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Technical TrendA Concept & Approach for Open Frequent Flyer Program (OFFP) 15
ArticlePractical Aspects of Implementing Newton-Raphson on Computers 17
Cover StoryBuilding Electronic Libraries: Issues and Challenges 7
Cover StoryEmergence of e-libraries Among South-Asian Countries: Critical Issues and Concerns 10
Cover StoryBOOKFACE - A Facebook of Books 12
Security CornerInformation Security »
Software Agreements in India – Points to Ponder 28
CSI Communications - Call for Articles for forthcoming issuesThe cover themes for forthcoming issues of CSI Communications are:• April 2013 - Big Data • May 2013 - Cryptography• June 2013 - Social Networking• July 2013 - e-Business/ e-Commerce• August 2013 - Software Project Management • September 2013 - High Performance Computing
(Future topics will be announced on an ongoing basis)
The Editorial Board of CSI Communications is looking for high quality technical articles for diff erent columns pertaining to the above themes or emerging and current interests. The articles should cover all aspects of computing, information and communication technologies that should be of interest to readers at large and member fraternity of CSI and around. The articles may be long (2500-3000 words) or short (1000-1500 words) authored in as the original text (plagiarism is strictly prohibited). The articles shall be peer reviewed by experts decided by the Editorial Board and the selected ones shall be published. Both theoretical and practice based articles are welcome. The articles and contributions may be submitted in the following categories: Cover Story, Research Front, Technical Trends, and Article.
CIOs/Senior IT/IS personnel/consultants of the companies managing technologies/projects related to the cover themes are welcome to contribute under the CIO (Managing Technology) section. Similarly, HR Senior Managers/Personnel/Consultants are invited to contribute under HR section.
Also, Letters to the Editors, questions to be answered in Ask an Expert, your experience to share some Programming Tips under the Practitioner Workbench: Programming.Tips() are welcome.
How to submit the contributions: The articles may be sent to the CSI Editorial Board via email [email protected].
Article Submission guidelines:• All manuscripts should be written at the level of the general audience of varied level of members.• Equations and mathematical expressions within articles are not recommended, however, if absolutely necessary, should be minimum.• List of references is preferred. List not more than 10 references at the end of your manuscript. Please don’t include any embedded
reference numbers within the text of your article. If you would to like to refer, you may state names in the text and provide full reference at the end. The reference must state the names of the authors, title, publisher’s name, complete publication reference with month and year. Web URLs should be there for website references with accessed date.
• Figures and Images used should be limited to maximum of three (only high resolution images need to be sent, and the image needs to be sent separately also).
• Only MS-Word and PDF submissions are allowed.• Include a brief biography of four to six lines for each author with author picture (high resolution)• Editors will edit the contents as felt necessary • Authors of selected articles will be notifi ed by the editorial board and copyright transfer form needs to be fi lled up by the authors.• Only original contributions are requested and no plagiarism is allowed.
Please note that months for various cover themes are tentative and may change depending on prevailing circumstances.
(Issued on behalf of the Editors of CSI Communications)
Plagiarism Alert for Prospective AuthorsThe Editorial Team of CSI Communications is appalled by the
large number of cases of plagiarism in articles submitted to it,
for consideration of publication. A number of rejections had
to be done in recent months wherein cases of verbatim copy
of published material with author list alone changed, has
been noted. This alert is being published in view of the highly
concerning situation.
Plagiarism in the present context is - use in part or whole
of other published articles with or without citing. Even with
citation, pasting huge chunks of text authored by others
is not admissible (the only exception being demarcated
quotes when situation warrants). Plagiarism is against
professional ethics and the editorial team has no option
but to recommend black listing for lifetime of the authors,
committing plagiarism. It is very surprising that those, who
commit such unprofessional act, seem
to be unaware that it is an extremely
simple matter for the editors (or
anyone) to verify plagiarism. In most
cases, a deft Googling will reveal the
sources instantaneously. Plagiarism
is easy to do and also easy to detect.
Prospective authors are requested
to take extreme care in avoiding intentional
and non-intentional forms of plagiarism,
thereby saving time for them as well as for the editors. CSI
Communications is committed to upholding ethical practices
in publishing and hence would continue to take serious view
of plagiarism.
CSI-C Editorial Team
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 3
ContentsVolume No. 36 • Issue No. 12 • March 2013
CSI Communications
Please note:
CSI Communications is published by Computer
Society of India, a non-profi t organization.
Views and opinions expressed in the CSI
Communications are those of individual authors,
contributors and advertisers and they may
diff er from policies and offi cial statements of
CSI. These should not be construed as legal or
professional advice. The CSI, the publisher, the
editors and the contributors are not responsible
for any decisions taken by readers on the basis of
these views and opinions.
Although every care is being taken to ensure
genuineness of the writings in this publication,
CSI Communications does not attest to the
originality of the respective authors’ content.
© 2012 CSI. All rights reserved.
Instructors are permitted to photocopy isolated
articles for non-commercial classroom use
without fee. For any other copying, reprint or
republication, permission must be obtained
in writing from the Society. Copying for other
than personal use or internal reference, or of
articles or columns not owned by the Society
without explicit permission of the Society or the
copyright owner is strictly prohibited.
Published by Suchit Gogwekar for Computer Society of India at Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park, MIDC, Andheri (E), Mumbai-400 093.
Tel. : 022-2926 1700 • Fax : 022-2830 2133 • Email : [email protected] Printed at GP Off set Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai 400 059.
Editorial Board
Chief EditorDr. R M Sonar
EditorsDr. Debasish Jana
Dr. Achuthsankar Nair
Resident EditorMrs. Jayshree Dhere
Published byExecutive Secretary
Mr. Suchit Gogwekar
For Computer Society of India
Design, Print and Dispatch byCyberMedia Services Limited
Cover Story
7 Building Electronic Libraries:
Issues and Challenges
Rachna Patnaik
10 Emergence of e-libraries Among
South-Asian Countries:
Critical Issues and Concerns
Dr. Sudhanshu Joshi and Dr. Manu Sharma
12 BOOKFACE - A Facebook of Books
Binimol MC and Remya Krishnan
Technical Trend
1 5 A Concept & Approach for Open
Frequent Flyer Program (OFFP)
Rudranil Dasgupta and Diptiman Dasgupta
Articles
17 Practical Aspects of Implementing
Newton-Raphson on Computers Dr. Pramod Koparkar
21 Five Key Considerations for an
Information Security Defender
Avinash Kadam
23 Deep Web
Manish Kumar, Dr. M Hanumanthappa, and Dr. T V Suresh Kumar
Practitioner Workbench
26 Programming.Tips() » Fun with ‘C’ programs –
comprehending the
localization support
Wallace Jacob
Security Corner
28 Information Security »
Software Agreements in India –
Points to Ponder
Adv. Prashant Mali
30 IT Act 2000 »
Prof. IT Law in Conversation with
Mr. IT Executive – Similarities
between technology and law; need
for collaboration Issue No. 12
Mr. Subramaniam Vutha
PLUSBrain TeaserDr. Debasish Jana
31
Ask an ExpertDr. Debasish Jana
32
Happenings@ICT: ICT News Briefs in February 2013H R Mohan
33
CSI Report Mr. Ravi Eppaturi
34
CSI Report Dr. Dharm Singh, Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra and Ms. Ridhima Khemasra
36
CSI Report Dr. M Sundaresan
37
CSI Report Mohan Datar
38
CSI News 41
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 4 www.csi-india.org
Important Contact Details »For queries, correspondence regarding Membership, contact [email protected]
Know Your CSI
Executive Committee (2012-13/14) »President Vice-President Hon. SecretaryMr. Satish Babu Prof. S V Raghavan Mr. S [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Hon. Treasurer Immd. Past PresidentMr. V L Mehta Mr. M D [email protected] [email protected]
Nomination Committee (2012-2013)
Dr. D D Sarma Mr. Bipin V Mehta Mr. Subimal Kundu
Regional Vice-PresidentsRegion - I Region - II Region - III Region - IVMr. R K Vyas Prof. Dipti Prasad Mukherjee Mr. Anil Srivastava Mr. Sanjeev Kumar Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh,
Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, North Eastern States Rajasthan and other areas Orissa and other areas in
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other areas in Northern India. East & North East India [email protected] Eastern India
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Region - V Region - VI Region - VII Region - VIIIProf. D B V Sarma Mr. C G Sahasrabudhe Mr. Ramasamy S Mr. Pramit MakodayKarnataka and Andhra Pradesh Maharashtra and Goa Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, International Members
[email protected] [email protected] Andaman and Nicobar, [email protected]
Kerala, Lakshadweep
Division Chairpersons, National Student Coordinator & Publication Committee ChairmanDivision-I : Hardware (2011-13) Division-II : Software (2012-14) Division-III : Applications (2011-13) National Student CoordinatorDr. C R Chakravarthy Dr. T V Gopal Dr. Debesh Das Mr. Ranga Raj [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
Division-IV : Communications Division-V : Education and Research Publication Committee (2012-14) (2011-13) ChairmanMr. Sanjay Mohapatra Prof. R P Soni Prof. R K Shyamsundar [email protected] [email protected]
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CSI Communications | March 2013 | 5
This would be my twelfth and fi nal message to you as the President of the Computer Society of India.
The last twelve months have seen a signifi cant amount of changes in the global ICT ecosystem that CSI is a part of, and also within the Society itself. As ICTs have become an essential part of the lives of citizens around the world, we have seen increasing assertiveness on part of the civil society on their rights vis-à-vis the Internet and ICTs. Governments around the world have largely been on the defensive, trying to protect their national interests while business, which is the other major stakeholder, has been trying to reduce risks on account of the sometimes-confl icting interests of Governments and civil society. This has given rise to piquant situations within the country and abroad in contentious realms such as cyberlaws, Internet Governance, and online security & safety.
For CSI too, this has been an eventful year. Our ExeCom has been active in managing the aff airs of CSI. We had a very successful Annual Convention at Kolkata, and a large number of professional activities such as conferences and workshops around the country during the year.
There have been some developments in the current year that seem to indicate an enhancement of our visibility and profi le: during this year, the CSI President was appointed as Member of the Cyber Regulation Advisory Committee (as per the notifi cation on 16 Nov 2012), a high-level committee Chaired by the Hon. Minister for Communication and Information Technology, Government of India, that has the mandate of advising the Government on issues pertaining to cyberlaw. Later this year, the CSI President has been also invited to join as Member, All India Board of Information Technology Education (AIB-ITE) of AICTE, as per the request received in February 2013. CSI has also been mandated to run 50 Electronic System Design & Manufacturing (ESDM) training workshops around the country, on behalf of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology based on our proposal submitted in December 2011.
Other signifi cant milestones during the year have been steady progress in CSI transactions, CSI journal, and the CSI digital library, all of which are set to enhance our visibility & credibility, at the same time providing valuable services to diff erent constituencies within CSI.
The need to off er value to Student Members, who constitute a signifi cant proportion of our membership, was raised at the Think Tank and President’s Council meeting at Kolkata. We have been gearing up on this aspect, and, with the appointment of a senior professional as the Director of Education, we hope to further enhance student services.
These are indeed important achievements for us. However, we still have scope for improvement in many areas, most
noticeably in membership and chapter development. Our coverage in diff erent parts of the country has been steadily increasing, but there are still pockets where CSI is virtually unknown. In some of these regions, we have launched initial activities that will hopefully culminate in Chapters in a reasonable period of time.
Another area where we can contribute is to international processes, institutions, and networks. CSI’s international presence has traditionally been focussed on IFIP and SEARCC, but we need to also enhance our linkages with other international agencies such as BASIS, IGF, and ICANN. We have already made a beginning on some of these during the last year. We are also in the process of signing new or renewed inter-society agreements with agencies such as IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and ISACA, which will add further value for our members.
I have been fortunate to have a team of Offi ce Bearers, ExeCom members, NC Chair & members, Advisors, and staff who have made my tenure reasonably smooth and trouble free. I would like to thank all of them, and also each member of CSI who have reposed their confi dence in me. It has been indeed an honour for me to serve as the President of CSI, and I am sure that the Society will become even more eff ective under the able leadership of Prof. SV Raghavan, who would be taking over as President; Mr. HR Mohan, the Vice President, and President-elect; and their respective teams.
It is with a profound sense of satisfaction that I bid you goodbye. As we are about to celebrate our 48th Foundation Day, I would like to end with a message with of hope, that CSI will fulfi l its mission and mandate of being the country’s most respected and beloved technical society.
With best wishes,
Satish BabuPresident
President’s Message Satish Babu
From : [email protected] : President’s DeskDate : 1st March, 2013
Dear Members
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 6 www.csi-india.org
EditorialRajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair, Debasish Jana and Jayshree Dhere
Editors
From Clay to Silicon is not a paradigm shift. But for
libraries, that may not be true. From clay tablets
that might have fi lled the libraries of Alexandria
to the Silicon brains that seem to power modern
digital libraries, there is of course philosophical
transformation. Technology is not a mere tool as far as
libraries are concerned. They have pervaded the heart
as well as soul of libraries, and they have created new
library experiences withering the old ones. This issue
of CSI has as its theme e-Libraries.
Rachna Patnaik of SAC, ISRO, Ahmedabad in
article titled “Building Electronic Libraries: Issues
and Challenges” gives an overview of the scene and
introduces the case of SAC e-library. The services of
the SAC library portal clearly indicate the changing
face of new generation libraries. Dr. Sudhanshu Joshi
and Dr. Manu Sharma in the article titled “Emergence
of e-libraries Among South-Asian Countries: Critical
Issues and Concerns” take a look at issues specifi c
to South Asian countries. Binimol M C and Remya
Krishnan report an innovative library application that
attempts to reach out to generation-X by initiating the
ubiquitous facebook.
Our Technical Trends section has an interesting
article titled “A Concept & Approach for Open Frequent
Flyer Program (OFFP)” authored by Rudranil Dasgupta
and Diptiman Dasgupta. In Article Section, Pramod
Koparkar has presented an educative computing
application for numerical analysis with “Practical
Aspects of Implementing Newton-Raphson on
Computers”.
Avinash Kadam has highlighted information security
awareness through his article “Five Key Considerations
for an Information Security Defender”. He has written
about specifi c aspects of the role of information
security defender, which are diff erent from
information security planner and information security
investigator. Manish Kumar, Dr. M Hanumanthappa
and Dr. T V Suresh Kumar have presented “The
Underworld of Cyberworld” through onion routing
aspects as well as anonymity challenges. The article
provides information on the technology like Tor and
Bitcoin, which has added a potential threat in cyber
community.
In Practitioner Workbench section, we have
Programming.Tips () presenting Fun with ‘C’ programs
– comprehending the localization support and The
gprof utility in Linux by Wallace Jacob. Security Corner
section covers two articles: one on information security
article by Adv. Prashant Mali titled “Software Agreements
in India – Points to Ponder”, another on IT Act 2000 by
Mr. Subramaniam Vutha on “Prof. IT Law in Conversation
with Mr. IT Executive – Similarities between technology and
law; need for collaboration Issue No. 12”.
There are other regular features such as; Brain Teaser,
Ask an Expert and ICT News Brief in February 2013
in Happening@ICT and CSI reports, Chapter and
Student branch newsand various calls.
Remember we look forward to receiving your
feedback, contributions, and replies as usual at
With warm regards,
Rajendra M Sonar, Achuthsankar S Nair,
Debasish Jana and Jayshree Dhere
Editors
Dear Fellow CSI Members,
From Clay to Silicon is not a paradigm shift. But for libraries, that may not be true.
Technology is not a mere as far as libraries are concerned. They have pervaded the heart as soul of libraries, they have created new library experiences wither to unknown.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 7
IntroductionThe growth of Internet and the availability
of enormous volume of information in
electronic/digital form have necessitated
the growth of e-libraries. By adopting,
emerging technologies, libraries are
reshaping its collections and services by
organizing, managing, and disseminating
information in an electronic format. Due
to an explosion of electronic resources in
the form of journals, books, newspapers,
magazines, data, images, music, and
other audio, videos etc., it has become
essential for libraries to store information
electronically. As the electronic resources
change at a very rapid pace, fi nding ways
to manage them eff ectively, from selection
to licensing, is becoming a major challenge
for librarians. There are certain issues
related to e-resources like acquisition,
access restrictions, authentication,
copyright, preservation, software, and the
user interface. In addition to acquiring and
managing e-resources, it is also essential
that library professionals must educate
patrons on the usage and access to
electronic resources.
Libraries have evolved from paper-
based storehouse of books and journals,
into distributed network of electronic
information and knowledge, now known
as electronic libraries (E-Libraries). In
electronic libraries, information is stored
electronically and made accessible to
the users through networks. Because of
the user preferences for the electronic
format, these resources are becoming
essential in library collection. The
collections in E-libraries are developed
and maintained to meet the information
needs of a given user community.
“Electronic resources” refer to those
materials that require computer access
and may either be accessed locally or
remotely via the Internet.
E-resources and Collection DevelopmentThe libraries, along with their traditional
holdings have now added various types
of electronic information resources like
E-journals, E-books, Full-text databases,
E-reports, CD-ROM and DVD-ROM
databases, online databases, and internet
resources as depicted in Fig. 1.
Libraries have started subscribing
these e-resources because of their
multidimensional features compared
to the print sources. Diff erent skills and
systems are required to handle and
manage these resources. Some of the
advantages of e-resources are: they
allow remote access across geographical
barriers, can be simultaneously accessed
by more than one user, support searching
capabilities with unique features i.e.
multimedia information, and save physical
storage space and do not require physical
processing, e.g., receiving and binding.
Although e-resources off er above
mentioned advantages, there are certain
issues like infrastructure costs, need of
technical support/training, concerns
about copyright issues and archiving,
complex licensing agreements, and lack of
uniformity and consistency in the format /
user interface etc.
E-Books
E-Resources
E-Journals
CD-ROM databases
DVD-ROM databases
E-Databases
E-Reports
Fig. 1: E-resources in a library
Collection development is the
process of systematically building library
collections to serve the needs of the users.
It is essential to answer certain questions
before building an e-library like “Why do
we need an e-library collection?”, “Who
are our patrons and what are their needs?”
How the collections will be organized and
accessed. Due to budget constraints,
it is essential to evaluate e-resources
before purchase, based on an in-depth
knowledge of the patron’s needs and
availability of resources. Although, the
availability of electronic resources enables
remote access to the information, it also
simultaneously presents certain issues
and challenges not encountered with
traditional materials.
Space Applications Centre Electronic library Space Applications Centre’s (SAC) library
provides various electronic services
to its users on their desktops through
organization’s internal network. With
the rapid development of electronic
publishing, library is not only acquiring
reading materials such as printed books
and journals, but also arranging for
providing access to various learning
resources in an electronic format.
The various electronic services
provided by SAC Library portal shown in
Fig. 2, are as follows:
• On-line Public Access Catalogue
(OPAC)
• Digital Repository
• CD/DVD Access
• E-Resources
• NPTEL videos
• Current Awareness service
• Project Literature service
• Content page service
The library services are hosted on
high-end servers on Red Hat Linux and
Ubuntu platform. The library’s online
catalog contains over 1 lakh items owned
by the library, including books, periodicals,
Building Electronic Libraries: Issues and Challenges
Rachna PatnaikHead, Library & Documentation Division, Space Applications Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad
Abstract: Information technology (IT) and network technology (NT) have given boost to the development of Electronic publishing
and have converted the traditional libraries to electronic libraries. Electronic/digital resources are revolutionizing libraries across the
world and there is a sharp transformation in the nature of library collections. In order to keep pace with this trend and meet user needs,
it is essential that libraries must incorporate criteria for the selection of materials in new formats while also maintaining traditional
collections. The librarian is also forced to use IT tools effectively to render services and to redefine the process of collection development.
There are various issues related to the acquisition, preservation, copyright, licensing, and access to these electronic resources, which are
far more critical than the print format. In this article, attempts have been made to highlight some of these key issues.
Keywords: Electronic libraries, electronic resources, etc.
Cover Story
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 8 www.csi-india.org
electronic documents, and other
materials. The bibliographic information
can be accessed through Online Public
Access Catalogues (OPAC) and users can
search according to author, title, subject,
keyword, publisher, place, etc.
SAC Library has developed a digital
repository using Dspace software, on
Ubuntu platform for managing digital
resources of its scientifi c community.
It consists of original research in digital
form, including technical reports
(unclassifi ed), publication, and house
publication which are uploaded in the
repository in a proper collection. For
the storage of the content, the server is
attached to 4TB Direct attached Storage
(DAS) device. The repository provides
access to and manages collection in a
professionally maintained archive, giving
users increased visibility and accessibility
over the organization’s network.
The NPTEL videos and electronic
documents available in the library are
mirrored on the Network Attached
Storage (NAS), of 6TB capacity to help
the users to access from their desktops.
All eff orts are taken into consideration
regarding monitoring and controlling of
license usage. From the security point,
share level security as well as user level
security is provided.
SAC Library also subscribes to various
electronic journals and books. Full text
electronic access to some of them is made
available as free with print subscription,
some by paying additional subscription
amount, and registering with our IP address.
Complete list of E-journals along with
instructions of usage, is provided on library
portal. These resources are IP authenticated,
and can be accessed within the campus as
well as from home through a proxy server.
Fig. 2: SAC Library portal
The usage of these e-resources is
tremendous, and users are accessing
these contents for their various projects
and research work, as brought out in Fig. 3.
Issues and Challenges in developing e-libraries The challenges of integrating electronic
resources and technologies are many and
need to be considered including content,
functionality, pricing, infrastructure,
access, technological obsolescence,
licensing, ownership, and copyright.
Therefore, before purchasing e-resources
it is essential to evaluate and form policies
to integrate this new technology, as
described below:
Content and pricingIt is essential to determine the media/
format in which the content should be
acquired, frequency of updates, the
availability of back issues, archiving
policies, etc.
As the pricing models of electronic
resources vary signifi cantly, libraries while
subscribing should consider the cost and
other additional benefi ts like savings in
physical storage, increased availability,
improved access or functionality. In terms
of access and archival, the best model
which meets the needs of the library
should be considered.
Infrastructure requirementsIt is essential to ensure that library
has proper infrastructure i.e. hardware
and software and has the capability
to provide and eff ectively maintain access
to resources on an ongoing and cost
eff ective basis.
The various methods of access, either
IP-authentication or login/password need
to be considered. Access via IP fi ltering
is often preferable because it provides
simultaneous access to multiple users.
Also, IP-address recognition allows
authorized library users to access content
from outside the physical boundary of the
library via a proxy server. The resources
should be compatible across a wide
range of platforms and web browsers.
Library should also provide training to its
users about the resources and browser
requirements.
Functionality and reliability The interface should be user friendly, easy
to navigate, and users should be able to
save search history, etc. It should off er
a powerful and fl exible search engine
with features like keyword and Boolean
searching, full-text searching, truncation,
relevancy ranking, etc. The system on
which the e-resources are hosted should
be available 24/7 and reliable with
minimum downtime.
Taylor & Francis
SPIEDL
Sciencedirect (Elsevier)
OSA
John Wiley
Indistat
IEL (IEEE/IET Electronic Lib)
AMS
AIP
AGUDL
ACMDL
0 2000
197
1197
1135
1080
9031
476
403
362
1758
4644
564
4000 6000 8000 10000
Fig. 3: Usage of E-Journals subscribed by library during last year
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 9
Technological obsolescenceThe biggest challenge in e-collection
development is the obsolescence of
hardware/software required to access
electronic information. In order to
ensure longer life of the electronic
information, a continuous development
and upgradation of information storage,
and access to techniques and technology
is a must. It is also essential to consider
the provision for migrating fi les to new
formats/platforms, to keep up with
technological advances.
Archiving/Preserving e-resources A major concern is, archiving and
preserving e-resources for the future use,
because libraries do not have ownership
of the e-resources, but can only access
them. Libraries may want a guarantee
that if they cancel or terminate their
subscriptions, they have the right of
perpetual access to previously subscribed
contents. Consideration should be given to
whether the content provider is compliant
to LOCKSS, Portico or other similar types
of archival products.
CopyrightCopyright is a form of intellectual property
that gives the author, of an original work
exclusive right for a certain time period
in relation to that work, including its
publication, distribution, and adaptation,
after which time the work is said to
enter the public domain. Since the entire
electronic library is available online, it
comes under the Copyright Laws and its
contents should not be reproduced or
electronically transmitted.
Licensing issues for e-resourcesUnlike print publications, e-resources are
not purchased outright and usually require
a license agreement to be signed. Prior to
the purchase, the license agreement must
be reviewed and negotiated as it describes
the authorized uses and users of licensed
information. The library should ensure
that as a part of the license agreement,
the vendor provides suffi cient advance
notifi cation in relation to renewals to allow
for suffi cient lead time to undertake an
eff ective review of the resource.
Renewal and Review of usesBefore renewal of any resource, the library
should review usage statistics to determine
eff ective use of the resource. The library
should demand from the vendor statistical
reporting i.e. COUNTER (Counting Online
Usage of Networked E-resources) and/
or SUSHI (Standard Usage Statistics
Harvesting Initiative) compliant usage of
e-resources. The library should be able
to ensure that library budgets continue
to be spent on resources that support
the overall mission and objectives of the
organization and remain relevant and cost
eff ective.
ConclusionThe development of an electronic library
is a long and challenging process and
libraries need to apply proper skills in
planning the collection and manage
both print and e-resources. During the
last decade, the status of libraries has
drastically changed due to emergence
of e-resources. Also, there is a rapid
urge of the user community to get more
information in e-format. Replacing printed
resources with electronic materials can
reduce the cost of processing, shelving,
and binding. Moving towards electronic
library from the traditional library needs a
balanced collection between printed and
electronic forms.
Since a vast amount of information is
available in electronic formats on Internet;
Librarian must not only identify and
facilitate access to electronic information
resources, but also educate library users
about their availability and use patterns.
Protection of intellectual property, security
of electronic resources, user training, etc.
should also be considered as eff ective
management of information within the
electronic library.
AcknowledgmentThe author is thankful to Shri Kiran Kumar,
Director, SAC for his encouragement and
Dr. Ajai, Chairman Library Committee,
SAC for his constant support and guidance.
The author is grateful to Dr. Pradip Pal and
Shri Nilesh M Desai for their critical and
fruitful discussions on the article.
References[1] Johnson Sharon, Evensen Ole Gunnar,
Gelfand et. al. (2012) “Key Issues for
E-Resource Collection Development:
A Guide for Libraries“, International
federation of library associations and
institutions.
[2] Kovacs, Diane K Kovacs, Elkordy
Angela (2000) “Collection
development in cyberspace: building
an electronic library collection”,
Library Hi Tech; Volume: 18 Issue:
4; 2000.
[3] Chandel A S, Saikria Mukesh (2012),
“Challenges and opportunities of
e-resources”, Annals of Library and
Information Studies, Vol. 59, Sept.
2012, pp. 148-154.
[4] Branin, J J (1994). Fighting back once
again from collection management to
knowledge management. In Johnson,
P and MacEwan, B Collection
management and development
issues in an electronic era. Chicago:
American Library Association.
[5] Kovacs, D K (1999). Electronic
publishing in libraries: introduction.
Library Hi Tech. Vol. 17 (1), pp 8-9.
[6] Jurasek, Karen. (2008). Trends
and challenges before the future
academic library professional that
will Shape the Future of Academic
Libraries.
[7] Avasia, Maya (2001). “Electronic
resources: Collection development”,
Proceedings of Caliber 2001.
[8] Kovacs Diane K and Robinson,
Kara L (2004), “The Kovacs guide
to electronic library collection
development”. n
Abo
ut th
e A
utho
r
Rachna Patnaik did her Master of Computer Applications (MCA), from NIT Bhopal in 1992. She has more than
18 years of experience in database management system, web designing, open source software, data mining, and
digital repositories. Her research interests cover a wide spectrum of library and IT technologies. Currently, she is
Head, Library & Documentation Division, Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 10 www.csi-india.org
Dr. Sudhanshu Joshi* and Dr. Manu Sharma***Incharge- Information Technology, Doon University, Dehradun**Asst. Professor, School of Management, Institute of Management Studies, Dehradun
Cover Story
Emergence of e-libraries Among South-Asian Countries: Critical Issues and ConcernsIn the last few decades, ICT has emerged
as a potential catalyst for socioeconomic
growth and development among
developing countries (Conceição, Heitor,
Gibson, & Shariq, 1998; Heeks, 1999;
Saunders, Warford, & Wellenius, 1994).
Few studies in the recent past also depict
that a competent telecommunication
infrastructure boosts the socio-
economical development of people at the
bottom of pyramid, through various means
including enhancing livelihoods, delivering
educational, and health opportunities at
the masses and by providing accessibility
to valuable knowledge and resources
(Caspary & O’Connor, 2003; Chapman &
Slaymaker, 2002; Slater & Tacchi, 2004;
Wilson, 2003).
Among the successful applications
of ICT, e-libraries proved to be one of
the successful ventures. Digital library
systems cater to the present and
potential needs of scientifi c and research
communities, and also the emerging
needs of society and practitioners by
bridging the geographical challenges.
Recently, the usage of cloud computing
to channelize e-libraries content is being
examined and how it can become a part of
future research and application.
Theoretically, the term digital
libraries can be logically defi ned as “an
extension and enhancement of physically
stored information, by means of retrieval
systems that manipulate digital data
in any medium” (texts, images, sound;
static or dynamic images) (Borgman,
1999; Marchionini, 2000; Marchionini &
Fox, 1999).
Digital libraries are seen as resources
that ideally: (1). Serve a defi ned community
or set of communities; (2). May not be
a single entity; (3). Are underpinned
by a unifi ed and logical organizational
structure; (4). Incorporate learning as well
as access; (5). Make the most of human
(“librarian”) as well as technological
resources; (6). Provide fast and effi cient
accessing, with multiple access modes;
(7). Provide free access (perhaps just
to the specifi ed community); (8). Own
and control their resources (some of
which may be purchased); and (9). Have
collections that: Are large, and persist
over time; Are well organized and
managed; Contain many formats;
Contain objects; not just representations;
Contain objects that may be otherwise
unobtainable, and Contain some objects
that are digital ab origin.
Today, we stand at a transition from
the traditional library to a global digital
library. The idea is to provide universal
access to digital content available only
in a digital library environment. In the
Information Age, we require a digital
library because the emergence of digital
technology and computer networks has
provided a means, whereby information
can be stored, retrieved, disseminated,
and duplicated in a fast and effi cient
manner (Bhattacharya, 2004). On a global
level, digital libraries (DLs) have made
considerable advances both in technology
and its application. South –Asian libraries
still have a long way to go, if they have to
benefi t from this movement.
Purpose of a Digital LibraryThe fundamental purpose of a digital library
must be to provide access to information,
along with appropriate reference tools for
identifying and evaluating the possible
sources and types of information
(Bhattcharya, 2004). Learning must be
digitized and organized in a manner that
can be searched intelligently and reliably,
using technologies that do not require
undue technical training. Perhaps most
diffi cult of all, is to have a sustainable
business model to support the digital
library must. Digital libraries can be
explored in an information society from two
yet not entirely compatible dimensions:
intellectual property and evolving
technologies to serve communities of
learning (Jeevan, 2004).
Challenges Facing the Digital LibrariesA digital library involves a massive
investment for digitization of the existing
collection and acquisition of digital
resources. Hence, the small libraries in
low income developing nations in South-
Asia are unable to invest in creating digital
libraries, or to digitize their collections.
Following are the challenges that libraries
in South-Asia face, as far as digitization
are concerned (Bhattacharya, 2004):
(i) Intellectual Property Rights: A major
challenge usually emerges during the
digitalization of libraries and that is;
complying with copyright and other
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
issues. A large pool of publishers and
authors are creating a mechanism to
benefi t the stakeholders, and ensure
the protection of the Intellectual
rights.
(ii) Security: Data security for digitalized
information is the biggest challenge.
Issues including piracy of databases,
virus inversion etc; need to be
addressed on immediate basis.
(iii) Technological change: Information
technology skills and applications
are changing and developing quickly.
To sustain, digital libraries need the
latest technology.
(iv) Lack of expertise: There are only
limited suppliers for digital materials
in the world. There is an urgent need
to expand this expertise across
South-Asia, to ensure that knowledge
remains a source of sharing.
(v) Inadequate fi nance and infrastructure:
Most of the academic and public
libraries are facing the problem of
fi nances. Thus, it is not possible for
all colleges and universities to change
their resources into digital resources.
(vi) Information explosion on the internet:
As digital libraries are working
through the Internet and other
networks, information fi ltration
mechanism needs to develop, to
extract the fruitful information from
the network for the end user.
(vii) Cost of regular refreshing: Some
sources of information, such as
e-journals, are unlikely to lead to
reduced costs either for publishers or
for libraries.
(viii) Preservation: To provide continued
digital information services, a
digital library should have historical
information resources in addition to
current digital sources.
(ix) Existing infrastructure: This is one
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 11
the major challenge the South-Asian
countries are facing, because of the
underdeveloped state of infrastructure
set up, which includes telecommunication
setups as well.
Conclusion:Besides, the diff erence in the development
of e-libraries in developing nations vis-
à-vis other areas of digitalisation, a
level of enthusiasm is required among
libraries practitioners to develop an
evolving prototype for e-libraries through
cooperation and collaboration among
diff erent countries (Jeevan, 2004).
Technology plays a vital role in the
transformation of libraries into digital
form, but besides technology various
factors including infrastructural needs,
human resource, fi nance, and lack of
planning also need to be considered.
In the emerging networked world,
copyrights and intellectual property are
now well protected and enough security
is developed and maintained. In addition
to this, learning from the developed world
gives more visibility to the intellectual
property of developing nations.
The other important dimension
that digital libraries should focus on is
preservation and access to content, and
on making digitalized content free, for
easy access among the member libraries,
while creating an e- consortium.
Future OutlookThe success of a digital library depends
upon the computers, communication skills,
and knowledge of library professionals
in connection with modern technology.
Future trends point toward the need for
extensive research in digital libraries
and for the transformation of libraries
as institutions. The present ambiguity of
terminology is hindering the advance of
research and practice in digital libraries,
and in our ability to communicate the
scope and signifi cance of our work.
A Brief list of potential areas of
concern could include (Goldner, 2010):
1. Most library computer systems
are built on pre-web technology.
Transformation is required in terms of
deployment of web 2.0 architecture.
2. System distributed across the net
using pre-web technology is harder
and more costly to integrate. Security
issues are needed to address.
3. Libraries store and maintain much
of the same date hundreds and
thousands of times. Collection
assessment is required across the
E-Library database.
4. With library data scatter across
distributed systems the library’s
web presence is weakened.
A comprehensive framework needs
to install.
5. With libraries running independent
systems collaboration between
libraries is made diffi cult and
expensive. Inter-library cloud is
required to be installed.
6. Information seekers work in common
web environments and distributed
systems make it diffi cult to get the
library into their workfl ow.
7. Many systems are only used to 10%
of their capacity. Combining systems
into a cloud environment reduces the
carbon footprints, making libraries
greener.
In the present article, we have suggested
measures to build the open-source public
cloud service library architecture, across
South-Asian libraries based on virtual
technology, eff ectively increase the service
capacity of information institutions, use
effi ciency of network resources, and
secure the applicability of services while
preventing the server from spreading.
Future research can be based on
key technical interfaces for building the
cloud infrastructure and realization of
major functional modules, including
the management of virtual server,
management of virtual application
mapping.
A South-Asian Cloud based e-library
can be formulated, which aims to
cooperate a set of library management
services, to support core library services
such as circulation, acquisitions,
cataloguing, and related resource sharing
among selected Asian countries.
References:[1] Chakraverty, R (2003). Digital
libraries: issues and future. In Y Singh, et al. (Eds.), New challenges in information management and e-learning in the age of globalisation-issues and opportunities: Proceedings of the SIS 2003, Vol. 1 (pp. 25–39). Roorkee: IIT Roorkee.
[2] Goswami, S K, & Ghosh, B K (2002). Digital library environment—Indian context. In A Chatterjee, et al. (Eds.), Digital information systems and services (pp. 229–234). Kolkata: IASLIC.
[3] Bhattacharya. P (2004), “Advances in digital library initiatives: a developing country perspective”, The International Information & Library Review, 36(3), pp. 165-175. 175.
[4] Conceição. P, Heitor, M V, Gibson D V And Shariq S S (1998), “The emerging importance of knowledge for development: Implications for technology policy and innovation”, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 58 (3), pp. 181–202.
[5] C L Borgman, C L (1999), “What are digital libraries? Competing visions”, Information Processing and Management, 35 pp. 227–243.
[6] Goldner, M (2010), “Wind of Change:
ILS
OPAC
Self-Service Circulation
Cataloguing
InstitutionalRepository
MetaSearch
CataloguingUtility
Natural/GlobalSystem
ConsortiaSystem
ElectronicVenders
PrintVendors
Resolver
ERMLibrary
Suppliers
Partners
UsersData
A to ZList
AcquisitionLibrary
Users
(a). Traditional library System Topology (b) Proposed South-Asian E-Library
Fig. I: Migrati on from traditi on library system topology (a) to Proposed Integrati on Model of South-Asian E-Library (b) [Source: Adopted from Michael Dula et.al. 2012]
Continued on Page 16
www.csi-india.orgCSI Communications | March 2013 | 12
Binimol MC* and Remya Krishnan**Cover Story
BOOKFACE - A Facebook of Books
With the evolution of the Internet, the
concept of automation has invaded every
single fi eld known to man. The age old
system of maintaining register books,
ID cards in library has been eff ectively
replaced by library automation systems.
The emergence of library automation
perhaps began with University of Texas,
using a punch card system to manage
library operation in 1936. In another decade,
Vannevar Bush talked about an automated
system that would store information,
including books, personal records, and
articles. The MARC. (Machine Readable
Cataloging) of Library of Congress in
1960s, became an international standard,
the integrated library system (ILS) in
1970s followed by the Internet in 1990s.
ILSs began allowing users to more actively
engage with their Libraries through OPACs
(Online Public Access Catalog) and online
web-based portals.
Open source ILSs such as Koha and
Evergreen are new in the scene. However,
a paradigm shift in the scene is yet to
appear. The Internet has triggered new
forms of social interactions, the foremost
being social networking sites. Orkut,
Facebook, Twitter, etc have become the
most important forms of social activity for
generation-X.
With the emergence of social
networking ventures like Orkut, Facebook,
Twitter, a large network of people
stay connected by status updating,
commenting, and sharing pictures.
Bookface, library software conceived
an implementation at the Department
of Computational Biology and
Bioinformatics, University of Kerala, has
attempted to exploit the paradigm of social
networking to make it appealing to Gen-X.
Library digitization was used primarily in
managements or administrations where
users did not have many benefi ts; however
Bookface redefi nes how the library can be
used. Bookface is an innovative library
management application, which merges
the features of social networking and
common library management software.
It is a web-based application that is
supported by multiple browsers and
mobile platforms. It is like a Facebook of Books and library users. Users can tag,
like, and comment on their favorite books.
They can browse the software through any
device that can access the internet. They
can maintain their bookshelves and thus
archive their reader life. This innovative
software is aimed at transforming the
The 21st Century is the age of social networking where the current generation interacts more virtually than physically. Social
Networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Orkut, etc. have taken social interaction in the human domain to the next
level. In this virtual networking culture, academic books, and libraries seem to be taking a back seat for the younger generation. To
encourage active reading and keep the passion and love for books alive, the concept of social networking has been implemented
in the academic library of Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the University of Kerala. Here we introduce
BookFace- the new face to library networking.
Fig. 1: The Home Page of Bookface
Fig. 2: Use of fi lters in Search box
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 13
library to a futuristic people-centric
library. Sookshmatech, a software fi rm in
Technopark, developed the software. The
URL of Bookface is www.bookfacedcb.org
Homepage of Bookface is obviously
reminiscent of Facebook. It energizes
the members to read the books. Reading
count is automatically recorded in
Bookface. Anyone who logs into Bookface
can know about the quantity of stock
books, availability of books, and the details
of issued books. The various fi ltering
options available in Bookface make it easy
to search and fi nd required books. It also
complies with the Right to Information
Act making the library an open-window
system. Bookface gives a more reader-
centric approach that is much diff erent
from the original objective of a usual
library that is more book centric and
service centric.
Issue & return process are done
through RFID (Radio Frequency
Identifi cation) system, thus replacing the
use of barcodes on library books. RFID
tags are penetrable through an item;
hence it can be directly scanned without
the need to open it. A stack of books
can thus be read simultaneously by the
borrower himself, hence the librarian
has just a monitoring role in this process
and the end-users can save time. The
book operations of the library are fully
computerized and the online public
access catalog (OPAC) is accessible from
anywhere from the world.
The home module of Bookface
provides the most relevant information
on the books and the users. Most popular
books are listed under separate tabs such
as Most Read, Most Liked, etc. Recent
comments by users are populated under
the “Recent Updates” tab. (Fig. 1). It is
based on the idea of social networking
on an academic scenario wherein users
can view images, a short description, and
the status of availability about any book
in the library. In the main window one
can view the most read, most liked, most
commented books, and recent updates. A
search option is also included to look up
for the book under various categories like
author, title, subject, stock number, call
number, etc. The librarian alone has the
privilege of viewing the library register in
the form of stock number, title of the book,
member name, issued, and returned dates
of books on the Home Page.
The Search box, which is available in
all modules, makes it easy to search
for particular books. Books can be
searched based on their titles, by the
authors, publishers, subject, etc. Various
fi lters such as science, philosophy, and
mathematics, can be applied to shortlist
the search results. Once the user provides
the necessary details and hits ‘Enter’, the
results will be displayed as seen in Fig. 2.
By clicking the Books link the page
goes to another page which displays
images of the new releases (Fig. 3a).
Recent comments and recently issued
books are the additional menus included
in this page.
Bibliographical information are
available from Book Details page i.e., full
book details and it’s transactions including
issuing time, date, month, and year. There
is a facility to write comment about the
books. Members can reserve their books
Fig. 3: Salient features of Books module
Fig. 3a: The Books module of Bookface
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 14 www.csi-india.org
beforehand when the books get listed on
the ‘New Arrivals’ list through this page,
so that when the book is available for
borrowing the user who has reserved it shall
get it fi rst. Another unique feature is that
the members can use ‘tags’ on their books
with tag names such as humor, science,
fi ction, etc. thus when other users need to
read about fi ction, the books tagged under
fi ction gets listed much similar to a cross
referencing system. Users can also create
shelf with their most liked books. The book
transactions are automatically linked to
this module to enable users to fi nd out
if materials are available for loan or have
been borrowed (Fig 3b).
From the stats page one can generate
various statistical reports about book
transactions, readership rates over the
years or a particular week or a month
(Fig. 4). This module displays graphical
representations of readership rates,
searches the number of stock books,
available books, and issued books
available as sub-classes from this module.
From the ‘Members’ sub-class the full
details about members of Bookface, their
readership rates and books currently in
hand are displayed.
.The Members module gives details
on the names and status of the members
in Bookface (Fig. 5). They are classifi ed as
MSc/ MPhil students, research scholars,
faculty, alumni and administrators.
Clicking on each member we get details
on the number of books the member
has read, liked, and commented. Alumni
members can also continue using their
accounts and add comments, but they are
denied borrowing or issuing of books.
Automation and networking of libraries
are still in their infancy in India. Their full
impact on libraries and library resources
will be known in due course of time. A
lot of concern has been raised in recent
times regarding the deteriorating reading
standards of the younger generations. The
key to this issue is to provide a “facelift”
to libraries that are resources of infi nite
knowledge. Bookface is one such solution
that encourages the students, teachers,
and all types of front end users alike
to befriend the books in their libraries,
and “to know and let know” about the
eff ectiveness of a book to others as well.
Bookface is thus a social library network
that has attracted a wide range of readers
ever since its launch and hence other
academic libraries shall surely benefi t with
systems such as these. n
Fig. 4: Stats showing net readership rate over the years.
Abo
ut th
e A
utho
rs
Binimol MC completed her Bachelor of Library and Information Science (BLISc) and Master of Library and
Information Science (MLISc) from Kerala University. She is currently working as Library Assistant at the
Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala.
Remya Krishnan did her Post Graduation in Biotechnology and MPhil in Bioinformatics from the Department
of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala. She is currently doing her PhD in the same
department.
Fig. 5: Members module of Bookface
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 15
IntroductionIn the airline industry we have a concept
of Frequent Flyer Programs (FFP), which is
basically an award program for passengers
who fl y in very high frequencies and under
this program; those sections of passengers
are recognized or given extra off ers/
promotions. Almost every travel company
has their own frequent fl yer program and
this leads to the following issues:
• Maintenance of multiple frequent
fl yer accounts by each traveler.
• Reward is based on miles fl own in a
particular fl eet and not total miles
travelled by a passenger in air.
• Passenger misses out on rewards if
he chooses to mix and match airlines.
• Passenger always has to restrict the
travel on the FFP program that the
passenger is associated with instead
of having an open mind to decide
best course of travel.
Suppose Airline ABC has a FFP A1 and
Airline XYZ has a FFP A2. Not only does
the passenger need to maintain two sets
of credentials for the same, but also he will
not be rewarded by ABC if the passenger
travels on XYZ and vice versa. This always
restricts the passenger in his airline
choices, and he is not properly rewarded
for ONLY fl ying, which should be the main
criteria.
In addition to this, for any
passenger, the entire travel paradigm
may also comprise of train, hotel, and car
reservations. All these disparate entities
have their own programs for tracking a
passenger’s frequent fl yer/frequent usage
statistics, which leads to an incomplete
travel experience. In most cases in
today’s scenario, the passenger will miss
out integrating the benefi ts of one of the
components in the other one.
Approach Towards Defi ning an Open Frequent Flyer ProgramThe core idea is the creation of a weight
based unique frequent fl yer program, which
can be thought of as Open Frequent Flyer
Program (OFFP) as it is not restricted to
any particular industry. The OFFP would be
a calculation of trip parameters instead of
isolated path. Every passenger would have
a single frequent fl yer number/unique id
for all airlines. The number would ALWAYS
be updated with points, when a passenger
travels independent of the airline chosen by
the passenger. The exact algorithm for this
is given in the next section.
Added to this would be the tracking
and addition of any travel component
like train, car, and hotel which would be
tracked through the same OFFP ID for a
passenger.
The advantages that this approach
would bring in are:
• Single Unique OFFP ID maintained
for a user - easier for user, easier for
the travel industry.
• Rewards would be for being in the air
or total distance traveled over the air,
and not based on particular airline
- being in the air and covering large
distance is the most profi table metric
of the airline, along with the points
earned by using trains, cars and,
staying in hotels.
• Passengers are no longer restricted in
the airline they choose to fl y, because
they know their FFP will be appended
by miles (through the algorithm we
have come up with below). Added to
this would be removal of restrictions
to choose a particular hotel or car
brand and would open the user to
limitless possibilities.
• Passenger never misses out on the
rewards of just fl ying, it can be just
added whenever he completes the
journey, and goes out of the airport to
use other travel components.
• Airline, hotel, and car rental
industries will see more traffi c as
awards become proportional to fl ying
miles, so there will be possibilities of
giving more benefi t to customer.
• The concept of our OFFP is that it
would be rewarded in terms of a trip
instead of only an airline or a hotel.
The OFFP would be a calculation of
all the components of the trip.
Detailed AlgorithmThe steps of the algorithm are:
• Defi nition of a single OFFP number
that is going to be maintained in a
centralized database.
• Defi nition of a relative rating of all
airlines, hotels, rental cars, and trains
maintained on their performance
and ratings. This can be done by a
neutral body and will be based on
the performance over the years for
the particular vendor (Be it airline,
train, rental car or hotel). This can be
a score, where the maximum value
can be 1.
• We need a starting value of the
unique OFFP number which can use
the points already earned by a user
through other FFP. The OFFP can
reuse the references of all the existing
FFP numbers that a user has today.
Suppose a user U1 has FFP numbers
F1 in airline ABC (with 1000 points),
F2 in train XYZ (with 1200 points),
F3 in Hotel GHI (with 800 points),
and F4 in Rental Cars DEF (with 1400
points). If step 2) is done, the new
FFP, OFFP = 1000* F1 + 1200 * F2 +
800 *F3 + 1400 *F4.
• Suppose ABC has a relativistic rating
of 0.7 (determined by step2), XYZ
has a relativistic rating of 0.9, GHI has
0.6 and DEF has 1. Then the starting
value would be OFFP = 1000*0.7
+ 1200 *0.9 + 800*0.6 + 1400* 1 =
700 + 1080 + 480 + 1400 = 3760.
If step 2 is not done, OFFP would be
2000.
• The defi nition of F1, F2, F3, and F4
comes from step 2 where the travel
industry is rated among its peers. For
users who start from 0 (travelling for
the fi rst time after the OFFP program
is launched), the initial value would
be 0.
• Calculation of OFFP going forward:
Let us take the example of an airline
for this calculation. The algorithm for
this would be as follows. If a person
fl ies on an airline ABC, the FFP would
be updated by a fi gure W_ABC*Miles,
where W_ABC would be the
wieghtage of the airline ABC, which
the airline itself can assign. Hence
at any point of time, the frequent
fl yer number of the passenger would
look like
A Concept & Approach for Open Frequent Flyer Program (OFFP)
Rudranil Dasgupta* and Diptiman Dasgupta***Advisory IT Architect (IBM)**Executive IT Architect (IBM)
Technical Trends
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 16 www.csi-india.org
• OFFP = W_Airline_1 * Miles1 + W_Airline_2 * Miles2 + W_Airline_3 * Miles3 + ......+ W_Airline_N * MilesN
• The same thing would be appended for other travel industries in the same manner.
• Redeeming off ers on the airlines is a special feature of our approach. When a person is redeeming his miles that has been calculated by our unique algorithm in Airline N, then the airline N will check the number of points earned on their airline (because an airline should give people using their airlines slightly more weightage) AS WELL AS a ratio of the rest of the points.
• So the Redeemable points for Airline N would be = W_Airline_N * Miles N + (Ratio which is <1 ) * (OFFP – [W_Airline_N * MilesN])
• This ratio can be defi ned by each airline based on their policy. It will be a rating that one airline assigns the other airlines and will be maintained as a standard chart for all airlines.
• The same algorithm would be used for other travel industries as well.
• Using the above algorithm will
give the advantages outlined in the earlier section, and have a consistent standard for not only the airline industry but all industries aligned with this.
• Since one of the main advantages of performing redemptions is to earn new miles, the redeemable points calculated for our program can be translated into miles, using a direct conversion (Points = Miles) or some ratio of the number of miles. To simplify the integration across industries, others can also give the earned awards in terms of miles. This would be very easy for rental cars and trains, and would need a tweaking for hotels, where per night would be translated in terms of miles.
Value for Travel Industries• Better collaboration, standardization,
and business opportunities for Airlines Industries.
• Allow a common standard across the airline industry reducing redundancy in maintaining of multiple numbers.
• A new way of proposing the solution in related areas to the customer.
• Due to more point accumulation, users will be attracted to travel more, so better business for industries as the points would become a calculation of the
• Better promotional off ers to customers.
• More win-win situation for travelers and the travel Industry.
• This points when re-deemed can be reused for getting other products & services too, which can be more attractive to customers (e.g. 5000 OFFP points can help them to buy a great leather bag).
References[1] https://www.fl yingreturns.co.in/html/
index.php[2] http://www.starall iance.com/en/
benefi ts/earn-and-redeem/[3] http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/
airlines/qantas-frequent-fl yer-qantas-club-queries/global/en
[4] http://www.oneworld.com/ff p/[5] http://www.webfl yer.com/[6] h t t p : //w w w. f o r b e s . c o m /s i t e s /
lar ryo lmsted/2013/01/23/why-frequent-flyer-programs-dont-work-
and-what-delta-is-doing-about-it/ n
Diptiman Dasgupta is an Executive IT Architect in IBM leading Travel & Transportation Industry in IBM Global Delivery as lead
architect and is a member of IBM Academy of Technology (AoT). He has 15+ years of experience in design and development,
architecting, providing technical strategy, solutions for creating and leveraging assets in client solution, as well as providing
technical leadership to the organization. Diptiman is having multiple publications on Social Collaboration/BPM available in IBM
developerWorks and has patents Filed/PUBLISH.
Rudranil Dasgupta is an IBM Advisory IT Architect, Advisory Accredited IT Specialist, and is currently working as the Advisory
Architect. He has close to 10 years of experience in design and development, architecting, providing technical strategy, solutions
for creating and leveraging assets in client solution, as well as providing technical leadership to the organization. He has in-depth
experience in working with WebSphere solutions, SOA, Web 2.0, Content Management, SAP CRM, and Java/J2EE. Rudranil has
multiple patent publications and patent fi lings. He is an active writer on the IBM developerWorks community and has multiple
publications. Moreover, he is an active member of the IBM University Relations and has delivered multiple lectures.
Abo
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Libraries and Cloud Computing”, OCLC Online Computer Library Center. Accessed on: 23/08/2012.
[7] Marchionini, G And E A Fox, “Progress toward digital libraries: Augmentation through integration”, Information Processing and Management, 35
(1999), pp. 219–225.[8] Slater, D, & Tacchi J (2004). ICT
innovations for poverty reduction. UNESCO Report.
[9] Wilson, E J (2003), “The information revolution and developing countries”, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
[10] Jeevan, V K (2004),” Digital library development: identifying sources of content for developing countries with special reference to India”, The International Information & Library Review, 36(3), pp. 185–197.
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Dr. Sudhanshu Joshi is the Incharge – Information Technology, he is also associated with School of Management,
Doon University, Dehradun, He has taught in academic programs at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee,
University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun and Gurukul Kangri University, Haridwar. He is the author
of 35 International Research papers and fi ve books on Technology Management. He has served CSI in various
capacities in its Haridwar and Dehradun Chapter.
Dr. Manu Sharma is presently serving School of Management, Institute of Management Studies, Dehradun. She has
vast academic experience in teaching strategies and technology management, her research and academic interest
is web 2.0 and its implications on business revenue.
Continued from Page 11
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 17
Newton-Raphson is a very widely used
and popular numerical method for solving
equations[5]. It appeals to an extensively
large class of users, since it does not
demand any specifi c form of equations.
It works equally well for a large variety of
equation-forms: for example, polynomial,
rational, transcendental, trigonometric,
hyperbolic, partial diff erential, and so on.
Another important aspect of
Newton-Raphson is that it is iterative in
nature, and as such, quite suitable for
use on computers. This attracts many
programmers, and a large variety of
scientifi c application programs includes
Newton-Raphson as one of the important
internal tools.
This article is about the practical
diffi culties one faces, when one attempts
to use Newton-Raphson on computers,
and especially, when tries to use it in an
automatic fashion.
Where is Newton-Raphson Required?Various real-life objects along with their
properties need to be modelled for the
purpose of simulation and performance-
analysis using computers. The objects
are modelled by certain mathematical
(symbolic) expressions, while the
properties are modelled by equations (and
inequalities) involving these expressions.
In engineering applications, the solution
sought to the system of equations has
diff erent requirements than those of
a mathematical solution. Arriving at a
solution in some form or another (that
is, symbolic, numerical, or procedural),
amenable to further processing, is
important. It is essential that the solution
is computable on the machine, and the
method can be automated.
With this point of view, methods
based on strategies such as numerical
iterative refi nement are more welcome. The
method, refi nes a guess about the solution
to arrive at a better one, and iterates
this until the guess is acceptable. Such
a method can quickly fi nd the solution
to the desired accuracy, whenever it
converges[1]. Newton-Raphson is such a
method for solving the system of non-
trivial equations over a fi nite, bounded
domain, and is applicable whenever the
functions involved are diff erentiable. In
fact, most of the functions involved in
representation of real-life objects, their
properties, and situations involving them,
are diff erentiable. It is no wonder, then,
that Newton-Raphson is so widely in use,
and so popular amongst programmers
concerned with real-life applications.
Many times we need to consider a
system of equations, each one with many
(more than one) independent variables,
rather than a single equation involving a
single variable. However, in this article, I
shall mainly resort to only a single equation
involving a single function of a single real
variable. The remarks and observations
of this article apply equally well to the
system of more equations involving more
variables, particularly when they are
expressed in vector and matrix forms[2].
Why Use Newton-Raphson?The chief reason, for the extensive use
of Newton-Raphson is its efficiency and
accuracy. The number of significant
digits in the solution doubles at every
iteration, and thus, very high accuracy
is obtained quickly[1]. In most of the
applications, the programmer’s grasp
of the problem at hand is good and the
functions involved behave normally
(non-exceptionally) near the solutions.
Thus, the use of Newton-Raphson is
justified. In a situation where Newton-
Raphson converges in one iteration, it
amounts to using and evaluating one
single formula: x – f(x) / f’(x) in order
to arrive at the final solution (see
any book on Numerical Analysis, for
example[1], in case you want to know
where this formula comes from). This
pays handsome returns to the user of
Newton-Raphson in the sense that the
user really is not solving equations but
is just evaluating functions. Of course,
this situation demands linearity or
flatness of the functions involved, and
in reality very few functions are actually
linear or flat.
What happens in practice is that
a single evaluation of the formula may
fail to give the result, but two successive
evaluations may yield up to satisfaction.
This amounts to using the formula
twice and is still attractive. Although the
functions involved may not be linear or fl at
on their large domains, a suffi ciently small
neighbourhood can be found out in which
they are almost linear or fl at. By focusing our
attention to such a neighborhood, we can
be certainly assured that Newton-Raphson
would yield the desired solution in two
iterations, if not in one. This partly explains
why every numerical programmer resorts to
Newton-Raphson whenever possible.
Deciding Initial ValueThe initial guess or the starting point is
very important in the working of Newton-
Raphson. In general, a starting point far
away from the actual solution often leads
to divergence of the iterative process,
rather than its convergence towards the
solution. It may also happen that the
sequence of refi nements oscillates around
the solution, but refuses to converge
to it. Generally, choosing the initial
guess suffi ciently close to the solution
eliminates these problems. However,
to defi ne the phrase ‘suffi ciently
close’ in a formal, programmable way
(to guarantee the convergence) turns out
to be tricky at times, and diffi cult in most
of the situations.
Looking at the graphs of the
functions involved, an experienced
numerical programmer may be able to
pinpoint a correct guess, but writing code
that automatically selects such a guess
appears to be diffi cult and forbidding.
This is a chief characteristic of iterative
processes, and turns out to be their
principal curse. However, it allows an
effi cient use of a priori knowledge about
the situation. If our initial guess is a ‘good’
one, then we get a pay-off by getting the
solution in just one iteration (that is just
one evaluation of the formula).
As an example, consider the task of
creating some picture on your terminal.
The terminal typically consists of an
array of pixels† and the task amounts to
deciding the colour for each pixel. If you
are using Newton-Raphson as a part of
Practical Aspects of Implementing Newton-Raphson on Computers
ArticleDr. Pramod KoparkarSenior InfoTech Consultant
†(A pixel is a small dot which is addressable independently)
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 18 www.csi-india.org
this calculation and if you already have
calculated colour of a neighboring pixel,
then this already-calculated value turns
out to be a very good initial guess. This
happens due to the coherence of the
objects involved in the scene.
The problem that needs automatic
computations is seldom a single one. It is
generally a family of similar problems, all of
which are programmed in a single stroke.
We sort them out over the parameters in
which they diff er. Having then found the
solution of the fi rst equation, (may be by
wasting unreasonably large number of
iterations) we now have quite good initial
value for the next, or nearby, problem. It
is diffi cult to say with certainty that this
strategy will always work, but for problems
with un-intricate structure, it generally
gives a ‘fairly' good method.
Sampling IssuesIn absence of any a priori knowledge about
the geometry/behaviour of the functions
involved, a common method to deal
with initial guess is to sample the entire
domain at points of some suitably laid out
grid. Typically, a (rectangular) grid is laid
out with a constant distance between the
adjacent points. A multiple programming
loop is then run in which each of these
points is used as the starting guess and
Newton-Raphson is run to check whether
it yields any solution. This capitalizes
on the power of computers, in that the
computer does not get bored of repeating
any kind of mundane, stupid task a
number of times. To achieve an accurate
scanning, the distance is chosen as small
as wished. This has an eff ect of increasing
the number of trials, but a numerical
programmer typically proceeds with the
view of “let the machine do the dirty job.”
Scanning the entire domain has two
bright disadvantages. Let me explain these
in detail:
The number of operations shoots up heavilyTranscendental functions like sin and
exp are expensive to evaluate, although
polynomials are not. To have 100 points
in one dimension that takes care of the
distance 0.01 in the domain, we need
to evaluate at 100*100 = 10,000 points
in two dimensions, 100*100*100 =
1,000,000 points in three dimensions, and
100*100*100*100 = 100,000,000 points
in four dimensions. Of course, you might
wonder where 4 dimensions come into
picture, but engineering applications are
full of four variables or even more, which
need to be dealt with simultaneously.
A common example is in shape
or geometric modelling. Consider an
example of fi nding an edge or a corner
of a suitcase whose faces (or sides)
are modeled as some kind of surfaces
expressed by some kind of functions. Each
of these surfaces has two independent
variables called surface parameters.
You need to evaluate intersection of two
surfaces to get an edge. This involves 4
parameters simultaneously. If you want to
fi nd out corner of the suitcase, you need
the intersection of three surfaces, and
thus, simultaneously have to deal with 6
independent variables.
Naturally, the suitcase dimensions
are in meters, whereas you want the
answers not only in millimeters (1000th
part of a meter), but in fractions of
millimeters (typically 10th of a millimeter)!
Thus, in each dimension you need to have
an accuracy that demands sampling of
10,000 points or so. With six independent
variables, this amounts to 1,000,000,00
0,000,000,000,000,000 = 1024 trials of
Newton-Raphson.
The effective yield is very smallLet us continue with the example above
of fi nding a corner of a suitcase. How
many corners a suitcase has? Think for
a moment. They are only 8. Do you run
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
trials of Newton-Raphson to fi nd out just
8 corners? Is it ok? What is the eff ective
yield of all eff orts?
Often the result of such huge
evaluations is to tell us that a large
percentage of these calculations
yield no result. In the example above,
999,999,999,999,999,999,999,992 trials
would have found no solution.
Why Does this Happen?Since, we are not using any a priori
information; we have to distribute sample
points uniformly over the domain. This
may (usually it does!) turn out to be an
‘inappropriate’ sampling of the domain
when seen from the point of view of the
geometric complexity of the functions
involved. Often it is required to refi ne the
grid by choosing sample points closer to
each other due to intricacies occurring in
certain portions of the domain, however
small it may be with respect to the
domain size. In doing so, the number of
points multiplies not only in this portion
(in which closeness is genuinely required),
but also in the other portions where the
geometry is relatively simple and does not
need dense sampling.
To appreciate this, I have created an
example as follows:
The function y = sin (1/x) provides
extremely good illustration of this problem
of adequate sampling distance. Consider
it on the interval (0, 1/2π) where the end
values are excluded to avoid division by
0. I have chosen this awkward value 1/2π just to ensure that the graph starts at
y = 0 value on the right hand side, because
sin (2π) = 0. This is the usual sin curve
compressed or squeezed from one side.
Even our trying to plot the graph of this
function on computer causes problems.
We fi x up a decrement in x and start a loop
from 1/2π down to 0. Successive points
are joined by straight lines. However small
decrement we choose, eventually it turns
out to be crude, and requires refi nement.
When x is close to 0, a small variation in
it causes a large (more than 2π) variation
in 1/x and sin (1/x) tries to take all values
from – 1 to +1.
Impact of Basin of AttractionThe function f(x) may have more than
one solution in the given domain, and the
application may need to fi nd out all of them.
For each of these solutions, the process is
repeated with appropriate initial guess.
However, it may happen that the process
has a tendency to converge to a particular
solution irrespective of the initial guess.
Thus, the process expected to converge
to a particular solution may go away from
it and converge to some other solution.
Moreover, this keeps happening for a
number of diff erent trials with diff erent
initial guess. This behaviour makes the
entire process unreliable from the point
of view of following normal, intuitive,
expectations. Due to this behaviour,
sometimes it becomes diffi cult to ensure
detection of every existing solution. How
this happens is very interesting to look at.
I wish to illustrate it by an example.
Consider the function shown above
through its graph. It has solutions at A,
B, and C, and extrema at D and E. If the
starting point for Newton-Raphson is
between D and B, and even beyond B on
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 19
its right side, it will most likely converge
to B. We say that points on the right of D
are in the basin of attraction of B. That is, if
you start Newton-Raphson from any point
in this set of points on the right side of D,
the process of Newton-Raphson iterations
shall eventually converge to B.
Similar remarks apply for the point C,
because the function is symmetric on the
other side. We observe that the set of all
points on the left of E are included in the
basin of attraction of C.
It is seen that the chances of
Newton-Raphson converging to A would
be more for a starting point between E and
D. Thus, typically the basin of attraction of
A is restricted between E and D, although
it may not include every point between
D and E.
To see this, consider the point K as
the starting point of Newton-Raphson. At
this point, please recall from numerical
analysis[1] that the value xnew
obtained by
an iteration of Newton-Raphson starting
with xold
, is obtained geometrically at the
intersection of the tangent at xold
(green
line in the fi gure) with the x-axis. Thus,
starting from K, the tangent lands on
some point left to E, and then the further
iterations of Newton-Raphson attempt to
go closer to point C rather than A. We say
that the point K is in the Basin of attraction
of the solution point C rather than the
solution point A.
On the contrary, if M were chosen
as the starting point of Newton-Raphson
instead of K, the tangent lands on some
point right to E, the convergence would
detect A as the solution instead of C. Thus,
whether the process would converge to
C or A depends on the slope of the tangent
at the initial guess (and where it hits
the x-axis) rather than its distance from
the point A.
Compared to B and C, the basin
of attraction of A is much narrow, and
not in the form of a connected interval.
Hence, if we try to run Newton-Raphson
with randomly chosen starting point, we
are likely to miss out A in spite of many
tries. In case of more than one solution,
it becomes necessary to have some kind
of a priori knowledge about the number
of solutions and their distribution in the
domain (although it is not easy). Only with
such knowledge, all possible solutions can
be detected exhaustively. An often-used
remedy to this is the grid method with
fi ner grid size, but it has its limitations
as discussed before in the section of
sampling issues.
No Remedy? Now, with all my discussion above, a
question would arise in your mind: Can
we not have a solution to this failure of
Newton-Raphson? Luckily, the answer
is ‘yes!’ A method exists to avoid these
failures. It is computable, and can be
automated.
You may fi nd its theoretical
development in[2]. Unfortunately, its
details involve intricate mathematics, and
are lengthy. Thus, they are beyond the
scope of this paper.
However, the method is found to work
well in practice, at least, when applied
to detect intersections of curved surfaces.
In case you are interested to know the
details, please see[3].
However, for the sake of
completeness, I am including below
a quick and short description of the
algorithm. The algorithm is based on
recursive subdivision technique.
The AlgorithmStep 1: Evaluate the range of the
function on the entire domain of interest,
using some standard technique like
Interval Analysis[4]. If the range does not
contain 0, then no question arises to fi nd
the solution to f(x) = 0; it simply does not
exist. Stop in this case.
Step 2: Alternatively, if the range has 0
in it, check the suffi ciency conditions for
the convergence of Newton-Raphson to a
unique solution. Such conditions do exist,
and can be computed and programmed as
shown in[2, 3]. If the condition is satisfi ed,
start Newton-Raphson and it shall
converge to the unique solution.
Step 3: Alternatively, if the condition is
not satisfi ed, subdivide the domain at its
mid point, and then recursively apply the
same technique to each of the resulting
sub-domains. In case the domain is
too small (i.e. zero within tolerance
of the program) then stop, as further
subdivision makes no sense. However,
this generally never happens, as during
subdivisions, smaller and smaller sub-
domains are generated, and they either
do not contain 0 (handled in step 1) or
satisfy the suffi ciency condition (handled
in step 2).
Observe that Step 2 resolves the confl ict
discussed in the section “Impact of Basin of
Attraction” and Step 3 resolves the confl ict
discussed in the section “Sampling Issues”
References[1] Acton, F S: Numerical Methods That
Work, Harper and Raw, New York,
1970.
[2] Koparkar, Pramod: Effi cient, Accurate,
Exhaustive, and Robust Method
for Solving System of Non-Linear
Equations, Proc. Numerical Analysis
with Automatic Result Verifi cation,
Lafayette, Louisiana, February, 1993.
[3] Koparkar, Pramod: Surface Intersection
by Switching from Recursive Subdivision
to Iterative Refi nement, The Visual
Computer, v. 8, p. 47, 1991.
[4] Moore R E: Interval Analysis, Prentice-
Hall, Englewood-Cliff s, 1966.
[5] http://www.google.co.in/ Search
with key phrases “applications
of newton raphson method in
engineering” and “applications of
newton raphson method in science”.
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Dr. Koparkar has a Ph.D. in Computer Science, in 1985. He has internationally published original research mainly in the areas of Geometric Modelling, Image Synthesis, and Geometric Shape Processing in 2-D and 3-D. He has been on the International Journal Editorial Board and International Conference Program Committee. He has visited several organizations in diff erent countries for delivering lectures, developing software and presenting research papers.
He has been on various Academic Advisory Committees at the University and Government levels in India. He had worked in Research Institutes like TIFR and NCST, and in Corporations like Citicorp, Computer Vision, ADAC Laboratories (all USA), and 3-dPLM/GSSL (India).
He has written four Books: Unix for You, Pascal for You, Java for You, and C-DAC Entrance Guide. At present, he off ers consultancy to corporate clients about various latest technologies.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 20 www.csi-india.org
8 JUNE 2013UPCOMING EXAM DATE
For more information and to register for an ISACA
exam, visit isaca.org/mycism-CSI.
FINAL REGISTRATION DEADLINE: 12 April 2013
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 21
An information security planner needs
foresight. Similarly, an information
security investigator needs hindsight.
An information security defender needs
360-degree vision. An attack can come
from any direction. Any of the seven layers
that constitute a well-planned ‘defense in
depth’ may be under attack. The weakest
link in the defense will snap, leading to a
collapse of the system.
So, how does a defender know which
is the weakest link? Only a veteran will be
able to intuitively sense it. All others have
to believe in Murphy’s Law: "Anything that
can go wrong will go wrong." A person
training for a defender’s job, should bear
this bitter fact in mind and prepare
for every possible consequence. The
training should be planned for creating
a disciplined cyber security army, from
the soldier to the general, and not just an
‘ethical hacker’ who is only familiar with
the hacking tools.
There are fi ve practice areas of
information security management that a
defender should be familiar with. These
are based on the requirements, to become
a Certifi ed Information Security Manager
(CISM):
1. Information Security Governance
2. Information Risk Management
3. Information Security Program
Development
4. Information Security Program
Management
5. Incident Management and Response
Most of the defensive activities
happen at the ‘information security
program management’ and ‘incident
management and response’ levels.
However, defense priorities, risks and
budgets are decided at the fi rst three
layers. A good understanding of all
dimensions is critical for eff ective and
effi cient information security defense.
Information Security GovernanceInformation is much more diffi cult to
defend compared to physical assets.
Physical assets are visible and one can
easily know their value. It is not easy
to know the value of the information
unless one is familiar with the business
goals and objectives. The information
security strategy requires familiarity
with components such as processes,
people, technology, and architecture.
The concepts of corporate governance
and information security governance
are a prerequisite, to be able to integrate
information security governance with
overall enterprise governance framework.
It may not be easy to convince
everyone about the necessity of
information security. One should be
familiar with methodologies, to build a
business case for justifying the investment
in information security. Without
senior management commitment, the
information security may not be taken
seriously. One should be familiar with
methods of obtaining their concurrence
as well as establishment and operation
of information security steering group,
information security management roles,
and general organizational structures.
Multiple factors including technology,
business environment, and risk tolerance
may aff ect organizations and information
security. Also, the regulatory requirements
may have potential business impact from
an information security standpoint. One
should also be familiar with common
liability management strategies and
insurance options. It is essential to
be familiar with generally accepted
international standards on information
security management, centralized and
distributed methods of coordinating
information security activities, and
establishing reporting and communication
channels throughout the organization.
Information Risk ManagementThe objective of this job practice area is
to ensure that the information security
manager understands the importance
of risk management as a tool for
meeting business needs, and developing
a security management program to
support these needs. While information
security governance defi nes the links
between business goals, objectives,
and the security program, security risk
management defi nes the extent of
protection that is prudence-based on
business requirements, objectives, and
priorities.
To know the information objects
to be defended, one will need to
identify and classify them in the order
of their importance, with the help of
the information owners. Knowledge of
information resource valuation is essential
along with knowledge of information
threats, vulnerabilities, and exposure. The
sensitivity and criticality of information
will have to be determined by using
quantitative and qualitative methods to
identify the impact of adverse events
on the business. Knowledge of security
controls, counter measures and the
methods of analyzing the eff ectiveness of
these is essential. A cost benefi t analysis
for mitigating risks to an acceptable level
will be required to justify the expenditure.
Securing information is not a one-time
activity. Knowledge of lifecycle-based
risk management principles and practices
will have to be applied for continued
assurance.
Information Security Program DevelopmentThe information security strategy needs
to be converted into activities that will
achieve the desired state of information
security. This requires knowledge of diverse
areas. To begin with, one will have to
acquire knowledge of planning, designing,
developing, testing, and implementing
information security technologies and
controls (e.g., cryptographic techniques,
access controls, and various monitoring
tools). Knowledge of information security
architecture (e.g., logical architecture
and physical architecture) and their
deployment will be required for the
selection of the right approach. The
security program will be successful only
when adequate awareness has been
created and when skilled and well trained
persons manage the program. Knowledge
of the requirement of information security
awareness, training and education across
the enterprise (e.g., general security
awareness, writing secure code, operating
system controls) is necessary for a well-
Five Key Considerations for an Information Security Defender
ArticleAvinash Kadam [CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CRISC]
Advisor to the ISACA India Task Force
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 22 www.csi-india.org
managed security program. Appropriate
policies, standards, procedures, guidelines,
and other documentation needs to be
developed. Good knowledge of how
to link policies and other supporting
documentation to the business objectives
is required. Not all security initiatives
can be handled by the in-house staff .
Good understanding of the processes
for incorporating security requirements
into contracts (e.g., with joint ventures,
outsourced providers, business partners,
customers, and third parties) should
be ensured. Knowledge of the methods
and techniques to manage third-party
risks (e.g. service level agreements,
contracts, due diligence, suppliers, and
subcontractors) should be acquired.
Knowledge of the design,
development and implementation of
information security metrics is essential
for a successful security program as
you can only manage something that
you can measure. There is a growing
requirement for certifying and accrediting
the compliance of business applications
and infrastructure to business needs.
Awareness of this is essential to meet the
expectation for certifi ed and accredited
security systems.
Methods for ongoing evaluation
of the eff ectiveness and applicability of
information security controls such as
vulnerability testing and assessment tools
is required, to get an assurance of the
eff orts that have been taken.
Information Security Program Management This practice area focuses on the tasks
and knowledge necessary, for eff ective
management of information security
within an organization. It starts at the
interpretation and implementation
of information security policies and
good understanding of the information
security administrative processes and
procedures (e.g., access controls, identity
management, and remote access). As
mentioned earlier, everything need not
be done by the organization itself. Many
activities could be outsourced. However,
there should be a good control over the
agreement with third parties, as well as
information security service providers
through contract provisions (e.g., right to
audit, confi dentiality, and nondisclosure).
The service level agreements should
be adequately defi ned to monitor the
security requirements. There should be
good familiarity with the methods and
approaches for providing continuous
monitoring of security activities in the
enterprise’s infrastructure and business
applications. The management metrics
should be defi ned and monitored to
validate the information security program
investments (e.g., data collection, periodic
review, and key performance indicators).
Various methods of testing eff ectiveness
and applicability of information security
controls (e.g., penetration testing,
password cracking, social engineering,
and assessment tools) should be
deployed judiciously. There should be
good knowledge of external vulnerability
and reporting sources, for information
on potential impacts on information
security in applications and infrastructure.
The information security problem
management practices, the reporting
of systems, and infrastructure security
status should be well defi ned.
Incident Management and ResponseIncident management is defi ned as
the capability to eff ectively manage
unexpected disruptive events, with
the objective of minimizing impact
and maintaining or restoring normal
operations within defi ned time limits.
Incident response is the operational
capability of incident management that
identifi es, prepares for and responds to
incidents to control and limit damage;
provides forensic and investigative
capabilities; and maintains, recovers and
restores normal operations as defi ned in
service level agreements.
Knowledge of the following areas is
essential to accomplish the above:
The information security team should
have the knowledge of the components
of an incident response capability and
information incident management
practices. They should be familiar with
disaster recovery planning and business
continuity planning. A good understanding
of events that trigger incident response
is essential along with the knowledge
of damage-control. The notifi cation and
escalation process becomes important
in an incident and should be quickly
followed. The roles of individuals in
identifying and managing incidents
should be clearly defi ned and understood.
Various tools and equipment are required
by the incident management team. The
team also requires forensic tools for
collecting and presenting evidence (e.g.,
admissibility, quality and completeness
of evidence, and chain of custody).
Thorough knowledge of these tools and
techniques is essential. The knowledge of
incidents should be documented and used
for subsequent action. Familiarity with
various internal and external reporting
requirements is essential. The post-
incident review practices and investigative
methods to identify causes and determine
corrective action is equally essential
to know. Knowledge of techniques for
quantifying damages, costs and other
business impacts arising from a security
incident is necessary. Finally, knowledge
of the recovery time objective (RTO) and
its relationship to business continuity
and contingency planning objectives and
processes needs to be acquired.
ConclusionFamiliarity with the fi ve CISM job practice
areas is utmost essential to become a good
information security manager, as well as
a good information security defender.
The practice areas mention a number of
knowledge statements. A practitioner
has to gain practical hands-on experience
in performing each of these tasks. Only
after gaining profi ciency in these activities
can a defender work toward making the
systems secure against any attacks that a
wily hacker may launch. There is no such
thing as a guaranteed, 100 percent secure
system, but managing a security incident
with the least damage and deploying the
lessons learnt to prevent its recurrence
is a great contribution the information
defender can make.
Avinash Kadam, CISA, CISM, CGEIT, CRISC, CISSP, CSSLP, GSEC, GCIH, CBCP, MBCI, PMP, CCSK, is an advisor to ISACA’s India Task Force. ISACA is a global association for IT assurance, security, risk and governance professionals with more than 100,000 members worldwide and more than 6,000 in India. The
nonprofi t, independent ISACA developed
the COBIT framework for governance and
management of IT, and off ers the CISA,
CISM, CGEIT and CRISC certifi cations.
Opinions expressed in the blog are
Kadam’s personal opinions and do not
necessarily refl ect the views of ISACA
(www.isaca.org). He can be contacted via
e-mail [email protected]. n
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 23
While the world is thriving on the
enormous possibilities and expansions
that Internet can provide to us in the years
to come, there is a hidden universe that
exists behind this technology. It will be apt,
if I say it’s “Underworld of Cyberworld”.
I am talking about deep web (also
known as hidden web or Tor services).
What Google is capable of, merely
scrapes the surface of what Deep Web
really has. Expert’s estimation claims
that deep web can be up to 200 times
larger than the surface Internet, and it
allows people to communicate without
detection. What happens in a cyber world
where people can slip in and out of sites,
which shift every now and then without
leaving any permanent trace. This is where
child traffi cking, drug peddling, people
off ering hitmen services, and threads on
how to build bombs are available. From
counterfeit and stolen products, to illegal
drugs, stolen identities, and weapons,
nearly anything can be purchased online
with a few clicks of the mouse. The online
black market not only can be accessed
by anyone with an internet connection,
but the whole process of ordering illicit
goods and services is alarmingly easy
and anonymous. It’s a dark world of the
internet, where majority of the world’s
population are oblivious to.
The most surprising thing is that law
enforcement agencies are almost helpless
to combat this growing menance, inspite
of being aware of their existence. To
understand this whole mess which exists
under the hood, we need to understand
about some technologies, which were
developed for the good cause, but got
exploited by the ill minded anti social
elements.
Before continuing our walkthrough
towards these technologies, I would
like to say, we are NOT endorsing these
activities. This information can help
security professionals to understand
how stolen identities and credit cards
are used, how products are fenced or
distributed illegally, and more. Unless until
we understand about this hidden activity,
we cannot develop any counter measure
techniques to prevent it. So objective of
this article is to spread the awareness in
the computer professional society, and
igniting the professionals to come out with
their novel ideas to combat it.
A journey into the darker side of
the internet starts with two open source
programs: Tor browser and Bitcoin. Tor
browser gives platform to the user for
anonymous communication, and Bitcoin
work as an online currency for fi nancial
transaction for illicit purpose. The next
section will give you the overall idea about
these technologies which will help you
to understand the whole scenario of this
darknet.
TOR – The Onion RoutingTor was originally designed, implemented,
and deployed as a third-generation onion
routing project of the U.S. Naval Research
Laboratory. It was originally developed
with the U.S. Navy in mind, for the primary
purpose of protecting government
communications. Tor was fi nancially
supported by the Electronic Frontier
Foundation of U.S. from 2004 to 2005.
Tor software is now developed by the
Tor Project, which has been a research-
education nonprofi t organization based in
U.S. since December 2006.
Tor aims to conceal its users'
identities and their network activity
from surveillance and traffi c analysis by
separating identifi cation and routing. It is
an implementation of onion routing, which
encrypts and then randomly bounces
communications through a network of
relays run by volunteers around the globe.
These onion routers employ encryption in
a multi-layered manner (hence the onion
metaphor) to ensure perfect forward
secrecy between relays, thereby providing
users with anonymity in network location.
Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that
allows people and groups to improve
their privacy and security on the Internet.
Individuals use Tor to keep websites from
Deep Web The Underworld of Cyberworld
ArticleManish Kumar*, Dr. M Hanumanthappa**, and Dr. T V Suresh Kumar****Assistant Professor, Department of MCA, M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, MSR Nagar, MSRIT Post, Bangalore – 560 054, Karnataka, INDIA,** Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Applications, Jnana Bharathi Campus, Bangalore University, Bangalore -560 056, INDIA ***Professor & Head, Dept. of Master of Computer Applications, M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore-560 054
Expert’s estimation claims that deep web can be up to 200 times larger than the surface Internet, and it allows people to communicate without detection.
A journey into the darker side of the internet starts with two open source programs: A Tor browser and Bitcoin. Tor browser gives platform to the user for anonymous communication, and Bitcoin work as an online currency for fi nancial transaction for illicit purpose.
Tor aims to conceal its users' identities and their network activity from surveillance and traffi c analysis by separating identifi cation and routing. It is an implementation of onion routing, which encrypts and then randomly bounces communications through a network of relays run by volunteers around the globe.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 24 www.csi-india.org
tracking them and their family members,
or to connect to news sites, instant
messaging services, or the like when
these are blocked by their local Internet
providers. Tor's hidden services let users
publish web sites and other services
without revealing the location of the
site. Individuals also use Tor for socially
sensitive communication. Journalists
use Tor to communicate more safely
with whistleblowers. Non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow
their workers to connect to their home
website while they're in a foreign country,
without notifying everybody nearby that
they're working with that organization.
Objectives of TORThe Tor protects a common form of
Internet surveillance known as "traffi c
analysis." Traffi c analysis can be used
to infer who is talking to whom over a
public network. Knowing the source and
destination Internet traffi c allows others
to track behavior and interests of users.
As we know Internet data packets
have two parts: a data payload and a
header used for routing. The data payload
works on the principle that whatever
is being sent, whether that's an email
message, a web page, or an audio fi le.
Even if you encrypt the data payload of
your communications, traffi c analysis still
reveals a great deal about what you're
doing and, possibly, what you're saying.
That's because it focuses on the header,
which discloses source, destination, size,
timing, and so on.
A basic problem for the privacy is that
the recipient of your communications can
see that you sent it by looking at headers,
so can authorized intermediaries like
Internet service providers and sometimes
unauthorized intermediaries as well.
There are some more powerful kinds
of traffi c analysis. Some attackers spy
on multiple parts of the Internet and use
sophisticated statistical techniques to
track the communication patterns of many
diff erent organizations and individuals.
Encryption does not help against these
attackers, since it only hides the content
of Internet traffi c, not the headers.
Tor helps to reduce the risks of both
simple and sophisticated traffi c analysis,
by distributing your transactions over
several places on the Internet, so no single
point can link you to your destination. The
idea is similar to using a twisty, hard-to-
follow route in order to throw off somebody
who is tailing you — and then periodically
erasing your footprints. Instead of taking
a direct route from source to destination,
data packets on the Tor network take a
random pathway through several relays
that cover your tracks, so no observer at
any single point can tell where the data
came from or where it's going.
Well, no doubt that the intention
of Tor development was an anonymous
communication for the good cause, but
the technology has been misused for
illegal activity. It suits the requirements
of cyber criminals and helps them in all
ways to be hidden, but when it comes
for the fi nancial transaction, tor alone
can not help them to be hidden. When
there is online business, there is online
Transaction. As normal online transaction
is monitored by federal government, it
will reveal the identity of the people doing
illegal business. To overcome this problem
the cyber criminal uses a diff erent
currency and transaction system known
as “Bitcoin”. It’s a very diff erent technique
for fi nancial transaction and raises a
challenging issue for the government to
monitor it. Next section will give you a
brief idea that how Bitcoin works without
revealing the identity of the users and
works as a real currency in the cyberworld.
Bitcoin –The Digital CurrencyBitcoin is an experimental new digital
currency that enables instant payments
to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin
uses peer-to-peer technology to operate
with no central authority: managing
transactions and issuing money are carried
out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is
also the name of the open source software
which enables the use of this currency.
Bitcoin is one of the fi rst
implementations of a concept called
crypto-currency which was fi rst described
in 1998 by Wei Dai on the cypherpunks
mailing list. Building upon the notion
that money is any object, or any sort of
record, accepted as payment for goods
and services and repayment of debts in a
given country or socio-economic context,
Bitcoin is designed around the idea of
using cryptography to control the creation
and transfer of money, rather than relying
on central authorities.
Bitcoin is system tool that will act as
a personal bank for storing and investing
digital currency on your computer. Once
it's installed on your system, it sits empty
like a piggy bank, waiting to be fi lled with
untraceable digital cash.
Getting it fi lled is the tricky part.
The digital monetary system online is
predominately operated by the likes of
PayPal, Western Union, and banking
companies that try to follow government
regulations to prevent fraud and money
laundering. There are two steps to legally
take money and have it converted at the
current Bitcoin rate into BTCs in our digital
and anonymous bank.
You can start by opening a Dwolla
banking account with no fees. You can use
your real information to open the account
as it’s not an illegal activity. After few
days you will be given a test and have to
identify small transfers in your Dwolla and
personal bank account. Once your account
Bitcoin is an experimental new digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network.
The digital monetary system online is predominately operated by the likes of PayPal, Western Union, and banking companies that try to follow government regulations to prevent fraud and money laundering.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 25
Abo
ut th
e A
utho
rs
Manish Kumar is working as Assistant Professor in Department of Master of Computer Applications, M. S. Ramaiah
Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. His specialization is in Network and Information Security and Computer
Forensic. He has worked on the R&D projects related on theoretical and practical issues about a conceptual framework
for E-Mail, Web site, and Cell Phone tracking, which could assist in curbing misuse of Information Technology and
Cyber Crime. He is also the president of International Association of Cyber Crime Prevention (India Chapter).
Dr. M Hanumanthappa is currently working as Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and
Applications, Bangalore University, Bangalore, India. He has over 15 years of teaching (Post Graduate) as well as
Industry experience. He is member of Board of Studies /Board of Examiners for various Universities in Karnataka,
India. He is actively involved in the funded research project and guiding research scholars in the fi eld of Data Mining
and Network Security.
Dr. T V Suresh Kumar is working as Professor and Head, Department of Master of Computer Applications and Registrar
(Academic), M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore. He has delivered lectures at various organizations
like Honeywell, SAP Labs, Wipro Technologies, DRDO, Mphasis, Indian Institute of Science (Profi cience), HCL
Technologies, L&T Infotech, Nokia and various Universities/Academic Institutions. He is actively involved in R&D
projects. He has published several research papers in various National and International Conferences and Journals.
is confi rmed, you can transfer any amount
from your personal bank to Dwolla.
Next you need to set up an account
with the Bitcoin exchanger e.g. MtGox.
After your Dwolla transfer moves to
MtGox, you can use the money to
purchase Bitcoins on the open market for
a small percentage-based fee. Once this
sale is complete, your Bitcoins are best
stored in your own bank account that is
residing digitally on your computer. Now
you are ready to go shopping on the black
market.
Combination of Tor and Bitcoin has
unfortunately served all the purpose of
cyber criminals. Tor Servers are now the
norm for storing, accessing ,and hiding
illicit activity. Tor's Hidden Servers provide
a real insight to an underground world
that once was limited to dark alleys,
shady places, and dangerous criminals.
Much like the internet has expanded our
e-commerce into a borderless global
market, Bitcoins and Tor have made
shopping for illicit goods and services
almost as easy as ordering a gift on eBay
or an iTunes song on your computer.
The level of protection provided by Tor,
makes law enforcement's agencies job for
tracking such activities, next to impossible.
ConclusionAnonymity has given wings to the cyber
criminals and anonymous digital cash
becomes their strength. The technology
like Tor and Bitcoin has added a potential
threat in cyber community. These are
the new challenges for which adequate
monitoring mechanism should be
developed. We accept that somewhere
anonymity is necessary ,but we should
try to develop a mechanism that unsocial
elements should not be able to use for
illegal activity.
References[1] Jacob Appelbaum. Tor and NAT
devices: increasing bridge & relay
reach ability or, enabling the use
of NAT-PMP and UPnP by default.
Technical Report 2012-08-001, The
Tor Project, August 2012.
[2] Karsten Loesing. Counting daily
bridge users. Technical Report 2012-
10-001, The Tor Project, October
2012.
[3] Philipp Winter. Design requirements
for a Tor censorship analysis tool.
Technical Report 2013-02-001, The
Tor Project, February 2013.
[4] R Mark Bortner. Cyber laundering:
Anonymous Digital Cash and Money
Laundering. Presented as fi nal paper
requirement for Law & the Internet
(LAW 745). A seminar at the
University of Miami School of Law-
1996.
[5] Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin: A Peer-
to-Peer Electronic Cash System,
Bitcoin Research Paper- 2009
[6] Simon Barber, Xavier Boyen, Elaine
Shi, Ersin Uzun. Bitter to Better
— How to Make Bitcoin a Better
Currency. Financial Cryptography
and Data Security. Lecture Notes
in Computer Science Volume 7397,
2012, pp 399-414.
[7] Brandon Gregg. Online black markets
and how they work, 01 May 2012.
http://features.techworld.com/
[8] http://www.torproject.org.in/
[9] https://en.bitcoin.it/
n
Tor Servers are now the norm for storing, accessing ,and hiding illicit activity. Tor's Hidden Servers provide a real insight to an underground world that once was limited to dark alleys, shady places, and dangerous criminals.
I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading
my face.
~ Rodney Dangerfi eld
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 26 www.csi-india.org
Programming.Tips() »
Practitioner Workbench
Wallace JacobSr. Asst. Prof. at Tolani Maritime [email protected]
Fun with ‘C’ programs – comprehending the localization supportNormally while writing, we tend to use the comma as the thousand’s separator and the decimal point for separating the integer part of a number from its fractional part. But there are also a few languages in which the decimal point is being used as the thousand’s separator, and the comma is being used for separating the integer part of a number from its fractional part! There are diff erences in recording the date and/or time in diff erent zones/countries. This article focuses on a few aspects of the localization support provided by the ‘C’ language. The code below explains the process of setting locale specifi c information:
Program listing one#include<stdio.h>#include<locale.h>
int main(){
struct lconv *localeex;localeex = localeconv();
printf(“\nDefault decimal point is %s”, localeex->decimal_point);printf(“\nDefault currency symbol %s”, localeex->currency_symbol);printf(“\nDefualt thousands separator %s”, localeex->thousands_sep);printf(“\nDefualt monetary thousands separator %s”, localeex->mon_thousands_sep);printf(“\nGrouping is done by %s”, localeex->grouping);setlocale(LC_ALL, “en_US”);localeex = localeconv();printf(“\n\nThe decimal point being used in US is %s”, localeex->decimal_point);printf(“\nCurrency symbol %s”, localeex->currency_symbol);printf(“\nthousands separator being used in US %s”, localeex->thousands_sep);printf(“\nmonetary thousands separator %s”, localeex->mon_thousands_sep);printf(“\nGrouping is done by %s”, localeex->grouping);if(setlocale(LC_ALL, “fr_FR”)) /* on failure setlocale() returns NULL */{ localeex = localeconv(); printf(“\n\nThe decimal point being used in France is %s”, localeex->decimal_point); printf(“\nCurrency symbol %s”, localeex->currency_symbol); printf(“\nthousands separator being used in France %s”, localeex->thousands_sep); printf(“\nmonetary thousands separator %s”, localeex->mon_thousands_sep); printf(“\nGrouping is done by %s”, localeex->grouping);}else{ printf(“setlocale() returned NULL”);}return 0;
}
For setting locale specifi c information the structure variables (struct lconv), macros (LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME), and functions [localeconv(), setlocale()] defi ned/prototyped in locale.h header fi le can be used.
A few members of lconv structure are as follows:
char *decimal_point; → the decimal point character used for non-monetary values
char *thousands_sep; → the thousands place separator character used for non-monetary values
char *int_curr_symbol; → a string of the international currency symbols used.
The fi rst three characters are the ones which have been specifi ed by ISO 4217:1987.
The fourth character is the character which separates the currency symbol from the monetary quantity.
char *currency_symbol; → local symbol used for currencychar *mon_decimal_point; → decimal point character used for
monetary valueschar *mon_thousands_sep; → the thousands place grouping character
used for monetary valueschar *positive_sign; → the character used for positive monetary
valueschar *negative_sign; → the character used for negative monetary
valueschar int_frac_digits; → number of digits to be displayed after the
decimal point in international monetary values
char frac_digits; → number of digits to be displayed after the decimal point in monetary values
char p_cs_precedes; → If p_cs_precedes is equal to 1, then the currency_symbol appears before a positive monetary value. If p_cs_precedes is equal to 0, then the currency_symbol appears after a positive monetary value.
char p_sep_by_space; → If p_sep_by_space is equal to 1, then the currency_symbol is separated by a space from the positive monetary value. If p_sep_by_space is equal to 0, then there is no space between the currency_symbol and the positive monetary value.
char n_cs_precedes; → If n_cs_precedes is equal to 1, then the currency_symbol appears before a negative monetary value. If p_cs_precedes is equal to 0, then the currency_symbol appears after a negative monetary value.
char n_sep_by_space; → If n_sep_by_space is equal to 1, then the currency_symbol is separated by a space from the negative monetary value. If n_sep_by_space is equal to 0, then there is no space between the currency_symbol and the negative monetary value.
char p_sign_posn; → If p_sign_posn is 0, then parentheses encapsulate the value and the currency_symbol If p_sign_posn is 1, the sign precedes the value and the currency_symbol If p_sign_posn is 2, the sign succeeds the value and the currency_symbol
char n_sign_posn; → If n_sign_posn is 0, then parentheses encapsulate the value and the currency_symbol If n_sign_posn is 1, the sign precedes the value and the currency_symbol If n_sign_posn is 2, the sign succeeds the value and the currency_symbol
In the statement, setlocale(LC_ALL, “en_US”);LC_ALL sets all the settings pertaining to a particular locale. Instead of LC_ALL the other permissible values are:
LC_COLLATE → which aff ects strcoll() and strxfrm() functions.
LC_TYPE → aff ects all character functions.LC_MONETARY → aff ects the monetary information
provided by the localeconv() function.LC_NUMERIC → aff ects decimal-point formattingLC_TIME → aff ects the strftime() function.
Wishing all readers Happy Localization!
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 27
The gprof utility in LinuxOften a programmer may be interested in fi nding out how much time
is being used in executing diff erent functions in a very large or complex
program with multiple functions. Perhaps the programmer may like to
increase the effi ciency of a function if a major chunk of time is being used
in executing a particular function. The gprof utility helps in obtaining a
program’s profi le. In order to use gprof the executable fi le should be
compiled using the -pg option of gcc.
For instance, suppose a program, saved by the name test.c, is as follows
(the program is for illustrative purpose only):
Program listing one
#include<stdio.h>
void func1(void);
void func2(void);
int main()
{
�func1();
�func2();
�return 0;
}
void func1(void)
{
�int i;
�for(i=1;i<10;i++)
� printf(“\n%d”, i);
}
void func2(void)
{
�int i;
�for(i=11;i<30;i++)
� printf(“\n%d”, i);
}
In order to compile the program, the user should type:
gcc -pg test.c
The -pg option instructs the compiler to generate special code that writes
a fi le by the name of gmon.out which is used by the gprof utility. A part of
the output generated by gprof is produced below:
Flat profi le:
Each sample counts as 0.01 seconds.
no time accumulated
% cumulative self self totaltime seconds seconds calls Ts/call Ts/call name 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0.00 0.00 func1 0.00 0.00 0.00 1 0.00 0.00 func2
% the percentage of the total running time of the
time program used by this function.
cumulative a running sum of the number of seconds accounted
seconds for by this function and those listed above it.
self the number of seconds accounted for by this
seconds function alone. This is the major sort for this
listing.
calls the number of times this function was invoked, if
this function is profi led, else blank.
self the average number of milliseconds spent in this
ms/call function per call, if this function is profi led,
else blank.
total the average number of milliseconds spent in this
ms/call function and its descendents per call, if this
function is profi led, else blank.
name the name of the function. This is the minor sort
for this listing. The index shows the location of
the function in the gprof listing. If the index is
in parenthesis it shows where it would appear in
the gprof listing if it were to be printed.
Call graph (explanation follows)
granularity: each sample hit covers 2 byte(s) no time propagated
index % time self children called name 0.00 0.00 1/1 main [9][1] 0.0 0.00 0.00 1 func1 [1]-----------------------------------------------–––––––-
0.00 0.00 1/1 main [9][2] 0.0 0.00 0.00 1 func2 [2]-----------------------------------------------––––––––-
This table describes the call tree of the program, and was sorted by the
total amount of time spent in each function and its children.
Each entry in this table consists of several lines. The line with the index
number at the left hand margin lists the current function. The lines above
it list the functions that called this function, and the lines below it list the
functions this one called. n
There's a serendipity to real life that the Internet can't duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well,
sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it's that book that
changes your life.
~ Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her: Stories
What is the value of libraries? Through lifelong learning, libraries can and do change lives, a point that cannot
be overstated.
~ Michael Gorman, Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 28 www.csi-india.org
Many clients meet me, after they’ve
been on one side or the other of a
software development project begun, and
sometimes completed, without a detailed
written agreement. Either the scope of the
project has expanded, or the complexity
of the work was underestimated, and the
developer winds up performing additional
work the user doesn’t want to pay for. Or
the user, assuming it owns the software
it paid the developer to code, objects
to the developer providing a modifi ed
version to one of the user’s competitors.
Or the developer, assuming it owns the
software and only gave the user the right
to use it for the user’s internal business
purposes, objects to the user’s eff orts to
commercially distribute the software –
without royalties to the developer etc.
The cost of a failed or disputed
software development eff ort can be
extremely high, for both the user and
the developer. The user has often paid
substantial sums to the developer and may
sue to recoup those costs, if the system
does not perform as intended. The time
lost in an unsuccessful development eff ort
could severely aff ect the user’s business
operations, which may entitle the user to
recover consequential damages from the
developer. Similarly, the developer may
be expecting to receive a signifi cant fee,
which it may have to sue to recover if the
user disagrees with the developer as to
what was supposed to be delivered.
Written Agreement or Contract is a MustIn India Contract Act, 1872 and Copyright
Act, 2012, apply for such a comprehensive
written agreement governing the
arrangement, and serving as a blueprint for
the development eff ort, its one side’s word
against the others as to what the parties
originally intended. Further, whether the
project involves custom original code, third
party application software, customization
of existing programs, or some combination
of all three, it is essential to clearly state
the parties’ respective intellectual property
ownership and licensing rights. This is a
very complicated task best not left to the
user’s Head of Marketing or the developer’s
GM of Sales (each expert in their own
fi elds) who may wish to personally savor
the joys of contract drafting and save on
legal expenses.
Documenting the Development ProcessA complex custom software development
engagement, is often divided into several
distinct phases: preparation of preliminary
functional specifi cations, preparation of
detailed design specifi cations, software
coding from the detailed specifi cations,
data conversion to the new system (if it
replaces an existing one), and acceptance
testing. Each should be refl ected in the
overall written agreement.
The preliminary functional
specifi cations serve as a high-level
blueprint identifying, in non-technical
business terms, the needs the user
expects the system to address. In many
cases, they will have been prepared by
the user and included in a Request for
Proposal. If the developer believes the
specifi cations are unrealistic, it should
persuade the user to modify them at this
early stage, before development begins.
The developer should not agree to design
a system to conform precisely to the
preliminary functional specifi cations.
The software may evolve during the
development process into a diff erent form,
than originally envisioned by either party.
Nevertheless, the developer should expect
that the user will want the preliminary
functional specifi cations, to become part
of the contract and may require the user to
agree that the software will "substantially
perform" the stated business functions.
While the preliminary functional
specifi cations will in many cases have
been prepared by the user, the detailed
design specifi cations will usually be
prepared by the developer and build upon
the preliminary functional specifi cations.
They will typically include fl owcharts,
system documentation, descriptions of
output, examples of the user interface,
telecommunications requirements,
data and fi le layouts, documentation
requirements, acceptance test criteria, and
schedules. The contract should provide
that the user will have a specifi ed period
of time, such as 30 days, to review and
either approve or suggest modifi cations
to the detailed design specifi cations. The
user should have the right to terminate
the contract if it is not satisfi ed with the
specifi cations produced by the developer.
On the other hand, if the developer is
asked to include additional features and
functions, the user should expect to pay
additionally.
Most users will insist that a
development and implementation
schedule be included in the contract. The
developer will often have an opportunity
to shape the schedule in situations,
where it is more familiar with the
development process than the user. The
schedule should provide for weekly status
meetings, so as to avoid any surprises
from almost inevitable delays. Schedule
slippages typically result from the user
requesting design changes, changing
developer staffi ng demands, unavailability
of key user personnel for decision making,
or unavailability of other resources. The
contract should state the respective
eff orts, and levels of contribution required
of each party in order to meet the schedule.
Since slippages are to be expected, the
developer will want to avoid agreeing
to fi nancial penalties associated with
delays and may wish to agree to exercise
only "best eff orts" to meet the schedule.
If the user insists on a rigid schedule
plus penalty for delays, the developer
should negotiate to receive bonuses for
early delivery.
The acceptance testing process,
typically involves testing each software
module individually, and the entire
system as a whole, to determine whether
it conforms to the detailed design
specifi cations. The testing mechanism
should be set forth in detail in the contract.
It should state objective acceptance
criteria, which can be developed with the
assistance of an independent third party,
if the user and developer cannot agree
on what such criteria should be. From
the developer’s standpoint, the contract
should require the user to provide written
acceptance or rejection of the system
within a specifi ed time period, or it will be
deemed accepted. The developer should
be aff orded several opportunities and
reasonable time periods to correct any
defects that may cause the system to fail
the acceptance tests before the user can
Security Corner Adv. Prashant Mali [BSc (Physics), MSc (Comp Science), LLB]
Cyber Security & Cyber Law Expert
Email: [email protected]
Information Security »
Software Agreements in India – Points to Ponder
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 29
consider the developer to have breached
the development agreement.
Scope ChangesChanges in project scope or software
functionality, from what the parties
originally envisioned are almost inevitable
during a custom software development
engagement. Disputes between the
developer and the client often arise
concerning whether the developer was
obligated to make a change, who should
bear the cost of the change, the cost itself,
and who should be responsible for any
resulting delay.
A written development agreement,
should state a clear mechanism for
requesting, approving and implementing
any changes in scope or software
functionality. The procedure should require
the client to request the change in writing
and the developer to respond, again in
writing, with a proposal describing the fee
and schedule impact of implementing the
requested change. The developer should
not be obligated to proceed with making
the change until the parties have agreed
on the cost and schedule impact, as well as
the specifi cations for the revised software.
In the absence of a clear contractual
provision addressing change orders, the
developer is particularly at risk in fi xed
price projects. The client might request a
change it perceives to be minor but which
actually entails a signifi cant amount of
extra eff ort by the developer.
Payment TermsSoftware development engagements are typically paid for, on either a fi xed price/milestone or time and materials basis. Since developing software is extremely labor-intensive and complex projects can take years to complete, the developer will usually prefer to be paid on a time and materials basis so as to recoup all its costs and maintain its profi t margin. The client will usually want the job to be done on a fi xed fee basis, so as to be able to budget for a known expense.
It is hardly reasonable for the developer to be expected to fund the entire development process, and wait until project completion before receiving any payment. Accordingly, many development agreements provide for regular periodic payments. An initial payment may be made upon signing the agreement, followed by a second payment upon completion of the detailed design specifi cation phase.
Subsequently, payments can become
due after completion of the coding phase,
completion of the program testing phase,
and fi nally, upon successful acceptance
testing including operation of the system
in production using live data.
The client will typically want to avoid
making large payments at the beginning
of the project so as to keep the developer’s
interest in performing promptly. Similarly,
in order to maintain an incentive for the
developer to provide needed assistance
during the often painful conversion from an
old system to a new one, the client may fi nd
it useful to withhold a fi nal payment until
after the system has proven itself capable of
successfully operating in a live environment
for some period of time, e.g., 90 days.
A very clear payment schedule in
a written agreement also benefi ts the
developer. Once a project milestone
has passed, the developer can rightfully
refuse to proceed with further work until
it receives the required payment.
Ownership RightsThe area of ownership or proprietary
rights presents a challenging and complex
range of issues. Without a written contract
clearly stating the parties’ agreement on
ownership of the software created by the
developer, Copyright Act, 2012 will apply
to vest ownership of the copyright in the
developer. Ownership of the copyright is,
for practical purposes, ownership of the
software. The copyright owner has the
exclusive rights to copy, distribute and
modify the software. The client will own the
actual copies of the software delivered by
the developer and residing on its computers,
but without ownership of the copyright it
cannot market, distribute or duplicate the
software. Section 19 of the Act stipulates
the mode of assignment. Sub Section (1)
thereof provides that in no uncertain term
that assignment has to be in writing signed
by the assignor or by his authorized agent.
As per sub Section (2) of Section 19 of the
Act, the assignment of the copyright, any
such work is to identify such work and also
specify the rights assigned and the “duration
and territorial extent of such assignment”.
In many cases, however, the
client may only be interested in using
the software for its internal business
purposes, in which case ownership of the
software, as opposed to a license to use,
is not a critical concern. The client may
object, however, if after paying millions
of dollars to fund the development of
new system, the developer then wishes
to commercially distribute the software to
others, including the client’s competitors.
One way to resolve this concern is,
for the client to receive royalties from
the developer’s further distribution of the
software. While there are no standard
guidelines as to the amount of the royalty,
it is not uncommon for the royalty to
terminate once the client has recovered
the cost of the software.
Warranty & Limitation of LiabilitySoftware is so inherently complex that
even the most extensive battery of
acceptance tests will not uncover every
programming error. Some will usually be
found after the system has been delivered,
and the client begins using it. Accordingly,
the client should insist on a provision in the
written agreement requiring the developer
to fi x software errors at no charge for a
specifi ed period of time.
Typically, the developer will be
expected to warrant that the software
will substantially conform to agree upon
performance specifi cations. If it doesn’t,
the developer will be expected to correct
the defect, if it is brought to its attention
within, e.g., 120 days of a specifi ed date,
such as the date the client accepts the
software.
The developer will want to limit its
warranty responsibility, to correcting
the defective software brought to its
attention during the warranty period. A
carefully drafted warranty provision, will
usually include a disclaimer of all other
warranties other than the one specifi cally
stated, along with a clause limiting
the developer’s total liability under the
contract. For example, if the developer
is unable to correct defective software
after numerous attempts, and it remains
unusable to the client, the developer will
not want to be responsible for potentially
ruinous "consequential" damages, such as
the client’s lost business opportunities or
lost profi t. A reasonable remedy for the
client in this situation may be a complete
refund of the fees paid to the developer.
The client’s remedies and the
developer’s liabilities are very often hotly
negotiated issues. Without a written
agreement limiting its liability, the
developer’s liability is potentially unlimited,
which may be the most compelling reason
of all for the developer to insist on a written
agreement. Conversely, a carefully drafted
warranty clause gives the client specifi c
enforceable rights, and a bit more comfort
than the developer’s verbal assurance,
"don’t worry, we’ll fi x it." n
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 30 www.csi-india.org
IT Act 2000 »
Prof. IT Law in Conversation with Mr. IT Executive – Similarities between technology and law; need for collaboration Issue No. 12
Security Corner Mr. Subramaniam Vutha
AdvocateEmail: [email protected]
IT Executive: Welcome Prof. IT Law! In our
last session you explained quite lucidly how,
both the law and technology open up new
business options. What will we discuss
today?
Prof. IT Law: And I also explained how the
common objective of both technology
and law render predictable outcome
of human plans and actions. We will
discuss that at greater length as desired
by you.
IT Executive: Thank you. I fi nd that
connections between law and technology
quite fascinating. Please tell me more
about it.
Prof. IT Law: We know that technology
opens up new business options. For
example, the Internet opened up new
vistas for commerce in the form of
e-commerce.
IT Executive: Yes, and e-commerce has
opened up many wonderful new options,
such as C2B and C2C commerce and so on.
Prof. IT Law: You are right. The Internet,
The World Wide Web, and the creation
of “cyberspace” in which people work,
seek entertainment and interact socially,
has spawned so many new options that
did not exist barely 10 years ago. Just as
a case in point, consider the possibility
of “reverse auctions”. Would that have
been possible without the Internet?
IT Executive: Not at all. Like many other things
we now take for granted such as e-ticketing,
web check-in for fl ights, and so on.
Prof. IT Law: Yes. Even the law has been
a great innovator – except that the law
moves much more slowly.
IT Executive: I am beginning to see what you
mean. But please give me some examples.
Prof. IT Law: Take the case of the
“Companies Act” or company law. It has
made possible, some fairly revolutionary
options. For example, company law
makes it possible for several thousands
of people to combine or pool their
capital, for common goals without even
knowing each other. When they do this,
they are shareholders in that company
that executes their common goal.
IT Executive: Wow! I did not think of it
this way. I too am a shareholder in a few
companies. What else does the company
law do to open up new business options?
Prof. IT Law: Company law permits
separation of ownership and
management. This is a great step for
business. Now the owners [shareholders]
of a company need not be its managers.
That can be delegated to professionals.
IT Executive: Great. And what else?
Prof. IT Law: Because company law
limits liability of the shareholders to the
value of their shares, it has encouraged
commerce and industry in areas that are
risky and have a long range outlook in
terms of returns.
IT Executive: I see. It does look like company
law in itself is some kind of great innovation
by the lawmakers.
Prof. IT Law: Yes. And so are laws
pertaining to contracts, insurance,
transport, stock exchanges, banking,
and so on. Each of these open up new
business options and does as much as
technology to keep the industry growing.
IT Executive: I can see your point of view – and I quite agree with what you say. But what connections do these laws have with
technology?
Prof. IT Law: Each of these laws, and
the businesses they serve or facilitate,
has been impacted by technology.
Especially the Internet and the World
Wide Web. For example, company law
now provides for e-voting, electronic
board meetings, and electronic
filings. Insurance and contracts
have moved online in a big way. Also
travel and communication have been
revolutionized by the Internet.
IT Executive: I understand. So what would
you advise those engaged in creating or
advancing technology?
Prof. IT Law: I would advise them to
learn the basics of the laws that apply
to them; the speed at which they work,
and progress does not give them much
margin for error. So knowing about the
essentials of law will make them safer
and more intelligent in their approach
to technology and its advancements.
IT Executive: I guess law and technology will
need to collaborate – which means lawyers
should learn more about technology and
technology advances.
Prof. I T Law: Yes, and technologists must
understand more about the law. And
help shape the laws that will impact their
plans and work.
IT Executive: That is an interesting concept. I
do hope to work with you to make computer
professionals more law-savvy.
Prof I T Law: Thank you, I appreciate your
openness and willingness to collaborate
with the law.
IT Executive: Thank you Prof I T Law, I look forward to more sessions with you.
n
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 31
Solution to February 2013 crossword
Brain Teaser Dr. Debasish Jana
Editor, CSI Communications
Crossword »Test your Knowledge on e-LibrariesSolution to the crossword with name of fi rst all correct solution provider(s) will appear in the next issue. Send your answers to CSI
Communications at email address [email protected] with subject: Crossword Solution - CSIC March 2013
CLUESACROSS1. A digital collection management software (8)5. Sharable content object reference model (5)8. An opensource asset management system for digital contents (9)11. A numerical code assigned to a book to uniquely identify it (4)12. Helps to locate a fi le or resource on the Internet (3)13. Online public access catalog (4)16. An archive for electronic preprints of scientifi c papers (5)18. Information about the publication (7)19. A portable format for word processing (3)20. Portable Document Format of fi les (3)21. A bibliographic database and model for scientifi c community (6)23. An opensource repository software package (6)25. Digital Book (5)27. A digital collection management software (9)29. A technical framework developed by W3C for description of
resources (3)31. An initiative by libraries and publishers to provide usage
reporting (7)33. A computer bus interface to connect to mass storage devices (4)34. Data about data (8)
DOWN1. A standard meta-language for mark-up languages (4)2. A non-periodical work complete as a complete set (9)3. A digital storage directly attached to a system (3)4. A document type defi nition for archival material (3)6. A unique code for titles of periodical publications (5)7. An e-book format (4)8. An Internet protocol (4)9. An e-book format (3)10. A short summary describing the main idea (8)14. An enterprise content management system (8)15. An organized collection of information resources (7)17. Macintosh audio fi le format (4)20. A programming language that controls printing (10)21. A fi le previewer for the GNOME Desktop Environment (5)22. An open standard based on open web languages for ebooks (4)24. A Digital Library for offl ine access (8) 26. Standard for the storage and exchange of two-dimensional
graphical data (3)28. A language for document style, semantics and specifi cations (5)30. An Internet audio fi le format (4)32. A document type defi nition for scholarly resources (3)
Congratulations toP Deepa (Dept. of MCA, Panimalar Engineering College, Chennai) for getting
ALL correct answers to February 2013 month’s crossword.
Did you know about world’s fi rst bookless e-library?
Traditional libraries for booklovers have been facing a transition of ideas to the concept of e-libraries. In changing technology bandwagon, digital-only libraries have not been established in full form. The world’s first electronic library is going to be found in San Antonio, Texas. The library will have no physical books, all in digital format, with many e-book readers available. Judge Nelson Wolf, the initiator of the project said, “Paper books have lost their allure, and future generations may have little use for them”. (Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Bexar-set-to-turn-the-page-on-idea-of-books-in-4184940.php)
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A L E X A N D E R
B2
A S S O C I3
A T I O N4
S M A L L T A5
L K T
T O6
E X C E P T I7
O N
R8
O B E R O N R Z
A B P9
I U
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T E D P U
I C13
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G L U29
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CSI Communications | March 2013 | 32 www.csi-india.org
Ask an Expert Dr. Debasish Jana
Editor, CSI Communications
Your Question, Our Answer“No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The
sensible worker does not knock those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't
knock yourself.” ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
From: Sandeep ReddyStudent of ISE branch, SIETTumkur, Karnataka
I read the article published in December 2012, issue of CSI Communications, and in Ask an Expert page I found that Mr. Himanshu B Dev requested for correcting the programs, which were published in the earlier editions of CSIC. I propose my solutions for the problem.
Problem: Find whether a no. is even or odd.Approach 1:
#include<stdio.h>int main(){ int noToTest = 2013; printf("Testing for no. %d\n", noToTest); int a = noToTest / 2; a = a * 2; if (a == noToTest) printf("Given no. is even\n"); else printf("Given no. is ODD");
}
Logic: For a given number, if we divide it by 2 and multiply it by 2 then we get same number. In this case, we are taking an integer variable to store the number i.e. a, so if 'a' is equal to 'noToTest' then it is even else it is odd because while dividing the fl oating number is truncated and stored.
Also, I would like to suggest the correction for 2nd approach. Approach 2:My program goes like this.
#include<stdio.h>int main(){ int noToTest = 2013; printf("Testing for no. %d\n",noToTest); float a = noToTest / 2.0 ; float b = a - (int) a ; if( b == 0) printf(" Given no. is even\n "); else printf(" Given no. is odd");}
Logic: 2.0 is making a big diff erence. The result of "a = noToTest / 2.0;" puts a fl oat in the variable ‘a’. But in last suggestion made by some expert was wrongly assumed.
Thank You for your valuable time.
A Many thanks, Sandeep. In the past, we had discussed this issue alongwith suggestions and concerns at length. Keeping in mind of maximum size of storage and the maximum as well as minimum permissible value for a particular data type, here comes some interesting observation. For example, in a 32-bit machine, a variable of int (signed) type would take the minimum value as (-231 i.e. -2147483648). If noToTest is say, (-231), and you try to divide by 2, the buff er can hold the result, as the sign remains negative whereas value when divided by 2 becomes (-230 i.e. - 1073741824). So, this should work fi ne.
[We appreciate all views, including the current one, from our readers expressed
on this topic. Many thanks for the analysis and explanation. – Editors, CSIC]
From: Raja RoyKolkata In the following program, how many bytes would be required by an object of class SHOP?
#include<iostream.h>class CUSTOMER { int cust_no; char cust_name[20]; protected: void Register(); public: CUSTOMER(); ~ CUSTOMER(); void status();};class SALESMAN { int salesman_no; char salesman_name[20]; protected: float salary; public: SALESMAN(); ~SALESMAN(){}; void Entry(); void show();};class SHOP: public CUSTOMER, SALESMAN { public: SHOP(); ~SHOP(){};};int main(){ cout << sizeof(SHOP) << endl; return 0;}
This prints 52.
The logic is as explained below. We presume 32-bit machine architecture having sizeof(int) = 32, and sizeof(char) = 1 (with non-unicode)
Thus, sizeof(SHOP)= sizeof(Customer) + sizeof(SALESMAN) + Δ (SHOP) i.e. size of data defi ned in SHOP alone= sizeof(int) + 20 * sizeof(char) + sizeof(int) + 20*sizeof(char) + 4= 4 + 20 * 1 + 4 + 20 * 1 + 4= 24 + 24 + 4= 52.
If you introduce a virtual function in the class CUSTOMER (there is none now), the virtual table pointer would be placed in CUSTOMER object as well, adding four (4) additional bytes of storage in 32-bit machine architecture for CUSTOMER object. Also, in virtually derived classes, the base class has to be shared; in that case an additional pointer-to-base
needs to be there as well. n
Send your questions to CSI Communications with subject line ‘Ask an Expert’ at email address [email protected]
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 33
Happenings@ICT H R Mohan
AVP (Systems), The Hindu, ChennaiEmail: [email protected]
ICT News Briefs in February 2013The following are the ICT news and headlines of interest in February 2013. They have been compiled from various news & Internet sources including the dailies – The Hindu, Business Line, and Economic Times.
Voices & Views• ‘Big Data’ spending to exceed $130 billion
by 2015, to generate 4.4 million jobs. Every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created. 90% of the data in the world today have been created in the last two years – Gartner.
• The Indian geoservices industry generated $3 billion in revenue in 2011, and accounts for 1.35 lakh jobs. Geoservices help businesses drive $40-45 billion in revenue, save $70-75 billion in costs, and aff ect 8-9 million jobs – BCG report.
• Cyber attacks now target key personnel in aerospace, defense set-up. Defense industry, gets an average of 7.3 attacks per day globally. – Symantec.
• ‘Spiderman’,’Chinaking’ are two software programmes believed to help in changing IMEI of Chines mobile phones a cause for security threat.
• Over 50% of mobile applications deployed by 2016 will be hybrid as enterprises are developing applications to support mobile work styles and increase customer engagement – Gartner.
• The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol used for net-banking, Facebook has serious weaknesses – Royal Holloway University.
• Hackers target gamers and making 7,000 attempts every day to infect gamers around the world –Kaspersky.
• Manufacturing and natural resources companies to spend Rs 40,800 crore on IT products and services in 2013, a 9.1% increase over 2012 – Gartner.
• Indian IT exports to grow 12-14% in FY’14; to clock revenues of $84-87 billion in 2013; domestic revenues to grow at 13-15% to reach to 1.20 lakh crore; the sector employing three million professionals added over 1.8 lakh in FY13 – Nasscom.
• A whopping $320-billion worth of electronics will be imported by 2020, which may exceed the annual oil import bill – MAIT.
• The global BI software revenue to reach $13.8 billion in 2013, a 7% rise from 2012 – Gartner.
• Digital data generated by India last year, which if stored in Apple’s iPhone 5 with 32 GB, will equal over 5,100 stacks of the device, as tall as Mount Everest. Data to grow from 127 EB (exabytes) to 2.9 ZB (zettabyte) between 2012 and 2020. India spent $0.87 per GB to manage data, which is much lower than China, U.S., and Western Europe – EMC & IDC.
• About 5 lakh people have so far watched over 1,100 hours of video of Maha Kumbh, on phones using the mobile TV service nexGTv.
• Bamital, a search engine virus on prowl in Indian cyberspace – CERT-In.
• Mobile industry to invest $ 1.1 trillion by 2017, employ 10 million – GSM Association.
• India losing out to China, Brazil in BPO sector – The Economic Survey.
• India becomes the world’s fi rst country to launch a smartphone (a Google Nexus One) into space by launching STRaND-1, on ISRO’s PSLV launcher on 25th Feb 2013.
Government Policy, Telecom, Compliance• The U.S. Govt. objects India’s plans of making
it compulsory, for Govt. agencies to source electronic products, including PCs, printers, and tablets,from domestic manufacturers.
• The Govt.of India to spend Rs 36,800 crore on IT products and services in 2013.
• 2G scam: Raja belied my trust, Attorney General tells JPC. CBI must scrutinize transcript of Niira Radia tapes says Apex court. CBI removes lead prosecutor on alleged collusion with accused. Court asks CBI to fi le more documents during NDA regime. JPC report could be delayed with key UPA ally DMK insisting on calling former Telecom Minister A. Raja as a witness. Apex court dismisses plea to revoke cancellation order. ED to fi le charges against Raja, Kanimozhi. Willing to appear before JPC as witness says Raja. JPC still undecided on bringing Raja as witness.
• Telcos oppose license fee for Internet services.
• Telcos continue removing inactive SIMs; 26mn users lost in Dec. The overall tele-density decreased to 73.34% from 75.55%.
• Home Ministry wants 911-type emergency response service.
• Govt. to re-examine services off ered by Skype, Google.
• Telcos that kept off new 2G auction cannot off er services – Supreme Court.
• Telecom tower fi rms may be allowed to keep 100% FDI.
• Internet rates may go up under new license framework.
• Uninor closes down its mobile networks in Kolkata and in Mumbai from 16th Feb. Over 1 crore customers have been disconnected. Sistema Shyam to shut operations in 10 circles.
• Post 2G licenses cancellation, entire spectrum to be put on sale.
• DoT is set to clear the policy for allowing Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO).
• MAIT demands correction in tax structures to boost domestic manufacturing.
• DoT announces third round of 2G spectrum auction. No applicant for GSM waves. Sistema Shyam – lone applicant to bid for CDMA spectrum. High base price, legal issues barriers to bidding says COAI.
• An electronics hardware manufacturing Cluster Park to come up at Sri City, a business city located 55 km north of Chennai.
• IT & ITeS SEZs allowed setting up backup centers in India.
• Vodafone India plans to off er fi xed line telephony services.
IT Manpower, Staffi ng & Top Moves• TCS to hire 25,000, Wipro 10,000 in AP• HCL’s Shiv Nadar earmarks 20% of wealth
(about Rs. 5,000 cr) for education.
• 'Third-party system integrators in demand as CIOs take to outsourcing'.
• At TCS, Rajesh Gopinathan will succeed S. Mahalingam as the company’s CFO.
• Many HCL campus hires yet to join the company.
• Tech Mahindra in favor of hiring locals in overseas centers.
• TCS to continue campus hiring. The ratio is 60% – N. Chandrasekaran, CEO and MD of TCS.
• Azim Premji transfers Rs 12,300-cr worth shares to trust to help improve the school education system and allied areas.
Company News: Tie-ups, Joint Ventures, New Initiatives• Bharti Airtel introduces an emergency alert
service through its helpline no. 55100 aimed primarily for women in Kolkata, Bengal, and Odisha.
• Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSpirt), a think tank made up of Indian product companies, has been formed.
• Social networking site Facebook on 4th Feb 2013 turned nine.
• MakeMyTrip launches app Route Planner which displays all connectivity options between two locations, including fl ights, buses, trains, and cabs. Also allows users to view multiple routes.
• Data Security Council of India, along with Facebook, Google, Kaspersky, and Microsoft, launches the India edition of – Stop, Think, and Connect, as part of the Internet safety campaign.
• Now vernacular e-books available on phone. Audio books, an upcoming trend in book world.
• Google organizes Mapathon contest. To register visit http://g.co/mapindia2013
• Cognizant beats Infosys for third time in a row.
• Facebook has 50 million duplicate accounts, besides 22 million misclassifi ed and undesirable accounts out of 1.06 billion.
• The last of the fl oppy-makers in India (perhaps the world), Amkette, has closed its lone manufacturing unit at Udaipur (Rajasthan).
• MTV and Swipe Telecom jointly launch MTV Volt, a 3G dual SIM six-inch phablet.
• Called ‘Peace of Mind,’ an app allows users to send a SMS for deleting all personal data from the handset which was lost to avoid identity theft ,and someone else accessing the personal data.
• India Semiconductor Association renamed as IESA - India Electronics and Semiconductor Association.
• Microsoft switches Hotmail accounts to Outlook.com.
• Firefox unveils operating system for mobiles.• Nokia unveils cheapest handset - Nokia 105
at 15 Euro (Rs. 1100).• BlackBerry launches Z10 smartphone at Rs
43,490.• Google, using Street View technology, to
present a panoramic view - a 360-degree view of business online.
n
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 34 www.csi-india.org
Computer Society of India – Mumbai
Chapter hosted its Annual Conference
IT2020 on 1st February 2013, at the
Victor Menezes Convention Center, at IIT
Bombay. The conference theme “Making
Emerging Technologies a Boardroom
Agenda” and tracks namely Security,
Mobility, Social Media, Big Data, and
Analytics was corroborated with KPMG,
the Knowledge Partner. Spoken Tutorials
team from IIT Bombay was the Support
Partner.
The inauguration was attended by
over 500 delegates, including senior
CSI members, delegation from Navy,
Corporate leaders, professionals,
academicians, and students.
Mr. Ravi Eppaturi,
Chairman, CSI Mumbai
Chapter, welcomed the
delegates and shared the
program and initiatives
planned over the day. He
also stated that companies which have
embraced these Emerging Technologies
will continue to be relevant to their
stakeholders.
The keynote speaker Mr. Sanjeev
Dali, from a popular FMCG company set
the tone for the conference by sharing
the growth and impact of Emerging
Technologies on the Boardroom Agenda.
He shared that some of their emerging
technology initiatives are being reported
and tracked by their Board.
Prof. Kannan Moudgalya
from IIT Bombay in his
plenary address shared
the process, progress,
and impact of the Spoken
Tutorial Project, and
the popular Aakash initiatives. He also
gave a brief demo of the Aakash tablet.
He invited all the delegates to visit the
IIT Bombay Spoken Tutorial, Aakash
2 associated stalls, and attend the
scheduled demonstrations.
Prof. Kannan invited Mr.
Ravi Eppaturi, to release
the newly created
Spoken Tutorials on
C++ and C along with Mr. Dilip Ganeriwal,
Mr. Sandip Chintawar, Mr. VL Mehta,
Mr. George Arakal, and Dr. SP Mudur.
The delegates went on to the attend
the scheduled Five (5) Parallel tracks -
Security, Mobility, Social Media, Big Data
& Analytics, IIT initiatives namely Spoken
Tutorial and Aakash 2 demos.
Security TrackThe security track was a blend of latest
trends in organizational security, and
how various industries are strategizing to
combat them.
Mr. AK Viswanathan, Senior Director,
Deloitte India, was the track chair. In his
introductory speech he highlighted how
security remains a dynamic talked about
topic and shared the agenda for the day.
The session on Security Intelligence
Operations Centre (SIOC), was presented
by two subject matter experts namely, Mr.
Mark Fernandez, Partner, Deloitte Canada
and Mr. Vinay Puri, Senior Manager,
Deloitte India. The interactive session
focused on global and Indian perspective
of the growing complexities in securities
for an organization. Numerous test cases
and scenarios were showcased and
discussed.
The Security panel discussion on
“Winning strategies to counter emerging
security threats” was moderated by
Mr. Vinay Puri, Senior Manager, Deloitte
India. Eminent panelist included
Mr. Anantha Sayana, Vice President and
Head - Corporate IT, Larsen & Toubro
Limited, Mr. Ashish Pachory, Chief
Information Offi cer at Tata Teleservices
Limited, Mr. Jagdish Mahapatra,
Managing Director, McAfee India and
SAARC, and Mr. Pravin Sharma, Chief
Information Systems Offi cer and Assistant
General Manager, Union Bank of India.
The panelist and delegates shared and
deliberated on the emerging threats, and
how an organization can guard against
such threats, based on their risk appetite.
Mr. Pinakin Dave, National Manager,
Channels and Alliances for McAfee India
on Security Connected Framework, shared
enterprise wide solution by McAfee India
in order to provide a seamless integration
of solutions, services, and partnerships
that intelligently reduces overall
infrastructure risks.
Mobility TrackMr. Lalit Shawney, Director, Lalit Sawhney
and Associates, chaired the Mobility Track.
The Enterprise Mobility Track covered
the opportunity, provided by increasingly
popular and powerful smartphones and
feature phones, which are in the hands of
knowledge workers, senior management,
'feet on street', and all level of employees
today.
With rapid proliferation of mobile
devices, more powerful than the standard
corporate desktop, a large number of
working people are now 'connected' to
work for longer hours than before. Often
this access happens on the same device,
which supports personal as well as
corporate applications.
The speakers Mr. Gerard Rego,
Director – Developer Experience, NOKIA,
Mr. Sowri Santhanakrishnan, Vice
President & Venture Leader, Mobility
Solutions, Cognizant Technology Solutions,
Mr. Suresh Anantpurkar, Consultant
Mobile Governance, Ex–President,
mChek, Mr. Nitin Bhandari, Associate Vice
President – New Products & Partnerships,
Vodafone, Mr. Jayanta Prabhu, Group
CTO, Essar Group, Mr. Anish Gupte, IT
Infrastructure & Services Lead, Kraft Asia
Pacifi c, Ms. Manjula Sridhar, Sr. Director
Sales at Arcot Systems (CA technologies),
Mr. LN Sundarrajan, Founder Rewire,
and Mr. Amit Chaubal, IS Security &
Compliance Manager, Kraft Asia Pacifi c -
covered the opportunity, the challenges,
and practical implementation of this
consumerisation in the enterprise world
and government, including the required
technologies and security / network
implications - to allow people to work
the way they want to work, and allowing
enterprises to leverage trends and
innovations to gain business advantage.
The two interesting and interactive
sessions covered policy issues, cost
savings, and productivity gains; the
disruptive character of the technology,
how 'the pilots are fi nally fl ying' and how
these technologies are changing the world.
CSI Report
CSI IT2020 - Making Emerging Technologies a Boardroom Agenda
Mr. Ravi EppaturiChairman, Mumbai Chapter
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 35
Social Media TrackMr. Hareesh Tibrewala, Joint CEO, Social
Wavelength, the track chair spoke about
how businesses need to think about
making business social, beyond just
social media marketing. He also shared
some cases on how internal use of social
networking platform could help contribute
to business productivity.
Mr. Sandeep Walunj, Chief Marketing
Offi cer, Magma Fincorp Limited, spoke
about creating a framework which would
enable all stake holders to engage with
the brand, and with each other. He spoke
about adopting a 3 pronged approach
which involved listening, communicating,
and engaging.
Ms. Deepali Naair, Country
Head (Brand and Corp Comm.), L & T
Insurance, explained how digital is not
just an “afterthought” and overall brand
communication on the digital platform has
become far more powerful and engaging.
Mr. Danish Mohammed, Leader
(Marketing and Strategy), IBM
Collaborative Solutions, mentioned that
organizations will need to move towards
adopting internal communication and
collaboration tools, which are able
to leverage these natural instincts of
Gen Y, resulting in overall increased in
productivity. Mr. Binay Tewari spoke about the how
the intersection of social, mobile, and local (SoLoMo) was creating huge communication and business opportunities.
Ms. Bharati Lele, Head Innovations, L
& T Infotech, shared some very interesting
eye-popping facts about social media,
importance of social media monitoring in
CRM, and relevance of social analytics.
An engaging Q and A session with the
speakers gave the audience an opportunity
to understand the future of social media
and integrated communication, as well
how social media would start impacting
other areas of business.
Big Data and Analytics TrackMr. C Kajwadkar, CIO, CCIL the track chair,
shared the drivers for the explosive data
growth and identifying various dimensions
of data that can defi ne the term ‘Big Data’.
The essence of key parameters like Volume,
Velocity, Variety, Variability, and Complexity
were to be deliberated in the track.
Dr. A B Pandey from UIDAI, made an
interesting presentation revolving around
AADHAR project that is going to capture
data of over 1.2 Billion residents of India.
The complexities of nature of data, size,
and challenges were eye openers.
‘Elephant in the room, are corporate
feeding it ?’ by Mr. Arun Gupta, CIO, Cipla
shared his candid view that business value
has to be assessed before embracing
projects of such nature and reiterated that
one should critically evaluate the need
before embarking on the journey of Big
Data.
Mr. Sanjay Mehta CEO, MAIA –
Intelligence presented an overview of the
Power and Reach of analytics.
Mr. Pushkar Bhat, SAP shared
capabilities of their product HANA, which
off ers Big data analytics using In-Memory
Computing technology.
Presentations by Sanjay and Pushkar
highlighted the importance of analytics,
in delivering tangible business value and
their contribution in making smarter faster
decisions.
A unique and highly interactive panel
discussion, “Big debate on Big data” was
much appreciated by the speakers and the
enthusiastic audience..
Mr. S. S. Mulay of Netmagic solutions
presented ‘Data Jig saw Puzzle- Tools &
Technologies’ about Hadoop, and all other
relevant technology elements in Big Data
environment.
Mr. Harish Ganesan - CTO and
Co-Founder of 8KMiles, made his pitch
‘Big Data - beyond hype’ and shared
implementation experience through a real
life case study.
Mr. Yogesh Sawant of Hitachi data
systems shared interesting real life cases,
about deployment of Big data solutions
within his parent company and clients.
He also gave his views about Information
Cloud and some of the problems that have
been solved using Big Data Analytics.
Theme DiscussionMr. Kunal Pande, Partner, KPMG
moderated the discussion. The group of
business leaders and CIOs who joined the
discussion included Mr. R. Ramanan, CEO,
CMC Limited, Mr. Vipin Agarwal, India
Chair, BSA, Mr. C Kajwadkar, CIO,CCIL,
Mr. Sebastian Joseph, Chief Technology
Offi cer, DDB Mudra Group, and
Mr. Shashi Kumar Ravulapaty, SVP & CTO,
Reliance Capital. The discussion revolved
around the requirement of the board and
impact of emerging technologies on the
Boardroom agenda.
The joint CSI and KPMG,
Thought leadership
paper was released by
Mr. Kunal Pande and Mr.
Ravi Eppaturi along with
Mr. R. Ramanan, Prof. Kannan Moudgalya,
and Mr. Rajiv Gerela.
CSI Mumbai Chapter Mobile
Application was launched on Android, iOS
and Windows, by Mr. Sandip Chintawar,
Mr. VL Mehta, Mr. Ravi Eppaturi, and
Mr. Chari.
Closing SessionMr. Ravi Eppaturi, Chairman, CSI Mumbai
Chapter, gave the vote of thanks and
reiterated the conference highlights:
1 One Day Conference with 50 speakers
across 5 tracks
2 Over 500 delegates
3 CSI-KPMG Thought leadership paper
released on the conference theme
“Making Emerging Technologies a
Boardroom Agenda”
4 C++ and C Spoken Tutorial released
5 CSI Mumbai Chapter Mobile
Application launched – Available on
Google Workspace
6 IIT Bombay – Partnership, Venue,
Active Participation
7 Lively CXO Theme Discussion
8 Aakash 2 and Spoken Tutorial demos
9 Pre Conference Survey – In
collaboration with KPMG, over 100
responses
10 Speaker Memento was designed
by an artist from Mouth and Foot
Association – A CSR initiative by CSI
Mumbai Chapter
11 CSI IT2020 Advertisement on Rediff
Visit www.csimumbai.org/IT2020 to
download the conference,
• Presentations
• CSI KPMG Thought Leadership Paper
• Photos
• CSI Mumbai Chapter Android
Application n
Congratulations to you, for successfully conducting key event of 2013. I admire all of your eff orts to make Indian IT a reckoning industry
on the world map.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 36 www.csi-india.org
CSI ReportDr. Dharm Singh*, Mr. Sanjay Mohapatra** and Ms. Ridhima Khemasra***
*Organizing Chair and Convener SIG-WNs CSI**Chairperson, Div IV, CSI***Organizing Secretory
ACCE2013: International Conference on Advance Computing and Creating Entrepreneurs
Special Interest Group –Wireless Networks
(SIG-WNs), Division IV, and Udaipur
Chapter Computer Society of India,
Geetanjali Institute of Technical Studies,
Udaipur, organized an International
Conference on Advance Computing and
Creating Entrepreneurs (ACCE2013)
in technical collaboration with by IEEE
Computer Society Chapter India Council
at Udaipur, Rajasthan, India, during Feb
19-20, 2013.
Inaugural SessionACCE-2013 started on Feb 19th 2013,
with the inaugural session at 10.30 a.m,
in Geetanjali Medicity Campus, Udaipur.
The conference was inaugurated by
Sh. Raghuveer Meena MP, Lok Sabha,
Udaipur constituency. He emphasized on
the use of communication and advance
computing for the welfare of society
at large. Key note speaker Prof. Bharat
Bhargav, guided the delegates about
cloud computing and how it could be
used for the upliftment of physically gifted
people. He emphasized on thinking out
of the box and using current technology
to create something innovative. Dr. R K
Nahar, Guest of Honor, pointed out the
rampant change in media and devices in
past decade. He emphasized the research
in nano- technology and semiconductors
devices to facilitate our living.
Mr. M L Talesra, Chairman, Computer
Society of India, Udaipur Chapter,
informed the housed that Udaipur Chapter
has 171 Members and three Institutions
as Institution members. The Udaipur
Chapter, established in 1986, witnessed
organization of many technical events,
seminar, and state convention .
Role of SIG-WNsDr. Dharm Singh, Convener SIG-WNs,
presented the role and activities organized
by the SIG-WNs, CSI which was initiated
with the blessings and vision of Sh.
M D Agarwal the then Vice-President of
CSI during our discussion with him. He
appreciated the opening of SIG-WNs
and readily approved the entire national
and international programme submitted
to him from time to time. As a president,
he left no stone unturned to generate
awareness and synergy amongst the
members of CSI for planning eff ective
activities through SIG-WNs. Dr. Singh
said that it is only with the whole hearted
support and active involvement of few of
our members that the wireless network
activities have fl ourished. He extended
his sincere thanks while recognizing the
key role they have played in planning in
execution of diff erent events so far, under
the banner of SIG-WNs to Mr. Rajesh
Kasera, Dr. Naveen Choudhary, CTAE,
Ms. Ridhima Khemasra, Ms. Kalpna Jain,
Ms. Drashti Deve, Abhijeet Sharma, Amit
Joshi, and Phagun Baya felicitated in the
inaugural session.
e-InnovationGuest of honor, Mr. M D Agarwal,
immediate Past President, Computer
Society of India and Head IT, BPCL
highlighted the 12th Five Year Plan, and
discussed CSI ethics and values. He
emphasized about the role of network
research in governance indicatives.
Technological change and innovation,
driven by research and development have
been found to be the most important
sources of increased productivity, higher
growth, and better welfare. He said the
country is now recognized as a global
player in software and software services
sector. Over the years several initiatives
have been taken in the Information
Technology sector to foster innovation,
improve delivery of e-Services to citizens,
and bring about profound change in the
way business is conducted and the way
Government works. The 12th Five Year
Plan considers ICT as a key driver for
India’s economic growth; budget outlay
for ICT based projects has been increased
by more than 100%.
Context-Aware Blind NavigationProf. Bharat K Bhargava, Department of
Computer Sciences, Purdue University
presented a key note talk on “A Mobile-
Cloud Collaborative Approach for
Context-Aware Blind Navigation” in the
inaugural session. He said that the indoor
and outdoor navigation is becoming a
harder task for blind and visually impaired
people in the increasingly complex urban
world. Advances in technology are causing
the blind to fall behind, sometimes even
putting their lives at risk, and technology
available for context-aware navigation
of the blind is not suffi ciently accessible;
some devices rely heavily on infrastructural
requirements. He said that 314 million
visually impaired people, 45 million blind
in the world today, and more than 82%
of the visually impaired population is age
50 or older. He suggested that the old
population forms a group with diverse
range of abilities. Bring mobile technology
in the daily lives of blind and visually
impaired people, to help achieve a higher
standard of life. We need to take a major
step in context-aware navigation of the
blind and visually impaired.
Technical and Special SessionsRidhima Khamesra, OS, presented the
technical and special sessions, and
in all two days a total of 7 technical
sessions were organized. In each session
many expert lectures from renowned
academicians like; Dr. Virendra Choudhary,
Bikaner Engineering College, Dr. Manju
Mandot, Director, Women Studies,
Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Mr. Azimmudin
Khan, Manager IT, RSMM, Ms. Meenakshi
Tripathi, MNIT, and Prof. Khushwaha,
MNIT, Allahabad were delivered. A
total of 64 papers have been selected
for presentation in the conference after
double ended peer blind review out of 251
papers submitted by various author across
globe. The acceptance rate is 25.49 %.
Workshop on Cloud ComputingWorkshop on Cloud computing was
organized at Geetanjali Medicity
Campus, Udaipur and almost 300
students participated in the workshop.
Continued on Page 37
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 37
Sixth Tamil Nadu State Student Convention
of CSI was conducted by the Student
Branch of Ratna Vel Subramaniam (RVS)
College of Engineering and Technology,
Dindigul on 11th and 12th September 2012.
Dr. C. G. Ravichandran CSI - SBC &
Principal of RVSCET, Dindigul presided
over the function and Mr. S. Ramasamy CSI
Regional 7 - Vice President delivered the
inaugural address. He inspired CSI student
members with his encouraging speech.
Dr. M. Sundaresan, CSI Tamil Nadu
State Student Coordinator (Chennai,
Coimbatore, and Pondichery) delivered
the valedictory address and distributed the
certifi cates and cash awards. More than
150 participants from 9 student branches
attended the two days event.
CSI Report
CSI Sixth Tamilnadu State Student Convention at RVSCET, Dindigul
Dr. M SundaresanProfessor and Head, Department of Computer Science and IT Bharathiar University Coimbatore
Inaugural Function Valedictory Function
Mr. S Ramasamy delivering inaugural address.
(From L to R) Mr. D Chandrasekarn,
Mr. A Sundar and Dr. C G Ravichandran.
Dr. M Sundaresan delivering the
valedictory address.
Dr. M Sundaresan T N State Student Coordinator (Chennai,
Coimbatore,Pondicherry) distributing Prize and Certifi cates
to the participants of CSI Sixth Tamilnadu State student convention
held at RatnaVel Subramaniam College of Engg. & Tech., Dindigul.
Dr. Bharat Bharagav, Prudue University and
Mr. Ashutosh Pancholi from Ashutosh
Data Products, were the speakers of the
workshop.
Valedictory SessionThe conference valedictory session was
organized in GITS campus at 4.30 p.m
on 20th February. Dr. N S Rathore, Dean,
College of Technology and Engineering,
Udaipur, graced the occasion as the Chief
Guest.
Sensor Networks in Agricultural ProductionDr. N S Rathore emphasized on ICT
applications in the fi eld of agriculture.
Mobile and pervasive computing
technologies provide us with some of the
fi rst opportunities to explore computing
outside climate-controlled building
environments. Sensor network systems
give us new capabilities for sensing and
gathering data about an environment,
and new ways to manage this data
digitally. We can gain information about
temperature, lighting levels, humidity, the
movement, and presence of people, and
many other aspects of the environment.
e-SecurityDr. S C Bhatia, fellow of CSI was the
guest of honor. He spoke about advance
computing technologies at large, and how
they could be used to improve the situation
of population in India. He discussed about
hacking and security issues. The cyber
security threats come from a wide variety
of sources and manifest themselves in
disruptive activities that target individuals,
homes, institutions, business, national
infrastructure, and Governments alike.
Their eff ects carry signifi cant risk for
public safety, security of nation, and the
stability of the globally linked economy as
a whole.
RecommendationsThe conference concluded with healthy
discussion and recommendations were
put forward based on the technical
sessions. These are:
• End to end framework for application
centric network infrastructure is
needful for implementing latest
applications.
• Online resources should be
strengthened.
• RFID, sensor technology with cloud
computing can be employed as an
enabler for physical challenged and
gifted children.
• Promote vernacular languages for
communication in diff erent media.
• Cloud storage should be used for
educational institutes among the
students and faculty to eff ectively
store, share, and distribute
educational data. n
Continued from Page 36
I must say I fi nd television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a
good book.
~ Groucho Marx
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 38 www.csi-india.org
The new portal of Computer Society of
India was launched on 26th January 2013.
The exercise was initiated in July 2011. Last
year, the new home page was launched.
The new home page was altered, based
on various inputs received from members
and non members. The revamped home
page was then attached to the old portal.
The next step was to design themes for
all inner pages, and then fi ll them up with
appropriate content. The main portal
has many themes and more than 350
pages of content. There is provision of 8
theme pages per chapter and per student
branch. Thus, when all content is loaded
the portal will have more than 4,500
pages of content. For this reason, content
management has been made powerful.
Now all types of documents can be
uploaded in to document library. Similarly
all types of images can be uploaded in to
image library. The hyperlink of required
document or image is embedded in the
web page. Thus, adding new content,
replacing or removing existing content will
be very easy. Also, the old content will be
easily accessible in the library or image
gallery.
Decentralised Content ManagementThe CSI is not just one organization, but
consists of many sub organizations. It
has 8 regions, 71 chapters, more than
450 student branches, 16 SIGs, and 5
divisions. Each of these units decides its
own agenda and conducts its activities
almost independently. Many of them
have developed their own websites, since
they could not fi nd the required freedom
as well as facilities to properly promote
themselves, within the CSI’s portal. It
was therefore a long pending need of CSI
to have a portal, which will enable and
empower each such unit to build their own
portlets within the CSI portal. The new
portal has overcome all challenges and
now provides this important functionality
to all these stakeholders.
Special themes are created and
applied for chapters, regions, SIGs,
divisions, and student branches. This will
bring homogeneity and standardization to
these sections of the portal, and enhance
ease of browsing. Various chapters and
SIGs have their independent websites.
These URLs are added to their respective
home pages in the portal. Also these
websites now open inside the CSI portal,
thus showing that they all are part and
parcel of one CSI.
The most powerful tool made
available in this portal is the ‘Capability of Decentralised Content Management’.
Following entities of CSI can now manage
their own content,:
All Chapters
All Student Branches
All SIGs
All Divisions
All RVPs
Education Director
National Student Coordinator.
More such users can be added as and
when required. Detailed manuals called
‘Guidelines for ..... Content Management v. (n.n)’ have been created and are
available for download on the landing
pages of each group. For example, if you
click on SIGs from the top menu and scroll
down to the bottom of the SIG landing
page, you will see the link ‘Guidelines for SIG Content Management v. (1.1)’.
The content management system has
a robust workfl ow with Maker / Checker
controls as well as comprehensive audit
trails of all CMS activities.
The old Membership SystemThere are many problems with the old
membership system, such as:
1 Inadequate Data Architecture
2 Inadequate Online Capabilities
3 Lack of Audit Trails
4 Lack of Service Orientation
5 Inadequate Security
6 Inadequate MIS
7 Lack of Integration with Accounts
8 Only One Fee Structure is Possible
9 Lack of User Friendliness and Ease of
Use etc.
10 Inadequate MIS
The new membership system will
overcome all these problems. Currently,
one functionality of ‘New member
registration’ is launched along with the
portal. This also has a host of unique
features.
Features of New membership RegistrationTo begin with, it will address the most
important problem faced by CSI today,
i.e. we can reach out to hardly 40% of
members by email or mobile numbers. The
data of rest of the members is incorrect or
outdated. The new membership system
will ‘VERIFY email id and mobile no.’ by
sending One Time Passwords (OTPs) to
the new aspiring members through email
and mobile numbers. The user will be
permitted to proceed with registration
only after successful verifi cation.
The New Membership system has
provision to save data after every screen.
Thus, user will not face the problem of
having to re-enter the data in case of
internet disconnections or any other
failures. Not only that, but the user can
decide to terminate the process after
saving data and then resume from that
point onwards at a later time.
The system has a shopping cart or
payment cart interface for demand and
collection management, which users now
expect on all ecommerce sites.
The system is supported by a highly
fl exible architecture for tariff management.
Thus, CSI shall be able to manage most
of the tariff changes, simply through
data entry of new rates. The architecture
supports storage and use of multiple
tariff s. Currently we have 3 diff erent
tariff s, which CSI has incorporated in the
database since 2006.
The system has provision for USD
and INR tariff s for International members.
Another user friendly feature is provision
of up to 3 diff erent addresses for each
member. The member can decide which
of the 3 addresses he wants the system
to use for allocation of his chapter. This
will enable members to continue their
association with the chapter of their
choice, and receive all communications
to a diff erent address. From 26th Jan. To 26th Feb. 2013, 44 individuals have
CSI Report
Computer Society of India Launch of New Portal on 26Th January 2013
Mohan DatarFellow And Advisor, Csi
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 39
successfully used this functionality and have registered as new members of CSI.
User FeedbackUsers were requested to give their
feedback about the new portal. A special
feedback form was provided to capture
the feedback. More than 400 feedback
entries were recorded during 26th Jan
to 18th February 2013. After eliminating
some duplicates, there were 355 unique
entries. It shows that 94% viewers have rated the portal as Good, Very Good or Excellent.
Free One Year SubscriptionBefore launching the portal, CyberMedia
had agreed to give up to 20 free
subscriptions for one year of DQ / PCQ,
as an incentive for giving feedback. It
was decided to give a free subscription to
every 5th feedback entry. However, after
seeing the feedback volume, CyberMedia
has agreed to increase the off er from 20
free subscriptions to 80. The list of lucky
winners will be published on the portal.
The detailed analysis of the feedback
is presented below:
Feedback Analysis
For 26-01-2013 to 18-01-2013
Non-Member Feedback Member Feedback Total
S.No
Portal Feature
Excellent V Good Good Avg Poor Excellent V Good Good Avg Poor Excellent V Good
Good Avg Poor
1 Look & Feel 90 63 55 18 3 39 41 29 4 2 129 104 84 22 5
2 Ease of use 105 59 40 21 4 55 38 17 3 2 160 97 57 24 6
3 Performance 114 58 43 11 3 48 43 19 3 2 162 101 62 14 5
4 Content
Quality
123 56 36 11 3 57 38 16 2 2 180 94 52 13 5
5 Overall 432 236 174 61 13 199 160 81 12 8 631 396 255 73 21
Overall Portal byall
4% 2%
47%29%
18%
Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Overall Portal byMembers
3% 2%
42%37%
16%
Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Overall Portal:Non-Members
7% 1%
47%26%
19%
Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Look & Feel by all
6% 2%
38%
30%
24%
Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Look & Feel by Members
3%2%
34%36%
25%Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Look & Feel by Non- Members
8% 1%
39%
28%
24%
Excellent
V Good
Good
Avg
Poor
Continued on Page 50
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 40 www.csi-india.org
FORM IV(Rule No. 8)
Statement about ownership and other particulars of the ‘CSI Communications’
1. Place of Publication Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park,
Marol MIDC Area, Andheri (E). Mumbai 400 093.
2. Periodicity of its Publication Monthly
3. Printers Name Mr. Suchit Gogwekar
Nationality Indian
Address Computer Society of India
Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park,
Marol MIDC Area, Andheri (E). Mumbai 400 093.
4. Publishers Name Mr. Suchit Gogwekar
Nationality Indian
Address Computer Society of India
Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park,
Marol MIDC Area, Andheri (E). Mumbai 400 093.
5. Editor’s Name Dr. R M Sonar
Nationality Indian
Address Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management,
Indian institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai-400 076.
6. Names and Address of Individuals who own the Computer Society of India
newspaper and partners or shareholders holding Unit No. 3, 4th Floor, Samruddhi Venture Park,
more than one percent of the total capital Marol MIDC Area, Andheri (E). Mumbai 400 093.
I, Suchit Gogwekar, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to my knowledge and belief.
Sd/-
Suchit Gogwekar
1st March, 2013 Signature of the Publisher
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 41CSCSCSI I CoCoC mmmmmmununniciccatatioioionsns ||| MaMaMarcrcrch hh 202020131313 ||| 414141
CSI News
From CSI Chapters »Please check detailed news at:
http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-March2013
SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST
AHMEDABAD (REGION III)10 February 2012: Campus Interview for CSI Students
The chapter initiated activities for shaping the future of CSI students by
enhancing their career. Chapter organized Campus Recruitment Drive in
association with IBM for pre-fi nal year students of BCA/BBA/MBA and
MCA. Campus interviews were conducted by HR-GPS department of
IBM, India wherein company tested the potential of students on diff erent
parameters as required by industry. Some CSI students were selected by
IBM after interview.
Conducti ng Campus Interview
BANGALORE (REGION V)Mr. E S Chakravarthy, Mr. Ramakrishnan, Joseph Sunil
Nallapalli, Prem Sankar, Sandeep J Alur, Niranjan Maka,
T Sabapathy, and Tathagat Verma
10-11 January 2013: Workshop on “Faculty Development Program”
Mr. Chakravarthy delivered keynote address on “Software Trends”. NIIT, TCS,
Ericsson, Microsoft, VMWare, Ninestar Technologies and Yahoo! supported
the FDP. They sent experts to address FDP as “Outcome Based Education”
Mr. Ramakrishnan, “Leadership, management & Administrative challenges”
Joseph Sunil Nallapalli, “Instilling thinking, Innovation & Research culture”
Prem Sankar, “Current Trends in Technology” Sandeep J Alur, “Future of Cloud
Technology” Niranjan Maka, “Mobile Apps Development” T Sabapathy and
“Advanced Lean & Agile methods” by Tathagat Verma respectively.
Conducti ng FDP
AURANGABAD (REGION VI)Dr. T V Gopal, Mr. Rahul Joshi, Mr. Dhanajaya K and
Dr. Radhakrishna Naik
2 February 2013: Two-days Seminar on “Model Driven Design and Development”
This seminar included various topics from history to real time model based
systems. The participants were extremely happy to learn new software
development strategies from a highly experienced professor from Anna
University.
Parti cipants att ending Seminar
COCHIN (REGION VII)CSI Cochin Chapter 18 February 2013: Regional Finals of “Discover Thinking Quiz, 2013”
Regional fi nals of Discover Thinking Quiz, 2013 were conducted at Cochin.
The fi nalists from Thirunelveli, Trivandrum and Cochin Chapters (3 teams)
participated in the event. The teams from Trivandrum and Cochin qualifi ed
for the National Finals.
Parti cipants of the Regional Finals of Discover Thinking 2013 quiz programme hosted by CSI Cochin Chapter on 18th February 2013 at Cochin along with the offi ce bearers of CSI Cochin Chapter
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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GIST
SIVAKASI (REGION VII)Mrs. J Angela Jennifa Sujana and Mrs. S Soraja 7-8 January 2013: Workshop on “Latex”
Chapter with Student Branch of Mepco Schlenk Engineering College
successfully organized a workshop on “LATEX “ for the benefi t of students.
In this session, students learned how to prepare a document. It also
helped fi nal year students for their project and their report submission too.
Workshop educated everyone regarding paper presentation for conferences
and symposiums.
Mrs. S Soraja AP, IT of Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi interacti ng with the students during the Workshop on 7th Jan 2013.
Dr. T Revathi, Dr. K Muneeswaran, Mr. J Maruthu 2 February 2013: CSI Discover Thinking Quiz
Chapter successfully organized a CSI Discover Thinking Quiz competition
for school students. In this event more than 10 students from various
schools participated. Top 5 teams were selected for fi nal round. Students
were tested in the fi eld of maths, science and sports. Prizes were distributed
for them by Chair Person Dr. T Revathi.
Dr. T Revathi Chair person CSI Sivakasi Chapter Distributi ng the certi fi cates to the Winners.
THANJAVUR (REGION VII)Prof. V Lakshmi Narasimhan 25 January 2013: Lecture on “Genderization issues in Software Development
Life Cycle”
Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan in his lecture focused on the issue of organisational
genderization and impact of genderization in software development life
cycle, how genderization is used to improve eff ectiveness of the task and
activity of each and every phase of the SDLC. He also stated the importance
of genderization in work place and personal life for young technocrats.
Disti nguished Lecture by Prof. V Lakshmi Narasimhan, Sitti ng: L-R:, Mr. A B Karthick Anand Babu, Dr. K Lakshmi, Dr. N Ramachandran, Mr. A Satheesh, and Mr. A Haja Alaudeen
VELLORE (REGION VII)Dr. Viswanathan, H R Vishwakarma 21 January 2013: CSI vExploreIT Programme
CSI vExploreIT, an exploratory course was for undergraduate and integrated
postgraduate students. Dr. Viswanathan while inaugurating said that
engineers are creative people. Although problems are solved by applying
maths and computational principles, inspiration, experimentation, vision,
analytical ability, creativity, imagination, energy, passion and communication
skills are also extremely important. Two-semester long course is specially
designed so that students explore IT discipline and its applications.
Parti cipants att ending the vExploreIT Programme
Please send your event news to [email protected] . Low resolution photos and news without gist will not be published. Please send only 1 photo per
event, not more. Kindly note that news received on or before 20th of a month will only be considered for publishing in the CSIC of the following month.
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 43CSCSCSI I CoCoC mmmmmmununniciccatatioioionsns ||| MaMaMarcrcrch hh 202020131313 ||| 434343
From Student Branches »http://www.csi-india.org/web/csi/chapternews-March2013
SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTDRONACHARYA GROUP OF INSTITUTIONS, GREATER NOIDA (REGION-I)Mr. Ravindrababu Ravula and Dr. Murali 6 February 2013: Seminar on “Research and Projects”
Mr. Ravindrababu Ravula introduced students to ‘Summer Internship
Opportunities at IISc, Bangalore’. The mission was to brief them on the
details of training program and the process of applying. Dr. Murali informed
students about IISc and its stellar achievements and he motivated them to
visit IISc to get informed on world class research. Mr. Ravula gave information
on the program and its contents.
Students att ending Seminar
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE (ITS), GHAZIABAD, UP (REGION-I)Mr. Kamal Karnatak 2 February 2013: Guest Talk on “MIS: Industry Perspective”
Mr. Kamal explained the applications, importance and issues of concern in
implementation of MIS set up. He elaborated the technical and research
aspects of MIS and presented details of designing and implementing ERP
based applications. He mentioned about various organizations, including
IBM, TCS, HCL etc., who are involved in developing their ERP based
applications just because of having cybernetic and adaptive approach as per
customer requirements and promoting development on this platform.
Mr Kamal Karnatak – Senior Vice President and Group CIO at R.J. Corporati on, Gurgoan, India addressing the parti cipants
KRISHNA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (KIET), GHAZIABAD UP (REGION-I)Mr. Lokesh Mehra, Mr Alok Prasad, Mr. Chawan Mehra,
Mr Vijay Rastogi, Dr. Narendra Kumar, and Dr. Arun
Sharma
30 January 2013: Panel Discussion on “Bridging the gap between Industry and Academia”
Mr. Lokesh Mehra, Director, Education Advocacy-Microsoft, Mr Alok Prasad,
Service Delivery Director – HCL, Mr. Chawan Mehra, Sr. Group Manager –
ST Microelectronics and Mr Vijay Rastogi, Sr. Project Manager – CSC shared
their views on the topic and informed students about various behavioural
and technical skills for better employability. Dr. Narendra Kumar, Director –
KIET and Dr. Arun Sharma, HOD – CSE also shared their views.
Honoring the guest
D.N.R. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY, BHIMAVARAM, A.P. (REGION-V)Dr. U Rangaraju and Mr. D Suribabu 31 January 2013: One Week Workshop on “Web Based Projects Using .Net
Technologies”The branch organized 1-week long workshop on Web based projects using .NET
Technologies for III year CSE Students to improve the technical and code development
skills. Dr. U. Rangaraju, Principal, inaugurated the workshop. Mr. D. Suribabu H.O.D &
SBC presided over this function.
Dignitaries on Dias: Mr. Rajanikumar, Mr. D Suribabu, Dr. U Rangaraju Principal, and Mr. Shabbir
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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTGITAM UNIVERSITY, HYDERABAD (REGION-V)Mr. Prabhu 23-24 January 2013: Two-days Workshop on “Network Security”
This workshop was organized in collaboration with CSI Education Directorate,
Chennai. A team of industry experts led by Mr. Prabhu delivered and
demonstrated on various aspects of Network Security using the tools to
provide hands-on experience to the students.
Guests on dias
GODAVARI INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (GIET) RAJAHMUNDRY, A.P. (REGION-V)Mr. Sahil Takur and Mr. Somesh 12-13 February 2013: Workshop on “Ethical Hacking and Network Security”
The workshop was organized for two days, the resource persons gave
valuable information on ethical hacking and security. Around 100 CSI
members participated in the workshop.
Dr. S Maruthuperumal gave a keynote speech on the inaugural session of the workshop, Mr. D Satti babu, Mr. Sahil Takur, Dr. M Ramjee Principal and Mr. Somesh (From Left )
R.V. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, BANGALORE (REGION-V)Dr. Sifi an Yusuf, Dr. Ajith Kumar Verma, Dr. M K
Panduranga Setty, Dr. B S Satyanarayana and
Dr. K A Sumithradevi
20-22 December 2012: 1st International Conference on “Future Computing”
Dr. Sufi an told the participants to put science into application in engineering
and deliver information through research. Dr. M K Panduranga Setty
expressed that exposure to industry problems can help re-orientation in
teaching. Dr. Ajith Kumar Verma presented information about “Performance
prediction in software development projects using soft computing”.
His presentation focussed on diff erent models that can be used for
metrics prediction.
Dignitaries during the Inaugurati on ICFC 2012 on 20-12-2012
REVA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT(ITM), BANGALORE (REGION-V)Dr. Rohini Deshpande, Prof. Gopal Krishna Shyam, and
Prof. G C Sathish
18 January 2013: Programme for Launching Convention on “Android Mobile Application (AMA) Development Contest”
CSI Karnataka state student convention at REVA ITM will be held on
19-20 April 2013. Dr. Deshpande gave an overview of the importance of
forthcoming Convention and release of the Instruction Manual for Android.
Prof. Gopal Krishna Shyam highlighted the journey of REVA branch in
getting this Convention. Prof. G C Sathish gave an overview on the
“ANDROID MOBILE DEVELOPMENT CONTEST" and the rules of the
contest. He also detailed the registration procedure for the event.
Dignitaries of the Inaugural Functi on
VITS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, VISAKHAPATNAM (REGION-V)Dr. B Murali Krishna 6-8 February 2013: 3-days Workshop on “Android Mobile Application
Development”
Students were taught the basics of developing applications that can be used
by the Android operating system. The applications that were developed can
be installed on mobiles.
Faculty members and parti cipants of the workshop
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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTBHIVARABAI SAWANT COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & RESEARCH, NARHE, PUNE (REGION-VI)Principal, Dr. D V Jadhav, and Mr. Girish 18-19 January 2013: Two-day Workshop on “.Net Technology”
Dr. D V Jadhav focused on need of learning of industry related technologies.
The expert Mr. Girish taught basics of .Net Technology along with hands-
on practices on ASP.Net, C# and VC++. Students also participated in mini-
project based on .Net technology.
Inaugurati on of Two-day Workshop on .Net Technology
PROF. RAM MEGHE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY & RESEARCH, BADNERA-AMRAVATI (REGION-VI)
Dr. D T Ingole and Mr. Shrikant Pande 12-13 January 2013: Two-days Programme on “Power Linux Workshop”
Dr. D T Ingole introduced the structure of newly developed laboratory
in dept of Computer Science & Engineering which is based on the Open
Source Technology. The Principal also inspired students as well as the
CSI chapter to organize such type of the workshops for students' skills
development. The training sessions were conducted by Mr. Shrikant Pande
in which all the basics of Linux Operating System were covered.
Linux workshop
DR. NAVALAR NEDUNCHEZHIYAN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, THOLUDUR (REGION-VII)Prof. K Sakthivel, A. Krishnaswami, and A Dhanamathi 9 February 2013 Technical Quiz Competition
Participants were split up into 25 teams and CSI members conducted quiz
competition in two rounds. Programme was organized to distribute prizes
to winners. The Principal felicitated and Vice Principal gave special address
about CSI and quiz Competition. Chief Guest Prof. Sakthivel delivered lecture
to motivate students to take part in various events to bring up their talents.
He distributed prizes and certifi cates to the winners.
Chief Guest distributi ng prizes and certi fi cates to winners
DR.MAHALINGAM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (MCET), POLLACHI, TN (REGION-VII)Mr. Ranga Rajagopal, Dr. A Rathinavelu and
Mr. Ranganathan
29 January 2013: Regional Level Student Convention “FAZILLANIA 2K13”
This was an innovative and explorative event which is organized for past few
years. Mr. Ranga Rajagopal delivered inaugural address. Mr. Ranganathan
highlighted benefi ts. The response was around 500 members who registered
online. 150 students participated from various institutions in Coimbatore
region. Various events were held and fi nally prize winners were declared &
awarded by the Principal.
Chief Guests and speakers on stage
EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, TIRUNELVELI, TN (REGION-VII)Prof. A Ezhilvanan, Mr Alwin Fernandaz, Mr. Kashim
Mohamed and Dr. K Ramar
6 February 2013: Workshop on “Cloud Computing”
Dr. Ramar spoke about Centre of Excellence (CoE) established in the college
in Cloud Computing. Mr. Ferdandaz stated that Cloud computing involves
delivery of computing services, such as data storage and software, over a
network at little to no cost. He mentioned that Cloud is not a new technology
which is a combination of Distributed, Parallel, Ubiquitous, Grid and Internet
Computing. Mr. Allwin and Mr.Kashim gave hands on training in installing
Eucalyptus Cloud tool and creating virtual machines.
(L to R) Mr. Alwin Fernanda (Cloud Engineer, CSC), Prof. R Velayutham (HOD/CSE), Prof. A Ezhilvanan (Managing trustee), Mr.Kashim Mohamed (Test Engineer, CSC), Dr. K Ramar (Principal), Prof. M Gomathy Nayagam
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SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTER. PERUMAL MANIMEKALI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, HOSUR, TN. (REGION-VII)Chief guest Mr. Ramasamy, Dr. S Chitra Ph. D Principal
and Prof V Keerthika
21 January 2013: Guest Lecture on “Recent Trends in Communication and Information Technology”
Mr. Ramasamy addressed students about signifi cance of various skills like
positive thinking, analytical skill, communication skills that they should
possess and he also highlighted opportunities for them. Dr. Chitra delivered
special address and explained importance of information and communication
for one’s success. The workshop was coordinated by Prof. Keerthika.
Honoring the Guest, faculty members and parti cipants att ending lecture
G R GOVINDARAJULU SCHOOL OF APPLIED COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, COIMBATORE (REGION-VII)Prof. S Balasubramanian and CSI Student Chapter 19 December 2012: Debugging Contest 2012
Intercollegiate Debugging Contest was held for student members of CSI
Coimbatore chapter. The competition consisted of two cumulative rounds.
First round was written round, testing the logical and programming skills
of participants. Final round was practical round consisting of two programs
testing logical, innovative thinking, and team work of participating teams.
Winner and runner were selected and cash prizes were awarded to them.
Our Director Prof. S Balasubramanian distributi ng the prizes to the Winners
JAMAL MOHAMED COLLEGE, TIRUCHIRAPPALLI (REGION-VII)Dr. A K Khaja Nazeemudeen, Dr. T Abdul Razak,
Mr. Sankaranarayanan Jambunathan. Mr. K N Abdul
Khadar Nihal, Dr. R Khader Mohideen and Mr. Ajmal Sait
19 January 2013: Intercollegiate Under Graduate Technical Symposium
“VARIT 2K13”
Mr. Sankaranarayanan Jambunathan inaugurated proceedings. To
commemorate the occasion, a souvenir was released. Students from about
17 Arts, Science & Engineering Colleges participated. Events like Bug-Zap,
Web-Master, Ad-Venture, Tech-Hunt and Hardware Assembling were
conducted. Mr. Sait distributed prizes and certifi cates to winners. Students
of Srimathi Indira Gandhi College for Women won overall championship and
Students of M.A.M. College of Engineering won the second place.
Mr. Sanakaranarayanan Jambunathan, releasing the souvenir of VARIT 2K13 and Dr. A K Khaja Nazeemudeen, Secretary & Correspondent, receiving the fi rst copy
JAYARAM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TIRUCHIRAPALLI (REGION-VII)Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan, Dr. S A Sahaaya Arul Mary,
and Dr. N Kannan, Principal
23 January 2013: Programme on “Trends and Issues in Data Mining and their Unusual Applications”
Presidential address was delivered by Dr. N Kannan. Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan
was the resource person for the seminar. He explained what is data mining,
why mining is needed, what are all the challenges and opportunities in data
mining, and some real time examples of data mining such us information
extraction services, health intelligence etc.
Speakers and parti cipants during the programme
M.A.M. COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, TIRUCHIRAPPALLI (REGION-VII)Mr. Chaitanya Khanapure and Mr. Vikas Maddala 10-11 January 2013: Workshop on “Cloud Computing and Virtualization”
Mr. Khanapure Head-Student Outreach Program delivered the workshop by
briefi ng the techniques of Cloud Computing and Virtualization. He provided
hands-on practical training to the students.
From Left : Ms. R Parimala, Prof. H Parveen Begam, Mr. Chaitanya Khanapure Mr. Vikas Maddala,
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 47CSCSCSI I CoCoC mmmmmmununniciccatatioioionsns ||| MaMaMarcrcrch hh 202020131313 ||| 474747
SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTPAAVAI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, NAMAKKAL (REGION-VII)Dr. Ch. Aswanikumar 19 January 2013: Guest Lecture on “Cyber Security”
All second, third and fi nal year students of CSE attended the “Cyber
Security” guest lecture. Dr. Aswanikumar elaborated on cyber security. He
also explained various security threats prevailing in the information network.
He insisted on the ways to protect data and how to be cautious in securing
the private data.
During inaugural functi on (L to R) Prof. K Devaki, Dr. V Manivannan, Dr. Ch. Aswanikumar, and Dr. K Premkumar
P.S.R.RENGASAMY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING FOR WOMEN, SIVAKSI, TN (REGION-VII)Dr. Vimala Devi 2 February 2013: Program called “Project Expo’13”
Student branch organized “Project Expo’13” for school students
of Virudhunagar, Tirunvelli and Tuticorin district. The Chief Guest
Dr. Vimala Devi talked on recent projects undertaking in all the Engineering
Departments and evaluated the projects which were presented and
developed by students from all Engineering Departments. Prizes were
distributed for the students who performed well.
Organizers teams of ProjectExpo13
Mr. Balaji Ravi, and Dr. K Ramasamy, Principal 8 February 2013: Guest Lecture on “Computer Network and Security System”
The Chief Guest Mr. Balaji Ravi spoke on Computer Network and Security
System, its history and evolution. He insisted that students should update
themselves to face competing environment. Dr. K Ramasamy delivered
presidential address. Third Year and Final Year Students from dept of
Computer Science and Engineering, Information Technology and Electrical
and electronic Engineering participated.
Speaker conducti ng the lecture
R.M.K ENGINEERING COLLEGE, KAVARAIPETTAI, THIRUVALLUR DIST, TN (REGION-VII)Dr. Andy Bulpitt, Dr. Elwin Chandra Monie,
Prof. M Somasundaram, and Dr. K L Shunmuganathan
25 January 2013: Seminar on “Artifi cial Intelligence”
Dr. Andy Bulpitt spoke on the topic of Artifi cial Intelligence and the areas
where AI is used and about his research projects. He also spoke about the
School of Computing and University of Leeds and opportunities for student
to pursue higher studies. Research interests of Dr. Andy Bulpitt are in the
areas of Medical Image Analysis, Bioinformatics and Virtual Environments
for Simulation of Medical Procedures.
Honoring the Guest Lecturer Dr. Andy Bulpitt
S.A.ENGINEERING COLLEGE, CHENNAI (REGION-VII)Mr. K Kulothungan, Asst. Prof- Dept. of IST,
Anna University
21 December 2012: Guest Lecture on “Network Programming”
The speaker explained the concepts of Network Programming and how to
write network programs and showed the demonstration of Inter process
communication using network programming.
Dr. S Suyambazhahan, Guest Mr. K Kulothungan, and Mrs. V Sujatha
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 48 www.csi-india.orgCSCSCSII I CoCoCommmmmmunununiciccatatioionsnss ||| MaMaM rcrcr hhh 2 201010 333 || 484848 wwwwwww.w.w.cscscsi-ii-ininindididiaa.a.orororgggg
SPEAKER(S) TOPIC AND GISTS.A.ENGINEERING COLLEGE, CHENNAI (REGION-VII)Mr. G Vinoth, Analyst, Verizon Technologies, Chennai 8 January 2013: Guest Lecture on “Object Oriented Concepts and its
Implementation”
The speaker explained Object Oriented concepts and its implementation in
the industry with examples of programs used in the industry.
Guest Mr. G Vinoth, Mrs. V Sujatha
Mrs. S Muthumala, Senior HR Manager, Congruent
solutions Pvt. Ltd
21 January 2013: National Conference on “Computer Applications and Information Technology”
The chief guest explained the objectives of the conference and asked
participants to be radical in the research in the fi eld of computer science
and Information Technology.
The guest Mrs. S Muthumala, releasing the proceedings of the Nati onal Conference CCAIT’13. Director Mr. P Venkatesh Raja, Dr. S Suyambazhahan, and Mrs. V Sujatha
SREENARAYANA GURUKULAM COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING (SNGCE), ERNAKULAM, KERALA (REGION-VII)Mr. Satheesh Bino IPS, Ernakulam District Police Chief
and Mr. Chaithanya Krishna
16-17 January 2013: Two-days Workshop on “Ethical Hacking and Cyber Forensics”
The workshop covered topics such as - Introduction to Ethical Hacking,
Footprinting and Reconnaissance, Scanning Networks, System Hacking,
Trojans and Backdoors, Sniff ers, Social Engineering, Denial of Service,
Session Hijacking, Hacking Web Application, SQL Injection and Hacking
Wireless Networks.
Inaugurati on of workshop
VELAMMAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CHENNAI (REGION-VII)Dr. Vijaya Chamundeeswari, Mr. Maria Michael
Visuvasam and S Soundararajan
30 January 2013: Guest Lecture on “Advanced Computer Architecture”
Various topics like Hardware support for compilers for exploiting and
exposing ILP, Advanced Compiler Techniques for ILP were covered in the
lecture and the concepts were explained in detail.
Speaker during the lecture
Mr. Dhanasekar, Mrs.Suganthini and S Soundararajan 2 February 2013: Guest Lecture on “Principles of Compiler Design”
Various topics like Lexical Analyzer, Syntax Analyzer and Semantic Analyzer
were covered and the concepts were explained with problems and examples.
It provided a platform to the students to recollect and gather new ideas in
the related topics.
Guest lecturer and parti cipants
VIVEKANANDHA ENGINEERING COLLEGE FOR WOMEN, SANKARI (REGION-VII)Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy (University of Texas at
Dallas,USA)
31 December 2012: One-day Workshop on “Open source software and java script”
Dr. Veerasamy emphasized basics of open source software. He also
spoke about the need of Open Source, Advantages of Open Source and
Applications of Open Source. He gave hands-on training to the students.
Students att ending hands-on training, Dr.Jeyakesavan Veerasamy on right hand side
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 49CSCSCSI I CoCoC mmmmmmununniciccatatioioionsns ||| MaMaMarcrcrch hh 202020131313 ||| 494949
Following new Student Branches Were Opened as Detailed Below –
REGION III IPS College of Technology & Management, Gwalior, M.P. –
The Inauguration of Student Branch Chapter on January 31, 2013, began with lightening of lamp
and Saraswati Vandana. The inaugural function was followed by a technical computer quiz titled as
“Computer Ville”. The quiz was organised for 9th to 12th standard students. The winner team was
Rishi Galav Hr. Sec. Public School.
REGION V Audisankara College of Engineering for Women, Nellore, A.P. -
The CSI Student Branch was launched at Audisankara College of Engineering for Women on 31-01-
2013, under the auspices of CSE department of the college. Participating in the event as the Chief
Guest, Mr. Y Kathiresan explained about the activities to be taken up by the CSI Chapter and the
techniques that would help students to face the technical interviews successfully.
Srinivasa Ramanujan Institute of Technology, Anantapur, A.P. -Departments of CSE & IT inaugurated CSI-SRIT Student Branch conducted workshop on
“Information Security Awareness” and “SAP Career Opportunities” on 19th January 2013.
Chief Guest was the resource person for the workshop on “Information Security Awareness”.
He gave wonderful presentation and covered topics such as - how to choose strong passwords,
precautions when downloading email attachments, types of mails, attacks, and prevention.
Vidhya Nikethan College of Engineering, Thirupathy, A.P. -CSI Student Branch was inaugurated on 28th January, 2013, by Chief Guest Mr. S. Ramasamy.
He informed that employment of graduates in computer science discipline is only 5% in India.
He said that through CSI student branch activities, students can acquire additional co-curricular
skills needed in the present day competition for employment of engineering graduates. Mr. Y
Kathiresan delivered a guest lecture on “Awareness on CSI and Unique Identity of Students”.
REGION VI Yadavrao Tasgaonkar College of Engineering and Management (YTCEM), Mumbai -
TIt was the occasion of inauguration function of CSI-YTCEM on 22nd January, 2013. The function
was followed by seminar on the topic “Adaptive business intelligence through web personalized recommendation” by Chief Guest Dr. Subhash Shinde.
REGION VII Jeppiar Institute of Technology, Chennai –
The inaugural function of CSI Student Branch in Jeppiaar Institute of Technology was held on
23rd January 2013. The Chief Guest Mr. Rajan T Joseph inaugurated the CSI Student Branch and
enlightened students about open source, technical skills, and managerial skills.
Kathir College of Engineering, Neelambur, Coimbatore –The Chief Guest Mr. Ranga Rajagopal
inaugurated CSI-Student Branch on 23rd
January, 2013. He shared his views on “Role and purpose of CSI student branches”. Guest of
honour, Mr. Kaiser Masood, gave the special lecture on “IT Trends and Industry Expectations from fresh recruits”. Guest of honour, Mr. Vaikunt R Prabhu, talked
on the role of “Finishing School” for today’s engineering students.
Knowledge Institute of Technology (KIOT), Salem –Department of Computer Science and Engineering of KIOT organized the inaugural function of CSI
Student Branch on 28th January, 2013. Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan inaugurated the branch and spoke
on Research Issues and Challenges in Cloud Computing. He delivered his new ideas and spoke
about job opportunities in Cloud Computing.
Speakers and winning team
Faculty members on dias
Guests and faculty members on desk
L to R: Dr. D V S Bhagavanulu, Mr. Y
Kathiresan, Dr. P C Krishnamachary, Dr. V
V Rama Prasad, and Mr. S Ramasamy
L to R: Dr. S K Ukarande, Principal, addressing the Inaugural
session of CSI-YTCEM. On the dias Mr. Kiran Chorghe, Prof.
Sumit Bhattacharjee, Dr. Subhash Shinde, Prof. Vijay Shelake,
during the inauguration of CSI-YTCEM Students Chapter.
Lightning the lamp by dignitaries from L to R Dr. V Kannan,
Mr. Y Kathiresan, Mr. Rajan T Joseph, Dr. Marie Wilson
Chief Guest during Inaugural Function
Chief Guest and organizing team
CSI Communications | March 2013 | 50 www.csi-india.org
Four good reasons to JOINTake part in various forums and discuss,
your favourite topics
Make a contribution on National level through
our open exchange of ideas seminars
Share your specialized knowledge
with colleagues
Receive new information on developments
in the fi eld via regular conferences,
seminars, workshops etc.
WE INVITE YOU TO JOINComputer Society of India
A professional body guiding
Indian Information Technology
IndustryJoin us
andbecome a member
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Continued from Page 39
Date Event Details & Organizers Contact Information
March 2013 Events
15-16 March 2013
National Workshop on- Securing Your Web Presence CSI Education Directorate, Chennai
Shri. Yogendra [email protected]
21-22 March 2013
National Conference on Communication and Networking for Inclusive Growth CSI DIV IV ( Communications ) & CSI Trivandrum ChapterSarabhai Institute of Science and Technology, Trivandrumhttp://www.csitvm.org
Dr. CG Sukumaran [email protected]. Biju Varghese, [email protected] Mohapatra, [email protected]
21 March 2013 National Conference on ‘MEPCOIT’13” IT Department of Mepco Schlenk Engineering and CSI Sivakasi Chapter
Dr. T [email protected]
23 March 2013 CSI Discover Thinking - 1st National Online Quiz on ICT for CSI student members SV Institute, Kadi, Ahmedabad
Dr. Nilesh [email protected]
23-24 March 2013
Software Project Management CSI Education Directorate, Chennai
Mr. Yogendra Kumar, CSI [email protected]
30 March 2013 1st National Programming Contest for Student members, National Finals RV College of Engineering, Bangalore
Prof. Shantaram [email protected]
CSI Calendar 2013
Prof. S V Raghavan
Vice President & Chair, Conference Committee, CSI
Photography did not eliminate painting. Film did not eliminate theater and so on. One technology feeds on
the vocabulary of the other, and I believe that the electronic technology has taught us to value the reading on
the page, and the reading on the page has taught us what we can do on the screen. They are alternatives, but
theyíre certainly not synonymous.
~ Alberto Manguel
A library may look like a single building, but please don't be misled by the walls. It's a single link in an enormous
chain. It's a single being in a gigantic ecosystem of words and thoughts and ideas.
~ Shula Klinger, Richmond, BC. Quoted in Beyond Words: BC's Public Libraries Are Changing Lives
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to
the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
~ Sandra Cisneros
I must say I fi nd television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a
good book.
~ Groucho Marx
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library
~ Jorge Luis Borges
What is the value of libraries? Through lifelong learning, libraries can and do change lives, a point that cannot
be overstated.
~ Michael Gorman, Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century
I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading
my face.
~ Rodney Dangerfi eld
Computer Society of India (CSI) organizes National / Regional / State level Student Conventions annually, at Student Branches across
India. The Conventions are held in the active Student Branches to promote the awareness on technological advancements and applications,
as well as to foster creative orientations among the student community, and facilitate their evolution to productive professions. These
conventions off er excellent opportunities to the students to manifest their technical profi ciency and prowess through paper presentations,
discussions, and extensive interactions with peers and pioneers in the domain.
CSI invites Proposals from Student Branches to conduct the National / Regional / State level Student Conventions to be held during the
academic year 2013-14 (April to March). The Conventions have to be held conforming to the CSI Student Convention Manual. (Available
at (http://www.csi-india.org/web/education-directorate/student-convention-manual1).
Convention Schedule: The Conventions have to be completed in accordance with the time schedule shown below.
State/Regional Convention : Before December 2013
National Convention : Before March 2014
Criteria: The proposing Student Branch should be very active, with a track record of several CSI activities, and be in good standing through
the years 2012-13 and 2013-14.
In case of multiple proposals for convention at the same location, the decision will be broadly based on the parameters given below.
a) Number of years of continuous valid student branch at the college (without break)
b) Average student strength over the past three years
c) Number and quality / level of activities at the student branch
d) Prompt submission of activity reports and fi nancial accounts
e) Ability to attract good speakers from Industry
f) Availability of infrastructure and other resources
g) Financial strength and potential
h) Accessibility and other general conditions
The Proposal: Interested Student Branches are requested to send electronic proposals with all relevant data, including the information
stated below.
a) Type of convention proposed: National/Regional/State level (Proposers of National Convention must have ability to mobilize
participation from multiple states and experience of having conducted regional/state level convention earlier )
b) Proposed dates (at least two days) – please indicate two sets of dates
c) A statement of case why the SB should be considered favourably for the proposed event
d) Signed undertaking by the head of the institution to provide all the required support (Document with Scanned signature)
How to send: The Student Branches may send the proposals through the Regional Student Coordinator (RSC) with copy to Education
Directorate (admn.offi [email protected]), concerned Regional Vice President (RVP) (http://www.csi-india.org/web/guest/executive-
committee) and National Student Coordinator.(Contact details of NSC/RSC are available at http://www.csi-india.org/web/guest/104).
Time line: Interested Student Branches may please send the proposals with all details through proper channel as explained above to reach
CSI Education Directorate before 10 April 2013.
Selection: A Committee constituted by CSI, including the Honorary Secretary, National Student Coordinator, Director (Education) will
assess the proposals and make the decisions.
CSI Support: CSI extends partial fi nancial assistance, in accordance with the availability of budgetary resources, subject to the approval
of the Executive Committee. CSI also supports the publicity eff orts for the Conventions.
Rajan T JosephDirector (Education), Computer Society of India
Education Directorate, National Headquarters
C I T Campus, 4th Cross Road, Taramani, Chennai 600113
Ph: +91-44-2254 1102/1103/2874; Fax: +91-44-2254 1143
Inviting Proposals from CSI Student Branches to Organize
NATIONAL/REGIONAL/STATE LEVEL CSI STUDENT CONVENTIONS During the year 2013-14
Registered with Registrar of News Papers for India - RNI 31668/78 If undelivered return to : Regd. No. MH/MR/N/222/MBI/12-14 Samruddhi Venture Park, Unit No.3, Posting Date: 10 & 11 every month. Posted at Patrika Channel Mumbai-I 4th fl oor, MIDC, Andheri (E). Mumbai-400 093 Date of Publication: 10 & 11 every month
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