November 13th, 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.
November 12th, 2012
Small businesses have been identified as the most unwilling adopters of cloud technology. This is due in part to the confusion the term “cloud computing” evokes in many managers of small businesses. Some think cloud technology represents another complex process that may be time-demanding and expensive; others simply do not want to spend their time and hard-earned resources on a supposedly new computing method of which efficiency they have no opportunity of confirming.
Here are some interesting discoveries: a large number of small businesses have Gmail, which means that they had already, unknowingly transferred their email service to the cloud through Google; some also utilize third-party storage facilities which are hosted in the cloud but which the business owners have no knowledge of. So, what is then the fuss about adopting cloud computing or not?
Small businesses have a lot to gain from using cloud computing. One of the great benefits of this is that they can be sure of continuous access by their clients or customers. When a business moves its operations from one physical location to another, its clients/customers will be required to wait for a certain of period of time until the business is set up at another physical location. However, cloud computing bridges this moment of transition and helps businesses keep their operations on-going even though they change office locations.
Business continuity, in this way, guarantees regular generation of revenues in the sense that client relationship will be unaffected by the move and they can enjoy the services that such a business renders.
Whether small business owners pay $50 a month or more to keep their IT infrastructure, data, email service etc in the cloud, they can still enjoy the rare advantage of gradually upgrading or scaling down their IT requirements with regard to storage capacity and other needs. This flexibility reveals that they can save on their IT expenses when compared to the cost of hiring IT personnel and maintaining in-house IT structure which are not scalable or flexible.
Most small business owners are yet unconvinced that cloud computing can offer the much needed protection for their data/information. This may have been the main fear that kept many small businesses from moving their entire IT systems to cloud. However, some recent developments in IT security and protection should be considered as positive signs that cloud computing is not as bad as managers of small businesses think it is—these latest developments point to the fact that cloud computing service providers also worry about satisfying their clients in this regard.
Hence, they constantly look for ways to make their clients’ IT systems secure, accessible and maintained in a fashion that business continuity will be possible. As a matter of fact, providing constant security to clients’ IT infrastructures does not only help cloud computing service providers to keep their customers, but it also helps their own businesses to grow. So, this is virtually a mutually beneficial relationship.
If small businesses are not expected to worry about the cost of maintaining in-house IT systems, hiring, training and maintaining IT personnel and securing their IT structures from time to time, it is clear that the excesses that would have been spent on the processes outlined above can be put to a more productive use.
This entails that small businesses can enjoy the opportunity of cost-efficiency as they divert unused funds to other areas of their business activities. This is why, specifically, cloud computing has been regarded as a tool for business innovation. Cloud technology helps businesses identify new areas of operations as well as maintaining the status quo in their current business activities.
Therefore, if there is anyone that must first consider using cloud computing, it should be managers of small businesses because of the benefits this approach will bring to their businesses.
One of the unique characteristics of GMO Cloud is its capability to adjust instantly on the demand of the user – on top of the base plan. This allows the users to maximize whatever resources they subscribe to without worrying about wastage. Visit the suggested configuration page to see which one is the likely fit for your organization and see the pricing for further details.
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/
November 9th, 2012
The Japanese cell phone market has always been known to be a tough market to crack. Even at the height of Nokia’s worldwide market domination, it was not able to get even 10 percent of the Japanese cellphone market. The reason for this is that Japan has a large number of feature phone manufacturers and a phone feature set which is unique to the country.
The use of feature phones is also the reason that the Japanese mobile phone app market landscape is completely different from the rest of the world. This has led to very hard market penetration for foreign-made phone apps. With the recent success of iOS and Android phones, the social game market seems to be opening up on its own accord. In dollar terms, the size of the Japanese market for social games on the PC and mobile devices was $3.6 billion in 2011.
For social game developers this is both good news and bad news. The good news is that, it is an opportunity for social game developers to enter the lucrative Japanese social games market. With Apple’s iOS mobile devices, selling via the Apple Store is a relatively easy point of entry for crashing into the Japanese market. The same is true for Android devices with Google Play. The downside is that the app and the website needs to be accessible to Japanese who do not speak the language. This would entail revising the program interface to enable Japanese characters.
