Monday, August 27, 2012

ZSL Presents at Colloquium Hosted by Indo American Chamber of Commerce on "Technology Enabled Design and Innovation for Sustainable Manufacturing", Chennai, India, August 8




















Shiv Kumar, EVP & CTO of Zylog Systems Ltd (3rd from Left), with IACC and Other Panel Members.






Shiv at right exchanging the Memento






Monday, August 20, 2012

Is it Safe to Use BYOD?


Smartphone’s Use to Boom in Coming Days
Smartphone Mobile Devices use is increasing rapidly. According to Cisco survey the growth rate is nearly tripled in 2011. By the end of 2012, the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the number of people on earth, and by 2016 there will be an estimated 1.4 mobile devices per person.
The rise of smartphones, is not surprising as more and more people rely on their mobile devices for their daily activities, including business communications, when at work, at home, and on the road. They access their corporate network from their personal mobile device and leverage many features like email, enterprise VPN connections, mobile business applications, spreadsheets, documents or presentations, many more for their day to day activities.

Is It Safe to Use BYOD?
With mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets becoming an integral part of day-to-day activities, many companies have decided to allow employees to choose mobile devices to use them in their workplace to connect to the corporate network and execute their business activities. A comprehensive device-agnostic BYOD strategy wherein the security is integrated in to the design can simplify and strengthen security o f networks, data and applications.
 According to a recently survey by Eset found that 81% of the US adults use a personal electronic device for work-related functions.  IPass in a recent survey has revealed that employees who uses personal devices to work has contributed to more than 240 hours of extra work than those who have separate machines for work and home.
In adopting BYOD into their enterprise businesses, Enterprises realize to achieve:
Consumerization:  Consumerization of infrastructure, applications and technologies that can dramatically lower cost and increase business functionality for enterprises and for employees it helps to use the device at ease because of the familiarity of devices or applications installed in the device.
Increase Efficiency and Productivity: These days most employees are carrying their own personal devices, notebooks, mobile phones and tablets that are latest. So they get to perform their tasks with acquainted, highly effective and latest technical devices that help to get their task done easily their tasks anytime anywhere.
Flexibility:  With today’s more mobile workforce, providing the information wherever they work for the day happens to be not an expectation but a necessity for business success.

Decreased Corporate Expenses: Enterprises are not required to do IT provisioning and no purchasing or renting of devices.
Employee Satisfaction: The workforce is reduced from the pressure of carrying two devices and can use the mobile device of their own choice.
Personalization: Employees feel comfortable working with their own devices at work, since they are used to the functions of the system.
Improve License and Software Management: The enterprises benefit out of the centralizing the packaging, distribution, provision and management of software licenses for all company owned applications employed through VDI are reduced.

Challenges in Adopting BYOD:
While the enterprises enjoy numerous benefits in adopting BYOD concepts, it has numerous risks associated:
Providing Device Choice and Support: With BYOD, the devices are evolving so rapidly and it becomes impractical for the IT organizations to provide the choice and same level of support to the different brands of mobile devices the employees bring to workplace.
Visibility of Devices on the Network: With BYOD adoption, each employee is likely to bring one or more devices and be connected to the network through different modes. It is critical for the IT to have tools to monitor the different devices connected to the network.
Protecting Data and Loss Prevention: Protection of corporate data is the biggest challenge of BYOD implementation.  An employee-owned smartphone or tablet may be regularly used to access personal data and business application.  This may require a secure business partition to securely contain the corporate data and also require a VDI application to authenticate passwords without storing them on the device.
Work and Personal Overlap: With BYOD, the corporate and personal data are increasingly co-mingled on devices, leading to security and privacy challenges.
Virus Attack: If users bring their own devices, it becomes very difficult to monitor various devices. Some devices may transmit viruses and damage the network and other devices linked to the network.
Expensive for Employee: It is an out-of-pocket expenditure for the employee and they would be responsible for repairs if the device was damaged or spoiled while performing the task.
Data Loss – BIG RISK: The risk that sensitive data could be placed on employee’s devices and lost can be a significant challenge for organizations.

