The front is glossy with a 9.4-inch TFT capacitive touchscreen display featuring 800 x 1280 pixels resolution. At 625 grams, it is heavier than the iPad 2 and Samsung Galaxy 750. The tablet has a thick side, which is made of a silver plastic panel - it feels a little cheap. The Tablet S runs on Android Honeycomb 3.2, which we’ve seen earlier on the Samsung 750 (layered with the Samsung Touch UI) and the Motorola Xoom. This version of the Android OS has been specifically crafted to suit the need of tablet users. Sony has enhanced the UI with several tweaks exclusive to its tablet like the favorites icon has been added on the top left next to the Apps icon. Moreover, a row of quick launch buttons are placed on the right upper corner - Browser, e-mail, remote control and news feeds. Honeycomb UI: The screen offers fairly good touch response, but it can't match up to the iPad. There are several instances when the device came across as sluggish and laggy, while responding. Navigation is just about fine, with specs like Nvidia Tegra 2, dual-core Cortex processor and 1GB RAM, which are pretty similar to most of the tablets in its class. Sony had added its touch in the form its own app store called selectApp, apart from the access to the vast Android Market. We received the 16GB unit that supports an SD card up to 32GB. Now, once you pop in the SD card, the device asks you to transfer data to the internal memory , also giving an option transfer it to the SD card back. 24 | January 2012
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Mobility Review
Fly Vision Tablet The Smart Choice
ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101G The Performance Gizmo Rs 43,000
T Rs 7,300
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ly is a fairly popular brand in India, best known for their entry-level mobile phones has launched its Vision Tablet in the market. The company has recently launched one of the most economical tablets available in the market, second only to the Akaash tablet. But money isn’t the only consideration of course, so read on to find out if the value of the Fly Vision meets its price tag. Design and Quality It is equipped with a 7-inch resistive touchscreen, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 800 x 480. This means that one can use a stylus or fingers (but will need to tap the display with a little more effort) to access the various onscreen options. One side of the bezel has a brushed metal finish and on it is a singular ‘Home’ button. This tablet is designed in landscape mode and the top is where the buttons such as on/off, menu and return keys are placed. On the bottom of the slate are where all the ports are located. These include a full-size USB port, a mini-USB port, DC-in for charging, a 3.5mm audio jack, as well as a MicroSD card slot. There is a 2GB memory card that comes along with it and the storage capacity can be expanded to 16GB. Overall, the design is pretty neat and the brushed metal strip on the face adds to the style factor. It is pretty slim as well and can easily fit in the back pocket of a pair of jeans or a handbag. The tablet is not really heavy as well and carrying it around does not pose a problem. The Fly Vision tablet runs on a stock version of Android 2.2 Froyo. On the home page and the main menu, there are no enhancements present. However, the media players for audio and video do feature some enhancements. The home screen is pretty simple looking and it appears like Fly has just added Froyo on this tablet without any customization from their end. We don’t have much of a problem with this, except for the fact that we would like brands to set themselves apart from the rest. 26 | January 2012
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he Transformer TF101G is a tablet for leisure and a netbook for work, just what the end customers are looking for actually.
Design and Built The Transformer comes in two parts, there’s the tablet itself and the keyboard dock which further expands its functionality. Let’s start with the tablet. Measuring just 12.9mm in thickness, it’s really slim and light too, at just 695g. The Galaxy Tab 750 still remains the slimmest and lightest 10.1-inch tablet though. Instead of a plain, boring back, Asus have gone with a nice patterned design and the colour is very eye catching as well. The tablet sports an IPS panel and a scratch-resistant glass for added protection. Connectivity wise, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack with support for a microphone as well, mini-HDMI (Type C) connector, microSD card slot while the left side houses the SIM card slot (For the TF101G model only) and the volume rocker and power/sleep button. While the TF101G does accept SIM cards, it does not support telephony functions. It does however come with 16GB memory, Gyroscope and E-compass and stereo speakers with SRS. Now, let’s turn our attention to the dock. If you thought this was just a plain old keyboard, then you're sadly mistaken. About the same size as a 10-inch Eee PC keyboard, the dock weighs another 640g, which brings the grand total to about 1.3kg which is more or less what a typical netbook weighs. The dock is equally slim and continues the same patterned design on the base as well. The four rubber feet help give it some grip when placed on a desk. The keyboard is your regular chiclet styled one but instead of the function keys, we have shortcuts for media, brightness, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even a button to lock the screen. You simply dock the tablet in and it locks in place, transforming it into a netbook. The multi-touch trackpad supports two finger gestures so you can move through the home screens by swiping it left or right and swipe it up or down to scroll. Pinch-to-zoom is also present in the gallery and browser.
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Mobility Review
Nokia Lumia 710 Beauty and Inteligence
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t a thickness of 12.5 mm, Lumia 710 is not the thinnest phone in the market currently but it’s got a contoured and curved back which gives it an overall ‘slim’ feeling. The 710 - from all sides The front consists of the 3.7-inch ClearBlack capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and Corning Gorilla Glass protection. The speaker is located at the back alongwith a five megapixel shooter, an LED flash and the first of the two noise cancellation microphones. We couldn’t really locate the second one, but we’re assuming it’s underneath the chassis or is clubbed next to one of the holes for the speakers. The 710 comes with an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and magnetometer sensor (for GPS assistance).
