Successfully Market Your Stock Photos in Face of Today’s Massive Competition!

Posted on February 16, 2011 by admin

I was looking at everystockphoto.com this morning. It‘s a search engine devoted to finding free stock photos. It got me thinking. What is the most precious thing we have?

Well, health aside, it is time. Time, in a sense, is on our side. The number of stock photos, free and otherwise, is burgeoning and is only going to increase. The more photos there are, the longer it is going to take to find the one that is right for a given use and client. Flicker (which everystockphoto.com accesses) has, for example, at the time of this writing, over 2 billion images. Let’s see, at three seconds per image, to see them all it would take over… oh never mind. You need a stock photo and you don’t have much money, so you start looking at free stock photos.

After about six hours, and you still haven’t found what you’re looking for. You begin to realize that time, indeed, is money. So you settle for something you don’t really want, or you start looking at a higher quality collection. This scenario isn’t limited to people looking for free images. Art Directors at major agencies, for example, have time constraints too. They may have more time constraints than money constraints. All of us have time constraints. Everyone who uses stock on a regular basis is going to have to find ways to make the best use of their time when doing searches.

The search is everything

How can people make their searches more efficient? They may turn away from agencies that have inefficient and bloated searches. They may turn to niche agencies. They will find a group of agencies and, perhaps, individual photographers who they know they can turn to. Some agencies may survive by shear quantity of images, but I believe that the agencies, and individuals who will thrive are the ones who provide quality images combined with efficient searches and a superior client experience.

It is hard to predict the future. It may be that some technology innovation changes everything. But short of that, agencies are going to have to find ways to make searches more efficient. Dan Heller suggested the answer might lie in editors who can create collections and share in the revenue from the monetization of those collections. Back in the good old days Tony Stone revolutionized the stock industry by editing down his collection, duping the heck out of it, and thereby making the images available to a wider audience. But however it is done, the need to sort through the mass of images is real and the answer will come.

Disaster to opportunity

What can we do as photographers to turn the tables on this mass influx of images, to make this disaster-in-the-making into an opportunity? The first thing we have to do is to create images that are relevant to the needs of the market and that stand out from the crowd by either having higher production value, unusually strong emotional impact or perhaps some hard-to-get location. We have to make wise choices in the distribution of those images. Are we going to be exclusive to an agency, or get the images out to as many distributors as possible?

Right now, generally speaking, the same RF imagery is distributed through numerous outlets. Go to one agency and the chances are that you will see the same images as the next agency has. Micro stock shooters, for the most part, consider it an effective strategy to distribute through as many agencies as possible. Even RM images are starting to be distributed on a non-exclusive basis. Some agencies may decide that needs to change, that they need to be known for their own strong and exclusive imagery. Istockphoto’s recent move to push for exclusivity is just such a move in that direction.

Choosing the right industry

When we are deciding where to place our images we also need to look closely at which agencies can best distribute our work. I have work with Getty and Corbis. I also have work with two niche agencies. My ethnic business and lifestyle work goes to Blend Images, an agency focused on celebrating ethnic and business diversity. My Animal Antics imagery goes to Kimball Stock, an agency specializing in animal images.

Branding is the final part of the puzzle. It has never been more important for each of us to brand ourselves, to stand apart and create a reputation that can predispose potential clients to look at our work first. But what does branding mean for a photographer? How do we go about creating our own brand?

A unique and consistent look

Branding means having and communicating a unique and consistent look from start to finish including our work, our website, and our entire business. The methods of communicating our brand range from source book ads and mailers to our websites and e-mail blasts, to stationery and business cards. What is important is that our brand is professional, classy and consistent. The key, though, is quality work. In this new intensely competitive environment can never be satisfied with “OK”. Be your own harshest critic. Edit your work down till it hurts. Never before has “less is more” been more appropriate.

With this huge glut of images it is more important than ever to have our work be seen. To do that we must choose our distributors carefully, produce only the best work, and effectively develop our own brand. If we can do that then I believe the rewards of being a stock photographer can be greater than ever.

Traditional Video Surveillance Vs Networked Video Surveillance

Posted on January 18, 2011 by admin

Traditional Video Surveillance VS Networked Video Surveillance

CCTV surveillance system

1.Security focused, meant for monitoring by guards

2.Physically walking around site for inspection

3.Monitoring CCTV systems, only one location

4. If an incident occurs, the guards are your first level decision makers with limited information and authority

6. Comes as windows based system and virus problems

7. No integrated solution available and no warranty for product

Disadvantages of such old generation of CCTV

1. Decision makers are informed after a time delay with little to no details

2. Failure to meet the needs of growing multi-location

3.Does not give access to businesses or executives on the move

4. Dumb recording of all data- whether motion is there or not.

5. Limited Storage Capacity.

6. Does not take advantage of what internet can offer

Now Basic Market Demands are following

Basic Market Demands

Networked Video Surveillance Systems

1. Takes advantage of internet and counts available bandwith and gives you access for your desired location 24×7×365 with Maximum reliability, Systems Should work 24×7×365, Storage Protection.

