SummIT (The Technology Cell @ NMIMS)

Vol. 3 September 2011

CONTENTS
PRESIDENTS ADDRESS.3 ABOUT SUMMIT ..4 IDEAS SEMINAR....6 ARTICLES
Go Green with Virtual Office ...8 Consumer Buyback Programs.........12 Green IT Initiatives...16 Implementing Green IT in relation to Hardware .18 Going the Green way for Data Centers..20 Future drivers of IT ....22 Cloud Computing, Green or Brown? ...14

IT BUZZ of the Quarter...26 FUN CORNER....28 PYLON of ISIS.30 IDEATE EDITORIAL BOARD...32

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SUMMIT PRESIDENTs ADDRESS

Greetings from Team SummIT! We, proudly, present you the first edition of the academic year of Ideate, the SummIT newsletter. Launched in the previous year, Ideate has now taken the third stride. The first edition focused on Customer Relation Management (CRM) which had articles from the industry people. The second edition targeted M-Commerce area and had articles from the top B-schools. In this third edition, the central theme is Green IT, a concept which has risen rapidly in the West and is making inroads in the Indian IT industry. Thus, with these initiatives, we aim to study the industry trends and make the readers aware of them. Since, the technology changes rapidly, we endeavour to roll out the newsletter every quarter and capture the changing scenarios. We try our best to equip you with the necessary skills before joining the workforce. Wish you all the best in your future career. Yogeshwar Kumar Team SummIT

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ABOUT SUMMIT
SUMMIT is a student body at NMIMS that involves itself with developments in the fastest changing domains of world business, i.e. Ideation & Information Technology. IT, being essentially borderless, needs to be understood at a macro level and ideation is what keeps any business going, be it new business or running existing business efficiently. The rapid changes in the business environment have resulted in increased complexities and responsibilities for the information manager today. The club members therefore regularly bring to campus distinguished people from the IT world & other prominent industry people to interact with students and to get broader perspectives on pertinent issues of future importance. Activities: Pylon of Isis - Online Treasure Hunt This is conducted to start off the year with a light and interesting event. This online treasure hunt requires players to cross different levels by solving the clues on a level.

Ideas Our Flagship Event IDEAs is the flagship event of SummIT. This is the event where panel discussion or Seminars are conducted. The purpose of IDEAs is to be the only source which keeps the budding managers updated on the industry front. Also, it is conducted at the start of the academic to enlighten the MBA students with the career options in the IT industry. Therefore, the theme is generally: The current and future trends and the role of MBAs in IT industry. Microsoft Office 2010 Workshop SummIT cell has always stressed on adding value for the students and there was no better way than asking Microsoft to conduct a session on Microsoft Office. The session was conducted by Dr. Nitin Paranjape, the Microsoft Guru. The session was a huge success. SummIT cell received accolades from all the attendees.

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Paragana Khoj - the online treasure hunt game is organized in November, as part of the college annual fest, Paragana. It also features paper presentation contest on IT case studies. Ideate Ideate, is the interactive IT newsletter. Every issue invites articles on various broad topics of IT. SummIT launches this magazine quarterly to keep the students informed on the recent developments in IT. Zero Respect Zero Respect is the inter-collegiate LAN Gaming event organized by the SummIT cell as part of Euphoria , cultural event at NMIMS, Mumbai. It was conducted in 2010 in a 2-day period (March 5-6th) and featured the popular multiplayer games (Counter Strike 1.6, FIFA 11, NFS Most Wanted, Call of Duty MW II). The gaming room was equipped with gaming boards and LED lights, projectors, etc. Rock music played while the gamers took on the battle. The brand new and powerful Alienware laptops on which the gaming was conducted added to the ambience and gave the participants a rich gaming experience.

Manthan- the IT e-Magazine Manthan is a unique initiative undertaken by SummIT. From last year, Manthan has gone online in eversions. It invites articles from the top B schools of the country and publishes the best articles. Manthan has also enabled the confluence of diverse industry perspectives on IT and business.

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IDEAS Seminar Articles

IDEAS Seminar
IDEAS is the flagship seminar of SummIT. This is conducted specially for the first years immediately after joining the institute to give them an overview on the latest trends in IT industry. This year, the topic of the seminar was Careers in IT after MBA. It featured a panel discussion between the industry experts from Information Technology sector. The guest speakers were: 1. Mr. Sachin Kelkar, Head of Channels, Intel 2. Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat, Vice President, Patni-IGate 3. Dr. Nilay Yajnik, Chairperson, Information Science, NMIMS, Mumbai Dr. Nilay Yajnik opened the panel discussion with an introduction to the first year batch about the increasing role of IT and systems and the importance of MBA in IT. Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat carried over the discussion explaining the MBA roles in IT industry in different functions as mentioned below:

Mr. Lokesh Bhagwat, Vice President, Patni-IGate

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Fun Corner

IT Buzz

IDEAS Seminar

IDEAS Seminar
Mr. Sachin Kelkar added to the discussion explaining about the new trends in IT in the future. In year 2020, the new buzz words and the mega-trends in the IT industry would be as follows:
Mr. Sachin Kelkar, Head of Channels,, Intel

Articles IT Buzz Fun Corner

Dr. Nilay Yajnik concluded the discussion and opened the house for questions. There was great enthusiasm among the audience and the question answer session was highly interactive.

