Which Payment Solutions Will Last and Which Are Just Fads?

With the rise of digital technology and the smart phone leaping over all else, the payment solutions for phone bills and other services have also changed drastically over the years. The more you look the more you see these changes and options showing up for online payment through text applications and so forth. The real question is though, which of these payment solutions will stick for future integration and which will fade out with time?

If you've recently had any dealing with Bank of America or any other major banking retailers in the US, then you've more than likely been told to check out their latest banking system via smart phone (using Android OS or iOS). These banking options such as transfer abilities through multiple banking accounts, digital payment of bills and so on have become an essential part of many peoples' lives. But will these payment methods live on?

Of course. The answer is simple and explanation is even simpler. It is due to ease. Ease of access and use is something that the general public crave. That's why the smart phone was created in the first place! Because they are simple and easy to use for people of all ages. What's more, so are their applications and methods of online payment via Bank of America apps, Wachovia, etc.

If there is absolutely one form of smart phone and mobile device payment that will not die out, it is definitely being able to pay bills using your personal banking application and account information simply by using your mobile device. Some things on the other hand don't seem to have quite the same fate. For instance, all too common "Text #### for more information!" ads that you see pop up from time to time while watching TV or surfing the web.

These advertisements seem to be the bane of mobile devices and their existences and it shows. Back in the day, kids and minors (and admittedly, sometimes adults who just didn't know any better) would text these numbers like crazy for goofy ringtones or some stupid love calculator, you name it. It was something that people would go crazy for. But now with the advancement in technology and the rise of free to play and free online applications and software, these are slowly dying out and soon will become a thing of the past. And I think we can all thank technology advancements for that.

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Retailers Grow by Enabling MCommerce Solutions in Businesses

Mobile technologies are playing a vital role in the lives of the business merchants when it comes to exploring the possible ways to capitalize on a consumer's demands and requirements. With no surprise mobile phones are the 'middlemen' devices between the consumers and retailers which are majorly influencing the customers on various parameters like price comparisons, manufacturing details etc. Based on the data submitted by the online sources via the cell phones, customers use their discretion before committing on a deal that implies a financial transaction. M-commerce solutions are slowly evolving as a platform of technology that will exclusively serve the business fraternity and the end users in an ethical way leaving no room for faulty or blinded business transaction. In the present times it's a win-win scenario between the customers and the vendors using mobile technologies.

Smartphone deployment is synchronous to social media in this age of modern connectivity. It is a non debatable topic that mobile applications are hugely driven by the social media acceptance and relevance. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and other sites help the retailers in targeting their specific audience in an effective manner by engaging them in communities and forums that relates the consumers' interests. For business owners it is of utmost importance that the marketing strategies involve the mobile and social media elements in order to reap 'never before' profits from the present techno-social partnership.

With the smartphones being the center of people's connect to the social media; the businesses are wisely using the social networks in engaging their customers by providing an option for signing up for the retailers' reward programs through their phones within the mobile web by using a unique text keyword. This ensures that the prospective product buyers are encouraged in all directions to visit the online market store on their mobile website to see and buy their products. About 56% of the Facebook users are believed to perform transactions with a view to buy products or services and with this scenario, the businesses happening in the internet space are more that the businesses happening in the actual store. Virtual sales on the PCs are now replaced by the mobile smartphone transactions as people now prefer buying products from their mobile phones.

Mobile eCommerce solutions enable the merchants to solve their prospective clients' queries which are mainly universal. Standing in long queues at the stores checkpoint for billing definitely is time consuming for the customers. With mobile payment systems the retail owner can enable the shoppers to pay at any point of time, this is one of main aspects the business owner can bestow on his/her customers. This move can earn the business a loyal customer base. The Near Field Communication technology enabled devices are responsible for this effective way of establishing billing points according to the shoppers' convenience. A technology like Near Field Communications is often nurtured by the retailing fraternity to stay ahead in the severe competition.

Times when retail outlets were frowned upon will immediately change the outlook of the customers when paperless billing and immediate delivery of products and services happen with a single click.

Endeavour- The Mobility Company is completely focused on the modern day mobile application development in field of retail, healthcare, banking and various other business verticals. Our company will be able to strategize the business perspective of any business niche in terms of leveraging mobility enterprise into the clients' environment. Whether the prospective client is customer driven or enterprise driven, out solutions reach out to cater to all kinds of demands in the competitive world.

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NFC Mobile Payment Solutions Are Taking Off

Over the recent course of technological advancements one area of continuous growth and development has been mobile computing, specifically focusing on smartphones. The massive adoption by the public of touchscreen smartphones, ultraportable netbooks and tablet computers has led to new technologies utilizing these devices as a way to make everyday life easier. One such technology that is taking off rapidly is NFC mobile payment options. This form of contactless payment allows a user to make a purchase and send an amount of money in seconds using only a smartphone and an NFC-equipped machine or register.

