FEBRUARY 2014
DRIVING
INNOVATION
COMPETITION PRODUCTIVITY
SummIT - Technology & Consultancy Cell, NMIMS
EDITOR’S NOTE
TEAM SUMMIT
President SRITEJ BODKAY Vice President
SRIJANANI CHANDRASEKARAN Creatives & Project Head PAYEL CHAKRABORTY Editorial & Seminar Head RAHUL SANGANI Treasurer & Event Head JITENDRA SACHDEV
The digital world around us is immersed in data, be it data from market research, customer records or social networking site feeds. The question is how can we organize the huge amount of data and use it to our benefit. SummIT, the information technology cell of NMIMS, brings to you the various facets of big data through the current edition of newsletter IDEATE. In this edition, we have focused our attention on ‘Big Data and Data Analytics - Drivers of Innovation, Competition, and Productivity’. We received several interesting articles from many B-schools, out of which some of the insightful ones are published for your perusal. We are even more delighted as we have added a new section ‘Expert Speak’ to our quarterly newsletter, where we got industry opinion, insights and current trends to help us understand better. In line with the theme, this time we bring to you the details of an interview with Mr.Rinkesh Arondekar, Senior Market Intelligence Officer at Nissan Motors on big data application, challenges and drivers from Indian and global perspectives. We at SummIT constantly strive to keep you updated with the latest in technology through various updates, news and articles. We hope the contents of this newsletter would interest you. We appreciate your valuable feedback which can be shared at summit@nmims.org. Happy Reading! -The Editor, SummIT
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WHAT IS IN STORE...
EXPERT SPEAK BE-SPECTACLED -Ruchika Panjwani, NMIMS, Mumbai
BIG DATA AND DATA ANALYTICS -Tangirala Kartik Kumar and Manish Prasad, FMS Delhi
BUZZ TECH UPDATES
EVENTS CROSSWORD IDEATE FEBRUARY 2014
EXPERT SPEAK
Mr. Rinkesh Arondekar is Senior Market Intelligence Officer at Nissan Motors with 4.5 years of total experience. Prior to this, he worked as Associate Manager with Mu Sigma on big data applications and projects SummIT: Why has big data become so important lately and what are the primary drivers for big data? Mr. Arondekar: Data Analysis had been always important for running businesses and managers in various industries have been doing data analysis for making decisions. However, it is only now that the importance of big data has been realized. Big Data as an industry and Analytics as a vertical in organizations is coming up. The prime reason being the total amount of data in the world is constantly increasing and the cost of memory is coming down. As Dheeraj Rajaram (Founder, Mu Sigma) says, the amount of data in the world is doubling every 18 months. The internet has also played a crucial role in big data to gain importance. This next 1
generation medium has changed the way people interact, make transactions, consume media and form opinion about brands. Not only the total amount of data is increasing, but also the mediums from which it must be synthesized for analysis have diversified. All this has led to big data becoming increasingly important in organizational decision making. SummIT: How do big data applications combine the data available from social media, mobility and cloud? Mr. Arondekar: Social Media and Mobile Internet Applications are important drivers of consumer data. There are analytics tools available in the market, which helps one synthesize useful data from these medium for decision making. Adobe Social is one such example. These tools help you
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EXPERT SPEAK analyze: Quantity: How much your brand is talked about compared to the competition? Quality: Whether the sentiment about your brand is positive, negative or neutral? Many companies use metrics such as Social Reputation Score (SRS) which combine quantity and quality to provide an overall brand health score on social media. Other metrics exist like Reach, Engagement and Demand. Tracking these over time could provide results on the overall success of and social media promotions over time. The data from social media is more reliable and its analysis actionable as the consumer is naturally responding to his brand experience which is not the case in typical market research setup. However, cloud computing is a technology which relies on sharing computing resources over a distributed network. Many existing online players use cloud in the background. However, it doesn’t impact the way Web Analytics applications work. SummIT: How should an organization get started with big data? Mr. Arondekar: We are living in the world of outsourcing. Services which are not the core focus of any organization should be better outsourced. It is not advisable for B-2-C organizations to start
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with big data analytics themselves. This is not their core purpose. As a first step such organization should take help of big data consultants like Mu Sigma, Latent View or AbsolutData. These companies have expertise and experience to understand client business and they could come up with a framework to take an organization to a desired level of analytics usage step-bystep. It is a mutual learning process where consultant learns about client business and client learns about analytics. Over medium to long term, the client organizations would learn and slowly establish their own analytics vertical. They could either start handling it on their own or if they have deep pockets and have already seen the advantages of analytics in decision making they could open more avenues for these consultants within their business. SummIT: How can the firms utilize big data to their advantage? Mr. Arondekar: Big Data Analytics should be understood as an investment and not as expenditure. In this world of cut-throat competition, it is very important for organizations to make informed decisions. Though the scope of big data Analytics is huge, following are some of the pointers to how an organization could utilize Big data: To keep track of national and regional whole sales, retail sales, distributors etc. 2