2. Use existing network infrastructure and reuse existing wiring and cameras for low start-up and operating cost

3. Sensors can be integrated and alerts can be sent.

4. Can do motion base recording and Motion based alerts.

5. Turns Analog Video data into Digital Data can be married to business applications

example- At a ATM- the video can be sent with each ATM transaction.

6. Integrated full solution box is available with warranty.

Such a networked Video Surveillance Systems are now available in India and US markets for mid market.

Please visit www.cradle.com to know more about the networked Video Surveillance products.

Why Soa Does not Deliver

Posted on January 12, 2011 by admin

If your IT is supposed to make your business more agile, then you need to turn to SOA, right? I do not agree. Why? Because everyone is once again mixing up cause and effect! An agile organization will fully utilize IT with or without SOA. SOA will not make a business or its people more agile.

Agility will only come from business and IT being willing to innovate and empower their users by doing away with rigid business processes and the straightjacket like impediment of BPM, CRM and ECM. Encoding your processes into rigid Java for SOA is a business killer.

Why the incredible SOA hype?

The SOA bandwagon is overloaded and subsequently bogged because everyone has jumped on to sell products and services. No surprise that Network Computing Magazine has named SOA the most despised buzzword in November 2006. The ‘If You Can’t Sell It, Rename It Game’ played by the likes of IBM (with Tivoli and WebSphere), Oracle (with Fusion), BEA (with Aqualogic) and others. Something has to change, and it’s not just the product names.

Do we even know what is wrong?

I seriously doubt it. The influential quantum physicist David Bohm wrote in 1980: “Fragmentation is so widespread in our society that it interferes with our perception and stops us from solving the simplest problems.” Sounds familiar, right? We put everything in little boxes, buy best-of-breed software solutions for each and every business problem and now we are surprised that they won’t work together.

On the process level we dissect work into little process pieces because they seem easier to manage this way. Process fragmentation was described by Thomas Davenport in 1993 as such: “A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and space, with a beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for action. Taking a process approach implies adopting the customer’s point of view. Processes are the structure by which an organization does what is necessary to produce value for its customers.”

I can go along with that but what IT implemented was more aptly described by Foote and Yoder in 1999, who wrote: “A ‘Big Ball of Mud’ system is a haphazardly structured, sprawling, sloppy, duct-tape-and-baling-wire, spaghetti-code jungle. These systems show unmistakable signs of unregulated growth, and repeated, expedient repair. Information is shared promiscuously among distant elements of the system, often to the point where nearly all the important information becomes global or duplicated.” This perfectly describes most SOA-Java application servers. Why? Because the clean object-oriented encapsulation is destroyed by an irrational requirement to use XML messages. XML conflicts with SOA, because Metadata has to be managed in a repository and not inside the data file.

I propose that David Bohm is right and that fragmentation is needed for our ability to think, organize and plan. However, the world around us is not built in process fragments and thus the current SOA approach will not solve fragmentation but rather, create a software engineering nightmare at a higher level. Business processes and process change management needs to be first looked at before IT systems can be defragmented.

Business Process 1911’s Style

There are those who say that SOA is an extension of process management. BPM proponents are however stuck in 1911’s-Taylorism and SOA makes it worse because there is still fragmented change management. Frederick Taylor believed in fragmentation and specialization and proposed rigidly structured corporations. Hence, each and every IT application represents such a business process fragment, because if not, according to Davenport, we don’t need it. But what is a business process? Rummler and Brache (1990) proposed that ”a business process is a series of steps designed to produce a product or service for a customer.” And that is quite simply, incorrect.

Yes, there are rigid processes and some Ad-Hoc approaches giving more room to the user to choose the course of the process. Strangely enough, hardly anyone seems to realize that the need for an agile enterprise is created by the dynamics inherent in process related business communication. It is obvious that the state of the communication content controls the process and not its meaningless steps. Business communication is not just a document or an email, but can be anything: a selection menu, a web page, a sticker on the document, a data record, images, or even a voice recording or video. No matter how much time and money is spent on business process analysis, there will always be one more communication item needed for a business process once it gets going. This is why collaboration tools and email are now so pervasive. They don’t require analysis to communicate.

In ‘Reengineering the Corporation’ Hammer and Champy made a very important suggestion: “Not the individual task or process is important but only the outcome.” BPM systems and BPR projects miss the ability to adjust to the dynamics of goal-orientation.

Damelio writes in ‘Basics of Process Mapping’: “Maps and flowcharts make work visible … they represent a snapshot in time …” And that is all that business process is supposed to be, as Bohm said. We need fragmentation to understand, but life does not work this way.

