Let me know if there are specific details you need explained in the second video other than the planned subjects mentioned in this one.

To your brilliant designs,

3D visualization is the creation of a computer-generated drawing which is remarkably lifelike, so lifelike that the viewer must wonder, “Is that a computer-generated drawing or a photograph?” 

The process of 3D visualization creation can be broadly divided into two steps: model creation and rendering.  

Model Creation

This entails creation in the computer’s memory of a 3D object that looks exactly like the target, real-world object. The 3D visualization expert uses one or more photographs of the object or perhaps 2D drawings of it as input information. Although the 3D visualization expert will inevitably have specialized drafting skills and spatial conceptualization ability of a high order,  he can take hours, days or months to create the object depending on how much detail is in it.

The completed model typically looks totally gray; also, there is no light falling on it and it therefore generates no shadows. The surface colors, lighting and shadows are created in the second step, i.e. rendering.   

Rendering

During this stage the 3D visualization expert specifies to the computer the surface finish of every part of the object as well as the intensity, color and position of the various lights that shine on the object. Examples of surface finishes (also called ‘textures’) would be “metallic red”, ‘beige linen” and “green moss”. Examples of lights would be “daylight”, “spotlight” and “directional light”. 

Once the computer has texture and lighting information, it pastes the specified surface finishes onto the appropriate surfaces and places lights of the specified intensity and color at the positions decided by the 3D visualization expert. It then draws light rays from every light source to its final destination.  A ray could travel from a spotlight to an object, then bounce off the object at the angle of reflection, hit another object, be reflected onto a third object, etc., losing intensity as it progresses along the path. When millions of light rays are drawn in this way, the result is a very realistic illumination of the object and its surrounds, complete with shadows and reflections (this is known as a ‘photorealistic rendering’). 

As one might imagine, the rendering process consumes enormous computing resources due to the very large number of light rays that have to be drawn. To render one scene consisting of a house surrounded by vegetation can often10 hours or more on the fastest desktop. If animation has to be created, which usually calls for 24 images per second, a 10-second animation would comprise 240 images, and the time taken to render these images on the computer would be 240 x 10 = 2400 hours = 100 days! Most probably by this time the client who wanted the animation would have lost faith in the 3D visualization expert and moved on to someone else who could do the job faster. 

Because of the long times taken for rendering, there was at one point a to drastically speed up the process. Software engineers found, in due course, a way of sharing the task of rendering between multiple computers. This concept did not imply that when 240 frames were required, each computer worked on a separate group of frames. It implied that even a single frame was worked on by the group of computers with a result that the rendering time for a single frame was less by orders of magnitude.

A group of computers that work together for rendering is known as a ‘render farm’.

It was often not feasible for drafting services to set up a render farm in their own office using five, 10 or more desktops. This constituted another need, one for rendering systems at low cost; and just as in the previous instance there was soon a solution: the online render farm.  

Online Render Farms

As you may have guessed, an online render farm is a render farm that can be accessed on a chargeable basis from any Internet terminal. Because it is online it can be used by more people than an offline farm, making it all the more commercially viable than an offline farm. 

But experience shows that it is not always a good 3D visualization solution. For the one part, it’s not as cheap as one would like it to be (experience leads one to believe it costs $1.50 per second of CPU time). 

Another fact is that although most online rendering render farms have online speed calculators which tell you that what takes your desktop 10 hours takes them only minutes, when you actually send them something to render you can be in for a jolt. You have to take your place in a processing queue and wait your turn, and it can often take more than one and a half hours before your turn comes! Whither the time savings? 

Conclusion

The motto of the story is not to think that an online render farm will solve all your computing resource problems as concerns 3D visualization. Apparently all the farms are overbooked at this time, and it will probably be some months before enough new farms come into being to reduce the average waiting time to a few minutes. 

The ideal solution would be to either have a special arrangement with an online rendering render farm for a maximum waiting time guarantee, or to render jobs on your own render farm (which of course might be subject to investment constraints, which will limit the amount of equipment and therefore the complexity of the 3-D visualization jobs you can render).

The important thing is to embrace the render farm concept and customize a solution that works for you based on the above suggestions. Be assured that such a solution is indeed out there!