EXPERT SPEAK
To achieve operational efficiency eg. Supply Chain Analytics To reach out to the appropriate target customer To understand the drivers of brand health and highlight strong drivers in communication To optimize marketing spends : marketing mix modeling To optimize expenditure for high ROI : financial analytics
SummIT: What benefits can organizations expect from big data in short run and in the long run? Mr. Arondekar: In the short run, the target should be to organize all the available data in a usable form and figure out which other data sources could contribute to enrich the available data pool and to give a reasonably complete picture. Then the company needs to prioritize and focus on one problem at a time. One cannot solve everything at one go. If the organization operates in multiple countries, it should start with one geography first. The organization should take help from consultants and start utilizing big data to make decisions. This initial engagement might take 3 to 6 months, after which the analytical decision making would kick-off. However, it is a continuous learning process and the organizations shouldn’t expect magical results in the short run. After this initial phase, both the consultant and the organ3
ization would know a lot about each other and about where all analytics that could be applied in decision making. Big data Analytics would be much more impactful in the long run and organizations would observe significant change in their way of making decisions. Remember, big data Analytics is an ongoing practice not a one-time fix. SummIT: What are the various challenges faced by the big data analytics provider firms? Mr. Arondekar: Big data firms have a wide range of challenges right from bringing new business to managing human resource. Following is a summary of the complex challenges being faced: To convince the prospects/clients about the power of big data. It is difficult for clients to imagine the future benefits as the initial investment seems high To understand and define the client’s problem as initially the clients aren’t aware of the available problem solving frameworks To ensure a sustainable and increasing revenue stream To recruit right talent. Currently no universities/institutions offer courses in big data. Industry relies on engineering colleges and B-schools to recruit at analyst and managerial levels
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EXPERT SPEAK 
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To train recruits : currently the understanding of statistics limited among engineering grads To retain talent. With 1.5 to 2 years of experience in analytics one gets twice the salary outside and high employee attrition is a result of this.
SummIT: What obstacles stand in the way of big data applications? Mr. Arondekar: Big Data applications have to constantly increase their data handling capacity with increasing data. The analyst expectations for data transformation are also on the rise. Another big challenge is to present the results of complex statistical analysis in an easy to understand form so that executives could quickly understand it and make decisions. The analytics applications have to regularly update themselves to fulfill and over achieve the graphical representation of results. Expectations are also on the rise to provide an easy-to-use interface to use big data applications. This helps managers with a lesser understanding of programming to use such applications. SummIT: What does future of big data analytics hold from a global perspective and an Indian perspective?
Mr. Arondekar: West has always been more open to new ideas, concepts and fast in implementation. In this case also, they are the first ones to accept that it’s worth
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investing in analytics. In India, it would take some more time as it is not economically viable for present analytics consultants to do business in India. Once the cost of big data analytics and software applications reduces and Indian businesses mature we would eventually see analytics being accepted and used in decision making. The analytics companies will have to develop a different cost model for Indian clients so that the cost becomes acceptable. If they want to open their shops to serve Indian clients, they might want to start a few projects on a goodwill basis without charging. SummIT: What metrics are used to measure the investment in Big Data? Mr. Arondekar: Currently, Big Data investment is calculated the same way as IT. And mostly the project billing happens on a head count basis rather than per deliverable basis. Typically, clients start with a pilot engagement when they start with a small problem of limited scope. If they find it productive they go for a longer contract. At times, multiple consultants compete during the pilot for getting the long term contract. The one with the best solution and cost structure gets it. Metrics as simple as ROI could be used. However, the returns could be realized only in the long term.
