We all know that Cloud Computing is one of the hot topics and lots of big companies adopted it already. Every week you can read an article on the internet or in one of the IT magazines. One year ago I started thinking on this subject after reading a number of articles on the activities of Google and IBM. The question that occur to me, can we introduce this also within the testing industry?

To understand the effect of Cloud computing on the delivery model in the testing industry, you need first to know what’s the IT or testing market currently asking and what can cloud computing offer. Let’s  first start with why already for a number of years companies see the importance of testing. The current keywords in the business are:

1. 1. Business is demanding earlier Time to Market(TTM).
2. 2. Traceability of the quality through the full process of software development.
3. 3. Complexity of the business chain.
4. 4. New non-functional requirements (compliancy, usability, performance etc.).
5. 5. More efficient ways to buy and deploy technology.

 These drivers in the business are speeding up the process and make IT & end to end testing to become a standard utility of everyday business.

The term “Cloud computing” has grown too big to explain in a couple of keywords. In the next paragraph I will explain a little more on the term and background, service offerings, risks and trends for the near future. In the second paragraph I will continue on the impact and possibilities for the testing industry, embrace the use of Cloud computing in it’s full appearance.  

Background on the terminology

Maybe you have heard about the term “Cloud Computing” but you wandering what’s it about and how it become such a hot topic in IT. Cloud computing is a bit of a catch-all term which can mean different things to different people and sometimes (wrongly) used by marketing departments. 

Cloud computing is in nature very conceptual. Some vendors use the term interchangeably with the term “distributed computing.” Others substitute it for the term “utility computing” or “hosted computing.” Others use it when they mean a type of web service. When you pin point it down, cloud computing is really a mix of all those phrases with each their own character. 

In general Cloud Computing is a type of computing, comparable to grid computing that relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios or even to deliver personalized information, or power immersive computer games. To do this, cloud computing networks large groups of servers, usually those with low-cost consumer PC technology, with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. This shared

IT- infrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together. Often, virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing.

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For an alternative definition, The Gartner Group defines cloud computing as, “A style of computing where massively scalable (and elastic) IT-related capabilities are provided as a service to external customer using Internet technologies.”

When you look closer at the term cloud computing and the way it’s currently being used, you can make a distinction between "cloud services" and "cloud computing." Cloud services  are "consumer and business products, services and solutions that are delivered and consumed in real-time over the Internet." In contrast, Cloud computing is the infrastructure or "stack" for development and deployment that enables the "real-time delivery of products, services, and solutions over the Internet."

So if you put all these things together you get the following services (based on an article of infoworld)

1. 1. Utility computing 
2. 2. SaaS (Software as a Service)
3. 3. PaaS (Platform as a service)
4. 4. TaaS  (Testing as a service)
5. 5. Web services in the cloud
6. 6. Internet integration
7. 7. MSP (managed service providers)
8. 8. Service commerce platforms

All the above named services have the following in common:

• Offsite: you don’t own the IT resources, rather someone  else has purchased them and you use them when needed;  
• Assembled virtually: virtualization technology allows multiple customer applications to be run on the system or on a machine;
• On demand: the resource can be turned on or off quickly and as needed;
• Pay-per-use: use as needed, the economic model is OpExand not CapEx, pay for what you need, not for unneeded capacity;
• Shared workloads: scale economies exist because of shared use and because client traffic may be non-correlated from a time of year or day usage perspective;
• Massive scale: access to extremely large infrastructure that would be challenging to build as a single entity

Services that cloud computing has to offer

In the next paragraph I will explain the different services and organizations that offer these cloud (related) services .

Utility computing 

The idea is not new, but it had a rebirth after Amazon web services, Sun, IBM, and the others who now offer storage and virtual servers that IT can access on demand. Early enterprise adopters mainly use utility computing for supplemental, non-mission-critical needs, but one day, they may replace parts of the datacenter.

The most obvious impediment to deployment addressed by utility computing is the need to provision and configure hardware again and again. Depending on the development methodology used, the size of the application and the level of desired redundancy, a single application may be integrated with hardware as many as six times. Every integration cycle inevitably introduces errors and they must be found and corrected. Utility computing eliminates continuous rebuilding of infrastructure. The needed infrastructure is defined along with the application in a portable format and the utility system creates that infrastructure dynamically every time the application is started.

