Providers experimenting and analysing “virtual care” to suit the post-pandemic needs

• According to a report published by Klas Research, healthcare providers after months of experimented approach and trial and error with new platforms, are equipping themselves with virtue care assistance for their post-COVID operations.

• A survey conducted with 277 organisations found that almost a quarter of people responding want to aggressively replace their platform or feel unsatisfied with it. Respondents also said that even though lesser in number but powerful enough tools are present today to match all the telehealth needs of the future – particularly from inpatient organizations.

• The report also highlighted that video conferencing vendors are amongst the most exposed because replacing them will be a fairly smooth process.

The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled the healthcare providers and clinicians across the country to turn to the available digital tools to continue providing routine care along with experimenting with varied other platforms to see what best can be delivered as virtual care. Klas research found that while most of the healthcare providers use the telehealth capabilities with a blend of multiple IT options to meet their virtual care necessities.

The Klas research categorised the virtual care vendors into 3 groups – video-conferencing platforms, EHR-centric virtual care platforms and non-EHR virtual care platforms for determining the provider opinions. Non-EHR virtual care platforms are healthcare centric with their focus on offering multiple visit types, patient scheduling, check-in, virtual waiting rooms and other healthcare workflows.

According to the report, Amwell and Teladoc’s InTouch are the primary players even though only a few customers plan to use them to meet their telehealth needs of the future. Klas researchers said that, “Amwell after a recent partnership with the Google Cloud, has struggled to scale to growth and maintain enough support with its customer satisfaction slowly declining since 2018.”

The respondents rated their highest satisfaction for the non-EHR virtual care platforms with Caregility at the top followed by TelaDoc’s InTouch, VSee, MDLive and Amwell. Subsequently, researchers asked about video conferencing platforms used for clinical cases. The results showed that of the 30% of the respondents using Zoom and Doxy.me said that they will not stick to these vendors for long and are looking for systems with better integration and simplified clinical experience which suggests that they are looking to switch their EHR vendor options in the future. While Microsoft was the differentiator with its newly developed healthcare-centric capabilities for Teams, Vidyo performed the worst as a video conferencing platforms.

The last category was the HER-centric virtual care platforms which involved patient portals that enabled for scheduling, documentation and billing that can also be done natively or via an EHR integration. According to the report, both Epic and NextGen also scored high for respondents overall satisfaction as strong EHR integration was enjoyed by the clinicians.

The users of Epic have often more complex needs though, while all respondents said that Epic will be core to their telehealth strategy with less than half considering it as their sole vendor. Over 80% of the respondents using NextGen said they will use Virtual Visits offering acquired from OTTO Health as their only source of telehealth technology. These customers consistently reported a positive feedback from the patients receiving a link directly via an email and were able to easily launch into a visit.

Cyberattacks in Healthcare reported a soaring spike since Nov. 2020

According to a Check Point Report, cyberattacks opposed to healthcare organizations have risen up to 45% since Nov 2020. During this period, other industries however saw a 22% rise in cyberattacks. In the month of November itself, Central Europe witnessed 145% increase in attacks and North America saw a 67% increase.

The cyberattacks included ransomware, botnets, DDoS and remote code execution. While most of the ransomware were targeted on a broad sector, the report found that Ryuk attack is tailored towards targeting the healthcare industry. Due to the pressure posed by the Covid-19 on the healthcare industry, offenders are making the maximal financial success in interrupting operations that have no room for free time.

CISA had proposed security recommendations for healthcare defense last year however Drew Daniels CIO and CISO of Druva said that, “there are also known control channels which can be blocked past in order to prevent the troublemakers.” These agitators will develop newer channels of infection and if any organization identifies Ryuk, then constraint and recovery will become the dominant business. He further said, “Security is not certain, nothing involving the internet can ever be. It isn’t just designed in that way.”

Ryuk was paused before re-surfacing in the fall. An infection can begin with a trojan such as Trickbot, Emotet, Dridex, or Cobalt Strike. Research by Deep Instinct finds that, “the earlier generations of Ryuk were rarely found without followed by Trickbot in its environment.” This allowed organizations to detect and dismantle Trickbot to therefore avoid a Ryuk infection. This Ryuk redundancy heavily relied on human-driven exploration.