NFC stands for "near field communications." It is a technology that allows two equipped devices to communicate with each other by only being near one another, with no contact or other input necessary. Typically the technology that powers NFC resides on a small chip and piece of software, allowing any mobile device to possess NFC capabilities if it's installed beforehand. For that reason most major smartphone manufacturers have taken to putting NFC capability into newer models of phones, allowing millions of people to use an item they carry with them everyday to make an NFC mobile payment.

NFC enables contactless payment between a buyer with an enabled device and an NFC-enabled terminal or register that accepts the payment. If someone uses an NFC mobile phone to purchase gas, they would swipe it in front of the specified area on the pump which would read the NFC data tied to the user's payment account and debit that account the preferred amount. With the swipe of a hand a transaction that usually takes minutes plus waiting in line is completed in a second. The idea that any purchase or monetary exchange can be done so simply has led to these mobile payment solutions taking off worldwide. Larger companies with more and more locations and uses are adopting the NFC technology to make quick payments. Banks use it to allow account holders to make deposits or transfers with a wave of their phone. Large retailers use it at express checkout lines for people who only have an item or two to pay and get on their way.

NFC mobile payment is not limited only to smartphones either. Banks have begun putting these chips into credit and debit cards so that payments can be made even quicker than cards normally allow. Because NFC can be put into just about any device, the speed at which the payment technology has taken off is astonishing and shows no signs of slowing.

To see how contactless payments is transforming mobile technologies and commerce; check out the website.

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On-Premise ERP and SaaS ERP Solutions: The Battle Is On!

There are innumerable options in both scenarios and both have benefits and risks. On-premise setup helps your business to meet your needs, however broad they are. The on-premise market segment is prevalent in the market since long and is unquestionably well-developed and based on sturdy grounds. However, the corporate world is fast giving up on on-premise ERP solutions because of the cost involved. Hence the decline is expected to continue. Forrester Research, Inc. the eminent research company has projected on-premise ERP sales to decline considerably by 2.5% from 2011 to 2015.

In sharp contrast though, Forrester has reported that the SaaS ERP market is expected to grow by leaps and bounds with a 22% compound average growth rate till 2015. SaaS web apps which are in huge demand too are on the rise.

One reason why businesses opt for SaaS is because of the immense scalability benefits. The ERP spend can be adjusted accordingly while the computing capacity can be scaled up and down based on requirements and budget. The changes can be implemented due to market shifts too. In contrast, once an ERP license has been bought, it cannot be refunded. SaaS also aids in administration and the ERP vendor is responsible of its security and safety. Thus, SaaS helps companies to spend more time focusing on core activities rather than troubleshooting IT problems.

Additionally, SaaS vendors levy a recurring subscription fee on a monthly or quarterly or annual basis. This fee gives the right to access the software but absolutely no rights are transferred or take possession of any software.

But some analysts also claim that there are some loopholes and business continuity risks in the SaaS concept which can be avoided by using on-premise ERP. With SaaS, companies have to deliver their critical data to the vendors, who store the data in different repositories. ERP is actually a company's nervous system which is controlled by somebody else in this instance. Companies are always hesitant to relinquish control and hand over data to an outsider.

Some of the basic characteristics of SaaS solutions include:

1. The solution must provide on-demand self-service
On-demand service is a major aspect of SaaS services. A cloud user should be able to readily access SaaS web apps as and when needed without human intervention.

2. The solution must be capable enough to provide broad network access
The user should be able to connect from anywhere without the need of a standard device and anytime of the day.

3. It must provide resource pooling.
One user or multiple users should be able to share computing resources simultaneously without much difference in speed and performance. SaaS solutions always follow this "multi-tenant" model of accessibility.

4. The SaaS ERP solution must be rapidly elastic.
This means that computing resources are always available on demand. If the demand increases, additional capacity can be allocated swiftly without any overheads and wastage of time.

5. SaaS solutions must be measured services
The cloud provider always needs to keep track of its service and usage. They are required to monitor and optimize usage too.

Elan Technologies is a Leading Web Development Services company that provides Software as a Service by highly experienced Subscription Developers with best technical support.

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What If Cloud Solutions Weren't Available?

Some things we take for granted so much that we don't even realize how present they are in our daily lives. In fact, as end-users, we often don't realize how fast things are moving in the technology industry.

Let's take one example: before Instagr.am became so popular, it was just one of those ideas that consisted of having an iPhone users post processed photos online and share it with their communities. The idea is pretty simple, but anyone who has been managing internet servers would appreciate more so the complexity and how difficult it is to manage the servers that will manage all those uploaded photos. Not only do those servers have to be very well-connected on the internet so that the upload process is seamless, but then they have to be properly organized. Apart from that, there must be a fool-proof contingency plan that will allow the service to be online 99.9% of the time.

Indeed, having the Instagr.am service online means that some users in the US may be sleeping while others in the UK may want to upload some files. Not to mentions the fact that a failure in the system can be disastrous for the whole system: indeed, should issues happen, the IT administrators should be able to restore the most recent backup - and by most-recent backup, we're talking about the latest snapshot that has been taken a few seconds ago.

