Increase Your Wi-Fi Signal Strength with a Foil

Are you looking for ways to increase the signal strength of that wireless router in your home without having to invest in a Wifi extender?

Then head over to the kitchen and grab some Aluminum foil that is normally used by mom for cooking or for wrapping sandwiches so that they stay fresh a little longer.



Tear off some foil in the shape of a rectangle, give it a curve and then place the foil behind the antenna of your router. This will reflect the wireless signals into your preferred directions.

If the router is mounted on a wall, you can make holes in the Aluminium foil and insert it inside the antennas as shown in the following video.

The Legal Issues Around Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing can help your business reduce costs as you don’t have to invest in hardware and other physical infrastructure, your data is stored on a secure location and you only pay for what you use – there are no licensing fees associated with cloud computing.

Legal Issues associated with Cloud Computing

That said, there are some important legal issues that must be taken care of before you sign-up with any of the cloud vendors for your business.

These issues, discussed below, are more relevant for business owners who are planning to shift to the cloud and may not really matter if you are a consumer who merely uses the cloud for storing emails or office documents. 

1. The Physical Location of your Data

1a. Where is your data stored physically?
Your data could be stored in any country and you may not even know where the data centre is situated. The ‘physical location’ raises the question of legal governance over the data. The customer must be clear so as to the provisions of the prevailing law in that particular nation.

1b. If a dispute arises, what will be the place of jurisdiction?
In case a conflict arises between the cloud vendor and the customer (you), which country’s court system will settle the dispute?

Say you are a business owner in China and your cloud service provider is based in the US. The vendor will definitely prefer settling the case in in an American court but as a customer, do you have the financial means and resources to get the dispute settled in the jurisdiction of another nation?

2. Responsibility of your Data

2a. What if the data centre is hit by a disaster?
It might happen that the vendor’s premises is severely affected due to a disaster. Even the 10-Q filings of Google Inc. with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission mentions such a risk:

Our systems are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, terrorist attacks, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, computer denial of service attacks, or other attempts to harm our systems.

The question is whether you are indemnified by the insurance company for loss of your business or not?

2b. Is there any liability coverage for breach of privacy?
If a privacy breach occurs due to a fault of cloud vendor, is there any liability coverage policy taken up by the vendor? The scope of breach of privacy has widened considerably over the years in the field of cyber insurance. Some insurance carriers offer coverage even for breach of minor information and the customer is compensated on on behalf of the cloud vendor.

2c. What can be done if the data center gets hacked?
Though all cloud vendors try their best to fend off hackers, no security setting is assumed to be foolproof. If the data center gets hacked, can you move against the vendor for claiming lost profits?

3. Intellectual Property Rights

3a. Is your data protected under intellectual property rights?
If it happens that the data is your own creation (like photographs, literature, etc), then is it protected under the intellectual property rights of that country? What means do you have if they get infringed?

3b. How secure are trade secrets?
Your data stored in the ‘cloud’ may have trade secrets or privileged information which must be protected under attorney-client relationship. How secure will such information be in hands of the cloud vendor?

Or consider a reverse situation. If you leak out a trade secret of another business entity, how far will your cloud storage provider go to protect your data when they have been summoned to the court with all your stored data, access logs, etc.

3c. Third party access?
The vendor may grant some privileged third parties access to your stored data. The identity of such parties, if any, must be disclosed to the customer. Here, the third party could be a legal authority or even an internal employee. The customer should always be informed before the vendor allows third parties to access the stored data.

To protect the interest of your business, it may therefore be extremely essential that your read the terms and conditions meticulously before signing up for a cloud based services.

If the vendor provides a standard form of contract (which is a general practice), then you must be must be fully aware of all the terms and conditions. It will save you from nasty surprises and you will be financially, mentally and legally prepared to save your business from unfavorable consequences of cloud computing.

40 p.c of European firms to up IT spend

53 percent of organizations in Europe will outsource more work in 2010, and 40 per cent of organizations are planning to increase their external IT services spending, according to a recent survey by Gartner, Inc.

The survey found that the percentage of organizations spending 50 percent to more than 75 percent of their IT spending on external service providers was on the rise, said a press release.

“However, the results also showed that the pressure on capital and IT operating expenditure is still strong, and European organizations expect providers to deliver further cost reductions,” said Claudio Da Rold, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

He added that although 40 percent of respondents said that they would increase the external share of their budget, 24 per cent said that they would increase the budget for providers, and almost a quarter of organizations still expected that their IT services budget wpould continue to decrease in 2010.

The online survey was conducted among 206 organizations in Europe during in the first quarter of 2010. The survey was directed at individuals who were involved in decision making on outsourcing and IT services in 2010.

The survey also showed that organizations of all sizes and with IT budgets of various magnitude are now showing an interest in outsourcing. It found that 14.7 percent of organizations with IT budgets of less than €1 million expressed interest in outsourcing, which compares to only 6.1 percent of organizations in this category in 2009.