Dr. Nilay Yajnik, Chairperson, IT, NMIMS, Mumbai

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IDEAS Seminar

Traditional vs. Virtual Office

tried to think about how to make your office building or office space more environmentally responsible? This is a very common trend and/or mission in todays traditional work spaces: changing to more ecofriendly lighting, beefing up recycling practices, avoiding paper copies of documents, etc. While all of these are effective and important steps in the effort to green-up todays offices, there is still one solution that offers a completely new dimension of greening to todays workplaces getting rid of them altogether.

Ever

Go Green with the Virtual Office

Fun Corner

Following are some aspects as to how a traditional office affects the environment. Traditional bricks and mortar offices use electricity all day to run lights, computers, printers and copiers, fac- By: Varun Verma similes, security cameras and alarms, fridges, microIst year, NMIMS wave ovens and coffee machines, hot water systems and any number of other appliances. Even outside business hours, many offices have night lighting and armed security systems that constantly use power. Traveling to and from a traditional office building on a daily basis causes a further impact on the environment. If you drive you are contributing to air pollution and using up just a little bit more of the oil supply. If you have several employees, the environmental footprint of your business can be even larger. Widespread use of virtual office environments reduces highway congestion and save money for both the employer and the employee. Many companies are now eliminating the need for physical office and thus the cost of leasing, lighting and maintaining that space. Then there are the small things we dont think much about for example, if you or your employees purchase food in take-out containers at lunch time, or pick up a few cups of coffee in paper cups during the day, you are adding to that massive global rubbish pile of take-out food containers. At the other end of the scale the demand for bricks and mortar office space for an everincreasing number of businesses contributes to the expansion of our concrete jungles and the consumption and manufacture of the materials used to build them. Companies like to be responsible and maintain their triple bottom line performance. By adopting Virtual Offices, companies can not only cut the costs enormously but be responsible simultaneously. For the vast majority of knowledge workers in the world each work day begins by `going to office'. The office is where one's `desk' is, where team meetings take place, where one meets colleagues, supervisors, and team members; and also where one catches up on organizational gossip. At the same time, spatially and often globally distributed teams are commonplace these days with variable degrees of distribution. For example, teams may be distributed over floors,

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buildings, cities or countries. It is becoming increasingly common for knowledge workers to conduct a majority of their interactions during the course of a work day electronically, using email, chat, phone or even video, without ever meeting face-toface. In fact, a growing number of employees today work from home; some organizations have even gone to the extent of dispensing with the physical offices for thousands of such remote workers. So, why do we still `go to office'? Are we losing something by working remotely? If so, how can innovative collaboration technology restore this missing 'something' for remote workers and distributed teams, and perhaps even go beyond it? Virtual Office What it is not? Another IM tool IM tool is not based on a spatial metaphor. Groups of people are created by users themselves i.e. is user driven which is not realistic. One needs to know everyone on his/her contact list/groups which may not be true in case of an professional setup like an office. There is no awareness of ongoing conversations between others whereas in real life one will hear all that is being said in his/her aura. Cumbersome to use, e.g. one has to initiate/join conversations whereas in an office you would just go up to someone and start talking. Another Virtual World General purpose too many updates, bandwidth heavy. Aura-based communication and presence aura sizes too large, dont always know whose listening. Interface issues navigation by small increments, manually change window focus to switch from chat to navigation or vice-versa. General animations and actions may be inconsistent with domain, accidentally start dancing or flying in office. Virtual Office What it is? Enables informal interactions with employees or coworkers in a remote office. Be virtually at your desk when working from home/out of office/travelling. Manage a remote team by virtually walking around .(MBVWA) Visit a collaborators office. Housing a distributed team. Outsourced knowledge work executed in offshore office. Interact with remote co-workers when physically in office.

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Features

Replicates a real-world office - The virtual office mirrors the real office both in architectural and internal layout. Each employee gets the same virtual seat as his real world seat thus maintaining the realism of the Virtual Office. To develop this model we start from the floor plan of the office and create the 3D model.

Floor Plan of the office

3-D Model of the Office

Logical Location Grid - The office space is divided into set of logical locations which can be mapped on the X-Y plane. Range of cells is marked for different places in the office viz. rooms, conference room, seats, corridor space. The user navigates from one logical cell into another as he would do in a real world.

Articles

IT Buzz

Aura Aura is a bounding space around him which matches the real world aural range. A user can see status of other users; can textchat with them who are present in his aura. The aura changes as user moves virtually and gets the new aura information. 3-D View of the office

Fun Corner

Navigation - Navigation in Virtual Office is incremental i.e. a user can move one cell at a time. User can use arrow keys to navigate in his aura. However if he needs to visit someone outside his aura he can either find the path himself or can use the navigation command and the system will find the path itself. In any case the navigation is not by teleporting because that doesnt happen in a real

Navigation by Walking

office.

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Chat - The most important feature of the Virtual Office is the facility to chat with the colleagues. VO provides an aura based chat wherein you can chat with the users present in your aura. However to enhance the functionality, shout mode and whisper mode are also provided. In shout mode your chat goes to the whole office as in if you are announcing bagging a new deal to the whole office whereas the whisper mode comes in handy when you have to gossip. Screen Sharing - Screen sharing facility is incorporated to deal with collaboration over documents, reposts and codes and remote management. Any open source solution like VideoLAN (VLC) can be used for this purpose. Meetings in Virtual Office Conference Rooms Theres a common saying that a good boss is known by the number of meetings he attends. A typical meeting in an office includes everyone going to the meeting room, choosing a seat to sit, presentations, interactive sessions between the audience and the presenter and maybe an Audio/Video in some cases. A Virtual Office solution will be incomplete without this feature. The salient features of Virtual Meetings are as under: 1. A document is shared among all the audience which will be used for the presentation. All the users have to navigate to the conference room either by walking or using the command based navigation whatever suits them . Speaker - Initiates the presentation for all by using the appropriate command. - The webcam video and 3D audio is being streamed Speaker View ence. Audience - Moves to the conference room and choose where to sit depending on the availability of the seat. - Can raise hand to ask a question or to seek a clarification from the presenter. - The presentation document can be independently navigated or can be synced with the presenter.