However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Significant impact on development will come from more subtle changes in workflow enabled by the fact application infrastructure is portable and can be deployed multiple times at minimal cost. The developers can run actual copies of the full application to unit test their code. Eliminating simulation environments improve developer efficiency and increase the number of bugs found and fixed by the developers themselves. Test engineers can also use the application infrastructure even before the code is complete in order to build test suites. During the test cycle, multiple copies of the application can be run to reduce the duration of the cycle. Utility computing also makes different forms of testing levels more efficient by allowing cheap simple testing environments. Using utility computing enables developers and test engineers to focus on their core skills rather than worrying about hardware. The result is a more productive, streamlined process for taking applications to production.

Currently there are a number of big players that can offer you almost everything,  Amazon Web Services (AWS), Go Grid, AppNexusetc. etc.

SaaS

Short term for Software as a Service, is a software delivery method that provides access to software and its functions remotely as a Web-based service to thousands of customers using a multitenant architecture. SaaS allows organizations to access business functionality at a cost typically less than paying for licensed applications, since SaaS pricing is based on a monthly fee. Because the software is hosted remotely, users don't need to invest in additional hardware. SaaS removes the need for organizations to handle the installation, set-up and often daily upkeep and maintenance. Software as a Service may also be referred to as simply hosted applications. Salesforce.com is by far the best-known example among enterprise applications, but SaaS is also common for HR apps and has even worked its way up the food chain to ERP, with players such as Workday.
And who could have predicted the sudden rise of SaaS "desktop" applications], such as Google Appsand Zoho Office?

Platform as a service (PaaS)

Delivers Cloud computing development environments as a service. Developers can use tools and testing tools as a service on someone else's data center, building and refining their applications and services. In the end they can even put them through some “real world” performance testing, before going into production and use. We've seen a great deal of interest by the developers in using Amazon's Web services (Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)) for PaaS. Like Google App Engine (Python) or Salesforce.com (Apex Code), these services are constrained by the vendor's design and capabilities, so you don't get complete freedom, but you do get predictability and pre-integration. 

We've also seen a lot of action and interest from Microsoft and even IBM. The new kid on the block these days will be become Windows Azure but currently we don’t have the insight what they are going to offer.

Testing as A Service (TaaS)

Is yes again an new SaaS variation, this form of Cloud computing delivers testing capabilities as a service. Customers can deliver their testing activities to a external supplier, how will the testing activities perform for a new build application. The customer can use tools and testing apparatus as a service on someone else's data center before going into production and use. This way it’s easier and cheaper for customers to use specialists tooling. Prime examples include such as uTest and Sogeti. Both offer customers a commercial on-demand testing services with a flexible payment method. 

Sogeti is using his own qualified personal to find defects where uTest's model (TaaS) is using a social network of testers to help companies test their applications. Customers of uTest in need of on-demand software testing can instantly create a account, testing budget, and create and post a release cycle for testing by the uTester Community. They offer two pricing models. An on-demand and annual subscription. Both options use a pay-for-performance and pay-per-bug model. In the last model the tester initially specifies the severity of each bug, it’s the customer who sets the final severity, and makes the approve/reject decision for any bug. This is what establishes the price for each approved bug.  

The Sogeti model (Named STaaS, Testing Software as a Service) is created around the T-map mythology and is more official of nature. You will find a complete set of processes to take care of the governance of a test line. Example; you are not able to create instantly a account to arrange your application to be tested, but work with agreement on a strategic level regarding contracts and SLA. At this level there is a responsibility for setting up the contracts and SLA etc. etc.

If you are one of the larger companies that need more insight on the quality of the testing and security that not everyone is looking new application this model offers a lot of opportunities.

One semi TaaS provider I don’t want to neglect is http://userfix.com. This free and and open source Social feedback hub is the place where you can log defects found for any website currently on the web. It has a wide scale of defects, for every test level you can think about.

Web services in the cloud

Is closely related to software a service in that way vendors offer small pieces of code, known as APIs (application programming interfaces) that enable software developers to provide smaller applications over the Internet, instead of larger, more complex applications. Rather than a single organization maintaining libraries of APIs for every and any language their develops might use, different vendors can provide a range of APIs for discrete business services -- such as Strike Ironand Xignite-- to the full range of APIs offered by Google Maps, ADP payroll processing, Bloomberg, and even conventional credit card processing services.

A lot of people directly look at SOA and web services as two similar things but this is not true. Web services are the preferred standards-based way to realize SOA (architectural style for building software applications). Web services in the cloud are applications that be connected by APIs by using the internet.

Currently there are not many suppliers who are offering full web services for an online test solution. The only company that’s able to help with the testing is http://litmusapp.com. They are able to give the customer a compatibility report for websites.

