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Structure and Behavior of Social Networks linked to Web 2.0 5

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Automated Teller Machines: Generational Shift Toward Personalized Technologies 20

Programming. Tips() »C/C++ Solution for “Floating Point Formats Not Linked” Error in Turbo C/Borland C 22

Programming.Learn (“Python”) »Scientifi c Twist of Python 23

Intelligent Communities and Future of Social Networking 9

Content-based Image Retrieval 13

Marketing Research Driven by Web -2.0 Technology - Prospects and Possibilities 15

Unleashing Web 2.0 for Higher Education 17

Call for Articles

Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair, Debasish Jana, and Jayshree DhereCSIC Editors

The cover themes for forthcoming issues of CSI Communications are:• May 2012 - Computational Linguistics • June 2012 – Knowledge Management• July 2012 - Image Processing • August 2012 – ICT In India• September 2012 - Multimedia Mining(Future topics will be announced on an ongoing basis)The Editorial Board of CSI Communications is looking for high quality technical articles for diff erent columns pertaining to the above themes or emerging and current interests. The articles should cover all aspects of computing, information and communication technologies that should be of interest to readers at large and member fraternity of CSI and around. The articles may be long (2500-3000 words) or short (1000-1500 words) authored in as the original text (plagiarism is strictly prohibited). The articles shall be peer reviewed by experts decided by the Editorial board and the selected ones shall be published. Both theoretical and practice based articles are welcome. The articles and contributions may be submitted in the following categories: Cover Story, Research Front, Technical Trends, and Article.CIOs/Senior IT/IS personnel/consultants of the companies managing technologies/projects related to the cover themes are welcome to contribute under the CIO (Managing Technology) section. Similarly, HR Senior Managers/Personnel/Consultants are invited to contribute under HR section.Also, Letters to the Editors, questions to be answered in Ask an Expert, your experience to share some Programming Tips under the Practitioner Workbench: Programming.Tips() are welcome.

How to submit the contributions: The articles may be sent to the CSI Editorial Board via email [email protected].

Article Submission guidelines:• All manuscripts should be written at the level of the

general audience of varied level of members.• Equations and mathematical expressions within articles

are not recommended, however, if absolutely necessary, should be minimum.

• List of references is preferred. List not more than 10 references at the end of your manuscript. Please don’t include any embedded reference numbers within the text of your article. If you would to like to refer, you may state names in the text and provide full reference at the end. The reference must state the names of the authors, title, publisher’s name, complete publication reference with month and year. Web URLs should be there for website references with accessed date.

• Figures and Images used should be limited to maximum of three (only high resolution images need to be sent, and the image needs to be sent separately also).

• Only MS-Word and PDF submissions are allowed.• Include a brief biography of four to six lines for each author

with author picture (high resolution)• Editors will edit the contents as felt necessary • Authors of selected articles will be notifi ed by the editorial

board and copyright transfer form needs to be fi lled up by the authors.

• Only original contributions are requested and no plagiarismis allowed.

(Issued on behalf of the Editors of CSI Communications)

CSI Communications - Call for Articles for forthcoming issues

Plagiarism Alert for Prospective Authors

Please note that months for various cover themes are tentative and may change depending on prevailing circumstances.

The Editorial Team of CSI Communications is appalled by the large number of cases of plagiarism in articles submitted to it, for consideration of publication. A number of rejections had to be done in recent months wherein cases of verbatim copy of published material with author list alone changed, has been noted. This alert is being published in view of the highly concerning situation.

Plagiarism in the present context is - use in part or whole of other published articles with or without citing. Even with citation, pasting huge chunks of text authored by others is not admissible (the only exception being demarcated quotes when situation warrants). Plagiarism is against professional ethics and the editorial team has no option but to recommend black listing for lifetime of the authors, committing plagiarism. It is very surprising that those, who

commit such unprofessional act, seem to be unaware that it is an extremely simple matter for the editors (or anyone) to verify plagiarism. In most cases, a deft Googling will reveal the sources instantaneously. Plagiarism is easy to do and also easy to detect.

Prospective authors are requested to take extreme care in avoiding intentional and non-intentional forms of plagiarism, thereby saving time for them as well as for the editors. CSI Communications is committed to upholding ethical practices in publishing and hence would continue to take serious view of plagiarism.

CSI-C Editorial Team

CSI Communications | April 2012 | 1

ContentsVolume No. 36 • Issue No. 1 • April 2012

CSI Communications

Editorial Board

Chief EditorDr. R M Sonar

EditorsDr. Debasish JanaDr. Achuthsankar Nair

Resident EditorMrs. Jayshree Dhere

AdvisorsDr. T V GopalMr. H R Mohan

Published byExecutive Secretary Mr. Suchit GogwekarFor Computer Society of India

Design, Print and Dispatch byCyberMedia Services Limited

Please note:CSI Communications is published by Computer Society of India, a non-profi t organization. Views and opinions expressed in the CSI Communications are those of individual authors, contributors and advertisers and they may diff er from policies and offi cial statements of CSI. These should not be construed as legal or professional advice. The CSI, the publisher, the editors and the contributors are not responsible for any decisions taken by readers on the basis of these views and opinions.Although every care is being taken to ensure genuineness of the writings in this publication, CSI Communications does not attest to the originality of the respective authors’ content. © 2012 CSI. All rights reserved.Instructors are permitted to photocopy isolated articles for non-commercial classroom use without fee. For any other copying, reprint or republication, permission must be obtained in writing from the Society. Copying for other than personal use or internal reference, or of articles or columns not owned by the Society without explicit permission of the Society or the copyright owner is strictly prohibited.

Published by Suchit Gogwekar for Computer Society of India at Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park, MIDC, Andheri (E), Mumbai-400 093.Tel. : 022-2926 1700 • Fax : 022-2830 2133 • Email : [email protected] Printed at GP Off set Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai 400 059.

Cover Sto ry

5 Structure and Behavior of Social Networks linked to Web 2.0Diptiman Dasgupta and Rudranil Dasgupta

Technical Trends

9 Intelligent Communities and Future of Social Networking

Diptiman Dasgupta and Rudranil Dasgupta

Research Front

13 Content-based Image RetrievalSajilal D

Articles

15 Marketing Research Driven by Web -2.0 Technology - Prospects and PossibilitiesBinu Zachariah

1 7 Unleashing Web 2.0 for Higher EducationPrerna Lal

20 Automated Teller Machines: Generational Shift Toward Personalized TechnologiesProf Jyotiranjan Hota

Practitioner Workbench

22 Programming.Tips() »

C/C++ Solution for “Floating Point Formats Not Linked” Error in Turbo C/Borland C Mrs. Shefali Naik

23 Programming.Learn (“Python”) »

Scientifi c Twist of Python Umesh P

CIO Perspective

24 Managing Technology » Business Information Systems:

A Closer Look Dr. R M Sonar

Security Corner

29 Information Security »

Cyber Crime against Women Adv. Prashant Mali

IT Act 2000 »

30 Prof. IT Law Demystifi es Technology Law Issues: Mr. Subramaniam Vutha

HR

31 Muddling Through Competencies at Work Dr. Mahesh Deshmukh and Dr. Manish Godse

PLUSICT@Society: Haven’t You Put Your Head in the Freezer Yet ?Achuthsankar S Nair

33

Happenings@ICT: ICT News Briefs in March 2012H R Mohan

34

Happenings@ICT: Impact of Budget 2012 on IT IndustryDr. Vishnu Kanhere

35

Brain TeaserDr. Debasish Jana

36

Ask an ExpertDr. Debasish Jana

37

On the Shelf! Book ReviewDr. Suneeta Sane

38

CSI Report: CSI Foundation Day CelebrationJayshree A Dhere

39

CSI News 42

CSI Communications | April 2012 | 2 www.csi-india.org

Know Your CSIExecutive Committee (2012-13/14) »

President Vice-President Hon. SecretaryMr. Satish Babu Prof. S V Raghavan Mr. S [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Hon. Treasurer Immd. Past PresidentMr. V L Mehta Mr. M D [email protected] [email protected]

Nomination Committee (2012-2013)Dr. D D Sarma Mr. Bipin V Mehta Mr. Subimal Kundu

Regional Vice-PresidentsRegion - I Region - II Region - III Region - IVMr. R K Vyas Prof. Dipti Prasad Mukherjee Mr. Anil Srivastava Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, North Eastern States Rajasthan and other areas Orissa and other areas inUttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and and other areas in in Western India Central & Southother areas in Northern India. East & North East India Eastern India

Region - V Region - VI Region - VII Region - VIIIProf. D B V Sarma Mr. C G Sahasrabudhe Mr. Ramasamy S Mr. Pramit MakodayKarnataka and Andhra Pradesh Maharashtra and Goa Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, International Members Andaman and Nicobar, Kerala, Lakshadweep

Division Chairpersons, National Student Coordinator & Publication Committee ChairmanDivision-I : Hardware (2011-13) Division-II : Software (2012-14) Division-III : Applications (2011-13) National Student CoordinatorDr. C R Chakravarthy Dr. T V Gopal Dr. Debesh Das Mr. Ranga Raj [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Division-IV : Communications Division-V : Education and Research Publication Committee (2012-14) (2011-13) ChairmanMr. Sanjay Mohapatra Dr. N L Sarda Prof. R K Shyamsundar [email protected] [email protected]

Important links on CSI website »Structure & Organisation http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/structureNational, Regional & http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/structure/nsc State Students CoordinatorsStatutory Committees http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/statutory-committees Collaborations http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/collaborations Join Now - http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/joinRenew Membership http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/renewMember Eligibility http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/eligibilityMember Benefi ts http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/benifi tsSubscription Fees http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/subscription-feesForms Download http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/forms-downloadBABA Scheme http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/baba-schemePublications http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/publicationsCSI Communications* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/info-center/communicationsAdhyayan* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/adhyayanR & D Projects http://csi-india.org/web/csi/1204Technical Papers http://csi-india.org/web/csi/technical-papersTutorials http://csi-india.org/web/csi/tutorialsCourse Curriculum http://csi-india.org/web/csi/course-curriculumTraining Program http://csi-india.org/web/csi/training-programs(CSI Education Products)Travel support for International http://csi-india.org/web/csi/travel-supportConferenceeNewsletter* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/enewsletterCurrent Issue http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/current-issueArchives http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/archivesPolicy Guidelines http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/helpdeskEvents http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/events1President’s Desk http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/infocenter/president-s-desk

ExecCom Transacts http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/execcom-transacts1News & Announcements archive http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/announcementsCSI Divisions and their respective web linksDivision-Hardware http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division1Division Software http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division2Division Application http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division3Division Communications http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division4Division Education and Research http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/division5List of SIGs and their respective web linksSIG-Artifi cial Intelligence http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-aiSIG-eGovernance http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-egovSIG-FOSS http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-fossSIG-Software Engineering http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-seSIG-DATA http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sigdataSIG-Distributed Systems http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-dsSIG-Humane Computing http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-humaneSIG-Information Security http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-sig-isSIG-Web 2.0 and SNS http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-web-2.0SIG-BVIT http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-bvitSIG-WNs http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-fwnsSIG-Green IT http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-green-itSIG-HPC http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-hpcSIG-TSSR http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/sig-tssrOther Links -Forums http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/forumsBlogs http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/blogsCommunities* http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/discuss-share/communitiesCSI Chapters http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chaptersCalendar of Events http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-eventcalendar

* Access is for CSI members only.

Important Contact Details »For queries, announcements, correspondence regarding Membership, contact [email protected] any other queries, contact [email protected]


Another year is upon us in CSI. A new team of leaders is taking charge of CSI at the helm, as a part of the periodic renewal process customary with every democratic organization. In this transition, our eff ort would be to maintain continuity as much as possible, drawing especially on the wisdom of the outgoing ExeCom members, and thereby boosting productivity of CSI as a whole.

CSI has been doing well in many areas, while there is signifi cant room for improvement in others. I would like to request cooperation from my colleagues in the ExeCom, Chapters and members, as well as from our team of offi cers who are performing key functions in the HQ and Educational Directorate, in order to collectively deliver services on the expected lines to all our stakeholders.

Membership and Chapters: While our membership is close to 90,000 now, it must be kept in mind that the professional membership is less than 25% of this number. I would once again like to point out that we have a target of 100,000 members by the end of 2013-14, when CSI completes 50 years of operations, of which the professional membership should be over 25%.

Our RVPs and the Chapter Revamp Committee have done excellent work in the past year and has revived many defunct and dormant chapters; we have also started several new chapters. We have to continue the task of streamlining CSI chapters, ensuring that we are able to fulfi ll our potential by securing functioning chapters in all potential locations. We are also expecting a signifi cant improvement in our international regional operations. The incoming team would like to strengthen RVPs as well as the Chapter Revamp Committee for ensuring vibrancy of our membership structures.

Our membership database is still an area of improvement for us. While the upgradation of software for the database is in process, this task cannot be completed without active participation from members and chapters. I earnestly solicit your cooperation in ensuring that your membership details are updated. For any clarifi cation, kindly contact our Membership Helpdesk (022- 29261723 OR [email protected] ).

Students: Students form the bulk of our membership at this time, with over 410 Student Branches (SBs) around the country. It is important for us to deliver such services to them as are of value to them, enhancing their technical skills as well as employability. The incoming team would like to encourage student activities structured through SBs at the cluster-, state- and regional-levels. I call upon the National, Regional, and State Student coordinators to request for any reasonable support they may require for enhancing the quality of membership services to students, including at the school levels that we have initiated.

Other Stakeholders: CSI has a diverse set of stakeholders in addition to its members, including the industry, the Government, the academic and research community, the user community, professional societies and fraternities, and the society at large. Our off erings for these stakeholders, especially the Government and academic/research community, are currently being strengthened. We hope to continue to work on this through the year, through a variety of programs including research support, CSI Communications, CSI Journal & CSI Transactions, Digital Repository, Centres of Excellence, nation-

wide training programs, and linkages with international partners.

In particular, CSI Communications, as a product that is of value to a cross section of stakeholders within CSI, has to be supported and nurtured to maintain its current level of excellence and to go beyond. The newly launched CSI Journal holds much promise. We look forward to developments on CSI Transactions, as it is perhaps a very signifi cant step that CSI has taken. Both the latter publications are important developments that we are targeting at the academic and research communities.

Kolkata National Convention: The National Convention for 2012-13 is being organized at Kolkata, a historic city with strong connections to the development of computing in the country. We have a team of stalwarts organizing a set of exciting programs for the National Convention. We look forward to another excellent convention in December 2012.

CSI Conferences: One of the most important class of off erings of CSI to our members, as well to other stakeholders, is Conferences. I request Divisional Chairpersons and SIGs Conveners in particular, and all organs of CSI in general, to ensure we do suffi cient numbers of Conferences and other events, keeping in mind the need for excellence in quality. We would also like to build on the information artifacts generated through our events over a period of time, by maintaining an open access digital repository.

International Collaboration: CSI has been keen to add value to its members through collaboration with external bodies, both with international societies such as IEEE Technical Societies and ACM, as well as with domestic institutions. We will be constituting a new subcommittee under whose stewardship new partnerships could be created, and the implementation of old MoUs monitored.

Streamlining of Administration: Another area that the ExeCom will be devoting attention to during the year will be streamlining the administration at the HQ as well as the Educational Directorate. The Subcommittee on Administrative Reforms set up earlier would be submitting its report at the joint ExeCom in March-April, and all such measures which are approved by the ExeCom will be taken up for implementation. In particular, we would like to bring in better fi nancial and administrative systems and improved accountability at all levels.

Overall, we are planning for a very productive year 2012-13 for CSI, where members as well as other stakeholders derive substantive value. If, in your opinion, there are any new activities or programs CSI can take up, or if you have any general suggestions in the running of CSI, kindly write to me.

On behalf of me and my colleagues in the OBs and the ExeCom, I wish you a very productive year ahead.

With LoveJai Hind.

Satish Babu

President’s Message Satish Babu

From : [email protected] : President’s DeskDate : 1st April, 2012

Dear members


Editorial Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair, Debasish Jana and Jayshree DhereEditors

We are happy to convey that as a new editorial team we have successfully completed 12 issues during April 2011 to March 2012. We thank all our esteemed ex-CSI president, advisors, contributors and well wishers. We have tried our best and we would appreciate your opinions and feedback that will help us to improve. We take this opportunity to invite all of you to make more and more quality contributions. This issue, our theme is Web 2.0. This is a new dimension and shift of paradigm in terms of the web content, delivery, process and through social networking, wikis, blogging, sharing of videos, hosted services, mashups, folksonomies and rich web applications.

Web 2.0. is a new dimension and shift of paradigm in terms of the web content, delivery, process and through social networking, wikis, blogging, sharing of videos, hosted services, mashups, folksonomies and rich web applications.

This issue starts with two articles from Diptiman Dasgupta and Rudranil Dasgupta from IBM. The fi rst titled “Structure and Behavior of Social Networks linked to Web 2.0” and second one “Intelligent Communities and Future of Social Networking”. The fi rst article starts with introduction to social network (SN) and more about SNs: a) their types and behaviours, b) life cycle, c) structure and functionalities. After discussing SNs they a) introduce web 2.0, b) connect SN and web 2.0, c) discuss benefi ts and challenges of SNs using Web 2.0, and fi nally, d) inform what is road ahead. In the second article they write about intelligent communities and why they are needed. They propose synthesis of an intelligent community using SNs and a model for new SN.

In research section we have an article from Sajilal D., FTMS School of Engineering & Computing Sciences, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia that gives brief introduction to content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR). In article section, we have three articles. 1) Mr. Binu Zachariah, Director, Rightrack talks about marketing research that is driven by Web 2.0 technology, prospects and possibilities. He mentions benefi ts of using web 2.0 research tools in the research process: rich multimedia streaming features, one-to-one and one-to-many interaction facility, provision for sharing user-generated content, and interactive gaming. 2) Ms. Prerna Lal from International Management Institute, New Delhi in her article “Unleashing Web 2.0 for Higher Education” talks about potential of Web 2.0 in higher education and describes applications of various Web 2.0 technologies in higher education. 3) Prof Jyotiranjan Hota, KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar has an article titled “Automated teller machines: Generational Shift Toward Personalized Technologies”. In this article he talks about multivendor software (MVS) and how it has brought a

revolution in leading banks around the globe. He emphasizes that there is a great potential for deployment of ATM MVS at small and medium banks in developing countries like that of developed countries.

Practitioner Workbench has two sections: Programming.Tips() and Programming.Learn (“Python”)". The fi rst section article is by Ms. Shefali Naik, H.L. Institute of Computer Applications, Ahmedabad on C/C++ Solution for “Floating Point Formats Not Linked” Error in Turbo C/Borland C. The second section is by Umesh P, Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala with title “Scientifi c Twist of Python”.

In CIO perspective, Dr. R M Sonar, in his article as a series of articles on business information systems takes a closer look at ISs, describe about how IT and IS impacts the organizations. He categorizes ISs into three broad groups based on activities they support: operational, decision making and knowledge activities in the organization. In Security Corner, we have two articles fi rst one by Cyber Law Expert Adv. Prashant Mali where he writes about cyber crime against women. He has specifi cally mentioned “Do’s and Don'ts” for women community when they are using internet. The second article is by advocate Mr. Subramaniam Vutha that deals with technology law issues. He writes about why technology law matters to IT people. In HR section Dr. Mahesh Deshmukh and Dr. Manish Godse introduce competencies at work, their types, why they are required and how they are the keys for organization's success. In ICT@ Society feature has article titled "Haven't You Put Your Head in the Freezer Yet?” by Dr. Achuthsankar Nair.

...benefi ts of using web 2.0 research tools in the research process: rich multimedia streaming features, one-to-one and one-to-many interaction facility, provision for sharing user-generated content, and interactive gaming.

Happenings@ICT has two pages dedicated in this issue, the fi rst one is on regular ICT News Briefs by H R Mohan, AVP (Systems), The Hindu, Chennai. The second one has write up on impact of Budget 2012 on IT Industry by Dr. Vishnu Kanhere, Chairman, CSI Mumbai Chapter. As regular contributor, Dr. Suneeta Sane writes a review about the book “A Manager’s Guide to Data Warehousing” under the column "On the Shelf!"

As usual there are other regular features such as Brain Teaser, Ask an Expert and CSI News.

Please note we welcome your feedback and suggestions at [email protected].

With warm regards,Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair,Debasish Jana and Jayshree DhereEditors

Dear Fellow CSI Members,


Cover Story

Diptiman Dasgupta* and Rudranil Dasgupta** *IBM Certifi ed Senior IT Architect & Member of IBM Academy of Technology (AoT) **IBM Accredited IT Architect, IBM Accredited IT Specialist, IBM

What Is Social Network? Whenever we consider a network, we imagine a set of entities connected with each other on a logical or a physical basis. Physical networks like computer networks are something that can be planned, implemented, and managed very optimally and effi ciently. However, when we move from physical to logical networks, the visualization becomes much more diffi cult. Social networks consist of the most intelligent components - human beings. Being so, any activity involved with the social networks - be it participation, management, or optimization - becomes extremely complicated and context based.

Due to the various facets of the human species, we can have multiple types of social networks in all the fi elds and areas. This can range from a network of physicists, to a network of doctors, to a network of soccer lovers. Each type of network has its own focus area, member size, geographical spread and societal impact. Managing such networks is not only complicated, but it requires a lot of collective eff ort and collaboration. Uncountable social networks have been formed, but only a few have fi nally achieved their true goal, which emphasizes the complexity of such a matter.

A social network is usually created by a group of individuals who have a set of common interests and objectives. There are usually a set of network formulators followed by a broadcast to achieve the network membership. This advertising happens both in public and private groups depending upon the confi dentiality of the network. After the minimum numbers are met, the network starts its basic operations and goes out to achieve its goal. Today’s social networks also support formation of multiple groups inside the network on the basis of interests on specifi c areas of the

network members. These groups run their own discussion threads, share viewpoints that are accessible to those group members only. Success of a social network mainly depends on contribution, interest, and motivation of its members along with technology backbone or platform support. This makes life easier to communicate and exchange information to fulfi ll a particular communication need.