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Audience View Virtual Office offers almost all the functionalities as would a real world office. For the above mentioned merits more and more companies are adopting this solution. It clubs the Green IT and something which someone misses when working from home/travelling. Virtual Office is a complete package and has a bright future.

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The next time you buy a laptop how would you like an upfront discount for your next purchase and what if that discount is for taking part in a cause? Yes it has been a reality for quite some time in the United States of America. Electronics buyback programs have been present in the US for quite a number of years. Usually large retailers partner with third party firms who take ownership of the recycling or reuse of old PC or laptops. The consumer generally ships the product to a third party vendor in exchange for cash or other incentives. These are then sold, refurbished or recycled by the vendor.

Consumer Buyback Programs

Why buyback? As the consumer electronics industry grew rapidly the main concern for consumers and companies alike when going for electronics product upgrades is the generation of e-waste. USA alone discards an estimated 30 million computers each year By: Raghavendran R and an estimated 70 per cent of heavy metals in landfills come Ist year, NMIMS from discarded electronics. A major portion of this is exported to China and Nigeria. In addition to making money by recycling was difficult and therefore there are lack of options to safely dispose electronics. For consumers who upgrade products frequently to keep abreast with the latest releases would find buyback program the most convenient. Not only does it help gadget lovers to continue with frequent upgrades but also encourages upgrade to consumers who are sitting on the fence because the current product is still functional. The latter form a large portion of the untapped target consumer segment and hence providing them an incentive to upgrade would increase sales. A lot of companies have approached different strategies for recycling. Some approach it from a pure perspective of recycling while others view it as an opportunity to lock in customers for future purchases. Lets have a look at few of them: HP In January 2009, HP started the Consumer buyback program in collaboration with Market Velocity, Inc. (MVI), an independent third party. HP calls its new program the HP Consumer Buyback and Planet Partners Recycling Program. The program offers money in exchange for any brand of PC, monitor, printer, digital camera, or Smartphone that HP determines still has some sort of value. The unique feature of this program is that it is not restricted to HP consumers. The website has given users facilities to provide the configuration of the old laptop and a quote will be provided. For corporate, HP offers Asset Recovery Services to safely dispose of old, unneeded IT equipment irrespective of the manufacturer. This program also takes care of the crucial aspect of data security that corporations face when disposing old equipment. HP also has pre-owned equipment solutions for servers, storage and workstations. Apple The company until recently offered only recycling option for old apple products that had to be discarded. On August 9, 2011 Apple announced its buyback program in partnership with PowerOn. Users can use the preliminary evaluation tool online to estimate the valuation of the phone and then ship it. PowerOn also securely erases user data before reselling the devices. An iPad in good condition can fetch $165 and an iPhone 3G (16GB) can fetch $65.

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Dell Dell has partnered with Techforward, Inc. to offer buyback program. However, this program works on a slightly different principle. The consumer has to enroll for the TechForward Guaranteed Buyback Plan for a fee. On enrollment, Techforward Inc. provides a guaranteed rate for the user. The consumer is eligible to receive up to 50 per cent back if the product is returned within six months of purchase, 40 per cent for up to a year, up to 30per cent for a year to year and half and finally up to 20 per cent for two years. The unique feature of the program is that consumers know upfront the amount they can redeem. The company has designed algorithms that could predict the future resale value of electronics for this purpose. TechForward also started a trade association called Ownership 2.0 with other companies based on subscription-based services or temporary ownership models, like temporarily owning textbooks. It also relieves the consumers the hassle of throwing away a fully functional product just because one does not have a use for it any longer. TechForward resells goods from its customers, rather than actually breaking them down into their component parts. BestBuy Similar to Dell, BestBuy launched its buyback program this year and the consumer is eligible to receive up to 50 per cent back if the product is returned within six months of purchase, 40 per cent for up to a year, up to 30 per cent for a year to year and half and finally up to 20 per cent for two years. Unlike Techforward, BestBuy has a flat fee chart for all consumer electronics items and the fee structure is transparent to the consumer. However, before jumping onto the bandwagon, spend a few minutes on checking on the points given below: Program features: Is the program enrollment fee attractive enough for one to realize sufficient discount and are there any riders for buy back? Sales tax: The consumer is triple charged for tax. First for buying the initial product, then for returning the product and receiving the gift card and finally when using the gift card. Accessories: If all the accessories are not returned then the buyback policy guaranteed value reduces. Data security: Ensure the third party vendor has a good record of wiping out data in used devices. Can you do it yourself: Although buyback offers the convenience, they are not the most profitable options. If you can do it yourself on eBay or craigslist then give buyback program a pass. What can one do about e-waste in India? In India, very few products come back for recycling. In the 8 million computers and 35 million cell phones used today, the number recycled is less than five per cent. There are not many options available for consumers to dispose e-waste responsibly let alone get some money for doing it. However, few companies are providing corporate solutions for handling e-waste. Attero is one of the few players in the Indian market catering to e-waste recycling needs of individuals and corporate. All one needs to do is call 1800-419-3283 to schedule a free pickup for an old monitor or pc that needs to be thrown away. Recently the company launched a new service http://www.atterobay.com/ to handle mobile phones reselling and recycling. It works similar to TechForward where users can send in mobile phones for vouchers, cash or plant trees for the equivalent amount. So the next time you are left electronic product that is no longer required, Think green and recycle and sometimes it pays!

