Internet Matters -- Benefits & Trends

The latest McKinsey report Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperity share some interesting insights into how the usage of internet is benefiting users across the globe. I found some of the pointers very insightful for the study and understanding of the Indian as well as the global market:   

• Internet’s contribution to India’s GDP in 2009 at 3.2 per cent is higher than China
•  Countries with high internet contribution to GDP correlate to those with strong internet supply ecosystem
• Access to appropriate funding help countries gain prominence in the Internet ecosystem
• Creating and promoting deregulation and appropriate legal framework and policies help accelerate the growth of Internet
• SMBs using web technologies extensively are growing more quickly and exporting more widely

There is no doubt that Internet is and will continue to play a major role in socio-economic development of the global citizens. The fast growth and benefits of Internet will give rise to trends that will impact the way we do business, and the way the government frames the rules and policies. The trends that I see emerging as a result of the positive impact of Internet are as listed below:

• Local consumption of internet will further increase
• There will be a rise on the Infrastructure investment
• Internet will be further used as a growth propeller
• The business leaders will strongly propagate the internet journey
• Policies and legal frameworks on Internet will be standardized and strengthened
• There will be huge spike in the internet usage among the SMBs
• Internet will help education move to the remote areas
• Internet will enable and empower the rural entrepreneurs, and enable them to connect with the worldwide audience

Mobile App for Strokes

You must have read my earlier blog post Healthcare Apps -- Maintain Your Health where I mentioned about the healthcare applications available on the iPhone and android platforms, and which can do wonders for your health.

 

But with the latest mobile application, ResolutionMD Mobile developed by Calgary Scientific, I feel telemedicine and mobile healthcare have taken a giant leap. As you know, the outcome of an acute stroke depends on how quickly the patients receive expert medical care. Hence using this app will not only save your life but will also enable the doctors to quickly diagnose and prescribe treatment. Do check out the video on ResolutionMD Mobile to know more about the application.

 

You can easily download ResolutionMD Mobile via App store for your iPhone and iPad or from the Android market for your android phone. This mobile application can take telemedicine to the remotest of areas and provide valuable support to the healthcare workers. Incidentally, the applications is already been used by hospitals in USA and Europe. And I am sure it will come as a blessing for India where a large majority of people die due to stroke every year, mainly due to the lack of immediate access to medical care.

 

This latest development vindicates my stand that medical care will move to the mobile phone. In fact, advancements in image compression, state-of-the-art microprocessors, great wireless-data bandwidth, developments in virtualization and cloud, ease of use and innovative usage of medical science – will turn the Smartphone into a healthcare tool.

Technology for Sustainability

Today as we move towards a totally globalized and highly networked society, the concept of sustainability supported by the right use of technology is taking a whole new meaning and approach. As you know sustainability is tightly integrated with social and ecological impacts. In fact, the approach entails a culmination of social, cultural, environmental, health and economic aspects; and all facilitated by the right technological services and solutions. It would involve redefining and re-arranging your lifestyle and living conditions, innovations across different sectors, re-alignment and a paradigm shift towards workplace practices and methods, and development and encouragement of new technologies—the basic idea is to make everything sustainable without making a negative impact on the society or economy or ecology.  

I strongly believe that technology will be at the heart of the sustainability movement. Today, we live in a globalized and the highly networked society, and this throws up numerous opportunities as well as equally daunting challenges. And these can be used or tackled based on the appropriate use of technology.

Here’s how I see technology benefiting the sustainability efforts and should be used to create the trends for the future:

• Make technology cost effective and easy so as to enable masses to use it for their upliftment.  
• Use innovative solutions to promote low carbon economy to curb environmental pollution.
• Deliver ICT solutions to take healthcare to the remote places.
• Use tech solutions innovatively, and create markets and opportunities to improve the socio-economic conditions of the people.
• Make telecommunications available and cost effective as it can become a catalyst to propel economic growth.
• Use the appropriate technology to optimize business operations and hence reduce adverse environmental impacts.
• Enable education to reach all and facilitate its growth.
• Provide connectivity to all. A networked society can have positive socio-economic and ecological impact. It can help fight climate, human rights, poverty and other issues that afflict societies across the world.

 There are many more ways that technology can enable the sustainability revolution. Please do feel free to share your thoughts and comments.

Proper Data Management for a Better Organization

One of the major issues in the IT world today is the ever growing data, and how to manage and store them properly. Thanks to the all the computing devices, be it the PC or mobile, corporate data volume is growing to an almost unmanageable level. But the basic problem seems to be that most of the companies do not have a planned approach towards managing the data and that often result to creation of a large pool of unstructured data. This in turn lead to a problem wherein data cannot be effectively used by organizations to help them make business decisions which can be crucial for their growth and survival.

As you know, data is extremely important for the organizations. So it is imperative for them to use the data in a productive manner, ensure their reliability and availability, and also protect them from intruders. So a proper corporate data management encompasses everything from data generation to data protection.