The Japanese passion for games goes very deep. Some of the social games played in Japan are endemic to the country and its people. Besides the language and graphics reflecting Japanese landmarks and street scenes, Japanese pop culture is another heavy influence on game design.
There are some game genres which are unique to Japan. These include:
These genres are practically non-existent outside of Japan. Software and gaming companies outside of Japan wanting to get a slice of the market would do well to take a look at the possibilities of creating for these types of games. With iOS and Android devices having a high penetration rate into the market, major players would be getting into the market as well. Foreign software developers need to have a good and stable infrastructure to host the social services.
An alternative to penetrating the market would be to partner with a social network application provider. The top three social network application providers (MIXI, DeNA and GREE) have at least 15 million users. In contrast, Facebook Japan has only 1 million gamers. Partnering with a Japanese game service provider gives the developer a leg up. With this setup, the service provider will serve as the billing and collection agent. The service provider’s internal synergies would also promote the new game. On top of that, the monetization model of Japanese social game service providers yield better gains than comparable Western companies.
Getting into the Japanese social game market is hard but not impossible. There are some necessary changes or revisions to make the program more culturally acceptable. Choosing the right hosting partner and game translation service are also necessary. Partnering with an established social game service provider is important to make use of their existing infrastructure. In lieu of an established game, creating a social game within a niche Japanese genre, from scratch, might be a better option rather than simply migrating an already successful game based on Western models.
The Japanese market for social games is big but different. The opportunities are there for big rewards. However, as a lot of Western companies have found out, doing business is not that easy. In order to be successful, foreign game developers have to be truly immersed in the culture and use that to their advantage.
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.
November 8th, 2012
Any large cloud vendor would have several data centers located in many different parts of the world. Between all of these data centers, there would be tens of thousands of disks, CPUs, RAM chips and networking devices. All of this equipment would be of differing vintage. Even if all data centers started off with identical equipment (which is seldom the case since they do not get built all together), over time, they would be subject to differing schedules of hardware maintenance and replacement of unserviceable components. Therefore, with the passage of time, even the most strictly managed data centers will tend to become heterogeneous in nature.
The end result of this variation in equipment is that differences in performances begin to appear for different cloud instances. Since cloud usage is typically charged over the hour (per minute charging is also emerging now), if you are able to move your application to a cluster with higher performance, you can achieve significant savings. The question is how to find clusters that are faster and more efficient.
Recent research at Aalto University Finland and Deutsch Telekom Laboratories, Germany focused on understanding hardware variations between data centers of the same vendor and studied the performance variation between various instances. While they studied a global vendor offering PaaS services, the results would be applicable to all large vendors. (It is possible that small cloud computing vendors may be able to have a greater degree of similarity of hardware).
The researchers used standard operating system commands to obtain the CPU details of their clusters and verified the output using other system calls. After considerable effort, they determined that the vendor had the following different types of CPUs –
S No |
CPU Name |
% availability in 2011 |
% availability in 2012 |
1 |
E5507 |
58% |
40% |
2 |
E5430 |
29% |
17% |
3 |
E5645 |
5% |
42% |
4 |
2218HE |
4% |
1% |
5 |
270 |
4% |
0% |
The trend is very clearly visible – the vendor is slowly phasing out the processors at serial numbers 1,2,4 and 5 of the table above and is switching over to E5645 (serial number 3).
When the list of CPUs was broken down by availability zones, there were some zones where the newer E5645 processor was barely present (<10%) and in some others, the numbers had risen to nearly 90%. Obviously, new data centers had the most modern processors. When the output of the different processors was compared, it was seen that there were differences amongst all and that the new ones were delivering 1.25 times the throughput of the next best ones. Compared with the earliest CPUs, there was a performance difference of more than 1.6 times.
Armed with these results, the research team began to calculate costs. After a fair amount of calculations, liberally laced with probability and calculus, some very interesting answers emerged.
If a large task took 100 server instances and took a year to complete, then by switching the instances from old processors to new ones (with a 1.6 times performance advantage), there was a net saving of $40,664 (the per hour rate of the original instance was $0.34). If you are a small business hoping to make a major impact in your domain, this kind of saving is very significant.
If users take some care to select those data centers where the infrastructure is new, they would be automatically getting the better processors and other hardware. Users who are aware of these issues can select instances where they getter better performance.
In times such as this, where every dollar needs to be squeezed for maximum value, this research offers companies a simple way to further reduce expenditure.
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.
November 7th, 2012
In May of 2012, the Japanese government banned kompu gacha dealing a huge blow to Japan’s biggest social gaming companies. Gacha is a game mechanic in which players test their luck for their chance to win a mystery item paying real world money for each of these transactions. Since the transactions are absolutely random, there are many documented cases of players spending exorbitant amounts in an attempt to win a specific virtual item. However, a lack of regulation meant that some companies could set the chances of winning an item at practically zero, meaning that players would be paying repeatedly in an addictive, and useless pursuit of a virtual item.
Why kompu gacha was banned in the first place
In the case of kompu gacha, translated roughly as “complete gacha”, players would have to collect several items in order to get a chance of winning a larger, rarer prize. Essentially, kompu gacha was a game of bingo with no way for players to know the chances of drawing a particular “number.” Adding to this, the potentially addictive mechanic of collecting items led to the government banning these practices. Kompu gacha played a huge part in the record profits that had been posted by Japanese social gaming giants like DeNA and GREE.
The main problem here was that players enjoyed the kompu gacha mechanics, something that was viewed gleefully by gaming developers as a win-win situation. However, kompu gacha makes winning the prize so random that it essentially becomes a gambling mechanic. Since underage children often had access to games using the kompu gacha mechanic, this was an inexcusable situation for Japanese lawmakers. The two cases that made headlines included a child in middle school that spent more than five thousand dollars in a month on kompu gacha games and an even younger child that spent more than a thousand dollars in only a couple of days. After the scandal that followed, the government was forced to start regulating the game industry and ban these kinds of game mechanics.
Although kompu gacha was banned, gacha remains alive today
Paying for a chance to win a virtual prize is still a core game mechanic. In fact, at least 80% of the most popular social games still include gacha machines and, for many game developers, the revenue from gacha’s micro transactions contributes more than half of their games’ revenue. However, the industry has taken some measures to reduce uncertainty in gacha and allow players to predict what is going to happen and how much they are willing to spend on winning a particular prize. Most gacha machines allow players to “spin the wheel” for one hundred Yen. There are also gacha machines with a higher chance of a better payout that offer spins for three hundred Yen.
Replacing kompu gacha with box gacha
As soon as gaming companies caught wind of the possible banning of kompu gacha, they started trying out different gaming mechanics that satisfy their customers’ need for betting real world money for the chance of winning a virtual prize. However, these new methods would necessarily need to be more predictable and less addictive than their predecessors.
A mechanic known as package gacha or box gacha has started to gain popularity as an alternative to abusive kompu gacha mechanics of the past, allowing players to have the same thrill of potentially winning a rare item after spinning. Basically, box gacha involves “filling” a gacha machine with a set number of game items or cards, fully disclosing the number of cards in the machine, how many of them are common, less common, rare, super rare, and even super special rare.
In normal gacha, each spin’s odds would be reset, meaning that every spin would have the same odds of hitting a rare prize. However, with box gacha each time a prize is won it is “removed” from the box, letting players know that they can win the prize they want if they play a certain number of times. Each spin increases the probabilities of winning a particular super rare or super special rare prize. This is definitely an improvement over kompu gacha, where there are cases of players that paid millions of Yen without every hitting the rare prize they were seeking.
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.