How relevant is IT to process?

In ‘Does IT matter?’ Nicolas G.Carr writes that ‘… in the 1990’s many strategic investments went to waste … and business executives have grown skeptical about IT, …’ and claims that IT is now a commodity and no longer producing a competitive advantage. I tend to agree, but the problem is not IT but what the business users request from IT!

Users want to organize their work in their own indescribable way, while management wants to rigidly control the user process. IT has absolutely no clue how to go about both, because the underlying technology (mostly because of Windows, Java and XML) has become nearly unmanageable. SOA simply adds to the already incredible complexity.

Business users are human and point at something to say: This I like and this I don’t. Once users see a cute GUI front-end they think the inside must be cute as well. Users buy a GUI, not architecture, flexibility or long-term manageability.

They demand however 99.99% availability (which is fine for the underlying mainframe-based, bank-transaction system); but when the average mental and physical availability of an employee is at most 50% then the availability expectation linked with the current complexity of technology creates the long rollout cycles. Users expect IT to be inhumane and that’s exactly what they get. And because they cant get what they want business is fighting for control over IT with Outsourcing and Governance. Bad idea!

Adherence to ineffective governance rules is usually more important than what constituents need, in case you have not yet noticed. On his ZD-Net blog Joe McKendrick asks to “Turn your SOA into a HOA (human oriented architecture)” and says, “Without governance, there is no SOA. But maybe we don’t want too much governance.” I want to add: Maybe we don’t want SOA at all if it requires even more rigidity to control and manage our business processes?

Business Process Decision Making:

Let’s face it: The AGILE-SOA-jBPEL-XML-enterprise can’t see beyond Tayloristic 2-D process graphs! The latest buzzword of ‘IT-Industrialization’ describes our plan to create Henry Ford conveyor-belt-IT-processes for lobotomized business users.

It gets worse. In 2005 Davenport and Harris further claimed in a MIT-Sloan article: “Rather than require people to identify the problems or to initiate the analysis, companies typically embed decision-making capabilities in the normal flow of work. Those systems then sense online data, apply codified knowledge or logic, and make decisions all with minimal amounts of human inter
vention.”

In “Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart” Ian Ayres too claims that huge data sets allow previously impossible predictions and that statistical methods are more accurate than the more intuitive conclusions drawn by experts.

From my perspective, Business Intelligence produces an unintelligible mess of data that has little to no meaning for business decisions, automated or not. Imagine that we not only make the processes more rigid but also the codified decision-making knowledge? That will ruin each and every business because the `statistical data facts’ are illusions and at best average values from the past that do not apply to the current point of decision. Face-to-face interviews with the relevant managers, employees and customers will give you an emotional intuitive feel for the right decision that statistics won’t.

You might ask: Emotions?

I have been asked to replace ‘emotions’ with ‘instinct’ because emotions is seen so negatively. I refuse! Instinct is more in the area of reflexes which do not require any thinking at all. Maybe feelings would be better, but feelings also require emotions deeper down in our human nature. I can go with intuition because intuition is an emotional function.

Today’s assumption is unfortunately that emotion or intuition is the opposite of reason. Maybe that is not so. Why can in the UK and the US the anti-depression drug Prozac be detected in the rivers? Because people are continuously forced to be reasonable and not emotional. Look inside yourself and you will feel that it is against human nature and it makes us sick.

Human decision-making is most likely an emotionally weighted pattern-matching ability of the brain. Rationality is only used for post-decisions justification or verification. Are not strong managers and entrepreneurs mostly very emotional, even unreasonable people? Absolutely! Pioneers such as Broca (1878), Papez (1937), and MacLean (1952) suggested that emotion is related to a group of structures in the center of the brain called the limbic system, which includes the hypothalamus, cingulate cortex, and hippocampi among others. Antonio Damasio – today Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California – has long researched neural systems for memory, language, emotion, and decision-making. In his 1994 book, “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain,” he documents his discovery that “humans with dysfunctional emotional centers face grave difficulties in decision-making.” Thus human decisions – intuitive or not – are emotionally weighted and how do you want to encode that, Mr. Process-Analysis-Consultant?

To improve decision making with the help of computing we need to invent technology to model intuitive human decision-making far beyond logical rules. While Ian Ayres mentions neural networks and pattern matching he fails to understand that both do not need statistical data but decision-points linked to real data. It is not important how many people took a certain decision, but what data pattern was used by each individual to come to the decision. Therefore we do not need to crunch meaningless and inaccurate data with unproven mathematical assumptions, but today’s computing power has to be used to interactively learn decisions from humans.

And what about ‘Agility’?

I am serious: Agility is a human property and not system functionality. What stops current organizations from being agile? The Java/XML ‘Big Ball of Mud’? Tayloristic BPM? Windows DLL hell? I say it is the lack of agility in people and their small-minded resistance to true innovation.