So what exactly should you as an organization do about your data? Here are my suggestions:

• First and foremost, always backup and duplicate your data to ensure that the required data is always there for usage in case the original data is lost.
• Always archive your data so that it is with you, to be used when you need it.
• Ensure your data authenticity and protect it from loss or breaches; develop a foolproof system to ensure that unwanted people cannot access the data.
• You need to store data only for a fixed period of time, and that time should be decided as per your rules and regulations and various industry compliance requirements. The main thing I want to say is that data should not be stored forever, delete the old and unwanted data. 

• You never know when you might the need the data – for audit and compliance or for user analysis etc – hence store it in the proper manner and make it easily accessible to the authorized people.

 Ensuring data authenticity and originality, availability, protection, appropriate storage and right usage are extremely crucial for any organizations to make the appropriate business decisions, create the right strategy and implement the precise mission critical concepts. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on better corporate data management.

The Fight for the Standard

For the last several decades, the Wintel (combination of Microsoft Windows Operating Systems and Intel microprocessor) standard has dominated personal computing.  In fact, till the late 90s Wintel was the undisputed leader and a mark of high tech computing devices. But the trend is changing with the emergence of Android and Apple, and fast pushing Wintel to the corner. As in the Smartphone arena, where Android and Apple is far ahead in comparison to rest of the competitors, industry experts expect same to happen in the personal computing devices’ space.

 But the fast growth of Apple as a standard is a trend that would become a big reality in personal computing. Though I personally feel both Apple and Android are amazing, but in the long run Apple will have an edge over Android. The biggest advantage is that Apple has the hardware and software, whereas Google only have a software plank.  All the apple products can only use Apple OS, whereas Apple OS is compatible with other products.

In addition, Apple has a head start in the developer market. I agree that both Apple and Android have great applications and a large developer community developing new tools, but as per reports the Apple developer community is far larger being an early starter and Apple apps store never shows the signs of slowing down.

But only time can say which would become a bigger standard. But from my perspective to be a leader in the long run, the following will be a game changer:

• Compatible with all solutions
• Integrate with other applications
• Speed and ease of use will be extremely crucial
• Encourage the developer community to developer more applications
• Develop strong partnerships with hardware companies (building personal computing devices)

  

Next election will be fought on mobile phones

India crossed 800 million mobile subscribers in March 2011!! This single piece of news shows that the rapidly growing mobile subscriber base cannot be ignored by anyone. And that aspect is one I feel the politicians will/should make great use and take the fullest advantage to reach the masses. Just as the Obama election was about the right usage of the internet, the next Indian election will be about the right and smart usage of the mobile phones and applications.

The trends that I foresee:

• The politicians will be using social media to constantly be in touch with the voters. They will be hiring social media experts to maintain their blogs, Facebook pages and tweet etc.
• Uploading of photographs, videos and written content will attain a critical mass. Hence demand for content providers will be high.
• They will be using mobile games to attract the users. Hence, application providers will have a field day.

You cannot simply ignore the power of the mobile phone. And as users are using it for everything so it would be a great platform to further your cause. Hence my advice to the politicians:

• Open a Facebook account and keep updating
•  Tweet as often as possible
• Upload videos at YouTube and your Facebook page
• Create mobile phone applications to sell yourself and connect with the masses

You should begin the process right now. The next election will be fought on the mobile phone, and whoever uses it smartly will definitely have an advantage over those who choose to ignore it.

Government-Industry Partnership—The PPP Way

The innumerable delays in public projects, corruption and red-tape blocking work, inability of private enterprises to reach all places or do things that hinders on a thin line between legal or illegal, and the overall success of work done in a cooperative manner (between private and government organizations) – are some of the reasons for the popularity of the PPP (private-public partnership) model.

In some sectors (development of airports and national infrastructure), the PPP model is working smoothly and have been instrumental in the success of some really tough projects (for example T3 at Indira Gandhi International Airport). In fact, it has brought about private sector participation in national development. Please check out http://www.pppinindia.com/reports-policy-documents.php for official reports on PPP in India.

Although it is been slowly used in the additional sectors like health and education, but I believe if the correct condition is created it can be adopted by all the sectors. This model is usually a win-win situation for the partners as well as for the consumers.

One place where I really want to see the model being rapidly adopted and really feel would work great is in the food security arena. In India, the problem is not really about food scarcity but food not reaching the people. So imagine the changes an effective PPP can bring in procurement, storage, distribution and transportation of food grains and other crucial stuff. This is one area where the public and private sector working together can bring in changes that the government alone would never be able to do.

In addition, I think we should go one step ahead from where we are. I personally feel that a PPPP (private-public-people partnership) model would be even more powerful. Right now the people involvement aspect seems like a missing piece. Adding that and appropriate usage of technology to make the model and its processes more transparent and efficiently would take it leagues ahead.

I would appreciate your thoughts/comments on this.