November 6th, 2012
As technology becomes more advanced, complexities also have their say in the growth. The situation is not different in the case of cloud computing. Since IT powerhouses as well as even small and medium enterprises are increasingly making their presence felt in the cloud computing sector, operational challenges do pop up frequently, which, if not dealt with immediately could stall your continuity leading to loss of revenue as well as reputation. One of the major challenges faced by enterprises resorting to cloud based business models is migration of key business applications onto the cloud. When CIO’s or managers issue an order asking their staff to migrate a particular app or set of applications onto the cloud, their job is completed by a word or two, but the technical staff has to jump over a China Wall to get things done in time.
This probably explains why a large amount of IT expenditure goes into the process of making applications portable. Here we list some major risks that enterprises face in the event of a cloud migration business strategy and how these issues can be resolved by taking appropriate precautions before the move is made.
Lack of experienced personnel: This is a big drawback as without the service of people who have experience in managing and controlling application portability onto the cloud as well as cloud management skills, your application portability task is bound to be unsuccessful. Porting key business apps onto a cloud would require expertise and precision compared to the human equivalent of a brain transplant and hence there is no room for even the slightest mistake. A solution to this problem would undoubtedly be to recruit only experienced personnel for the job. Not only that, live testing scenarios should be undertaken before deploying them for duty in addition to providing them with training and reference material.
Handling confidential enterprise data: The internet is a playground for malicious software, viruses, illegal bots, etc. and hence migrating crucial business data and applications to an internet-based business model like cloud computing requires extensive preparation and precautions to ensure and safeguard the authenticity of crucial data and prevent it from landing in the wrong hands. The solution would be to maintain a strict security firewall to prevent intrusions. The entire cloud platform should be under constant surveillance and any suspicious events should be traced to its origin and reported to the respective authority.
Involvement of 3rd Party: If IT is not your key competency, then migrating to a cloud-based business environment would require the service of a 3rd party IT solutions provider who has expertise in cloud operations and management. But then this would mean that your businesses key applications as well as mission-critical data would be handled by an external source which increases the risk of data being leaked or lost. The best way to combat this issue would be to choose a premium partner with proven track record in providing cloud based solutions. Check out their previous partnerships and analyse how their solutions reacted to vulnerabilities and threats.
Integration of in-house and cloud applications: The technical integration of data as well as business applications becomes a key issue when enterprises resort to cloud-based monitoring and service. Very often companies prefer to keep a certain amount of applications and data in-house while migrating to a cloud platform. However the migrated applications may have to depend on these in-house data for their operations, which requires a proper integration of both these components that is technically a challenging perspective. A proper scheduling and systematic approach to migration would solve this issue. Identification of dependent systems, calculating impact of migration and planned migration of all relevant systems onto a trusted cloud platform would eliminate the thoughts of concern plaguing enterprises in this regard.
Support for legacy systems: Moving to the cloud ultimately results in change of infrastructure and adoption of new standards of business operations. Newly integrated software platforms as well as hardware components make their way into offices but at the same time, these changes spark another wave of problems because of the need for interoperability of existing legacy systems with these new components. It is a wiser decision to upgrade your legacy systems rather than degrading cloud infrastructure to facilitate interoperability. Aging systems prove to be a damper in cloud performance and efficiency and also create greater workload because of slower processing capability.
Thus the solution for almost all major application migration issues in cloud computing pretty much lies in the hands of enterprises themselves. Taking steps to resolve them at the earliest would only pave the way for greater success within limited time for a whole new cloud based business model.
GMO Cloud takes pride not only in the excellent service they provide but as well as its proven track record. With the introduction of the public cloud offering, additional services – which includes migration - were included to complement and follow through on the core services sold.
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.
November 5th, 2012
Why are companies moving their IT infrastructures to the cloud nowadays? There could be several reasons for doing so; however, the desire to increase productivity and enhance efficient collaboration are the primary expectations of some business managers entirely moving their IT systems to the cloud.
No doubt, cloud technology affords businesses the unprecedented flexibility and scalability that make it possible for businesses, irrespective of their sizes, to upgrade their IT requirements periodically when the need arises. Invariably, when the amount of information processed by these businesses increases owing to business expansion or hike in customers’ number, they will not necessarily need to worry about how to handle this peak IT requirement, they can simply scale up their storage capacity because cloud computing allows it. Hence, this action will definitely lead to better productivity on the part of these businesses.
