Category: Technology

For a long time now,there has been a seemingly prevalent trend in the world of business. Leading companies or market leaders often fail to stay on top of their industries, as technology or market conditions suddenly change.
For example, Xerox was once the market leader in copier machines, but later on, Canon took over the small-copier space. Wal-mart took over the once popular Sears.

In the software industry too, there was once a time when Apple computers brought in and popularized the idea of personal computing and literally established the standards for user-friendly computing as well. But they went behind by almost 5 years, in the introduction of portable computers from the market leaders in this space.

As you can see, this has been a consistent pattern in most industries. Established companies often invest heavily and aggressively in technologies that are essential to retain their existing customers, but seldom foresee the directions of their future journey together. They fail to focus on investing in certain other advanced technologies that might be important for their future customers. Hence even though they are successful in retaining their current customers and dominating the market, their slack on meeting future demands of customers brings them down.

Why does this happen?

The real reason for losing the wave
From a broad perspective, it may be the result of several issues combined, like a lack of proper planning and execution, short-term investment issues and internal issues too, such as bureaucracy, monotony, inefficiency and the like. But the main reason for this pattern is actually right at the heart of the paradox. All established companies fall prey to one of the most popular and undeniable principles of management – being close with customers.

Even though most business managers have everything under control, customers have a certain dogmatic power over a company’s investments. Businesses always make it a point to direct their activities to what customers want. Whether it’s the introduction of a new product, or new technology or venturing into new channels of distribution, the first priority of businesses is to look up to what customers want – is it something that their customers would want? Is it going to be profitable? Is the market big enough? – the questions are many.

This is how most businesses fall into the cycle. It’s fine as long as the customers are satisfied. But the problem arises when the customers reject a certain new technology or product, because it doesn’t meet their needs as effectively as the company’s current product or technology. In the end, they find themselves being burned by the very technologies or products that their customers led them away from.

From an ongoing study of technological changes, it has been consistently found that most established companies stay ahead in their respective industries, in developing new technologies that address the performance needs of their next-generation customers. However, industry leaders don’t really focus on being in the forefront of commercializing new technologies that don’t meet the initial demands of mainstream customers and focus on appealing to emerging markets alone.
In order to remain on top, businesses need to identify those technologies that serve the next-generation needs of customers, and pursue them only while keeping themselves protected with the technologies and processes that serve mainstream customers as well. There is only one solution for it – creating organizations that remain independent from the mainstream business.

Striking that fine balance, takes time, effort, and most importantly many failures. We might be able to see more businesses in future, embracing this approach.

In the wake of the age of mobility, and increasing demands for high-quality web and mobile applications, DevOps is fast becoming the most reliable and preferred strategy for most organizations. It’s cross-functional collaboration and speed are making it more like a go-to strategy, as it enables quick delivery of software solutions, which is precisely what is needed in the current business scenario. Moreover, as businesses are in the process of digital transformation around the world, an agile environment is only a necessity, as a lot of business aspects linked to the transformation process like growth, customer loyalty, and satisfaction, competition differentiation etc., need to be taken care of well. DevOps helps in creating such a responsive IT environment, enabling organizations in rapid development and deployment of high-end software solutions.

But how far is DevOps successful? How can an organization judge for itself whether it’s DevOps initiative was, or will be successful? Sure, a lot of organizations are following it, but given the transformational scenario that most organizations are in, it could be difficult to measure its success, because DevOps by itself is not exactly a formal framework and it doesn’t provide a lot of guidance. Organizations simply have to learn into it.

There are some metrics or elements that accurately help in measuring the success of DevOps. Most organizations make the mistake of measuring a number of elements, which often may not be necessary and retreat to ones that can be easily collected. But, the issue is that some of these metrics that matter for DevOps may not be as familiar to organizations. For example, the speed of deployment, rate of change and the like are metrics that are only applicable to DevOps, which in turn is a comparatively new concept for organizations.
So what are the metrics that should be considered for DevOps?

The elements that matter

Importantly, we need to consider people-centric metrics, and process and technology centric metrics as well for DevOps. Out of these, people-centric metrics are probably the most difficult to collect, but often prove to be the most useful. They can actually be one of the most powerful influencers on a DevOps program. Hence, internal metrics like staff training and retention rates should be strongly considered.
When it comes to

When it comes to process metrics, we need elements that help to measure the effectiveness of interlinked processes throughout the delivery process. It helps to see if the collaboration is effective. It also helps to identify deficiencies within the processes that need more work.

