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12.21.2012What Can Rendering Service Market Get From Cloud Computing?
12.20.2012Penetrating the Japanese Social Gaming World With the Help of Japanese Social Gaming Companies
12.19.2012Cloud-Based Rendering – the Logical Next Step for Render Farms
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10.25.2012
PassportScan Ltd is a UK-based company that provides hotel applications and solutions for its clients. PassportScan Ltd adopted cloud computing to eliminate on-site IT structures as it strives to improve the quality of the services it offers to its clients. Some of the benefits the UK Company derived from its adoption of cloud technology are briefly highlighted in this article.
PassportScan Ltd’s operational effectiveness increases as a result of moving all its operational activities to the cloud. In other words, the Company is able to perform faster and more precisely in attending to its many clients’ requirements. Hotels require swift data management, which entails that guests’ checking-in and checking-out information are properly and speedily processed in order to achieve a high level of efficiency. This is what exactly PassportScan was able to do within a short period of time.
These improved services help the company’s clients to flexibly and speedily monitor the rate of room occupancy in real-time. Most especially, large hotels need management solutions or applications that will enable their staff to know, at each particular period, the room occupancy rate so as to know which room needs to be filled up with another guest. Hence, with cloud computing, PassportScan is able to provide this unique service to its many clients.
One of the main advantages PassportScan derived from using cloud computing was in the cutting of its recurrent expenditures. The company now saves money while running its operations entirely in the cloud: it means that expenses that will have been spent on physical IT structure, technical support and programming activities can now be re-directed to another section of the Company’s business operations for better utilization.
With the help of cloud computing, PassportScan UK is able to make higher projection for revenues and increased profitability. Apart from saving on its recurrent expenses, the Company is able to innovate, expand and diversify into other business interests simply because its main IT infrastructure has been made flexible, scalable and more efficient through cloud technology. Subsequently, PassportScan’s profits have reportedly soared since its adoption of cloud computing, and the Company hopes to see more profitability in the future.
Much of the innovations PassportScan gains from utilizing cloud technology come in the form of developing new business opportunities. Previously, many of PassportScan’s clients were large hotels. However, the scalability and flexibility features afforded by cloud computing allow the Company to take up small and medium-sized hotels that require its hotel management solutions/applications. Invariably, PassportScan expands its businesses as well as increasing its profitability due to its usage of cloud computing. And most of the small and medium-sized hotels that employ the Company’s solutions/applications eventually get the chance to motivate their staff performance and enhance productivity in the area of increasing the level of room occupancy.
Before this time, a lot of small and medium-sized hotels did not have the solutions for monitoring, in real-time, the rate of checking-in and checking-out of their guests. Hence, this practice lowers the rate of occupying those empty hotel rooms.
PassportScan demonstrates, inarguably, that cloud computing works in every area of human endeavor, including travels and transportation. As shown in this case, cloud technology does not only increase the overall performance of a business, it also enhances innovations that can be instrumental in obtaining more revenues and consequently lead to higher profitability.
In essence, cloud computing maintains a culture of low expenditure through the elimination of heavily expensive in-house IT infrastructure. It also brings about functional and flexible IT system that can be scaled up or down based on the amount of requirements at a particular period in time. This flexibility characteristic is what makes cloud computing endearing to small and medium-sized enterprises—which are the backbone of economic development in any country.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
About the Guest Author:
Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/
10.24.2012
The gaming market in Japan, particularly with regard to social gaming is an especially lucrative and promising market that has attracted the attention of international investors in the last few years. However, the peculiarities that make this market attractive also make it harder to predict. In this article, we will take a look at some trends in Japan’s gaming market and what the next years may have in store for Japan’s social gaming industry.
An overview of the actual state of gaming in Japan:
Japan has a social networking culture that stands out from other countries in that it is unique to Japanese culture. In Japan, both real identity social networks and virtual identity social networks have gained prominence as a way to share news, gaming, and social interactions. Japan’s social networking structure is particularly interesting in that it is dominated by three very large social networks that are entirely Japanese, each with its own particular market and goal that is very clearly delineated. The three main homegrown social networks in Japan today are:
There are some aspects of the actual state of the Japanese social gaming industry today that may sound completely alien to outsiders. For example, the industry structure is quite fragmented by Western standards and there are hundreds of providers of social apps. There are two companies that provide both social games and platforms, DeNA and GREE. A good comparison to what these two companies are doing in Japan would be to imagine a company in the West that combined Facebook and Zynga into a single entity – it should be noted though, that Zynga has closed their operations in Japan.