The ransomware strain even though developed now, still relies on Trickbot and spear-phishing and document containing a VBA (visual basic for applications). macro. Targeted organizations can balance between blocking or allowing, in case the ransomware is able to use Powershell alongside. “This can catch back to the admins doing anything they can in order to not impact their user base, which can even mean lowering the security posture of the environment”, says Deep Instinct. This is one reason why Ryuk thrived in the healthcare sector during the pandemic.

Security propositions for ransomware can often drill down to traditional hygiene methods. Daniels, on a recent healthcare ransomware attacks, said, “I was shocked by the lack of the basic security hygiene and I I would be negligent not to miss the importance of patching and patching and patching”. Along with the routine antivirus updates, IT can restrict the users on their ability to run specific applications, but with also running the risk of interfering with employees’ output.

 Daniels further said, “This may fundamentally dull down some of the risks, malware can be delivered via macros in an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document or anything similar that’s part of our daily working”. In continuance, he said that “it is unlikely that this level of functionality can be turned off as it would severely limit the users’ capacity to work. Years old system have been designed to enable connectivity, productivity and openness.” If a system was completely read-only, it would largely curtail users’ expediency.

Data Engineering Trends in 2021

The year 2021 will foresee a tremendous increase in the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and other domains of data science. Walking the trail into the future, let’s take a look at the latest developments in data engineering in the year 2020 and what’s in store for 2021 and thereafter. The recent data engineering trends can be primarily divided into the following 3 categories –

1. Data Infrastructure
2. Data Architecture
3. Data Management

Before we go into the depths of each of these categories, let us also spend a moment to know the top 3 predictions for the year 2021:

1. Metadata management including data lineage, data quality and data discovery tools will together blend into a mainstream data management platform.
2. Data Mesh principles will observe a significant adoption in driving this unified data management platform.
3. Lakehouse systems including Iceberg, Rudi, Data lake will be significant in shaping the data engineering architecture.

Data Infrastructure

Managed Data Infrastructure and Serverless Computing – The year 2020 saw the cloud platforms continuing adoption of the open source data infrastructure solutions. This adoption is growing from AWS’s EMR, Azure HDInsight, Google Cloud Data proc to the latest AWS managed Airflow. Even though opinions may differ on cloud platforms packaging the opensource, the Cloud managed  infrastructure certainly has many pros for the consumers to rapidly adopt complex infrastructure and put their attention to solving business problems.

2021 and beyond –

Cloud Datawarehouse – Since 2010, tightly coupled computing and storage has been the go-to approach to run large scale data processing engines. It was in 2019 when the industry finally acknowledged the cloud data warehouse system, after declaring that data processing is the old way of thinking.

With Snowflake’s successful IPO in 2020, cloud data warehouse systems emerged as an assurance for the future. The Amazon S3 update is as an important step in adopting object storage for the Cloud Datawarehouse system, with a powerful read after write consistency.

2021 and beyond –

Cost Optimisation – The Cloud Datawarehouse as well as the managed data infrastructure systems has put pressure on optimising the cost of operating the data warehouse systems for example, Netflix. At the same time, the GPU accelerated workload provides a strategic business advantage examples of which can be Pinterest and NVIDIA.

2021 and beyond –

Data Architecture

Lakehouse – The support for ACID transactions, data versioning, auditing, indexing, caching as well as query optimisation are the vital characteristics to build large scale data systems. 2020 saw emerging lakehouse frameworks such as DataBricks Delta Lake, Apache Hudi and Apache Iceberg. Lakehouse is a new generation of open platforms that unify Data Warehousing and advanced analytics.

2021 and beyond –

Lambda vs. Kappa vs. Lambda-less – The real time and batch computing management to provide one integrated dataset view remains the primary challenge in data processing. Pinterest writes on some of the challenges of Lambda architecture as well as its migration journey to the Kappa architecture. Linkedin also took an interesting approach to the Lambda-less model.

