Internet and Technology

The Indian Broadband market is expected to expand almost exponentially over the next five to six years according to a report published recently and it would appear that the use of WiMAX (short for World Interoperability for Microwave Access) is leading the charge with usage expecting to rise to over 21 million users by 2014. WiMAX where installed correctly is designed to provide greater efficiency, development and utilisation of broadband services.

This echoes further additional reports that confirm that the Indian economy is flourishing and the demand for telecommunications networks and services has finally outpaced the availability provided for by what are euphemistically described as conventional legacy wired telecommunications.

It would appear that within the Indian marketplace that vendors, operators and system integrators are all coming together to engineer a bandwidth revolution, the like of which has never been seen before.

Leading the charge in this particular telecommunications sub sector would appear to be Reliance Technology Ventures; the VC (Venture Capital) subsidiary of Mumbai based Reliance AD Group.

One of reliance technology ventures sister companies reliance communications is at present one of India’s largest CDMA (code division multiple access) suppliers and is now serving its intention to move into the GSM marketplace.

It has achieved this by its recent funding of a large undisclosed investment in E-Band, a San Diego based manufacturer and designer of multigigabit wireless communications systems.

Given the current rate of growth within the Indian marketplace industry experts are predicting with current levels of investment and expansion we may be at the beginning of what could possibly be one of the world’s top three WiMAX marketplaces.

At the forefront of this expansion have been major carriers such as Reliance Technologies who are already running commercial WiMAX services in Bangalore. Should these initial tests prove to be successful and if you want to go on initial criteria and that would certainly be the case, they are predicting that by 2014 the accumulated WiMAX subscriber base in India alone will reach 21 million.

Partly because of its rapid expansion equipment costs the general market costs are dropping whilst revenues are rising. Costs in India are being driven down faster than in any of the major worldwide marketplace.

At present industry analysts state the penetration of broadband throughout India at present lies at an extremely low figure of .2%. With the new technologies and investment rapidly being made available for the industry, experts are predicting the market to double within the next couple of years.

It cannot be denied that globally, investment in emerging wireless technology services such as WiMAX is growing certainly more than any other similar mobile technology.

It is one of those things that you can get a rough estimation of how mature technology marketplace is when you sit back and analyze the number of hardware equipment manufacturers who are prepared to “jump in with both feet,” desperate to claim vital market share.

Elsewhere in Asia, WiMAX is expanding and it would appear that from other marketplaces, certain Asian telephone companies are planning to run controlled tests of these services based on WiMAX technology in the United Kingdom next year.

Certainly it would appear that the initial WiMAX tests run by Reliance WiMAX in Bangalore are going well and that the costs of the Reliance Data Card are expected to drop accordingly.

