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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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11.16.2012
Social networking and increased presence of collaboration tools in office environments have turned into a new exciting platform altogether for providing more gritty tools for organizations to coordinate their activities. What we are talking about here is the evolution of social collaboration in office space and the most recent trend is coupling this new age collaboration with the most promising technology in the IT workspace of today: Cloud computing. Basically, we are dealing with the process of taking social collaboration to the cloud – so what exactly does such an option do for the business?
First of all, we need to see a business project as a social entity where few people collaborate on it to get things done based on comments from their peers and managers. There is always a pinch of constructive criticism as well as a dose of heavy criticism at times if the people involved do not take things too seriously. The entire idea is to convert the traditional project management and control mechanism into one driven by social project management strategies. This is what social collaboration on a project aims to achieve and cloud computing adds more utility and easiness to this transformation thanks to its ability to bring resources and people who use the resources closer without geographical and technological constraints and boundaries.
With a cloud-based collaboration platform, your project management becomes more of a daily routine like using Facebook. Communicating with your peers becomes easier no matter where you are on the planet. Social collaboration in the cloud entitles you to take your work with you wherever you go, whether it is your home, holiday spots, etc. This would offer more flexibility to your working hours, reduce stress and help you concentrate on your work as well as your personal affairs equally without interference.
There are several benefits of social collaboration on the cloud and it very often streamlines the entire workflow in any kind of business organization that adopts this new age collaboration tool. Planning a well laid out solution for design and deployment of your primary work environment as well as the configuration for timelines, achievement milestones, etc. is made possible by this approach to social collaboration.
Customised development and testing environment for every product and for every person involved in each of these stages. Integration between these departments is very easy as well with such a mode of operation.
The strategy helps in guided content planning with detailed sessions being made available to developers and editors to help them prepare for the challenges that lie ahead as well as provide them with a platform for successful community management, drive participation from everyone and above all help them to mitigate risky conversations and establish the desired level of behavioral compliance.
With such a core platform that is integrated onto every business sphere, it is easier for management to assess the success of implementation of key business ideas and also monitor the status of objectives that are under different stages of execution. Providing detailed reports onto highly customised administrative panels and dashboards is made possible by social collaboration on the cloud.
With such a core platform that is integrated onto every business sphere, it is easier for management to assess the success of implementation of key business ideas and also monitor the status of objectives that are under different stages of execution. Providing detailed reports onto highly customised administrative panels and dashboards is made possible by social colThis architecture of social collaboration is something a traditional office environment has never ever dreamt of before. Just imagine the project manager conveying the respective tasks, responsibilities and instructions to each and every employee by just updating his status on the enterprise social network just like a Facebook status. He can tag the respective names of employees to each departmental responsibility he mentions in his status update.laboration on the cloud.
This approach saves time considerably and creates a more friendly approach to employee management as compared to the age-old dictatorial practice of sending custom email and messages to each employee detailing him with what to do.
When minds are needed to come together to achieve something, this platform paves the way for such a session of brainstorming. To be more specific even a project planning today becomes a social activity and the level of success that a social project can achieve depends upon the depth of cooperation and openness the employees are willing to be subjected to.
Social collaboration in the cloud is part of a bigger trend of social business which is the philosophy that brings social collaboration into the modes of operation of a business. It revamps traditional communication methodologies and creates new ways to connect, communicate and construct goals.
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.
11.15.2012
Super storm Sandy has highlighted the need for robust disaster recovery procedures. Luckily, there was sufficient notice of the severity of the approaching storm and most businesses were able to take adequate precautions to ensure safety of their data and ensure business continuity. But Sandy is being followed by another severe storm and therefore it is becoming clear that your disaster recovery procedures have to survive tests over several weeks.
Quality of DR
One of the critical parameters your business continuity is linked to is the quality of your disaster recovery procedures. As businesses get more dependent on the Internet, data has become critical. A recent Gartner Group study brought out that 40% of businesses that lose their data in a disaster collapse within the next five years.