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ARTICLE
BE-SPECTACLED
- -Ruchika Panjwani SBM, NMIMS, Mumbai
Ruchika is 2nd year student of MBA (Core) at NMIMS, Mumbai. She is a very outgoing person who loves travelling and reading different genre, which includes technology as an important one. “Torture the data and it will tell you everything” - Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize Laureate Big data analytics is the new torturer on the block
What is Big Data? Gartner “The IT research front runner” defines it as a high-volume, velocity and variety information asset that demands cost-effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making. However to define it simply keeping the technical jargon away, I would define it as 5
‘Big Data’ is similar to ‘small data’, but bigger, thus requiring different techniques, tools and architecture to solve new problems or old problems in a better way.
Why Big Data? Big Data is known to have three characteristics which themselves indicate the need for Big Data.
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ARTICLE
The last decade has seen a tremendous increase in unstructured data attributed to the digital revolution. As per CRISIL, today 80% of the data residing in any enterprise is unstructured. The sources being blogs, weather patterns, location co-ordinates, clickstreams, email and social media amongst many others.
This has made traditional analytics largely obsolete and has generated a need for analytics, which can process big data and provide insights, relevant and necessary in today’s world.
Applications for Big Data Analytics While Big Data a few years back would have concerned only the geeks, it is now relevant for leaders across sectors, products and services. Yeah, business leaders can no more run away from its saying it is something our Head of Research Mr. XYZ is looking into!
Like many new Information technology, big data can bring about dramatic cost reductions (money is always important), substantial improvements in the time re-
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quired to perform a computing task, or new product and service offerings also, support internal business decisions, so says the technology advocate.
As per CRISIL, today 80% of the data residing in any enterprise is unstructured.
The sources being blogs, weather patterns, location co-ordinates, clickstreams, email and social media amongst many others. Big Data can help reduce power shortage in India India has the world’s fifth largest power generation capacity; however, it still faces an acute power shortage due to the inability of an inefficient and outdated power infrastructure to meet the growing demand from the public as well as industries. The 2012 grid failure triggered the adoption of smart grid technologies and smart meters, it is however incomplete without 6
ARTICLE upgradation of the traditional systems. These systems have served utilities well in the past, but are not built to handle the frequency and volume of data that will emerge from smart meters and grid devices. Thus, big data analytics becomes our quintessential knight in shining armor.
Big data analytics can be used to look at anomalies and patterns to dig out trends to enable power providers to be better at solving their grave problem of supply and de-
mand.
by analyzing usage patterns at the customer premise and meter level thus providing a more market driven and customized pricing offers which reflect individual consumption characteristics. It is when needs like these are addressed and opportunities like these are leveraged, that the effort to modernize the utilities sector initiated in India will be considered complete.
Big Data – A tool for targeted advertising Targeted advertising is an answer to both optimization of resources and customization to customer demand. It is thus a chief need for government and product companies alike.
At one end of the spectrum operators seek intelligence attached to infrastructure for optimization of processes and at the other end customers demand choice and convenience at affordable costs. Achievement of both is what big data enables. Big data analytics can be used to look at anomalies and patterns to dig out trends to enable power providers to be better at solving their grave problem of supply and demand. For example, based on trends protocols can be established to move customers to alternate feeders during times of over capacity, it can help companies to move away from “one size fits all” services to “My plan” (much like Vodafone) 7
The manifestation of this need can be seen in the popularity it provided Karthik Shahshidhar who successfully predicted Karnataka elections using secondary data of exit polls conducted by other agencies. The way Big Data analytics could fit in the
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ARTICLE picture is by enabling parties to dynamically analyze the pre-election sentiment and deploy advertising resources and human volunteers to the areas that need most attention. This innovation, though sounds like a reality in US where all records are digitally available, can be an innovation in India too by leveraging Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme an extension of the Aadhar project. The data generated about the beneficiaries of the project could help decide further government funding to particular states; it would also help track the improvement and growth within particular states thus improving governments’ focus on particular states for particular schemes.