India is growing rapidly in IT infrastructure on its way to become an IT super power. According to I-Cube study, PC ownership grew 36% and Internet subscriptions grew 25% in 2008. However, a large number of computers in India have pirated OS and softwares instead of genuine copies. Moreover, a significant percent of the Internet connections are without antivirus protection. These issues pose a great threat to the security of the PCs and the cyber world making India a major threat source.Continuous Growth in PC Internet PenetrationIndia has recorded a healthy growth rate in PC and Internet penetration as people have started to use PCs and Internet for multiple activities. PC owners and Internet users grew 36% and 25% in 2008 respectively, according to I-Cube study. According to Manufacturers’ Association for Information Technology (MAIT), desktop sales were 52.7 lakh units in the fiscal year 2008-09. Of them, assembled and unbranded systems accounted for 31%, proving that a significant portion of PCs sold are assembled.It is well known that most of the assembled systems have pirated OS and other software. People deliberately buy them because they can save a few thousand rupees with the pirated versions, which are unreliable and easily succumb to malicious threats.68% of the Software Is PiratedPCs users are increasingly opting for pirated softwares. Sixth Annual BSA-IDC Global Software Piracy Study revealed that PC software piracy level in India is 68% in 2008. Major reason for this can be the preference of assembled/unbranded systems that use pirated softwares to save few thousand rupees. When people buy their fist computer or newly introduced to Internet, the area neglected is security of the system. Pirated operating systems or softwares don’t get updates or patches regularly, making them prone to attacks easily. This leaves an opportunity to the cyber criminals as PCs without proper security are extremely vulnerable to hacking.The risk of cyber crime and security problems arises with software piracy. Generally, websites and peer to peer sites offering pirated softwares infect PCs with trojans, spyware, keyloggers, and identity theft tools. According to Symantec, there is an explosion of malware in the recent past years worldwide and they have listed 1,800,000 unique signatures in 2008 that grew 239% YOY. India with a vast number of Internet users with pirated softwares is a soft target for serious cyber crimes such as hacking.Viruses Originating From India IncreasedAs there are a significant number of illegal copies of OS and other softwares in use are not secured, there is a high probability of PCs getting infected when connected to Internet directly or connected with a data storage device. They in turn become the source of virus. According to Network Box Analysis of Internet Threats in July 2009, India is the fourth largest source of Internet threats with 5.2% of the total threats, and is increasing rapidly.Laziness and Vested Interests of Some ISPs Make Users SufferMost ISPs encourage security compromised Internet connections to their subscribers by refusing to configure routers for home broadband connections. Accessing Internet without a router can be compared to walking outside without shoes. A PC that directly access Internet without a router is easily vulnerable to online threats such as hacking, as it lacks some basic protection that a router offers. Computer malware increases the bandwidth consumption. Since many broadband connections charge on usage basis unlike in countries like US, it is the ISP’s interest if malware exists in their client’s PCs. Educating consumers on malware providing awareness could cut their revenue per user.Due to these irresponsible ISPs, threats originating in India are increasing rapidly. India with the fifth highest broadband subscribers in Asia-Pacific-Japan region is top in malicious code activity in volume. Indian Internet users face serious threat from virus and worm attacks with 9 out of top 10 malicious codes found. Low adoption of security measures encouraged the sharp increase of bot-infected PCs making them compromise to online threats and crimes. There were 103,812 distinct bot-infected PCs with an average of 836 bots per day in 2008 in India.India with an increasing IT infrastructure is expected to continue its share of growing malicious activities. It is the responsibility of government, ISPs, Internet and computer users to understand the threats posed by unbranded systems, pirated softwares and unsafe Internet connections and counter them with improved security protocols and measures.

Software Industry in India uniquely identified Compare another Countries Software Industry, if we are talking about revenue concern with another domestic project then it hardly reach up to 50% of the total turnover of the software Industry, Yet now a days, there is a heavy emphasis on exports, this may sound good, It actually is also a potential source of concern.

Reason behind it is that the Software Industry is vital a support industry. The Important role of software industry is to, to improve the functionality of some form,

or solve some problem which will be hard to solve manually. The improvement may be in form of improved form or service, problem solving capability, information management, efficiency, or something else. In other words, the real success of the software industry should not be measured in terms of how much revenue they have generated, but how much enhancement they are able to induce in other industry segments. In this light, the high ratio of exports to domestic consumption of software is a disturbing trend – in exports the multiplying effect of the software goes to some other country.

A main cause for the domestic consumption not being high is lack of understanding of software, its processes, and its costs by the consumer organizations. For a long time consumers of IT goods thought that software is “free”, and the main thing in IT is the hardware. Little was it realized that hardware, without proper software is almost literally a piece of metal and silicon junk. This mentality, unfortunately, was also reinforced by some hardware vendors, who at the time of selling their machines, either promised to “give software for free” or convinced the buyer that software is something that the buyer can easily do himself. And this is as far from truth as it can be!

As we know, software can be broken into three categories – system software, software packages, and application software. System software comprises of operating systems compilers, editors, etc., which typically come with the machine. Software packages like DBASE, LOTUS, and ORACLE etc. are general utility programs that can be used to develop applications in some domain more easily. Application softwares are those that that are used to provide a computer based solution to some problem of an organization. Some examples of such softwares are, software for payroll processing, banking, railway/airline reservations, inventory management, decision support system, etc.

Application software that makes the IT investment useful to an organization. Generally, a typical application software depends on the needs, characteristics, and methods of the organization, and has to be developed specially for the organization and cannot be bought as an off-the-shelf product. And as things stand today, getting software developed is not cheap.