An agile IT department run by a truly agile CIO supported by an agile board creates an application platform that puts great power into the hands of the skilled business user who is willing to be agile himself.

In their SOA White Papers the likes of IBM, BEA, TIBCO and Oracle name an endless array of technical complexities to create SOA when there is not enough IT manpower available on this planet to even do 2 % of such SOA projects (Source: Max Pucher, 2007, informed guess of 35 years IT). Remember, once the hole is so deep that you can’t climb out, digging deeper will not improve your situation.

KISS – Keep it simple, stupid!

Simplification is needed, and it was I who first humbly proposed in 2000/2001 the consolidation of Inbound and Outbound documents into Closed-Loop CRM processes with Papyrus WebRepository – to the blank eyes of every big-name analyst I spoke to! Today, you find Inbound/Outbound in every ECM vendor’s White Paper. Thank you all, because copying is the sincerest form of flattery. Today, I already propose the consolidation of ECM, BPM, and CRM … So you better stop digging!

Do we need Governance?

I do agree that we need some oversight to make the user happy. We can call it governance if you prefer, but it is simply the requirements of management between users and IT. If you already have a deeply fragmented IT landscape with too many outsourcers and external consultants maybe you do need governance to stay afloat.

SOA or Change Management?

The core issue of IT is change management. Change Management is about metadata: structured data about data that “describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource.”

Yes, but we do all that with XML, I am told. Listen, WSDL metadata for SOAP and UDDI metadata for WSDL is still not enough because neither links to the user interface and the process. You need DTDs, XSLs, XSLTs, XPATH, BPML and BPEL and a lot of Java code to verify that the data is valid and use it in hard-coded decision blocks.

In ‘SOA For Dummies’ the BEA-friendly authors therefore recommend a repository for the Java programs AND a registry for the dynamically linked SOA services. Their argument for two management products is understandable in the light of BEA’s old Tuxedo, the programmed Java Weblogic and the acquired Aqualogic workflow world.

However, a metadata change in a service interface is NOT automatically propagated to all user interfaces, all Java modules, all process definitions, all XML transforms and all databases. There is NO WAY that a user himself can make any change simply and quickly. As there is no common versioning and no common deployment, we are right where we were before – in a ‘Big Ball of Mud’ – just more complex.

Standards – where art thou?

Others believe that standards are the solution. There are many SOA definitions from various organizations such as the Open Group, Oasis, OMG and others. Most definitions still miss several core issues, such as global transactions, security and event handling. As a consequence there is still no standard way to deliver SOA.

Several vendors offer SOA Change Management with tools such as HP-Mercury, IBM Tivoli and others. These are huge investments to deal with SOA infrastructure and networking but not with the front-end business service needed by the user.

As you can see, confusion reigns. I see RFPs where SOA compliance is requested at the same time as ‘fully-featured APIs’. RFPs request XML and Java standards, when there is no such thing. That is an easy ‘YES’ response in the RFP. Many IT people seem to believe that SOA in some way solves the non-standard situation of Java and XML, when at best it hides some of the problems.

Where are we going with SOA?

I think that in a few years we will have forgotten it. The big new buzzword is already ‘Event-Driven Architecture’.

Why am I not surprised? When I designed WebRepository in 1996 it was built around state/event-driven application models. BPM/SOA vendors claim that you can ‘simply connect’ events to the 2-D workflow graphs of a BPEL process by using Java code (i.e. with Oracle jDeveloper).

From my perspective, to use the word ‘agility’ for SOA that requires Java programmers t
o create a simple event-driven process is misrepresentation.

Consultants and analysts:

Why do I seem to continuously needle against consultants, analysts and outsourcers? I actually do not. But like everyone else, not all of the ideas that consultants have are good ones.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) was first described by Gartner in 1996 in an SSA Research paper. Gartner, like most research companies have a cupboard full of skeletons (failed predictions) and I am not holding that against them. SOA is not a wrong idea and neither is EDA, but what the industry made of it is what I am speaking out against. I am asking you to not let the prevailing vision cloud your ability to judge for yourself. I am asking you to not be afraid, to stand up and say what you – as someone who is right there at the grass roots of IT – have to say about it. I am asking users and business department to not interfere with what IT wants to deliver as long as IT has a process focus on the user. Actually, I am asking users and IT to be more agile!

The Vision of the Anointed:

What is it then that stops most large organizations from forward-thinking strategic change and innovation – as requested by Barbara Gomolski above – equally in government or business? Why are otherwise excellent professionals so afraid to do something new?