The top of the phone consists of the microUSB slot, the power button and the headphone jack, while the microSIM slot is located beneath the 1300mAh battery. The volume rocker and camera shutter buttons are located on the right. The Lumia 710 listened to us! The Lumia 710 feels extremely solid in the hand and comes as a welcome relief from all that Android ‘plasticy-ness’ we have been subjected to in the recent past. At a weight of 125.5 grams, the 710 has the right balance of being light as well as sturdy. In terms of design and build, the Lumia 710 nails it, and is easily one of the best out there in the same price bracket. A combination of a 1.4 GHz single core Scorpion processor, a Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset and Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, seems to work fantastically
Rs 18,500 well for the Lumia 710. It’s fast, zippy and shows no signs of lagging down and if you’re new to the Windows Phone world, we’ll describe it in one word for you, its eye candy. In terms of looks alone, Android’s grid UI or even Apple’s UI stick out like a sore thumb in front of the brilliant, almost magical, use of colours in the phone’s user interface.
Samsung Galaxy Note — Elegance with Panache Price – Rs 31,750
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hile the Galaxy Note is no doubt large and looks huge; when placed next to the slimmer Galaxy S II, but it is most certainly not ungainly. There is clearly no evolutionary theme evident in the jump from the sleeker Galaxy S II to the bulkier Galaxy Note, except that Samsung took a more mature and practical approach while conceptualizing the Note. The phone is about 9.7mm thick, and weighs around 178g. It’s not a thick phone, but it is definitely on the heavier side. Coming from the Galaxy S II, which weighs an anorexic 116g, the Note’s near-200grams (including the Flip Cover) is noticeably heavy. Even with its large size, Samsung has done well by keeping the device relatively slim and conveniently portable. It’ll slip right into your pocket without making it uncomfortable for you to go about your regular day. The rounded gun-metal borders make holding and gripping easy, and using gun-metal on the borders makes sense, because those areas will be the most frequent hand contact points. The gun-metal paint on the plastic stylus pen is already eroding; thankfully, this won’t be the case with the rest of the body. Because such a large portion of the phone is the screen, and the protective glass that covers it, the front of the phone MOBILITY
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looks typically like an overgrown iPhone, except the minor differences in home button and size. standard
the shape T h e back cover is a flimsy paper-thin piece of plastic, which leaves the protective glass over the camera lens jutting out, it will get scratched the very first time you place it flat on its back. The Flip Cover serves no real purpose, other than to provide the 5.3-inch display with a little more protection, and also cleans it with its inside felt finish. The quality of the Flip Cover though leaves a lot to be desired, and within a few days of use you will see it fray along the edges, with the rubberized coating coming off.
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Mobility Review
Maxx MTP9 Focus— Best Value for Money
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axx Mobiles has entered this arena with its MTP9 projector phone. In addition to having an inbuilt projector, it’s of the touch variety and has a few goodies packed within its tiny candybar shell. The MTP9 Projector Phone comes with a dual tone finish of black and silver. It’s quite thick because of the inbuilt projector and is predominantly made of hard plastic that give it a slight cheapish feel. However, it did survive a few falls, so it could just be the look and not the build that feels that way. There are three buttons underneath the 2.8 inch screen – two for calling purposes and one to go back to the screen. The right consists of the volume rocker, placed next to the extremely closely placed camera button and microUSB port. The power ON button is located at the top and the speakers and heatsink (remember it’s a projector phone) are located on the back and sides. Did we miss the 3.5 mm jack? Nope, because the phone doesn’t have one, so the only way to Rs 6,299 listen to music is via the microUSB slot. The MTP9 comes with a projector stand, which again is made of complete plastic with an air cushion at the bottom. However, in terms of functionality, it’s extremely useful because the phone slots perfectly onto the stand and if you want to use the phone for sessions of video playback via the projector, then the stand is definitely helpful. It’s got a 208 MHz processor under the hood and a 2.8 inch resistive touchscreen. Initially, it might not seem too powerful in terms of either speed or functionality but once you’ve got a hang of the feedback the phone is used to (a firm and precise touch) it’s quite decent to use, at best.
Motorola DEFY+ In its Own League Rs 17,100
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otorola’s first try at rugged smartphones was the IP67 certified DEFY and now they’ve launched its successor, the DEFY+. It’s got the same form factor, but the internals seem to have been modified. The DEFY+ is a carbon copy of its predecessor. There are no added curves, screws, or connectors and the design and build is just the same. Well, why change it if you’ve perfected the design, right? This also means that the phone comes with the IP67 certification. The top consists of the headphone jack slot and the power button whilst the microUSB slot is located to the left underneath a rubberised air-tight flap. The back consists of a metallised lock that protects your internals from the harsh environments you intend to use the phone in. The 5 MP shooter and single LED flash is located at the back along with the microphone. On the front we have the 3.7-inch screen with four capacitive buttons below it and proximity and ambient light sensors above it. A notification LED has been included next to the two sensors. In our underwater test, water didn’t seep in through any of the connectors or via the back panel. The internals were completely protected against any kind of contact with liquid and that’s definitely noteworthy. It’s a rough and jagged looking phone that will surely last longer than your average Android device. 28 | January 2012
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