Its demonstration in private commodity sector is much simpler owing to the advancement of the companies in storage and utilization of data. An early adopter of big data in this sector in India is Bharti Airtel, which handles around 8 billion calls every day, generating petabytes of data and then analyzing it for identifying new revenue opportunities. There are numerous examples to support the big data’s claim to fame, but the discussion is incomplete without the mention of entrepreneurs - the real drivers of innovation and productivity.
competitive world. Bizosys is one such startup which has made its mark in big data ecosystem with its tool HSearch which handles 15 billion risk calculations for an investment bank under a second. Gramener is another one which has helped a large petroleum giant to improve its distribution efficacy using its analytics and visualization. This list is endless, but here is a where I feel I have sufficiently made my point. In the end, information technology is not the end, but only the means to achieve the end. Cloud, social media, big data are the tools we use to reach the ultimate goal of having a satisfied customer. Digital disruption and customer obsession are actually the factors changing the world, but the only way to succeed is by embracing this change.
References: CIO.in | How's India Dealing with Big Data? CIO India News on | CIO.in. The Hindu: Big Data Analytics offers a way to drive business change - The Hindu. Livemint.com - Indian start-ups sense big opportunity in big data - Livemint.
Entrepreneurs with big data analytics as their core capability are not only creating a niche for their firms, but in the process enabling firms to find their leverage in today’s
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Big Data and Data Analytics -Tangirala Kartik Kumar and Manish Prasad FMS, Delhi T.Kartik Kumar is a first year student pursuing MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University. He worked in HCL Technologies as a Web Designer before joining FMS and likes playing football and singing Manish Prasad is a first year student pursuing MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University. Manish worked in the domain of business intelligence in TCS before joining FMS and likes to rap, paint, play drums and table tennis
Big Data and Data Analytics: An Introduction Many companies, social networks, researchers, data analysts and organizations need large amounts of data for many purposes like understanding market trends, military surveillance, data analysis, scientific research etc. Big Data is a collection of such data, or datasets (collection of data) each having a low information density but present in such a huge quantity from 9
which useful information, statistics, patterns, values or inferences can be found if analyzed. As of 2012, every day 2.5 quintillion (2.5Ă—1018) bytes of data were created. Increasing number of data mining and monitoring devices like mobile devices, aerial sensory technologies, software logs, cameras, microphones, radiofrequency identification readers, and wireless sensor networks, social networking interfaces have led to this explosion
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ARTICLE in the amount of data being stored, monitored and recorded at any given point of time. In other words, big data is a buzzword used to describe a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large that it's difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques. These statistics cannot be obtained using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications but need new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization. Gartner defines Big data as, “high volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery and process optimization.� This is also known as the 3V’s model. Veracity is an additional dimension of big data that is considered nowadays. The size of big data varies for companies. For some, a few hundred gigabytes may be a large amount of data from which statistics have to be deduced or inferred while for some the size may me as high as a few terabytes! Some examples of areas where such high data is collected and analyzed include Walmart, which handles more than 1 million customer transactions every hour. In fact, it is predicted that by 2017 the global mobile data traffic itself would reach 11.2 Exabytes per month. This data if quickly analyzed can help in making quick sales decisions, offer daily
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marketing strategies, and understand customer demands. This would give Walmart an edge over its competitors. The NASA Centre for Climate Simulation (NCCS) stores 32 petabytes of climate observations and simulations on the Discover supercomputing cluster for analyzing and monitoring the climate. This information can be used to understand the climate, make future predictions related to weather and climate which will help in making a
number of decisions like monsoon expectancy, and prepare for possible hurricanes, tornados and so on. Big data architectural ecosystem includes Hadoop, HDFS, Hive, HBase, MapReduce, Flume and ZooKeeper. As time is of essence and understanding the various trends of the fast changing world is becoming highly important and relevant, big data has given industries the ability to analyze and utilize vast amounts of data in shorter durations which is imperative to their success in this competitive world.