Technology metrics are those such as uptime and capacity to support expected web traffic, which basically help in reviewing the technologies used in the DevOps process. It also includes insights derived from failures or errors like failed releases, code defects and the like.

Another important thing to note while determining metrics is to sustain a comprehensive or holistic approach. Sticking to just one or two aspects of measurement like operational or developmental metrics, may not provide the required results. As a matter of fact, there are chances of it having a negative impact on behavioral improvements in the organization.

To start off, here are a few dimensions which can be used to measure the effectiveness of DevOps:

• Collaboration and sharing – This literally forms the base of a DevOps program and is hence the most important measure. They help in judging the acceptance or resistance to the program, on an ongoing basis, which is a valuable indicator of the effectiveness of DevOps. As mentioned before, some of the metrics in this dimension might be easier to collect such as staff retention rates, training, and turnover, while others like employee morale might be more difficult. Another aspect to look into here, is how metrics in other dimensions are affecting elements in this dimension. For example, how far are MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) changes affecting employee morale, retention, absenteeism and the like. Automated surveys and other means to get employee feedback are other areas that may be considered for this dimension.

• Efficiency – This dimension mainly focuses on developmental and operational aspects. The capacities and capabilities. Moving from the traditional ratios like server to admin, businesses are now using customer-centric ratios like FTE (Hours worked by a Full-Time Employee) to customers. This value is expected to increase in the coming years, as more enterprises are now moving to automation and the cloud. Other metrics such as examining costs on an application basis and cost of release are good measures in improving data center efficiencies.
• Quality – This dimension focuses on elements related to service delivery. For example, metrics like percentage of applications rolled-back because of code defects. Now this metric could initially be high for organizations that have just begun on their DevOps initiative. This is probably due to extra time required for the purpose of making the new processes effective, and other related things. These metrics might give other useful insights when combined with other indicators. For example, the rate of rollbacks when combined with the change volume indicator, could provide more important insights.
  These are some other metrics in this dimension:
  Cycle time – time required to complete a stage or several stages within a project
  MTTR – average time taken to restore a service or repair a defective part

• Business value – This dimension is focused on external things – like the impact of DevOps on meeting business goals. It includes elements like customer value or loyalty, time to market and the like. The lead time too provides businesses with an analogous metric that helps to know how well DevOps is meeting the need to deliver high-quality software services fast. This is specifically important as a long lead time may mean more defects in code and issues in testing.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is another important metric, which is a simple method to measure customer loyalty. Even though this measure has been traditionally used for marketing purposes for a long time, customer loyalty is also affected by the fast and timely delivery of software services through high-quality web and mobile apps.
All these metrics contribute towards analyzing the effectiveness and success of DevOps. Keeping track of these, can help an organization in deciding whether to continue with the program or do the needful to make it further effective.

Image credits: Prashant Arora’s blog

If you thought “digitizing” your business was all about incorporating some kind of technology into your processes, and that replacing your people and papers with technology would do the trick, then you are in for some new information. That’s right.

Digital business transformation has more to it than you probably imagined. It is more about doing things in different ways and producing new and improved business designs, all with the common goal of blurring the lines between the physical and virtual worlds.

Digitization is not just dehumanizing or mechanizing work

Most people understand digitization to be either an extension of automation or pretty much the same thing. But according to Gartner, the goal of digitization is to create and deliver new value to customers and not just improving the quality of already existing services.

For example in a hospital, nurses and doctors use clipboards and forms for access to patient details, to jot down further medicine details and the like. Merely replacing these paper forms with tablets and other devices is not digitization in itself. Internally, there are improvements in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, when compared to paper-based manual transcription and for patients too, the quality of already existing care is improved.

Though there are a thousand benefits to the entire health organization by doing just that, like better accuracy and speed while entering data into the Electronic Health Record systems, it does not actually count for digitization as here the patients do not experience any additional value.

Instead, what if the entire care and control system is redesigned with the help of smart machines and the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The smart devices can be programmed to do most of the data collection, analysis and monitoring of the patients themselves, which leaves only the talking, the touching and empathizing to be done by the nurses – basically what we humans do best. The devices can monitor the patient’s health conditions continuously and keep checking for any vital signs of discomfort or variations, and alert the nurses and doctors well ahead in case of an issue.

