How phenomenal has the growth in IT been? It continues to suprise us with it’s flexible implementations in every domain of interest possible.IT has become an essential component for businesses to run smoothly and efficiently.Recent trends have seen growth of IT in the field of finance.

How is Information Technology useful in the field of finance?

Companies use IT for services ranging from financial trading to reporting earnings.Companies prefer to work with those banks and financial institutions that offer services through technology.This makes the services portable and hence more efficient and makes business transactions easier.Another added advantage is provision of security mechanisms for customers performing transactions via these technologies that promotes a sense of accessibility and helps increase customer base.

• Banks can function on a global scale because of technology.Global developments and financial trends couldnt be accounted for without the use of technology.The interent helps banks to keep track of credit transactions around the world and predict trends and identify patterns.Social media provides business with customer information.By creating a place for their products businesses not only acquire customer feedback but also develop a loyalty towards their products.

Lets look at the four services that are set to revolutionize financial services:

1. The first change is the invention of bitcoins.It is virtual currency that has been in use to trade over the internet.Bitcoins are being used to provide a faster smoother payment platform for consumers all over the world. Efforts are being made to develop a lighter simpler and more secure payment gateway as opposed to the traditional bank processes.You can refer to my post on bitcoins here.
2. The second service is the business API.Efforts are being made to develop business functions as components over the internet aiding in the growth of customers owing to the easier accessibility.
3. The third change is the use of open source movement in the context of financial services.Remember how Mozilla developed as a product because of the contribution of many developers all over the world?Similarly efforts are being made to develop financial services as a collaborative effort.
4. The fourth change is use of social media to identify customers.

So how can a financial service accomodate the use the technology?

• Provide security and support across various range of devices.
• Enable customers to be connected seamlessly to the central system for availing the services.
• Give customers the flexibility of operating their accounts and make decisions on the accessibility of their accounts.
• Build on open API’s so that a wide range of services can be provided to the customer from various vendors.

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How often do you come across these categorizations? Oh Amazon is a service based company!Google is really focused on developing functional products!Ask anyone in the IT industry and they will go into a detailed discussion about these categories of companies.

What is a service?A service is provided to you when you go and ask for it.It is tailored to your needs and delivered to you based on your requirements.The service you requested may not be available to another customer.The Huffington Post is an incredible service company. They solve the problem of political commentary on the web

So what is a product?A product is software which has already been developed and is delivered to a wide number of customers.So here the software is built even before the customer approaches the company.Microsoft Office is a product.

So how are these companies different from each other?

• Service based companies rely on their skills to provide a service to the customer which brings in investment.Services may differ from customer to customer and hence customer relationship is primary.Product based companies rely on their products.They sells the same product to different customers and can be assured that customer experience is predictable.
• Product based companies can have a global target.Service based companies target a more specific domain.
• Product companies invest on marketing to build on their brand and create awarenesss and demand for their products.Service based companies are more focuses on delivering to a specific target and hence market to a defined set of potential clients.
•  Product companies tend to focus on building their brand reputation, improving their market position and making sales, while service companies tend to place their focus on increasing revenue, rather than market shares.

Where does your interest lie?

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Business Integration is a strategic implementation which mirrors how technology is being absorbed as a function of business.It synchronizes information technology (IT) and business cultures and objectives and aligns technology with business strategy and goals.It embodies the business implications of implementing a technology in an organisation.

We live in a world where change is just another variable.Technology empowers change.It brings out possibilites we never thought were possible.What are the implications of these changes?How are these changes structured to produce a positive output?How can technology generate revenue?how can the financial performance be improved? How is the infrastructure established?

These questions and many more are tackled by this strategy.As we dive deep into a world where technology is everywhere its become more than a requirement for companies and organisations to become more aware of the technology underneath before making any decisions for any application in the organisation.Business integration aims to combine the processes and stages of implementation of any product within the decision process to ensure that any implications of the decisions are not ruled out.This ensures a smoother plan for the development of a company or an organisation.

In layman terms business integration is walking on the fine line between business and technology ensuring that the technology being adapted by the organisation brings out positive revenue and helps the ongoing process within the company.

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Ever wondered if you could just learn a particular subject at your own pace?Or master a skill within a time frame with periodic improvements?.These are the fundamentals goals of the MOOC : Massive Online Open Courses.They give you the flexibility of learning anywhere anytime.All you need? An internet connection and a desire to learn.