2021 and beyond –

Streaming SQL Engines & OLAP Engines – Real time computing and insights are crucial for many businesses. Event sourcing is a well-established design pattern that brings up this question – Can we merge compute business metrics and streams or feed it all into the OLAP databases and query it?

2021 and beyond –

Data Management

Data Quality and Metadata Management – The data quality is critical for developing a data pipeline, and the ML model is as efficient as the quality of data. Both Microsoft and Airbnb write on how data quality effort improved its organisations decision-making process. One of the most remarkable trends of 2020 is the emergence of tools and infrastructure in data engineering for managing metadata at scale.

2021 and beyond –

Data Mesh – Data Mesh in 2020 emerged as a de-facto principles for scale data management as an organisation grows. We have see a number of companies moving beyond a monolithic data lake and adopting a distributed Data Mesh.

2021 and beyond –

DBT & Workflow Orchestration – The fundamental pattern behind the success of DBT is that the industry embraces SQL as the best data abstraction mechanism for most of the data engineering workload. The success of DBT is also primarily driven by the corresponding successes of cloud data warehouse systems and the data lake 3.0 systems.

2021 and beyond –

How will the Manufacturing Sector revamp post-Covid

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic had sent the manufacturing sector into a topsy-turvy state. Due to government-imposed restrictions and lockdowns, most of the operations were halted or curtailed. Some of the manufacturing units were even brought to a standstill. The supply chain was immensely disrupted leading to a shortage of raw materials, intermediate products, and finished goods. Employee health is also a matter of grave concern as physical interaction is risky.    

The key to overcoming such hardships lies in adapting to such circumstances. Anticipatory steps from both government and manufacturers will help in stabilizing the sector and fostering economic growth. China had portrayed exemplary behavior in adjusting to the current situation. As a result, Chinese GDP was showing positive trends while major economies had collapsed. CNBC has claimed that China’s GDP in Q3 had rebounded to 4.9% growth.

To plan and accelerate response, the following are key recommendations for the manufacturers for their recovery.

1.   Creation of an Agile Nerve-centre Team

Why do corporates seem sluggish to act in post-covid times when they had taken the quick decisions and rapid responses during the pandemic? It is the need of the hour. Such a mechanism should be applied to normal situations too. An agile nerve-centre team must be formed with some experts, decision-makers, and decision implementers. Based on the expert analysis, their recommendations can be considered by the decision-makers. After approval, the decisions would be implemented by the frontline workers.

Once the crisis subsides, such a team must remain active and alert to practice agile decision-making.  Such responsiveness would not only help in tackling uncertain events but also help in making the most of market demands.

2.   Updated technology

Companies that are more innovative in terms of leveraging the benefit of advancing technology were able to manage adverse conditions arisen due to the pandemic. The corps, whose solutions are based on the cloud had shown better resilience. Though cloud solution has its own security and performance issues, flexibility and less turnaround time for business continuity had weighed the scale in its favor.

  Another revolutionary advancement was 3-D printing. It will accelerate the shift towards digital manufacturing. It had proved to be successful in the conversion of design to finished goods. One such example seen was ventilators. 3-D printing experts and regulatory bodies such as FDA had matched shoulder to shoulder to make tested ventilators for the emergency.

For manufacturers, the inclusion of such solutions should be on their top chart to achieve tighter demand-supply agility and financial health. Companies open to new technology had shown 7% more revenue growth over their peers.

3.   Extended Supply Chain

In the global supply chain model, price is no longer the only prime criteria to source parts globally. Doing so would lead to a shortage of supply in a region farther from the supplier’s region. The regional supply chain needs to be incorporated. And they need to assent to global trade compliant requirements. It might not be the most cost-optimized but it will ensure reliable supply.

In the case of supply stoppage across the borders, manufacturers must accelerate the development of local, low-risk suppliers.  They would help in the smooth flow of materials. It is time for letting go of intellectual property rights, especially in the healthcare industry. Medtronic is one such company that had shared the design of the PB 560 ventilator publicly for the greater good of society.