Technologies like, hands-free conversational interfaces, can be used for data entry in hospitals, rather than typing in the data manually, thereby utilizing what comes naturally to human beings to make work easier. All these technologies help them in being proactive in their approach, thereby delivering more effective care and the end result is thus, better outcome for the patients as well as the doctors.

So, it is evident now, that digitization is not just dehumanizing or mechanizing work. It is rather a way or means for people to go back to their more “natural state”.

Digitization is not just dehumanizing or mechanizing work. It is rather a way or means for people to go back to their more “natural state”

Letting humans revert to what they are best at

With all the smart devices that can think for themselves in place, you might wonder, “so what is the need for people or what is our role in an organization?”

It is not about completely eliminating people from the scenario or taking them out of the processes. It is more about redefining their roles and getting them to do what they are best at. That way, they don’t have to be stalled with other tasks like data entry and paperwork, that bring down their efficiency and productivity.

Janelle Hill, vice president and analyst at Gartner says, “We now have the ability to use machines to support and augment people to help them realize their potential, not have them bogged down in paperwork and systems data entry. We need to think about how to identify the right work for the people.”

A digital business environment provides innumerous opportunities for innovation and improvements, which can help organizations in winning over customers with additional value and gaining the competitive advantage. Such value though, can be created only through a complete rethinking and redesigning of work itself. People need to be assigned work they are good at, while leaving the rest to be done by the smart machines. Thus, the full value of digitization can only be achieved through proper definition of work and not merely by inserting digital technologies into the existing processes.

“People need to be assigned work they are good at, while leaving the rest to be done by the smart machines. Thus, the full value of digitization can only be achieved through proper definition of work and not merely by inserting digital technologies into the existing processes.”

Source: Gartner

If you are thinking, “Oh compliance management. That’s the stuff that financial institutions and agencies have to deal with. It’s not for me”.
Well, you’re wrong.
If you are in business, then it’s vital for you as well. Of course, it is extremely important for those of you in the finance industry, undoubtedly. But that’s not the only industry that is prone to risks now, is it?
All businesses, big and small, regardless of what industry it belongs to, are exposed to risks. And considering the growth and advancements in technology these days, you can imagine how much the business risks have also increased. In 2016, business interruption (including supply chain interruption), and market conditions (like volatility, intensified competition and stagnation) are likely to be the top two corporate hazards. Cyber incidents are also going to be a matter of serious concern for businesses this year, not to mention the rising sophistication levels of cyber attacks. Hence, clearly it is not enough anymore, to just have a risk management strategy in place.
You need to protect your company from all possible risks like these, and that too covering all possible aspects of your business, which is best taken care of by compliance management software.

Compliance is a good thing

Yes, even though it can be a headache sometimes, it is the reason why you can have those painkillers safely and be sure that it will be effective. It the reason why you can drive those cars freely, without worrying about its safety mechanisms.
Any consumer product that you use is a result of a good number of audit and compliance procedures and a good set of regulations, standards and norms. They basically make your world a better, safer place to live in, right?
Similarly, your business needs to comply with the respective regulations and standards applicable for your kind of business. It is not just for the consumers. As long as you stick to the rules or standards, any changes taking place in the business environment, wouldn’t affect you. I’m talking about the business risks I mentioned before. Being compliant, thus makes you safer.
A good compliance management system includes the controls, functions and policies necessary to keep your business from trouble, in a cost-effective manner. It keeps up with the changes, thereby making sure you don’t fall behind.

Benefits to business

Risks are something you cannot run away from. You need to be prepared for them. This is where compliance management software will help you. Here are some benefits:

• Process standardization: It saves you the time and effort involved in keeping up with new regulations. It also helps you avoid the confusions and hassle involved in the process.
• Productivity increase: It increases the efficiency of your business, as your processes get better and more clearly defined. As it becomes a part of the culture of your organization, your employees perform tasks more efficiently.
• Improves trust factor: It helps you in building on your brand loyalty and goodwill. Customers tend to trust companies who have given a lot of value to compliance regulations and are transparent in their processes. Hence, prioritizing compliance means, prioritizing your customers.
• Builds reputation: It provides you with better chances of getting third-party contracts.
• Reliable audits: It enables easier and more accurate audits, and clarifies reporting procedures
• Efficient management systems: It enables better, more efficient management systems as well.

