TESCO and its IT Generated Advantage…

To analyze the IT Generated Advantage of TESCO, let’s take a look at the various fields of technology where it has operated/invested till now.  In 2001, for the first time TESCO became involved in the Internet grocery retailing. It obtained a 35% stake in GroceryWorks. In October 2003 the company launched a UK telecoms division, comprising mobile and home phone services. In 2004 it launched a broadband service. It also offers and Internet based DVD rental service. Tesco also increased their online presence with its flagship F&F and Cherokee clothing lines.

Tesco.com’s success in the online grocery field really showcases their IT Generated advantage over other competitors. With annualized sales of more than £500 million, Tesco.com is the world’s largest online grocer. Presently, it has more than 3 million registered customers, and delivers 120,000 grocery orders per week. The company also started using Google Adwords in late 2003.

Stewart Hunter, Tesco's Online Advertising Manager, wanted to take advantage of AdWords' ability "to promote our non-food businesses as well as to target customers in a more cost-effective way." He adds that a key measure for Tesco is its return on investment (ROI): "if it's not cost effective, we won't do it," he says.

"We've witnessed dramatic increases in driving traffic with online advertising during the key campaigns we've run," says Hunter. "Google has delivered really well for us on electricals, for example, and is very good at driving trade for us during specific occasions. Over Mother's Day, we were able to drive 15,000 visits over a two-week window and saw a conversion rate to sales as good as any advertising we undertook. These were cost-effective sales for us. They surpassed our internal sales targets."

Tesco has also upgraded their IT infrastructure in collaboration with Microsoft technologies. Since the arrival of the ITAP advisor and by using Microsoft enterprise IT management framework, Tesco.com has seen significant improvement in how it plans, manages, and delivers architecture. In particular, better alignment and integration with the business, and establishing a dedicated enterprise architecture capabilities, processes, and standards.

TCP SYN ATTACK: A Form of DDOS Attack

A Syn-Attack is a form of Denial-of-Service Attack. In this type of attack the attacker sends a flood of Syn Packets to the target machine and brings it down. To understand this attack in a better way we need to take a look at the connection initiation phase of TCP protocol. When a client attempts to establish a connection with the server through TCP, both the client and the server needs to go through a 3-way handshake phase. The steps shown below demonstrate the 3-way handshake:

1.   The client requests a connection by sending a SYN (synchronize) message to the server.

2.   The server acknowledges this request by sending SYN-ACK back to the client.

3.   The client responds with an ACK, and the connection is established.

 In a TCP SYN attack the attacker exploits the first step of the 3-way handshake protocol. When he pumps a flood of SYN packets to the victim machine, the victim machine sends ACK back to the client for all the millions of SYNs it received. It not only sends the ACK back, but the server also expects a response from the client. Hence the connections are half-open at this stage, which basically translates into consumption of a huge chunk of memory. After some time when the whole memory is used up, the server can no longer accept new incoming connections. So, all the legitimate users are blocked from using the server’s services. This is clearly a form of Denial of Service attack.

There are several ways in which this attack can be mitigated. One of the methods which I worked on is by using Syn-Cookies. In this case, when a client sends a SYN to the server the server acknowledges the SYN by sending an ACK with a cookie value set. The client has to respond back to the server using the same cookie. Otherwise the connections will be dropped. Moreover, if the client doesn’t respond back in a stipulated time frame, the half-open connection will be closed too. In this way the attack can be thwarted quite comprehensively. I used to work on this feature while working on a Cisco Product called Application Control Engine (Cisco ACE). During the testing phase, I used to generate millions of syn packets to attack the ACE, but the syn-cookie feature was very stable and I could crash the system only once :D.

I know I have used a lot of technical terms in this blog. If any of my class mates is interested in learning this is detail I will be happy to help.

Should Companies Adapt to ERP or the other way round?

ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning software according to Wikipedia definition

“is an Integrated computer-based system used to manage internal and external resources including tangible assets, financial resources, materials, and human resources. It is a software architecture whose purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders. Built on a centralized database and normally utilizing a common computing platform, ERP systems consolidate all business operations into a uniform and enterprise wide system environment.”

In short ERP helps to integrate the data in an organization in a single database so that various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other.

The purpose behind is not only to ensure transparency but also to facilitate tracking down information regarding the status of a particular   order or its dispatch and other related operations.