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ARTICLE Driver of Innovation, Competition, and Productivity Retail
Retailers can understand customer preferences based on demographic and geographic parameters and market situations and stock their products accordingly. Retailers can collect and analyze data from a larger pool of customers. Based on big data analysis products can be modified and enhanced quickly as per the market requirement. . Analysis of CCTV feeds can also be used for strategic product placement by identifying the portions of a retail store with higher visibility among customers. Promotion of products can be done in an organized and selective manner to increase its efficiency by analyzing the number of times an ad is watched, number of clicks on e-commerce websites and the conversion ratio and which customers prefer which mode of promotion.
Banking
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Banks can use data like number of online transactions, ATM withdrawals and calls to call centers can be used to enhance their experience to understand how customers use their differ-
ent channels, such as branches, online, mobile, call centers and ATMs. Banks can understand preferred payment modes and use it to leverage customer experience and give calculated preferences like higher credit card limits, zero demand drafts fee and higher withdrawal limits. Banks can analyze a large pool of data, segregate, and effectively target their services. A 1-crore loan can be given to a client who has the ability (based on data collected) to repay it to improve response rates. Big data is also used for risk evaluation and assessment bolstering bank’s position from monitoring counterparty risk to anticipating and managing it Using big data banks may analyze on which days of the month a customer spends money and send offers accordingly.
Insurance
Insurance comprises of two major divisions: actuarial and underwriting. Both of these are dependent on the analysis of data. Big data analysis in insurance greatly helps pattern identification for customer-centric, risk-centric, and finance-centric activities for development of customer centric product/ service portfolio offering.
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According to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P., “The Insurance Industry in 2012”, insurers using big data can improve their overall performance by facilitating greater pricing accuracy, deeper relationships with customers, and more effective and efficient loss prevention. According to a survey conducted by Novarica, ‘Analytics and Big Data at Insurers: Current State and Expectations’, smaller insurers face an ‘analytics gap’ relative to their larger rivals which can be overcome using big data.
Consumer Products
Customer preferences can be analyzed to create packaging which appeals to their eyes. Higher sale potential can be achieved
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by targeting products to the right consumers at the right locations and at the right time of the year. Efficient Inventory management reduces product cost which makes it more competitive in the market. Latest happenings can be analyzed like Olympics and cricket matches to connect the product with latest happening in the world. This helps consumers in recognizing the product more easily.
References 1. SAS | Business Analytics and Business Intelligence | Whitepaper | wp_49547 2. IBM | IBM big data platform - Bringing big data to the Enterprise. –IBM
3. BankTech | Home - Bank Systems & Technology. How Financial Institutions Can Use Big Data and Converged Data Sets to Improve Customer Loyalty.- BankTech
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BUZZ SATYA NADELLA APPOINTED AS MICROSOFT’S CEO On 4th February, 2014, Microsoft named Satya Nadella as its CEO to succeed Steve Ballmer. Nadella joined the company in 1992 and has worked across breadth of technologies to transform some of biggest product offerings. He had been Senior VP of Research and Development for online services division and most recently was Executive VP of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. He led the transformation of cloud
services which grew from $16.6 billion in 2011 to $20.3 billion in June 2013. He hails from Hyderabad and attained his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, Karnataka. He moved to US to earn MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and an MBA from the University Of Chicago Booth School Of Business. He is taking charge of the company when it is struggling in big growth markets like mobile and search technology. As a person he defines himself by curiosity, has a thirst for learning and believes in taking charge.
BITCOIN: FOOL’S GOLD OR NEW CASH? Cash has several advantages over bank balances. Cash involves no bank fee, no account freezing problem or bank bankruptcy fears, and instant access at all times. However, it is more difficult to use in the eCommerce enabled world today. Bitcoin is a digital alternative to cash. Simply put, the virtual money is stored in a digital wallet, which is stored on your computer or mobile device and can be used using a Bitcoin application.
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By specifying an “address” you can transfer bitcoins or Bitcoin currency to others. “Bitcoin” (capital B) is the currency protocol, or the currency system, while “bitcoins” are representative of the currency. The record of the transactions is kept on multiple systems on the Bitcoin network, meaning it cannot be forged. Also, Bitcoins can be generated in the system, a process called Bitcoin mining by dedicating computing resources for Bitcoin transactions.
To get started, one needs to first get a Bitcoin wallet, such as from the official website (www.bitcoin.org).