May you render in peace,

The Indian banks and insurance companies were major sources of the warm, mineral-rich water that the IT companies were relaxing in while the rest of the world moaned. But it seems that after a while, those same banks and insurance companies got wind of how important they were to the health of the IT companies, and they decided to leverage this.

The Indian banks and insurance companies are now knocking on the IT companies’ doors with a smile on their face saying, “Seeing that we’re giving you all this business and keeping you well-fed, and that without us you’d be up the you-know-what creek without a paddle, maybe you wouldn’t mind re-negotiating our contracts worth $800 million to provide one hell of a more services for the same money. If you say no, you might regret it.”

Knowing how things go in India, the IT cos will join their palms in a namaste, touch the feet of the clients and murmur, “Whatever you say… you are our friend, philosopher and guide.”

Let’s see how it pans out… I’ll keep you posted.

Cheers,

source: livemint.com

It’s not often that stellar figures in Internet marketing (Guy is also a Twitter expert) come to this side of the planet. The fact that Guy has reinforces the idea that India is a software happening place.

That said, there are sections of the audience that felt he underestimated their familiarity with hip web culture, especially Twitter. He also apparently said that labour in India had a minimal cost. Wrong, Guy, WRONG. If you want to run a quality company you need quality people, and although they may not cost as much as in the overpriced West, they do demand, deserve and get salaries that afford them a very comfortable lifestyle.

Being a hard-core Tweeter myself, there were a few twuggets (Twitter nuggets) he threw at the crowd. If you’re into Twitter, you should read on… else skip the red text:

Guy’s objective is to gain as many followers as possible by tweeting interesting factoids. He believes there is value in repeating tweets (like the value of repeating TV ads), so each of his tweets are resent every eight hours  with a different wording. His reason for triple tweeting is that not all people are on twitter at the same time.

He pointed out that the first time he tweets something it gets him 700 page views, second time 500 page views and third time 400 page views.

He employs about three people to find interesting stuff and tweet on his behalf, and spends much of his day on Twitter himself. 

***

The theme of his speech was startups.

>>> He advised startups not to spend money on venture capital (did he shoot his foot?) and advertising, but to promote their offering through social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

>>> He said that he made investment decisions based on a gut feel and didn’t expect due diligence by the entrepreneur. Case in point: Twitter (he was one of the early investors).

***

I personally have read through his foundation articles on how to get more out of the professional social network LinkedIn. There was nothing new in them, but  then again, I believe he could have been the first to state the facts with an army of authors drawing on his wisdom. When all is said and done, I have a healthy respect for the man.

Cheers!

Sources: The Times of India, WATblog.com, Pluggd.in

“As part of our ‘One Philips, One IT’ initiative, we plan to consolidate our data centers (over 400 currently), bring down the number of suppliers and move more work to our center in India,” said a prominent member of the company’s management committee. “We want to leverage our outsourcing partners and Indian operations more than ever before,” he added.

“Going forward, we would like to outsource our entire helpdesk to a single vendor — – — the discussions are already on,” he added. By the first quarter of 2010, Philips plans to use only one global service provider for managing its 40 helpdesks around the world, he also stated.

But competition is hotting up for the large Indian outsourcing companies. Just delivering computing infrastructure maintenance is no longer going to cut ice; European service providers like T-systems are offering enterprise business applications bundled along with infrastructure maintenance. Philips is in fact going to announce an outsourcing contract with the same T-systems in the near future, and this contract will include SAP as a service.

Philips has also planned to invest more in business intelligence software.

Source: The Economic Times, Friday, 9 October 2009.

As always, FYI 

The local markets of advanced nations appear small as compared to the potential markets in nations like China, India and Brazil where the combined population would be in the vicinity of 2.5 billion people who are younger and willing to spend as compared to the smaller but older populace of Western Europe, Japan and the U.S.

According to experts, Brazil is likely to help Latin America out of recession. Though many nations globally are still in the grip of the economic crisis, the Brazilian economy is likely to grow by 4% to 6% next year. Rio de Janeiro being chosen as the venue for the 2016 Olympics is seen as significant in helping the economy recover faster.

But whether this helps increase employment and investments in the U.S. is still not very clear. The fact that there is increasing American investment for production near emerging economies in lieu of shipping goods from US facilities overseas, means Americans are definitely looking at profits from those emerging markets.