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Cloud computing is certainly a hot topic at the moment as more and more organizations are opting for Cloud based services for varied reasons. The vast array of web based shared computers known as Cloud has become a top priority for most of the companies because of its flexibility (as it is easily scalable) and eco -friendliness. By transiting to Cloud, the company reduces the cost on its facilities and also helps in marketability of its services to customers by reducing carbon footprints and hence being a responsible Corporate Citizen. In current global scenario, the heavy weights like IBM, HP and SAP are ready to lock horns with existing players like Amazon, Salesforce and Microsoft whose offerings have matured over a period of time. More and more research has been carried out to make the Cloud data centers more energy efficient. A report from Cleantech market intelligence firm Pike Research has forecasted that the adoption of cloud computing will lead to a 38% reduction in worldwide data centre energy expenditure by 2020.

Cloud Computing Green or Brown!!

Articles

By: Alok Bugde Ist year, NMIMS

But what accounts for these significant energy savings? Think of cloud computing as being like a mass transit system. The data centre is essentially getting computing applications to carpool or take the bus instead of sitting in their own individual servers. However, unlike mass transit, there is no sacrifice in convenience or performance with this move. Consider the disappointing fact that a typical server in a company often runs at about 10% of capacity, meaning there are lots of servers out there drawing power without doing much computing. Like single-occupancy cars, those servers use up much of the same energy than they would if they were running at full capacity. Scalability is one of the key feature of cloud computing. Resources dont have to sit around consuming power when underutilized and can be (virtually) spun up when required. This greatly reduces the under-utilization of the resources as seen in the traditional data centre servers. One of the most popular example is How the Cloud computing aced the Australian Open website. The site attracts more than 10 million visitors every year, a huge cluster of those visits only during January while the event is on. For the rest of the year, activity is much lower. In earlier years, servers had to be deployed to cope with that expected peak demand, but that isnt necessary now thanks to the intelligent use of cloud systems. A company's move to the cloud may reduce the direct carbon footprint of that company, as it has shifted a portion of its energy consumption (and therefore carbon emissions) to the cloud provider. In most cases, there will also be a net carbon reduction, due to the greater energy efficiency of the cloud provider's ICT

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infrastructure and data centre. As a matter of fact clouds also differ in terms of Green efficiency i.e. some clouds are greener than others. Greenpeace points out that eBays new flagship data centre in South Jordan, Utah, is loaded with energy efficiency features, but Utah derives over 81% of its electricity from coal. The cloud, in that case, says Greenpeace, is brown. Alternatively, a major U.S. data centre service provider has located all of its data centers near the Columbia River to take advantage of hydroelectric power. Thats a truly green cloud. But theres catch here, an overzealous demand for low latency (reducing the number of connections between Cloud data centers and clients) may mean that large data centers still need to be located in metropolitan areas where the environmental impact is high. Thus a call must be taken between business efficiency and green efficiency. Also the availability of cheap resource would prove to be a costly affair in the long run and would itself go against the cloud computing. Availability of cheap resources results in poor optimization of resources. By cost based analysis, it is cheaper to add another server than to optimize the current solution for data storage issues. Hence defeating the green purpose of Cloud computing. Over-processing of the cloud server would result in over-utilization of cloud based data centers, by allowing things that may never have been processed before to be processed without an impact on performance, for example, selecting a very large set of data for analysis because you can literally process the data in an hour where previously it could have taken days. So, hypothetically speaking we are using more resources, not less. Thus by Jevons Paradox, it may mean that in the end we end up using much more of a more efficient resource, paradoxically increasing energy consumption, which is definitely NOT Green.

Articles IT Buzz Fun Corner

Thus there are many "it depends" moments when we talk about the greenness of cloud computing. But none of the big cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft or IBM are publishing metrics at all. It solely depends on these cloud providers to become more transparent around their utilization and consumption numbers, which will help us to gauge the energy efficiency of cloud computing. Until then whether cloud computing is Green or Brown it is still a subject to debate.

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The picture of our Earth as seen from the moon is

bound to hold anyone awestruck. It looks like a beautiful blue lamp, hanging in space, obviously alive. Although, in the first glance, it seems to be made up of innumerable separate species of living things, on closer examination, every one of its working parts, including us, is interdependently connected to all the other working parts. In a way, it is the only truly closed ecosystem that we know about. To put it in another way, it is an organism that came alive, billions of years ago.