Put together with a proper, broad risk management program, compliance systems enable better overall risk management. They help you keep yourself updated about the new regulations and ensure that they are all complied with.

It’s the CEO’s job

If you take any aspect of your business, you will find compliance to be an integral part of it. For example, in marketing and advertising, you need to make sure that the claims you make about your product or service is true and does not violate any rules. Your marketing message should also not be an inappropriate one.
Similarly, in information security, software, health and safety, environment and even matters like employee equality, you have several compliance regulations by various authorities to keep up with. Hence, rather than implementing compliance where needed alone, you need to make it a part of your organization culture. It is indeed a difficult task and it is up to the CEO to ensure that.

We all know what non-compliance can lead to, especially since the infamous Volkswagen scandal. There were also similar instances in the past, where companies have faced serious charges for non-compliance. As your company’s CEO you need to be well aware of the consequences of non-compliance and make sure you foster a culture of regular compliance from day one. Protecting your business from risks is basically in your hands. Talk to our software compliance experts right away to find out the perfect compliance management solution for your business.

To explain the whole story, from the beginning to the end, in a sentence would be: “Parse was the most popular mobile backend-as-a-service (mBaas) for mobile applications, acquired by Facebook in 2013 and Facebook recently announced that it is completely shutting it down in a year’s time (by Jan 2017)!”

The Parse framework provides a hosted back-end infrastructure with unlimited opportunities for third party developers with its products like, Parse Push, Parse Core, Parse Social, etc., to build their mobile apps (Android, IOS, and Windows) by using a single SDK. Facebook’s announcement on its shutdown, followed by their migration tools and assistance, simply disguise a world of hurt for businesses that based their future on Parse. It’s shutdown has sent panic waves among teams who have their apps on Parse; their main concern being what to do next ? Many are looking for alternatives to develop apps without bothering about the backend, some try to take all the code from Parse to elsewhere and are confused as to which platform to use and trust.

What do you do now?

Relax! Think of it like a simple house-relocation, the whole migration doesn’t come without headaches, but is still in control with some wise moves. Let’s evaluate the actual impact of Parse shutdown in its true sense, and few smart options to overcome the trouble caused.

Who will be affected?

For now, people who have their apps built on Parse. If you have created apps using Parse backend solution, then you surely need a game plan and a skilled technical team to move to an alternate service. However, Facebook has open sourced the Parse’s source code, supplied database migration tools and provided enough time to move to your next option, so this isn’t the worst shutdown announcement ever, So chill. One year is plenty of time for you to move away from Parse or build apps on a trusted place.

And for those others chuckling at the worried Parse users, just be informed that you too are at the risk of such an issue, especially if your app dependents upon third party services. Developers might have ‘exception handling’ for when servicers are temporarily down, but what if the server has vanished forever? A disaster recovery plan will be always handy.

What are your options? (Alternatives to Parse/mBaaS)

The shutdown means you have to:
1. Migrate to another BaaS/ Parse alternatives: Find an alternative BaaS that has all the features similar to your App’s requirements, for Google has many developer APIs and backend services; Microsoft has Azure, or Amazon’s AWS.But of course this requires ample amount of customization to ensure your fit. However, be warned because, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!”

2. Migrate to a PaaS from one of the major cloud providers: Platform-as-a-Service is more generic and broader than Backend-as-a-Service and the vendors won’t lock you in that much. PaaS services from major players like, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others are mostly part of their core cloud offerings and therefore is comparatively at lower risk of shut downs. This migration would mean serious efforts from the technical team to develop missing parts, but you can be at greater development flexibility while enjoying all benefits you had with BaaS.

3. Migrate your backend to a self-hosted instance of Parse: Parse Server is basically Parse that can be hosted on your own infrastructure. Your client side will thus remain the same and needn’t refactor the whole app to unplug the Parse SDK. Copy the Cloud Code of your app to the parse-server as described here to migrate your existing Cloud Code to Parse server. There is no Native Cloud code in Parse server and you will need to use replacements like, App Links. Yet, direct replacement is not possible, but you can have a trained developing team to generate these tags and deal with the non-trivial migration process. The issue here is, whether the community will continue developing and fixing Parse in future, since it’s already a zombie. You may also extend your current JavaScript from Parse into full-blown NodeJS application : If there isn’t too much complex scripts on Parse, adding CRUD operations on top of MongoDB database would be much less effort. This shall give you complete control over the backend and data, without having to be locked down into any platform.