I have found one explanation: In “The Vision of the Anointed” Thomas Sowell wrote in 1996 about political visions in a way that fully applies to other areas including business and IT visions: “Differing visions, of course, are based on differing assumptions … For a prevailing vision, however, meaning that its assumptions are taken for granted by the so-called thinking-people, those assumptions are never challenged with demands for empirical evidence … A prevailing vision offers more than anything a state-of-grace for those who believe in it.”

The subtitle of Sowell’s book is fittingly: “Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.” Only politicians and stock market analysts outdo IT in the art of self-congratulation.

Someone who opposes a prevailing vision is fought with all means possible by claiming that ‘the hidden motives have to be disclosed.’ Much like the dicussion on climate change …

References and innovation:

IT people in large organizations more than others shy away from innovation. I am always asked for reference installations (and no one wants to be one) which is impossible for innovative software. Hey, it’s NEW; no one else has done it before! Additionally there are no two customers who actually do the same thing with our software or have the same infrastructure. As always, a reference should be about the integrity of the people involved and not about technology.

You can obviously choose the safe route and decide not to innovate and make your choice from a Gartner Magic Quadrant. Gartner Group is however a market analyst company and thus their information is from the past. You won’t find innovation there.

SOA is not innovation but an evolution of object-oriented messaging that took a wrong turn because vendors needed to sell what they had – they just renamed it. My position in this paper has in difference translated into ISIS Papyrus products over the last twenty years and therefore some of it has been and is once again very innovative.

I propose that going into a huge programming effort yourself or buying a rigid piece of ‘standard’ software (with rigid processes) involves a much bigger risk than giving something new a try. IT is the most powerful competitive tool there is – if implemented and used by agile people.

You can’t lead by walking in someone else’s footsteps. If you don’t innovate, your IT is not leading edge no matter how buzzword compliant you are. Benchmarking IT against others who don’t innovate will only pull everyone down to the same low level. But then … you can show that you are among the best in your benchmark!

Innovation – doing something new – always bears some risk. Be brave!

Bibliography and References:

Allen, Paul (2006). Service Orientation, winning strategies and best practices. ISBN 0521843367.

Ayres, Ian (2007) Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. ISBN 978-0553805406

Bohm, David, (1980) Wholeness and Implicate Order, ISBN-13: 978-0710003669

Carr, N. G. (2004) Does IT Matter?: IT and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage ISBN-13: 978-1591394440

Damelio, R. (1996) Basics of Process Mapping, ISBN-13: 978-0527763169

Damasio, Antonio (2005) Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, ISBN 0-380-72647-5

Davenport, Thomas (1993), Process Innovation: Reengineering work through information technology

Draheim, D. & Weber, G. (2006) Trends in Enterprise Application Architecture, ISBN-13: 978-3540327349

Erl, Thomas (2005). Service-Oriented Architecture: Concepts, Technology, and Design. ISBN 0-13-185858-0.

Hammer, M. ; Champy, J. (1993), Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto … ISBN-13: 978-1863735056

Hurwitz; Bloor; Baroudi; Kaufman (2006). Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies. ISBN 0-470-05435-2.

Johansson, Henry J. et.al. (1993), BPR: BreakPoint Strategies for Market Dominance ISBN-13: 978-0471938835

Newcomer, Eric; Lomow, Greg (2005). Understanding SOA with Web Services. ISBN 0-321-18086-0.

Pulier, Eric; Hugh Taylor (2005). Understanding Enterprise SOA. ISBN 1-932394-59-1

Rummler & Brache (1990), Improving Performance: How to manage the white space … ISBN-13: 978-1555422141

Sowell, Thomas, (1996) The Vision of the Anointed ISBN-13: 978-0465089956

Taylor F. W. (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management, ISBN-13: 978-1434638205

Watson, Thomas Jr. (1997) Father, Son and Company, ISBN-13: 978-0593020937

Internet resources:

SSA Research Note SPA-401-068, 12 April 1996, “‘Service Oriented’ Architectures, Part 1″

SSA Research Note SPA-401-069, 12 April 1996, “‘Service Oriented’ Architectures, Part 2″

SOA Reference Model Technical Committee, OASIS (2006). A Reference Model for Service Oriented Architecture. (PDF).

Rational Unified Process, IBM, Mar. 2005, www-3.ibm.com/software/awdtoolsrup.

IEEE Std. 1003.1, Standard for Information Technology— Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), IEEE, 2004.

E. Christensen et al., Web Services Description Language (WSDL) 1.1, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) note, Mar. 2001; www.w3.org/TRwsdl

SOAP Version 1.2, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation, June 2003; www.w3.org/TRsoap

SOA Blueprints, Middleware Research, Mar. 2005, www.middlewareresearch.comsoa-blueprints

Anderson, A. “IEEE Policy 2004 Workshop, 8 June 2004, Comparing WSPL and WS-Policy,” Sun Labs, 2004; www.policy-workshop.org/2004/slidesAnderson-WSPL_vs_WS-Policy_v2.pdf

Brian Foote, Joseph Yoder (1999) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_ball_of_mud

Joe Kendricks, (2007) http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/?p=913

Coenen, Alcedo (2006). SOA agility in practice (PDF). Via Nova Architectura.