Green IT Initiatives

IT Buzz

Man has evolved over thousands of years. Every stage has resulted in several inventions and discoveries. One of the most significant inventions was that of the computer. With the advent of computers, so- By: cieties all over the world have become greatly influenced by them and now computers form an integral Vudayagiri Ganesh Samvaran part of our lives. In the current age, almost 70% of Ist yr ,NMIMS our daily chores are carried out by machines. Technology is developing by leaps and bounds. Technology has penetrated completely into our life and now we have even started segmenting it, so that each branch can be developed further. One such branch is Information technology. We are living in an information age where information is the key factor to sustained growth. Information technology is surely a needful and identified sector which can be leveraged for optimization of computation, automation of repetitive tasks and, furthermore, to have an edge in the globalized economy. Information technology has its own pros and cons. Uneven growth pattern, as a ripple effect of the bulge in Information technology sector has caused the mass inflow of people, in and around the IT establishments, mostly to the cities which causes the cities to expand unevenly, creating concrete jungles by deforestation and loss of self sustenance to villages. The imbalance produced in the ecosystem needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner. The following initiatives can be implemented to bring harmony in the ecosystem and minimize the harm that can occur because of the development in IT sector. Tele-work and Virtual meetings: We need to maintain a proper mix and match of face to face teaming and virtual teaming. This will reduce transportation costs and help us conserve fuel thus reducing the carbon footprints of a company. Proper planning and breakup of projects into independent logical units will ease teams to work at their own locations, resulting in optimization of work as a green IT initiative.

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Cooling and Powering: Cooling and powering of data centers consume a huge amount of energy. IT Corporate groups with the help of political bodies should turn their investments towards pure pollution free energy sources like solar energy. This will reduce pollution and help us in saving our non-renewable resources. Optimized Processes and Procedures: IT groups should implement green IT initiatives to reduce the carbon prints by encouraging ERP implementation so that, a paperless enterprise can be established. CSR: The Information technology segment should take up social responsibility and build some supplementary programs with help of political systems to rebuild self sustained green villages. This will prevent the mass exodus from the villages and gives a boost to the green IT initiatives. All the employees should adopt a positive lifestyle through proper connect points to natural ecosystem so that the positive energy in and around them is reinstated which will indirectly improve the interdependent environment. E Waste Management: IT groups should follow e-waste management and handling rules. E -waste collection centers should be established so that the unused and obsolete electronic products do not sit idle at homes, where one does not know what to do with the waste as there is no systematic mechanism to dispose it. E-wastes are considered dangerous, as certain electronic components contain toxic metals, biologically active materials and plastic additives. These should be disposed in a proper way to minimize the hazards due to toxic waste. This in a nutshell, is the great challenge of our time to create sustainable communities i.e. social and cultural environments in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations. Being ecologically literate or ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities. IT sector, which forms a major part of the world economy in the present day scenario, can contribute immensely towards the promotion and implementation of the green IT initiatives. We need to revitalize our communities including our educational communities, business communities, and political communities so that the principles of ecology become manifest in them as principles of education, management, and politics.

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Green

IT refers to the environmentally sustainable process of manufacturing, using and disposing of computer hardware efficiently and effectively with no or little environmental degradation. This is also achieved by minimizing the usage of toxic components like mercury and lead while manufacturing hardware and also by making the products more and more energy efficient. An energy efficient hardware product would minimize the usage of electricity while running and this would lead to less environmental degradation.

Implementing Green- IT in Relation to Computer Hardware

The very concept of designing efficient hardware is important in todays world as IT is progressively taking on increasing roles in the business world, which is leading to data centers becoming larger and the increased usage of desktops and laptops. The problem is even more aggravated with hardware becoming more affordable and the rising cost of energy, which is a scarce resource. Implementation of energy efficient hardware By: would lead to decreased running costs and increased profits.

Articles

Chiranjib Banerjee Ist year, NMIMS

IT Buzz

Also, the heat generated by computing equipment, especially large data centers has a multi-fold impact. First, a large amount of capital needs to be spent in running the cooling equipment. Secondly, the heat from these IT equipment is discharged in the environment, leading to increased global warming. Thirdly, heat being a by-product is essential a waste of energy. Designing and manufacturing energy efficient IT hardware would reduce the impacts of these problems. Utilization of LCD monitors instead of CRT monitors have helped reduce energy consumption and heat generation to a large extent. Many organizations in the IT hardware manufacturing industry have taken initiatives to go-green. The initiatives range from educating and making conscious the end consumer to incorporating efficiency in their manufacturing process and making their products energy efficient.

Fun Corner

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRYInitiatives taken by LenovoVarious manufacturers have incorporated the Green-IT theme in their manufacturing processes in order to save the environment and

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portray their image as that of a caring brand. Lenovo portrays its range of computing products as the easiest way to go green. Its entire product range is manufactured from recycled plastic. For example, its Thinkpad L series notebooks contain 85% recycled plastic content. In terms of energy saving, Lenovo produces IT hardware which is ENERGY STAR 5.0 compliant, which translates to upto 60% decrease in energy utilization and costs. The company has also devised a software (Thinkpad Power Manager), which it bundles along with its range of products. Using this utility, the energy usage per desktop per year can be reduced by upto 69%. Lenovo also implements the concept of bulk shipping in which the company ships many products packaged together. According to Lenovos estimates, if it ships 5000 desktops together, it helps in saving 10,000 kgs of packaging material. The Asset Recovery Service which caters to the end-of-life products is provided by Lenovo helps in data destruction, proper recycling and cash-back credit for next Lenovo purchase. This helps Lenovo in retaining its customers within its own brand and being environment friendly at the same time. Initiatives taken by DellDell India has also taken initiatives to encourage green behaviour in consumers by launching discount coupon in 2010 to encourage PC recycling. Under this program, consumers who send their old PCs to Dell for recycling were offered discounts on their next purchase of Dell systems. Dell also had launched the Go Green Challenge in 2010 in an effort to raise awareness and community involvement in green initiatives in India. The company invited citizens to submit photographs and videos of related to concerns and thoughts on green technology, online. The 20 entries which received the most votes from the community were given recognition online and were also given gifts to motivate them to further their ideas related to environmental protection. The challenge had received 627 green ideas, 108 green pledges, over 2900 online registrations and built a community of over 21,000 fans in Facebook.