4. Look for building your own backend now: Something that you definitely had issue with in order to have gone for Parse in the first place. But since we are more concerned about vanishing services at this point of time, with open source self-hosting, you can at least hope to get the ongoing maintenance from a developer community.

From similar examples of other shutdown notices, the initial chaos it creates and the slow emerging saviors, it’s always wise to wait for a month or two to see how the dust settles, and eventually decide what will work best for you.

Moving to another mBaaS? What should you look for?

The shutdown of Parse, StackMob, Proxomo and MobDB has left developers perplexed about the future of mobile-backend-as-a-service. Unless mBaaS comes up with a credible response to this question of vendor lock-in issue, I doubt any sane developer would touch this now. Hopefully there will be no “fool me three times”.
Developers can avoid reliving such nightmares by ensuring that their vendors don’t lock them in. Under any cases of acquisition or shutting downs, you should be given full control of your applications’ source codes. Be sure to check these with your provider if you consider using BaaS or mBaaS:

Developers can avoid reliving such nightmares by ensuring that their vendors don’t lock them in. Under any cases of acquisition or shutting downs, you should be given full control of your applications’ source codes. Be sure to check these with your provider if you consider using BaaS or mBaaS:

1. Do you get full access to their mBaaS source code (including the backend server and backend server administrative console and not just client side SDKs)

2. Can you continue running your app if they shut down (Ask them whether you can download run time components of your app and deploy it elsewhere without going to their site)

3. Who owns the IP (intellectual property) of your app components? Ask your vendor to demonstrate these to you; if they can’t show how this is done or probably has no reference to provide, like a customer who got this done, you are locked in to them!

Can Developers still trust 3rd party services?

With Parse shutdown people woke up to what “Vendor-lock-in” actually means in practice. Several factors like, the move to serverless computing (e.g. Amazon Lambda), have recently made mBaaS a lot less attractive as a standalone. And with the recent shutdown notice, Backend-as-a-service is presently facing a tough time.
However, It is definitely a tricky balance between choosing an mBaaS platform or building the mobile backend yourself. The favored suggestion is to do more work on Amazon with the option to fall back to Google, than to do less work on Parse but without any plan B.. As Dave Verwer, founder of Curated puts it:

“It’s always a tricky balance between using a BaaS platform like Parse, or building everything yourself. We’re all aware that any service we rely on could potentially go away at any time but there is none more disruptive than your entire back end! On the other side of the argument, you could spend years building everything you need from scratch and completely custom, then have the app not gain any popularity and have it all wasted. It’s a tricky problem and there’s no right answer.”

Yes, Parse shutdown has brought a lot of pain, but it has also drawn light into the hidden risk that developers who depend on 3rd party services are at. It’s terrible when something you count on becomes an ex-service, but as its result you wouldn’t want an “ex-app or business”. If you are affected by Facebook’s move, you have to make a plan change and a new game plan until there’s time. Fingent will be glad to be of service to you for any migration, or app development using your own backend. We can help you decide what will work for your business in the long run.

Still unsure about your options? Let’s discuss!

Over the past few years, the one trend that we saw throughout was the rise in the use of mobile devices. The number of smartphone users in the world has now surpassed 2 billion according to E-marketer, which is an increase of about 12.6% over the past years. Now if that doesn’t say we are moving rapidly towards an increasingly mobile future, I don’t know what will.
While on one hand, it makes all our lives a lot easier, on the other hand, it means things are a little more difficult for the developers. Businesses these days demand more mobile based solutions, while at the same time, do not do away with web based applications. As the trend these days is, businesses want web applications that can also work on mobile devices – the best of both worlds.
Hence, developers these days are throwing up their hands in frustration trying to create interactive content through applications that are accessible from both desktop and mobile devices for businesses. A major shift towards HTML5 is now becoming more essential in order to satisfy industry demands. The future may well be in the hands of HTML5, considering the rising need for all pervasive applications.

The mobile world that we live in

As of this year, we have around 4.61 billion mobile users in the world and it is expected to reach almost 5.07 by 2019, considering the pace at which it is increasing every day. And another interesting fact is that since 2013, we have had as many mobile phones in the world as there are users. That means there is likely to be not a single individual now, who doesn’t own a mobile device, thereby increasing the chances of applications being viewed on mobile devices more.
This makes it all the more necessary for developers to create and deliver complex apps that work on all devices faster.
TMCnet contributing writer, Steve Anderson, mentions in an article that, the increasing popularity and use of mobile devices across business enterprises “will leave many developers looking for a way to develop for desktops that also allows for use on mobile devices.”

For all these reasons and also because of it’s rich features, it is no wonder that HTML5 is rising high in popularity.

A large majority of developers are now using HTML5

Almost 153 Fortune 500 companies are using HTML5 now. And a survey of more than 3400 developers conducted across the U.S, Europe, and Asia this year shows that more than 50% of developers are now developing HTML5 web apps for mobile, closely following iOS which are used by 61% of developers.
What’s more, as part of a recent Strategy Analytics survey on mobile application developers’ preferences and attitudes towards application development, researchers have also proved that, out of all the technologies used for building native or web apps, HTML5 showed the strongest predicted growth rate at 20%. They also found out that almost 63% of all business apps are being created in HTML5.

Always the developer’s choice
HTML5 offers a whole new range of possibilities and powerful capabilities to its developers when compared to native apps development. Syntactic features like audio, video and canvas elements, for example, are some of the new and effective features provided by HTML5, all of which make it much easier for developers to integrate multimedia or graphical content on the web app or web, without the need to rely on APIs and plug-ins.

Another key attraction for developers towards HTML5 is its open standards support, which enables them to fulfill application requirements in the face of fragmented mobile devices, form factors, platforms, and operating systems. They can basically use HTML5 to create and deliver rich content without having to rely on the device or its Operating System, which again makes it more preferred than native.

Besides, developers have always preferred coding in a language that can be used across different platforms, so as to ensure good quality user experiences on multiple devices and screen sizes. Also, because it helps them maintain a skillset that can be applied for different kinds of requirements as well as companies or employers. These days even JavaScript programmers are moving to HTML5.

In the future

Looking back, it is indeed surprising to see how much of an impact HTML5 has had on mobile app development. It has literally been a revolutionizing force. Now, it has come to be the perfect blend of developer preference, business requirements, and technological advancement. In the coming years, it is definitely going to be adopted by more number of enterprises, as they are slowly moving from their usual administered use of Internet Explorer, to Chrome or Firefox browsers at work, both of which have high-level HTML5 support. Further in future, with the growth of Windows 10 adoption and use, the use of the new Microsoft Edge browser will also increase, which will enable business enterprises to make full use of the power of HTML5.

Want to develop a smart Mobile Application for your Business?Contact us.

The holidays are over, most of the Christmas décor have been packed up or are still waiting at the sideways for the garbage pickup. And it’s that time of the year again, when we start with new hopes, resolutions, plans and budgets for the New Year head. Last year, we saw massive technology breakthroughs, some gaining immediate success and application, and certain others setting the stage for future innovations. To name a few, the Internet of Things, the Magic Leap, 3D Printing, Car-to-car communication, Project loon, Smart Machines and Apple pay were top technologies of 2015, that pretty much left us awestruck by its pace. If that has been in the past year, imagine what technology will have in store for the year 2016!
Pop!!! I just popped your imagination balloon to bring light to the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES), happening at Las Vegas from 6th to 9th January 2016. The event brings together all the stunning technologies that will probably set 2016 on fire- the tech fire, leaving all of us super thrilled and anxious about the ‘coming soon’ technologies. The marketplaces/TechZones at the giant exhibition floor will showcase terrific technologies, ranging from wearable to unmanned systems, which will make our lives like one in the fantasy world, very soon. For CXOs, managers and other key decision-makers of startups and SMBs, this means a critical opportunity to bring their cool products on limelight. The startups exhibiting in Eureka Park Marketplace at CES have been getting over $1bn collective investment since 2012.
The members have been preparing for the event for weeks and there are a lot of speculations from the usual CES suspects about what we will see at the annual conference. The following technologies will have a major role this year:

Personalized wearable
The Google Glass, Apple watch, Skully motorcycle helmet, Tag Heuer and Oculus rift have been a heck of wearable last year. This year the market is even riper and is going to be attractive with more personalized offers. No surprise because, the wearable sales are predicted to cross the 29 million units mark in 2014, to a whopping 172 million by 2018 and its global revenue will see a 12-fold increase from that of 2014. There will be a lot more smart watches from legacy brands, life-saving wearables, women’s wearables, commodity wristbands, mind reading tech, wearable toys, smart clothes, Invisibles, low-cost wearables and next-gen fitness trackers; however, the big players like Apple, Google or Pebble might not reveal their surprises so soon. Sensors will pop up in everything, from sneakers to dresses. Hearables (smart headphones) – adding sensors to earphones for wireless transmission, communication, medical monitoring and fitness tracking purposes, will be a thing this year. However, we might want to wait until spring to know where the wearable trend is actually heading.

More Rideables
Anything with wheels will also have sensors and electric motors attached to it. Electrification will become eminent and there will be many small electric scooters, skateboard, and bikes with advanced battery life and bearable budgets. Luckily, the use of hover boards is banned at the convention center. We are yet to see how different will they be from last year’s participants.

The ‘All-Connected’ dream Homes
Your dream home will seem even more fantasized, with everything in it connecting and talking to each other to make the everyday tasks automated, quick and easy. Apple HomeKit, Google Brillo and Samsung SmartThings are clearing out the mess to make connectivity creep through all areas of your home and make all equipment more integrated. We’ll see the beginner tangible pieces of the Internet of Things, helping the things get connected and speak the same language in few years from now.

AR and VR are like the hosts
Augmented reality and Virtual reality are always present in their different manifestations at the CES ground. HoloLens and Magic Leap are down the lane, Oculus has yet to reveal the first look of Rift headset or its touch controllers, either of which can occur at CES 2016. Stepping up the gaming zone, VR is expected to become mainstream this year and companies will have the technology used for real day applications. Considering the momentum it has gained now, it is fair to expect many other companies, like PC hardware and accessory manufacturers to reveal their VR surprises at the show.

Drones everywhere
A major part of the CES floor will be reserved for the ‘unmanned systems’ which will include drones that can be used for anything from travel, sports, photography, construction, search and more. Drones will come with creative upgrades, with better sensor integration and intelligence to carry out your specific needs smartly. The event will also include security, risks and safety discussions and future implications of such gadgets.

Cars become a must-have gizmo
CES showcases high technology cars over the years, that it more or less resembles the Detroit Auto show. This year, cars will be even smarter at the show with technologies like, smartphone connectivity, electric vehicles, in-car infotainment centers, and self-driving technology acting together. Moreover, Faraday Future, a secretive automaker in California has revealed its first all-electric, non-polluting sports car concept. Several other manufacturers like, General Motors will reveal the production versions of their next electric car. All major players in the industry, from Tesla to Toyota will be there unfolding their surprises at the event.
Apart from these, security is going to be a major subject of discussion at the CES 2016. With the Internet of Things being a source of numerous security concerns, as different companies collect more and more personal and confidential data of consumers, security is the biggest focus at the event this year.
So, let’s look forward to the event kicking off tonight, to bring us some amazing technology tricks.

Image courtesy: The Verge

2016 will be the year when technology will bridge the gap between the physical and digital world. The Internet of Things and the rise of connected data will bring even more opportunities and also many new challenges. Keeping pace with the latest business technologies is crucial to stay ahead of this game. Listen how companies can lay strong foundations for incredible changes that are about to happen. In this videocast, we request our CEO Sam to take a stab at predicting technology trends that may materialize in 2016

Let’s think for a moment, of the technology driven world that we live in now and how much the all pervasive technology has changed the way that we all live our daily lives. From our personal spaces to the biggest businesses and industries, we have come a long way from brick sized cell phones and DVDs to sleek touchscreens and microchips to name a few of the smallest changes. With the advent of the “Internet of Things” and “Industry 4.0” or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we have been introduced to and have infact been living with a concept called Ubiquitous computing or pervasive computing.

According to Wikipedia, ubiquitous computing in contrast to desktop computing, involves the usage of any device in any location and in any format. It basically enables a user to interact with a computer which may exist in a number of different forms such as the regular laptops, desktop computers and notebooks to sensors and terminals in our everyday objects like the refrigerator, a pair of glasses, the TV and the like. We have all come to embrace these concepts, getting used to the “things that think” around us, and having the ability to get things at our fingertips.

Such ubiquity of software has touched almost all aspects of our lives and all industries in the business landscape as well, including the manufacturing sector and the audit and compliance sector, leaving no stones untouched.