Jones, Steve (2005). Toward an acceptable definition of service (PDF). IEEE Software.

Mittal, Kunal (2006). Requirements process for SOA projects, Part 1 of 3: Capturing requirements for an SOA application – Initial requirements to build out your SOA (HTML). IBM Developerworks.

Shan, Tony; Hua, Winnie (2006). Solution Architecture for N-Tier Applications (PDF). In Proc. of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Services Computing (SCC 2006), pp. 349-356.

Wada, Hiroshi; Suzuki, Junichi (2006). A Model-Driven Development Framework for Non-Functional Aspects in Service Oriented Grids (PDF). In Proc. of 2nd IEEE International Conference on Autonomic and Autonomous Systems (ICAS 2006).

Bieber, Guy (2000). Programming Service Oriented Progra
mming (HTML). Motorola.

Gomolski, B. (2006) Computerworld Opinion, Oct. 2006

2009 Intel China Research Institute of the Open Day was held in Beijing

Posted on December 20, 2010 by admin

Today, October 12, with “melt-hui in China, a better tomorrow” as the theme of “2009 Intel China Research Institute Open Day” held in Beijing, shows the Intel China Research Institute (Intel Labs China) nearly 30 forward-looking research projects and results, both in collaboration with Intel, the global research system and technological achievements and Intel China Research Institute over the past year research project from the main innovation, as well as to join hands with the local academic community to carry out frontier research projects, mainly divided into four Dell INSPIRON 9400 Laptop Battery exhibition:

Enterprise-class computing technology zone – in order to best meet the needs of users to play the maximum potential of the Intel platform, Intel China Research Institute for business computing conducted a series of enterprise-class computing technology, optimization and improvement, including the underlying hardware technology innovations, such as the pre-design tools, system speed up the technology, input-output technology; platform, system-level innovation, play the advantages of Intel’s integrated software, hardware, and other factors to consider in order to achieve global optimization, like clouds computing, high-performance computing.

Terminal Technology – the Internet era, people’s needs and demands of individual equipment, increasing demand not only small size, low power consumption, but also high-performance, easy to use, high security and so on. In response to this important demand trends, Intel China Research Institute organized a number of research groups, from support for multi-core and heterogeneous platforms, software tools into the future 3D applications and personalization applications, easy to use, etc., to terminal technology innovation, is committed to bring about a better end-user experience.

Mobile Computing Technology – As wireless technology continues to progress, the whole mobile computing devices become increasingly change the way people live, work and play. Intel China Research Institute of starting from the application to the user experience as the core, through the framework of the future of wireless technology, innovation, and constantly challenging technical limits, so that the Intel architecture provide people with better mobile performance.

Academic Cooperation Zone – Intel has always attached great importance to research and academics in Dell INSPIRON 8000 Laptop Battery technology fields. After more than ten years of hard work, Intel China Research Institute and local universities, research institutes, scientific research cooperation has entered a more far-reaching, wide stage. Areas of cooperation involves a number of leading edge of technology, including the most advanced computer architecture research, super-computing technology and multimedia technology and mobile computing technologies, including many long-term large-scale collaborative research projects, and carries many of the world in the forefront of China’s future technology, the core of leadership.

The following guide will help you in-depth understanding of the technology demonstration research projects.

Full optimization of enterprise-class computing technology business computing:

Light Peak and third set of prototype verification platform

The project successfully developed the first set of Light Peak prototype verification platform, the Light Peak on the host DisplayPort protocol, the transmission bandwidth of up to 10Gbps, video resolution, far exceeding 1080p HDTV. System integration of IO interface to the introduction of optical transmission, to provide higher bandwidth, thus greatly reducing the number of peripheral interfaces.

Quick IA Intel Architecture prototype verification platform of new technology

Quick IA technology is to achieve the FPGA on the Intel processor core (Pentium, Atom, etc.) in the Xeon server running BIOS / OS, is the Intel Architecture processors and SoC prototype verification platform. Quick IA can mainly be used to validate the new processor architecture for SoC prototype verification, testing new instructions, heterogeneous system architecture studies, Dell LATITUDE D620 Laptop Battery computing research, and cycle-accurate simulation.

Cloud model: cloud computing performance modeling

The future of cloud computing challenge is how to understand the characteristics of cloud computing applications and accurate estimates of resource requirements. This study through the application of sampling and analysis required for effective forecasting of cloud resources and operating performance, using micro-oriented system modeling method is accurate and to find the bottleneck of the system depends, and Hadoop / HDFS has achieved better results.