Although cloud computing is said to provide a very reliable solution to disaster recovery, there are many issues involved and merely by moving to the cloud does not make you safe. DR planning needs a DR look at the subject and not simply an IT perspective. You need to think like the military does – self sufficiency and being able to handle multiple threats becomes the key.
Cloud-Based DR and Testing
Cloud based DR has a number of advantages – some are readily apparent, others are not. If you follow a virtualized approach to disaster recovery, your primary servers, their OS and applications, any software patches you may have used are all kept ready as an image that can be applied to create a new instance in any data center in any part of the world. Similarly, transactional data – data that changes regularly every day can be replicated – should be replicated – to data centers away from your primary ones. Then, if, following a Hurricane Sandy-like event, your primary data center were to go under water, you have everything available on a different location and you can be up and functional in a matter of minutes.
As compared to an on-site backup using tape or hard disks, a cloud-based DR site can handle more catastrophic events. You can also fine tune your cost and capabilities to give you the best possible return for your money. Many companies also use their DR site to take the load off their main site in times of excess demands. This also allows them to check the efficacy of their DR procedures.
Focus on Networks
With basic DR capability becoming reliable and affordable, the focus is now shifting to networks. This is one component of your IT infrastructure that cannot be outsourced or virtualized. Besides this, you need to be able to map your old IP addresses, firewall rules and VLAN configuration rules. As a result, many data center operators are now offering complete packages for DR.
DR Site Requirements
When you opt for DR packages, check the physical separation between your existing data centers and the DR center. It has been documented that some Greenfield data centers were built on land that are prone to flooding and hence cheap. While landscaping may take care of some aspects of flooding, there will always be vulnerabilities that exist which a better site will not suffer from. One major data center publishes data of about last several decades to prove that their site is intrinsically safe. Also ensure that they use different grids. If you are really concerned, there are accepted standards and audits of your disaster recovery sites. If these audits are performed regularly, there is certainty that when the push comes to shove, DR will work.
DR becoming easier?
Prior to Hurricane Sandy, many small and medium businesses found it hard to justify the additional expense of a DR site. However, seeing the damage that the hurricane has caused and the difficulty experienced in restoring power and communication to large areas so many days after the storm, it has become clear that expenses on DR are an insurance policy that will need to be taken out. Worsening weather, global warming, terrorism and hackers are making it essential to think seriously about DR.
Catastrophes like these are inevitable yet they cannot be used as an excuse for businesses suspending their operations. Every minute they are not operation is lost opportunity; this is why GMO Cloud makes sure that networks are on consistent uptime, facilities are well taken care of, and is ready for any unwanted disasters that threaten a businesses operations.
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.
11.14.2012
Japan is home to some of the biggest names in computer games. In fact, when it comes to console games, the Xbox is the only major non-Japanese brand in the market. Future growth however is moving away from consoles and towards social gaming and mobile gaming applications. With the slowdown in the growth of console games and the increase in the social gaming market, it is expected that social gaming will be the dominant platform by 2015.
When it comes to social gaming, the Japanese statistics are totally different from the rest of the world. For one, the games are mostly home-grown. One reason for this is that it is almost impossible to make inroads in the Japanese market without any localization and culturalization of the apps to make them more “Japanese.”
Localization is not only limited to changing the language to Japanese (Nihonggo), it also means that the graphics should also be changed accordingly by using Japanese place names and posters. Culturalization addresses the issue of being Japanese appropriate. Due to cultural differences, there are some concepts which are uniquely Japanese. A straight translation of the game app might not take into account the Japanese culture in terms of in-game character behavior. Porting social media games to take advantage of localization and culturalization means the difference between guaranteed failure and a fighting chance at the market. In most instances, getting help from a third-party which is experienced in localization and culturalization customization jobs would be the only path even before launching the app in Japan.