I think that we see a growing market, when test management or tooling companies deliver their application online and the developer is able to integrate by using the API’s testing capabilities within his application. The next step will be that tooling around .NET, Java/ J2EEwill delivered online and customers will use this to validate technologies like SunOne, WSDL, XML, SOAP, UDDI.

Internet integration

Internet integration of cloud-based services is in its early days. OpSource, which mainly concerns itself with serving SaaS providers, recently introduced the OpSource Services Bus, which employs in-the-cloud integration technology from a little startup called Boomi AtomSphereSM.  OpSource Connect unifies SaaS applications in the “cloud” with legacy enterprise applications behind the corporate firewall. The OpSource Services Bus (OSB) is a multitenant enterprise services bus that provides a “write-once, integrate with all” capability for SaaS applications and Web services. The OSB allows applications to consume Web services, to integrate with other OSB applications, and to integrate with third-party, non-OSB applications.

SaaS provider Workday recently acquired another player in this space, CapeClear, an ESB (enterprise service bus) provider that was edging toward b-to-b integration. Way ahead of its time, Grand Central – who wants to be a universal "bus in the cloud" to connect SaaS providers and provide integrated solutions to customers.

FUSE ESB is one of the potentials for bringing SOA to unserved and underserved markets (such as smaller businesses and nonprofit organizations). In essence, people who don't have the budget for SOA solutions and consultants. SOA has been a part and parcel of high-margin business for vendors, but the time for market disruption may be here. Open source solutions may pave the way for this shift towards this new generation of commoditized SOA deployments.

The background of these “internet integration by Service” is, because organization will use more Web services mash up’s with data coming from multiple locations. In the end customers don’t care if the data is coming from the desktop or from a Web services call. They just want it to be secure and compliant. So we are helping our customers solve problems.

Managed service providers

This is one of the oldest forms of IT-services on the internet. It’s managed service is basically an application exposed to the cloud rather than to end-users. You can think about  a virus scanning service for e-mail or an application monitoring service. When you look closely to this service it’s something that is outsourced to someone else to develop it for you and all you have to do when it’s completed is to implemented into your own package.  Think of Google’s purchase of Youtubein which Google video has been rubbed out because Youtube did it better with video sharing. Or managed security services delivered by SecureWorks, IBM and Verizon, fall into this category, as do such cloud-based anti-spam services as Postini, recently acquired by Google.

Service commerce platforms

Is a hybrid of SaaS and MSP and better known as e-commerce. This cloud computing service offers a service hub that users or companies interact with. They're most common in trading environments, such as expense management systems that allow users to order travel or secretarial services from a common platform that then coordinates the service delivery and pricing within the specifications set by the user. But it all depends on what your selling and all that stuff. But either way what would take hours to set up a e-commerce site. Your cutting down the time and on top of that your connecting a lot of other e-commerce related services as well.  Such as airplane tickets, car rentals and a hotel reservations. Companies like Best Buy, Walmart benefit especially because they don’t have to maintain thousands of products of various sizes and prices. Well-known examples include Rearden Commerceand Ariba.

As described the next web solution is coming to us shortly. Microsoft’s Software-plus-services (S+S) is designed around Azure Services Platform. They are describing that it will bring together the best of cloud-based, hosted services and the software that resides on a variety of devices to provide flexible and effective solutions. This model is based on the premise that we need flexibility in the way which they access services and IT departments need the flexibility to decide which workloads they are most comfortable moving to the cloud and which are better left on-premise. 

Today companies around the world are implementing Microsoft technologies to take advantage of the best combination of on-premise software and cloud-based services. Using Microsoft Online Services, businesses including Coca-Cola Enterprises, Blockbuster and Energizer access and manage Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Office Live Meeting etc.  over the Web through a single secure infrastructure. In addition, 1 million people rely on Office Live Workspace for sharing and collaborating with friends, family, and colleagues.

Risks

It’s true these clouds services are build flexible but in the end they depend on network connectivity and normal hardware (servers, switches etc) which can fail like everything in daily live. They must withstand escalating (internal & external) security threats. And, upstart providers must build a strong customer base in order to survive financially. Failures in any of these areas could result in disruptions to a subscriber’s access to the online application which can adversely affect its ability to do business.

According to analyst firm Gartner, customers need to ask tough questions  and consider getting a security assessment from a neutral third party, before committing to a cloud vendor.  Says Gartner  in a June report titled “Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing.” Cloud computing has “unique attributes that require risk assessment in areas such as data integrity, recovery and privacy and an evaluation of legal issues in areas such as e-discovery, regulatory compliance and auditing,” Gartner says (Compare security products).