Terminal Technology gives you a more intimate computing devices:

MYO: a simple programming model of heterogeneous CPU

The programming model is shared between different types of CPU memory, a software prototype for seamless sharing of complex data structure that contains pointers and to avoid grouping and data management. The model is a simple programming model refinement can support different memory consistency model, can easily be extended to the language C / C + +. It is a visual computing and throughput for the calculation of a unified memory model, a significant increase in the number of accelerated applications, can greatly enhance the competitive advantage of Larrabee in support of complex dynamic data structures, such as for software, collision and share ” Scene Graph “(scene-graphs) and so on.

The three-dimensional model for ordinary users to create

The technology can use a group of users to shoot photos, automatically create realistic three-dimensional SONY VGP-BPS2 Laptop Battery, thereby enhancing the virtual world immersion of the user experience. The technology will be the first to enable ordinary users do not have the three-dimensional scanner with expensive or complex three-dimensional modeling tool, you can quickly and easily build a virtual world of three-dimensional model, but also the first time camera-free frame of reference parameter estimation, greatly simplifying the three-dimensional modeling process.

3D face modeling and customization

The technology for the first time face of the parametric generation technology can be used to enter the real portrait PC camera, automatic control of robust and accurate expression. The technology is available from the 3D face database to learn “and variable type of” three-dimensional human face model, for a given a frontal face photo, automatically reconstruct the corresponding three-dimensional human face, with the slider you can easily customize the need to face the three-dimensional features, including shape, gender, expression and color.

Polymerization of I / O Subsystem synergies between MID and the calculation of HPIA

This technology enables applications to MID and to migrate seamlessly between the PC or laptop (such as 3D gaming, web video conferencing), the migrated applications by aggregating I / O logic, continue to visit MID on the peripherals, and through the device to wear permeability and polymerization I / O virtualization capabilities enabling peripherals to effectively increase efficiency. Migration of high-performance applications to high reliability and security is guaranteed. In which aggregate I / O logic allows the peripheral device with a grid-based features, better adapted to the needs of cloud computing is a new MID, and PC usage patterns work together.

Mobile computing technology “traveling light Changxiang life”:

Three-dimensional image of the world to create and navigation technology

The technology can help ordinary users to participate to quickly create photo-realistic image of HP PAVILION ZE4400 Laptop Battery, based on sensors and high-precision three-dimensional navigation vision technology can support mobile devices, augmented reality
functionality.

Multi-channel, your choices

The technology uses a distributed concurrent design in order to ensure synchronization between the different hosts, but no additional overhead control, channel allocation of its innovative design to ensure effective use of multi-channel balanced, with 802.11 with the traditional single-channel media control layer compatibility

Google Android running on a prototype of a video conferencing system

The rapid development of high-definition video technology to the integration of Intel’s CPU capacity and transmission capacity 3G technology raised demand, while the use of H.264/AAC codec video conferencing is a great potential for application technology. In this context, the prototype developed in H.323/PCM applications based on Google Android demonstration system for the future integration of Intel platforms and provides the technical foundation for 3G transmission.

Local academics to join hands to explore cutting-edge technology:

Advanced mobile computing technology research center

In the promotion and support of Science and Technology, Intel China Research Institute and Tsinghua University jointly established the “Tsinghua University – Intel’s advanced mobile computing technology research center.” The center has a model for the next generation of mobile computing hardware and software required for infrastructure and service agreements as the main direction, is mainly engaged in on-demand mobile service agreement, adaptive streaming software technology and mobile collaborative computing technologies. In the direction of their products is to provide the user experience and business model-centric mobile computing solutions, as well as hardware and software optimized system design for mobile devices.

Personal High Performance Workstation

Intel China Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Computing Technology with the cooperation of the high-performance workstations, personal research. Personal use of low-voltage high-performance workstations, Intel Xeon processors, can be very low power consumption and heat dissipation to provide supercomputing performance, high computing performance, low power consumption, small space use of the environment an ideal solution. Individual high-performance workstation software can effectively reduce management complexity, and to promote the wide range of high-performance computing applications, its advanced programming environment provides a user-friendly parallel programming tools.

Private Cloud Storage Middleware Key Technology Research

Intel China Research Institute of Peking University as a collaborative research project with one of COMPAQ PRESARIO R3000 Laptop Battery focuses on distributed metadata management, distributed data block storage, parallel data transfer, distributed system, fault handling, the community data-sharing strategy, cloud services interface and cloud service level management, key technical issues; and developing high-performance, easy expansion and easy management of enterprise private cloud storage middleware, the entire development work will take advantage of Tsinghua University, have been deployed to verify the data sharing platform Corsair optimized.