It is also important to note that all of these companies’ stocks have a bright future and are all projected to increase in the coming year. The dominant companies in the market hold something of a monopoly on the Japanese social gaming market, with the only successful foreign gaming company in Japan being Reekoo. GREE and DeNA have a very tight hold on the Japanese social gaming market that is nearly insurmountable for foreign companies looking to gain a foothold in Japan.
Possible threats on the horizon for established gaming companies in Japan
There are several aspects that may threaten the future of the established players in the Japanese social gaming market. One of the most widely publicized of these is the increasing government regulation of social gaming practices. In recent years, attention has been cast on gambling-like aspects of Japanese social gaming. Other problematic practices include games that take advantage of the addictive quality of these kinds of games while offering unfair or even impossible odds to their customers. Known as kompu gacha, these kinds of practices involved using micro transactions to milk consumers out of considerable amounts of money.
Apart from regulation, the rise of Western social media companies in Japan is also a threat. While Twitter gained almost immediate acceptance in Japan, Facebook was an underdog for several years. However, it is only recently that Facebook has managed to overtake social gaming giants such as Mixi for a larger share of the Japanese market. Experts predict that Facebook’s market share will continue to rise. Successful incursions by other international social media network companies may also finally open up the Japanese social gaming market to interested companies and investors outside of Japan. It is important to note that these threats to GREE and DeNA’s dominance of the social gaming market are not particularly strong and that these companies have done a good job of adapting to the fluctuations of the demands of the Japanese public.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
About the Guest Author:
Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.
10.23.2012
The Green Grid (TGG) ( www.thegreengrid.org ) is a nonprofit consortium of industries with more than 175 member companies around the world. The key focus of TGG is data centers around the world. TGG is fast becoming a global authority on data centers, and when they speak about the efficiency of modern data centers, companies stop to listen. Recently TGG announced a published a case study of energy efficiency in Data Centers in Japan. This makes for interesting reading and there is much to learn from companies running data centers that may not be very efficient as yet. In this article, I have summarized the key learning points from these case studies.
In one case, a company decided to implement a 50% reduction in total data center energy consumption over five years. The company followed a three pronged approach consisting of visualization, assessment and analysis, and optimization. These were continuous processes and not a one-time effort, which resulted in major improvements in efficiency.
The result of the optimization was that the temperature on top of the racks reduced by 2o C. Two air conditioners were made surplus and removed. Further improvements have been made by replacing old air conditioners with more efficient ones. The company has already improved the efficiency of its data centers and more improvements are underway.
In the case of another company, it was found that the awareness of power consumption was in itself a catalyst for continuous improvement in efficiency. The company examined in detail the energy efficiency in each data center. It spoke to operations staff and to management and build standard data collection methods.
The collection of data about energy utilization was automated to the extent possible. Results of the initial study showed temporary increase in use of captive power during electrical power outages and increase in air conditioning load during installation of new equipment. Having seen the savings accrue from a simple awareness of the consumption, the company is now expanding the breadth of its reporting, automating the reporting functions and increasing the frequency of reports which will give the company a better idea of the rate of increase or decrease in its consumption and allow corrective action to be taken earlier.
In a third case, a company built a data center in Kyushu in 2008. The company adopted a hot aisle containment design. The efficiency of this design improves with the power density level in the data center. Thus as the data center gets more load, the efficacy of hot air isolation will improve. The floor was raised to 1 m height which is not the norm followed by Japanese companies. Cabling under the floor was routed in such a way that it did not impede the air flow. Intake fans in the data center were controlled based on the temperature inside. As the temperature increased, the fan speed was increased as well. This further reduced power consumption. The hot air thrown out by the exhaust system is not allowed to go waste, but is used to heat up a large green house that grows a large variety of exotic fruits!
This company now uses external air for 10% of its data center cooling needs and has realized a reduction of 40% in its total consumption with all the methods listed above. In general, it has been found that energy efficiency tends to be higher in containerized data centers. Besides, they are erected faster, and have lower operating costs. Japan did not use containerized data centers earlier because of building standard laws and fire laws, but now these have changed and containerized data centers are beginning to appear in Japan as well.