In my view companies should actually put in effort to adapt to ERP solutions. The company should train itself and learn the various pros and cons of ERP solutions out in the market and make a correct decision while choosing the correct ERP platform. No company can progress further without properly grasping the ERP fundamentals. The Company has to properly understand ERP fundamentals in order to derive the maximum outcome. These are crucial factors deserving attention when it comes to ERP. The services of ERP cannot happen all on a sudden in an organization. It is a long drawn process .The spade work that needs to be done may require a couple of months and even years depending on issues like volume of the organization. Meticulous planning will definitely help to achieve ERP benefit.

Companies have to be vigilant enough more so when it comes to the question of choosing the appropriate platforms and ERP software. This issue becomes crucial when it comes to the point of corporate amalgamation. The software used by the different companies have to be brought under one common platform.

In more simple terms, ERP is software that has been designed to function in a certain way, obviously taking into account the needs of the customers. Companies who want to centralize their operations using ERP solutions should seek proper help with training and planning from the ERP solution providers. Once they are convinced and ready to adapt to the solution, they should go ahead and implement ERPs.

Let’s also consider the scenario, where the ERP solutions are customized to meet the needs of each company. First of all in this case, companies again have to go through the fundamentals of the ERP software to understand the implementation to use the solution correctly. Moreover, there is no end to customer demands and it will be very difficult to for the ERP solution providers to match all the needs of the customers.

To conclude, I feel that there should be a balance from both sides. ERP solution providers should design the software keeping in view the needs of customers and the companies should adapt their organization to be able to use this solution productively.

Facebook's Challenges for future

Facebook has become a phenomenon in the Internet Social Networking space growing massively. Recently they touched 400 million users figure. But, while Facebook dominates the US social networking market, similar international networking platforms are keeping a global monopoly on virtual social life out of reach for the California-based company. Facebook faces some strong challenges ahead of them for their future growth. Last year, they filed a lawsuit against German Social Network, StudiVZ for the violation of copyright laws, because of mimicking of its logo, features and services.And to add to their woes, StudiVZ has already 5.5 million users as compared to 2.2 million users of Facebook in the same areas. Facebook has to somehow find out a way to thwart these kind of copyright violations in future. Otherwise, it might prove costly to them in future.

Moreover, Facebook faces some strong competition from other popular social networking platforms like Orkut, Hi5, Bebo. Orkut has a strong presence in the South American and Indian market. Bebo has become extremely popular in the United Kingdom and Australia.  These platforms are a real threat to Facebook's global aspirations. Facebook should find out innovative ways to move ahead in future and maintain their exponential growth.

One of the right steps that they took yesterday, was to forge a deep integration with Yahoo. Users will now be able to log into Facebook from their Yahoo homepage. Facebook will benefit a lot from this partnership, because they will now have access to Yahoo's global market presence.

DIFFICULT ROAD AHEAD OF GOOGLE??

Google: One of the most powerful brands of the world…4^th best to work for…Internet’s most visited website…and the saga of success continues for this amazing company.

But when I decided to take a closer look at Google’s innovation success in the past 12 years of their existence and some of their future plans, the picture didn’t seem that rosy as I had expected it to be.

Some of the key issues that I observed during my analysis are:

Are they really successful with their “innovative” products?

Google has released a large number of products in the market over the past. But apart from their Search Engine, Gmail and google maps, most of their products have not done well. Google Chrome has only around 7% of the market share. The Android market share over IPhone is not as impressive as one would have expected.  Their Spreadsheet also didn’t do that good business as expected. Their NexusOne mobile phone also tanked in terms of usage and sales. Even one of their biggest revenue generators (youtube) was a result of acquisition. Now with facebook having captured the social networking market completely, and orkut usage dropping every single day, they sure realize the incoming threat. They have to lead the market in innovation if they are to maintain their growth in the long term.

Privacy Issues:

This is known to everyone. Google doesn’t handle the privacy of its users very well. Either through google chrome, cookies, mail snooping or surveillance of wifi networks they have breached the privacy on numerous occasions. Recently, it was disclosed that google had collected about 600 gigabytes of data from users of public WIFI stations during 2006-2010!! They really have a lack of concern for the user data and try to use the data to their maximum advantage.

One thing that will be interesting to observe in future is if google actually innovates more in future or relies more on acquisitions. I expect more leadership in terms of innovation from one of the leading brands in the market.

Fundamental Concepts of Internet

This post is a continuation of our previous Information Systems class, where we were introduced to the fundamental terms of the Internet Technology. Having worked for almost 5 years in Cisco, I felt obliged to share my knowledge with all of you.