Software in manufacturing and audits

The first ever industrial robot was used in the production line in 1954, and since then, software has always played a huge role in manufacturing and production, not as a core function though, but as a supporting function. But with increasing moves towards digitization and automation of processes and procedures, especially under the Industry 4.0 umbrella, software started to assume bigger, more comprehensive roles and now we find software everywhere, from production lines to control systems. Literally every device or equipment involved in the processes are connected among each other as well as to a central unit, and are also programmable, thus making the already thin line between physical and digital even more blurred.

Considering the industry’s general shift towards a more consumer-driven approach, it is indeed necessary to incorporate more flexibility, agility and control across all processes, as the pressure to deliver high quality, configurable products and services is only going to increase down the lane. All this increases the need for manufacturing companies to invest in technology, especially software based technology, so as to generate more speed and flexibility, both of which are critical to be profitable in this environment.

Business Intelligence and Performance management are two other areas in manufacturing which make use of software and data gathering on a large scale according to Gartner. Hence, the manufacturing industry assumes one of the top three positions in the list of industries looking to hire technology and software experts.

Just like manufacturing, the concept of software everywhere also redefines the scope for audits, inspections and compliance, and there are many newer challenges to face. One point of concern though, is that there may be a thousand risks and consequences associated with certain kinds of technologies and their deployments, but only little thought is put into understanding them, and even the manufacturers, lawmakers and compliance bodies know very little about many of these risks. For example, the risk of manipulation is something that most people have often overlooked and the recent scandal of the German automobile giant, Volkswagen proves this point.

The Volkswagen scandal

In September 2015, Volkswagen was issued an EPA notice after it was found by independent NGOs that they had been cheating in emission tests. It was discovered that Volkswagen cars were emitting up to 40 times more toxic fumes than permitted, which included particulates that are really harmful to the lungs especially for those with breathing related issues. They had since then admitted that they sold about 11 million cars over the last 4 years, which implies that this practice or this cheat has been going on for a quite a while.

The British newspaper “The Guardian” estimates an average of 1 million tonnes of air pollution from the Volkswagen cars every year, which is roughly the same as the emissions from all of United Kingdom, from power stations, vehicles and the like. It only means that the pollution caused by this cheat is as bad as the pollution from an entire country.

Now how did Volkswagen manage to get past all the rigorous, stringent and detailed tests conducted by the EPA, that too for a long time?

It was in the tests

All the tests of the EPA, like a cold start test, a hot start test and many others along with a 30 minute rigorous test by the Federal procedure as well, are usually specified in great detail, as are the steps in order to prep the cars for them. And unlike any other compliance tests which may have many grey areas, these tests of the EPA contain specifications, which are very thorough, detailed and extremely clear – everything that you can expect from a good quality specification.

It was this very attention to detail that enabled Volkswagen to cheat. Most mechanical parts of a car these days are managed and controlled by computers and electronic control units. These units have information about almost every single part of the car such as the speed, the angle of steering, the fuel intake etc. and such information is generated almost every instant that the car is switched on. The extremely detailed test specification and the availability of such specific information about the car enabled Volkswagen engineers to program the computers to use this information to recognize when the car was being tested. They were able to program the software to switch the car from a road mode to a calibration mode, when it recognized that the car was being prepared for a test.

Now the one thing that is crystal clear from this whole issue is the fact that it impacts all of us in the business of quality assurance and inspections. Just like cars, almost all equipment used in manufacturing and production rely on some kind of software, and software, as we know it, is a very different beast, considering the traditional equipment that we are used to, when it comes to production, manufacturing, control systems and the like.

This shows that advancements in technology only mean more vulnerabilities and challenges for compliance auditors and inspectors and more alertness from their end. So what exactly are the points that we, as auditors need to keep in mind when it comes to compliance inspections and what are the challenges that we face? Read more on our blog, Challenges For Auditors And Inspectors In The World Of Connected Devices.

Here’s a webinar on the ubiquity of software in the compliance industry, by Deepu Prakash, Head of Process and Technology Innovation at Fingent Corp:

Software Everywhere- Webinar

Fast technology pace, sudden paradigm shifts, changing business models and the fall or rise of the year-  predicting technology trends can often be like reading tea leaves. Who would have predicted Google being the star of the internet? Or the extraordinary popularity of Uber as an unrivaled app-based cab service, the rise of Tesla or Amazon, the resurrection of Apple.

What has 2016 in store for businesses and enterprises? Know more in this short video cast as we request Deepu Prakash, Head of Process and Technology Innovation at Fingent, to take a stab at Technology predictions for 2016