Experience shows that data center efficiency is best ensured by following a synchronized approach with both IT equipment and facility equipment working together to a plan. Seasonal variations must also be taken into account and companies now routinely prepare different operating modes to cater for different seasons.
One important issue about running a data center is managing costs. Implementing some of the methods discussed in this paper has resulted in large savings that eventually go on to make the data center more competitive.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
About the Guest Author:
Sanjay Srivastava has been active in computing infrastructure and has participated in major projects on cloud computing, networking, VoIP and in creation of applications running over distributed databases. Due to a military background, his focus has always been on stability and availability of infrastructure. Sanjay was the Director of Information Technology in a major enterprise and managed the transition from legacy software to fully networked operations using private cloud infrastructure. He now writes extensively on cloud computing and networking and is about to move to his farm in Central India where he plans to use cloud computing and modern technology to improve the lives of rural folk in India.
10.22.2012
Soaring costs of running business operations, economic recession, volatile US currency, etc. – all are becoming factors to create the most hostile environments for business enterprises across the planet. Companies are scouring far and wide to find ways to cut down on IT expenses so that they can squeeze something extra out of their budgets in order to compete in areas of prime proficiency. Outsourcing is the biggest strategy followed by corporations across the globe to counter rising domestic operational costs and as per a the most recent study by Savvis. The enterprises are embracing cultural shifts in their outsourcing ventures by focusing more on breakthrough technologies such as Cloud Computing.
According to the survey, nearly 60 percent of company decision makers favor outsourcing of critical business procedures to proprietary business models like cloud computing rather than opting for in-house infrastructure because they believe that cloud computing is going to be the trump card they need to cut down on costs. Since cloud based services eliminate the need to have expensive infrastructure and computer equipment in-house, organisations depending on it can reduce their IT budget considerably and reduce other associated costs such as power consumption, maintenance costs and so on.
Another interesting discovery from the survey was that nearly 3 out of 5 survey respondents believe that in-house infrastructure results in wastage of resources considerably. Rather than focusing on infrastructure requirements, IT companies are turning their attention to key organizational prerequisites such as competitive agility, strengthening collaboration and increasing productivity as well as efficiency of their operational models. Industry leaders believe that outsourcing combined with technologies such as cloud computing are the stepping stones to success in achieving these corporate objectives.
The software as a service model or commonly known as SaaS model is a growing technological strategy that companies undertake to make huge savings on software licenses and other utility procedures carried out via proprietary software. This model of operation allows business enterprises to leverage the benefit of using software services without having to buy or install them on their hardware components. The costs are much lower than a buy-and-operate model and this model of service delivery is made possible because of cloud computing.
On a similar note, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) models are also gaining attention. Here companies need not spend on exorbitantly priced hardware storage and computational hardware for processing information as they can use the service via a shared interface between the hardware vendor and the business process. This remote access of complex hardware at lower costs is courtesy of cloud computing. Such modes of operation are gaining widespread applause from industry gurus because of the savings they make for businesses.
As per the survey, global organisations which currently outsource 25 percent of their IT infrastructure are going to ramp it up to over 40 percent. More than 50 percent of the surveyed organisations now admit that they have wasted their money on buying infrastructure that they could have easily rented via a cloud service. However 56 percent of the surveyed organizations and especially 78 percent of Japanese organizations surveyed are still satisfied with their in-house infrastructure management and are yet to shift to a cloud based paradigm.
Surprisingly, 42 percent of the surveyed organizations stay away from outsourcing citing lack of contractual obligation from outsourcing partners as the main reason. The main reason that prevented outsourcing was because of company culture and not such obligations which clearly indicates that there is a shifting paradigm. Cloud computing is picking up affection as per the survey wherein 85 percent of the organizations surveyed are reportedly using some form of private or public cloud services for storage, Big Data, analytics as well as other key business processes.
As the need for competitive agility increases, companies would continue to strive for newer outsourcing regimes to boost their productivity. Organizations are continuously embracing new initiatives to ensure that outsourcing their managed services can prove to be even more fruitful than it is at present. The survey threw light on a clear statement. Business enterprises are changing their focus from saving IT budgets into enriching their core competency levels. More strategic decisions are expected to take place in coming years and we have to wait and see what happens.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
About the Guest Author:
Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.