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Todays enterprise data centers are running into a Going the green Way
power and cooling wall. Significant increases in the business demands are fueling the growth in the size and complexity of data centers. This, in turn, is increasing the total power consumption and heat generation in data centers, pushing the limits of todays electrical and cooling systems.

for Data Centers

Articles IT Buzz Fun Corner

How green is your data center? If you don't care now, you will soon. Most data center managers haven't noticed the steady rise in electricity costs, since they don't usually see those bills. But they do see the symptoms of surging power deBy: Arnab Malick mands. Every year, as we revise our standards, the power Ist year, NMIMS requirements seem to go up," says Forbes, senior vice president and manager of mainframe technology at Regions Financial Corp. in Birmingham, Ala. "It creates a big challenge in managing the data center because you continually have to add power. To address this challenge, designers must take a holistic, systems perspective and determine: (1) How each component of a modern data centerincluding processors, servers and blades, storage, racks, and cooling systemsshould be designed to do its part in achieving power-efficiency? (2) What policies and mechanisms are required to piece together the powermanagement capabilities offered by individual components to create a power-efficient green data center? Consolidation, and consolidation of some more Consolidation of servers is the best way to start when you want to make a few basic changes and yet achieve substantial savings. In many DCs, at a time around 10-30% of the servers are dead which could be turned off. Going Virtual is one of the best ways to go in for this initiative. This not only saves direct energy cost but also helps in increasing the utilization of the Servers. Power management The potential savings of leveraging power management with the latest processors are significant. AMD's newest designs will scale back voltage and clock frequency on a per-core basis and will reduce the power to memory, another rapidly rising power hog. Also, Just taking full advantage of power management features and turning off unused servers can also cut data center energy requirements by about 20%. Apart from these, its often argued that turning on power management can actually increase reliability and uptime by reducing stresses on data center power and cooling systems.

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Moving up to the energy-efficient servers As newer architectures and designs evolve, they are much more energy efficient than their predecessors. "Intel's Xeon 5100 delivered twice the performance with 40% less power," says Lori Wigle, director of server technology and initiatives marketing at Intel. Moving to servers based on these designs should increase energy efficiency. High-efficiency power supplies showing the way Every watt of energy wasted by the power supply requires another watt of cooling system power just to remove the resulting waste heat from the data center In spite of this, achieving cent percent efficiency is out of bounds as there is a certain amount of tradeoff between efficient and cost premium. Power supplies are available today that attain 80% or higher efficiency -- even at 20% load -- but they cost significantly more. High-efficiency power supplies carry a 15% to 20% premium. So optimum power supply efficiency should be chosen which suits the best. Internal business barriersthe bane In most organizations, IT functions (load generator) are separated from the facilities (power bill payer) group. Breaking down those barriers is critical to understanding the challenge -- and providing a financial incentive for change. The line between these groups should blur as it can be the smallest of things that can affect your power bill. It can range from simple room-level air conditioning to targeted cooling systems that move heat exchangers up to -- or even inside -the server rack. Standards to guide you There are several certifications and standards in place which should be able to guide organizations into buying the best energy efficient IT equipment. For Servers, the Energy Star certification is in place. Another group called the SPEC (Standard Performance Evaluation Corp.) on performance per watt benchmark for servers that should act as a baseline for energy efficient customers. Change for the future IT equipment manufacturers won't design for energy efficiency unless users demand it. So organizations need to take it upon themselves, to push these initiatives forward. Greater Energy efficiency should be the long term goal towards which all should be working on. With the above simple paradigms in place, the Datacenters of today can move towards the GREEN Data Centers of tomorrow. It will not only be beneficial for the society but also for the Organizations where they will be able to cash in on its benefits and rake in moolah. Its after all money that speaks.

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The turbulence in the current economic scenario has forced organizations to resort to cost minimization in all aspects. With developed nations like the U.S and many European nations drawing flak for their thriftiness, managers are now more conscious of how much is being spent and the question which often comes to limelight is What is my Return on Investment? .Very often the return on IT expenditure is subjective and it is the budget of CIO that comes under the hammer. IT organizations thus need to streamline their business process by enhancing capabilities which gives them the agility and flexibility to respond quickly to changing business opportunities. The task of building capability should be central to the organization performance and a systematic management approach is essential for incorporation of learning and development of the IT workforce. With new technology gaining traction every day, it is crucial to impart the workforce with competency and confidence to work in these new arenas.