Implementing social networks and sustaining them is one of the biggest challenges, and people have formulated many mechanisms in the past to keep alive such networks. This has been largely supported by the advancements in the fi eld of information technology. The large-scale computerizations and the powerful advent of e-commerce have aided this too, but overall the need for a structured support was and is still there. Web 2.0 has been one of the greatest contributors in this area, and we will see how it has been a great contributor in this fi eld.

Types and Behavior of Social NetworksThe characteristics of social networks lie in its variety. We have a huge number of social networks based on people’s needs and goals, and classifying social networks is quite a challenging activity. Social networks exist in various domains - within and outside the organizations, within and outside geographical boundaries, within and outside social boundaries, and many other areas. Such huge variations make the reach of social networks grow to all sectors of the society. Keeping these in mind, the main categories identifi ed are given below (Fig. 1): • Social contact networks: These types

of networks are formed to keep contact with friends and family and are one of the most popular sites on the network

today. They have all components of Web 2.0, such as blogging, tagging, Wikis, and forums. Examples of these include Orkut, Facebook, and Twitter. • Study circles: These are social

networks dedicated for students where they can have areas dedicated to student study topics, placement-related queries, and advanced research opportunity gathering. These have components like blogging and fi le sharing. Examples of these are FledgeWing and College Tonight. • Social networks for professionals:

These types of social networks are specifi cally designed for core fi eld-workers, such as doctors, scientists, engineers, and members of the corporate industries. A very good example for this type of network is LinkedIn. • Networks for fi ne arts: These types

of social networks are dedicated to people linked with music, painting, and related arts and have lots of useful networking information for all aspiring people of the same line. Examples of such a network are Amie Street and Buzznet. • Police and military networks: These

types of networks, though not on a public domain, operate much like social networks on a private domain due to the confi dentiality of information. • Sporting networks: These types of

social networks are dedicated to people of the sporting fraternity and have a gamut of information related to this fi eld. An example of the same is Athlinks. • Mixed networks: There are a number

of social networks that have a subscription of people from all the above groups. It is a heterogeneous social network serving multiple types of social collaboration. • Social networks for the ‘inventors’:

These are the social networks for the people who have invented the concept of social networks, the very developers, and architects who have developed the social networks. Examples are Technical Forums and Mashup centers. • Shopping and utility service

networks: The present world of huge consumerism has triggered people to

Structure and Behavior of Social Networks linked to Web 2.0


Success of a social network mainly depends on contribution, interest, and motivation of its members along with technology backbone or platform support.


invest in social networks that will try to analyze the social behavior and send related information for the same to respective marts and stores. • Others: Apart from the networks

outlined above, multiple social networks serve a huge number of the Internet population in various ways. Some of these networks die out very fast due to lack of constructive sustenance thoughts while others fi nally migrate to a more specialist network.

Life Cycle of Social NetworksFor any social network, there are a number of steps in its life cycle. In each step of the life cycle of an online social network, Web 2.0 concepts have a great infl uence. Consider the diagram below (Fig. 2). For all the steps in the life cycle, Web 2.0 has provided tools and concepts that are not only cost eff ective but very easy to implement.

Oftentimes, online networks have a tendency to die out very fast due to lack of proper tools to communicate. Web 2.0 provides excellent communication mechanism concepts like blogging and individual email fi ltering to keep everyone in the network involved in its day-to-day activities.

Structure and Functionalities of Social NetworksHere are some interesting facts about the social networking and its usage. Internet

users spent 65% more time online in April 2010 (884M hours) than they

did in April 2007 (536M hours). With the sector having grown

to account for almost 23% of UK Internet time

(176M hours), one in every four-and-a-half UK minutes online is accounted for by social networks and blogs. In mainland China, social networks are taking off at a

tremendous speed. As of March 2010

comScore data, Facebook traffi c made up 41% of

all traffi c on a list of popular social destinations. Social network

advertisement revenue will reach $421 million, marking an overall 50% increase according to Informa.

The above statistics just demonstrate how the social network scenario will be impacting the IT industry as a whole. Niche features and state-of-the-art concepts like Web 2.0 have given users a wide range of services and created a huge boom in social networking applications. This can be credited to the basic restructuring of the Web as a whole. Earlier the Web was a read-only platform modifi ed by a select

group of Webmasters (administrative users on the side of the website) with almost no opinion taken from the end users. The Web over the last decade has migrated to a platform in itself and has started a revolution where the end users are ‘developing’ on the Web itself with minimal intervention from the Webmasters. Social networking applications have been able to greatly leverage from this paradigm shift of the Web, and all that a social networking application off ers have been because of this evolution.

The social networking applications of today have all been modeled on some common services to be provided to a user. Such services are broadly divided into the following: • The ability to add friends/relatives/

colleagues using the same network • Post messages either to a contact

or a group of contacts and receive messages in return

• Upload and share fi les in the genre of music, video, or documents

• Personalized home pages (such as Wikis) can be created by the users

• Blogging capabilities • Instant messaging capabilities with

other users who are online in the same social network

• Maintain online albums related to portraits

Fig. 1: Diff erent types of social networks

Interact withother networks

(mashups/distributedforums)

Achieve finalgoal/related goals

or terminatenetwork

Need forsocial network

Share groupdata with all

members(podcasting/file sharing)

Initial set ofmembersidentified

Create spacefor social

networking site(Wikis)

Conduct regularmeetings (online

meeting tools)

Have discussionson important

topics (forums)

Fig. 2: Life cycle of social networks

Socialnetwork

Mixednetworks

(Facebook)

Specialistnetworks

(LinkedIn)

Inventornetworks

(mashups)

Fine arts(Buzznet)

Police andmilitary

networks

Sportingnetworks(Athlinks)

Educationnetworks(Fledgewing)

Retailnetworks

(Wal-Mart)

Socialnetworks


• Development of links in professional fi elds by featuring career details

• Online gaming options among members of the same social network

The above services are some of the features that are very commonly found in the various social networks that we have on the Web today. It is also observed that any new social network that is coming up is trying to have most of the features that have been outlined above. The current structure of all social networks that we see is generally identical and consists of all the features that we have discussed above. Even the interfaces are quite common. For example, what Orkut portrays as its scrapbook, Facebook has demonstrated through the wall.

Using Web 2.0 to Optimize Social NetworksWeb 2.0 and its components Looking at social collaboration, Web 2.0 tries to tap the power of humans connected electronically through its new ways. This is one of the commonalities between social networks and Web 2.0 - both have people as their fulcrum.

The main agenda of Web 2.0 is to connect people in numerous new ways and utilize their collective strengths. In this regard, many new concepts have been created, such as Techniques (Blogging, Social Networking, Communities, Mashups, and Tagging); Standards (XHTML, CSS, and REST); and Tools (RSS,

AJAX, DOJO, PHP, and Ruby) (Fig. 3). The power of Web 2.0 is the creation of new relationships between collaborators and information.

The components of Web 2.0 help to create and sustain social networks as we will see in details in the upcoming sections. Blogging is the art of social conversation and has replaced personal home pages, thus helping for a more consolidated flow of thoughts and ideas. Wikis have enabled collaborative contribution and authoring among distributed teams. Tagging or folksonomy is a collaborative means of identifying information widgets to increase the power of any website and searching required information in a faster way. Combined with other such concepts, Web 2.0 provides an ideal platform for implementing and helping social networks to grow.*

Following diagrams demonstrate components of Web 2.0 and how it is linked with social networking.

Social networks and Web 2.0 servicesIn today’s environment, computer literacy is at its peak, and tools that are aided through the computerization age are most eff ective in keeping alive a concept as complicated as social networks. Web 2.0 has come to the aid of social networks and through its components has pushed the growth and sustenance of any social

network. The major components of Web 2.0 that support social networks are explained below. These components contribute in the areas demonstrated in the earlier section. Social networking applications (Fig. 4) have integrated these components as services within their interface. These components have been detailed below to demonstrate what may become a singular service later on. • Communities: Communities are

an online space formed by a group of individuals to share their thoughts, ideas, and have a variety of tools to promote social networking. Nowadays, a number of tools are available online to create communities that are very cost effi cient as well as easy to use. • Blogging: Blogs give the users of a

social network the freedom to express their thoughts in a free-form basis and help in generation and discussion of topics. • Wikis: A Wiki is a set of co-related

pages on a particular subject and allows users to share content. Wikis replace the complex document-management systems and are very easy to create and maintain. • Folksonomy: Web 2.0 being a people-

centric technology has introduced the feature of Folksonomy where users can tag their content online, which enables others to easily fi nd and view other content. • File sharing/Podcasting: This facility

helps users to send their media fi les and related content online for other people of the network to see and contribute more. • Mashups: With this facility, people

on the Internet can congregate services from multiple vendors to create a completely new service. An example may be combining the location information from a mobile service provider and the map facility of Google Maps in order to fi nd the exact information of a cell phone device from the Internet, just by entering the cell number.

As we see from the above components of Web 2.0, each of them contributes to help the implementation and continued existence of social networks on a meaningful basis. While Wikis and Communities help to create an online space for the networks, Blogging, Folksonomy, and File Sharing help to fl ow information across the virtual world of the social networking community.

Fig. 3: Components of Web 2.0

Web 2.0

CSSREST

XHTML

RSSAJAXJSON

Javascript

TaggingBlogs

MashupsFile Sharing

Wikis

Platform Web


Benefi t and Challenges of Social Networks Using Web 2.0Web 2.0 has provided a number of benefi ts to social networks. It provides a platform where users of the network need not to worry about the implementation or underlying technology at a very aff ordable cost and a very easy pickup time. Concepts of Web 2.0 like blogging are something that people do on a day-to-day basis for which no new knowledge skills are required. The beauty of this lies in this very fact - Web 2.0 techniques are very people-centric activities, and thus its adaptation is very fast. People are coming much closer to one another, and all social and geographical boundaries are being reduced at a lightning speed, which is one of the biggest sustenance factors for any social network. Using Web 2.0 also increases the social collaboration to a very high degree, and this in turn helps in achieving the goals for a social network.

There are a number of challenges that are faced within the implementation of social networks using Web 2.0 concepts. One of the major aspects is data security and privacy. In such public domains, there is a huge chance of data leak and confi dentiality

loss because there are usually no centrally mandated administrative services to take care of such things. Privacy of individual users also arises and can create a huge problem if malicious users somehow manage to perpetrate the social networks. This is all the more important for public utility networks like doctors and police. As a majority of the social networks are offl ine - and in order to bring these under the purview of online social networks - a lot of education and advertising needs to be done which itself becomes a cost burden when the people involved are not computer literate. This becomes more viable in areas of the world that are developing and do not have the basic amenities. The fact is that these areas are the ones that can benefi t the most using social networks in an online mode, and a huge amount of eff ort would be needed to help them using the technologies.

Road AheadThe power of social collaboration, if utilized properly, can dissolve social and cultural work barriers as well as promote innovation and higher productivity. Social collaboration is here to stay, and the faster organizations adapt and support the

demand for collaboration, they will have a stronger marketplace position. The need is to implement strong organizational support that would help create a structured approach to performing social collaboration and minimize risks.

Web 2.0 has introduced a number of powerful features that social networks are utilizing. These have provided signifi cant advances that can be seen by the worldwide acceptance of networking sites with these technologies.

In spite of all challenges, the worldwide acceptance of social networks and its implementation using Web 2.0 is here to stay and fl ourish. It is up to us to participate in this movement and continue to contribute toward the betterment of the technology and concept for more contribution to the society as a whole.

Bibliography[1] http://chicago.everyblock.com/[2] h t t p : //e n .w i k i p e d i a .o rg /w i k i /

Communities_of_Practice[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_

network_service[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_

knowledge[5] h t t p : //e n .w i k i p e d i a . o r g /w i k i /

Web_2.0[6] http://gkmc.utah.edu/winter2009/

Presentation/papers/paper%20summary%20-%20wu.pdf

[7] http://realbusiness.co.uk/internet_business/bebos_closure_what_it_m%20eans_for_social_networks

[8] h t t p : / / t h e f u t u r e b u z z .com/2009/01/12/social-media-web-20-internet-numbers-stats/

[9] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/333/7582/1283

[10] h t t p : //w w w . c d m c . u c l a . e d u /Welcome_fi les/onlineoffl ine.pdf

[11] h t t p : //w w w. c o - i - l . c o m /c o i l /knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml

[12] http://www.connect ingup.org /node/659

[13] http://www.cs.umd.edu/~mbilgic/pdfs/gd05.pdf

[14] h t t p : //w w w . d i g i z e n . o r g . u k /downloads/fullReport.pdf

[15] http://www.ehealtheurope.net/c o m m e n t _ a n d _ a n a l y s i s /2 8 2 /german_doctors_switch_on_to_web_2.0

[16] h t t p : / / w w w . i b m . c o m /d e v e l o p e r w o r k s / l i b r a r y/w s -SocialCollaboration/index.html

WikisCommunities

Social networkTagging Blogging

Podcasting Mashups

Fig. 4: Linkage of social networks

Using Web 2.0 also increases the social collaboration to a very high degree, and this in turn helps in achieving the goals for a social network.

Continued on Page 19


Diptiman Dasgupta* and Rudranil Dasgupta** **IBM Certifi ed Senior IT Architect & Member of IBM Academy of Technology (AoT) **IBM Accredited IT Architect, IBM Accredited IT Specialist, IBM

Social Network and Intelligent CommunitiesIn today's global scenario, social networks are one of the major enablers of interaction and communication for diverse set of people across race, culture, and geography. In reality, social networks are applicable both inside and outside the corporate world. Ultimately, it is a set of people who are part of the organization or society. So giving them a platform to collaborate, share their thoughts, and create a group of people with similar behavior or responsibilities or mindset are becoming critical day by day for creation of a successful community of human beings. Moreover, it can be an immense power when multiple people raise their thought and get integrated virtually through social networking. So it is becoming important day by day to eff ectively leverage this power of virtual communities that is good for society, and business and intelligent communities can be one of the vehicles for the same.

In this article, we will focus more on application of the social network by formation of intelligent communities. We will detail the concept of intelligent communities, which are making the world more interconnected and intellectually driven. Moreover, it can create real value for organization and society rather than just using social networks for making friends. So, the need for intelligent communities will be brought out in the context of an organization and society, and current pain points for such networks will be discussed in detail. We will also propose a model to describe the synthesis of an intelligent community using social networks and provide implementation idea of the proposed model. The impact of such intelligent communities toward organization and society will be detailed followed by the challenges of implementing intelligent communities using social networks. We will conclude with discussing the road ahead and the other areas of implementing the intelligent community.

Intelligent CommunitiesIntroduction to intelligent communityThe concept of community is based on

collaboration where social collaboration, its tool, and technologies (e.g. Web 2.0) can play a very signifi cant role to create, spread, maintain, and reuse knowledge which in turn can generate signifi cant revenues in business. Before diving into details of social collaboration and its impact on communities, let us explore what is an intelligent community.

A community is an interconnected group of people with similar areas of interest. They connect either physically or virtually, share their ideas on a topic/area of interest, and generate knowledge artifacts which are reusable in similar context. Intelligent communities can be conceptualized as a vibrant, up-to-date knowledge hub on a particular area of interest relevant for business or society or of academic interest. An intelligent community built around technology and business is all about building an ecosystem of people who are interconnected and contributing toward a common community vision, creation of knowledge, exchange of ideas, and experiences through proper outreach to a wider network of people of similar mindset or interest. The following are some basic characteristics of an intelligent community within an organization: • Find and stay connected with the right

practitioners, with the right skills• Identify appropriate peer groups and

rapid collaboration• Build skills, mentoring, and

share knowledge through virtual collaboration

• Reduce eff orts signifi cantly by obtaining the correct information

• Cross hierarchy or organizational structures independently

All the various aspects and collaboration types that make a community intelligent cannot be realized without social collaboration. Social collaboration, its tools, and technologies have opened up a multifold channel of idea exchanges, knowledge creation, classifi cation, and searching.

Need for an intelligent community in organization and societyAn intelligent community can be thought of as an engine for the creation and spread

of tactical knowledge. It is more relevant for a particular context and targeted for a particular set of people with a specifi c need, which cannot be created easily. The knowledge that is shared and learned in communities can be thought of as a social capital. People connect at various levels and across departments, without the constraints of a formal structure. As people connect with each other, they are able to share their expertise and learn from others. Signifi cant time savings can happen by assisting coworkers who have faced similar problems or are having similar experiences. It reduces the learning curve as well as errors. Previously, it was critical to know coworkers with similar experiences especially in large and geographically distributed organizations. However, with social collaboration and Web 2.0, we now have a platform to identify these similar set of people rapidly and thus creation, maintenance, and sharing of knowledge with other practitioners is in real time. The following list is a set of benefi ts of having an intelligent community leveraging the latest social collaboration tools and technologies:• Rapid problem solving• Leverage existing knowledge to

rapidly develop new capabilities• Leveraging best practices quickly• Standardizing practices• Time saving in communication and

collaboration• Chances to avoid mistakes Now, let us see what the pain point in today’s virtual communities is and how it can be addressed:(i) What is today’s pain point - Duplication of information and profi le for a same person across diff erent networks creates a lot of problem today. Each person needs to maintain his/her up-to-date profi le in each social networking site. In many cases, they need to add same set of friends across many networks. So today’s social networking sites focus more on enriching their functionalities but don’t take any care about duplication of functionalities. (ii) How intelligent community can help out - Some kind of interoperability can

Intelligent Communities and Future of Social Networking

Technical Trends


be conceptualized across many social networks of similar behaviors. One social network can exclusively maintain the user profi les, and other networks can provide the specifi c services. For checking of credentials, they can hook up with the profi le network (Fig. 1).

Synthesis of an intelligent community using social networksThe current genre of social networking applications that we fi nd in the web does not have any particular specialization. For a new user, choosing a particular social network becomes very diffi cult, because all of the social networks provide more or less the same range of services. None of the social networks highlight on the concept of specialist or niche services. As these applications do not have any niche services, they specialize in or provide any additional value. This sometimes leads to confusion and duplication of profi les in multiple networks. This duplication does not get limited only to the profi le creation. There is also a repetition of content in terms of messages and uploaded content in all the social networking sites. The end result is a confused user who spends all

his social interaction time doing the same over and over again.

In the current model, the fact that users have multiple profi les and social networking application associations leads to a tendency to forget removal of redundant profi les. These profi les, which do not get updated or removed, become a waste commodity. Keeping all the information in multiple places also increases security risks and may lead to loss of privacy of information. It sometimes may also happen that users just stop using some of the social networking sites that they used to visit because they have so much to maintain. This leads to certain sites storing user information (mostly personal) day after day without any activity. This is a great waste of not only some information but also the web space as a whole.

As users on the Internet platform, there is a natural tendency to want almost every service in all applications. However, sometimes it does not make sense to have multiple functionalities in the same social networking site. While trying to use all functionalities of the site, the users actually get into a tangle and end up using just one or two of so many features. Sometimes,

this also leads to misuse of a certain feature of the social networking site.

The major challenges that we have shown above comes from the fact that social networks in the present age do not concentrate on a particular service. Every social network tries to provide maximum features to its users. While that is not a deterrent in itself, social networks are slowly losing out on the user population who are fi nding it very diffi cult to concentrate on a particular social network for a length of time. This in turn leads to the decline of many social networking sites. One of the classic examples of such a scenario is the closure of Bebo (AOL).

The increasing competition, which also comes from the fact that every social network is concentrating on all services, is also removing the most important feature of these networks. The fact that they are being provided free of cost is something that may become something of the past. One such example is the social networking site - Ning. There may come a time, when due to all social networking sites becoming almost mirror images of each other will cause them to start charging the user to stay in competition.

Model for the New Social Network The model that we want to propose through this article is the evolution of Social Networks as a Service (SNaaS). This has been conceptualized in a diff erent manner than the normal social networking servicer that we have. As we have observed, there is tremendous competition among the social networks for user count increase, and crowding all features in one site is clearly not helping. What we need are social networks focusing on a particular functionality and exposing that as a service. Certain social networks have already started a thought process in this direction, one of the leading examples being LinkedIn, which is concentrating on the aspects of corporate social networking mainly.

The model that we have proposed has been shown in Fig. 2. There are multiple services that we have been describing in the article so far, and these services have been shown in a specialized manner under services. We have community management as a specialized service for communities, event management, contact management for profi les as some of the niche services that a single social networking application (shown in the horizontal plane) can provide.

Social network 1

Social network 3

Social network 5

Profile masternetworkUser

Social network 2

Social network 4

Fig. 1: Avoiding duplicati on of profi les in multi ple social networks


The basic thought behind this model is that we will be having a host of services on the Internet that can be made available to a user. Such services have been shown under the services vertical in the model. In the service provider section, we have the social networks, where each social network will be specializing in one of the services (see Fig. 2). While a social network may choose to provide multiple services, its niche area will be one of the services. As a result, the social network application itself becomes a service provider. Another very good example of such services is a profi le management service. This service can provide entire management for user profi les that can span across social networking applications. Hence, a user availing this service can reduce multiple user profi le creation and risks associated with the same.

In the proposed model, the social network would be concentrating upon one of the niche services while keeping the other common features as an additive or supporting cast to the main service. Let us consider the operation of a social networking site that would be dedicated to the career growth of users by building a corporate network. In the present scenario, we have job portals resumes can be uploaded for employees and for employers to see. Example of such a site is Monster.com. We also have sites like LinkedIn, which concentrate on the corporate networking. However, we do not have a model where the main focus would be career growth, but allow the other features like blogging, instant messaging as a backbone. In the proposed model, the network would be concentrating on building corporate networks through resume and position advertisement as the main service, while using the other services to aid the main theme. This is in stark contrast to the current scenario, where the popular social networks like Facebook, Orkut, and MySpace do not have any distinguishing service that they provide.