4.   Change in Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior had shifted due to the pandemic.  After the lockdown would be lifted, new sales and marketing strategies are needed to adapt to new buying behavior. High-price goods such as automobiles were traditionally sold face-to-face. A new rich interactive online catalogs or sessions would compel the buyer to purchase the product. This would create a similar experience for the buyer as done before traditionally.

Almost every economy had trembled. The lower section of the economy pyramid had been hit hard. When normalcy has been established, affordability would be a major aspect in every consumer’s mind. Manufacturers’ should look out for value-added services and subscription value-based models to shift focus to customer-centric solutions. It would streamline revenue to old stable charts.

Empathetic behavior in times of crisis would make a long-lasting impact on the customers. Now, everybody remembers General Motors for manufacturing ventilators and Louis Vuitton for manufacturing the sanitizers and face masks.

5.   Protect and Up-skill the employees

Employees are the ones that will handle every operation for you. Therefore, it could be a great time to up-skill them. Not only would it help in times of crisis but also after the pandemic is over. Online learning platforms can immensely help in meeting this needs.

Big corporations must be concerned about their employee’s health. Online methods or automated solutions must be implemented to avoid the risk of infection and improve operation. For example, Walmart’s robot-run warehouse in New Hampshire reduced the human handling of goods and improved operations too. Such ideas could be used in other areas as well.

The Covid-19 has highlighted the importance of supply chain management and remote working. It is high time for manufacturers to convert every challenge to a growing opportunity.

Digital is the way to go in future Retail Payments

The world has experienced a major transformation in all walks of life with the global pandemic. And as the world is now coming out of this pandemic to get back to their lives in the new normal, people everywhere are looking for the best ways to protect themselves from any kind of viruses. And, making contactless payments is at the top of the list of protecting oneself from any kind of touch.

Even the United States is beginning to adopt ways such as phone wallet or contactless bank cards. Of course, the one and only Coronavirus is the primary force behind this sudden change. Amidst these times, it is appealing to know what 2021 has in store for us apart from the most-awaited Corona vaccine. Here, we will closely look at the top 5 digital payment trends for 2021 amidst the growing demand for contactless payments apps.

1. The GenZ – GenZ or Generation-Z is the term is used for individuals born between 1999 to 2012. Gen Z also happens to be popularly known as the digital world generation. Gen Z population might surpass the millennial population by year end, which indicates that world’s total population will see a shift towards a tech-savvy generation. This is the generation that has a higher dependency on pioneer and automated technologies and services. Therefore, the coming years will see an increased demand for digital payment methods.

• Mobile Point Of Sale (mPOS) – mPOS or Mobile Point-of-sale is a state-of-the-art technology that has made a big difference in the in-store payment process. mPOS is certainly a trending digital payment technology making the whole process more streamlined and flexible. mPOS has liberated the merchants from their brick-and-mortar locations to central checkout areas with staff equipped with mPOS devices.

• Mobile Wallets – A mobile wallet is a mobile application that mimics an actual physical wallet. With this, we can send and receive money to pay bills, buy tickets, do online shopping and receive rewards too. Companies can access the consumer usage easily with a mobile wallet. And, there can be many merchants using the same wallet for example Google wallet. A mobile wallet renders easy, quick and cashless payment services.

• Cryptocurrency – Blockchain is taking electronic payments further with its financial applications such as cryptocurrency. A cryptocurrency is a decentralized currency built on the blockchain network. With its ease of access and safety measures, cryptocurrencies now seem suitable to be used with retail payments. As cryptocurrencies are available on mobile devices and transactions are in a very short time with very less transaction fees which makes it especially viable for small transactions in the retail sector.

• Adoption of wearables – It is just a matter of time when wearable devices become a ecommerce. As wearable technology gains acceptance and importance with consumers, innovative minds in the retail sector have begun to come up with technology ideas to boost their customers’ retail experience. The endorsement by the retailers on use of mPOS devices in store has created an elevated push for consumers to adopt wearables in experiencing the benefits of all-digital wallet.

