enterprise it support services usa

Business Intelligence Platform RESTful Web Service

Posted on September 14, 2020September 16, 2020 by Subhadeep Datta

Albert Alan

Restful API

RESTful Web Services are REST architecture based web services. Representational State Transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture for distributed systems such as the World Wide Web. In this architectural style, data and functionality is considered resources and are accessed using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), typically links on the Web.

REST has some advantages over SOAP (Simple Objects Access Protocol) but is similar in technology since it is also a function call via HTTP protocol. REST is easier to call from various platforms, transfers pure human-readable data in JSON or XML and is faster and saves resources.

In the basic idea of REST, an object is accessed via REST, not its methods. The state of the object can be changed by the REST access. The change is caused by the passed parameters. A frequent application is the connection of the SAP PI via the REST interface.

When to use Rest Services

You want to access BI platform repository objects or perform basic scheduling.
You want to use a programming language that is not supported by another BI platform SDK.
You want to extract all the query details and number of records per query for all the reports like Webi and Crystal, etc.
You want to extract folder path of all reports at once.

Process Flow

RESTful Web Service Requests

To make a RESTful web service request, you need the following:

URL – The URL that hosts the RESTful web service.
Method – The type of HTTP method to use for sending the request, for example GET, PUT, POST, or DELETE.
Request header – The attributes that describe the request.
Request body – Additional information that is used to process the request.

Common RWS Error Messages

Restful Web Service URIs Summary List

URL	Response	Comments
/v1	Service document that contains a link to the /infostore API.	This is the root level of an infostore resource
/v1/infostore	Feed contains all the objects in BOE system	/v1/infostore
/v1/infostore/ <object_id>	Entry corresponding to the info object with SI_ID=.	/v1/infostore/99
/v1/logon/long	Returns the long form for logon, which contains the user and password authentication template.	Used to logon to the BI system based on the authentication method.
/v1/users/ <user_id>	XML feed of user details in BOE system	You can Modify user using PUT method and DELETE user using DELETE method.
/v1/usergroups/ <usergroup_id>	XML feed of user group details in BOE system	Support GET and PUT and DELETE method. You can Modify user group using PUT method and DELETE user group using DELETE method.
v1/folders/ <folder_id>	XML feed displays the details of the folder, can be used to modify the details of the folder, and delete the folder.	You modify the folder using PUT method and DELETE the folder using DELETE method
/v1/publications	XML feed of all publications created in BOE system	This API supports GET method only.

Extended Workflow

The workflow is as follows:

To Pass the Base URL

GET http:///localhost:6405/biprws/v1/users

To Pass the Headers

To Get the xml/json response

Automation of Rest Call

The Business Intelligence platform RESTful Web Service (BI-REST-SDK) allows you to programmatically access the BI platform functionalities such as administration, security configuration and modification of the repository. In addition, to the Business Intelligence platform RESTful web service SDK, you can also use the SAP Crystal Reports RESTful Web Services (CR REST SDK) and SAP Web Intelligence RESTful Web Services (WEBI REST SDK).

Implementation

An application has been designed and implemented using Java to automate the extraction of SQL query for all the webi reports from the server at once.

Tools used:

Postman (Third party application)
Eclipse IDE

The structure of the application is as below:

The application file comprises of the required java jar files, java class files, java properties files and logs. Java class files (SqlExtract) are the source code and will be compiled and executed using command prompt as:

Step 1

Javac -cp “.;java-json.jar;json-simple-1.1.jar;log4j-1.2.17.jar” SqlExtract.java

The above command compiles the java code.

Step 2

Java -cp “.;java-json.jar;json-simple-1.1.jar;log4j-1.2.17.jar” SqlExtract.java

The above command runs the compiled java file.

The java properties file (log4j) is used to set the configurations for the java code to run. Also, the path for the log file can be set in the properties file.

The logs (SqlExtractLogger) consist of the required output file with all the extracted query for the webi reports along with the data source name, type and the row count for each query in the respective folder in the path set by the user in properties file.

The application is standalone and can run in any windows platform or server which has java JRE (version greater than 1.6 – preferred) installed in it.

Note: All the above steps required to execute the application are consolidated in the (steps) file.

Conclusion

SAP BO provides Restful web service to traverse through its repository, to fetch structural info and to modify the metadata structure based on the user requirements. When integrated with programming languages like python, java, etc., extends the scope to a greater extent, allowing the user to automate the workflows and to solve the backtracking problems.

Handling Restful web service needs expertise in server administration and programming as changes made to the metadata are irreversible.

References

About the Author –

Alan is a SAP Business Intelligence consultant with a critical thinking and an analytical mind. He believes in ‘The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do’.

Mentoring – a Win-Win Situation

Posted on September 2, 2020September 3, 2020 by Site Admin

Rama Vani Periasamy

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton

Did you know the English word ‘Mentor’ actually originated from the Greek epic ‘The Odyssey’?

When Odysseus had to leave his kingdom to lead his army in the Trojan war, his son Telemachus was left under the guidance of a friend ‘Mentor’. Mentor was supposed to guide and groom Telemachus during his developmental years and make him independent. The word ‘Mentor’ was thus incorporated in the English language. We use the word in the same context that existed in Greek Mythology – to guide a person, make him/her an independent thinker, and a doer.

In the age of technology, there may be tools and enormous amounts of data to get a competitive advantage, but they’re no match for a mentor. The business hall of fame is adorned with the names of people who discovered that finding a mentor made all the difference.

A lot of people have been able to achieve greater heights than they imagined because they were able to tap into their potential and that is the energy mentoring brings in.

In today’s world, a lot of corporate offices offer mentoring programs that cut across age groups (called the cross-gens), backgrounds, and experiences that benefit everyone. But sometimes the mechanisms and expectations of a mentoring program are not clear which makes the practice unsuccessful. Today’s young generation think they have the internet to quench the thirst of their knowledge. They do not see mentors as guiding beacons to success but only help them meet their learning needs. Citing it with an example, mentoring is equivalent to teaching a man to not just fish, but also share the experiences, tricks, and tips, so that he becomes an independent fisher. More often, our current generation fails to understand that even geniuses like Aristotle and Bill Gates needed a mentor in their lives.

When mentoring is so powerful, why don’t we nurture the relationship? What stops us? Is time a factor? Not really. Any relationship needs some amount of time to be invested and so is the case with mentoring. Putting aside a few hours a month is an easily doable task, especially for something that is inspiring and energizing. Schedules can always be shuffled for priorities.

Now that we know that we have the time, why is it always hard to find a mentor? To begin with, how do you find a mentor? Well, it is not as difficult as we think. When you start looking for them, you will eventually find one. They are everywhere but may not necessarily be in your workplace.

We have the time, we have a mentor, so what are the guidelines in the mentoring relationship?

The guidelines can be extracted very much in the word ‘MENTOR’.

M=Mission: Any engagement works only if you have something to work on. Both the mentor and mentee must agree on the goals and share their mission statement. Creating a vision and a purpose for the mentoring relationship adds value to both sides and this keeps you going. Articulating the mission statement would be the first activity, to begin with in a mentor-mentee relationship.

E=Engage: Agree on ways to engage that works with your personalities and schedules. Set ground rules on the modes of communications. Is that going to be a one-one conversation periodically or remote calls? Find out the level of flexibility. Is an impromptu meeting fine? Can Emails or text messages be sent? Decide on the communication medium and time.

N=Network: Expanding your network with that of your mentor or mentee and cultivating productive relationships will be the key to success. While expanding your network will be productive, remember to tread carefully. Seek permissions, respect, and even ask for an introduction before you reach out to the other person’s contacts.

T=Trust: Build and maintain trust with your mentoring partner by telling the truth, staying connected, and being dependable. And as the mentorship grows, clear communication and honesty will deepen the relationship. Building trust takes time so always keep the lines of communication open.

O=Opportunity: Create opportunities for your mentee or mentor to grow. Being in a mentor-mentee relationship is like a two-way lane, where you can come across opportunities from both sides, which may not be open for non-mentors/mentees. Bringing in such opportunities will only help the other person achieving his/her goal or the mission statement that was set at the beginning.

R=Review and Renew: Schedule a regular time to review progress and renew your mentoring partnership. This will help you keep your progress on track and it will also help you look for short goals to achieve. Reviewing is also going to help retrospect if a different strategy is to be laid out to achieve your goals.

Mentoring may sound irrelevant and unnecessary while we are surviving a pandemic and going through bouts of intense emotions. But I feel it is even more necessary during this most unusual situation we’re facing. Mentoring could be one of the ways to combat anxiety and depression caused by isolation and the inability to meet people face-to-face.

Mentoring can be done virtually through video calls, by setting up a time to track the progress of your goals and discuss challenges/accomplishments. Mentoring also proves to be the place to ask difficult questions because it is a “No Judging” relationship and the absolute safe place to deal with work-related anxiety and fear. I still recall my early days as a campus graduate where I was assigned a ‘Buddy’, the go-to person. With them, I’d discussed a lot of my ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions of the work and the corporate world, which I had resisted opening up to my supervisors.

Mentoring takes time. Remember the first day you struggled to balance on your bicycle and may have fallen down hurting your knees? But once you learned to ride, you would have loved your time on the saddle. The same applies to mentoring. Investing the time and effort in mentoring will energize you even better than a few hours of Netflix or scrolling on Instagram. Let us create a culture that shares knowledge, guides & encourages nonstop, like how Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle and Aristotle held the beacon for many. There is an adage that goes “when you are ready to become a teacher, the student appears”.

“A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself.” — Oprah Winfrey

The article is based on the book “One Minute Mentoring” by Ken Blanchard & Claire Diaz Ortiz.

About the Author –

Rama is that everyday woman you see who juggles between family and a 9 hours work life. She loves reading history, fiction, attempting half marathons, and traveling.
To break the monotony of life and to share her interest in books & travel, she blogs and curates at www.kindleandkompass.com

Design-led Organization: Creative Thinking as a Practice!

Posted on August 28, 2020August 28, 2020 by Site Admin

Gogul R G

This is the first article in the series of ‘Design-led organization’ writing about creative thinking as a practice in GAVS. It is the first step for the readers to explore the world of design and creativity. So, let’s get started!

First let’s see what is design thinking is all about

There is a common misconception that design thinking is new. But when you look back, people have applied a human-centric creative process to build meaningful and effective solutions. Design has been practiced for ages to build monuments, bridges, automobiles, subway systems, etc. Design is not only limited to aesthetics, it is more of a mindset to think of a solution. Design thinking is a mindset to iteratively think about a complex problem and come up with a viable solution.

Thinking outside of the box can provide an innovative solution to a sticky problem. However, thinking outside of the box can be a real challenge as we naturally develop patterns of thinking that are based on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge surround ourselves. It takes something to detach away from a situation where we’re too closely involved to be able to ﬁnd better possibilities.

To illustrate how a fresh way of thinking can create unexpectedly good solutions, let’s look at a famous incident. Some years ago, an incident occurred where a truck driver had tried to pass under a low bridge. But, he failed, and the truck became ﬁrmly lodged under the bridge.

The driver was unable to continue driving through or reverse out. The struck truck caused massive trafﬁc problems, which resulted in emergency personnel, engineers, ﬁreﬁghters, and truck drivers gathering to negotiate various solutions to dislodge the truck.

Emergency workers were debating whether to dismantle parts of the truck or chip away at parts of the bridge. Each of one were looking for a solution with their respective level of expertise. A boy walking by and witnessing the intense debate looked at the truck, at the bridge, then looked at the road and said, “Why not just let the air out of the tires?” to the absolute amazement of all the specialists and experts trying to resolve the issue.

When the solution was tested, the truck could drive with ease, having suffered only the damage caused by its initial attempt to pass underneath the bridge. It symbolizes the struggles we face where often the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed constraints we work within.

“Challenging our assumptions and everyday knowledge is often difficult for us humans, as we rely on building patterns of thinking in order not to have to learn everything from scratch every time.“

Let’s come back to our topic “What is Design thinking?” Tim Brown, Executive Chairman of IDEO – an international design and consulting firm quoted design thinking as below.

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

Now let’s think about our truck example. A boy with his fresh mindset provides a simple solution to address a complex problem. Yeah! this is the sweet spot. Everyone is creative and capable of thinking like a designer, and out of the box, to come up with a solution. This way of inculcating design as a mindset for a solution is known as Design thinking.

Yes, you read it right, everyone is creative…

We forget that back in kindergarten, we were all creative. We all played and experimented with weird things without fear or shame. We didn’t know enough not to. The fear of social rejection is something we learned as we got older. And that’s why it’s possible to regain our creative abilities, even decades later. In the field of design and user experience, there are individuals to stick with a methodology a while, they will end up doing amazing things. They come up with break through ideas or suggestions and work creatively with a team to develop something truly innovative. They surprise themselves with the realization that they are a lot more creative than they had thought. That early success shakes up how they see themselves and makes them eager to do more.

We just need to rediscover what we already have: the capacity to imagine, or build upon, new to the world ideas. But the real value of creativity doesn’t emerge until you are brave enough to act on those ideas.

Geshe Thupten Jinpa, who has been the Dalai Lama’s chief English translator for more than twenty years, shared an insight about the nature of creativity. Jinpa pointed out that there’s no word in the Tibetan language for ‘creativity’ or ‘being creative’. The closest translation is ‘natural’. In other words, if you want to be more creative, you should be more natural! So…be natural!

At your workplace, the complex problems can be easily sorted out when you find a solution using creativity with the mindset of design thinking. Creativity can be improved by following the below steps.

Go for a walk.
Play your favorite games.
Move your eyes.
Take a break and enjoy yourself.
Congratulate yourself each time you do something well.
Estimate time, distance, and money.
Take a route you never have taken before.
Look for images in mosaics, patterns, textures, clouds, stars…
Try something you have never done before.
Do a creative exercise.
Start a collection (stamps, coins, art, stationery, anything you wish to collect)
Watch Sci-Fi or fantasy films.
Change the way you do things – there are no routine tasks, only routine way of doing things.
Wear a color you do not like.
Think about how they invented equipment or objects you use daily.
Make a list of 10 things you think are impossible to do and then imagine how you could make each one possible.
For every bad thing that happens to you, remember at least 3 good things that happened.
Read something you have not read yet.
Make friends with people on the other side of the world.
When you have an idea, make a note of it, and later check to see if it happened.
Connect a sport with your work.
Try food you never tried before.
Talk to grandparents and relatives and listen to their stories.
Give an incorrect answer to a question.
Find links between people, things, ideas, or facts.
Ask children how to do something and observe their creativity.

Start doing the above-mentioned steps to inculcate a creative mindset and apply it in your day-to-day work. Companies like GE health care, Procter & Gamble, UBER practiced design thinking and implemented in their new product launches and for solving complex problems in their organizations. Be natural to be more creative! When you are more creative, you can apply design thinking for seeking any solution for a complex problem in your work.

This is the first article in the series of Design led Organization in GAVS. Keep watching this space for more articles on design and keep exploring the world of design-thinking!

References:

Creative Confidence by Tom Kelly & David Kelly
The Basics of User experience design by Interaction design foundation
https://medium.com/@dannysauter/retrace-genius-to-become-one-30904d3ad716
https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking

About the Author –

Gogul is a passionate UX designer with 8+ years of experience into designing experiences for digital channels like Enterprise apps, B2C, B2B apps, Mobile apps, Kiosk, Point of Sale, Endless aisle, telecom products. He is passionate about transforming complex problems into actionable solutions using design.

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Posted on August 27, 2020August 28, 2020 by Site Admin

Dr. Ramjan Shaik

Scientific progress is about many small advancements and occasional big leaps. Medicine is no exception. In a time of rapid healthcare transformation, health organizations must quickly adapt to evolving technologies, regulations, and consumer demands. Since the inception of electronic health record (EHR) systems, volumes of patient data have been collected, creating an atmosphere suitable for translating data into actionable intelligence. The growing field of artificial intelligence (AI) has created new technology that can handle large data sets, solving complex problems that previously required human intelligence. AI integrates these data sources to develop new insights on individual health and public health.

Highly valuable information can sometimes get lost amongst trillions of data points, costing the industry around $100 billion a year. Providers must ensure that patient privacy is protected, and consider ways to find a balance between costs and potential benefits. The continued emphasis on cost, quality, and care outcomes will perpetuate the advancement of AI technology to realize additional adoption and value across healthcare. Although most organizations utilize structured data for analysis, valuable patient information is often “trapped” in an unstructured format. This type of data includes physician and patient notes, e-mails, and audio voice dictations. Unstructured data is frequently richer and more multifaceted. It may be more difficult to navigate, but unstructured data can lead to a plethora of new insights. Using AI to convert unstructured data to structured data enables healthcare providers to leverage automation and technology to enhance processes, reduce the staff required to monitor patients while filling gaps in healthcare labor shortages, lower operational costs, improve patient care, and monitor the AI system for challenges.

AI is playing a significant role in medical imaging and clinical practice. Providers and healthcare organizations have recognized the importance of AI and are tapping into intelligence tools. Growth in the AI health market is expected to reach $6.6 billion by 2021 and to exceed $10 billion by 2024. AI offers the industry incredible potential to learn from past encounters and make better decisions in the future. Algorithms could standardize tests, prescriptions, and even procedures across the healthcare system, being kept up-to-date with the latest guidelines in the same way a phone’s operating system updates itself from time to time.

There are three main areas where AI efforts are being invested in the healthcare sector.

Engagement – This involves improvising on how patients interact with healthcare providers and systems.
Digitization – AI and other digital tools are expected to make operations more seamless and cost-effective.
Diagnostics – By using products and services that use AI algorithms diagnosis and patient care can be improved.

AI will be most beneficial in three other areas namely physician’s clinical judgment and diagnosis, AI-assisted robotic surgery, and virtual nursing assistants.

Following are some of the scenarios where AI makes a significant impact in healthcare:

AI can be utilized to provide personalized and interactive healthcare, including anytime face-to-face appointments with doctors. AI-powered chatbots can be powered with technology to review the patient symptoms and recommend whether a virtual consultation or a face-to-face visit with a healthcare professional is necessary.
AI can enhance the efficiency of hospitals and clinics in managing patient data, clinical history, and payment information by using predictive analytics. Hospitals are using AI to gather information on trillions of administrative and health record data points to streamline the patient experience. This collaboration of AI and data helps hospitals/clinics to personalize healthcare plans on an individual basis.
A taskforce augmented with artificial intelligence can quickly prioritize hospital activity for the benefit of all patients. Such projects can improve hospital admission and discharge procedures, bringing about enhanced patient experience.
Companies can use algorithms to scrutinize huge clinical and molecular data to personalize healthcare treatments by developing AI tools that collect and analyze data from genetic sequencing to image recognition empowering physicians in improved patient care. AI-powered image analysis helps in connecting data points that support cancer discovery and treatment.
Big data and artificial intelligence can be used in combination to predict clinical, financial, and operational risks by taking data from all the existing sources. AI analyzes data throughout a healthcare system to mine, automate, and predict processes. It can be used to predict ICU transfers, improve clinical workflows, and even pinpoint a patient’s risk of hospital-acquired infections. Using artificial intelligence to mine health data, hospitals can predict and detect sepsis, which ultimately reduces death rates.
AI helps healthcare professionals harness their data to optimize hospital efficiency, better engage with patients, and improve treatment. AI can notify doctors when a patient’s health deteriorates and can even help in the diagnosis of ailments by combing its massive dataset for comparable symptoms. By collecting symptoms of a patient and inputting them into the AI platform, doctors can diagnose quickly and more effectively.
Robot-assisted surgeries ranging from minimally-invasive procedures to open-heart surgeries enables doctors to perform procedures with precision, flexibility, and control that goes beyond human capabilities, leading to fewer surgery-related complications, less pain, and a quicker recovery time. Robots can be developed to improve endoscopies by employing the latest AI techniques which helps doctors get a clearer view of a patient’s illness from both a physical and data perspective.

Having understood the advancements of AI in various facets of healthcare, it is to be realized that AI is not yet ready to fully interpret a patient’s nuanced response to a question, nor is it ready to replace examining patients – but it is efficient in making differential diagnoses from clinical results. It is to be understood very clearly that the role of AI in healthcare is to supplement and enhance human judgment, not to replace physicians and staff.

We at GAVS Technologies are fully equipped with cutting edge AI technology, skills, facilities, and manpower to make a difference in healthcare.

Following are the ongoing and in-pipeline projects that we are working on in healthcare:

ONGOING PROJECT:

PROJECTS IN PIPELINE:

AIOps Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations

Following are the projects that are being planned:

Controlling Alcohol Abuse
Management of Opioid Addiction
Pharmacy Support – drug monitoring and interactions
Reducing medication errors in hospitals
Patient Risk Scorecard
Patient Wellness – Chronic Disease management and monitoring

In conclusion, it is evident that the Advent of AI in the healthcare domain has shown a tremendous impact on patient treatment and care. For more information on how our AI-led solutions and services can help your healthcare enterprise, please reach out to us here.

About the Author –

Dr. Ramjan is a Data Analyst at GAVS. He has a Doctorate degree in the field of Pharmacy. He is passionate about drawing insights out of raw data and considers himself to be a ‘Data Person’.

He loves what he does and tries to make the most of his work. He is always learning something new from programming, data analytics, data visualization to ML, AI, and more.

Center of Excellence – Security

Posted on August 5, 2020August 7, 2020 by Site Admin

The Security Center of Excellence was instituted to set standards in the practice and be the point of contact for technical solutions, problem solving, etc. The broad objectives of this CoE are as follows:

Develop and maintain technical assets that can be leveraged across GAVS.
Enable Quality Governance by providing support in gating of architecture and design related deliverables.
Enable Operational Governance by establishing cadence for tech review of projects.
Create domain-based SMEs within the practice.
Train and upskill members in the practice.
Improve customer satisfactory index by implementing new ideas and innovations across all engagements.
Create additional SOC services for market competency.
Automation – Detect, investigate and remediate cyberthreats with playbooks and response workflows.

COVID and the changing nature of threat landscape

For many industries, it has been challenging period ever since the COVID outbreak, more so for those in security. Clearly, the bad actors have lot of time at their disposal which is reflective in the innovative techniques being used to attack targets. The level of vigilance required in monitoring the alerts and application of threat hunting techniques is key to diagnosing problems at initial stages of compromise in the worst-case scenario.

Remote Infrastructure Monitoring Services — *Source: IBM X-Force Research*

For enterprises that have no clue about MDR (Managed Detection and Response), this is a good time for them to start. We have innovative, cost effective solutions – “Make Hay while the Sun shines”. Small and large corporations alike have lost business and money because of lapse in security controls and monitoring. Now is not the time to make headlines that you are the victim of a major breach.

Our team is developing a vulnerability alerting tool, which we intend to equip customers with to provide qualified bulletin alerts, i.e. alerts only on vulnerabilities that affect them. This is a first of a kind in the market. This will greatly benefit existing and new customers.

Expanding into IAM and PAM

Security practice is expanding into Identity & Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) services. With new customers being onboarded into this focus areas for products such as Sailpoint, Thycotic, Ping, Cyberark, Okta and Azure PIM, we are expanding our talent pool through recruitment and through training and certification. This should largely benefit our existing customers and prospects who intend to leverage our security practice to fulfil their cyber security needs.

Expansion of our Red Team

Our Red Team within the practice has been expanded with many talented members, including some with bug bounty bragging rights. This has enormously helped in performing intensive tests on our internal product platforms, security assessments for customers. We have also extensively invested on tools for the Red Team to help them reduce assessment times.

Certification drive

With some more analysts having certified across AZ-500, Cyberark and trained on Darktrace. GAVS’ security analysts are taking full advantage to increase their knowledge thanks to the generosity of our alliances and training sites like Pluralsight. Even the mighty Microsoft opened their learning website for free, enabling young talent to equip themselves with critical DevOps and Cloud security skills.

As part of CoE initiatives, we have;

Aligned our security roadmap based on industry trends and to ensure solutions tailored for customer pain points.
Extended our SOC practice with IAM and PAM in 2020.
Identified domain-based SME and product-based SME for quick support.

We are currently in the process of creating security products, GVAS and GSMA, to help customer in proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities and self-maturity assessment of their cybersecurity posture. We are also underway to add Operational security to our Security practice.

If you have any questions about the CoE, you may reach out to them at COE_INFOSEC@gavstech.com

CoE Team Members

Venkatakrishnan A
Shivaram J
Alex Nepolian Lawrence
Ravindran Girikrishnan
Aravindah Sadhasivam Subramanian
Vijayakumar Veerapandiyan
Thubati Uday
Ganta Venkata Sandeep
Sundaramoorthy S
Sukanya Srinivasan

Center of Excellence – Java

Posted on August 5, 2020August 7, 2020 by Site Admin

The Java CoE was established to partner with our customers and aid them in realizing business benefits through effective adoption of cutting-edge technologies; thus, enabling customer success.

Objectives

Be the go-to team for anything related to Java across the organization and customer engagements.
Build competency by conducting training and mentoring sessions, publishing blogs, whitepapers and participating in Hackathons.
Support presales team in creating proposals by providing industry best solutions using the latest technologies, standards & principles.
Contribute a certain percent of revenue growth along with the CSMs.
Create reusable artifacts, frameworks, solutions and best practices which can be used across organization to improve delivery quality.

Focus Areas

Design Thinking: Setting up a strong foundation of “Design Thinking and Engineering Mindset” is paramount for any business. We aim to do so in the following way:

2. Solution and Technology: Through our practice, we aim to equip GAVS with solution-oriented technology leaders who can lead us ahead through disruptive times

3. Customer success

Identify opportunities in accounts based on the collaboration with CSMs, understand customer needs, get details about the engagement, understand the focus areas and challenges.
Understand the immediate need of the project, provide solution to address the need.
Java council to help developers arrive at solutions.
Understand architecture in detail and provide recommendation / create awareness to use new technologies
Enforce a comprehensive review process to enable quality delivery.

Accomplishments

Formed the CoE team
Identified the focus Areas
Identified leads for every stream
Socialized the CoEwithin GAVS
Delivered effective solutions across projects to improve delivery quality
Conducted trainings on standards and design-oriented coding practices across GAVS
Publishedblogs to bring in design-oriented development practices
Identified the areas for creating re-usable artefacts (Libraries / Frameworks)
Brainstormed and finalized the design for creating Frameworks (For the identified areas)
Streamlined the DevOps process which can be applied in any engagement
Built reusable libraries, components and frameworks which can be used across GAVS
Automated the Code Review process
Organized and conducted hackathons and tech meetups
Discovered potential technical problems/challenges across teams and offered effective solutions, thereby enabling customer success
Supported the presales team in creating customized solutions for prospects

Upcoming Activities

Establishing tech governance and align managers / tech leads to the process
Setting up security standards and principles across domain
Buildingmore reusable libraries, components and frameworks which can be used across GAVS
Adopting Design Patterns / Anti-patterns
Enforcing a strong review process to bring in quality delivery
Enabling discussions with the customers
Setting up a customer advisory team

Contribution to Organizational Growth

As we continue our journey, we aim to support the revenue growth of our organization. Customer Success being a key goal of GAVS, we will continue to enable it by improving the quality of service delivery and building a solid foundation across all technology and process streams. We also want to contribute to the organization by developing a core competency around a strategic capability and reduce knowledge management risks.

If you have any questions about the CoE, you may reach out to them at COE_JAVA@gavstech.com

CoE Team Members

Lakshminarasimhan J
Muraleedharan Vijayakumar
Bipin V
Meenakshi Sundaram
Mahesh Rajakumar M
Ranjith Joseph Selvaraj
Jagathesewaren K
Sivakumar Krishnasamy
Vijay Anand Shanmughadass
Sathya Selvam
Arun Kumar Ananthanarayanan
John Kalvin Jesudhason

Design Thinking 101

Posted on July 6, 2020July 7, 2020 by Site Admin

Vasudevan Gopalan

Is the end-user at the center of everything you do? Do you consider human emotions while conceptualizing a product or a solution? Well, let us open the doors of Design Thinking

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is both an ideology and a process, concerned with solving in a highly user-centric way.
With its human-centric approach, design thinking develops effective solutions based on people’s needs.
It has evolved from a range of fields – including architecture, engineering, business – and is also based on processes used by designers.
Design thinking is a holistic product design approach where every product touch point is an opportunity to delight and benefit our users.

Human Centred Design

With ‘thinking as a user’ as the methodology and ‘user satisfaction’ as the goal, design thinking practice supports innovation and successful product development in organizations. Ideally, this approach results in translating all the requirements into product features.

Part of the broader human centred design approach, design thinking is more than cross-functional; it is an interdisciplinary and empathetic understanding of our user’s needs. Design thinking sits right up there with Agile software development, business process management, and customer relationship management.

5 Stages of Design Thinking

Empathize: This stage involves gathering insights about users and trying to understand their needs, desires, and objectives.
Define: This phase is all about identifying the challenge. What difficulties do users face? What are the biggest challenges? What do users really need?
Ideate: This step, as you may have already guessed, is dedicated to thinking about the way you can solve the problems you have identified with the help of your product. The product team, designers, and software engineers brainstorm and generate multiple ideas.
Prototype: The fourth stage brings you to turn your ideas into reality. By creating prototypes, you test your ideas’ fitness.
Test: You present the prototype to customers and find out if it solves their problem and provides users with what they need. Note that this is not the end of the journey; you need to get feedback from the users, adjust the product’s functionality, and test it again. This is a continuous process similar to the build-measure-learn approach in the lean start-up methodology.

Benefits of Design Thinking in Software Development

1. Feasibility check: Design thinking enables software development companies to test the feasibility of the future product and its functionality at the initial stage. It enables them to keep end-user needs in mind, clearly specify all requirements and translate all this into product features.

2. No alarms and no surprises: Once you’ve tested your MVP and gathered feedback from users, the team can confidently proceed to the product development. You can be quite sure that there will be little to no difference between the approved concept and final version.

3. Clarity and transparency: Design thinking approach allow product designers/developers to broaden their vision, understand and empathise with the end-users’ problems and have a detailed blueprint of the solution they should eventually deliver.

4. Continuous improvement: The product can be (and sometimes should be) modified after its release when user feedback is at hand. It becomes clear which features work and which can be done away with. The product can undergo some series enhancements on the basis of feedback. This leaves place for continuous improvement and software development process becomes flexible and smooth.

Real-world Success Stories

1. PepsiCo

During Indra Nooyi’s term as PepsiCo’s CEO, the company’s sales grew 80%. It is believed that design thinking was at the core of her successful run. In her efforts to relook at the company’s innovation process and design experience, she asked her direct reportees to fill an album full of photos of what they considered represents good design. Uninspired by the result, she probed further to realize that it was imperative to hire a designer.

“It’s much more than packaging… We had to rethink the entire experience, from conception to what’s on the self to the post product experience.”, she told the Harvard Business Review.

While other companies were adding new flavours or buttons to their fountain machines, PepsiCo developed a touch screen fountain machine, a whole new interaction between humans and machines.

“Now, our teams are pushing design through the entire system, from product creation, to packaging and labelling, to how a product looks on the shelf, to how consumers interact with it,” she said.

2. Airbnb

Back in 2009, Airbnb’s revenue was limping. They realized that poor quality images of rental listings may have something to do with it. They flew some of their employees to a city and got them to take high quality photos and upload it on their website. This resulted in a 100% increase in their revenue.

Instead of focusing on scalability, the team turned inward and asked, ‘what does the customer need?’ This experiment taught them a few big lessons, empathy being just as important as code was one of them.

3. Mint.com

Mint.com is a web-based personal financial management website. Part of their success is attributed to the human-centric design of the website which tracks and visualizes how a person is spending their money. Bank accounts, investments, and credit cards can easily be synchronized on Mint, which then categorizes the expenses to help the user visualize their spending. They built a product that illustrates a core principle of design thinking: truly understanding the position and mindset of the user. They had 1.5 million customers within 2 years.

Design thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.

References

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226141981_Design_Thinking_A_Fruitful_Concept_for_IT_Development

https://blog.brainstation.io/how-5-ceos-used-design-thinking-to-transform-their-companies/

About the Author –

Vasu heads Engineering function for A&P. He is a Digital Transformation leader with ~20 years of IT industry experience spanning across Product Engineering, Portfolio Delivery, Large Program Management etc. Vasu has designed and delivered Open Systems, Core Banking, Web / Mobile Applications etc.
Outside of his professional role, Vasu enjoys playing badminton and focusses on fitness routines.

The Pandemic and Social Media

Posted on June 8, 2020June 8, 2020 by Site Admin

Prabhakar Mandal

The COVID-19 outbreak has established the importance of digital readiness during pandemics. Building the necessary infrastructure to support a digitized world is the current mandate.

Technology has advanced much in the past century since we were hit by the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, and it plays a crucial role in keeping our society functional. From remote working to distance learning, and from telehealth to robot deliveries, our world is set to witness a lasting change post this pandemic.

As with other major and minor events of the past few years, social media is playing a big role in shaping people’s perception of the ongoing pandemic. Not just that, the social media platforms have also contributed to spreading information/misinformation, helping people cope with the strange times, and raising awareness about some pressing issues.

Social Media and the pandemic: The Good!

Social media is one of the most effective ways to share news nowadays (it may be the only way for some people), especially if you are trying to alert the masses quickly. First-hand accounts of those who were infected and recovered were available almost in real-time. Scenes of lockdowns from the countries that first imposed it gave us a heads-up on what was due to come. If only we’d paid more heed to it.

With most of the world stuck at home, our mobile devices have increasingly become the go-to option to connect with the outside world. Social media usage has surged during the lockdown, with various apps witnessing a manifold increase in their traffic.

From educating to entertaining, social media platforms have stepped up as well. Movie and video streaming apps have redefined movie/video watching behavior by introducing features that allow users to host long-distance movie nights with friends and family.

We also witnessed a surge in various ‘online challenges’ that people could do in their homes and upload online. While some may view them as naïve, experts claim these are part of the various coping mechanisms for people.

Social media surfing has gained a significant share in the pie of leisure activities. Be honest, how many of us living alone are doing anything but scrolling these apps in our free time? But thanks to the social media ‘influencers’, scores of us are being motivated to workout at home, eat healthily, pick up a book, or learn something new.

Posts from health workers and others on the frontline have also helped spread the word on the difficulties they’re facing and rallied efforts to help them.

Online solidarity has spilled over offline as well. People are taking to social media to offer support in any way they can, such as picking up groceries for those who are unable to leave home or sharing information on how to support local businesses who are struggling. Communities are rallying together to support organizations and individuals by opening fundraisers to a larger audience.

Social Media and COVID-19: The Bad

Unfortunately, the impact of social media has not been all good. News on social media spreads fast, fake news even faster. Misinformation can cause panic, and can even turn out to be fatal on health issues. As a practice, we should all do a bit of research and validate the information from ‘reputed sources’ before sharing it.

This next bit is more of a tip…Whether it’s a business or a personal profile, you should refrain from posting anything that makes fun of, ridicules, or trivializes the situation. Not only is that insensitive, but it could also spell trouble for you, especially as a business.

The ‘influencers’ have been found guilty of misusing their power and taking advantage of the situation. Various inauthentic posts had gone viral before being pulled down. Do social validation and fame know no limits?

It is true that people often turn to social media as a stress-buster, but experts say it is equally stress-inducing for some individuals. It is important to note here that we’re also in the midst of an ‘infodemic’ – an anxiety-triggering over-abundance of information.

It is easy to overlook, especially now, the devastation that mental health issues cause globally. Studies have reported an increase in mental health issues attributed to social media in recent years. Psychologists say the lockdown will only add to that. Needless to say, mental health has a bearing on physical health as well.

Anti-rich sentiments have also gained momentum in the past weeks, as the pandemic makes the class divides glaringly obvious.

Conclusion

From the transparency that we have gained through this current COVID-19 situation, we now understand that we were not prepared to handle it. Many developed countries have had their health systems overwhelmed, those on the frontlines are being overworked and even the most advanced nations are stumbling to get their economies back up. The next pandemic is not a matter of “if it happens”, but “when it happens”.We need to be prepared at an individual and collective level. Indeed, technology has advanced and will continue to advance exponentially, but institutions and societies need to accelerate in adapting to it and continue investing in building the technology systems for the preparedness.

About the Author –

Prabhakar is a recruiter by profession and cricketer by passion. His focus is on hiring for the infra verticle. He hails from a small town in Bihar was brought up in Pondicherry. Prabhakar has represented Pondicherry in the U-19 cricket (National School Games). In his free time, he enjoys reading, working on his health and fitness, and spending time with his family and friends.

Resilience

Posted on May 6, 2020May 29, 2020 by Site Admin

Bindu Vijayan

Even as the world is grappling to understand the full extent of the economic impact of this pandemic, I read that the pandemic is minting brand new billionaires, with the need for testing kits, vaccines, and medical supplies being so high. Companies who are able to meet the demand surge for these products enjoy boosted shares and have their stocks surging. That’s how things go with technology, it liberates and it enslaves, but it has most certainly helped build resilience and aided us through the unexpected in our response and recovery. Though labor-intensive businesses like food, manufacturing, logistics and some others are badly hit, our societies are still kept functional by technology in many ways.

Technology has raised our resilience as a community, the pandemic has thrown us into situations we have never been through before – a paralyzed public transportation, no malls, no restaurants, no beaches, no tourism, no visiting our friends, family, and relatives, almost everything that we have taken for granted has been curbed, but technology has enabled us to continue in spite of the crisis. We still are able to work, have essential supplies and deliveries reach us, get medical assistance, almost everything has been made available, and possible for us to live in the comforts of our home as we comply with the virus curbs.

Working remotely – Reducing human density and following social distancing are key to combatting this virus, and working from home is seeing a lot of success. Virtual meetings and collaborations have become the ‘now normal’, with added comfort factors like virtual backgrounds to protect the privacy of one’s home. We are all suddenly seeing the relief from not having to navigate those long commute hours, and this transition has actually dropped a few emotional barriers; suddenly it is more visible (and alright) how we are at home, away from the office, and it is humanizing corporate life a little. We are alright to see (and for others to see us) children being home-schooled, parents dealing with their fuss and outbursts in the background of a meeting, and pets walking around vying for screen space. We are sharing more human aspects of ourselves, there is this shared vulnerability in this situation which is increasing the engagement and connection between co-workers. Though security issues are a concern, there are many advantages in remote working that are emerging for companies. If this does become the new way of working, organisations can save a great deal on leases, cafeteria, and other maintenance expenses.

Online / Distance Education – Just like offices and businesses having to function largely from home, the student community as well have learnt to rely on online learning. About 1.57 billion students are reported to have been impacted by this pandemic, and they are currently doing online programs, thanks to great immersive experiences through technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality and others.

Online purchasing – Today undoubtedly, online shopping is a boon, and has come to everyone’s rescue. With such strict lockdowns especially in severely affected areas, people have had to stay in, strictly monitored by the authorities and online shopping is the need of the hour. Grocery e-commerce has soared with shoppers turning online to purchase. Research from Ipsos reports that the largest increase in e-commerce shopping is in Vietnam (57% consumers purchasing online), India (55%), China (50%), and Italy (31%).

Contactless delivery, Drones and Robots – Companies have started ‘contactless delivery’ services with packages being picked up and dropped off at designated locations as this makes it less risky though not entirely virus-proof. Deliveries are also being done by Drones and robots. Drones are even used to walk dogs during these times, disinfect areas,

Entertainment – Be it concerts, be it parties, gaming, physical workouts, it’s all online now, and it’s such a hit with everyone! It’s no more about watching movies at home, technology brings the parties, museums, churches, and ceremonies into our homes now.

Health – Wearable IoT devices to track one’s vitals are proving its worth with each day into the pandemic. It captures patient information early and allows for faster and more effective treatment. Telehealth is another important aspect of healthcare today. Today, it is proving particularly helpful for mental health support, given the travel restrictions.

As we operate our businesses away from the office, employees will have to be kept engaged. Enabled with technology, grave as the pandemic is, employees are empowered to work from home. Behaviours need to strengthen organizations’ culture, and it is important that the culture is based on trust, transparency and honesty. It is not easy to make things error-free, but the current scenario demands that expectations are managed well, and the foundation works on mutual loyalty.

It is not just the employees who are going through anxieties and fears, the same is happening to our customers as well. Lower productivity, logistics, and other restrictions of lockdowns can disrupt relationships and engagements. Special attention to reinforcing trust and transparency through openness and willingness to engage is imperative. And, through it all, protect your employees, they are the best ambassadors for your organisation, and employee behaviour and attitude is a very significant driver of customer satisfaction.

“To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.”– Doug Conant

References;

VDI for Remote Working

Posted on May 4, 2020June 1, 2020 by Site Admin

Padmapriya Sridhar

The modern workforce is constantly evolving. Flexible work hours, remote working, anytime, anywhere access to corporate data, applications & resources from any device, are fast becoming baseline employee expectations. Organizations are also adapting and exploring better ways to work and collaborate, to boost employee productivity. While providing secure employee mobility is one goal, ensuring 24*7 support for always-on businesses, business continuity with minimal disruption in the event of natural calamities, or pandemics like Covid-19, are other drivers that are escalating the need for secure remote access for employees.

While providing employees with laptops or mobile devices is one option to enable remote working, it can incur heavy capital expenditure and more importantly, it can quickly spiral into a management and security nightmare for the IT team. With thousands of endpoint devices, disparate applications and data, and sophistication of cyber attacks, supporting secure and compliant workplace mobility can become overwhelming, if even effectively doable. With this said, let’s look at Desktop Virtualization as a viable alternative.

Desktop Virtualization

Desktop Virtualization is a technology that completely untethers a physical device from the desktop environment. Desktop components such as the hardware, operating system, applications, data, and user persona are moved into the data center, where they are centrally managed as individual components. When a user accesses his desktop from a remote device through the network, a dynamically assembled set of these components is presented to the user as a personalized view of his desktop, called a virtual desktop. The decoupling of the user’s device from his desktop environment enables desktop access from any of his computing devices.

Benefits of Desktop Virtualization

Simplified IT Management: Centrally located & managed computing and data environment simplifies IT management, and enables tighter control over endpoint devices, easier enforcement of security and regulatory compliance, and hence a lesser number of IT incidents. This process efficiency reduces operational overheads and drastically reduces costs.

Cost-Effective: Desktop Virtualization shifts organizational expenditure from CapEx to OpEx. When virtual desktops are hosted in the cloud as in Desktop as a Service (DaaS), costs are based on usage, making it very cost-effective.

Enhanced Employee Productivity: Employee mobility through secure access to the desktop, applications, and other corporate resources anytime & anywhere, fuels productivity.

Faster Disaster Recovery: This is achievable with minimal downtime since recovery does not involve rebuilding the physical infrastructure environment.

Rapidly Deployable and Highly Scalable: Virtual Desktops are provisioned based on role-specific preconfigured templates, and so can be spun up quickly depending on the demand curve. They can also be destroyed just as fast when not required, saving a lot of time, effort, and costs in anticipatory provisioning. Similarly, applications can also be quickly served, since they are centrally installed and controlled, lending agility to IT operations.

The abstraction and isolation of the desktop computing layers open new possibilities of workspace delivery. Different desktop virtualization technologies address different layers of the computing environment. Some of them over the years have been:

Application Virtualization, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), Service-Based Computing (SBC), Client-Hosted Virtual Desktops (CHVDs), User Personalization Management (UPM), Workspace Aggregators, Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and many more. Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is a cloud-based service offering powered by one or more of these technologies.

VDI & DaaS have had the most innovation in recent times. VDI is a preferred choice since it remotely delivers the image of the desktop environment that users are comfortable with. VDI provides the highest levels of abstraction & security, among the technologies. In VDI, each user gets a dedicated thick client user environment run as a virtual machine (VM), and hosted on a server in the data center. The user works on the desktop image that is sent over the network and can then interact with the files, applications, and the OS, as he would in a physical desktop. The flip side to VDI is that the implementation and management need specialized technical expertise, so it would help to use a VDI vendor who offers end-to-end service as well.

In DaaS, the virtual machines are hosted on the cloud, and so it automatically comes with all the cloud computing benefits like flexibility, faster deployment, scalability, and affordable cost structure due to usage-based pricing, & the shift towards operating expenses.

GAVS’ VDI Solution

zDesk, is our end-to-end integrated solution for a fully functional VDI. zDesk combines the benefits of VDI and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) and can be hosted either on-premise or on the cloud. The simplicity of the single-vendor solution enabled by hyper-converged and software-defined infrastructure technologies defies the rapid deployability, scalability and robust security of the virtual desktops. For more information on our VDI solution, please reach out to us at inquiry@gavstech.com.

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