Benefi t of Proposed Model The proposed model spawns a number of benefi ts while also removing the challenges of the current model:• Duplication of data removed: In the proposed model, every social network would be concentrating on one particular service and providing add-on services to support the main theme. This would allow users to join a network for a specifi c purpose instead of creating accounts in any random network just for the sake of

it. This would remove duplicate profi les of users as well as reduce the upkeep time for a user for each network they belong to. For the case of user profi le duplication, we have profi le services (described earlier) that can be a niche service to manage profi les for social networking applications. • Reduction in failed ventures: The recent bubble burst for AOL (Bebo) and Ning have sounded a warning message for the other social networks that are prevalent today. The current scenario and competition will cause other networks to cascade in the same direction until and unless there is a distinct value addition that a social network can provide to the user. In our model, we have proposed exactly this value addition. Following our model will lead each network to become niche providers in a service area and reduce the chances for reduction in the failed ventures.• Increased security and data privacy: In the existing scenario, social networks do not properly allocate resources on security infrastructure. This results in a lot of security incidents. The crux of this problem lies in the fact that social networks off er too many features, which in the long run are not utilized and open security loopholes. Following our model will allow social networks to concentrate their security in the niche service area which the network is providing.• Higher acceptance among users: Though social networks are very popular among the Internet population, we must also accept the fact the average user is

becoming much more aware of their exact needs. Providing them with services-focused social networks will increase the acceptability of the network and lead to a much more stable user-network relationship.• Focused user community: One of the biggest advantages of the model we propose is that it will be a focused user community. When a user enrolls for a social networking site, the user will be very clear as to the exact service that is being provided. This will greatly increase the chances of survival of a social networking site when its focus is aligned in a particular direction.

Impact of an Intelligent CommunitySocial collaboration has always been practiced in some inherent form. However, what we have today are enterprises creating an environment for social collaboration. In addition, they are also developing excellent resources in order to tap into the incredible power of social collaboration using social computing. The concepts of reuse and innovation are driven very much in this model owing to the massive strength of the connected group.

As the market for technology becomes more and more competitive, with new products and services available each day, people have become an important focus point in the success of an organization. More connected the resources of an organization are, higher is the social collaboration index and higher

Orkut Facebook MySpace Linkedin

Social networks

Social networkmoderators

Working Model - Social Networks

Services Users

Blogging

Wiki management

Professionalgrowth

Mentoring

Contact management

Academic institutes

Event management

Communitymanagement

Fig. 2: New model for social networks


is the quality of the "social software" generated. Higher collaboration also leads to cost savings through reuse, more practical realization of the 24x7 work space and brainstorming of globally distinct minds.

A critical benefi t of this collaboration is the reduction in the barriers between the client and the project delivery teams. Clients are encouraged to be part of the social collaboration. As soon as they start using the concept, the person on the other end does not only become a developer or a project manager, but also a human being capable of understanding the client's problem. Collaborating on a social level not only gives the client, but also project teams a diff erent perspective on the client's issues and this only results in a much more satisfi ed client and a better business solution to be reused for other clients.

Challenges of Implementing Intelligent Community Using Social NetworksWhile we have huge number of positives for implementing social collaboration using social computing, there are many challenges here. Loss of confi dentiality and privacy is one of the major hindrances here. Whenever people team over social networks, inadvertently there are risks that information confi dential to the organization may come out. If proper controls are not kept in place, there may be huge losses for organizations along with violations of intellectual property.

As most social collaboration tools are not controlled by any central body, there will not be any set rules or structure to such computing. This entails tremendous self-responsibility while performing such activities. Moreover because of the lack of central control, the implementation becomes slightly unstructured. This may in turn lead to waste of eff ort instead of increase in productivity. There is also a very small investment in such eff orts by small organizations. Adapting to social collaboration on a structured basis is also something that may have a steep learning curve because people would also need to learn the principles while participating in certain activities.

Road AheadThe power of social collaboration, if utilized properly, can dissolve social and

cultural work barriers as well as promote innovation and higher productivity. Social collaboration is here to stay and the faster organizations adapt and support the demand for collaboration, they will have a stronger marketplace position. The need is to implement strong organizational support, which would help create a structured approach to performing social collaboration and minimize risks.

Web 2.0 has introduced a number of powerful features that social networks are utilizing. These have provided signifi cant advances, which can be seen by the worldwide acceptance of networking sites with these technologies.

In spite of all challenges, the worldwide acceptance of social networks and its implementation using Web 2.0 is here to stay and fl ourish. It is up to us to participate in this movement and continue to contribute towards the betterment of the technology and concept for more contribution to the society as a whole.

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[36] h t t p s : // w w w - 3 0 4 . i b m . c o m /f i l e s / f o r m /a n o n y m o u s /a p i /library/3cef8521-8f61-4d75-9ade-3d1ed168a642/document/6361f655-f6ca-4d95-8542-618535baf1b8/media/aot_atn_v2_n7_2011.pdf n

This article is based on the individual research done by authors and published in the form of multiple articles in IBM developerWorks (as per references given in Bibliography section)


All the above images have something in common - they all have a circle of some form in it. One does not need to mimic Sherlock Holmes to make this observation. However, it is surprising that Google can also make this observation. The above images are extracts from a Google image search result with the fi rst image (dosa - a lentil-rice pancake from south India) as query. If these were the fi rst hits then there was reason to be even more surprised. However, one would fi nd many a image that doesn’t seem to ring any bell of similarity. This is the present challenge faced by content-based image retrieval (CBIR). This article gives a brief overview of the area.

Traditionally, information has been stored in textual format in a given language whether electronically or as a hard copy document. Extracting required information manually or automatically has been a relatively simple task. However, when the information is held as an image,

the same is not true. Being able to describe an image in a concrete manner is a hard task. Although the human can interpret what is seen, to be able to translate and teach the characteristics of the image to a machine is possible; but it is a much diffi cult task1. The retrieval of documents by a text-based search engine does not require an understanding of the content. When retrieving images, the same is not necessarily true. Even if an example of the image required is provided when searching for images of similar content, most current algorithms fail to match high-level concept of the image to its lower-level content. The problem here is relying more on visual similarities in judging semantic similarities, something which itself is highly subjective2.

There are two basic problems which need resolving. The fi rst is that of the effi cient and meaningful breaking of an

image into parts based on features such as shape, color, texture, and spatial locations. The second is the large variance existing between the low-level features and high-level expressions of an image2.

In CBIR, a description of the required content in terms of visual features of an image is required. Images can then be ranked with respect to their similarity to the description. These images which most closely refl ect the description are the ones to be retrieved. Features described can be either of general purpose or domain-specifi c. General features include color, texture, shape etc., whereas domain-specifi c features are those used in special applications such as biometrics. How to generate a query which adequately describes the needs of the user is a major diffi culty in multimedia information retrieval. Even though the resolving of a query like “fi nd an image of an elephant” is relatively easy, the resolution of a query like “fi nd an image of an elephant with a rabbit” is a hard task to conduct3.

Attempting to access images via text-based methods has proved problematic, a situation which has prompted an increase in the research of and for an image-based solution. This is most often referred to as

Research Front

Sajilal D. FTMS School of Engineering & Computing Sciences, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Content-based Image Retrieval

Sajilal D. holds MSc (Computer Science) and MPhil (Futures Studies) and has been in IT education fi eld and research for the past 10 years. He currently heads the FTMS School of Engineering & Computing Sciences in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His areas of research interests are image processing, image retrieval, character recognition, and approximate/fuzzy string matching in lingusitic computing.


CBIR. CBIR relies on the characterization of primitive features such as color, shape, and texture that can be automatically extracted from the images themselves4. Fig. 1 gives a simple architecture of a CBIR System.

CBIR systems can use a variety of features for locating images. Color is an important choice. Querying color histogram for each image is common. Region histograms, color moment, dominant color, color cluster, bit signature etc. are some other features associated with color that can be exploited. Texture can be used as a feature to exploit patterns within the images and their spatial defi nition. It is achieved by modeling texture as a two-dimensional gray-level variation. Relative brightness of pairs of pixels is computed which enables degree of contrast, regularity, coarseness, and directionality to be estimated. Edge statistics, wavelet transforms, fi ltering etc. are some techniques used to enhance texture exploitation. Shape is yet another feature that can be used in variety of interpretations. Shape of the image or shape of a specifi ed region that is sought can be targeted, often the latter. Features such as lines, circles, boundaries, etc. can be exploited5. Fourier Transforms, template matching, convex parts, curvature scale space etc. are some

techniques used to enhance shape exploitation.

Typically, low-level fea-tures such as color, texture, shape, etc. are extracted by automated methods. The generation of high-level features usually requires human input. Images may be indexed at the low-level feature level, the object level, the syntactic level, and the high-level semantic level. Features selected by the system designer are divided into metadata and indexes and become a static set. The ability to dynamically extract and index features in order to adapt the system in response to the changing needs of the user and/or application is also needed for superior performance.

A dynamic CBIR system may use software robots for the collection of information. Systems diff er in the ease with which visual information is categorized into semantic classes.

The ability to extract features directly from compressed images and video avoids the need for expensive decompressing of the data.

Requesting searches to be based on low-level visual content is a major challenge for the users in that they have to be able to recreate scenes or to imagine from their expectations how the images or scene might look. This leads to frequent mismatching between low-level features and high-level semantic expectations. Therefore, currently, the users must serially view a large set of images, most of which may be irrelevant or undertake many query refi nements. Searching through visual features is possible, but thus far with mixed results.

An important part of CBIR is that of Relevance Feedback (RF). The idea behind RF is to take the results that are initially returned from a given query and to use the information about whether or not those results are relevant to perform a new query. Three types of feedback can be usefully distinguished: explicit feedback, implicit feedback, and blind or “pseudo” feedback. CBIR systems can also make use of RF, where the user progressively refi nes the search results by marking

images in the results as “relevant”, “not relevant”, or “neutral” to the search query, then repeating the search with the new information6. RF is considered to be very useful in reducing semantic gap and thus enhancing accuracy of a CBIR system7.

Many systems of CBIR have been in vogue since last two decades. The IBM QBIC, Visualseek, PicHunter, and NeTra are some of the prominent ones. Google’s image searches as well as these systems have scope for improvement and also tremendous scope for application in the multimedia-rich digital world. Another related area of research is content-based video retrieval. This off ers much challenge in addition to application. Television channels would fi nd it a very useful tool if a content-based retrieval is possible on the video archives and footages that they have archived over decades. MPEG-7 currently has started addressing this, in an attempt to evolve an industry standard. This area is also an equally, if not more, fertile area of research.

References[1] R. Datta, J. Li and J. Z. Wang (2005).

Content-Based Image Retrieval - Approaches and Trends of the New Age, ACM.

[2] S. Deb and Y. Zhang (2004). An Overview of Content-based Image Retrieval Techniques, Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Application (AINA’04), IEEE.

[3] V. Castelli and L. D. Bergman (Eds.) (2002). Image Databases: Search and Retrieval of Digital Imagery. John Wiley & Sons: New York.

[4] P. Aigrain (1996). Content-based represen tation and retrieval of visual media: A state-of-the-art review. Multimedia Tools and Applications.

[5] D. Forsythe (1997). Finding pictures of objects in large collections of images, in Digital Image Access and Retrieval: 1996 Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing.

[6] Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relevance_feedback

[7] G. Das and S. Ray (2007). A Comparison of Relevance Feedback Strategies in CBIR, Computer and Information Science, 6th IEEE/ACIS International Conference. n

Fig. 1: A simple architecture of a CBIR System

Feature extraction

Visualfeatures

Imagecollection

Multidimensional indexing

Query processing

Query interface

Retrieval engine

User

Textannotation


Article Binu ZachariahDirector, RightrackEmail: [email protected].

What does the term Web 2.0 mean to you? Does it imply your transformation from a simple email user to an active member in a few social networking sites or a blogger or a contributor to popular social media sites? According to Wikipedia, “Web 2.0 is a loosely defined intersection of web application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web”.

Undoubtedly, Internet has opened the floodgates for a new wave of social interaction in the society. It facilitates individuals to communicate and network with each other by nullifying the concepts of space and time in a virtual world. Today, the virtual world powered by Internet-driven applications is fast evolving by the patronage of millions of cybercitizens spread across geographies and time zones. The synchronization of information and communication technologies is now serving as the backbone for various mission-critical applications. To top it all, open source applications, cloud computing, content management system, and social computing have revolutionized the process and exchange of information and communication between individuals and groups. Indeed, Web 2.0 applications transformed the cyber world from static to dynamic mode distinctly characterized by collaborative information exchange among the user community.

Gathering information and feedback from the people is critical to organizations to remain competitive in the market place. Today, companies collect variety of information about their products and services from their current and potential customers. Market surveys, in-depth

interviews, and focus group discussions (FGDs) are the traditional methods that are widely used by them for information gathering. However, when those methods are viewed in today’s perspective, they are costly, time consuming, manpower-oriented, and prone to human errors and bias. A sizable chunk of the population like high-fl ying corporate executives is hard to reach by traditional methods. The networking power of Internet makes it an essential medium for driving current and

future information and communication technology (ICT) applications.

Today, a host of online marketing research tools fueled by Web 2.0 technology has been gradually transforming the way business research is being carried out all over the world. The power of Internet coupled with bespoke Web 2.0 applications is used to reach out to people and gather detailed information and insights. Online variants of many of the traditional marketing research methods such as online FGDs, in-depth interviews are already in prevalence. Web 2.0 research

tools aid the research process with rich multimedia streaming features, one-to-one and one-to-many interaction facility, provision for sharing user-generated content, and interactive gaming. To a certain extent,the real-world experience is successfully recreated in the virtual world to appeal to the senses of the participants as part of the research process.

Corollary to this trend, the unprecedented growth and development of mobile Internet applications and

smartphone technology in the recent years have shortened the divide between the virtual and real worlds. In addition to the prevailing social networking and social media applications that are available on mobile phones, the evolving application areas like augmented reality, QR codes are capable of being adopted into the ambit of online marketing research to supplement and enrich its methods. Surely, there are more exciting things in store that are yet to come.

The Indian marketing research industry is largely propelled by traditional tried and tested research methods. Online research methods except online surveys and polls have not yet found many users in India. Some brand owners in India use social media and social networks to interact with their current and prospective customers in order to gather insights and feedback on their products and services. However, validating the information gathered from social media is diffi cult due to factors such as lack of access to demographic/psychographic profi les of network followers, proneness to personal bias, chances of being infl uenced by distorted views expressed by others, lack of control over network conversations, and little scope for private interactions. Moreover, the data generated out of social media

interaction is a property of network site owners. In that context, online interactive research tools are better equipped to handle such pitfalls with a clear edge. They are faster, convenient, economical, and effi cient too when compared to the traditional methods.

Bulletin board focus groups (BBFG), online text/audio/video chat-based focus groups, online in-depth interviews, online diaries ,online ethnography, etc. are a few of the popular qualitative

Marketing Research Driven by Web -2.0 Technology - Prospects and Possibilities

“Web 2.0 is a loosely defi ned intersection of web application features that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web”.

Web 2.0 applications transformed the cyber world from static to dynamic mode distinctly characterized by collaborative information exchange among the user community.


research tools generally used by marketing researchers all over the world. Online DIY (Do-It-Yourself) tools equip research users to undertake their own research studies by eliminating third-party research agencies. Interestingly, the majority of the stakeholders of Indian market research industry are not familiar with these tools. Most of the Web 2.0 marketing research tools

are of foreign origin. EasyResearchPro is an Indian variant among them. EasyResearchPro is a hybrid tool that is capable of handling both qualitative and quantitative research projects. It uses “dialogue method” to communicate with the target people, and the process of communication is aided by multimedia streaming and document sharing. Synchronous and asynchronous participation options provide greater

convenience and flexibility to both researchers and participants.

Online moderated discussions are better and low-cost substitutes for costly and time-consuming traditional FGDs. The cost comparison chart shown above indicates the cost-saving properties of online group discussion format.

In the real-life scenario, conducting traditional FGDs in multiple locations - if

a research project warrants so - is a costly aff air. The cost incurred on travelling, boarding, and lodging of researchers and clients normally forms the major part of the total project expenditure. Similarly, the project completion time gets extended proportional to the number of locations or cities where the study has to be organized. By resorting to online focus groups, researchers can fi nish multilocation studies in a few days time.

Web 2.0 research tools are generally used for: (i) Testing of new product concepts, prototypes, designs, branding, pricing, etc.; (ii) Studying Customer satisfaction, loyalty, customer experience, tastes, preferences, expectations, attitudes, and opinions; (iii) Exploring and extracting insights from customers through direct interaction (Can also be used to engage and retain the social media contacts of organizations by creating a private social network for interaction within a social network.); and (iv) Creating “customer panels” to track regular feedback and also to carry out targeted promotions and loyalty programs.

The key advantages of using Web 2.0 research tools include: substantial cost and time savings on projects; confi dentiality and privacy of data, fl exibility to participate from anywhere; detailed feedback and insights from the people; and ability to conduct multilingual studies and automatic generation of reports, tables, charts, and transcripts. Above all, web-based marketing research applications are regarded as “Green technology” - which indirectly reduces carbon footprints.

Web 2.0 research tools, predominantly the qualitative ones, are getting better and sophisticated with the evolution and progress of information and communication technologies. Technology-driven business research with special focus on social media and mobile applications is gathering momentum in developed countries around the world. Catching up with global trends, India is expected to adopt new technologies that bring forth better productivity, faster turnaround time, and cost benefi ts in the realm of business research. n

Cost Components Traditional Focus GroupsCost implication

Online Focus GroupsCost implication

Respondent recruitment Applicable Applicable

Moderation Applicable Applicable

Incentives to participants Applicable Applicable

Software tool rental Not Applicable Applicable

Transcription Applicable Nil

Video recording Applicable Nil

Travel/Boarding Applicable Nil

Venue hiring Applicable Nil

Binu Zachariah is the director of Rightrack, an online business research company. To his credit, he has over 15 years of professional work experience in marketing research and strategic marketing consultancy and IT services. He holds postgraduate degrees in Business Management, Sociology, and Applied Psychology. His areas of interest are online qualitative research and Applied semiotics. Binu can be reached at [email protected].

About the Author

Web 2.0 research tools aid the research process with rich multimedia streaming features, one-to-one and one-to-many interaction facility, provision for sharing user-generated content, and interactive gaming.


Article Prerna Lal Lecturer, International Management Institute, New Delhi

IntroductionWeb 2.0 is clearly the second coming of the Internet and represents the rapid proliferation of new generation web- or Internet-based technologies. Web 2.0 has created the platform for increasing interpersonal content facilitation, sharing, creativity, service delivery, innovation, and collaboration. Organizations have been taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies in many ways - by providing a better communication channel for all stakeholders for sharing their experiences

and collaborative working and introducing innovative ways of marketing products and services etc[2].

This article is an attempt to under-stand how institutes and organizations providing higher education can take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for providing a social and collaborative learning platform for students and instructors.

What Is Web 2.0?Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and defi nes it as “the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as an interacting and enabling platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network eff ects to get better the more people use them”[9].

Web 2.0 and Higher Education According to MIT Sloan Management Review report, organizations are using Web 2.0 mainly to support innovation, creativity, collaboration, and information sharing[8]. These benefi ts are not limited only to organizations, but institutes providing higher education are also exploring ways to unleash Web 2.0 capabilities to create a better learning environment for students.

Teaching and learning needs in higher education are very diff erent,

mainly because there we have a group of students coming from diverse educational backgrounds. Moreover, some students may have work experience as well. Using tools like PowerPoint presentations, WebCT, or Blackboard - which are tailored towards one-to-many approach and mostly faculty-driven - may not be very eff ective in this case. While designing the pedagogy for courses in higher education, instructors need to ensure active participation of students in discussions, group activities etc[7]. This should inturn result in developing competences in them to create their own understanding and insights regarding a concept and sharing it with others. This is a situation where one can take advantage of the unique features of Web 2.0. Moreover, it can provide a platform for instructors and students to create

their own content in diff erent formats ranging from documents, audio or video clips, photos, news etc. and sharing those using tools like blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and social networks.

Conclusion With the proliferation and adoption of Web 2.0 tools by businesses and other consumer-oriented organizations, it becomes important to help familiarize students with these tools. Learning about such tools prepares students for their future employment avenues. However, use of these tools in education may face challenges related to availability, accessibility, and acceptance of technology and diffi culty in enthusing and motivating students to use and leverage such tools.

In conclusion, it can be said that Web 2.0 tools can and has led to a powerful paradigm shift in the dissemination and deliverance of education and pedagogical content, course material, and literature. Clearly, Web 2.0 technologies and tools need to be considered more as strategies that embody certain philosophical and theoretical concepts and ideas about how people interact and learn. Higher education entities and decision makers need to adapt to the new realities that inform key areas of their work. The evolving world of Web 2.0 will still continue to shape trends in the educational sector, and both consumers and creators need to adapt in order to leverage the manifold benefits.

Unleashing Web 2.0 for Higher Education

Prerna Lal is a lecturer in Information Technology at International Management Institute, New Delhi. She is basically an engineer with an MBA (IIT-Roorkee) degree . She is SAP-certifi ed consultant and has ITL V3 Foundation-level certifi cate in IT Service Management. She has more than 10 years of experience in academics and research with areas of interest being data warehousing and data mining, management information system, software project management, IT service management, and cloud computing. She can be contacted at [email protected].

About the Author

Web 2.0 tools can and has led to a powerful paradigm shift in the dissemination and deliverance of education and pedagogical content, course material, and literature.


Web 2.0 Description Application in Higher Education

Examples

Blogs and microblogs Blog is a website where an individual (blogger) can share his or her own experience, perceptions, and refl ections about a specifi c topic. We can also include images, links to interesting websites etc. Typically, these views are stored in a chronological order. In microblogs, the individual is limited to a specifi c number of characters per posting.

Educational applications of blogs include publishing news and information regarding courses, sharing research references, problem solving, interacting, and expressing views on various topics by students or instructors.Blogs can help students in improving their ability to express views through posts, developing collaboration and social skills while working on group projects [5,6,10].

Edublogs.org (blog), Twitter (Microblog)

Wikis Wikis are web pages that allow a group of registered users to create and edit web pages incrementally.

Wikis can be used as virtual collaborative environment where students and educators cannot only share knowledge but also play an important role to create a knowledge base.

http://istheory.byu.edu/wiki/Main_PageThis site provides researchers with summarized information on theories widely used in Information Systems (IS) research in Wikis format.

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds

RSS is a vehicle for providing diff erent types of web content to user’s browser.