Therefore, it is imperative that subscribers put the right safeguards in place to mitigate these risks. A technology escrow agreement is a proven mechanism for protecting the investment which organizations make in software applications. It ensures that if something goes wrong and the provider cannot fulfill their promise of delivering their application. If you look around on the internet,  we see that there is a growing concern that mainstream adoption of cloud computing could present a mixture of privacy and ownership issues, with users potentially being locked out of their own files or customer data gets in the wrong hands.

In this article I’ve focused on 2 areas (privacy, legal) to understand which risks there are and how customers can deal with these treats. 

Privacy

These day’s we are using more and more free web applications such as e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and storage. These applications are hosted "in the cloud"--in other words, on a server somewhere in the world that’s not yours. Users access these programs through the Web in a format that allows for easy data sharing. The side effect of using these applications and store data with programs hosted on someone else's hardware is that you lose a degree of control over your (sensitive)  information. The responsibility for protecting that information from hackers and internal data breaches then falls into the hands of the hosting company rather than the individual user or within the company internal surroundings.

The concept of handing sensitive data to another company worries many people and companies. Is data held somewhere in the cloud as secure as data protected in user-controlled computers and networks? Privacy and security can only be as good as its weakest link. Cloud computing increases the risk that a security breach may occur. there is also a growing concern around the world as to whether personal information about individuals stored may be accessed by law enforcement bodies, particularly under anti-terrorism legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act.

If a corporate or public sector customer uses a cloud computing service for purposes such as managing its e-mail system, it is quite possible that e-mails sent or received by individuals within the organization will be stored in the U.S. or another country.  Government investigators trying to subpoena information could approach that company without informing the data's owners. Some companies could even willingly share sensitive data with marketing firms. So there is a privacy risk in putting your data in someone else's hands. Obviously, the safest approach is to maintain your data under your own control.

In theory at least, such e-mail could be accessed by law enforcement bodies in that country, possibly without the knowledge of the persons affected. The reason behind this lies in the USA in the two types of legislation “Constitutional rights/legislation”- which are stronger then the Statutory rights/legislation. In practice, to intercept the same email kept on your home computer (as opposed to in the Cloud) the government law enforcement authorities need to show probable causesince the data is kept within the premises of you home/company and protected by Constitutional rights. If the same piece of data is kept “in the Cloud”, then the law enforcement authorities need only a Court orderwhich is relatively easier to get. The solution is to anonymous and encrypt the data online so that it cannot be 'released' without the user's permission.

The security of data stored by Web companies is a question that users need to consider after a number of recent events. In 2006, AOL released the search terms of 650,000users to researchers on a public web page. Microsoft and Yahoo!last year released some search data to the U.S. Department of Justicein a child pornography case. Yahoo was lambastedin Congress for giving the Chinese governmentthe e-mail information of dissident journalist Shi Tao, who was later sentenced to a 10-year prison term. Another concern is the rise in cybercriminal intrusions and companies losing data also pose problems for cloud computing. Last year, for instance, retailer TJX  lost 45 million credit cardnumbers to hackers and the British government misplaced 25 million taxpayer records.

Does all this mean that users have to give up on Web applications for the sake of security? No, but the users of one of these cloud services must be aware of the risk and the possible impact on their organization or personal live.

For more information on the privacy implications of cloud computing, check the following report articles:

1.    Ann Cavoukian: “Privacy in the Clouds” -- A White Paper on Privacy and Digital Identity: Implications for the Internet.

2.    Robert Gellman wrote the World Privacy Forum's report on cloud computing (Privacy in the Clouds: Risks to Privacy and Confidentiality from Cloud Computing).

3.    Bruce Schneierwrote the article Do You Know Where Your Data Are?

Legal

The technological possibilities of cloud computing could meet its nemesis in the form of national regulations and issues around legal jurisdiction.

These day’s a lot of countries are looking at the internet and the way it’s contributing to their national tax income. How is this going to work for, example, a reservation program for the European market located in the VS. Currently every European country has got its own tax rules and what about sales tax because your applications are hosted in the VS?

The cloud computing trend also gives rise to concerns about whether rights holder will be in a position to enforce their intellectual property rights when computing resources are used for the unauthorized distribution of video, music or other content, and the location of the infringing activity may be difficult to determine.

Finally, there is the broader issue of which courts will have jurisdiction to deal with any wrongful activity such as the posting of defamatory content on storage devices located in one jurisdiction, where the customers or any affected third parties may be located in other jurisdictions. The whole point is that it isn't confined to one box, one building, or even one country.