In the mobile game market, penetration is also a problem. Besides the same problems with localization and culturalization, there is the issue with the gaming platform. Currently, the Android and iOS platforms have a combined 50 percent of the market for smartphones. The remaining 50 percent is composed of feature phones which are sold only in Japan. This results in more market fragmentation than the rest of the world. Whereas phone buying decision-making in other countries have increasingly gone towards a choice between an Android phone and an iOS device, in Japan, the fragmented market remains as a hurdle. For game developers, this may be a barrier when it comes to selling more games. However, it can also be an opportunity to have a foothold in the Japanese market. The key is to port the games to run on local feature phones. Normally, this would be a daunting task. However, since the developer would also need to reprogram for localization and culturalization issues, overhauling the program would become a one-time cost.
Culturalization does not necessarily mean that the games have to be in genres which are almost exclusively Japanese. It also does not mean that the game has to be anime or manga related. These are different conditions which are uniquely Japanese, but can also be used as hooks for game development.
It can be taken for granted that any developer who would want to enter the Japanese market should also have a partner when as a conduit for promoting, and accepting payment for the apps. These are established companies which have a complete roster of games. Of course, the developer has the option to just license the app to these channels or to be complete partners with them. Licensing the apps would be less of a hassle. The developer only needs to sit back and relax while the money rolls in. For most small companies this may be the ideal approach. For larger companies which have a larger listing of games, and who want to have a larger presence in the Japanese market, they might opt for a more hands-on approach to managing the business.
Japanese gaming is not just a matter of installing a server and selling access to the game. The prudent game developer has to understand the major differences between Japan and the Western approach to mobile and social gaming. Developers have to have a man-on-the-ground for a better understanding of what they should be doing and what they should avoid doing.
Considering that Japanese gaming culture is more pervasive, it is expected that at some point in time, there would be a convergence of these technologies, where all social games would be able to run on mobile devices. Mobile games, running on social media however, has a lesser chance of happening.
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:
Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
11.13.2012
Amidst the good predictions on the lucrativeness of the gaming market, it is inevitable that some investors still have reservations after hearing news contrary to this. The social gaming community, however, needs to look at the likes of the large social gaming markets in Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries. There is no question that Japan is a leader in social gaming and the large companies that dominate this market have had a chance to create strategies that leverage this medium’s advantages very well. In this article, we will take a look at how user acquisition strategies differ for the Japanese social gaming networks.
Looking at other Western social gaming companies’ user acquisition engines raises some questions on how these social games acquire new users. Rather than attracting gamers based on relevance, these games tend to rely too much on giving users incentives to invite their friends. There are two factors that are fundamental to these games that pose a problem:
The two user acquisition methods listed above are entirely dependent on a social network. Using another network’s growth to advance your particular product is a common practice, but it can backfire if your company is not helping the network that is providing your growth. For example, PayPal was helped tremendously by the growth of eBay and YouTube’s initial growth could not have happened without MySpace. In both cases, PayPal and YouTube provided value for members of the underlying network – in the case of PayPal, it gave eBay users a convenient, instant payment method and in the case of YouTube it allowed MySpace users to share videos easier than ever before.
Japanese social gaming networks like DeNA’s Mogage Town (Mobage for short) and Gree are not based on real identity. The lack of real identities means that people are more likely to send out mass invites and, due to the focus on gaming, cross promotion is actually welcome. One of the most important reasons why these Japanese social network platform models represent a clear future for social gaming is that, from their conception, they have always been mobile. Whilst for many of the Western platforms, social gaming was an afterthought. In the case of networks like Mogage and Gree, users are provided with a mobile gaming experience and a community of like-minded fellow gamers.
While increased traffic resulting from publicity on major portal sites and PR campaigns is welcomed, heavy server load generated by sudden increases can cause site delays or crashes for game operators. This represents not only decreased customer satisfaction but missed business opportunities.
A number of our customers are highly successful Japanese social gaming companies who choose our cloud hosting platform due to its flexibly expand and contract. Our system allows them to automatically increase and decrease the number of virtual machines and server resources depending on traffic according to the random timing of visitors.
Learn more about the high availability functions of our Cloud Hosting.
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.
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.