What Enterprises Need to Do to Mitigate these BYOD & Mobility Risks?  
To tackle these challenges, the enterprises need an effective Mobile Device Management solution for protecting vital company data and other assets.
 Whether employees use company-sanctioned mobility platforms and devices or use their own personal mobile devices, mobile device management is crucial. Organizations that have not developed an MDM strategy until now will need to do so as soon as possible to decrease the threats of data security breaches, as well as loss of confidential information.  Creating an effective MDM technique that covers both the mobile devices that companies purchase and/or those owned by the employees themselves typically begins with an assessment of danger tolerance. With an acceptable level of danger recognized, IT then needs to evaluate the various strategies available for implementing MDM solutions. These techniques include software solutions, applications and cloud-based offerings.
An effective Mobile Device Management solution should provide the enterprises with real management capabilities, including convenient configuration, policy governance, user, Mobile apps and device administration, security, privacy protection, self-service tools and lost device management.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Adoption of Mobile BI by Leading-edge Organizations is on Upswing


Business Intelligence, as most of us know is defined as the ability for an organization to take all its capabilities and convert them into knowledge, ultimately, getting the right information to the right people, at the right time, via the right channel. It majorly involves using computers to identify, extract and analyze business information and data. In plain terms, intelligence in business involves computers analyzing data. With too much having said and told about Business Intelligence, let us take a dive and see the progression in this domain— Mobile Business Intelligence

What is mobile BI?
Mobile business intelligence software extends desktop business intelligence (BI) to mobile devices. They optimize traditional BI reports so they can be viewed easily on a small screen and are ideal for displaying Key Performance Indicators and alerts with simple charts, graphs and spark lines. 

The use of mobile BI software on an upswing!!
Of late, the use of mobilebusiness intelligence (BI) software has been on an upswing and it’s easy to see why. The following major factors have combined to create a potent fertilizer for fuelling the technology’s growth namely:
Ø  The rise of smartphones and tablet computers usage that provides anytime anywhere access and ease of usage
Ø  Demand from business users for up-to-the-minute data to help support decision-making have

Gartner Inc. predicts that mobile analytics will be one of the leading trends. This predication suggests that mobile BI is likely to be adopted throughout entire enterprises with multiple business units adopting mobile BI. By 2014, 33% of business intelligence will be garnered through mobile devices. This adoption and utilization will not be limited to C-level executives.

Top trends in Mobile BI
-          By far, the number one trend in mobile BI is how rapidly top-level executives make decisions using it. Because information is readily available to organizations utilizing mobile BI, they take, on average, about one-third of the time to make decisions than organizations that have not employed mobile BI strategies.

-          Mobile BI addresses a big complaint against analytics and information management for many years – not being easy to consume, chart and data overload, devices not secure.  Not anymore. Tablet devices are just right for mobile BI – small enough to carry and large enough to be effective. The early success of the iPad for BI has caught many experts by surprise.

-          Tablets’ big screen size and touch screen facility makes Mobile BI applications more user-friendly and easy-to-use. There are many Mobile BI apps coming in the market, but we need to mention Apples’ iPad, for growing popularity of tablets among users. Other Mobile BI apps include BIRT Mobile, Roambi, Micro Strategy Mobile, SAS Mobile, IBM Cognos 8 Go!

With anytime anywhere availability of intelligence data to senior & middle management employees on a 24×7 basis, more organizations will be adopting this technology and Mobile BI will continue to grow rapidly which is transforming the BI platform for the better. 

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Can Cloud Computing Take On Healthcare Industry?


Technologies in the healthcare IT industry are converging with time and are far outpacing the legacy systems used by hospitals and healthcare providers. Recently, cloud technology has started replacing these legacy systems and offers easier and faster access to this data stored in public and private or hybrid.

How Cloud Computing will help Healthcare Industry

Implementing and utilizing technology will offer healthcare practices significant benefits, with Cloud computing offering better access to healthcare services and information that would subsequently result in improved outcomes and increased cost savings. Other advantage is that healthcare data has specific requirements such as security, confidentiality, availability to authorized users, traceability of access, reversibility of data, and long-term preservation.














A recent Healthcare IT News survey found 48 percent of respondents planning to incorporate cloud computing into their health IT endeavours; 33 percent had already taken the plunge. But 19 percent answered with a "no".

Cloud technology in healthcare market has different models; applications, deployment models, service models, pricing models, and components. Applications in healthcare are of two main types, namely,
  • Clinical Information Systems (CIS)
  • Non Clinical Information Systems (NCIS)

CIS includes EMR, CPOE, PACS, RIS, LIS, PIS, and others while NCIS includes revenue cycle management, Automatic Patient Billing, cost accounting, payroll management, and claims management.

The healthcare industry is slowly adopting public clouds due to its highly regulated nature whereas the private and hybrid cloud models have a higher affinity.
Cloud computing is a utility based or pay-per-use type of a service and the market can be categorized by two types of pricing models offered by the service vendors, the pay-as-you-go model and the subscription-based or spot pricing model, while keeping operating costs to a minimum, covering only the essentials. Additionally patient data stored in the Cloud, health professionals and hospitals will no longer need to invest in storage systems.

Today, many pharmacology vendors including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer have started embracing cloud computing and major cloud vendors like Amazon, Oracle and IBM have developed pharma-specific clinical research cloud offerings with a goal of lowering the cost and development of new drug.

Cloud based solutions have their own pros and cons. A solution should be selected based on the features and needs of the organization; not based on whether it is cloud based or on-premise. Most of the cloud vendors like Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, etc provide Healthcare Cloud with custom settings and user specified options, which help increase productivity.

Ultimately, Cloud computing helps physicians to provide better patient care at a lower cost without sacrificing their quality of work and productivity.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

ZSL Develops a Hyper-Local Cross-Platform Mobile Marketing Solution

ZSL engineered and developed this new innovative Location-based Mobile Marketing software,for the Digital Signage Services Company, available for iOS and Android OS platforms backed by web application hosted in AWS Cloud, which included Web-based Campaign Management Application and Consumer-targeted Mobile Apps downloadable from Apple iStores and Android Market Place/Google Play. The solution provisions  advertising and media organisations to float mobile advertisements through the web-based campaign management application to targeted geographic areas and genders. This web application renders the advertising and media organizations with end-to-end mobile marketing support, which includes campaign management, vendor management, administration console, marketing & sales user management and pricing modules. The mobile ad campaigns can be created and targeted based on geography, gender and categories widely ranging for various products and services including food, retail, pharma, electronics, apparels, logistics and more. The GPS Listener, developed by ZSL, integrated in the consumer downloadable mobile app helps the mobile device to listen periodically for new campaigns or deals or ad messages and receive alert notifications for the categories, subscribed by the consumers, within the geo-fenced area of the mobile device. The consumers can set the geo-fence, in their mobile device, to be either walking or driving based on which the campaign zone is set automatically. The solution provisions the consumers to invoke re-alert notifications of un-viewed deals within the geo-fenced areas. The solution is multi-lingual and consumers have privilege for language preferences.



Monday, August 13, 2012

ZSL Joins Technology Leaders to Present at the Annual World Congress of CloudCon-2012 in Dalian China

Zylog Systems Ltd (ZSL) Joins Technology Leaders to Present at the Annual World Congress of Cloud Computing (CloudCon-2012)
Dalian, China, August 28-30, 2012

CloudCon and BIT

CloudCon and BIT
“Third IT Revolution” - Be a part of it.
CloudCon-2012 is the world’s premier cloud computing event, covering technology, business models, industry experiences, legal aspects, research, development, latest trends and innovations in the world of cloud computing. Cloud computing is attractive to business owners as it eliminates the requirement for users to plan ahead for provisioning, and allows enterprises to start from the small and increase resources only when there is a rise in service demand. We hope to build a platform for the professionals to discuss the relevant research results, development tendency and offer huge opportunities to the IT Industry.
BIT’s Annual World Congress of Cloud Computing 2012, CloudCon-2012 Conference, is built around the theme “Leading the Third IT Revolution”.

Highlights of the Conference

  • 9 Remarkable World-class Symposiums of Cloud Computing
  • 110+ Astonishing Sessions Cover Current Hot Topics and Issues Related to Cloud Computing
  • 200+ Oral Presentations from World Leaders Covering Cloud Computing
  • Up to 30-50 Exhibitions and 100 Posters Reflect Latest Research Breakthroughs, Cutting-edge Technology, Novel Products and Highly Efficient Methodologies from both Academy and Industries
  • 300 Participants from Related Fields

Symposium 1: Cloud Computing for Business Part II

Time: 08:30-12:05, August 29, 2012 (Wednesday); Place: Room No. Ming (C), 5th Floor, Hotel Nikko Dalian
Chair Dr. Erik Hoogerhuis, Worldwide Sales Leader, Application and Integration Middleware, WebSphere, IBM, USA
08:30-08:55 Title: Integrating your Cloud CRM Solutions - Maximizing your Customer Relationships, Business Agility, Data Quality and Business Process Efficiency

Dr. Erik Hoogerhuis, Worldwide Sales Leader, Application and Integration Middleware, WebSphere, IBM, USA
08:55-09:20 Title: Transitioning to Cloud Computing by Small & Medium Enterprises in the Software Industry

Mr. Stephen K. Lo, Regional Director, Asia Pacific, TELLUS International, Inc., Singapore
09:20-09:45 Title: Trusted Cloud Computing

Dr. Christoph Meinel, CEO, Hasso-Plattner-Institute for IT-Systems Engineering, Germany
09:45-10:10 Title: Achieving Business Agility through Cloud Computing

Dr. Shivakumar Kandaswamy, Chief Technology Officer, Zylog Systems Limited (ZSL), USA
10:10-10:25 Coffee Break
10:25-10:50 Title: How to Advance Legacy Business Support Services to Benefit IT Cloud

Dr. Anca Sailer, Research Staff Member, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA
10:50-11:15 Title: TOSCA: Deploy and Orchestrate with Confidence

Dr. Tobias Kunze Briseno, PaaS Architect, RedHat Company, OASIS, USA
11:15-11:40 Title: Understanding the Key Determinants of Private Cloud Migration— Insights from Chinese Firms

Dr. Jun Wu, Director of Institute of Service Science and Service Mangement, Beijing University of Posts and Telecomunications (BUPT), China
11:40-12:05 Title: Adaption of Cloud Services in IT Infrastructure Management

Mr. Jagannath Kallakurchi, Managing Director & CEO, Choice Solutions Limited, India
For a detailed program schedule, please visit: http://www.bitconferences.com/cloudcon2012/fullprogramme.asp#2

Thursday, August 9, 2012

IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program announced ZSL as a 2012 Laureate for its Innovative Mobile Health Suite.


IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program announced ZSL as a 2012 Laureate for its Innovative Mobile Health Suite. The annual award program honors visionary applications of information technology promoting positive social, economic and educational change. Shiv Kumar, EVP & CTO of ZSL, received this award at the award event held in Washington, DC, during June 2012.


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

ZSL Presents at Colloquium on Technology Enabled Design and Innovation for Sustainable Manufacturing

ZSL Presents at Colloquium on “Technology Enabled Design and Innovation for Sustainable Manufacturing” hosted by Indo American Chamber of Commerce (IACC) & Autodesk
Chennai, India, August 8, 2012

Indo-American Chamber of Commerce and Autodesk is organizing a colloquium on “Technology Enabled Design and Innovation for Sustainable Manufacturing”.
This event will leave the business managers informed, inspired and energized about trends and technologies that will be important to their businesses in the years ahead and helps to learn how industry leaders are leveraging innovation to gain and maintain a competitive advantage with new business models, new market opportunities and new ways of designing.
Venue: Sheraton Park Hotel and Towers, Chennai, India
Day: August 8, 2012
Time: 7.00-9.30 PM IST
Chief Guest: Mr. James Golsen, President Commercial Officer,
U.S. Consulate General - Chennai
Key Note: Mr. Subu D Subramanian, MD and CEO, Defiance Technologies


For more details, please visit: https://www.iaccindia.com/event.asp?id=134


Thursday, August 2, 2012

An Integrated Approach to Secure Enterprise Mobility

Want to empower your enterprises and workforce with Mobility & BYOD to enable anytime anywhere business?

- Are your IT Administrators tussling with scalability and security challenges of Mobility & BYOD?
- Are your enterprise looking for an integrated approach to manage cross platform mobile apps, mobile devices and its users?


Watch ZSL's webcast "An Integrated Approach to Secure Enterprise Mobility" where you will learn about:
• The latest adoption trends of Mobility and BYOD in enterprise businesses
• Challenges faced in embracing Enterprise Mobility & BYOD
• Identifying cross-platform management (iOS, Android OS, Windows OS, Blackberry or any other devices) methodologies and solutions that keeps your TCO low and ROI high
• Effective Mobile Device Management strategies to address the ever growing usability, compliance, regulatory and administration challenges
• Lost device management and data retrievals

Watch Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a26XU1r-emE&list=UU1bwgt4NdnXS5tV4f8hCCmQ&index=2&feature=plcp

Make Your Business Apps and Processes Smarter and Agile with ZSL & IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise (SCE)

This webcast will cover how enterprises can leverage IBM Smart Cloud Enterprise (SCE) combined with ZSL's Cloud expertise and specialization to build an agile Enterprise Infrastructure that would align their IT Operations with business priorities. You will have a comprehensive overview of IBM SCE features, technology stack, ZSL value addition services for IBM SCE and some real-time use cases.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY5rGAnRC0U&list=UU1bwgt4NdnXS5tV4f8hCCmQ&index=1&feature=plcp