Internet Telephony: Improvised Conventional Phone Service

Posted on October 30, 2010 by admin

In today’s world, internet is playing a vital role in changing people’s thinking and lifestyle. These changes came into existence with the innovation in technology and advancement. Well, credit for this revolution is given to internet. While talking about technology in communication industry, internet has come up with advanced communication that allows user to handle long distance and international calls at substantial rates. Thus, internet telephony is considered as a popular and widely used for accessing internet applications. The reason for its popularity that has made PSTN user to switch on to advanced VoIP telephony is increase in productivity and cost efficiency.

While calling through IP telephony, user can save his pounds as it is based on packet switching protocol that allows the user to share data, voice, video or images through single line. Thus, through advanced calling, user can communicate with other user irrespective of locality and mobility.

The latest VoIP telephony is a combination of conventional phone services and high speed internet. It allows user to make and receive all calls at cheaper rates without any hurdle in setup of VoIP services. For making calls through voice over ip telephony, user needs ATA (analog voice adaptor), internet connection and telephone for calling his friend or relative. VoIP phone service allows user to use his broadband connection to place telephone calls over the Internet. Though, this technology is rocking the telecom industry to the core.

The major advantage of VoIP telephony includes lower cost, greater flexibility, scalability, functionality, network efficiency and above all security. Apart from this, telephony satisfies the voice quality. On calling through VoIP, user enjoys unlimited incoming and long distance calls to anyone across the global village. User must opt for those VoIP providers who offers free voicemail, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, call waiting ID, 3 way calling and speed dialling. Considering these points, with the time, internet telephony is getting popular among varied groups like corporate and business houses and now even among residential users.

Where to Outsource: a Guide to the Best Outsourcing Destinations

Posted on July 7, 2010 by admin

Offshore outsourcing is the practice of hiring an external organization to perform some business functions in a country other than the one where the product or service will be sold or consumed.

Outsourcing has increased at a rapid pace due to the advancement in modern satellite and Internet technologies, better connectivity and a constant search for less expensive labor to cut costs and achieve competitive advantage. By outsourcing their back office business processes to less expensive nations like China, India, Philippines, Malaysia, companies can cut labor costs, concentrate on their core businesses and strengths, and ensure better customer satisfaction. According to a recent report, US firms have saved nearly US$8 billion through outsourcing to developing nations like the Philippines

There are many developing nations that act as offshore outsourcing destinations to developed nations. Some of the countries that can be considered as offshore outsourcing destinations are as follows:

Philippines

The Philippines’ key competitive advantage is its people. Philippines has a well-educated English speaking work force and stands out as the world’s third largest English speaking nation. The attitude, commitment, community, and education constitute the key competitive advantage especially in the front office operations such as customer service and sales.

The Philippines boasts of a huge pool of productive, trainable and multi-skilled labor force. Filipino Outsourcing companies such as AOV Outsourcing service only hire workers that are highly qualified for various outsourcing tasks.

Government support and the IT infrastructure is a given. Major companies that already operate in the Philippines include AIG, AOL, Barnes & Noble, Chevron, Citigroup, Dell, HP, HSBC, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Motorola, Procter & Gamble, Siemens AG and Trend Micro.

China

In recent years, China is rapidly emerging as one of the world’s leading suppliers of offshore software outsourcing services due to its incredible development rate. Although India is at the moments the world leader in software outsourcing industry, China aims to outpace India and become the next dominant competitor in software outsourcing. It is predicted that China will emerge as one of the top three countries for overseas software outsourcing between 2007 and 2010. Companies are already beginning to plan their offshore outsourcing strategies to take advantage of China’s emerging strength as an outsourcing center. This includes looking for ways to take advantage of the country’s current software strengths. Some estimates state that China outsourcing could rival India as the leading offshore IT services market as early as 2007.

The recent flurry of activity that helped put China on the outsourcing map came about partly as a result of government support and promotion, partly because of Japan’s push to move much of its software development work to China, and partly because a number of large foreign companies — GE, Microsoft, Dell, SAP and HP, for example — started up R&D centers in China.

India

One of the major players in the offshore outsourcing industry, India has a well educated, talented, low cost and English speaking workforce, excellent IT and networking infrastructure, a fairly stable political scenario, friendly laws and well laid taxes and quality certified software firms. The offshore outsourcing market in India is ever growing and has produced many success stories making India a popular offshore outsourcing destination for IT related and other BPO services.

Offshore assignments have moved up the value chain – from data entry to large and complex turnkey projects of 200 to 300 person years. Almost any service can be outsourced to India, be it healthcare, engineering or KPO.

Malaysia

Malaysia’s well-developed infrastructure, attractive business environment and strong government support makes it a rising alternative to India and China. The government’s positioning of Malaysia as a hub for services and technology innovation has resulted in a number of multinationals locating some of its global or regional operations in Malaysia. Malaysia has a relatively more stable political climate backed by consistent economic growth which makes it attractive for sensitive, high end applications in banking and finance.

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