Another productivity-enhancing benefit of cloud technology is that it permits relatively easier accessibility for users to log onto the cloud from anywhere and on any digital device in real time to obtain the required data/information. In other words, employees of companies can retrieve relevant data/information stored in the cloud in the course of executing their official duties without facing serious barriers or hindrances.
Incidentally, the rate of retrieval of information stored in the cloud is comparatively faster and less laborious than when the same amount of information was stored on in-house servers. This is because the cloud structure is perpetually managed by a third party whose primary responsibility is to see that the systems do not experience, if possible, any downtime. Interestingly, this uninterrupted continuation in business operations is projected to increase productivity and add long-time value to the good and services produced by these businesses.
Companies are also witnessing efficient collaboration among their ranks of employees using the cloud technology. Now, it is possible to have fast and coordinated chats, email, instant messaging and constant updating of data/information for better business utilization. Before, companies solely relied on duplicating information from one section of their operations to another. But that has changed dramatically; information can be accessed by employees of any company, irrespective of their sections of operations, in real time by merely logging on to the company’s cloud.
This elimination of duplication of documents, data, files and instructions will help businesses to drastically reduce the cost of transmitting information from one department to another. As a result of this practice, data loss, data violation and exposure of data to unauthorized parties will be prevented, and companies can maximize the time of accessing, retrieving and processing information to carry out their operations more efficiently.
Interestingly, these benefits of higher productivity and faster collaboration among employees in a company have reportedly helped business managers to save cost on a number of activities: they do not need to duplicate their files, documents, disks, desktop computers in order to retrieve and utilize certain information/data. While this practice can help businesses to save cost on running their operations, they also contribute to the conservation of the environment—environment is safe when fewer and fewer business wastes are produced. Instead of having packs of files, employees of a company can share a single file by merely accessing this file on their company’s cloud.
Hence, it is right to say that cloud technology is also a clean-energy process that is capable of helping humans maintain unpolluted environment. This is in addition to the benefit of leading to higher profitability due to the reduction in the overhead expenses and profits from optimum business performance. The efficient collaboration among employers of the same company that has adopted cloud computing reflects a rich culture of greater business performance that many companies need in order to stay highly 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:
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/
November 2nd, 2012
There is no question that cloud computing has played an important part in the tech industry in the last couple of years. There were plenty of developments in cloud computing in 2012 alone. New start-up companies are popping up every few days with some kind of innovative cloud computing service or advancement. This industry’s developments are measured in days and weeks rather than months and years. Studies predict that cloud computing technology will be a major source of revenue and employment worldwide by 2015. In fact, many industry experts go as far as to predict that by 2020 everything will be in the cloud, including hardware, software, platforms, services, and processing.
However, these kinds of long-term predictions must always be taken with a grain of salt since technology can advance in unexpected ways. Regardless of this, there is no doubt that cloud technology will be a major player and driving force in the technology market in the next few years.
Important cloud computing developments from the past year
The demand for full time IT professionals specializing in cloud computing has exploded in the last year, more than three times as much as it was since 2009. Some of the major reasons companies have migrated to cloud computing in 2012 include reduced costs, higher efficiency, and a lower need for personnel and resources. Studies show that agility, reduced costs, and scalability are still the most important factors for companies looking to adopt cloud computing. While SaaS is still the most important cloud service and the one in which companies are investing the most, PaaS and IaaS services are gaining traction and, in the next five years, they are expected to grow dramatically in popularity and adoption.
Of course, there are still obstacles in the adoption of cloud services. Many companies still hold doubts about cloud computing’s security. Other problems include government regulations and compatibility and vendor issues. This is an important factor for start-up companies and businesses investing in cloud computing to consider. However, these factors are quickly becoming a non-issue as new companies come up with technology solutions that help ameliorate these concerns. In 2012, five key sectors benefited from cloud computing the most. These were media, mobile technology, social media, data storage and handling, and online commerce.