Digital payments is the way of life in the new normal. The future will see payment methods in the form of contactless apps. The transformation journey of retail marketplaces towards digitalisation will indeed be an exciting one. As this transition happens from cash to digital payment, more new trends will emerge. Contactless Payment trends will revolutionise our future payment methods intensely. This market is expected to grow more than double in size from $8.3 billion to $19.3 by 2026. Analysts predict contactless payments will be a prerequisite for companies to enable their customers to ease low-value purchases, make pandemic-friendly transactions to consequently support their revenue.

Contact us today to know about how you can transform your retail business with digitalisation!

Top 5 Healthcare Trends that unfolded in 2020

The year 2020 has seen Healthcare as one of the most essential, dynamic industry boosting with opportunities. Amidst this whole new normal expedition, there has been a surging global demand for innovation for continual improvements in health outcomes, access, quality, affordability. As the world challenges with the pandemic, the industry players must focus on the following top healthcare trends.

1. New Business Models – 2020 has observed advance and transformational business models creating a significant value in terms of healthcare costs as well as quality. There has been an extensive surpassing of the health systems that are coordinating between delivering continuing care with minimal dependency on acute care assets. The industry players must rapidly shift their attention towards driving these efficient ways of innovation and scale it further to give a boost to what has been done in the past.

• Modernized Care-based Model – Innovation in the care model has substantiated in multiple ways in this year. Care Models focused on the future will matter most to the consumers’ experience in the current healthcare ecosystem. By taking advantage of the fitting process, people and technology, the industry is now able to address advancing healthcare needs for both individual as well as group. Such kind of care models and technologies have enabled early diagnosis and efficient monitoring patient response. The year 2020 also saw an expansion in virtual care giving system.

• Healthcare Ecosystem – The medical industry is evolving with dynamic changes and the latest technologies like Applied Artificial Intelligence, telemedicine and other Cloud-based applications. These digital advancements have enabled fruitful ways for the development of a healthcare ecosystem that are personalized, consumer-focused, direct and automatic yet integrated. Healthcare industry leaders must now have a clear vision of their significant role in the future environs by finding how they want to organize their innovation capabilities with mergers and acquisitions.

• Healthcare amalgamation with the digital world – Nearly 65% of hospitals now are using either cloud or cloud-based services. Despite of the challenges, there has been an ongoing progress in healthcare transformation with the use of digital technologies. Cloud, 5G, AI and IoMT (Internet of Medical Things) are rapidly changing consumer preferences and shaping the healthcare sector. Rising use of DaaP (Data-as-a-Platform) are of great benefit to extract insights from patient data. With the advancing Telemedicine technology, health care systems will likely to continue their research and investment to identify uncertainties that might follow and keep those in check.
• Future of Work – New care models enabled by technology has a high potential to change the role that physicians will play in the healthcare infrastructure and delivery in the future. In the next 10 years, the transition will only accelerate. To offset their own workforce shortages, many nations are offering high incentives to pull foreign talent and encourage them to work in remote areas.  Healthcare organizations are also using alternate employment models such as contract or virtual to securely retain their cost-effective talent models of the next generation.

To conclude, the healthcare industry is emerging with some of the most appealing trends today. This makes it obvious that those who fail to assimilate modern technology trends will fell between the cracks. It is of utmost importance today to be aware of as well as effectively implement some of these technological trends transforming the care-based healthcare industry. Contact Us today for guidance with your digital transformation initiatives for your healthcare organisation.

VirtueTech and GoDaddy – a real example of growth by mutual support!

GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and incorporated in Delaware. GoDaddy is the world’s largest services platform for entrepreneurs around the globe. As of June 2020, GoDaddy has more than 20+ million customers and 7K+ employees worldwide.

VirtueTech is associated with GoDaddy since a long time now. Recently, VirtueTech and GoDaddy have been working closely together in the following Commerce Consolidation projects –

1.  MSH (Main Street Hub):

This project is regarding the owning the JIRA data from MSH acquisition. The flattening of the data by removing the PII information and ingest the data into Acquisition’s account and automate the process by using airflow orchestration.