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BUZZ After installing the client it can be filled with bitcoins by getting small amounts free on various internet sites, buying them using actual money (Dollars, Rupees etc.), or by trading goods and services over the internet. To spend the money, one can visit the increasing number of eCommerce sites that support Bitcoin payments. But in India, the use is not that widespread, mainly restricted to speculators. Bitcoin offers several advantages as compared to fiat or real currency and bank accounts. It’s a global, decentralised currency, i.e. not country specific. Therefore, it will have the same value the world over, though exchange rates may differ. There are no transaction limits, like daily spending limits, in the Bitcoin system. There is no chance of a frozen account as the money is kept on the local system. One has access to the money at all times. There are no bank charges on transactions and a business can start accepting payments without any fees. On the flip side, just like cash in pocket, it earns no interest. Bitcoin transactions can be risky as they are irreversible. Any frauds cannot be reversed and there are no authorities to appeal to. Right now, the currency is in its nascent stage. So there is risk involved for users, as it may face government restrictions or drop in value. Since it is not backed by a government or bank guarantee, it can be worthless someday. Besides, like a physical wallet, it is possible
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to lose your virtual wallet too, due to corruption of computer memory or loss of mobile device. But this can be guarded against by taking simple measures. As for future trends, more and more websites and even some physical locations are accepting Bitcoin. Right now, it is still very new. The currency is highly volatile. In Jan 2013 it was trading at around $10-$13. Now in Jan 2014 it is at around $950. And when China, (a huge market of Bitcoin exchange) banned new deposits in mid - December 2013, it lost half its value in a single day. Some people consider the current high prices to be a bubble waiting to burst. If this happens, the exchange rates may crash, with people losing a lot of value in investments. Speculative Bitcoin trading may prove to be very risky. It is neither legalised by countries, nor is it banned in most. However, there are major concerns regarding misuse of Bitcoin for money laundering and other criminal purposes as it is untraceable. Governments and central banks around the world are wary and are carefully monitoring Bitcoin. They would not like to give up their right to issue currency that is legally accepted. It might take just a handful of countries putting restrictions on it, to lead to a collapse. Lastly, it is not the only digital currency out there. It can face competition from other currencies, especially as the supply is ultimately limited to 21 million BTC.
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TECH UPDATE 3D PRINTING-WHERE THE FUTURE LIES? is prepared by the printer, something very similar to the concept used by an ink jet printer. A laser beam then heats the metal dust to solidify it. Next, the printer goes on adding layers of metal dust successively to form the final structure, until the final object pops out of the printer much like the paper from a printer.
An exciting new technology has come up which has a potential to revolutionize the way manufacturing is done presently! This technology is called 3D printing or additive manufacturing.It works by building layer by layer development of physical objects using digital models and specific material deposition devices. How is it different from traditional manufacturing? Well, traditional manufacturing works on the principle of ‘subtractive’ method, where the final product is prepared by cutting, drilling and moulding. 3D printing, on the other hand, takes an entirely different approach; it is essentially an additive manufacturing where laser sintering is used. In this process a thin layer of metal 15
3D printing has gained much momentum and can be the next most sought after technological advancement in the 2014. It will overhaul the whole manufacturing process, making it on demand manufacturing, sharply reducing the inventory costs and inducing speed in the whole manufacturing cycle. The basis of 3D printing lies in a set of standard principles. It uses precision material deposition devices to convert the digitally made models into actual physical parts. The complexity of the part is determined by the computing power of the modeling software and the imagination of the designer. Unlike traditional modeling where first simple parts are made and then interconnection is done separately, 3D printing is able to create inter-connected parts too. This is a remarkable and the most striking feature of this technology where the product is produced and ready all at once. What future does 3D printing offer to the world? This technology is at its nascent stage and has a long way to go.
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TECH UPDATE
Those who will dive into it now have great future prospects as it is the next logical step in manufacturing world where lean and greener options are being stressed upon already. A shift in the way processes are run in manufacturing domain will require entirely different skill sets. It will open the doors for the designers who will be in great-
er demand and a mass shift from the manufacturing plant experts to product designers and developers is expected. Some industries that will immediately adopt this technology are food industry – from chocolates in varied shapes and sizes, to cheese and anything and everything made of flour can use this technique which will add to the presentation and visual appeal to the dishes. Another application will be in medicine – from metal limbs and jaw transplants to body braces and orthopedic insoles, this technology will save time, costs and greatly increase the precision of the part to be fitted. Jewellery designing, which has largely been a manual workmanship industry till now, will be hugely impacted and assisted from this technology. Going further there will be many more areas where this technology will prove its mettle.