Future drivers of IT: Building capabilities and devising competitive strategies for tomorrow

Articles IT Buzz Fun Corner

Organizations need to build a comprehensive plan By: Anubhav Mishra to find avenues to fill parity of demand and supply that exists with the current market. The demand that exists is Ist year, NMIMS something that has come up recently in the innovation space. Inflexibility creeps in into workers who remain stagnated in a specific technology for a long period of time. So when these workers come up with anything new they tend to be reluctant to take up these activities. It is only through the development of competencies that workers would be more comfortable to groom themselves into the requirements of the changing business world. The channelization of talent into the training should be done only after a careful study of the upcoming technologies in the market. Management of workforce over great distance is another aspect which is very important. With escalation of prices in real estate it is becoming by the by crucial for diversification of offices from location of prime costs to cheaper working locations like the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities of nations. It is thus imperative for companies to endow appropriate management skills to leaders so that teams with members dispersed over different locations can work in tandem. To achieve such synchronization team members not only need to have a great understanding amongst them but also needs to have a higher degree of trust in each other capabilities. An expedited method of dissemination of information is crucial to build high performing teams under such circumstances. Fortunately technologies such as Microsoft Unified Communication proved to be a one stop solution for all communication in an office. Of the innumerable strategies that can be adopted by IT organizations we shall discuss a

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few of them which will impact the way IT organizations operate in the current business scenario. IT companies rely heavily on the capabilities of the workforce for producing revenues. The workforce relies on a knowledge base to enrich those using searches which can be termed as knowledge mining. Formation of an indigenous repository of information and a common platform for sharing of information can be of great help to the workforce. It may be a mistake on the part of the organization to quantify the value that search for information contributes to the profits of organization. The inhouse knowledge centers would prove to be more useful as it would have the resources contributed by people having common goals. The repository should be powered by efficient search engines to give better matches for helping the workforce to leverage on the work and ideas of other workers. Workers can troll for information to gain insights which could guide them make business decision. With the evolution of cloud computing the perspective of IT companies has changed vastly. IT companies should be more aggressive in acquiring business form Medium scale enterprises. Some of the most renowned cloud services are the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, the Google Cloud Connect (imagine how we are able to open office documents in Google Docs over the web without having the requisite application in our local systems), Microsoft Windows Azure. Creation of private clouds would be an efficient way to woo such customers who have shoestring budgets at their disposal. Clouds would eliminate the capital expenditure of such clients as infrastructure costs would be minimal. This ropes in the concept of SaaS (Software as a Service) which is other known as on-demand software which is hosted centrally and is accessed by a thin client through a web browser over the internet. Such software is often maintained by experts and the hardware required to perform voluminous transactions would be furnished by the cloud service provider. Designing of the architecture and planning of which cloud services are to be made available is to be done judiciously. For the internal operations of the IT organization and delivering projects to customers decision needs to be made on how to leverage on public clouds. Delivering ready to use applications would not only reduce the expenses of customers in quantitative prospects but also would give the IT companies a recurring profit depending on the volume of data that is transacted over the cloud. Availing applications hosted on private clouds would help customers to be more tolerant to faults and also enhance their capability to be more continuous in their business operations. IT companies should thus equip themselves with appropriate infrastructure to create their private clouds and thereby be ready to showcase their capabilities to potential customers. Modularization of cloud services where they are divided into components parts like the operating systems, applications and middleware is another offering which IT companies can think of to gain the competitive edge.

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Web 2.0 brings in the concept of Wisdom of Crowd where an organization can reap benefits from the interaction of social capital. Collaboration and creation of mashups are some of the other avenues which Web 2.0 offers. Mashups are the most important concepts involved in building of dashboard applications which are used by Insurance companies and various banks which seek data from varied data sources e.g. an insurance manager may want to track the performance of the agents who report to him and at the same time he may want to check the workflow of certain requests that he had raised. The offerings of Web 2.0 being vast thus give IT companies to contemplate and concentrate their efforts around the concept. Virtualization is another space where IT companies need to concentrate. Virtualization has transformed the architecture of computing. With extensive growth in data volumes and declining budget to address the maintenance of datacenters it has become essential to optimize the utilization of resources. Server virtualization has brought in higher efficiency and building agile datacenters where resources can be started or stopped as per requirements. The advent of virtualization has given IT providers a solution which fills up the inadequacy of Storage Area Networks (SANs). Virtualized Machines are much more capable as far as scalability, manageability ,sharing operation are concerned in comparison to their counterparts (SANs). With the intensification of price challenges IT companies in the Service Sector should transform more towards a product oriented approach. In India where majority of the IT companies are service oriented, the vision of the management should be towards the development of products so that it caters to the needs of the current and future market demands. Customization of such products needs to be done to meet the requirements of clients belonging to different spheres of business. The management should be able to visualize future in a time frame which others find it difficult to see and the management should be willing to invest at that pace. The concept may seem to be far-fetched but it has been observed that some service based IT companies are investing heavily in e-commerce applications to get the desired results. The design of enterprise applications should consider the small gadgets and gizmos of the modern era which includes the mobiles, palmtops and laptops used to access the web. With heightened compatibility of such applications they are more prone to get attacked. But that is the cost which application developers have to incur to find a greater traction in the market. Key loggers, viruses, malware and Trojans are some of the programs which can lead to the pilferage of valuable information present in these devices. The only remedy to the maladies is to build application with higher level of encryption and using digital certificates created by trusted publishers.

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Finally providing adequate workforce for the sustenance of legacy systems is something which IT companies cannot neglect. They have been and will continue to be the backbone of the service oriented IT companies. A methodical approach to the execution of such task is what most clients expect and performing up to the expected task is what makes them satisfied. An excellent performance in the development, maintenance and support of these systems followed by cross selling of the latest technologies by the pre sales team is what may work wonders for the revenues of IT companies. The strategies discussed above may be just technologies in which IT companies need to spearhead themselves and for managers to impact the business positively through scrupulous application of such concepts. But staying in touch with the real time information may be the most important tool for decision makers. Harnessing the skills of consultants from specific fields makes the task of understanding clients easier and also makes the IT takes of looking from the perspective of clients easier. IT companies need to be more agile in meeting the expectation of clients in a stipulated time period and should also be smart enough to cater to the unexpected needs of clients. Building a healthy and fruitful relationship is the key to thriving in any market under any circumstances. It is more of a symbiotic relation for both the IT vendor and the business client where conversion of information into insight leads to the prosperity of the client which in turn makes the vendor has more jobs at hand.