2. Sucuri:

This is project is regarding the financial data of sucuri, where the cleaning of data from the raw and share it with EDS for GCR reports. In deep, the finding of the no of subscriptions, new revenue, total paid amounts for each invoice, etc.

• RTF (Real Time Finance):

This is project is regarding the financial data, where the cleaning of data from the raw and share it with EDS for GCR reports.

Other projects apart from the ones mentioned above are – RTF, FrontApp, Google Light House, Clean Layer Framework, Glue Clean Layer Framework, Jira Generic Solutions, advertising enablement solutions, and GCP to AWS. The project timelines for all of these recent projects have been starting September 2020 till December 2020.

We at VirtueTech have been providing seamless services to GoDaddy in Data Engineering on AWS, Hadoop Admin, and GCP. Of these, there are a number of AWS Services that VirtueTech has specifically used for GoDaddy project. They include – AWS S3, EMR, Spark, Hive, Athena, Service Catalog, Lake Formation, CI/CD Jenkins, Redshift, Redshift Spectrum, Lambda, and Cloud Watch.

Our well-timed and efficient services are the primary reason for our trusted and continuing relationship with GoDaddy. All our projects for GoDaddy were involved into building the data platform in GDE Account, and Commerce Consolation that was involved in building the Data Lake in the respective accounts itself. VirtueTech’s credible customer relationships have developed and strengthened as a result of our flawless AWS services and our extended support to all our clients’ project needs.

Contact us today to know more about how you can profit by the enormous opportunities in the world of AWS!

Accomplish your needs for rich data and quick decision making with Enterprise Data Lake

Our experts will assist you leverage secured integration pipelines from all sort of sources along with proper data security, privacy and governance.

Recently, the world has seen an increasing demand for faster and highly efficient data access at our fingertips. This has given birth to the concept of enterprise data repositories. These enterprise data solutions are termed as Data Lake. This enterprise data lake has offered various benefits such as –

1. Centralized enterprise content repositories
2. Win over the traditional systems for data source
3. Cleanse, enrich and transform data and analytics
4. Search, analyse and derive insights from both structured as well as unstructured data.

Enterprise Data Services Data Lake (or EDS DL) project is an one stop shop for enterprise wide reporting and analytical data needs. Data is procured from disparate sources, both internal and external to the organization. The data comes in multiple formats (relational, structured, unstructured) and at various cadence. The procured data is processed and shared with downstream systems, analysts and end users through various channels like Looker Reports, ETL pushes etc.

AWS S3 service is used for data lake storage. Different S3 Buckets are created as per business needs. Various AWS technologies are engaged for procurement and processing of Data. Most of the Data pipeline jobs run on Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) on Fargate services. Amazon EC2 instances are created and used in Amazon EMR Clusters where Spark services are hosted to handle streaming jobs. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is used to host necessary metadata for various jobs and tables. Amazon DynamoDB is used to store watermark values that’s needed for the incremental data pull and push. Security is implemented through IAM services. Multiple IAM roles are defined to control access for storage and processes based on business and team needs.

At VirtueTech, we help with smart data lake designs and help with managing the data migrations and transformations. We also empower the analytic team so they can work, experiment, and innovate. VirtueTech has had a trusted and continuing relationship with their Customer Getty Images. Our relationship has been developed as a result of our flawless AWS service and support to all our clients’ project needs.

Cloud Computing Primers

Sharpen our axe with Cloud Computing Basics by VirtueTech

Have you ever wondered how your Instagram photos, WhatsApp chats are restored whenever you change your phone? All of this and much more is possible through cloud computing. Let’s start unraveling what it is.

What is Cloud?

Two decades before, the organization used to own every infrastructure like servers, database systems to deploy their services.  But today, they need not possess everything on their own. They may seek cloud-based servers and databases. The term ‘Cloud’ refers to servers that are accessible on the internet. Softwares, databases are present on these servers. These servers are present in one or more data centres and managed by a cloud service provider.