Philip Nolan, partner at leading business law firm Mason Hayes+Curran, was speaking at an event organized by the Irish Software Association(ISA). He told the public the following:

“Although cloud computing is all about providing services remotely from what might appear to be global ‘cloud’, that cloud is still going to be subject to national regulations. The companies building the massive server farms that are going to support this cloud are going to have to think in terms of jurisdiction and so, in terms of location.” (check the PowerPoint slides)

** This article is written based information that is freely available on in the Cloud. If you have any comment on the material, please contact the administrator.

With the largest number of Americans out of jobs and unable to cope with the challenges from the emerging markets like India Infosys Technologies plans to boost hiring in the US if a proposal to restrict the country’s work visas becomes law. 

The recruitment would be in addition to existing projects, Srinivas said in an interview from London, where the senior vice president heads the company’s operations in Europe and manufacturing-services unit worldwide. Bangalore-based Infosys has budgeted 1,000 new US employees by the end of 2010.

“We have already started the hiring engine, but we haven’t hired yet,” Srinivas said in the telephone interview. “All actions have been taken, including locations where this hiring will happen, what kind of profiles -- those plans are in place and we can execute at any time.”

Infosys, whose clients include General Electric Co and General Motors Corp, has about 10 per cent of its 104,900 employees in the US, mainly Indians on H-1B foreign work visas. The proposal by Senators Dick Durbin of the Democratic Party and Republican Charles Grassley would require the company to replace half of them with Americans. They submitted the bill in April as the US battles its highest unemployment rate since 1983.

“The first signs of protectionism are there,” Krishnakumar Natarajan, the chief executive officer of Infosys’s smaller rival MindTree Ltd, said in an interview this week in Bangalore. “The sentiment is clearly, ‘Hey, when there are job losses here, why should they go outside?’”

A possible US law limiting foreign visas comes as Armonk, New York-based International Business Machines Corp, the world’s largest provider of computer services, adds staff in India and challenges Infosys, larger rival Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and their peers in their home market.

Infosys has risen 57 per cent in Mumbai trading this year, compared with a 62 per cent gain at Tata Consultancy. The benchmark Bombay Sensitive Index has advanced 62 per cent.

The Durbin-Grassley bill “obviously is a concern if it gets implemented in full and with no time lag,” Srinivas said. “Over a period of two years, we can easily manage.”

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Check out your own personal Jesus. My recommendation go out to the second movie.

The research agency Gartner Inc has identified emerging technologies for future and predicts that these will have a transformational business impact. According to the report "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008," these should be considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years.

"Although Web 2.0 is now entering the trough of disillusionment, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications," said Jackie Fenn, vice president, Gartner.

"Later -- in between two and five years -- cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is moving up the slope of enlightenment, will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT,” he adds.

So, here’s looking into the emerging technologies for future.

Gigantic Music Collection Heads Back To The Auction Block

After putting his six-million-song music collection on eBayand getting burned by a fake bidder, Pittsburgh rare-music collector Paul Mawhinney is once again trying to unburden himself of the 45s, LPs, and other pieces of recorded music he's amassed over the years via auction. But this time, he's switched up two key details: First, Mawhinney is letting registered buyers browse throughhis online database of music,which outlines the market value of each item (only 45s are in it now, but he's currently adding his long players to the site as well); and second—and perhaps most crucially—he's given up on the idea of selling the collection to someone who will keep it intact as a museum piece, thus allowing anyone who wants to turn around and open a rare record store of their own into the fray.

Sean Dunne made this little documentary about ‘The World’s Greatest Music Collection‘.

Paul Mawhinney used to have a record store, from each record he sold he kept the last one to add to his archive. So in the end he has an unique collection of 3.000.000 records. Unfortunately he has to let go of it, but apparently no one shows any serious interest in buying it.
This movie is heartbreaking, Paul really was in it for the love for music.

EUROPEAN UNION supports new Chemical Party! 

The European Union did it again. Complete new research shows how "Chemicals having a party". Including; Sexy carbons, bored noble gases, explosive reactions.

What will be the effect on the company business strategy if the financial crisis will hold on? Will we get worlds wide in a situation where you will see that the management will say “let’s do less with less”.

In several of the core markets served by offshore vendors, the current business slow-down is reducing demand for the underlying services, no matter who is providing them. Fewer mortgages are being processed, fewer plane reservations are being made, and fewer people are purchasing high-tech solutions that require technical support.. Why this happens? Because companies are scaling back their budgets, governments having huge dept and customers don’t have the same money to spend as before.