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Recent IT news of the quarter

The Google Motorola deal Googles acquisition of Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion is for a lot more reasons than just access to over 17,000 patents and the intellectual property. Google with this acquisition has vertically integrated hardwaresoftware ecosystem like Apple for better profit margins. Motorola Mobility also has a significant set box business which Google might be very interested to leverage after the lukewarm response received for Google TV. Infosys plans to redefine BPO services Infosys views the current global slowdown as an opportunity to move up the value chain and feels organizations operating on traditional BPO models will be left behind. People are crucial to a firms success in BPO industry and the other important factor is ability to address future client needs in the present. Anantha Radhakrishnan, vice-president and head Business Transformation, Technology Services and Customer Services at Infosys BPO said that HR, new operating models and innovation are top priorities. It is leveraging on cloud capabilities to deliver business processes to client. Infosys is trying to sell business-outcome based end-to-end services leveraging the cloud model. That means a client can buy a business service from Infosys BPO, which is offered on a point solution created by Infosys on SAP, run on Amazon Web Services infrastructure. The client will only pay Infosys based on business outcome and not for the application or licensing of SAP or for using Amazon services. Infosys would take care of that in the backend. Infosys has also launched "Infy-on-the-go" a mobile service using Infosys proprietary mConnect and MS Outlook frameworks. Supervisors and managers can use this service to approve workflow requests real time using Blackberry and also have Outlook for offline access. After the deployment more than 5000 travel approvals (around 20 % of overall approvals) have happened using BlackBerry over the last 5 months. They have also achieved about 32% reduction in ticket cancellations due to on-time approvals.

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Apple to go on without Jobs I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. Steve Jobs On August 24, 2011 Steve Jobs announced that he is stepping down as CEO and Tim Cook as his replacement. The visionary will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee. Product roundup Apple loses iphone5 prototype. Amazon to release a tablet. Sony debuts android powered Walkman player prototype. Samsung tries an extra large screen phone with Samsung Note (5.3 inches). HP to exit PC, mobile and tablet business HP the worlds largest PC maker announced its intention to sell or spin off its PC business. The reason behind it is stagnant revenues, stiff competition and the future of PC is not too bright in the world of mobility. It also announced premature discontinuation of its tablet Touchpad which triggered an immediate stock clearance sale. The tablets were sold for $99 apiece, a full 75% discount on the original price of $399. In continuation with its shift in focus to software business, it acquired British company Autonomy for about $10.2 billion. Autonomys enterprise software specializes in database search and the company is also looking to move into Saas.

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1. 2.

With reference to a CPU, what does MIPS mean? Who is the Indian CEO and Chairman of Motorola Solutions? When and where was Google founded? What is the full form of IBM? The capacity of which component in a PC determines the colour depth and screen resolution of a monitor?

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Who has succeeded Narayana Murthy as the chairman of Infosys recently? Which bank did he head formerly?

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What amount of money has Google agreed to pay Motorola to acquire its Motorola Mobility business?

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Which 2 companies did Tim Cook, the present CEO of Apple work for before he joined Apple in 1996?

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Which Ace Indian shooter is set to get KhelRatna? Which company replaced Reliance Industries as most valued company in the elite of 30 companies that constitutes the Sensex?

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10.

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Old Computer ads

ANSWERS of Quiz

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1.Million Instructions per Second 2.Sanjay Jha 3.Menlo Park, California in January 1996 4.International Business Machines 5.VRAM 6.K.V.Kamath, ICICI Bank 7.$12.5 Billion 8.IBM and Compaq 9.Gagan Narang 10.Coal India

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Pylon of Isis
It is an online treasure hunt organized by Team SummIT for the first year batch of NMIMS. In this game, the participants have to cross the different levels. The clues to the next level are present in the existing level and one might have to change the url, click an item or answer questions or explore the map page. The person completing all the levels earliest is the winner. Around 90 teams (180 members) participated in the event. 37 teams were able to crack the treasure at the end. The blog page http://labyrinth2010.blogspot.com was hyper active and attracted over 1000 page hits in a span of 3 hours.

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Editorial Board 2011

Ideate is the SummITs quarterly newsletter. The main objective of these newsletter is to make the people aware of the latest trends in IT. Every issue focuses on one theme which is generally one of the new buzz words in IT industry. The newsletter consists of articles on various topics related to the central theme. This Ideates theme has been Green IT. We sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading this issue. Best Wishes Team Ideate 2011

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Team SummIT
Faculty-In-charge: Dr. Nilay Yajnik (Follow him at http://nilayyajnik.blogspot.com ) Yogeshwar Kumar Venil Shah Samir Sethi Anusha Bonda Anshul Mahajan Tarun Gupta Ankit Jain Rajat Anand Mayank Golcha Bijo Mani Roshni Bansal

Contact Us at summit@nmims.org Website: http://summit-nmims.co.in/ Address: Narsee Monjee Institute of Management & Higher Studies (University), JVPD Scheme, Vile Parle (W), Mumbai 400056 Tel: 26134577/26143177 Fax: 26114512

September 2011