MOOC’s provide the same content as any traditional equivalent but also have an addded bonus of discussion forums where the enrolled students can talk about the course content and exchange ideas with each other.And with thousands enrolled there can never be a dull day!

They are catering to the needs of a diverse set of individuals.You could be a high schooler, an undergrad ,a graduate, a working professional looking to master a new skill set or just a 70year old enthusiastic about BASIC.The top universities in the world are offering their coursework over the web to promote learning.Heck i just finished a intorductory course on C# offered by Microsoft itself!

Popular MOOC’s platforms include edX,coursera,udacity etc. Coursera also offers you a structure to the courses to obtain a specialization.As soon as you complete the course you get a certificate from the university offering the course.

So go on start learning!

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As I mentioned in my earlier post, trillions of bytes of data is being added to the internet every day. We perform millions of operations every day on this data to make conscious decisions. Big data, databases or whatever we choose to call this humungous amount of data simply cannot be ignored. At the heart of any application, this data is what we work on to calculate our next steps.

Data Science is simply the extraction of data. Data Science is typically the practice of:

• Formulating questions and answering these questions to derive solutions that hold business value.
• Defining the data or working with existing data and choosing mechanisms for collecting, storing and exploring this data.
• To identify the methods of analyzing this data to get the desired answers and performing this analysis by means of appropriate algorithms in various architectures
• Gathering the information obtained from the analysis phase and structuring it so that a common man can understand the theories behind the conclusions from the analysis phase.

Data Science is practiced by well data scientists. Their skill set is in high demand as the world runs literally on the data it encompasses. Data Science has many areas of research. Some of them are as follows:

• Cloud Computing
• Information Visualization
• Computer Vision
• Signal Processing
• Databases and information integration etc.

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Do you know the volume of data that is available on the internet? Its hard to lay down a figure.But here’s a fun fact :

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data !!!!

What if this data isn’t organised?Imagine the sheer amount of work you would have to put in to  process all this data to get the required information.Yeah it will take you a number of years to get  a single operation done.Now what if you had a way to organise all this data?Give it a structure ?Wouldn’t that cut down your effort by a considerable amount?That is what data structures are for.Data structures are a way to organise your data in a particular way so that your computer can process your information efficiently.Instead of storing 10 similar values in 10 different variables you can store your data in a single variable itself.

Let’s look at some examples of data structures:

• Array : This structures allows you to store similar values in one variable.The length is fixed at the time of declaration.
• Lists: Here they contain data and addresses where the data is stored.These are referred to as linked lists.
• Queues:They work on the principle of first in first out.
• Stacks:They are literally data stacked upon each other where the last value entered is accessed first
• Trees:A hierarchical structure used to store data.
• Graphs:A set of nodes that are connected to each other

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Linux is one of the most widely used operating system in the world. It has been modeled after the UNIX and POSIX like environments. It is one of  the largest open source projects that still is being worked upon!

The creator of Linux is Mr.  Linus Torvalds who had created Linux in 1991. Linux is a multi-user and multi-tasking operating system.

Come to think of it 94% of the worlds organizations use Linux for their work! Linux now is not only confined to our home systems but also runs on mainframe systems and even supercomputers. Thus, Linux finds widespread acceptance. Linux supports various platforms, irrespective of the underlying hardware architecture.

The beauty of Linux is that it’s source code of it’s kernel, which  is modified by thousands of people around the world. The source code is still under constant development. Come to think of it a new kernel is released every 2-3 months! A kernel is an interface between the hardware and applications in an operating system.

The Linux kernel is divided into 3 families as

• Debian which includes Ubuntu and Linux Mint
• Fedora which includes CentOS and Oracle Linux
• SUSE    which includes OpenSUSE

Most Linux distributions (or families) support various programming languages. These programming languages include

• PHP
• Ruby
• C++
• Python
• Haskell etc.

Linux includes  specific-purpose programming languages targeted at specific applications like scripting, processing of text, configuring the system and management in general. Linux also supports shellscript, awk, sed and make as well.

Some of the  applications where Linux is used widely are

• Web Serving
• Networking
• Databases
• Scientific Computing
• Home Computing

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Ever wondered how the millions of neurons inside our brain work?How they communicate with each other?How they process all this information?