Let us see the order of software costs from the view point of a client. One way to estimate the size and complexity of an application is the function points approach. By this method, a medium sized business application requiring 10-12 reports to be printed, having 8-10 different types of input, a few interface files, and a dozen odd different types of queries, will have about 200 function points. Typical productivity in the software industry is of the order of 10 function points per person-month. This means that this application will require about 20 person-months to develop. That is, a team of 4 software engineers will develop this system in about 5 months. As many good organizations charge between Rs 6 – 10 lakhs per person-year, in terms of money such an application will cost at least Rs 12 lakhs! And it can easily run on a workstation or a system consisting of a server and a few PCs costing about 6 – 8 lakhs! So, in India also, as the hardware costs have fallen over the years and the salaries of software personnel have grown, the reversal of hardware-software cost ratio has occurred. Only, many organizations still do not seem to realize it! Being ready to pay the cost of software is not the complete story. Another reason for organizations not getting proper returns from their automation plans is that organizations do not understand software, the process of producing software, and software quality. It is now known that to produce quality software, the developing organization has to follow well laid out software engineering methodologies. Unfortunately, there are many software organizations who will not follow these methods and do a poor job of developing the software, but bid low for a job. Due to lack of appreciation of software quality and software development process, a consumer cannot understand why a company will charge 20 lakhs, while the team of boys out of school are willing to do it for one tenth the cost. They find out the reason the hard way – when low quality software with poor user interface and without proper documentation gets delivered, which keeps failing, loosing data and records, and is not liked by the people who have to use it. The other approach, which the more aware companies will take, is to give the contract to some well known, reputed company. They will get a good software but will probably be charged more due to their inability to distinguish good from bad and effectively use competitive forces to reduce costs. Getting quality based application software developed is actually not an easy task. It requires sufficient knowledge about the software development process to be able to distinguish between a “mature” software organization that has reasonable software development processes in place, and an “immature” organization, which produces software in an ad-hoc manner, and is therefore more likely to produce a low quality software. Furthermore, the customer organization also has to play an active role during the development of software, if it wants the software to satisfy its objectives – even the ISO: 9000 standards for software companies specify that the customer organization play a key role during software development. Unless the customer organization analyses the capability of the software developers and plays its the proper role during software development, it is likely to end up wasting its investment in computerization and IT.

Icreonglobal is a leading Offshore Software Outsourcing Company in India and Offering Web Development Services and Custom Application Development Services

Over the years, the market for Indian offshore software services has expanded with Adobe Flex is a cross-platform, based on Macromedia flash software being accorded a significant status. The consumers worldwide are lapping up the services as the well-skilled flex programmers, provide a prospering platform to the entrepreneurs, in the form of booster websites, to boost the sales of their valuable solutions.

Programmers and developers are innovating new things to impart interactivity to the internet based applications similar to the desktop applications. Usability of desktop applications sets it as the first choice for consumers. For consumer centric, business-centric internet applications business models are still not so flexible to provide the same degree of usability to the users as desktop application.

Flex is a free, open source framework for building highly interactive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems. Flex creates SWF files that are rendered by Flash Player. Flex applications are delivered on the web via the Flash Player or to the desktop via Adobe AIR.

Flex applications can be created using flex builder. It is an integrated development environment for RIAs that combines richness, interactivity, usability of desktop applications with the cross-platform reach of adobe engagement platform. Client side logic can be easily built using flex that can be easily integrated with LiveCycle solutions, XML, web services. Rich interface can be created using design tools.

Flex application development is a newly introduced term and may not be known by many. It basically relates to Adobe flex, which is the cross-platform, that is based on the Macromedia flash software, which is a development framework and a comprehensive application advancement tool. It is also a solution for the development and delivery of RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) within the enterprise and also throughout the web to enhance the interactivity for the Internet.

Free open source Flex software is available but many serious developers like to use Adobe Flex Builder software for quick, professional development and maintenance of applications. If you don’t have a Flex development expert in your team, outsourcing to specialist offshore Flex developer may be the solution.

IT professionals have started looking forward towards the technical challenges of web applications and RIA is the only solution available at this point of time. Web applications implement Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that combines interactivity of desktop application with the reach and distribution of web based applications. RIA has provided us with many benefits; user interaction is improved and made easier, user can find information easily, quickly, accurately to make better decision and improve ROI. Before moving towards RIA implementation flex developers’ requirement is taken into account and infrastructure is looked into for simple applications to critical applications.