Report about the outsourcing market;

• In a Goldman survey from August 2007, tech execs said that outsourcing was their 10th highest priority. In the report is also described that the IT spending index, based on a survey of 100 IT execs at Fortune 500 companies, came in at 65, down from 71 in the prior survey in April and below the year-ago mark of 73. In hard numbers ; 33% of tech leaders said they expected their tech-services budgets to shrink. Only 16% of businesses expect to increase spending on these services.
• The Indian National Association of Software and Services Companies forecast revenue growth of 21 percent in 2008, down from 28 percent in 2007.

These signs can’t ignored and will have their effect on the off shore of work.

At number 1 will find anti porn propaganda, Produced by the Citizens for Decent Literature, this is an amusing propaganda film from 1965 entitled Perversion for Profit. It is presented by George Putnam - “Outstanding News Reporter”. It demonstrates certain photographs and points out that they appeal to “the sodomists” and others with “overtones of bestiality”.

Hard to believe that this film is meant to discourage you from buying porn. If anything, it rubs an itch for that vintage porn. And I cannot believe the makers of this video were not turned on. They have such exquisite taste. And the little boxes that are meant to cover the body parts achieve no such thing. If anything, I think these guys were peddling porn themselves.

The short film backlon points to was sponsored by Charles H. Keating, Jr. (the same banker implicated in the savings-and-loan scandals) as part of his decades-long crusade against porn, and reminds us that "Pornography and 'fun' lead to illegitimate children and hefty financial burden on taxpayers." Almost as much of a burden as S&L bailouts! "Perversion for Profit" also exposes the secret ties between adult entertainment and "homosexuality, lesbianism, violent crime, the Communist conspiracy and Satan."

India’s offshoring success story will need greater onshoring support to sustain it, notes the Black Book of Outsourcing’s 2008 State of the Industry report. The most comprehensive client satisfaction survey in the outsourcing industry saw Infosys fall out of the top 50 this year to rank 59. Three Indian firms, Wipro (6), Satyam (7) and Genpact (8), figure in the top 10. TCS moved up to rank 15 this year from 27 last year while HCL tumbled from 13 last year to 21. On of the big European player on the Indian market, Capgemini, has moved in the overall ranking from the second place in 2007 to the 12 place this year.

Conducted by the US-based consultancy Brown-Wilson Group, the report is based on client experience responses of nearly 24,000 buyer executives. In what the report said was “indicative of the growing re-appreciation for US-centric firms”, Hewlett-Packard emerged numero uno in the rankings, followed by Perot, CSC, Unisys and EDS.

The report notes the rise of ‘reverse outsourcing’, the phenomenon of Indian companies opening offices in USA and hiring locally. “The reverse outsourcing development is too new for Indian companies to point to actual cost savings yet, but moving front office processes closer to the client is fast attracting buyer interest. Major suppliers are responding to the demand for enhanced, locally delivery customer service,” it said. Attributing the decline of Infosys, which was ranked 10th last year, to ‘rising accounts of client discontent’, the report notes, “over a dozen major customers cited the fact that Infosys has not melded their consulting and service delivery well. US clients cite a lack of American front-office support with an imbalance of too much delivered from offshore.”

The report showes that the big approval winners were those vendors that placed heavy focus on verticalization: Those outsourcers who adapted to their clients' specific industry demands rather than applying a cookie cutter domain approach. Also for the second year, China, which has seen a tremendous increase in outsourcing investment, scored overall with very low levels of satisfaction. The majority of analysts believe China will take at least another 10 years before emerging a rival to India. Latin America and Central & Eastern Europe suppliers saw the highest growth in its outsourcing industry with parallel upsurges in client satisfaction scores. Many new vendors from these regions displaced Indian, Philippine, Chinese and Canadian outsourcing suppliers this year on a competitive KPI (key performance indicator) index. Western EuropeWestern Europe prefer regional vendors, while US is leaning towards western hemisphere providers as likely considered alternatives to China and India next year. The UK and Western Europe also views the U.S. as its third most popular destination for offshore outsourcing after India and China. We expect to see the US and Central/Eastern Europe to replace China in this period of evolution for European destination preferences.

A majority of analysts said that China will take another 10 years before emerging a rival to India. Respondents rated client experience, economy/inflation/recession and globalisation as the top factors dominating outsourcing strategies next year.

Sectors likely to boost offshoring efforts in 2009 include banking, which is expected to increase offshoring by over 72 per cent, investment management (68.5%), insurance (62.7%) and legal (59.4%). The most important supplier features for 2009 include a client-centric culture, cultural alignment and the right onshore-offshore balance.