Educators can use RSS as a means to syndicate blog posts, communicate events scheduled on or off campus to prospective and existing students, can be used for research projects to monitor news and search engines for a specifi c keywords by creating search feeds.

Registering for RSS feeds from academic publishers like Elsevier, Inderscience regarding call for papers for a specifi c journal.

Podcasts Podcasting is an asynchronous web technology where digital audio or video fi les can be viewed or downloaded to a computer or personal player. Podcasts gives fl exibility to users to access the content anytime, anywhere, and using any media (desktop, mobile, laptop etc.).

Educators can record and post podcasts of lectures, seminars, conferences on an institute’s website. This will help students who are unable to attend these events in person[1].

Oxford, MIT, Stanford University etc. provide educational podcasts through iTunes.http://itunes.apple.com/in/genre/podcasts-education-higher/id1416

Social bookmarking Social bookmarking is a way of saving links of interesting websites to an individual’s blog or a public website. Usually, these links are tagged with keywords for ease of browsing.

Social bookmarking simplifi es the distribution of reference lists, bibliography, research papers, and other resources among peers and students.

Digg, http://delicious.com/ , reddit

Social networks Involves grouping of specifi c individuals or organizations which may or may not have similar interests.

Both instructors and students can use this platform to interact with their peers, alumni, people from industry, or prospective students etc. Social networks can be used for sharing information regarding courses, industry trends, promoting institute’s events etc[4].

Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Myspace

Mashups Mashup is a web application where one can combine data (audio, video, text etc.) from two or more than two sources to create something new.

Creation of audio, video, photo, and news mashups for presentations or group work will encourage students to innovate and demonstrate their capabilities[3].

Ableton, Flappr, Buzzword


References [1] Hicks, A and Graber, A (2010).

Shifting paradigms: teaching, learning and Web 2.0, Reference Services Review, 38(4):621-33.

Cormode, G and Krisnamurthy, B (2008). Key Diff erences Between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0,available at http://fi rstmonday.o r g / h t b i n /c g i w r a p / b i n /o j s /index.php/fm/article/view/2125/1972.

[3] Craig, E M (2007). Changing paradigms: managed learning environments and Web 2.0, Campus-Wide Information Systems, 24(3):152-61.

[4] Ellison, N B, et al. ( 2007). The Benefi ts of Facebook ‘Friends’: Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12(4).

[5] Kaplan, M D, et al. (2010). Educational blogging: Integrating technology into marketing experience, Journal of Marketing Education, 32, 50-63.

[6] Lowe, B and Laff ey, D (2011). Is Twitter for the Birds? Using Twitter to Enhance Student Learning in a Marketing Course, Journal of Marketing Education, 33(2), 183-192.

[7] Malony, E J ( 2007). What Web 2.0 Can Teach US About Learning? The

Chronicle of Higher Education, 53(18), B26.

[8] Mangelsdorf, M E (Spring, 2007). Beyond Enterprise 2.0 (Interview) Sloan Management Review.

[9] O’Reilly, T (2005). What is Web 2.0? Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software, available at: www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/ 30/what-is-web-20.html

[10] Virkus, S and Bamigbola, A A (2011). Students’ conceptions and experiences of Web 2.0 tools, New Library World, 112(11/12):479-89. n

[17] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/kits/d-ls-web20kit/

[18] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-socia lco l lab/www.merseys ide .police.uk

[19] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-socialcollab/index.html?ca=drs-

[20] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-socialpart2/index.html

[21] http://www.icmrindia.org /casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Ethics/%20BECG082.htm

[22] h t t p : //w w w . i n s i d e f a c e b o o k .c o m / 2 0 1 0 / 0 5 / 2 1 /s e c u r i t yissues-%20could-force-facebook-to-slow-down-product-development/

[23] http://www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk/kpq-1-1-zannini.pdf

[24] http://www.koolmd.com/health-online-prescriptionsmedication-%20ref i l l s-heal th-advice-webcam-h.264-web-physiciansmedical-%20doctors-md-health-care-cyber-docs/

[25] h t t p : //w w w . k r i s h n a d e . c o m /blog/2010/ning-announcement/

[26] http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/brits-spend-mosttime-%20on-social-networks-but-email-and-portalssurvive/%203013588.article

[27] http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&fi le=article&sid=21147&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[28] http://www.shockmd.com/2009/0 7/0 6 / h o w - a n d - w h y - j u n i o r -physicians-use-web-20/

[29] h t t p : //w w w . s l i d e s h a r e . n e t /j e r e m i a h _ o w y a n g /o n l i n e -community-best-practices-fi nal

[30] http://www.socialtext.com/[31] http ://www.w3.org /2008/09/

msnws/art icles/Future_of_SN_Giles_Hog%20ben_ENISA.pdf

[32] http://www.whoswatchingcharlottesville.org/social.html

[33] http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/16/ngo-20-wikinomics-and-the-future-of-the-non-profi t-sector

[34] http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/products/connections/

[35] https://www.lotuslive.com/[36] h t t p s : //w w w - 3 0 4 . i b m . c o m /

f i l e s / f o r m / a n o n y m o u s /a p i / l i b r a r y/ 3 c e f 8 5 2 1 - 8 f 6 1 -4 d 7 5 - 9 a d e - 3 d 1 e d 1 6 8 a 6 4 2 /document/6361f655-f6ca-4d95-8542-618535baf1b8/media/aot_atn_v2_n7_2011.pdf n

Diptiman Dasgupta is the Lead Architect for Travel & Transportation Industry in IBM Global Delivery and is a member of IBM Academy of Technology (AoT). He is an IBM Certifi ed Senior IT Architect and Open Group Master Certifi ed IT Architect in the area of Enterprise Integration (EI). He has 14+ years of experience in design and development, architecting, providing technical strategy, solutions for creating and leveraging assets in client solution, as well as providing technical leadership to the organization. Additionally, he is also the member of IBM Global Delivery (GD) CTO offi ce and also supports Technical Eminence Program in IBM Global Delivery. Diptiman is having multiple publications on Social Collaboration/BPM available in IBM developerWorks and has patents Filed/PUBLISH.

Rudranil Dasgupta is an IBM Advisory IT Architect, Advisory Accredited IT Specialist, and is currently working as the Advisory Architect. He has close to 9 years of experience in design and development, architecting, providing technical strategy, solutions for creating and leveraging assets in client solution, as well as providing technical leadership to the organization. He has in-depth experience in working with WebSphere solutions, SOA, Web 2.0, Content Management, SAP CRM, and Java/J2EE. Rudranil has multiple patent publications and patent fi lings. He is an active writer on the IBM developerWorks community and has multiple publications. Moreover, he is an active member of the IBM University Relations and has delivered multiple lectures.A

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Continued from Page 8

This article is based on the individual research done by authors and published in the form of multiple articles in IBM developerWorks (as per references given in Bibliography section)


Article Prof Jyotiranjan Hota Area Chairperson of Information Systems,KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar

Automated Teller Machines: Generational Shift Toward Personalized Technologies IntroductionATM transactions are continuously becoming complex due to multiple transaction options and usage of various categories of cards at ATM counters. So innovative software solutions are always in demand in order to cater to the customer’s requirements. Now many banks are providing personalized services, envelope-free deposits, and advertisements at their ATM counters. Noncash items like coupons, movie tickets, and gold coin services are possible through ATMs. Due to personalized features, it is possible for banks to cross sell and upsell products and services to the customers at the ATM counters as per their past transactions.

Multivendor ATM Technology Multivendor software (MVS) has brought a revolution in leading banks around the globe. It is a revolutionary concept to execute a single software application in the entire ATM network. These multivendor applications can run on any hardware platform. Hardware components can be brought from multiple vendors and fi tted with “best of the breed” of ATM needs. This next-generation MVS is based on XFS Standard that provides common API for interacting with various devices of an ATM. Now there is a trend to shift toward open architecture, which adopts open systems like Microsoft windows, multivendor ATM technology, and TCP/IP-based networks. Due to open ATM architecture, hardware and software are not tightly coupled. So it is advantageous for the banks to decouple the purchasing of hardware and software for their ATMs.

ATM Industry InternationalToday’s ATM market is shifting toward more open architectures, as marked by the rapid adoption of ATM hardware running Microsoft Windows operating system, the emergence of MVS, and the move toward TCP/IP-based networks[2]. As per the study of Retail Banking Research[7], during 2010, market share of three leading MVS providers was

66%. NCR was the market leader with 24% market share followed by KAL and Wincor Nixdorf with 21% market share each. McEwan[5] stated that traditional ATMs are expensive to buy and upgrade software in order to keep up-to-date. Future aim of banks and ATMs is to adopt MVS across their entire ATM network. As per a survey conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. for Diebold in 2006[9], 42% of the consumers want to customize their ATM preferences online and 41% think more positively of their fi nancial institutions when an ATM can memorize user preference settings. Personalization increases the experience of customers and enhances the speed of transactions by eliminating repetitive tasks, screens that are unnecessary and irritating. As per the research report of Phoenix Interactive Design Inc. (2011), the generational shift toward adoption of ATMs of customers as a self-service banking option will continue which are personalized, functional, available 24x7, and do not require human intervention. RBR’s “Global ATM Market and Forecasts to 2016”[8] studied that Asia-Pacifi c has just set the record for the most new ATMs deployed in one year, the number of installations fell in 12 of the World’s 65 largest market.

IndiaIn India, ATM industry is growing at an exponential rate. Currently banks, airlines, hotels, and retailers are using ATMs. So to say, ATM has brought a self-service revolution. Chandnanl[3], MD of NCR, shared his views with Financial Express on the Growth of ATM industry in India as the fastest growing in the APAC region. NCR continued to be the market leader in India. SBI, Corporation Bank, OBC, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Citibank, HSBC, StanChart, and UBI are the customers of NCR in India. NCR had invested multimillion dollars by setting a manufacturing factory at Pondicherry and a management center in Mumbai.

As per RBI, ATMs were introduced to the Indian banking industry in the early 1990s initiated by foreign banks. ATM technology was used to reach the customers at a lower initial and transaction cost with hassle-free services. As per RBI’s Draft approach paper[6], ATMs have gained prominence as a delivery channel for banking transactions in India.

Rural ATM Network in IndiaTo explore the rural market, biometric technologies were adopted in India. This facilitated the illiterate rural poor to use ATMs. But, the installation cost of these

Global installed base of ATMs set to reach 2 million by 2011

Number of ATMs worldwide 1967-2011 (millions)2.0

1.8

1.6

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0

Source: RBR research

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11


biometric ATMs is quite high. Another ATM technology targeted at rural population in India is multilingual ATMs. However, multifunctional ATMs are yet to be popular in India now.

PNB installed its fi rst biometric ATM at a village in UP to help illiterate and semi-illiterate customers through voice guidance and fi nger tip to perform basic ATM transaction. By 2010, the bank plans to cover 30,000 villages, 15 million households, and 75 million people by using business facilitator technologies. As per Business Line[1], penetration of ATMs in village areas is quite low. Low transaction volume is making it unviable. Procurement price of ATMs - depending on the order - varies between Rs. 4-5 lakhs and Rs. 6-7 lakhs per ATM. As per the instruction of government, joint sourcing of ATMs among public sector banks can drive down the cost of procurement through economies of scale and also encourage banks to set up ATMs in unbanked rural areas. As per Business Line[1], Thrissur-based Catholic Syrian Bank has installed biometric ATMs at Ozhur village of Kerala to provide banking facilities to under-banked areas in secure and cost-eff ective manner. The biometric ATM has been developed by Vortex Engineering Pvt. Ltd. in collaboration with IIT Madras. Additional features like weather information, commodity price, and stock prices can be integrated into the Vortex Gramateller ATM with the help of an additional interface to the switch.

Managerial and Technical Benefi tsOperation and maintenance cost was high in traditional ATMs. MVS facilitates

independent decision making for the banks in opting for hardware vendors. This had reduced drastically the cost of ownership of ATMs for the banks. Deployment of MVS had reduced infrastructure management issues in these banks. In OS/2 environment, data security was not an issue as the environment was closed. However, scope of patch downloads and security updates was not there like windows operating systems installed in new-generation ATMs[4]. ATMs can potentially do better jobs if the experience is personalized. Banks want to change their software on a regular basis and have uniform behavior across their networks. This improves customer service, reduces costs for the bank, and increases effi ciency[10].

Some ATMs can memorize consumer preferences as per their past transaction behavior and tailor services accordingly. Some of the ATMs even have Internet facility, which provides two-way interactions with live agents, off er biometric security capabilities, and display personalized advertisements. Internet-enabled ATMs are easier to maintain as the ATMs can be connected to vendor’s central monitoring systems.

Conclusions and FutureDeployment of MVS is at maturity stage in large institutions of developed countries. In many developing countries, there is a great potential for deployment of ATM MVS at small and medium banks. So the future of MVS looks quite good in these countries. In the current context, there is a passion among leading banks to link all of their distribution channels. This multichannel integration will provide scope for ATMs of

banks to cross sell, provide single view of a customer across channels, and enhance customer services and choices.

References[1] Business Line (2011). CSB unveils fi rst

biometric ATM, available at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/banking/article2484893.ece?homepage=true&ref=wl_home, accessed on 02.01.2012.

[2] Celent (2008). A window on the future of ATMs available at http://www.crossloader.net/distribution-atms-a-window-on-the-future-of-the-atm, accessed on 02-01-2012.

[3] Chandnanl, D. (2005). NCR India with an Interview with Papiya De, 2005: Indian ATM industry is the fastest growing in the APAC region, available at www.financialexpress.com/news/indian-atm-industry-is-the-fastest-growing-in-the-apac-region/62134/1, accessed on 20.12.2011.

[4] Kal (2010). The future of ATM Software, available at http://www.usfst.com/article/The-future-of-ATM-software/, accessed on 20.03.2012.

[5] McEwan, H. (2011). Recent Innovations in ATM Software, available at http://ezinearticles.com/?Recent-Innovations-I n -ATM -S o f t wa re & i d = 6 4 6 49 8 5 , accessed on 01-12-2011.

[6] Reserve Bank of India (2007). ATMs of Banks: Fair Pricing and enhanced Access-Draft Approach Paper, 2007-Reserve bank of India, available at http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=17936, accessed on 20.12.2011.

[7] Retail Banking Research (2010). Multichannel integration to drive MVS going forward, Banking Automation Bulletin, available at www.rbrlondon.com/newsletters/b275e.pdf, accessed on 12.03.2012.

[8] Retail Banking Research’s “Global ATM Market and Forecasts to 2016”, available at http://www.atmia.com/ClassLibrary/Page/News/files/RBR%20Press%20Release.pdf, accessed on 15.03.2012.

[9] Survey conducted by Harris interactive Inc. for Diebold (2006). Available at http://www.usfst.com/article/Tactics-for-Reducing-the-Total-Cost-of-Ownership-of-Advanced-Function-ATMs/, accessed on 11.03.2012.

[10] Retail Banking Research(2011). Taking control of the Network with Multivendor software, Banking Auomation Bulletin available at http://www.rbrlondon.com/newsletters/b292_KAL.pdf accessed on 05.01.2012. n

Global ATM installations 2005-2011

2,000,000

1,800,000

1,544,8531,641,490

1,727,865

1,801,670

1,869,3751,929,660

1,985,805

1,600,000

1,400,000

1,200,0002005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Source: Global ATM Market and Forecasts to 2011 (Retail Banking Research)

2010 2011

Continued on Page 32


Have you ever come across “fl oating point formats not linked” error in C or C++ program. Here follows a tip. Let’s analyze the following program listing and after successful building of the program, the above mentioned runtime error appears. Program Listing Oneint main(){ struct STUDENT{ int rollno; char stdname[20]; float percentage; } *s1; printf("\Enter student details: "); scanf("%d %s %f", &s1->rollno, s1->stdname, &s1->percentage); printf("\nThe entered details are: "); printf("Roll:%d, Name:%s, Percentage:%f ", s1->rollno, s1->stdname, s1->percentage); getch(); return 0;}

The above C program is written and compiled in turbo C. When I executed the above program it displayed the following error, Scanf: fl oating point formats not linked and the program terminated abnormally. It happened because of the variable *s1, which is a pointer to the structure “STUDENT”, in which I had defi ned a “float” variable named “percentage”. It means I found this error when I tried to read a value for fl oat data type using pointer to structure. When the program is executed, the compiler displayed a runtime error at the line scanf("%f", ... &s1->percentage).

It can happen when we use Borland C/C++ or Turbo C/C++ as compiler. “Floating point formats not linked” is a Borland runtime error (Borland C or C++, Turbo C or C++). Borland's compilers do not link in the fl oating-point (f-p) library unless we need it. Therefore, by force we need to add any fl oating-point (f-p) function when we have “%f” or other fl oating point(f-p) formats in scanf() or printf() calls. The solution is to call a fl oating-point (f-p) function or just add link of a fi le, which contains at least one fl oating-point (f-p) function.

To do this, a hackish solution could be to defi ne a dummy function somewhere in a source fi le but don't call it:

void dummy(float *a) { float b=*a; // perform some floating point access dummy(&b); // calling a floating point function}It doesn't have to be in the module with the main program, as long as it's in a module that will be included in the link. Therefore, the above program should be written as follows:

Program Listing Twovoid dummy(float *a) { float b=*a; // perform some floating point access dummy(&b); // calling a floating point function}int main(){ struct STUDENT{ int rollno; char stdname[20]; float percentage; } *s1; printf("\Enter student details: "); scanf("%d %s %f", &s1->rollno, s1->stdname, &s1->percentage); printf("\nThe entered details are: "); printf("Roll:%d, Name:%s, Percentage:%f ", s1->rollno, s1->stdname, s1->percentage); getch(); return 0;}

In the above program, “dummy” is a user-defi ned function. You may give any name to this function instead of “dummy”. Similarly, “a” and “b” are variable names, which you may change.

This is because Turbo and Borland C/C++ compilers sometimes leave out fl oating point support and use nonfl oating point version of printf and scanf to save space on smaller systems. The dummy call to a fl oating-point function (such as the example given here) will force the compiler to load the fl oating-point support and solve the original problem.

A cleaner option is to enable fl oating point library linking in Turbo C/C++ or Borland C/C++ from linker options for library to include fl oating point. n

Programming.Tips() »

C/C++ Solution for “Floating Point Formats Not Linked” Error in Turbo C/Borland C


Mrs. Shefali NaikSr. Lecturer, H.L. Institute of Computer Applications, Ahmedabad

Mrs Shefali T Naik is currently affi liated as Senior Lecturer at H L Institute of Computer Applications, Ahmedabad. She has done BSc(Maths) and MCA. Her interest area includes database management system, software engineering, system analysis and design, software project management and computer system architecture. She is a member of CSI. She has a total of 11+ years of experience in acdemics.

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CSI Communications | April 2012 | 23CCSI CoCommmmununicationsns || Ap iril 2012 || 2323

Let us obtain a bit of knowledge about real python to begin with. Pythons typically lay around 100 eggs at a time. While incubating the eggs, the female python contracts its muscles to raise the ambient temperature around the eggs. After the eggs are hatched, the mother python leaves the young ones and the baby pythons begin searching for food by themselves.

SciPy (one of the scientifi c packages for Python) is an open-source library that works with the help of Numpy. Scipy is capable of doing Fourier transform, integration, and Ordinary Diff erential Equation solvers. Moreover, it has built-in tools for linear algebra, image processing, signal processing, optimization, and statistical distributions and functions.

To use the Scipy package in Python, fi rst we need to install the Scipy package. Please follow the instructions mentioned in the previous issue. Linux users can install it by using terminal and windows users can use easy installer.

If your SciPy package is ready, you can load the Scipy module into python and activate all SciPy functions by:

>>>import scipy>>>from scipy import *

Now your Python is equipped with sub-packages for signal processing, Fourier transform, statistical analysis, and packages for calculus etc. For procuring complete list of sub-packages in SciPy, hit the command help('scipy') in IDLE.

You can import Scipy sub-packages that are needed for the program instead of all packages in Scipy.

For example:

>>>from scipy import linalg>>>A=mat('23,24;25,26') # to create a matrix>>>mat(A).I # Inverse of matrix A

Now let’s see how a polynomial can be represented by using Scipy. For example, can be represented by

>>> eq=poly1d([1,-5,6])

Now let’s see some operations on the polynomial.

>>>print eq # to print polynomial>>>roots(eq) # roots of polynomial

The integral, with constant of integration =4 can be done with one line command!

>>>print eq.integ(k=4)

Derivative of the polynomial can be found by

>>>print eq.deriv()

More function in linear algebra and matrix operations can be obtained by importing scipy.linalg model into python.

>>>from scipy.linalg import *>>>A=matrix([[5,2,4],[-3,6,2],[3,-3,1]])>>>A.T # Traspose of matrix>>>A.I # Inverse of matrix A>>>eigval,eigvect=eig(A)>>>eigval # Eigen values of matrix A >>>eigvect # Eigen vector of matrix A

There are many more linear algebra functions available in this library, but explaining all of them are out of scope for this practitioner workbench. Please go through the documentation and try yourself.

The statistical toolbox consists of statistical functions. The data from a Numpy array or in the word fi le can be imported into python and we can fi nd mean, median, variance, correlation etc.

Have a look at some of the examples:

>>>x=arange(-10.,10.,1) # define a array>>>mean(x) # mean>>>var(x) # variance>>>amin(x) # minimum value in observation>>>amax(x) # maximum value in observation>>>std(x) # standard deviation of observation n


Umesh PDepartment of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala

Programming.Learn (“Python”) »

Scientifi c Twist of Python


CIO Perspective

Managing Technology »

Business Information Systems: A Closer Look

Dr. R M SonarChief Editor, CSI Communications

In the previous article, overview of ISs (information systems) and how they have evolved over the years have been covered. This article takes a closer look at ISs. Organizations use variety of ISs that serve specifi c purposes and help in carrying out certain types of activities. IT (information technology) includes servers, personal computers, smart devices, laptops, storage devices, network and communication equipments, protocols, standards etc. The scope of ISs has been broadened in the same way as that of IT. Conventionally, ISs were limited to internal use and were facilitating automation at operational level, in addition to providing reporting and decision support at middle and top level. These systems mostly deal with data and information. However, with the emergence of other types of systems such as intelligent systems (e.g. expert systems), knowledge management (KM) systems (often include content management systems, document management systems etc.), and contemporary terms like business

intelligence and analytics, the scope of ISs has also been broadened to include these. IT deals with core technologies and acts as important enabler, whereas ISs focus on business (work) systems and facilitate (may be by providing data, information, knowledge and insight) to accomplish business activities in more effi cient and eff ective way by automation to a possible extent (refer Fig. 1).