“Organizations in Europe are expecting - or are in need of - growth, but they are also still highly cautious,” said Da Rold.

“Although we conducted this survey in the first quarter of 2010, before the start of the Greek financial crisis, we believe that the cautious expectation of growth will continue in Europe beyond 2010. Regardless of the future direction of the economy, European businesses and their service providers need to optimize their multisourced environments, while increasingly adopting industrialized IT services,” Da Rold added.

IT Infrastructure Projects 2010

Bank of India : Collaborative Communication To ensure cost effective, timely communication across organization, Bank of India has deployed comprehensive unified communication solution

Kotak Mahindra Bank : Data Center Consolidation Reduction of operational costs and optimization of resources was achieved by datacenter consolidation

State Bank of India : Datacenter Consolidation To cut OpEx, the bank thought to consolidate all its DCs and DRCs from across the world to a single location

United Bank of India : Gilat Card Integration in VPN Integrating satellite with terrestrial network using Cisco VSAT NM card

Bharat Petroleum Corporation : MPLS, VPN Connectivity All the staff are using MPLS links for business transaction, e-mails and Internet based business information

Max New York Life Insurance : Server Virtualization Virtualization solution on VMware platform was deployed to enable elimination of server sprawl

Max New York Life Insurance : Infrastructure Redesign A centralized setup that reduced servers from 500 to 25 and helped save Rs. 5.9 Crore.

Max New York Life Insurance : Data Center Upgradation Virtualization, consolidation with focus on Green IT was achieved with segmentation of firewalls on the same hardware box

Manappuram Finance : M-SIAN M-SIAN is reducing transaction time at the branch and maintaining end-point security at branch-level.

BORL : Unified Communication To set up a common network platform that would cater to basic data communication services, UC was deployed

S TEL : CRM Implementation A Telecom company deploys effective services using CRM to ensure high level of customer approval

Sasken Communication Technologies : Server-Storage Virtualization Seamless migration of service/data to new environment and Point-In-time Recovery for all virtualized servers

Enterprise IT buying 2010-2011

The economic downturn caused most organisations to cut all their budgets last year, including IT spends. Though the worst is now over, recovery is happening very slowly. These are therefore extremely challenging times for budget planners, who're currently busy planning for the next financial year. What kind of growth plans should they project and plan for next year? What should be their business priorities? Since IT is directly aligned with every organization's business needs, the IT spends can only be determined after the business priorities are decided. To make life easy for IT budget planners, who would be caught in a dilemma right now because of this, a survey of large and very large organizations was made to understand their IT spending plans for the next fiscal. The results are interesting indeed, giving a positive outlook for next year.

Business priorities
The business priorities for a majority of organizations across all industries surveyed over the current financial year (2009-2010) were to reduce operational cost, followed by improving productivity and customer service. This was understandable given the economic downturn. In the coming 12 months also, organizations plan to do the same, possibly, as the market condition improves, these priorities will change, and organizations will start looking at more growth oriented activities. Amongst the various industry segments that were surveyed, manufacturing organizations had productivity improvement as their top priority, followed by measures to reduce operational costs. Improving customer services was the top priority in the BFSI segment, which perfectly gels with the fact that most banks were busy deploying CRM solutions last year

BlackBerry-India standoff : Probability vs Possibility

Research in Motion faces an August 31 deadline to give India access to its secure email and instant messaging services or the Indian government has said it will ban those services, hurting much of corporate India.

India toughened its stance on RIM on Friday, saying any solution must pass through field trials. The government says it is concerned that militants could misuse the services to create instability.

If India does ban BlackBerry services, it would be the first country to do so, even though several governments have raised security concerns about the popular device.

Following are scenarios on what might happen to the services:

No Ban, RIM Agrees to more talks with Govt for Solution

Probability: Most likely
RIM could secure an extension of the deadline by persuading the Indian government to hold more talks with the company and jointly arrive at a solution to address security concerns.

RIM on Thursday offered to lead an industry forum to look at India's need to have "lawful access" to its encrypted mail and messenger in an effort to stave off the blocking of the popular service in the world's fastest growing telecoms market.

"Discussions are ongoing. We are not in the business of shutting down services," junior telecoms minister Sachin Pilot said on Friday. Earlier this month, RIM successfully managed to get a reprieve from a ban threatened by Saudi Arabia, with the country saying progress was being made on addressing its concerns.

Kuwait does not plan to ban BlackBerry services, but has been holding talks with the manufacturer about moral and security concerns. RIM had been asked to block pornographic sites and the company has requested four months to deal with the request.

NoBan, No Solution, India Govet Relents

Probability: Possible
RIM has hit back at India by pointing out that blocking BlackBerry services would be futile and has warned Indian firms' productivity and efficiency could be a hit by such action. The security that BlackBerry offers has made it popular with companies looking for a secure way to communicate, and the device has become an integral -- and possibly indispensable -- part of business executives' lives.