We found What? 

The Phoenix Mars Lander mission announced the discovery of water ice on Mars. Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it.

"It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that."

The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing.

So Next year we all going to book a ticket to Mars to enjoy the "elfstedentocht 2008"

NASA has more info on this amazing discovery.

A little bit late but still intersested who dead Celebrities earn there money (thanks to Forbes)

It's one thing to read the Forbes list of "World's Richest People" or their List of Billionaires articles. You can't feel too bad about royalty, media moguls or trust fund babies making more thanyou. But when even the dead earn a bigger paycheck than you? It's hard not to feel bad about that.

Think about how much money you made last year. Now add the annual salaries of 12 people you know. Does it even come close the 247 million dollars earned during the last year by the deceasedcelebrities on this list? Probably not. Forbes used criteria even for this list, I guess even when you die you are subject to meeting monetary specifications to make "the list." 

The business of digging up dead celebrities to pitch products is getting cutthroat, with management firms now taking a much more aggressive approach to licensing and marketing the iconic images. Rather than waiting for the phone to ring, rights managers are actively marketing dearly departed stars to advertisers and vendors. It's helped transform posthumous peddling from a niche business into the realm of mainstream marketing - fueled by growing competition, staggering licensing deals and digital technology that can resurrect the dead.

"It's a huge business," said Ryan Schinman, chief executive of Platinum Rye Entertainment, which represents celebrities. "There are so many points of distribution and so many ways to make money."

Exhuming dead celebrities to appear in commercials - think of Audrey Hepburn dancing in that Gap ad - or slapping their name on all sorts of merchandise is nothing new. However, what has changed is the mad scramble behind the scenes among companies that specialize in dead celebrities - thanks to the lucrative fees that the growing business now offers. Also boosting the business is a move to market personalities that fall outside the usual realm of entertainment and sports, such as civil rights leaders, politicians and famous intellectuals.

China is known to simply overwhelm the competition. No wonder the Indian companies are sweating over the Chinese threat in every business sphere. The latest bout of concern is being experienced by Indian IT companies over one of their biggest achievements till date — business process outsourcing or provision of BPO services.

Looking at how the Chinese are obsessed with learning to speak English these days, Indian IT companies fear that their dominance in BPO services could be a thing of the past. In fact, around two months back, Wipro chief Azim Premji had openly said that China will become a major threat to India in the BPO services space.

That could be true in the long run. But in the short term, China may not be such a threat to the fledgling Indian IT companies. The major impediment is the poor quality of English. According to Chinese government sources, less than 0.05% of China’s population can speak English. And it will take at least two decades for the number to inch up. Even among those who speak the language, a mere 10-20% can converse fluently.

In general, the American Dream can be defined as having the belief and the freedom that allows all citizens and residents to achieve their goals in life through hard work in the United States of America.

The term was first used by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America which was written in 1931. He states: "The American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

The sights and sounds of the psychedelic sixties in a mind-warping Journey! There's no bad trips here, man. It's a non-stop hippy orgy of psychedelic sensations and intense hallucinations with Something Weird Video's ULTIMATE mind-warping 'LSD Psychedelic Freakout ...

-Totally far-out trip through a universe of colors and psychedelic sounds.
A sensory-stimulating journey into the deepest casms of the mind where inner peace and tranquility are not served on tap at a convenience store owned by 'the man'! Groovy chicks and hip dudes, come on and let's dig
it together!

kinda strange film looks like its old footage from 8mm thats been converted . this isn't one to watch around young minds either , a lot of nudity ;)
i would also recommend dropping some lsd before watching also to get the full effect.

In the recent past, more and more multinationals have been scaling their operations in India and more(and more) work getting outsourced to fast developing nations like India and China. Everyday in magazines, newspapers and various other places, we have news about "more and more jobs being cut in US (or some other developed country) and getting outsourced to India". But, on the brighter side "Outsourcing has impacted the economy of India in a very positive way" and Outsourcing has become a buzz word.

Today we look at the other side of the coin-how it is hurting the American outsourcers.U.S. companies had looked to India for their outsourcing in the first place with the intention of saving money. 

Now, with the dollar plunging the way it has, things have suddenly become more expensive for the Americans. The falling dollar is affecting the business world by making American services and goods cheaper and raising the cost of foreign goods and services at the same time.