More automation of manual business activities brings in greater effi ciency, accuracy, control, transparency, and integration capabilities. However, underlying information technologies used have greater impact on the way ISs are deployed. Moreover, it also impacts on the way ISs work and perform. For example, if a fi rm has a powerful, fault-tolerant and scalable IT infrastructure, then it can deploy ISs that are more real-time, scalable that can assure continuous operations. Similarly, if the fi rm is using universally adopted standards such as EDI (electronic data interchange) while communicating

with business partners, the ISs become more compliant, open standard, and can be easily integrated with partners’ systems. Thus, the ISs can provide the fi rm with more opportunities to participate in larger marketplace. Fig. 2 shows how strong information technologies and ISs give a fi rm its competitive advantages.

Information System as a SystemFig. 3 shows core elements of a typical system. The major ones are input, processing, and output. Feedback is important to make corrections, changes, and improvements in processing as well as in input. Indian railways has computerized its train ticket reservation system long back, thus allowing passengers to book their seats and get tickets at railway reservation counters. This system is a typical transaction processing system. Any person visiting a railway reservation counter for booking a ticket needs to write down the passenger details on the reservation form: names of the passengers, address details, contact numbers, train number, date and time of travel, any special priorities (such as senior citizens), and seat preferences. Once the system receives this as input fed by the data entry operator, it starts processing it. Processing involves checking the availability of required number of seats and blocking those seats if they are available, or putting them on waiting list, thus updating the booking information in the reservation database. If the seats are available, then the person gets printed tickets as output.

Such systems have become more open and widely accessible through various channels, such as Web; mobile (WAP: wireless application protocol, SMS: short messaging services, app: application); email; APIs (application programming interfaces); and kiosk. Many kinds of interfaces are provided to interact with the system from anywhere at anytime. For example, the customer can book the train ticket through websites like http://www.irctc.com or through other travel websites like http://www.yatra.com. The customer needs to enter his/her details through web interface and get the output as electronic

• Consists of various players in the ecosystem: governments, regulators, business partners, suppliers, buyers, distributors, retailers, etc.• Each player plays appropriate role and contributes in the ecosystem

• Takes various resources as input and produces/provides products and services• Has structure, culture, processes, and resources (including people and technology)• Interacts with various players in the ecosystem and firm’s and industry’s value chain

• Execute specific or various business activities and functions• Include well-defined business proccesses, roles, and responsibilities• e.g. customer relationship management

• Help in carrying out various business activities and functions more effectively and efficiently• Bring in speed, accuracy, control, and transperency• e.g. CRM system

• Consists of core technologies and infrastructure• Acts as an enabler for automation of information systems (e.g. computerized reservation system)

Businessecosystem

Firm

Businesssystems

Informationsystems

Informationtechnology

Fig. 1: Scope of ISs


• Scalable• Open standard and

extensible• Fault-tolerent

Strong IT infrastructure and

support

• Automation of major business activities (processes) at enterprise (andextended) level

• Use of standard and industry practices

Better information systems in place • Optimal use of resources

• Seamless end-to-end business processes

• Better knowledge sharing and collaboration

•

Facilitate smarter business activities

• Improved operational efficiency and control

• Improved customer and supplier intimacy

• New products, services, and business models

Bring strategic advantages and make

the firm agile • Low cost leadership• Product and service

differentiation • Access to and

participation in larger market

The firm becomes more competitive in

the ecosystem

Informed and quickdecision making

Fig. 2: Impact of IT and IS on a fi rm

ticket which can be subsequently printed. This increases the scope of such kind of systems. They are not limited to be used by only railway companies and their employees. Off ering various kinds of interfaces and connecting many players as selling partners in the business ecosystem means more reach and more business. Apart from selling partners, various other players can access such systems in their internal systems by integrating through set of APIs provided. For example, a telecom business fi rm can have a tie-up with the railway company to book tickets for their employees those travel on offi cial tours through their internal travel administration system. Such arrangements are win-win proposition to both the parties.

Table 1 shows what types of activities, inputs, outputs, and processing are supported by the ISs. These types depend upon the type of IS and what organizational activities they support. For example, transaction systems deal with raw data, whereas KM systems deal with knowledge. Therefore, to get better business benefi t and give competitive advantages to the fi rm, the ISs must have wide accessibility and should follow well-accepted standards and practices.

What Type of Activities Does IS Support?Operational supportOrganizations involve administration, interactions, and transactions that can be categorized under operational activities. Administrative activities include taking care of offi cial correspondence and communications; assuring various appropriate compliances by all stakeholders (such as KYC, organization’s rules, and

policies); organizing and managing meetings; asset management; preparing RFPs (request for proposals); RFQs (request for quotes); and accounting and computing payrolls. Interactions mostly involve talking to customers and employees, understanding their issues, having meetings, collecting feedbacks, managing public relations etc. Transactions can be specifi c to business operations that involve customers and other stakeholders. These activities include procurement, payment processing, order processing, shipments, product and service deliveries etc.

Decision supportActivities like planning, budgeting, scheduling, optimization, and forecasting involve decision makers. Decision makers use various statistical, mathematical, and operation research tools and techniques to build models to do analysis. If more and more information is made available about the problem to decision makers, the decisions can be better with better certainty. In short, decision support activities involve two activities: one that assists decision makers in analysis and the other one that provides required information whenever required.

Informational: These activities take care of information needs of administrators and managers especially to take informed decisions. For example, management ISs provide reports on various activities and resources. In general, reports can be (a) for internal purposes, e.g. weekly and monthly sales report; (b) required by external agencies: regulators and govt. agencies, e.g. report on KYC compliance; (c) requested by customers, e.g. monthly category-wise (like travel, electronics gadgets, books, etc.) spending on credit cards during specified dates; or (d) required by other stakeholders like agents, e.g. monthly commission and bonus reports. These ISs that are informational can provide predefined reports, parametric reports, customizable, and ad hoc reports.

Analytical: Activities that support in data analysis. Rich multimedia, charting, and visualization tools provide fl exibility, interactivity in representing, and analyzing information so that users can quickly get insights and act on the same. For example, dashboards use various color combinations, meters, dials, and pointers in diff erent shapes and sizes to show

Processing Input Output

Inte

rfac

e

Scope

Environment

Interface

Feedback

Fig. 3: System elements


Table 1: Activities/components of ISs

Basic activities supported Operational support (administration, interaction, support, and transaction) e.g. TPS, OAS (offi ce automation systems), asset management systems

Increase operational effi ciency

Decision support (informational, analytical) e.g. MIS, GIS, DSS, BI systems

Informed decisions and eff ective resource management

Knowledge support (knowledge management, knowledge automation)e.g. KMS, CMS, KBS (knowledge-based systems)

Makes the fi rm learning and knowledge-based organization. The fi rm can leverage organizational knowledge.

Standards adopted in general Ad hoc, proprietary, organizational, industry, country, consortia, or universal level

Adopting standards improves fl exibility and manageability. Provides better accessibility and participation in larger marketplace.

Input/output, source, and interfaces • Data, information, knowledge, insight

• Structured, semi-unstructured, unstructured

• Detailed, aggregated (consolidated), highly aggregated

• Simple data entry forms, rich multimedia, visualization

• Noninteractive, interactive, personalized

• Manual, semi-automated, automated

• Online, offl ine

Collecting as much details as possible in more structured and standard form gives better capability to the fi rm to do 360˚ analysis, better understanding, and insights. Interactive, intuitive, and personalized interfaces improve acceptability and usability of the system and also intimacy. Automated interfaces increase accessibility, availability, control, accuracy, and speed.

Processing • Core computations, database access and manipulation; data, information, and knowledge retrieval, searching and updates; aggregation, summarization, and groupings of data; drill-down (exploratory analysis); mining, modeling; analysis; symbolic processing; soft-computations

• Effi cient, eff ective

• Manual, semi-automated, automated

• Continuous, periodic, ad hoc

Effi cient operational systems improve productivity; information is available in real time. Decisions taken should be eff ective to have better forecast and use resources optimally. Analysis should be done on continuous basis and possibly automated to look for every opportunity or risk and act upon the same.

Scope • Personal; functional (human resource, sales, marketing, fi nance, production, logistics, etc.); business unit; enterprise; extended (include business partners); interorganizational

• Individual, collaborative, social

• Employees, customers, suppliers, subcontractors, people in general etc.

Enterprise-level and collaborative systems provide and work on common database and knowledge repositories. Should include all the stakeholders to share their ideas, contribute, and collaborate. Should have unifi ed view of various stakeholders and resources. However, individual’s ISs should be allowed to access data from enterprise systems to improve their personal productivity.

various key indicators and statistics. Business professionals use contemporary term business intelligence (BI) for such kind of ISs.

Conventionally, decision support systems use various quantitative models on the basis of analytical tools and techniques. These systems provide options for what-if and scenario analysis.

Contemporary decision support systems use various data mining tools to extract interesting patterns, relationship from the data, and use it to make decisions.

Knowledge supportIt should be noted that having good knowledge along with information can help in better, informed, and knowledge-

based decisions. Because of very diff erent nature of knowledge compared to data and information (especially built by processing transaction data in databases), it makes sense to diff erentiate knowledge support systems from decision support activities. Knowledge support activities deal with tacit and explicit knowledge in various forms rather than just data


and information. Knowledge activities are managed by people and supported through KM systems. However, some of these activities can be automated using AI (artifi cial intelligence) techniques. So these activities can be divided into two types: activities that support people and ones which can be automated.

Knowledge management: There are two basic types of knowledge - tacit (remains with people’s heads) and explicit (expressed in some form). However, the levels/types of explicit knowledge can vary greatly based on the way it is expressed and represented. An easiest form to express such knowledge is to describe it in plain text form using natural languages, e.g. writing a book, a blog, an email etc. However, one needs to understand and comprehend such knowledge in order to get insights. Better way can be to express it in more actionable form, e.g. expressing it step-by-step in more clear and explicit form (writing set of steps to remove a virus from a PC). Knowledge expressed as set of business rules is in more actionable form where even computers can interpret. KM systems help to create, represent, store, share, and apply the knowledge. Professionals categorize content management systems and document management systems as part of KM systems.

Knowledge automation: The focus of decision support system is to assist people in decision making, whereas focus of intelligent systems is to automate intelligent tasks that need expertise and are normally done by expert people. These tasks may be automated using AI techniques. These systems achieve intelligence broadly in two ways: (a) they are fed with explicit domain knowledge that is codifi ed and represented in a way they can interpret, process, and use it; expert systems are good examples of these and (b) they are modeled and have capabilities to learn, adapt, and generalize from the past data, examples, and cases on their own, e.g. artifi cial neural network credit card fraud detection-based systems. Some intelligent systems use combinations of these two broad approaches, e.g. case-based reasoning systems. They contain domain knowledge to search most similar and relevant cases to the problem case from the case base of

solved case(s) and reuse their solutions to arrive the solution to the problem case.

Fig. 4 shows basic activities that ISs support, and some activities provide inputs to other activities. Better operational systems that automate most of the operational activities are essential for better decision and knowledge support capabilities, as these systems provide many of the inputs required. Some examples are shown in Fig. 4.

Does IS Follow Standards and Which Ones?Many standards, open technologies, and systems exist that are widely accepted by many players in a business ecosystem. By following them, ISs can be easily integrated and linked to each other in the ecosystem without manual intervention. The core and open technologies like XML (extensible markup language) make it easier to describe, store, share, and exchange the data and contents across. XBRL (eXtensible business reporting language) is a freely available and global standard for exchanging information especially fi nancial ones, such as balance sheets and profi t and loss statements. In India, the income tax department uses XML for eFiling. It allows tax returns to be fi led by uploading/submitting details in XML fi le (in specifi ed XML format called schema as described by the income tax department). ISs that provide interfaces to process eFiling XML fi les can easily

be integrated with income tax systems. EDIFACT (electronic data interchange for administration, commerce, and transport) is used for structured and automated messaging between buyers and sellers. EDI standards are meant for business transactions, whereas EFT (electronic fund transfer) standards are meant for banking transactions. RDF (resource description framework) is one of the many standards for Internet and web that is used to describe the resources (e.g. news contents), which is especially published on web in standard and structured way (semantic web).

Organizations follow possible standards (e.g. common vocabulary) for all their internal systems while (a) defi ning database schemas; (b) creating databases and knowledge sources; and (c) getting, collecting, and feeding data etc. It may include proper structure (e.g. data types, size, formats etc.) and semantics (e.g. possible domain values, taxonomies, classifi cation schemes, and ontologies). This makes internal systems more interoperable, which gives unifi ed and consistent view of data where there is no data duplication. For example, creating a standard that whenever customer data is collected through any customer touch point it must be collected in three separate fi elds: surname, fi rst name, and middle name. This is much better than having only one fi eld as customer

Operationalsupport

Decisionsupport:

Informational

Decisionsupport:

Analytical

Knowledgesupport:

People (KM)

Provides knowledgesources e.g. for text miningfor sentiment analysis,provides structuredknowledge (e.g. businessrules) to build AI systemssuch as case-basedreasoning and expertsystems etc.

Various reports, drilldown analysis andvisualization tools provideinsights to the people thatthey can share using KMsystems

-

Provides transactionaldata to build variouskinds of reports

Unstructured informationcollected through interactions(e.g. feedback) can be sharedas knowledge to KM system

Transaction data can beused to understandpatterns, associations,relationships, etc. usingmachine learning algorithms

Transaction dataand data aboutresources can beused to buildquantitativemodels

Knowledgesupport:

Automated

Fig. 4: Basic acti viti es supported by ISs and their interdependence


name where interface (for physical form) allows names to be entered in any fashion. This makes sure customer names are properly entered, and data are consistent and organized properly. It can be searched, matched, cross-verifi ed, and validated (e.g. search people with specifi c surnames) and relatively lesser eff orts while integrating with external systems.

What Type of Input, Output, and Interfaces Does IS Have?Transaction processing systems deal with data entered through mostly day-to-day business activities. Typically, data is entered through interfaces (data entry forms) either by employees or external stakeholders like customers or suppliers themselves if systems are online. Interfaces should be more (a) user-friendly, (b) parameterized (to select proper and relevant options may be step-by-step), (c) restricting to domain values as much using GUI (graphical user interface) controls and immediate validation, (d) interactive, and (e) intuitive. Such interfaces can be used by large number and types of users. Data collected through such interfaces is accurate, validated, and in proper format. Some interfaces are semi-automated such as ATMs (automatic teller machines). Instead of visiting a branch and fi lling up a form, customers can access and operate their accounts through ATMs that does not require withdrawal form to be fi lled in and submitted. EDI interfaces are automated with internal systems of transacting parties so that there is no manual intervention required. IVR (interactive voice response) interfaces have also been automated to a great extent these days.

Systems like GIS (geographical ISs) manage all types of geographical data. They allow the user to view, understand, interact, and visualize data in many ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the form of maps, globes, reports, and charts. BI systems use interfaces that use rich graphics and visualization to represent data and information.

What Processing Does IS Do?Transactional systems do lot of computations such as searching, retrieving, and updating data in database/fi les. These systems do processing on continuous basis, access and update databases, and must be effi cient to do transactions in

real time. Decision support systems are used on ad hoc basis, and analysis is done using appropriate model from model base. The decision taken must be eff ective. Data generated and stored in databases by transaction systems is often queried, aggregated, summarized, or grouped based on various criteria and requirement to present it in the form of variety of reports to take care of information requirements of managers and administrators (e.g. MISs). Reporting systems use SQL (structured query language) to retrieve data from databases. BI systems that consist of OLAP (online analytical processing) facilitate a user to do drill down analysis by retrieving data stored in multidimensional form (cubes). Similar to the way transactional systems manage data, KM systems manage knowledge, search, retrieve, and update knowledge (e.g. contents).

AI-based intelligent systems model and mimic workings of biological systems. Genetic algorithms are based on the principle survival of the fi ttest and evolve best solution to given problem. Expert systems perform symbolic processing (dealing with words and sentences) and infer (deduct) new facts from the existing ones. Rule-based expert systems use one of the two basic techniques to arrive at a solution to a given problem: backward and forward reasoning. Backward reasoning starts with a goal and tries to satisfy it. It searches the appropriate rule(s) from knowledge base (set of rules) whose “THEN” parts match with the current facts about the problem and try to satisfy them (“IF” part) by asking relevant facts that leads to conclusion. Neural networks model and simulate working of nervous system by using mathematical algorithms. They are capable of solving complex problems.

What Scope Does IS Have?Spreadsheet packages in desktop environment allow individual users to manage the data, do lot of ad hoc analysis, and develop decision support systems. Although they boost personal productivity, they may not be good options when data needs to be shared and collaborated. Data remains in islands and does not give integrated and unifi ed view at functional or enterprise level. Better they should be used for analysis purposes, pulling required data whenever required rather than using them to store

and manage data. Enterprise ISs like ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems use common database and span across the organization, automating almost all core functional processes. Such systems can be extended to external stakeholders like dealers, agents, service centers, and franchises. Interorganizational systems such as payment gateways and supply-chain management systems connect many organizations. IS may allow multiple users to share, work, and contribute jointly to accomplish the given task. This makes them collaborative. ISs can be extended to captive customers as well as other people to connect to each other, share feedback, rate, and review products and services, etc. to make them social. Some systems like CRM systems focus on customers, whereas HR systems focus on employees.

SummaryThe type of input, output, and activities ISs support varies greatly. The classifi cation may be based on diff erent kinds of core activities and tasks that are required to be performed. These may be broadly classifi ed as: operational, decision support, and knowledge support. Organizations need ISs that support these core activities to gain competitive advantage. However, having all kinds of systems in place is not enough; these systems should be (a) based on standards and best practices; (b) open, accessible, and available; (c) handling structured and detailed data, information, and knowledge; (d) eff ective and effi cient; and (e) automated to the extent possible.

Bibliography[1]� James O’Brien, George Marakas, and

Ramesh Behl (2010). Management information systems, 9th edn., Tata McGraw Hill.

[2]� Henry C. Lucas Jr. (2008). Information Technology: Strategic Decision Making for Managers, Wiley India.

[3]� Laudon, Kenneth. C., Laudon, Jane. P., and Rajanish Dass (2010). Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 11th edn., Pearson Education.

[4]� R M Sonar (2011). People Centric BI and KM: Relationship and Integration, CSI Communications, 35(8), 35-37.

[5]� Various case studies from http://www.cio.in/ n


Last week I got four diff erent cases from women. Although all four women were cyber ignorant, still cyber crimes were committed with all four of them. The new trend, which I am observing is even illiterate women are falling prey to cyber crimes. Another disturbing factor - which bugs me - is the alarming rate of divorce in the country, which is also fuelled by some of the cyber crimes committed on women. Looking at various cyber crimes on women that I am handling currently, thought of penning down this article for awareness of new cyber crimes against women occurred.

Many chat-based friends or Facebook-hooked buddies today enjoy teasing their lady friends by using words such as “awesome body”, “sexy”, and “attractive” etc., which are actually the beginning of obscenity. They slowly take their female friends into confi dence and start discussing about their own problems like a true homey friend. The emotionally oppressed or family-wise depressed Indian woman is a soft target. These guys then turn their successful Net-based friendship into a strong bond and gradually proceed to send obscene or derogatory remarks and send lascivious talks. It is also seen that if the recipient shies away, the sender of such messages would become more encouraged to continue further. The problem would be arrested or solved only if the victimized lady reports back immediately or warns the abuser for advances he makes and reminds about strong legal actions she can take which are available to her under the law.

Cyberstalking and Domestic Violence VictimsDomestic violence victims are one of the most vulnerable groups to traditional stalking. So it’s no surprise they are vulnerable to cyberstalking as well. It’s a myth that if women “just leave” they will be okay. Cyberstalking is a way to continue to maintain rigid control and instill fear into a domestic partner, even when she has already left the relationship. The fact is India has crossed the danger mark in cyber crimes targeting women and children. Statistics show, and law enforcers confi rm, that the majority of

cyber crimes are related to obscenity. Mumbai tops the list in these crimes, followed by Delhi. It is believed that about 75% of all cyber crimes are targeted at women, adolescents, and children.

A study conducted on 72 women by Megha Desai and K Jaishankar[1] states that 12.5% of the respondents had intimate relationship with their cyber stalker before the stalking started. According to the research, 62.5% cases of harassment started through emails and online chats.

Making and Circulating MMS of WomenIn the latest crime against women, a teenage girl was abducted in broad daylight and was molested inside the car by three miscreants. The trio also made MMS of the girl to blackmail her. The incident took place, when the victim was on the way to her coaching class. Abductors pushed the girl inside a white Maruti car and started molesting her. They also tortured her with cigarette burns. The accused threatened the girl to circulate the MMS if she discussed the incident with anyone.

In a separate incident in West Bengal, Jesmina Bibi, 28 (a resident of Bakdanga in Domkal and a mother of two) hanged herself after some local youths morphed some obscene photos of her and circulated them through MMS. She could not bear the humiliation and jeering by her neighbors and killed herself.

Cyber Money LaunderingAvanti had been living alone in Mumbai for almost 7 years, with no social life or 'real' friends. Meeting Mickey online seemed a welcome twist to her otherwise stodgy life. What looked like a prospective marriage proposal, turned out to be a nightmare. Eight months on, Mickey sent her a message stating that he is in dire need of funds and sought fi nancial assistance. Ignorant of the fraud, and madly in love, Avanti kept sending money to Mickey, till one day she realized that her newfound 'friend' had detached all ties with her. Like many women, Avanti was a victim of cyber money laundering - a form of cyber crime.

My friend doctor observes that cyber crime cases coming to him have increased

manifold in recent years. Some cite recession and loneliness as culprits. He sees at least 25-30 such cases every month, with many female students living away from family and working for long hours, computers become their trusted pal.

In general, computer is a resort for an idle woman. Since the impersonator isn't in public, they feel anonymity works to their advantage and that they are safe. If they succeed in their fi rst attempt, they are immediately hooked on to it… there's no looking back for them and soon it becomes an addiction, then virtual connects are more closer than physical people.

Do’s and Don'ts • Don’t ever put too much personal

details on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, or other social networking as it might get misused.

• Always make two kinds of online presence: a professional presence for your colleagues and clients and a private presence meant for socializing. The presence should be with some online identity that consists of a dummy profi le photo and details.

• Do not reveal mother’s name or your personal tastes, distastes, hobbies, which can be used to profi le you and segregate you for targeted cyber crimes.

• Don’t ever post your personal memoirs like snaps, where you are partying, or where you are on vacation. This helps to further profi le you.

• Ensure that your private moments or bedroom pictures are not on your computers, which are hooked to the Internet and specifi cally on computers, where you download torrents.

• While in hotel or in changing rooms of malls, ensure to check for a two-way mirror.

• Ensure that your Webcam on computer is plugged out when not in use, and mobile phones with camera are kept in reverse direction.

Reference[1] Desai, M and Jaishankar, K (2007).

Cyber Stalking - Victimization of Girl Students: An Empirical Study. n

Information Security »

Cyber Crime against Women

Security Corner Adv. Prashant Mali [BSc (Physics), MSc (Comp Science), LLB]

Cyber Law ExpertEmail: [email protected]


Why Technology Law Matters to IT PeopleIT person: Prof. IT Law, I just heard you speak at the Computer Society of India. Why did you say that information technology people like me should know something about technology law?Prof. IT Law: I could tell you why. But fi rst, please tell me how do you currently handle legal issues that may impact people like you who use computers and the Internet extensively at work?IT person: Oh, we simply leave those things to the lawyers. Only they can understand the complexities of any laws.Prof. IT Law: I see. Leaving things to your lawyer has at least three major drawbacks. Firstly, unless you know something about technology law issues, you may not know when to approach a lawyer. And when you fi nally do, the damage may have been done already. IT person: Please give me an example I can understand.Prof. IT Law: That is easy. For example, you have a privacy policy that you think protects your interests. But there are changes in the way you deal with the personal information of your clients. Perhaps something simple - like using a vendor to handle some matters, instead of doing it in-house. Your lawyer does not know about such changes; and you don't know its legal implications. Especially, in the light of the important additions to the Information Technology

Act - on privacy issues. Such situations can lead to serious legal problems.IT person: But such things happen all the time. How is it diff erent with regard to the use of the Internet as compared to things we do in an off -line mode?Prof. IT Law: The use of the Internet does 3 signifi cant things that add to risks:a. It automates business transactions,

so there are more transactions than ever before. Many of them without any human involvement!

b. There are dealings with more "unknown" people than ever before. That opens up new risks and issues that we never faced before the advent of the Internet.

c. It increases the speed or velocity of business; therefore retracting off ers or correspondence can be virtually impossible. For example, you have made an off er at great discounts on your website, and before you have noted a serious fl aw, you receive more than 150 orders based on the fl awed off er made by you.

d. Again, legal remedies take long even in the "real" world. In comparison with the speed of business in the "virtual" world, legal action is generally "too little too late". So preventive action is crucial to avoid legal issues, costs and liabilities, while using the Internet for business.

IT person: I understand, but why not still leave it to the lawyers?

Prof. IT Law: When you, as an IT person, don't know some vital and basic things, you will not be able to determine what to tell your lawyer. That can be very expensive in the long run because things will fall into the cracks - between you and the lawyer - causing much damage to your business! IT person: I agree. And the third reason?Prof. IT Law: Well, to put it simply, resolving legal issues related to business over the Internet needs a "multidisciplinary" approach. For instance the lawyer should know enough about the Internet, the law relating to the Internet and how it aff ects your business plans and operations. So you need to "educate" your lawyer about these things. On the other hand, the speed of business leaves little time for 'legal' reviews in advance of most operations. So some adroit 'multidisciplinary' work done you with your lawyer could save you much expense, grief and potential liability in the future.IT person: The whole thing still looks a little complex and daunting to me. Prof. IT Law: I understand how you feel. So, I plan to talk to you about one signifi cant technology law issue every month and to demystify it for you. Will that help?IT person: Thanks, that sounds very helpful. I look forward to a talk with you every month. n

IT Act 2000 »

Prof. IT Law Demystifi es Technology Law Issues:

Security Corner Mr. Subramaniam VuthaAdvocateEmail: [email protected]

Mr. Subramaniam Vutha is an Advocate. He was former Senior Vice President, Legal, of Tata Infotech Ltd. [earlier Tata Unisys Ltd.] and of Schoolnet India Limited. His areas of interest are Information Technology laws, Intellectual Property Rights, e-Commerce laws. He is a member of various committees, such as Computer Law Association, U.S.A. [now International Technology Law Association], a worldwide body of computer lawyers and Legal Advisory Group constituted by the Controller of Certifying Authorities, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India.

About the Author


Muddling Through Competencies at WorkIn IT function, general perception is that technical skills and experience are the only key indicators of performance and success. However, this is only a half-truth. For example, when a Software Engineer starts his/her career as a Database Administrator, his/her most important competency may be ‘Database Problem Management’. Over a time, it may become secondary and ‘optimization of database’ emerges as more critical. Then, he/she starts interacting with the customer; hence, his/her behavioral skills start playing as one of the key aspects. This clearly implies that as the employee rides the success ladder and gains more experience, the competencies keep changing. Moreover, behavioral aspects become more critical diff erentiator than the technical know-how.Competency profi ciency is diff erent for diff erent job roles. For ‘Database Problem Management’ competency, the level of complexity is diff erent for Team/Project Lead and Software Engineer. A Team Leader may be involved in identifying a problem and off er a proper direction to solve it, whereas a Software Engineer has to actually solve it based on the direction off ered by the Team Lead. Every organization has a competency model that drives the human resource function. Competencies are aligned with the organizational vision, mission, and goals. Job analysis is a key methodology that leads an organization to arrive at defi nitions of job roles and responsibilities and the Competency Model. High-performance organizations value competencies that build organizational capabilities and individual values.

What is Competency?A competency is defi ned as an observable and measurable behavior that refl ects a person’s knowledge, skill, and personality (and attitude) that contributes to ones’ success on the job.

Core CompetencyConcept of core competencies was proposed by C. K. Prahalad and G. Hamel. These are few in number and central to business goal and strategies, which off ers a fi rm its competitive advantage and help in

long-term growth. Core competencies are typically applied across the organization to understand the readiness of employee for greater responsibility, their alignment with organizational culture and behaviors, and their potential to be promoted into leadership position. These competencies may not remain same over a period because of dynamic nature of business environment. Some examples of core competencies are Client Service Orientation, Eff ective Interactive Communication, Drive Business, Quality Conscious, Integrity, and Developing people.

Technical CompetencyTechnical competency is described as the technical skills and knowledge required within their area of specialization to complete the technology task. Major technical positions and their technical competencies required in IT function are as follows:• Software Engineer: Design, defi ne, construct, enhance, support, and maintain application software on one or more platforms. • Architecture: Apply architectural theories, principles, concepts, practices, methodologies, and frameworks.• Business Analyst: Apply the principles of business analysis in the planning, reengineering, requirement gathering for government business environments, operations, processes, and practices.• Database Designer and Administrator: Apply the methods, practices, and policies that are used in the design and the management of databases.• Testing: Perform testing of software and/or hardware using a systematic approach.• Information Security: Ensure that there are adequate technical and organizational safeguards to protect the continuity of IT infrastructure services by the implementation of IT security principles, methods, practices, policies. In addition, they also ensure availability of tools that are used in securing IT resources including information and operations security, physical security, business continuity/disaster recovery

planning, methods to deal with security breaches, and security assessment in a technical environment.

Behavioral CompetencyIt is defi ned as behaviors that are essential at work place to achieve organizational goals. There are more than hundred behavioral competencies, but usually a basket of 6 to 18 are used for any job position. For example, IT Project Manager competency may be knowledge and ability to apply formal project management principles and practices during the planning, implementation, monitoring, and completion of projects, ensuring eff ective management of scope, resources, time, cost, quality, risk, and communications. Though it is expected that technical know-how is important for a Project Manager, the expected competencies for his/her performance seem to be behavioral.

Why Competency?Competencies ensure right people with right skill at right job with right output. A focus on the right competencies in an organization will impact various objectives of organization as follows:• Employee Selection: Since good job role and competencies are based on rigorous job analysis, competencies serve as good indicators during selection, right fi tment, and also look at potential to perform in the future. Organizations can ensure that they are selecting and retaining individuals who consistently demonstrate the core and technical competencies that are critical for success in their position. Competencies that are mapped to specifi c job role can aid the interviewer to ask relevant questions during the interview process. Hence, the interview process will be more structured rather than ad-hoc. Even psychometric tests conducted during selection process will be more aligned to competencies. • Performance Management: Competency deals with ‘what is expected at work place’. When an employee is aware about expectations from him/her at work and how their performance is measured, then they can not only aspire to achieve the expected performance but also exceed it. It has been observed that organizations

HR Dr. Mahesh Deshmukh* and Dr. Manish Godse*** Ph.D. (IITB), CEO, Maruma Consultancy Pvt Ltd., Email: [email protected]** Ph.D. (IITB), COO, iKen Solutions Pvt Ltd., Email: [email protected]


that have linked performance to competencies have achieved highest performance per employee. • Competency-based Assessment:An employee may not have all the competencies that are required for success on the job. The gaps can be identifi ed using right assessment tools, which are based on a robust competency model. • Individual Development is very important for organizational growth. Individual developmental needs are derived from the identifi ed gaps during employee assessment. Organizations ensure development initiatives are aligned to key core and technical competencies. This is an important step in talent management process.• Succession Planning: Employees may leave or retire from the organization. Moreover, organizational growth story may need more employees to drive business results. Thus, organizations have to plan for

‘who next’ for all key positions. Competency model helps to create a sound succession planning to identify key positions. • Employee Training: Customized trainings are planned and organized around the competencies that are critical for job success. These help to improve performance, prepare them for changing job requirements, or introduce new tools or technology required to drive business.

Competency and OrganizationCompetencies are key for organizational success. To meet the organizational goals, every employee should achieve the desired profi ciency levels as desired/designed by the organization. There are various objectives (as listed in one of the sections above) of HR that are related to employee performance and dependent on competency model. Hence, each employee should be well-informed about the competency of his/her job role. As mentioned in this article, job analysis is very critical for development of a

competency model and that competency models have various applications for selection, high-potential identifi cation, retention of talent, and succession planning. Our future articles will address each of these areas in some detail.

Bibliography:[1] Francoise Delamare Le Deist &

Jonathan Winterton, "What Is Competence?", Human Resource Development International, Vol. 8, No. 1, 27 – 46, March 2005.

[2] Josh Bersin, "The Role of Competencies in Driving Financial Performance", Bersin & Associates Reseach Report, January 2007.

[3] ORO Technical Competency Dictionary for the IT Community, January 2006.

[4] Richard E. Boyatzis, "Competencies in the 21st century", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 27 No. 1, 2008, pp. 5-12. n

Mahesh Deshmukh: Mahesh is the Managing Director of Maruma Consultancy Pvt. Ltd. Mahesh has 19 years of HR experience in both industry and consultancy.. He is recognized as a change management, talent management & organization development professional with extensive experience in the design and implementation of Assessment Centers, Development Centers, Senior Level Executive Assessments, & Development, Job Analysis and Competency design projects, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching.

Manish Godse: Manish is currently working as COO in iKen Solutions Pvt. Ltd. iKen is an IIT Bombay research spin-off software product company. He has two decades of experience, which spans as Business Leader, Entrepreneur and Academician. His functional experience is focused on Strategic partnership development, Customer relationship management, Pre-sales, Product management, Product & services costing, Psychometric testing, Assessment and Coaching.A

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r Prof. Jyotiranjan Hota is an Associate Professor and Area Chairperson of Information Systems wing at KIIT School of Management, Bhubaneswar. He has more than 14 years of experience in both industry and academics. He is a BE in Computer Science & Engineering from NIT Rourkela and PGDBM from Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. He is a life member of Computer Society of India . His area of interest includes business intelligence, analytics, and ERP. He has discharged the role of Publicity Chair, Finance Chair, Programme Committee Member, and Reviewer of several International Conferences in India and abroad.

Continued from Page 21


Whoever said that the Internet is a network of computers was a nerd for sure. He or she saw the bits, bytes, CPUs, routers, and cables and was blind to the obvious ingredient of the Internet - people. Behind (or in front of!) every computing device, there is a human being, staring into its screen and adding life to technology. Very real life sits on top of the uninteresting technology. Like a drop of morning dew, the Internet refl ects the whole world ... business, fun, love, divinity, sex, cheating, politics, hatred etc. It is amazing to see the breadth and depth of human behavior unfolding on the net. I recently caught a student of mine in a compromising posture with the fridge! He was getting himself photographed with his head in the fridge! My interrogation revealed that he was becoming a part

of a meme, which Wikipedia defi nes as an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture (they undergo evolution, reminding one of genes that self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures). The head in the freezer meme seems to have been initiated by David Horovitz, an artist with

arguably bizarre creativity. In 2009, he posted a picture with his head in the freezer in Flickr. He then posted a call for others to do it and tag the fi le with the number 241543903, which was the part number of his refrigerator. Today, if you search Google with the string “241543903”, you see how this meme has picked up momentum. In March 2012, 234,000 hits have been counted by Google.

How human behavior reflects on the Internet

and how it evolves in different strains and sometimes reflects back on real life is something that a media sociologist will find as a fertile area of research. There are newer forms of cooperating, learning, loving, hating, and newer forms of behavior that are hitherto not known. n

Haven't You Put Your Head in the Freezer Yet ?

ICT@ Society Achuthsankar S NairEditor, CSI Communications


Happenings@ICT H R MohanAVP (Systems), The Hindu, ChennaiEmail: [email protected]

ICT News Briefs in March 2012The following are the ICT news and headlines of interest in March 2012. They have been compiled from various news and Internet sources, including the fi nancial dailies - The Hindu, Business Line, The Economic Times.

Voices and Views• Mobile handset market grows 10% in

2011. 183 million handsets were sold - CyberMedia Research.

• Mobile-driven healthcare services biz pegged at Rs. 3,000 cr in India. Global opportunity is at $23 billion - PwC India.

• Media viewing, entertainment happen more on cellphones than TV sets - InMobi.

• Mobile tariff s to rise if charged for spectrum - Mittal.

• In 2011, cloud services helped to generate $600 billion business and 1.5 million new jobs - IDC.

• 30% of organizations will block social media sites by 2014, compared to 50% in 2010 - Gartner.

• Data center market in India to reach $609.1 million in 2012 and grow at a CAGR of 21% to touch $1.3 billion in 2016 - Gartner.

• Global data center traffi c estimated to grow at 33% annually till 2015, surpassing 4.8 zettabytes a year.

• Govt should regulate social media - Kris Gopalakrishnan.

• Indians bought 3 lakh units of tablets in 2011 compared to 60,000 in 2010 - Frost & Sullivan.

• App marketplace (with over 10 lakh applications) has become an estimated $20-billion economy.

• The ICT sector in UK valued at £110 billion provides direct employment to 6 lakh and indirectly employs 11 lakh.

• Mobile money users, in Middle East, Asia, and Africa are expected to cross 1 billion by 2015, India to account for 100 million - Tavess Research.

• By 2014, personal cloud to replace PC in users' digital lives - Gartner.

• The average cost of mobile incidents is pegged at Rs. 42.32 lakh per organization annually - Symantec Corp.

• For falling employee productivity, social networking is to be blamed - www.salary.com

• Semiconductor sector to grow 4% this year - Gartner.

• The 2012 Budget is disappointing on various counts - NASSCOM

• GSM networks can be hacked into - Matrix Shell.

• India’s Internet economy to reach Rs. 10.8 trillion by 2016 - BCG.

• Mobile subscribers in India to rise by 9% to 696 million in this year - Gartner.

Telecom, Govt, Policy, Compliance• AP IT industry calls for abolishing MAT levy.• Cybercriminals set up entire fake app store.• New 2G spectrum auction will be open to

all bidders - DoT.• Govt. plans to set up a National Cyber

Coordination Centre (NCCC) for assessing cyber security threat on a real-time basis and monitoring of Internet traffi c.

• Due to security concerns, DoT to make it mandatory for telecos to procure locally manufactured and personalized SIM cards.

• TN Govt. to support Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Centers.

• TRAI issues consultation paper on spectrum auction.

• An interministerial panel slams National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) for roping in a pvt. company for setting the Internet monitoring system.

• Montek suggests real-time sharing of unused spectrum.

• Telecom should be given ‘infrastructure sector’ status - CEO, Bharti Airtel.

• Now, 63% of households have telephone connection.

• Call tracking must be operational by May 31 - Govt. tells telcos.

• Govt. expects Rs. 40,000 cr from spectrum sale.

• Spectrum auction to end by Jan-Feb 2013 - FinMin.

• $30-40 I-slate tablets for school students by NTU of Singapore and the NGO Villages for Development and Learning Foundation (ViDAL).

• Govt. to roll out soon an electronics policy having a production target of $400 billion by 2020.

• Nation's fi rst telecom tech incubator planned in Kerala.

• TRAI disconnects 22,769 mobile connections for sending unwanted telemarketing SMS.

IT Manpower, Staffi ng and Top Moves• 2G mess leads to more fi ring, less hiring.• Ajuba's to ramp-up in people count from

2,000 now to 4,000-5,000 by 2014.• Thoughtworks employing 600 in India

plans to add 230 this year.• Cloud computing will create 2 million

jobs in India by 2015. 50% of it will be in the small and medium businesses - –IDC.

• Yahoo may lay off thousands in

restructuring drive. • Happiest Minds which has 225

employees, to hire 75 by March 2012.• Snapdeal to hire 500 people in 6 months.• Off shore jobs from US, Europe drying up

- Hackett Group.• Viom Networks (telecom tower

company) restructuring may hit jobs.

Company News: Tie-ups, Joint Ventures, New Initiatives• Intel launches Future Scientist program

& covers 50,000 girls.• Windows 8 Consumer Preview launched.

It has undergone 100,000 code changes and is designed to run on an array of devices, capabilities, and form factors.

• TomTom, HTC tie up for map services on smartphones in India.

• IBM to set up offi ces in 40 tier II and III locations.

• Microsoft to expand presence in smaller cities to tap the addressable market of over 45 million SMBs in India.

• Indian handset makers now set sights on low-cost tablets.

• RCom-HCL Info consortium wins Rs. 300-cr Aadhaar contract.

• Nokia India unveils the “Nokia Music Theatre”, a platform for nurturing musical talent at the grassroots.

• Intel launches E5 Xeon processor for burgeoning data centers.

• After selling 55 million iPads worldwide, Apple unveiled its new version iPad3.

• Facebook goes down in several European countries.

• Airtel unveils unlimited Asia-Pacifi c roaming data plan.

• Nokia to exit mobile money business globally.

• Matrix cuts call rates from UK to India at Rs. 1/min.

• Apple having $100 billion in reserves announces $2.65/share dividend, $10 billion buyback plan.

• EMC to off er courses in social networking analytics.

• Tech Mahindra, Satyam to merge in the ratio of 2:17.

• Nine small and medium IT companies have formed a consortium, IT SME India, to tap global markets.

• Facebook has warned legal action against companies that ask job applicants for passwords to the social network.

• NIIT Tech implements an automated Content Management and Delivery system at Singapore Parliament. n


Happenings@ICT Dr. Vishnu KanhereChairman, CSI Mumbai ChapterEmail: [email protected].

Impact of Budget 2012 on IT IndustryThe Union Budget was presented in the Parliament by the Hon. Finance Minister on 16th March, 2012. As expected it is a mixed bag for tax, IT Industry, and professionals, and their response and mood is as expected muted.First the good news – the positivesThe number of Internet users that currently stands at about 80 million is expected to grow more than four times in the next 4 years to over 350 million. Moreover, Internet penetration and its use is expected to grow from present 8% to over 30%. This will revolutionalize retail trade and commerce with e-commerce market growing manifold, and opportunities growing in IT/ITES and e-governance segments. This will create several opportunities for the IT Industry.

For the domestic IT Industry in fact, even in this budget there are lot of opportunities visible with the proposed introduction of e-platform for issues above Rs. 10 crore becoming mandatory, and electronic voting for shareholders for top-listed companies.

The new venture fund for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) of Rs. 5,000 crore as well as simplifi cation of IPO process for smaller issues will open up new sources of fi nance.

The tax concession - of exemption from capital gain on sale of residential property investing into new start-up venture by purchasing plant and machinery in a newly formed company - will also provide an impetus.

The Aadhar platform based on UID will be rolled out nationwide in 2012. It has got a 46.5% increase in budgetary allocation at Rs. 1,758 crore from Rs. 1,200 crore in 2011-12, an increase of Rs. 558 crore. Apart from this, direct transfer (electronically) of subsidy to the retailer and eventually to the farmer is to be implemented in phases. LPG transparency portals and proposal to directly credit

(electronically) subsidies on cooking gas to eligible families is also proposed. All these present big opportunities to domestic IT companies that will enjoy good growth. The focus on R&D - whereby weighted deduction of 200% for approved in-house R&D facilities - has been extended beyond 31st March, 2012 by further 5 years. Moreover, the steps toward progressive education, skills development, and infrastructure in the budget will defi nitely benefi t IT companies, as it will others.Now for the downside, and it is also equally may be a bit more stiff First, for the IT industry, the request to exempt special economic zone (SEZ) income from minimum alternative tax (MAT) has not been granted and it is disappointing. It makes Indian software exports less attractive, less competitive, and erodes into their thin margins. As if to add insult to injury, MAT of 18.5% of gross total income before section 10AA (SEZ) and Chapter VI A deductions for all other (noncorporate) assessees is also proposed in this budget. So eff ectively, all IT companies which were not corporates are also now hit.

A retrospective amendment to the explanation of the term royalty in favor of the department and against software fi rms no doubt brings clarity to the issue, but hits the software companies very hard. License to use software, when copyrights are not transferred, is now brought under royalty that attracts withholding tax and income tax on sale in India, which again includes uplinking/uploading/downloading.

Eff ectively, if any Indian entity uses overseas software product by downloading/acquiring it or through online pay per use, or hosted in the cloud, it will be considered as a royalty paid attracting 20% withholding tax and income tax will be attracted on it. Microsoft, GE, Samsung, HP, Sonate will be facing fresh tax heat in India. But that’s not all, these software

and services will also become 20% more expensive for users as these companies will in all likelihood pass on their burden to users, making it more expensive. These amendments, retrospectively from 1976, will create signifi cant uncertainty and increase the cost of doing business. Introduction of Advance Pricing Agreements for international agreements proposed in this budget therefore comes as a small consolation.

It seems, step-by-step, the tax laws are becoming stricter for the IT industry and the romance/honeymoon seems to be getting over.

IT companies have been the blue-eyed babies of successive regimes having had a favorable policy and liberal tax regime. Given the size and success achieved by many, one cannot argue for a special or a concessional treatment any longer. But given its importance in creating jobs currently around 2 to 3 million and expected to multiply over four times in the next 5 years, as well as the substantial contribution to exports, the minimum which could be given to them is clarity, consistency, simplicity, economy, and equity in tax laws.

Tax administration has to be improved and made more taxpayer friendly. IT companies continue to struggle to get refunds of service tax paid by software fi rms, and their employees - IT professionals - struggle to get refunds of taxes deducted at source on their salaries.

The sooner the house is put in order the better will it be for all of us.

Despite continuing reforms, there just is too much government interference and rampant corruption with no end in sight. Today’s progress has been achieved virtually in spite of the successive budgets. If government takes care of politics which is their domain, I am sure we the people of India, IT/ITES included, can take care of our economy. n

Abo

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r Dr. Vishnu Kanhere is an expert in taxation, fraud examination, information systems security and system audit and has done his PhD in Software Valuation. He is a practicing Chartered Accountant, a qualifi ed Cost Accountant and a Certifi ed Fraud Examiner. He has over 30 years of experience in consulting, assurance and taxation for listed companies, leading players from industry and authorities, multinational and private organizations. A renowned faculty at several management institutes, government academies and corporate training programs, he has been a key speaker at national and international conferences and seminars on a wide range of topics and has several books and publications to his credit. He has also contributed to the National Standards Development on Software Systems as a member of the Sectional Committee LITD17 on Information Security and Biometrics of the Bureau of Indian Standards, GOI. He has been a member of Balanced Score card focus group and CGEIT- QAT of ISACA, USA, and is currently Chairman of the Computer Society of India, Mumbai Chapter and Convener of SIG on Humane Computing.


CLUES

Brain Teaser Dr. Debasish JanaEditor, CSI Communications

Crossword »Test your Knowledge on Web 2.0Solution to the crossword with name of fi rst all correct solution provider will appear in the next issue. Send your answers to CSI Communications at email address [email protected] with subject: Crossword Solution - CSIC April 2012

ACROSS3. A common approach of engaging site visitors in Web 2.0 (7)4. A general-purpose, high-level programming language (6)6. Web-oriented architecture acting as a key piece in Web 2.0 (3)8. A general-purpose server-side scripting language (3)11. Representational state transfer style of software architecture for

web (4)13. Personal home pages in diary format (4)14. A web browser (5)16. Technology that helps to refresh part of web page content (4)18. Pluggable components for managing and displaying in a web

portal (7)19. Person behind the term "Web 2.0" - used for the fi rst time in

January 1999 (12)22. A technology that helps dynamically generated web pages (3)24. A dynamic, refl ective, general-purpose OO programming

language (4)29. Semantic markup to reuse existing (X)HTML tags for metadata (11)30. A web browser (6)32. Mechanism to allow access to internal representation in platform

agnostic way (11)

DOWN1. Web 2.0 standards for feed (4)2. Used to annotate and categorize web content (10)3. A micro-blogging service on web (7)5. Mechanism to check whether the web page entries are human

made (7)7. Helps rapid development of cross-platform websites (4)9. Delivery of audio (or video) content (7)10. Visual representation in virtual chat room (6)12. Semantic markup format for publishing contact details (5)15. Name of object that lets JavaScript make GET HTTP requests (14)17. A javascript library supporting browser agnostic development (6)20. Web feed mechanism of transporting articles across Internet (3)21. Remoting service that generates AjaxService class at runtime (3)22. Javascript object notation using lightweight data interchange

format (4)23. A dynamic programming language (4)25. User interface library from Yahoo! (3)26. A list of links to other weblogs (8)27. Standard for displaying (X)HTML representation of calendar

information (9)28. A personalized dashboard publishing platform for the web (8)31. A software for viewing streaming video on a web browser (5)32. World Wide Web Consortium (3)

Solution to March 2012 crossword

Congratulations toP Deepa (Associate Professor, MCA Dept, Panimalar Engineering College, Chennai)

for getting ALMOST ALL correct answers to March month’s crossword.

1B U R R O 2

W S W H E E 3L E 4

RI Z A

5H U F F M A N W R 6

A7

C

Z 8L

9Q D O

10Q I Z U V M

11U N C O M P 12

R E S S A A P

A L 13S H A N N O N R

D 14L E 15

M P E 16L T 17

C O D E C

P Z 18G I F E S

19O E 7 20

Z Z 21P C X S

22J P E G 23

7 Z I P A O

T V T M24

G Z I P I 25P R D

M O26

D E F L A 27T E 28

P N 29G C R U S H

R A 30M U

31D E C O M 32

P R E S S O R N

G P R 33Z C A T

M 34J F S I

E P

1 2 3

4 5

6 7 8 9

10

11

12 13 14

15

16 17

18

19 20 21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29

30 31

32

"Doctor, I have huge

social network on Facebook,

Twitter all over the world. Still

I feel very lonely because we can't meet in person"


Ask an Expert Dr. Debasish JanaEditor, CSI Communications

Your Question, Our Answer“The most important thing in the kitchen is the waste paper basket and it needs to be centrally located”

~ Donald KnuthSubject: Ajax example

What is the diff erence between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0? What is the role of Ajax in Web 2.0 context? Can you please provide an example to explain the basic concept behind Ajax.

Anonymous

A Web 2.0 is more of a marketing buzzword than a real technology term. But, that’s not the point. Web 1.0 is basic Internet where users interact with backend web servers to transact something that could be for information query and retrieval, for business transactions, approvals, bookings etc. Essentially, users are at the receiving end where information is essentially fed and supplied by the server. Come Web 2.0, we are now in the age of social networking. Who has not heard about Facebook, Twitter for instance, and here the contents are generated by the users. Moreover, as technologies evolved, users get to demand and actually get the lively experience as that of a desktop, the reach of rich graphical user interface through web - smooth, clean, and elegant. Earlier, web pages had the content (data) and the look (stylesheets, HTML tags) embedded in the same content. As a result, whenever even a minor part of the screen data needs a refresh, for example, a live cricket score used to force the entire page to get reloaded with all its bag and baggage. Today, we have the technology set forth to refresh only a portion of a page and that too only the data travels across the network bandwidth, as for rest of the page the layout probably remains the same, thus not needing to reload the layout. Ajax, the asynchronous Javascript and XML off er the technique to load portion of a web page. Let’s give an example of an Ajax script. <html><head><script type="text/javascript">function loadXML(){ var ajaxreq; try { // for Safari, Opera 8+, Firefox, Chrome, IE7+ ajaxreq = new XMLHttpRequest(); } catch (e) { // for IE 5 or 6 try { ajaxreq = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } catch (e){ // some problem alert("will not run on your browser!"); return false; } } }

ajaxreq.onreadystatechange=function() { if (ajaxreq.readyState == 4 && ajaxreq.status==200) { document.getElementById("aDiv").innerHTML = ajaxreq.responseText; } } ajaxreq.open("GET","dummy.txt",true); ajaxreq.send();}</script></head><body><div id="aDiv"><h2>Example of AJAX</h2></div><button type="button" onclick="loadXML()">Try it!</button></body></html>

The above html/javascript shows an example of Ajax-enabled script. Upon running, the web page will show content similar to as shown below:

Example of AJAX

Let’s explain the steps. In our web page, we have this text written “Example of AJAX”, and we need to click the button to run the test. The text “Example of AJAX” is shown within a <div> tag. The <div> tag stands for division or section in an HTML document. The <div> tag is used to group block-elements in an html page to format with styles. On click of a button, we call a javascript function called loadXML. Within this function, we have the variable ajaxreq that makes Ajax possible. Depending on browser support, this essentially creates an appropriate request object. Next, we have a function that will receive data sent from the server. The readyState property holds the status of the XMLHttpRequest. The property on readyState change stores an anonymous function to be called automatically whenever the readyState property changes. The readyState property 4 means request fi nished and response is ready, status 200 means “OK”. Thus, when readyState is 4 and status is 200, the response is ready to be shown as the inner content of the div. In such cases, we load the text from a server fi le dummy.txt to replace the inner content of aDiv. Thus, whenever the button is clicked, a request is generated to get the text from remote fi le dummy.txt. The server program running in the backend, upon receipt of this request post, should send a response back with some text (contents of the dummy.txt fi le). This, in turn, is shown as part of response shown on the aDiv content. n

Send your questions to CSI Communications with subject line ‘Ask an Expert’ at email address [email protected]


On the Shelf!

Book Review »

“A Manager’s Guide to Data Warehousing”Book Title : “A Manager’s Guide to Data Warehousing”

Author: : Laura L Reeves

ISBN : ISBN 978-81-265-2365-8

Printed Pages : 450

Price : Rs. 399/- US edition Price: Rs. 2300/-

Publisher : Wiley India Pvt. Ltd.

Dr. Suneeta SaneProfessor and Head (MCA), Computer Technology Department,Dean, Research and Development, VJTI, Mumbai

The title itself indicates the target reader group. It is essentially a guide for the nontechnical professional who is eager to learn more about data warehousing. The author details each step of a data warehouse project. The author also provides a clear explanation of what is involved in effi ciently building a data warehouse and what must be done to deliver the data. The book is distributed in fi ve parts ranging from fundamentals of data warehousing to fi nal data delivery and expanding over the success. To make the book readable, the author has taken care to entice the attention of the reader by providing the key points to successful implementation of making warehousing in an attractive manner. The book also lists out the frequent question that an executive would ask before choosing warehousing.

Part one of the book deals with the fundamentals of data warehousing with special emphasis on why to build the warehouse and what business promises are given to improve business by using data warehousing. It also describes the pitfalls of implementing the warehousing in an organization.

Part two deals with the business side of data warehousing, successful IT partnership, how a successful project can be set up, how to provide business requirements, and how to ensure that business and technical staff have a common understanding of the data warehouse project.

Part three provides an insight into data, its modeling, and various details about data real-life scenarios. It describes a case study of a call center. Through the case study, it provides the

road map for building a data warehouse while giving an insight into eff ective communication for business requirements for the data warehouse.

Part four describes actual building of the project - various methods to judge the right technology, fi nding options for a particular choice, and not getting carried away by the market hype. It describes the way in which the data is drawn in the database using the ETL techniques. The tools required to make certain that data is organized and can be delivered as needed.

Part fi ve deals with the managing of production data warehouse where tips to fi nish project, post implementation tracking of the data warehouse use, implementation of changes in business processes, and streamlining these in the order of the warehouse has been described with examples keeping the reading simple and eff ective.

What is appealing is that it gives ideas to recover a warehouse project from a stalled state. The book discusses solutions for sustained and long eff ort of BI and continuance of funding for BI projects, which otherwise are kept at backfoot even in giant organizations.

There are plenty of resources for technology professionals who design and build data warehouses; this is a useful guide for a nontechnical audience. This book exactly fi lls this void and presents an excellent resource for business and IT managers, others from the non-IT side. It provides a guideline to deploy the data warehouse and ensure sustainable success, which makes it a must read book. �n


Following new student branches were opened as detailed below –

REGION V MIC College of Technology, Krishna Dist., A.P. - The Chief Guest of the inaugural function on 14th March 2012 was Dr. K. Rajasekhara Rao.

In his Inaugural address Prof. D. Panduranga Rao told students that they need to be extra cautious & be learners for lifetime as technology tends to change rapidly. Dr. V Srikanth emphasized the need for innovation and hard work among students.

REGION VI St. Vincent Pallotti College of Engineering & Technology (SVPCET), Nagpur - On 7th Jan’2012, the SVPCET CSI student branch was

inaugurated. The guest for the event was Mr. Swapnil Deshmukh. On this occasion, inauguration of CSI wall magazine was done by Fr. George, Gr. Manoj, Fr. Johnson , Mr. V. B. Kute and Mr. M.V. Bramhe. .

REGION VII NGM College, Pollachi, Coimbatore – On 13 March 2012, during the inaugural ceremony, Dr. R Nadarajan spoke about CSI’s achievements,

importance and contribution in the Research and Career Development. Dr. P. Badri Narayanan spoke about Evolution of IT and huge opportunities available in IT fi eld.

PARK College of Engineering and Technology (PCET), Coimbatore - Dr. R. Nadarajan, Chairman, CSI Coimbatore chapter inaugurated a new CSI Student branch on 12 March, 2012. Dr. G. Mohan Kumar, presided over the function.


CSI Report Jayshree A Dhere Resident Editor, CSI Communications

CSI Foundation Day Celebration at MumbaiOn 6th March, 2012 various CSI chapters celebrated CSI’s 47th Foundation Day, since its formation in the year 1965. CSI Mumbai Chapter took this opportunity to sign a memorable MoU with a premier engineering institute in the country, viz. VJTI and joined hands together for organizing various types of knowledge events, training, and for providing innovation. The objective of the MoU

is to bridge the gap between the academic institutions and industry. The event was followed by the launch of CSI Research Journal by Mr.

Prithviraj Chavan, Chief Minister of Maharashtra state and Prof. Narsinhan Memorial lecture by Prof. Balakrishnan of Institute of Science, Bangalore, who spoke on the topic called ‘Revenge of Silicon’.

Mr. Chavan made his prestigious presence on the occasion and spoke at large about taking proactive steps in taking Maharashtra ahead in the area of eGovernance. He himself has been a CSI member and spoke about his memories of CSI. He spoke about India’s progress in the ICT fi eld and mentioned that there is a need to climb the value chain and that we have not yet reached our full potential. Yet, he suggested that it is possible to come out with innovative solutions and get them manufactured elsewhere in the world. He spoke about the fact that India cannot be rich by its natural resources

like some other countries and if we have to create wealth it will have to be by leveraging knowledge-based technology. He also emphasized the importance of use of our languages in computer science and creating our own knowledge in the subject.

Dr. Grover, Nuclear Scientist at the Homi Bhabha National Institute, spoke on the occasion highlighting the importance of the fourth pillar of a nation, viz. cyber power in addition to the traditional three pillars - economic power, military power, and political power. Mr. M D Agrawal welcomed the guests and spoke about the role of CSI in eGovernance arena and appealed the Government of Maharashtra to take help from eGovernance SIG of CSI. Dr. Shyamsundar, talked about the evolution and drivers of change in computer science and informed the audience about India being global software off shore services leader and how its exports in this category during the period 1998-2008 met 65% of India’s net oil import.

Dr. FC Kohli, one of the founder members of CSI, was present on the occasion and spoke about the need of India having eGovernance using various Indian languages. Read rest of the report on http://csi-india.org/web/csi/csi-47th-foundation-day

CSI Foundation Day Celebration at Various Chapters and Student Branches

Region IGhaziabadThe event at Ghaziabad commenced with welcome by Chapter chairman and followed by a session by Mr. Vijay Rastogi on Technical Trends of year 2012. He discussed about the latest trends in Mobile computing, Cloud Computing, and Business intelligence. This was followed by discussion on e-Governance status in India led by Mr. H S Sharma, senior member, CSI.

Region VBangaloreOn 10th March 2012, Dr. S Ramani, past CSI President, inaugurated the celebration event. He asked the next generation to take over the reins of CSI by active participation. Senior CSI members and children did the honors of lighting the candles, cake cutting, and singing the birthday song for CSI.

Sam Mukundan, IIT Kharagpur alumni and a serial entrepreneur, shared his wisdom on how diversity leads to innovation and then on to wealth. He involved the audience in the innovation process and models were designed by participant groups using color clay to depict an icon for the movie on Steve Jobs.

Region VIAurangabad On 6th March 2012, Aurangabad Chapter celebrated 47th foundation day of CSI in an innovative way in the gracious presence of Dr V M Pandharipande

(Vice Chancellor, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University) and Mr. Kunal Kumar (Collector, Aurangabad) by conducting “Walk for Life rally” in the university campus.

Region VGoaThe 47th CSI Foundation day celebration was held at Goa Engineering College,

Farmagudi. As a part of the celebrations CSI - Goa Chapter organized a talk on ‘Android.Novice’ by Mr. Prajyot P Mainkar, CEO, SPM Softwares & Designers. Mr. Prajyot, highlighted features of Android such as Android Development and UI Guidelines, Cross Platform Development & NFC, Connected Services in Android etc..

Student BranchesRegion IIIAESICS, AhmedabadOn 6th March 2012, Mr. Bipin Mehta, Director, AESICS presided over the celebration function and highlighted the contribution of CSI in learning, knowledge sharing, and career enhancement of students. The chief guest of the function was Dr. Bhavesh Patel, Dean, Amrut Mody School of Management (AMSoM), Ahmedabad University. To pay tribute to various pioneers in computing, videos related to computing history, generations, and computer inventions were screened in the function. The keynote speech was delivered by Mr. Satish Babu, Vice President-cum-President Elect of CSI through video conferencing. Student technical paper presentation competition was organized on the occasion.

Region VANITS, VishakhapatnamNeoAPP Solutions, Hyderabad sponsored the celebration event on 6th March 2012. On this occasion, Prof. Tirimula Rao Benala elaborated the positive impact of CSI activities on the students.

Mr. K V S S Rajeswar Rao DGM(IT), RINL Chief Guest of this event delivered an inspiring speech elaborating how CSI can play greater role in moulding the future engineers as Quality Workforce.

(Read the detail report of celebration events at various chapters and student branches at http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-April2012)


EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENTS

CSI Executive Committee 2012-13/14

President (2012-13)Mr. Satish BabuPresident, Inapp 121 Nila, Technopark,Trivandrum: 695581Phone: 471-2527270(M): 91-9447027274eMail: [email protected]

Vice President cum President Elect ( 2012-13)Prof. S V Raghavan

324 A, Maulana Azad Road, Vigyan Bhavan Annexe, New Delhi: 110011Phone: (O) 011 23022115(F) 011 23022116eMail: [email protected]

Hon. Secretary (2012-14)Mr. S Ramanathan

13 (Old No. 5), Rajagopalan StreetWest MambalamChennai: 600 033Phone: 24740074(M) 91766 43039 eMail: [email protected]

Region-III (2011-13)Mr. Anil Srivastava

C 23, Shivaji Nagar,Bhopal: 462016Phone: 755-2760460 (M) 91-9425014155eMail: [email protected]

Region-IV (2012-14)Mr. Sanjeev Kumar

DGM I/c (Project RSP), MECON Limited, Doranda, Ranchi: 834002Phone: (O) 0651-2483312 (M) 91-9431706990 (F) 0651-2482189eMail: [email protected]

Immd. Past PresidentMr. M D Agrawal

B P C L Quarters, Flat No. 21,Near Asean Heart Hospital,Bandra Kurla Compelx,Mumbai: 400051Phone: 022 26540376(M) 91-9820536302eMail: [email protected]

Region-I (2011-13)Mr. R K Vyas

70, Sanskant Nagar Society,Plot No.3, Sector-14, Rohini,New Delhi: 110085Phone: 011-27866259(M) 91-9810592760eMail: [email protected]

Region-II (2012-14)Prof. Dipti Prasad Mukherjee

68 Ashokgarh,Kolkata: 700108Phone: (033)25773351eMail: [email protected]

Hon. Treasurer (2011-13)Mr. V L Mehta

504, Nalanda, J. P. RoadAndheri (West)Mumbai: 400053Phone: 91- 9820130911eMail: [email protected]


REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENTS

NOMINATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS (2012-13)

DIVISION CHAIRPERSONS

Region-V (2011-13)

Prof. D B V SarmaFlat 301, Lb Towers, Door No: 15-3-61/8, Maharani Peta,Visakhapatnam: 530002Phone: 91-9848632846eMail: [email protected]

Region-VII (2011-13)

Mr. Ramasamy S 4th (new No. 6) North AvenueSri Nagar Colony, SaidapetChennai: 600015Phone: 91 -98400 09417eMail: [email protected]

Region-VI (2012-14)

Mr. C G Sahasrabudhe7, Snehal ApartmentsSahawas SocietyKarve Nagar, Pune: 411052(M) 91- 9822171609eMail: [email protected]

Region-VIII (International) (2012-14)

Mr. Pramit Makoday293 Turnpike Road, Suite 213, Westborough, Massachusetts, USA, Zip 01581Phone: 1 508-366-0552(M) 1 508-250-6667eMail: [email protected]

Division-I: Hardware (2011-13)Dr. C R Chakravarthy

No. 15 Heerachand Cross Road, Cox Town,Bangalore: 560005Phone: (080) 2548-8009 (M) 91-98450 45744eMail: [email protected]

Dr. D D Sarma2-16-104, Prasanthinagar, Op: Survey of India, Uppal, Hyderabad: 5000039Phone: 040-27203510, (M) 91-961 802 4570eMail: [email protected]

Division-II: Software (2012-14)Dr. T V Gopal

L - Ii / 4, Staff QuartersAnna UniversityChennai: 600025Phone: 91-9840121302eMail: [email protected]

Mr. Bipin V MehtaCompuvision, 607, Shiti Ratna, 6th Floor, Panchwati, Ahmedabad: 380006Phone: (O) (079)-2656-8750, 2646-7760(R) (079)-2642-2751 (M) 91-98250 63928eMail: [email protected]

Division-III: Applications (2011-13)Dr. Debesh Das

Computer Science and Engineering Department,Jadvapur University.Kolkata: 700032Phone: 03324131766 (M) 91-9903888840eMail: [email protected]

Mr. Subimal KunduFlat No. 1A, Block-7, Space Town Housing Complex, P O Airport, Kolkata: 700052 Phone: (033)3293-8102 (033)2529-6109(M) 91-98301-92673eMail: [email protected], [email protected]

Division-IV: Communications (2012-14)Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra

Duplex 26, Plot 1565 (p),Sector-VI, CDA,Cuttack-14, Orissa.Phone: 91-9861010656eMail: [email protected]

Division-V: Education and Research (2011-13) Dr. Nandlal L Sarda

Dept of Computer Science & Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay Powai, Mumbai 400 076, IndiaPhone: 91-22-25767710 (M) 91-9820120045eMail: [email protected]

CSI Communications | April 2012 | 42 www.csi-india.orgCSCSCSI I I CoCoCommmmmmunununiciccattatioionsnss ||| ApApApririr lll 2 201011222 || 424242 wwwwwww.w.w.cscscsi-ii-ininindididiaa.a.orororggggg

CSI News

From CSI Chapters »Please check detailed news at: http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-April2012

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTLUCKNOW (REGION I)Dr. Shiv Verma 1 March 2012: Experience Sharing Session on “Entrepreneurship

Development for Knowledge Based Industry” (with special reference to IT and Mobility)

During his talk, Dr. Shiv Verma touched upon salient attributes of American social system. He compared it with Asian and Indian social system. He encouraged the need for more innovation- and entrepreneur-based thinking at this juncture when economy is looking good and India is all set to take a giant leap from here.

CSI Lucknow: Dr. Shiv Verma conducti ng the lecture

UDAIPUR (REGION III)Prof. S S Chahal, Prof. Sorel Reisman, Mr. Satish Babu, Mr. Ketan Bhatt, Dr. Dharm Singh, Dr. Gil Taran, and Dr. John Walz

4-6 December 2011: International Conference on “Communication and Networks” (COMNET-2011)

In this three-day event, a total of 70 papers were scheduled to be presented out of 281 papers submitted by various authors across the globe. Out of these, 50 papers have been recommended for publication in the International Journal of Computer Application. There was an International Workshop on Free and Open Source Software (IW-FOSS) and a press conference.

Guests on stage

HYDERABAD (REGION V)Dr. Kannan Srinathan, Mr. Muralidhar, and Mrs. Preeti Saxsena

16-17 March 2012: National Conference on “Social Networking” (NCSN-2012)

The national conference was inaugurated by Dr. Kannan Srinathan. About 65 papers were received from various students, faculty, and research scholars from all over India. Out of these, only 45 were selected to be presented at the conference. A couple of papers were submitted by people from abroad.

Guests sitti ng on stage in Nati onal Conference

NASHIK (REGION VI)Mr. M B Joshi, Mr. Avadhoot Sahasrabudhe, Mr. Uday Malekar, Mr. Vinay Hinge, Mr. Diwakar Yawalkar, Mr. C N Tilgulkar, and Mr. Sagar Bhavsar

9 March 2012: Conference on “ERP”

Mr. M B Joshi took the fi rst session on “Mastering Master Data”. Mr. Sahasrabudhe and Mr. Malekar talked about importance of ERP for organizations of all sizes. Mr. Vinay Hinge gave presentation on the interesting subject “What not to expect from ERP?”, evolution of ERP, and discussed 10 myths about ERP. An interesting panel discussion of actual implementers shared their experiences of ERP implementations.

During the session

CSI Communications | April 2012 | 43CSCSCSI I CoCoCommmmmunununicicicatattioioionsns ||| ApApApriririlll 2 2 2010101222 ||| 434343

COIMBATORE (REGION VII)Mr. Richard Stallman 7 February 2012: Distinguished lecture on “Free Software in Ethics and

Practice”

The chapter along with CSI Division 3 (Applications) conducted a distinguished lecture on “Free Software in Ethics and Practice” by Mr. Richard Stallman.

Lecture by Richard Stallman

27 February 2012: CSI Discover Thinking Quiz

The 'Discover Thinking' - 2nd National Science and ICT Fun Quiz was for students of middle school from 6th to 9th standard. The regional round saw the participation of almost 1000+ students from schools in Coimbatore, Nilgiris, Tirupur, and Erode.

Masters Aditya Prabhakar Pati l and Karthik Ganapathy, Kochi won the Nati onal fi nals

SIVAKASI (REGION VII)Dr. Ranjani Parthasarathi 14 March 2012: National Conference with a Focus on Research issues in

“Computing Technologies”

Dr. Parthasarathi delivered a keynote address on Multicore Technologies and its Research Issues. 24 selected authors presented their papers. Delegates from Orissa had active interaction in the areas of Video Compression, High Performance Computing, Wireless Technologies, Internet and Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, Information and Network Security, and Data Mining.

(Left ) Dr. S Balakrishnan, Principal delivered the Presidenti al address (Right) The chief Guest distributed the certi fi cates to the parti cipant

From Student Branches »http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-April2012

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTAISHWARYA COLLEGE, UDAIPUR (REGION-III)Mr. Ashutosh Pancholi 27 February 2012: Seminar on “Virtualization & Cloud Computing”

Mr. Ashutosh Pancholi during the technical talk stressed on unleashing the power of VIRTUALIZATION encompassing technical fundamentals on setup and implementation of Virtualization. The discussion included in detail about Blade Centre Server, Hypervisor, VMware covering the strengths and opportunities in overcoming contemporary business problems.

During technical talk

SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST


SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTBHARATI VIDYAPEETH, NEW DELHI (REGION-III)Prof. M N Hoda, Dr. Sandeep Agarwal, and Mr. Bharat Bhusan

3 March 2012: One day Faculty Development Programme (FDP)

The topics covered in the FDP were 21st Century Teaching Learning System, Web Technologies, Telecom Convergence, and Android Computing. It received an overwhelming response with 62 participants from 38 eminent institutes.

(FDP on Emerging Technologies; Inaugurati on is in progress)

GYAN GANGA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT (GGIT), BHOPAL (REGION-III)17 February 2012: Event of Paper Presentation

During this event, students had to submit the PPT on any topic of their interest. A total of 15 teams participated in the event. 6 teams were selected for the 2nd round.

Students att ending Paper Presentati on at GGIT

Mr. Anand Bugde 27 February 2012: Expert lecture on “Web Services”

Around 60-80 students and faculties of both Computer Science and Information Technology Department attended the lecture. The lecture included introduction about web service, techniques used in it, and its applications in current scenario.

Mr. Anand Bugde Delivering the lecture

SARDAR VALLABHAI PATEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (SVIT), VASAD (REGION-III)Dr. S K Vij 23 January 2012: Expert talk on “Value Creation in Digital Economy”

The expert talk covered areas like value creation by enhancement of product, ongoing trend of customization, knowledge-based products etc.

Dr. S K Vij giving a talk on “Value Creati on In Digital Economy”

Mr. Shailesh Prasad Konwar 25 January 2012: Expert talk on “Cloud Computing”

The talk on “Cloud Computing” by Mr. Shailesh Prasad Konwar, who has expertise in Java, Linux, and Information Warfare, covered a good range of cloud computing technology.

Mr. Shailesh Prasad Konwar giving a talk on “Cloud Computi ng”

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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTSARDAR VALLABHAI PATEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (SVIT), VASAD (REGION-III)

24-25 February 2012: Exhibition at SVIT

The SVIT organized an open exhibition wherein the students came up with their brilliance, creativity, and interests in the form of technical projects and models, sketches, and paintings and collections.

Prof. V P Parmar and Prof. Hetal B Bhavsar visiti ng the parti cipants

ANITS, VISHAKHAPATANAM (REGION-V)Mr. Jagdish 9 February 2012: Alumni interaction session

Mr. Jagdish threw light on the importance of soft skills, body language, business English, participative learning, and participating in various activities conducted by the department and the college to grow as a person. 65 Prefi nal year students attended this session.

Mr. Jagdish addressing the students; Prof. (Dr.) Suresh Chandra Satapathy

Dr. Swagatam Das 17 February 2012: Speech on “Real Parameter Optimization with Diff erential Evolution”

Dr. Swagatam Das spoke in detail on various kinds of Real Parameter Optimization, Diff erential Evolution, and problem solving using Diff erential Evolution.

(L to R) Dr. Swagatam Das and Dr. S C Satapathy

Mr. S A Rajesh 24 February 2012: Lecture on “Mainframes”

Topics covered in this lecture were - Basic Mainframe Concepts, Evolution of Mainframes, its architecture, subsystems, and fi nally Batch and Interactive Processing.

Mr. S A Rajesh, Tech lead, Infosys, delivering the lecture

R. V. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, BANGALORE (REGION-V)Mr. Krishna Prasad 25 February 2012: Technical talk on “Technology Trends: Challenges”

Krishna Prasad in his talk discussed about the technology trends. He said that present day technology is supported by data, knowledge, and intelligence. Now, it is SaaS or SOA wherein the growth rate is high compared to traditional software development.

Speakers with audience


SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTAISSMS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, PUNE (REGION-VI)Mr. Vinay Pal 2 February 2012: Workshop on “Dot Net”

Mr. Pal explained the features of Dot Net and why we should use Dot Net to develop software applications. He also explained how to compile and run Dot Net programs.

Workshop on Dot Net

J. J. MAGDUM COLLEGE, JAYSINGPUR (REGION-VI)Prof. (Ms.) A B Shikalgar, Prof. (Ms.) A A Patil, and Prof. (Mrs.) D A Nikam

8 March 2012: One day college level Symposium “Technotsav”

Under this technical symposium, there were two events organized - Pool Campus and Tech Quiz.

Diff erent photos of the event

ST. VINCENT PALLOTTI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (SVPCET), NAGPUR (REGION-VI)Mr. Amulya Nanda and Mr. Manishankar 21 January 2012: Workshop on “Ethical Hacking and Software

Development”

Mr. Nanda gave basic knowledge of software development in addition to the aptitude of programming, whereas Mr. Manishankar taught preliminary techniques and prerequisites of hacking.

During the Workshop

Mr. Mayur Rathi and Mr. Moses 4 February 2012: Event of "Virtual Campus"

The event started with a 45-minute Campus Recruitment test. The test was followed by group discussion and personal interview.

Mr. S M Wanjari and Mr. Nishant Dhage 11 February 2012: Workshop on “PC Assembling”

The event started with the session on introduction to hardware and peripheral components. In the next session, there was a live demo of PC Assembly.

Introducti on to Hardware

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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTSARDAR PATEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (SPIT), MUMBAI (REGION-VI)Aaswad Satpute and Sheetal Pandrekar 10 March 2012: Workshop on “Latex”

The fi rst session of the workshop covered the basic syntax and terminologies. The session covered topics such as: formatting technical articles and books, formatting tabular content, implementing and formatting graphics, Math Mode, generating table of contents and list of references, and making own commands in latex.

Parti cipants during workshop

KARAPAGAM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, COIMBATORE (REGION-VII)Mr. S R Thirukkumaran and Ms. Anjali 9 February 2012: Workshop on “Network Simulator-NS2”

KCE Student Branch organized a one-day workshop on Network Simulator-NS2 along with CSE Association at IBM Centre of Excellence lab in college premises.

(L to R) Prof. K Malarvilli, Prof. D Sivaganesan, Mr. S R Thirukkumaran, and Ms. Anjali

KONGU ENGINEERING COLLEGE (KEC), PERUNDURAI (REGION-VII)Mr. V S Sathiesh Kumar 4 February 2012: Guest lecture on “J2EE-an Architectural Overview”

Mr. Sathiesh Kumar gave a fl eeting glance about the fundamentals of Java, then gave a detailed view of the two-tier and the three-tier architecture of J2EE. He also gave a glimpse of the other concepts of Java, and how they are applied in the real-time environment in corporate.

Guests on stage at KEC

NATIONAL COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING (NCE), TIRUNELVELI (REGION-VII)Mr. Mohit P Tahiliani and Prof. (Dr.) M Mohamed Sitheeq

10 March 2012: One-day National-level Workshop on “Network Simulation using NS-2”

53 faculty members and 143 students participated in the workshop. The session covered Architecture of NS-2, Wired TCL Scripts, Wireless TCL Scripts, MANET TCL Scripts, AWK Scripts, and plotting graphs.

Encl: (Speakers on the dias)

NATIONAL ENGINEERING COLLEGE (NEC), KOVILPATTI (REGION-VII)Dr. K G Srinivasagan 23 February 2012: Expert Lecture on the topic “Green Computing”

More than 60 students enthusiastically participated in the lecture. Dr. K G Srinivasagan, Professor & Head of CSE (PG) department was the resource person.

Expert Lecture on “Green computi ng” by resource person Dr. K G Srinivasagan


SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTRAJALAKSHMI ENGINEERING COLLEGE (REC), CHENNAI (REGION-VII)Mr. K S Balaji, Mrs. Helen Jesuraj, Mrs. R Banumathi, and Mr. G Mohan

16-17 March 2012: National Seminar on “Software Project Management and Software Quality Assurance”

The seminar focused on the industrial perspective of the subjects viz. SPM and SQA. Mr. K S Balaji presented his views on project management and activity control. Mrs. Helen Jesuraj projected the industrial needs on Software Metrics. Mrs. R Banumathi discussed on the cost estimation procedure. Mr. G Mohan enlightened the key aspects in Total Quality Management.

During the seminar at REC, Chennai

S. A. ENGINEERING COLLEGE, CHENNAI (REGION-VII)Mr. B Sai Prasad 1 March 2012: One-day Workshop on "Project Management Concepts"

Mr. B Sai Prasad inaugurated the workshop and delivered the inaugural address. The workshop mainly focused on the project management concepts for the fi nal year students to do their projects.

Speaker on dias during workshop

CSI Membership = 360° Knowledge

Your membership in CSI provides instant access to key career / business building resources - Knowledge, Networking, Opportunities.

CSI provides you with 360° coverage for your Technology goals

Learn more at www.csi-india.org

WE INVITE YOU TO JOINComputer Society of India

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andbecome a member

I am interested in the work of CSI . Please send me information on how to become an individual/institutional* memberName ______________________________________ Position held_______________________ Address______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________City ____________Postal Code _____________Telephone: _______________ Mobile:_______________ Fax:_______________ Email:_______________________ *[Delete whichever is not applicable]

Interested in joining CSI? Please send your details in the above format on the following email address. [email protected]

Date Event Details & Organizers Contact Information

18-21 Apr. 2012 4th International Conference on Human Computer InteractionIFIP TC-13, Pune

Prof. Anirudh [email protected]

25-27 Apr. 2012 RACSS-2012: International Conference on Recent Advances in Computing and Software Systems Dept. of CSE, SSN College of Engineering, Chennai, CSI Chennai Chapter & Div IV, IEEE Madras Section, IEEE CS

Dr. Chitra [email protected]://www.racss2012.com

27-28 Apr. 2012 Hands-on Practical Share Point 2010 Power Using Training CSI Mumbai Chapter

Mr. Abraham [email protected]

May 2012 Events

16 May 2012 SPIN Meeting: Topic - • Basics Agile Ways of Software Development CSI Mumbai Chapter


22-26 May 2012 Confi guring and Administering Microsoft SharePoint 2010 CSI Mumbai Chapter


24-27 May 2012 Certifi cate Course on PMP (Project Management) 4.0 (36 Hours of PDU's) CSI Mumbai Chapter


26-27 May 2012 Two-day Workshop on "Secure Computing Systems" CSI Division II [Software] and Military College of Telecommunication Engineering [MCTE], Mhow.

Dr. T V [email protected]

July 2012 Events

26-28 Jul. 2012 International Conference on Advances in Cloud Computing (ACC-2012)CSI, Bangalore Chapter and CSI Division I

Dr. Anirban [email protected]. C R [email protected]

November 2012 Events

29 Nov.-1 Dec. 2012

3rd International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2012)CSI Kolkata Chapter Event at Kolkata, URL: https://sites.google.com/site/csieait2012/

D P Mukherjee/Diptendu Dutta/Debasish Jana/Pinakpani [email protected]

December 2012 Events

1-2 Dec. 2012 47th Annual National Convention of CSI (CSI 2012)organized by CSI Kolkata Chapter, URL: http://csi2012.csi-kolkata.org/

Subimal Kundu/D P Mukherjee/Phalguni Mukherjee/J K [email protected]

14-16 Dec. 2012 International Conference on Management of Data (COMAD-2012)SIGDATA, CSI, Pune Chapter and CSI Division II

C G [email protected]

CSI Calendar 2012

S V RaghavanVice President & Chair, Conference Committee, CSI

Please send your event news to [email protected] . Low resolution photos and news without gist will not be published. Please send only 1 photo per event, not more. Kindly note that news received on or before 20th of a month will only be

considered for publishing in the CSIC of the following month.

Last Date for Paper Submission: June 15, 2012

Organizing Chairs Program Chairs Tutorial Chairs Finance Chairs Registration Chairs Advisory ChairsD P Mukherjee D Jana A Bagchi R T Goswami S Kundu D P SinhaD Dutta P Pal P Mukherjee S Sinha S Daspal R N Lahiri

Organizing Committee Members**

International Program Committee Members**A Kumar (India)A Mukherjee (India)A Chaudhuri (India)A K Mandal (India)A Viola (Uruguay)A Chakrabarti (India)A Guha (USA)A A Desai (India)A Sinha (USA)A K Laha (India)A Ray (USA)A Ghosh (India)B N Saha (USA)B C Patel (India)B Chanda (India)B C Dhara (India)B B Chaudhuri (India)B Sengupta (India)B Dam (India)C A Murthy (India)C T Bhunia (India)C Mazumdar (India)D P Mandal (India)D Mukhopadhyay (India)D Saha (India)D Chakraborty (Mexico)D Sinha (India)D Tarafdar (USA)D C Schmidt (USA)D P Muni (India)G S Lehal (India)G Garai (India)G Sahoo (India)I Bloch (France)J Tang (USA)K Majumdar (USA)K Roy (USA)K Dutta (Singapore)K Roy (India)K Banerjee (India)M Sangtani (India)M Pakhira (India)M Mitra (India)M Z Hasan (USA)M Nasipuri (India)M Banerjee (India)M Baruah (India)N Chakravarty (India)

N Mukherjee (India)N Burade (India)N A Abbas (Iraq)N Chatterjee (India)N Ray (Canada)N Ghosh (USA)N B Hui (India)P Dutta (India)P Bhowmick (India)P Dasgupta (USA)P Kumar (India)P Sarkar (India)P Maji (India)P Nagabhushan (India)P K Jana (India)P Uppuluri (USA)P Dasgupta (USA)R Kumar (India)R Buyya (Australia)R Dattagupta (India)R Gulati (India)S T Hasson (Iraq)S K Sanyal (India)S Chattopadhyay (India)S K Saha (India)S P Maity (India)S Neogy (India)S B Sadkhan (Iraq)S Basu (USA)S Majumdar (Canada)S Kundu (India)S Mitra (USA)S S Basu (India)S Bhunia (USA)S Chattopadhyay (India)S Roy (USA)S Chaudhuri (India)S Biswas (India)S RayChaudhuri (India)S Mitra ( India)S Dutta Roy (India)S Sarkar (USA)S Bhattacharya (India)S K Parui (India)S K Sen (USA)T Lahiri (India)U Acharya (Singapore)U Bhattacharya (India)U Pal (India)

A Bose G Hazra P Verma A Nag J K Mandal S Roychowdhury C Ghosh Md Aliullah T Chattopadhyay

**As on March 25, 2012

FOR LATEST UPDATES AND MORE DETAILS:Conference Website: https://www.sites.google.com/site/csieait2012

Online Paper Submission Website: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/eait2012

AI and Soft Computing e-Learning Project ManagementAutonomic Computing BIFS Applications

Embedded Systems RFID and Applications Enterprise Applications Rural Applications

Bio-Informatics and Bio Inspired Computing

Extreme/Agile Programming

Security and Privacy

Biomedical Applications GIS & Remote Sensing Semantic Web TechnologiesBI and Analytics High Performance

Computing Software Design Patterns

Cloud & Grid Computing Image Processing Software Engineering Machine Learning Mobile Application

Development Software Testing & Quality

Data Mining Mobile Computing Supply Chain Management

2012 Third International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2012)In conjunction with the 47th Annual National Convention of CSI

Organized by the Computer Society of India Kolkata ChapterNovember 29 – December 01, 2012, Kolkata, India

Technically Sponsored by IEEE Kolkata Section Computer Chapter

CALL FOR PAPER AND PARTICIPATIONObjectiveEncouraged by the earlier responses and keeping the tradition CSI Kolkata Chapter is organizing the Third International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2012). The event will comprise of pre-conference tutorials, plenary sessions, invited lectures by eminent speakers of international repute, session papers and panel discussions.

TopicsOriginal unpublished contributions are solicited for presentation at the 2012 Third International Conference on Emerging Applications of Information Technology (EAIT 2012). The topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

Paper Submission and Review Process The papers must be submitted ONLINE using double column IEEE format through Microsoft’s CMT site. Please follow the author instructions for paper format and other important information before submitting the paper for review. The submitted paper must be complete in all respects and must include results, fi gures, references etc. Review process will be double blind. PC may reject papers without review if the submission is not in proper format. Plagiarism of any form will lead to outright rejection of the paper.

PublicationEAIT 2012 proceedings will be published by the IEEE and will be made digitally available in IEEE Xplore subject to fulfi lling necessary conference registration and presentation formalities. Only IEEE Xplore-compliant PDF fi les will be accepted for fi nal paper submissions. EAIT 2012 conference and conference proceedings will meet IEEE’s quality standards, and IEEE reserves the right not to publish any proceedings that do not meet IEEE standards. IEEE reserves the right to exclude a paper from distribution after the conference (e.g., removal from IEEE Xplore) if the paper is not presented at the conference.

Registered with Registrar of News Papers for India - RNI 31668/78 If undelivered return to : Regd. No. MH/MR/N/222/MBI/12-14 Samruddhi Venture Park, Unit No.3, Posting Date: 10&11 every month. Posted at Patrika Channel Mumbai-I 4th fl oor, MIDC, Andheri (E). Mumbai-400 093

csic 2012( april )

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