The U.S. is definitely trying to boost its economy by increasing exports just as they have in the past. Had it not been for overseas customers, a small construction-equipment firm like Power Curbers Inc. near Salisbury, N.C., would have gone under during the meltdown.

They were lucky that infrastructure development was going on in other countries, as almost 75% of the sales were international as compared to the 25% just two years back, said the president of Power Curbers Inc.

Companies like General Electric Co. say that advanced nations like the U.S. are relying heavily on new economies. The GE chairman said that to be able to sustain the balance in the shift of consumption power from “wealthy nations to emerging giants” there has to be a different business format for a company like his to succeed. With a growing market in heavily populated countries like China and India, the old business format of developing products at home and distributing them globally will no longer be relevant, he said in the October issue of Harvard Business Review. He added that more power needs to be placed in the hands of the local people of these countries and their views taken on designing, building and marketing the products.

Though he did not refer to the implications of this on American employment figures, the trend is clearly visible from the company’s annual reports. The report quotes that GE, in 2004, had 165,000 employees in the US and 142,000 employees outside. But last year the figures were: 152,000 employees in the US and 171,000 outside. This clearly indicates growing US investment overseas. But it’s also likely to revive old issues like the outsourcing downside as well as US tax and currency policies that encourage outsourcing.

Source: Chicago Tribune, October 6^th, 2009

FYI

Top Indian tech companies were long satisfied with doing software maintenance and database upgrading work for US and European firms like Citigroup Inc. and BT Group PLC (who were looking for cost effective solutions). But the Indian firms now want a larger share of the pie: they are broadening their services and want to compete for more advanced work which is usually outsourced to bigger, rival companies like International Business Machines Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co, or Accenture Ltd.

They are looking for a chance to run external data centers for customers which will help them expand into increasingly popular areas of “cloud computing”, a style of computing in which dynamically scalable resources are provided as a service over the Internet. They are attempting to combine these services into “end-to-end outsourcing packages” for clients as well.

Though Indian firms have tried for years to advance to the next level with their offshoring model, they are now under pressure to change their business format. The recession and increasing competition worldwide in the tech services industry has knocked down the annual 30% revenue growth they have been accustomed to. Annual export revenue growth in the outsourcing industry came down to 16% in the current financial year which ended in March. Industry experts, NASSCOM (The National Association of Software and Services Companies), predict a growth of only 4% to 7% this financial year. A company spokesperson from a Houston-based outsourcing advisory firm, TPI, says that India needs to really convert their businesses totally to continue to see the old growth range again.   

If Indian firms are able to progress to the next level, it could well be the deciding factor in determining if its outsourcing industry, which is currently at $58.8 billion, will remain just a back-office service provider to the technologically advanced Western firms or will see new areas of growth as well as be the rising star that it has been in the past decade.

India is under pressure because of many factors. Firstly, service providers who are based in the US have expanded their presences in India. Secondly, worldwide customers are scaling down their IT expansion plans and consolidating outsourcing vendors to decrease spending. Thirdly, competition in the form of cheaper offshoring alternatives is available from places like Philippines and Vietnam.

Industry experts say that India needs to be able to strike big deals like IBM did. IBM snagged deals in which companies like Australia’s Qantas Airways and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. became part of their client list. For India to qualify for deals like these, she must hire more highly qualified experts in core fields like telecom, pharmaceuticals and credit derivatives, and must be open to changing the current business format.

Taking risks have never been India’s forte, but for big infrastructure outsourcing deals, there will be high costs and risks. Service providers must be ready to buy equipment for clients, take over their IT staff and take on the onus for reliability of remote data centers 24/7.

Such deals don’t work strictly on billing for the number of hours worked but rather, should be worked out in such a way that the service provider makes money only if the client sees profits. The profit margins can be lower, in the 15% to 20% range rather than on the 20% to 30% which has been the norm in the Indian software business.

A company official from top tech Indian company Infosys said that it’s not an easy job to take over the entire operations of a company’s IT related work. He says that the mindset required for running it and pricing it is very different and that the Company is still in the process of learning along the way. But things are changing for the better.

Among the largest Indian outsourcing firms, Wipro, the third biggest  in terms of sales after top dog Tata Consultancy Services and  Infosys recently clinched a deal with the Australian based Origin Energy to set in motion the overhauling of the company’s retail business operations. In 2007, Wipro bought Infocrossing Inc., a U.S. data-center management firm with expertise in health care.