Microsoft Definition of Cloud

Let us understand what is Cloud according to Microsoft’s website. The cloud is changing how applications are designed and secured. Instead of monoliths, applications are decomposed into smaller, decentralized services. These services communicate through APIs or by using asynchronous messaging or eventing. Applications scale horizontally, adding new instances as demand requires.

These trends bring new challenges. Application state is distributed. Operations are done in parallel and asynchronously. Applications must be resilient when failures occur. Malicious actors continuously target applications. Deployments must be automated and predictable. Monitoring and telemetry are critical for gaining insight into the system. This guide is designed to help you navigate these changes.

What are the primary services provided by Cloud?

1. IaaS: IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service consists of Servers as the primary component provided by Cloud. In this model of the cloud, servers and storage space are rented by the company from the cloud service providers. Examples of IaaS service include – Google compute engine, Open-stack, Amazon EC2. Infrastructure as a Service is used by Infrastructure & Network architects.
2. PaaS: PaaS or Platform as a Service consists of Operating systems, Databases, Development tools as the primary components provided by Cloud. This service can also be understood as consisting of everything a company needs to build its applications. The advantages of PaaS are primarily that it allows for higher-level programming with reduced complexity; the overall development of the application can be more effective, as it has built-in/self up-and-down ramping infrastructure resources; and maintenance and enhancement of the application is thus easier. Examples of PaaS service include – Microsoft Azure, Oracle cloud platform, AWS elastic beanstalk, SAP cloud platform. PaaS is primarily used by Application Developers.
3. SaaS: SaaS or Software as a Service consists of Software as the primary component provided by Cloud. With SaaS, users need not install every application to their system, instead, they can use the ones present on the cloud. Examples of SaaS service include – Salesforce, Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365, Amazon web services, Netflix. SaaS is primarily used by the end-users.

A decision needs to be taken to decide what model suits you the best to complete your application. After deciding the model, you need to know how these applications are deployed. Do all these applications launched publicly for everyone or some of them reserved for a closed group of people?

Now let us move on to deployment types of the cloud.

What are the different types of Cloud Deployment?

1. Public: It is a service provided by some external vendors usually open to all for usage and used by multiple organisations.
   • When to use the public cloud?
     1. For general computing requirements, like communication or storage of non-sensitive data.
     2. In case of varying peak demands where additional resources are required.
   • Example: Google drive
2. Private: It is a server  reserved only for a particular organisation
   • When to use a private cloud?
     1. When data is highly sensitive
     2. When  a higher level of control is required
     3. In industries with highly regulated policies
     4. In organisations where high performance is a priority.
   •  Example – In the banking sector
3. Hybrid: It is a combination of the public as well as a private cloud. It is used in organisations where some of their services are meant for public usage while other services are to be used by a closed group of people.
   • When to use a Hybrid cloud?
     1. For organisations where IT security and performance both matters in multiple verticals.
     2. For optimising your cloud requirements without compromising with the value.
   • Example – In the gaming industry, where user data is stored on the public cloud, and apps are maintained on the private cloud.
4. Multi: Multi-cloud deployment consists of several public clouds.
   • When to use multi-cloud? It is used typically in scenarios where you cannot rely on only one cloud service provider.
   • Example – An organisation using services, servers, or databases from multiple vendors.

Why organisations are moving towards a hybrid cloud than a private or public cloud?

Public cloud requires less maintenance and is highly reliable as they have more servers as a backup for failure. Since you need to pay for the service you are using, these clouds are more affordable.  The public cloud will provide innovation and flexibility. It will eliminate the capital required to own a cloud and maintain it. Moreover, you need to pay for the services that you use. The public cloud also comes with ample free resources to get through any bottleneck situation.

In the public cloud, you have less control over the data. You might not know in which data centre your data may be operating. That’s where the private cloud comes into the picture. Your sensitive data will remain in your private cloud protected by the firewall. While all non-sensitive data could be sent to the public cloud. It gives you more control over your data and customisations. The private cloud will ensure low latency that is another shortcoming of the public cloud. The private cloud has more flexibility. Private Cloud is an organisation’s cloud that gives you more customising option. It also ensures more control over the data.