With the Indian outsourcing companies raising their fees to make up the difference, many American businesses are hit hard. Within the space of a year the American dollar has dipped 13% from about 45 rupees to about 39. Now with marked pay increases to India, suddenly the prospect of saving money doesn’t seem very palpable and both, the outsourcers and the outsourced have been compelled to adapt. In addition, experts expect the rupee will go from strength to strength as its economy further establishes itself.
Not that India’s outsourcing industry isn’t thriving. Americans still find it more profitable to use it.

But the necessity of raising Indian salaries and the rising currency is causing Indian vendors to look more closely at their costs and prompting them to make small price increases. This leaves the Americans sending over more dollars than they had in the past and therefore not saving as much money as they had expected. In spite of this the businesses hardest hit by the devaluation are small and medium sized Indian companies that cannot shift work to other cheaper places in the world as outsourcers can still do. Most of them work for a limited number of clients with contracts that are fixed in dollars each year.

The rising rupee and the fluctuating dollar have affected the Indian IT industry adversely. It has dented profits and at the same time, many foreign clients with a dollar budget are finding it too expensive to use Indian service providers. 

PARIS (Reuters) - The U.S. economy lost the title of "world's biggest" to the euro zone this week as the value of the dollar slumped in currency markets.

Taking the gross domestic product of both economies in 2007, the combined GDP of the 15 countries which use the euro overtook that of the United States when the European currency surged to a record high of more than $1.56 per euro.

There are over 900,000 names on a U.S. government terrorist watch list. The ACLU has a counter to show the latest number.

"At the current rate of growth, the U.S. watch lists will contain a million records by July. If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins" said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program."The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

The new counter features a rolling, odometer-style display with a real-time readout showing how many individuals are on the list at a given moment. The figures are extrapolated from a September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month. As of today, the list stands at approximately 917,000 names.

Dogs are great walking companions, great personal trainers, and great nags. If you begin walking with your dog, you may soon find his tail is wagging your walking program. They are ready to walk when you are (unlike friends and family), will tow you down the trail, and let you know when it is time to lace up your sneakers.

If I go for a walk with my parents dog I always bring my "Ralf Ottow light".

The 45-year-old Dutch optics engineer has been building his own lights since he was eight, but his recent 38-million-candlepower creation, the Maxablaster, is more like a miniature star. To start, Ottow stripped out the innards of a powerful commercial flashlight and switched in a mercury arc bulb, which generates light by creating an ultra-hot plasma between two closely spaced electrodes inside the gas-filled central chamber of the lamp. That results in a brighter, more focused beam but also kicks out more ultraviolet light (hence the sunburn, a product of early testing). So he added a specially coated reflector and designed, ground, and coated a new glass window that would trap UV rays while still pumping out light.

Powered by a pack of 54 batteries, the Maxablaster can put a bright spot of light on a cloud four miles high and illuminate a house from just as far.

How it Works see it here 

Probally you want something cooler and saver to let your dog out if you live in a bad neighbourhood.

Security forces have sealed off three monasteries in the Tibetan city of Lhasa after protests earlier this week, witnesses and a rights group said. Witnesses said police were at Drepung and Sera monasteries on Thursday. A third monastery, Ganden, was also surrounded, a US-based group said.  The move follows at least two days of protests by monks against Chinese rule.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that shops had been set on fire in Lhasa, amid continuing unrest. Confirming reports from Tibet is difficult because both access and the media are tightly controlled.But rights groups say the demonstrations are the largest in Tibet in almost two decades, and have spread from Lhasa to rural areas and neighbouring provinces. 

'Three layers'
The protests began on Monday when Tibetans around the world marked the 49th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule.Unconfirmed reports then suggested that as many as 600 monks from Drepung and Sera monasteries joined peaceful rallies on Tuesday and that police used tear gas to disperse them.

There are also unconfirmed reports that monks have been detained, and that monks at the Sera monastery are on hunger strike. According to the US-based International Campaign for Tibet, three major monasteries in Lhasa are now "under lockdown and surrounded by troops".

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.  Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was "somewhat disoriented," and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

"She said that she didn't need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave," he said.

THe Kansas woman apparently sat on the toilet at her boyfriend's house for two years. Her boyfriend claims he brought her food and water and encouraged her to come out of the bathroom. She refused and finally, after two years, he called police.

• AMY Winehouse smoking crack cocaine and speaking(oohhh) about Ecstasy and valium (on youtube).
• Singer Pete Doherty's getting suspended form prison term for a number of drugs and motoring offences (he admitted driving while uninsured and with no MoT while in possession of crack cocaine, heroin, ketamine and cannabis.
• Kate Moss, in the newspaper taking a snort cocaine.