India, an emerging market and the world's second-fastest growing major economy, may not risk stoking the ire of businesses over a service that has become critical to the functioning of corporations in the country and around the world.

A shutdown would affect about 1 million users in India out of a total 41 million BlackBerry users worldwide, allowing them to use the devices only for calls and Internet browsing.

Unlike rivals Nokia and iPhone-maker Apple, RIM uses powerful codes to encrypt, email messages.

RIM has said BlackBerry security is based on a system where customers create their own key and the company neither has a master key nor any "back door" to allow it or any third party to gain access to user data.

India Bans BlackBerry Services

Probability: Unlikely
The security offered by RIM is both a blessing and a curse for the firm. While it sets RIM apart from rivals, it is a headache for governments intent on monitoring chatter between militants who may be plotting to cause instability.

India faces an internal security threat from a rising Maoist insurgency, as well as the risk of militant attacks similar to the one in 2008 when armed Pakistan-based militants went on a rampage across several Mumbai landmarks, killing 166 people. Analysts see no easy fix to the standoff as RIM says it has no way of intercepting the data that countries want access to. RIM has denied media reports that say it provided unique wireless services or access to any one country.

The company is likely betting that countries that ban the service risk being viewed as anti-business while also boosting RIM's reputation for providing unparalleled security that even governments cannot crack, experts say.

Government code crackers could possibly break the encryption on their own without RIM's help, but it is a slow process that requires tremendous skill and powerful computers.

Also, cracking the encryption without the knowledge of users and the service provider could have legal repercussions.

Automation to transform IT into revenue driver

IT has come out of its oblivion and is an integral part of any business today. Gone are the days when IT was considered to be a cost centre. Not long ago, every CIO was made to sit and ponder as to what revenue does IT bring to his/her business and is it worth spending so much dollars on it?

But today with automation this scenario is undergoing a gradual change.

“There are three stages of managing IT. They are break-fix model, remote infrastructure management (RIM) model and automation management or automatic management model. The next level of IT management services is automation, which in turn will turn IT into a revenue driver”.

How is automation going to change IT from a cost centre into a revenue driver?
Unlike before, today it is all the more important for a business to ensure that its IT assets run properly, at least 99.99 percent of the time. So from a reactive method of break-fix model, companies have to move into a proactive method to manage IT and that is automation.

Automation helps reduce human errors, improve productivity and also improves service levels. The developments in this area lead us closer to the dream of autonomic computing or self-healing technologies, where problems in devices are automatically fixed through intelligent tools without human intervention.

What are the newer trends that are coming up in IM space?

One of the trends is automation. Automation evolved in the early 90s in the West. Today, the West is moving towards a run book model or configure management data base (CMDB) model.

CMDB means every asset and footprint in a network is configured and all those configurations, both hardware and software, are then stored in a centralized location. With this, one can map which person is working on what application, at what level etc.
Moving forward, IT assets will be taken care of as a run book model, where all the policies and procedures are carried out in an automated way at different service levels. Once automation comes in, IT will start providing value-added service to other business units too.

Thus IT will stop being a cost centre and with automation every CIO will be able to answer the billion dollar question, “What value is IT bringing to my business?”. India is slowly moving on to this model.

How has remote infrastructure management evolved in India?

Remote infrastructure management technology has been with us for a long time. However, because of the lack of economic viability of the technology, only large markets could afford it.

Evolution of RIM in India is much more rapid than in any other market. Till about 2007 nothing of this concept have been heard of in India. In 2008 and early 2009 there were a lot of buzz about RIM in India; however, nobody had any clue. A few service providers started providing RIM and thus started learning the concept in early 2009.

However, today the evolution is very fast. We are in the early stages of a matured market. The speed with which we are growing, in another two-three years we will get a widespread model.

By 2013 nobody is going to manage IT as such in the break-fix model anymore in India. Most of the market will be then managed through RIM. However, it will take 2013-2015 for the market to get widespread automated managed service.

How will virtualisation and cloud shape up RIM space?

Cloud and virtualisation are one aspect of IT operation, whereas, automation and RIM are different.

Cloud is a common infrastructure where people can pool in and start using the common infrastructure and put their applications and data into further use. Whereas, in virtualisation, people use infrastructure that is available virtually. These were the initiatives that started in 2005-2006 in the market and will only mature by 2012.

Cloud is still in the early stages of developments and will be full-fledged only by 2014, since there are only a very few Indian cloud operators today. Whereas, virtualisation is picking up very quickly, as a concept, where applications scale up virtually.

Moreover, companies such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, have been able to effectively perform and optimise in a virtualised server. Today all these software solutions are capable to work on a multi-tier architecture or a client-server model.

However, these software producers have not invested and come out with any product that can work effectively in a virtualised environment. Even though in a virtual server any software can work directly, the code that runs in these software has not been designed to run in a virtualised environment.

So, unless the business applications are transformed in to virtualised model, this will not really create a big value for the business. And we are still three years away from it.

At the end of the day, virtualisation and cloud are IT assets, so RIM is required to manage them.