Computational Neuroscience aims to decode the functions of the brain in terms of information processing properties of the structures that constitute our nervous system.It is an  interdisciplinary science that links the fields of neuroscience,psychology and cognitive science with computer science,electrical engineering along with mathematics and physics.Computational Neuroscience uses the above fields in the following ways:

• Computers are used to stimulate and model brain function
• Principles of mathematics and physics are used to understand he functions of the brain
• And finally we try to understand how the brain performs computations

Given the enormity of the subject how do we go about understanding the functions of the brain?Various schemes are being implemented to understand how the brain “actually works”. Scientists and researchers mainly focus the level of analysis.David Marr divided this level of analysis into 3 different types,computational,the algorithmic and the implementation levels.

The computational level is the most abstract and describes  the problem to be solved, what computations are being performed. Optimality,modularity etc are the kind of principles that are studied under this level. The algorithmic level deals with the structure of the solution,for example the nature of the subroutines used to perform a calculation. Finally, the implementation level describes how this algorithm is actually implemented in a machine. The differences between the algorithmic and implementation levels is similar to a high level language and its platform specific implementation.

Finally computational neuroscience can be thought of an amalgamation of artificial neural networks,neuroscience and dynamic systems.

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Ever heard of ERP’s? ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning.And what does that do?

Apartment complexes these days are well connected aren’t they?You have 1000 apartments in one complex.And all these apartments are usually connected by a telephone system.Anyone can call anyone.Now all these connections are managed by one system aren’t they?Similarly imagine a very very large software company.They might have terabytes of data.The number of departments and cross functional teams are varied.Now all this data has to be integrated,managed,collected and stored for running the company.How is this done?This is where ERP’s come into place.They are a set of native applications that perform the above tasks.

SAP stands for Systems Applications and Products in data processing.And it is a widely used ERP software.SAP was created in 1972 by a set of IBM engineers.It has widely gained popularity since then and now SAP SE is the fourth largest software company in the world.!So what does SAP do?It integrates all the functions for data handling into one system that works as one unit by sharing information.SAP works as three tie architecture:

• Presentation:Has the SAP GUI which helps the user interact with the database layer via the application layer.
• Application Layer:Has the modules for carrying out the tasks.
• Database Layer: Has all the data needed for the ERP SAP systems.

SAP s not limited to one area of application.It provides solutions in the following areas:

• Supply chain management
• Customer Relationship Management
• Product Life Cycle Management
• Supplier Relationship Management
• Advanced Planning and Optimization

The technical modules of SAP deals with primarily ABAP(Advanced Business Applicaton Programming) is an object oriented programming language that helps develop applications in SAP,XI- Exchange Infrastructure,Net Viewer etc.SAP in short is a business application that is helping to bring technology and business together.

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Ignore it or not mobile platform are the emerging markets today.Convenience is key.

Ever had a ground breaking idea for an app?Held back because you lack knowledge or even experience in a mobile platform? Cordova is here to help you out !!!

Apache Cordova is a set of API’ that allow us to design and design native mobile applications using HTML,CSS,Javascript.The key advantage of using Cordova is that applications can be built without the use of any native code as web technologies are used and hosted in the app itself.Since these web technologies are somewhat similar across varies platforms the app can be developed and published in any platform without much change to its structure.What basically Cordova tries to achieve s fast development of mobile applications across various platforms without being tied down by the mobile platform’s native language.

Cordova is primarily based on Javascript.It provides a uniform set of Javascript libraries and device specific native backing code for those libraries.Cordova s available for the following platforms:

• Android
• Blackberry
• Windows Phone
• Palm WebOS
• Bada
• Symbian

The key component of an application using Cordova are a config.xml file that provides information about the parameters that afect an applicaton’s functionality.The application is implemented on a web page named by default as index.html that lists out the CSS,HTML or Javascript files that are needed for it to run.Two basic workflows can be used to develop applications:

1. A Cross Platform Workflow: When we want our application to run across many different mobile operating systems as possible with little need for platform specific development.Basically offers cross platform compatibility.
2. Platform Specific Workflow: When we develop our application for a specific mobile operating system.

Go on try out Cordova,you might be in for a surprise !

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