At least the security concerns are quickly being answered by new technology and cloud service providers. Enterprise facing software, archiving services, and cloud backup services have allowed many businesses to ensure that the cloud will not place their data at risk. Cloud collaboration is probably one of the most promising cloud services in the next few years. The last year saw a massive investment in cloud technology, with more than seven billion dollars invested in cloud start-up companies by venture capitalists.
Cloud computing is expected to grow dramatically in the next few years
According to studies by Microsoft and market watch firms, cloud computing is expected to grow impressively in the next few years. Cloud computing is expected to help create more than fourteen million jobs all around the world, many of these are concentrated in southeast Asia. Investors can also expect massive revenues, with almost 1.1 trillion dollars every year after 2015. This is especially significant because, thanks to the savings that cloud computing offers businesses, IT spending is only expected to grow sixteen percent, while jobs will increase by nearly thirty percent.
The Southeast Asian market, in particular countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Singapore, are an especially attractive target for cloud computing investors. This is due in great part to the position that these countries occupy in global business. Many of these countries act as global business hubs thanks to their privileged position geographically, advanced infrastructure, and business-friendly governments. This helps create a positive feedback loop where an increase in cloud computing investment increases job opportunities which in turn allow cloud computing technology to continue growing in these areas.
Public cloud investment is expected to drive growth in the cloud computing market. Although private cloud investment will undoubtedly influence growth, it is in public clouds where most innovation and investment will occur in the next few years. The year 2015 is considered as a turning point in the future of this market, with most projections up to 2015 being extremely positive. However, with the accelerated pace of new developments in cloud technology, advancement may actually occur faster than expected.
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.
November 1st, 2012
Apple and Android are the top preferred smart phones in Japan. In a survey conducted in June, 2012 Android covers 53 percent of the market; Apple iOS had a significant 32 percent share while Microsoft got 3.2 percent of the market.
There was a surge in the number of smart phone users in Japan since the beginning of 2012 with a whopping 43 percent increase. There are a total of 24 million smart phone users and this represents 23 percent of the overall mobile population.
The favorite among smart phone brands is Sharp with 22.5 percent, next is Panasonic Panasonic with 13.6 percent, Fujitsu with 11.8 percent, NEC with 8.9 percent, and Sony with 7.9 percent.
The phones are primarily used for texting, mobile emails, games and novels. They hardly use their phone for voice calls especially in public places.
No Voice Calls in Public Places
Train commuters are constantly reminded to switch their phone to “manner mode” also known as silent mode, so that other people will not be bothered. In a country where collective need is the number 1 priority, talking on one’s mobile phone in public is considered unacceptable. In fact a person who is using his cell phone will not be allowed by the bus driver to enter the bus. He must end his call before boarding the public transportation. When their phone accidentally rings, they can answer it, but will immediately end the call. Unlike Westerners who are fond of talking on their phones while walking around the mall.
It is an unwritten rule that phones must be on silent or vibrate mode whenever one is leaving the house. It is acceptable to take calls when in a cafe or restaurant. In theaters, the phones should be completely shut off, because even the small light can annoy other people.
Smart Phone Novels
Apart from calling and texting, users also read novels from their smart phones. Also known as “keitai shosetsu” or cell phone novels the stories are sent to users like a text message. The chapters usually have 70-100 words and are written by young authors who hide under pen names. The romantic fiction can be downloaded in installment form. Currently the most popular cell phone novel is “Second Hand Memories”. The chapters are short, with only 100 words, with interesting plots and twists. There have been a couple of cell phone novels that have been published into books; some have turned into a movie.
Other countries have picked up the mobile bookworm trend. Commuters in China, Germany and South Africa, are also reading novels from their smart phones. The revolutionary literary genre allows anybody and write novels anywhere at any time.
Smartphone Games
The females in Japan are known to spend at least 90 minutes a day, sending emails and browsing the Internet using their Smartphone’s. The gadget is taking the place of credit cards, it also used for looking up train schedules, buying tickets, checking apartments for rent, making bank account cash transfers, selling and buying stocks, horoscopes, jokes, music charts, theater schedules, museum hours and the like.