With IBM striking an innovative deal with India’s largest telecom company to outsource everything from billing to network management to delivery of cellphone content like ringtones, a trend has been set for other companies to handle similar work. Tata Consultancy Services has won a contract to handle all IT infrastructure for Indian wireless startup Unitech Wireless, a joint venture of Unitech Ltd., a large Indian property developer and Norway’s Telenor ASA. The deal, worth almost $500 million, binds the Indian company’s revenue with the success of Unitech’s cellular network rollout.

Indian Company HCL won a major $350 million, seven-year contract with Reader’s Digest Association Inc. to manage the company’s network infrastructure and advise it on how to expand into digital media. The Company added that Reader’s Digest’s bankruptcy proceedings will not affect the contract. HCL also bought outsourcing specialist Control Point Solutions Inc. in 2008.

But India’s finding it hard to sustain her image as a low-cost service provider and has not been able to beat rivals on cheaper pricing when it comes to bigger, infrastructure heavy deals. A consultant with an India-based outsourcing advisory firm sums it all up to say that landmark deals like these will prepare the ground for Indian firms to test their ability globally to take on larger contracts in the future.

FYI…

Source: Wall Street Journal, October 5^th, 2009

The financial services sector, like those with substantial amounts of revenue from banking sectors, is first to be hit by the meltdown as this sector makes up almost one-third of the total BPO market, worldwide.

Gartner believes that buyers should be prepared. They should build exit strategies into contracts and have backup plans in the event of contracts; this has been the rising trend since 2007.

The entire scenario of business process outsourcing will change with market exits, acquisitions and the arrival of new vendors in the coming years. The economic crisis, unprofitable contracts and the inability to adapt to standardized delivery models will make it very difficult for most service providers to continue in their existing avatar. Where some outsourcing firms will be acquired, others will exit the market completely. Firms with new business models who will deliver business processing services as automated, utility services will take over.

Gartner is of the view that buyers’ vendor selection teams should study the prospective providers’ business deals or models to fully understand how they make their profits. It would be in their interests to become familiar with the vendor’s winning model of acquiring new businesses.

Source: The Economic Times, 30th September, 2009

FYI…

According to a senior official of an offshore advisory firm, QuantumStep, Nordic companies studied many successful offshoring case studies like Ericsson and Ikea before considering India. Nordic countries prefer to start off with small contracts in the region of $10-20 million, but are expected to sign larger ones only after looking at the benefits of the earlier contracts. Belgium, another potentially huge market for service providers, is also signing contracts to the tune of almost $30-40 million and more, said the official from QuantumStep.

EquaTerra, an outsourcing advisory firm, in a study involving 370 contracts, signed by over 200 Nordic customers and worth around $4.3 billion, found that Indian service providers were better than their European counterparts such as TietoEnator and Capgemini when it came to quality of services offered. EquaTerra  said in a recent report that there’s no doubt that India leads the pack when it comes to providing services for the Nordic firms with at least 61% of firms using India for all or at least some of their outsourcing needs.

Unlike other European markets, such as Germany, where labor laws make it difficult for service providers, Nordic countries are more flexible and this is what makes it more viable for India. Major Indian IT companies are looking at outsourcing contracts to the tune of $100 million each, in the coming years.

When Handelsbanken was looking at offshoring, it shortlisted many firms, including European and Indian ones, before finally deciding on Indian firms. Handelsbanken had tentatively been exploring offshoring for almost a year; the recession forced them into considering it as a definite possibility. Handelsbanken are looking for suppliers to maintain their legacy mainframe systems in addition to making them work with newer business software applications.

Though one top Indian IT firm confirmed that Nordic countries are indeed looking at outsourcing to India, others declined comment.

The head of the European division of an Indian IT firm says that the overall Nordic market will not grow much this year but the demand for outsourcing is seeing a steady growth. According to him, about 100 deals which have been signed over the past six to eight months are collectively in the vicinity of € 500,000 to € 150 million with the most significant one in size and in terms of frequency being in the vicinity of € 8-20 million.

Norway is expected to show a high IT market growth in Europe this year, around 1-2% every year, while most other markets have not grown or have declined.

Source: The Economic Times, October 1^st, 2009.

Just FYI…