DID YOU KNOW?
The Obama administration in the US announced $200 million in new R&D investments for “Big Data” initiative in 2012
70% of data is created by individuals – but enterprises are responsible for storing and managing 80% of it!
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EVENTS
There are smart phones, smart TVs, smart cars, but have you ever heard about Smart City? Well, it is no more a Hollywood concept, but it is real and has started to happen in different parts of the world already. You would wonder what this is and how it works. We, at NMIMS got this opportunity to get an insight into the role of Information Technology in making cities smarter and wiser in the times to come. SummIT, the technology cell at NMIMS, held a very interesting guest lecture by Mr. Somnath Mitra, Sr Business Process Consultant IBM India Pvt. Ltd on ‘Business Intelligence System for an IT Enabled City’ in December ’13. Mr. Somnath is working with IBM and holds a rich experience of more than 17 years in the IT industry across various domains. He is working on assignments to make smarter infrastruc17
ture for smart cities in line with IBM’s steps towards innovative solutions for cities. Mr. Somnath addressed students by reminding the tough and dynamic competition and advised to strive hard to achieve their goals. He pointed out that with advancements in the lifestyle and globalization; there is a huge demographic shift towards the cities. With this shift there is a pressure on cities, to develop infrastructure, adopt robust safety measures and improve healthcare services. The new concept of smart cities takes into account this rising burden by integrating various aspects of city operations together and driving them in parallel with the help of business intelligence (BI) systems of IT.
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EVENTS Rio De Janeiro, a culturally rich city, is home to six million people. There is already a burden on the city owing to its age old infrastructure, natural disasters, and increasing crimes. As the city prepares itself for the 2014 world cup and 2016 Olympics, there was felt a need to have a new city operations plan. For this Rio has collaborated with IBM to develop state of the art city by integrating more than 30 agencies into one centralized control center. This command center gathers information from various agencies to predict problems and counteract them. IBM has used its BI systems to help the city prepare, plan and respond to any unexpected emergencies in an effective manner. There is better traffic management, improved health facilities and central emergency response systems and services for the people of Rio. Mr. Somnath demonstrated how things work at the level of an IT enabled smart building. From smart valves for water distribution system, CCTV cameras, security and fire alarms, to electronic device sensors and password protected houses; a smart building integrates everything an infrastructure can have by developing a mechanism in which every device talks to another and can be controlled by the owner or the building manager. This concept has been used in Gurgaon by a few builders. He rightly mentioned that this technology has a promising future for budding
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managers and technology experts, for IT has penetrated into our daily lives as never before.
The new concept of smart cities takes into account the rising burden on cities by integrating various aspects of city operations together and driving them in parallel with the help of business intelligence systems of IT. The session was a success and was attended by both first and second year students. Mr. Somnath gave his insights about the BI technology future in India and scope for managers in this field and the students found it a highly fruitful session.
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Down 4. Small pictorial on screen represen- 1. A business unit within Adobe known as OBU. tation of an object. 2. The name of the wearable device 6. Founded by Phanindra Sama and by Samsung Galaxy. Charan Padmaraju. 3. Video conferencing tool used in 7. An online community that has offices. something in common with NASA. 5. An easy way to earn money from 9. The term "software ________ " your online content. was coined by Mike Murray. 8. Android for nexus 10. 13. One of the characteristics of big 10. Approach to project managedata. ment introduced by Dr. Winston 15. The original name for Zomato. Royce. 16. Changes made to Google logo. 11. Google's answer to Siri. 17. Image-based social media web12. A puzzle originally called number site based around comical images place. dubbed "Fun". 14. A blog is an acronym for?
Answers to the above crossword will be published soon on SummIT facebook page! facebook.com/SummIT.nmims
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THE TECHNOLOGY & CONSULTANCY CELL School of Business Management, NMIMS V. L. Mehta Road, Vile Parle (West), Mumbai – 400056
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