Trending Cloud deployment services

With the continuously evolving cloud architecture and applications on the cloud, let’s take a look at how recent trends are changed.

A.   Database as a Service (DbaaS)

DbaaS, also known as managed databases, was started by Amazon web services (AWS) in the year 2009. It is expected to grow by 320 million in the year 2025. Setting up database, operating, and managing is one of the crucial tasks for any organisation. DbaaS let you use database service without knowing about its exact implementation.  Another advantage is its unanimous functioning regardless of the specifications of the database. The same service would work for any database used. It makes backing-up, creating, and resizing of database an easy task.

B.    Blockchain as a Service (BaaS)

Now, you don’t need an on-premise blockchain network to create, host, and use blockchain applications. Use the blockchain environment provided by the cloud service provider. It is effective in delivering minimum viable product.

C.    Big Data as a Service (BaaS)

This service comprises of statistical analysis tools or information. These tools help an organization to assess a large amount of unstructured data into useful insights. It helps them analyze the on-going business and how to gain competitive advantages.

D.   Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS)

As cloud service becomes incredibly accessible, so does AI with companies gathering and storing infinite data. This is where AIaaS comes in. Fror companies that can’t or are unwilling to build their own clouds and build, test, and utilize their own artificial intelligence systems, AI as a service is the solution.

Contact us today to know more about how you can explore this colossal world of Cloud!

Reform your telecom strategies to excel in the new normal

Drive your business with the leading telecom trends

As the world emerges post-covid, telecommunication industry is all geared up to explore newer markets with its basket of top-notch telecom trends. The pandemic has seen a wide transformation in the way people connect and communicate. During this time, the emerging technologies and top telecom trends proved not only a catalyst but also a saviour for the organizations that reshaped their strategies to deliver extraordinary customer experiences.

With the consumer demands changing at an accelerating speed in the new normal, the telecom industry has to continually innovate to deliver unprecedented digital experiences. As the world is progressing to normalcy, telecom companies are the frontrunners to fulfil their commitment to adjust and meet the changing business needs in the current era of digitalization.

Here, we explore the top 3 technology trends that are defining the Telecommunication Industry in the post covid world.

THE 5G REVOLUTION

The current era promises breakthrough changes with 5G. In this time of the new normal, both success and survival will largely focus on evolving with the changing times. The top challenge in the telecommunication industry are the increased demand for high-speed connectivity and minimal latency at improved data rates.

In the 5G world, telcos will experience a dramatic shift from being just technology distributors to being a blend of both technology distributors and service providers. This will put more responsibility on the telecom operators in terms of newer services, and enhanced customer experience. The high-speed 5G will also enable increased connectivity in remote areas, which was earlier never fully accomplished by 4G network as well. Now, 5G is being adopted as the future of the telecommunication industry promising immense opportunities for both businesses and consumers.

THE CLOUD EDGE

The global cloud computing market size is expected to grow from USD 371.4 bn in 2020 to USD 832.1 bn by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5% during the forecast period. Covid-19 has very well taught the world about social distancing and personal hygiene, but there isn’t a better time to learn and adapt to network distancing and hygiene by keeping our networks remote and secure. During the pandemic, remote network access is no more an option but a mandate. Our Cloud experts are effectively equipped to help you move from the past legacy system to the Cloud infrastructure and align cloud strategy to your business objectives at minimal risks and cost.

ADVANCING TELEMEDICINE

Telemedicine has been known for some years now, but has been widely embraced only during the COVID-19 outbreak. Telemedicine is a versatile process with endless possibilities for development. The Telemedicine trends can be classified as patient monitoring, healthcare information, intelligent assistant diagnosis and information analysis. In an age of digitalization, telemedicine can be limitless and largely exceed the capabilities and possibilities in healthcare as well as the telecom industry.

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT

Telecom is the lifeline of the new normal. This overview shows how revolutionizing and keeping pace with these recent telecom trends will help organizations envisage their future and lead the way forward.