In trains, teenagers are often seen glued to their phones listening to music, reading novels or surfing the Internet. They are fond of sending emails. Girls actually go to restrooms so they can update their Facebook status and their friends about their date, or the movie or concert they are watching. For artists smart phones are used as storage for their random ideas.
The Japanese are fond of playing games on their phones. Unlike typical arcade games, which give full cinematic experience, phone games are very simple, yet very popular. It primarily keeps the users busy when they are in between appointments, or waiting for the train. The games are primarily free, however once the players wish to upgrade to the next level then they must pay a fee. Free games can end in seconds. However high level games can go on and on. Some die hard gamers spend an average of $600 dollars a month for games.
This form of entertainment is a big hit, because players can have fun with utmost anonymity. They actually take on a new character; they turn into a completely different person, when they play. The experience is a breather for a culture that is not fond of direct interaction. It gives people a chance to act like kids, and meet new friends while they play without revealing their true identity. A bank executive for instance could be playing with a cab driver, something that will not exactly happen in real life.
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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.
October 31st, 2012
A research paper estimates that the big data market in Japan could reach 1,000 billion Yen by 2020 and lead to smart cities that minimize waste and improve efficiency.
A Critical Application
A typical example of processing such volumes of data in real time is provided by an application in Japan that provides real time earthquake warning to citizens. This kind of application was simply not possible earlier at the scale that cloud computing and big data can provide. As this application improves, it will use more diverse data to improve the quality of its prediction.
How Governments are Getting Involved
With cloud computing approaching maturity (though there is still some distance to go) and companies beginning to get serious mileage out of the technology, government began to get involved to see if there were efficiencies and benefits they could tap. If there is one thing that governments have in plenty – and I don’t mean red tape – it is data. There are mountains of data with the government and till very recently, it simply filed it away without being able to do very much with it. Cloud computing of course has given new capabilities to data management and value extraction. This is where big data comes into its own. Properly harnessed, the information hidden in big data will give citizens –
As all of these and other scenarios come true, big data and cloud computing could have an impact on our lives that would be as great as that of the Internet itself.
Unlike private companies where the data driven culture has firmly taken route and the implementation of decisions and directives is rapid, work in the government is far more deliberate and many facets of the problem and the proposed solution are examined and thought through before a decision is taken. Governments also have to contend with privacy and security issues.
Technologies Required
Managing Big Data requires companies to be able to handle Real Time Analysis and Streaming of data – with massive amounts of data simply flowing in, there has to be a very large I/O capability and parallel processing that uses rules based algorithms to manage the data streams. Typically, this kind of data could be from sensors (think of surveillance cameras), social media sites, video records, communication records. This has to be handled, tagged, classified and stored as it comes in otherwise it would be impossible to locate a data item of interest. This massive, multiprocessor based handling is in reality only possible with cloud based systems.
Map Reduce Frameworks – at this level of processing, a master server maps the data (distributes it) to many different servers, collect their processing results and ‘reduce’ it to a final summarized result. These servers are based on Hadoop and related technology. They provide the capability to process data streams in parallel and move them to distributed servers. They rely on Hadoop Distributed File System to store the data in a manner that is fault tolerant. At this stage, the data can be used to provide output in the form of business analytics, log analysis, web search engine output and so on. Depending on the quantity of data coming in, the map server can call in additional servers or release the ones that are not needed. This capability is native to cloud applications and hence the server is ideally suited to run in the cloud.
In Summary
There are several components that work together to be able to create an effective application cluster. It all starts with a well planned information strategy that then leads to an information infrastructure where the appropriate technology is used to build systems that can handle such applications. There have to be policies that control the management, use and protection of the data a phased execution plan. Obviously, such a complex application cannot be delivered all at once, there is iterative development that continuously refines the application and creates new opportunities. Big data opens up possibilities of applications that were in the realm of fantasy a few years earlier. However, the kind of processing that is needed can only be available in the cloud. Truly, big data is an idea whose time has come.
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.
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