In the beginning I would like to point out that all the technical concepts of Internet communication have been inspired from the real world. I mean that the different protocols that are currently being used by computers to communicate with each other are very similar to the ones we use in our daily life.

The fundamental unit of information in computer networking is known as Packet.  Each Packet holds all the data that is being communicated between computers in the internet. Now, to send this packet from one computer to another we require addresses. Compare this situation to the one where we send letters from one address to the other. The terminology used in the Internet technology is known as IP Addresses. Each computer connected to the internet should have a unique IP Address associated with it. When packets are being transmitted from one computer to another, they are stamped with both the Source IP Address and Destination IP Address. Both the source and destination addresses are mandatory for the communication. When the packet reaches the destination, the destination computer processes the packet and then it replies back to the source. In order to reply to the source, the IP addresses are swapped, i.e. the source IP address becomes the destination and vice-versa.

An IP address (according to IP version 4) is of the format x.x.x.x, where each x is a number between 0-255. So there can be a total of 2^32 unique IP addresses, which is like a huge number of addresses. But the amazing fact is that we are already short of addresses by using this scheme of addressing!! The internet has grown so massively that even 4,294,967,296 addresses fell short. So, we are now gradually migrating towards a new format of IP addressing scheme called as IPV6 (version 6). For further readings on the IP Addresses you can take a look at the following links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/question549.htm

There are millions and millions of computer in the internet. Imagine the number of packets that are flowing in the internet constantly! It’s humongous. So there are lots and lots of intelligent devices working in the background and making sure that the traffic flow is smooth, fast and reliable. Some of the most fundamental backbone devices of the internet are”

Switches and Routers:

 To understand the functionality of these devices clearly you have to understand the concept of Network Layers, which I will cover in one of the future posts. As of now you can think of these devices as traffic controllers, which make sure all you packets reach their destination by taking the shortest possible path and time. They also do error correction control and make the system more reliable.

Firewall:

This is one of those devices which control the security of your network. You can define your policies and based on those policies, the firewall inspects every incoming packet. If the policy criteria match with the packet details, the specified action will be taken on that packet. The action can be one of Accept or Drop.

There are plenty of other devices like the Server Load Balancers, VMWare servers, Global Site Selectors, Security threat detector and protector etc…

I am going to cover the functionality of all the devices mentioned above in my future posts.  This  is just the beginning…

Revenue and Social Networking websites...

 Social Networking Websites and $$$$...

I have always wondered about how social networking websites make their money.  I am planning to be an entrepreneur myself with an online presence. So, I thought I might do some research and figure out how do facebook, orkut , Myspace or linkedin generate millions of dollars.

The social networking sites have the following primary sources of income:

i.                     Investments from Venture Capitalists

ii.                   Acquisition by well established players in the market

iii.                  Advertising

iv.                 Fees for Premium accounts

In the beginning, when an entrepreneur with an innovative idea decides to transform his innovation to a venture, s/he approaches several venture capitalists. S/he tries to convince them about the idea and the project. If a venture capitalist picks up the idea and decides to invest on the project then the entrepreneur can start implementing the project right away. In most of the cases the seed capital is a combination of several sources like individual savings, money pooled in from friends, families and venture capital.

Now, as the business starts growing and the operational costs increase the entrepreneur has to think of other smarter ways to fund the project. S/he can choose to approach other investors again. But that is not a long term scalable approach. In some cases if the business has already created a large number of users the owner can decide to sell to other big players in the market.  Take the example of Youtube. Google acquired Youtube for 1.65 billion$ back in 2006.

But for entrepreneurs (like Facebook) who decide not to sell, they use advertising as one of their main sources of revenue. Web advertising is still an emerging market. Web advertising is broadly classified under 2 categories:

i.                     Cost per click (cpc): Pay whenever the advertisement is clicked by an user

ii.                   Cost per view  (cpv) or Pay per view (cpv) : Pay whenever the advertisement is viewed by an unique viewer

Although the television industry currently earns the maximum chunk from advertising, the fate of online advertising will see a radical change in future. A lot of research is currently being done to figure out the best way to advertise online without annoying the users.

Another way of generating revenue is to make users sign up for premium accounts. Businesses who sign up with the website can get premium facilities to market their products.

The popularity of social networking websites is growing exponentially. Now, with additional gadgets like IPhone and Blackberry’s they have an additional advantage to generate more traffic and more money.

Sources: 

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/information/how-social-networking-sites-make-money1.htm

http://techcrunch.com/2006/11/13/google-closes-youtube-acquisition/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising