Network Role in Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT), also called Internet of Everything is a scenario in which people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human to human or human to computer interaction. Small and Medium Sized Businesses in India today have access to new technologies, new markets, suppliers, and customers and are constantly looking shaping industry conditions.

Increase in competition has driven companies to reach out for IT and the Internet as a basic infrastructural requirement for optimizing efficient operations and businesses. SMBs are looking at Internet of Things to enable new business models which will increase profit margins for companies. After some time, IoT solutions will originate from start-ups that are less than three years old.

There are certain challenges in IoT. Foremost is managing the Network. When network grows in complexity, small business needs to focus on comprehensive network solutions. A dedicated IT staff is required, who is up to date with the complex nuances of IoT ecosystem and can help manage the network. Second challenge is Security. Organizations need to protect their businesses through theft of information, virus break prevention, and application abuse with limited additional cost and manageability issues. Most businesses have Cost Restrictions.

Organizations now required a simplified Infrastructure. Because of tremendous increase in number of devices the infrastructure requirement has evolved drastically and new devices run on different bandwidths. It needs to be redesigned so that cost and complexity can be reduced. There is need for a new security model. Strategic IT investments in the right network infrastructure can help businesses capture the IoT opportunity and continue to drive innovation in India.

Book Review: The Tipping Point

In this brilliant book, Malcolm Gladwell explains and analysis the ‘tipping point’, that magic moment when ideas, trends, and social behavior cross a threshold, tip, and spread like wildfire. Taking a look behind the surface of many familiar occurrences in our everyday world. Gladwell explains the fascinating social dynamics that cause rapid change.

Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas.

Gladwell introduces us to the particular personality types who are natural pollinators of new ideas and trends, the people who create the phenomenon of word of mouth. He analyzes fashion trends, smoking, children television, direct mail, and the early days of the American Revolution for clues about making ideas infectious, and visits a religious commune, a successful high tech company and one of the world greatest salesmen to show how to start and sustain social epidemics.

There are three principles of social epidemics in the book: the law of the few, the stickiness factor and the power of context. The law of the few is roughly comparable to the 80/20 rule, that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. Gladwell attributes the success of social epidemics to the efforts to three types of individuals: connectors, mavens and salesmen. The Tipping point is a powerful and fascinating book that cuts across a variety of fields of interest. Within, Gladwell constructs and details ideas that change the way one perceive social trends one might not otherwise think to question.

The True Cost

The True Cost is a Documentary Movie by Andrew Morgan. This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The True cost is a groundbreaking documentary film that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider, who really pays the price for our clothing?

It is filmed in countries all over the world, from the brightest runways to the darkest slums and featuring interviews with the world’s leading influencers including Stella McCartney, Livia Firth and Vandana Shiva. The True Cost is an unprecedented project that invites us on an eye opening journey around the world and into the lives of the many people and places behind our clothes.

The movie suggests another expose of corporate greed versus environment well-being. Andrew Morgan dives to the bottom of the supply chain, to the garment factories of Cambodia and Bangladesh and the cotton fields of India, where he links ecological and health calamities to zealous pesticide use. Garment workers subsisting on less than $3 a day recount beatings by bosses who resent unionization and request higher wages.

The film is sadly unlikely to affect the buying habits of consumers who have become addicted to low retail clothing prices in difficult financial times. But hopefully more films like the True Cost will mark the beginning of a movement and not just a brief, painful journey into a world we’d rather forget. If films like Super-Size Me and Fast Food Nation can begin to put a dent in the similarly harmful fast food industry, it’s certainly possible that this film will mark a step in the same direction for fast fashion.