Now let's suppose that Instagr.am owners didn't have access to cloud-computing resources for developing their ideas: they would have had to invest into millions of dollars of IT infrastructure as a prerequisite to launching their product, with risk of finding out, possibly a few months later, that the product doesn't "stick". One can safely say that access to cloud-computing resources have definitely helped them with the "proof of concept" phase as well as during the exponential growth they have experienced. The pay-as-you-go model for cloud-based solutions have made it all possible, as well as the vision of the entrepreneurs of course - that definitely helped too.

But Instagr.am is not the only business idea that benefited from cloud-computing solutions. If we look around, we can see that most of the Apps in the mobile world have adopted cloud-computing solutions as part of their back-office IT system. Indeed, a teenager in the corner of their room can even develop a wonderful application just by working on the coding phase of the project, while the infrastructure that's used for "making it happen" rely on cloud computing: from data storage, to servers. If you look at it more closely, there are millions of Apps in the Google Play Market as well as the iTunes market: this is all made possible thanks to the easy access to cloud-computing solutions that perfectly adapt to every innovator's project.

Now I invite you to browse around the mobile apps market (either for Android or for Apple iOS): don't you think there are a lot of awesome (and sometimes unbelievable) ideas being implemented out there? Indeed, one can say that cloud-computing solutions have made it easier for developers to bring a concept or idea to reality "by passing" the huge investment that once was required before even being able to write a single digit of code.

Cloud services such as hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint are available from Giacom World Networks. For more information, visit http://www.giacom.com/.

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The False Allure of Open-Source Infrastructure Solutions

Open Source has its place. IBM is now a Linux shop; Wikipedia is a social Open Source phenomenon; Google Chrome just captured the majority market share of Internet browsers. When deciding between Open Source and commercial solutions, be sure you truly understand the TCO involved before making the decision.

FREE! That word has a powerful effect on decision-makers in IT Infrastructure. This allure of FREE! is the cause of more headaches, failed projects, delayed deployments, and unstable architectures than most Senior IT Managers will acknowledge. Many Senior IT decision-makers get positively feral when making purchasing decisions for Open Source solutions due to the allure of "FREE!" TCO goes out the window at that point.

Why are we so drawn to things that are "Free"? Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, believes it's due to the misconception that "free" frees us from risk of loss:

FREE! gives us such an emotional charge that we perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is. Why? I think it's because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. The real allure of FREE! is tied to this fear. There's no visible possibility of loss when we choose a FREE! item (it's free). But suppose we choose the item that's not free? Uh-oh, now there's a risk of having made a poor decision - the possibility of a loss. And so, given the choice, we go for what's free.

IT practitioners commonly make the mistake of going in the direction of FREE! without fully understanding the TCO involved in Open Source solutions. The two most commonly overlooked aspects of Open Source solutions are supportability and variability. Take the following two factors into consideration before you chase after your next FREE offering.

Who you gonna call? - hiring for talent and not skillsets

Supporting Open Source infrastructure solutions typically requires an in-depth knowledge of coding and programming - skills not typically found in system administrators. Out-of-the-box configurations aren't typical. I was faced with a decision of supportability recently when I had to choose between an Open Source network monitoring solution or a commercial one for a mid-size ISP. The Open Source solution came free, but it required extensive configuration and modification, as well as advanced support that involved a mid-level understanding of programming and scripting.

Good staffing practices dictate the need to hire based on talent and not skillset and to hire based on the right fit (First, Break all the Rules - Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman). My system administration staff had the talent and fit, but not the skillset, to support the Open Source solution, but they could easily install, configure, and support the commercial product. Time to deployment for the commercial solution < 4 hours. Time to deployment for the Open Source solution > 30 hours, and this didn't include RTFM time. At a cost per hour of resource allocation time, I saved $1300.00 in setup for a product that costs $2200.00.

We live in an age of iPods, iPads, and Xbox's - the age of GUI. Understanding technological concepts (the "talent" portion of hiring) and implementing them in the easiest way possible are the keys to running a low Total Cost of Ownership infrastructure. Having to know a particular solution's command line structure, or shell, wastes time and resources that are better allocated to productivity within the strengths of the team. My team may not know a particular Linux command and may spend 20 minutes perusing MAN to find how to do something that's extremely faster than pointing and clicking on an icon that does the job. Finding staff that understands popular commercial solutions is easier. How much easier is it to find a Windows admin than a Linux admin? Because Windows is easy enough for almost anyone to pick up - allowing me to focus on the talent and fit of the individual instead of skillsets.

101 Dalmatians - Open source is variable by nature

Open Source solutions are extremely customizable and flexible, and they typically allow access/changes to all aspects of the underlying code. These benefits are the very reason why Open Source solutions are not always the best solutions. Customizability, flexibility, and access cause variability. Variability is a blight of running a stable IT architecture.

Having begun at the very bottom of the IT Infrastructure industry, flipping burgers for a bank (also known as "helpdesk"), and working my way up through every IT department across multiple industries, I realized an important concept at play in the stable environments that was not apparent in the unstable environments - standardization. It was in 2005 that I grabbed my first copy of The Visible-Ops Handbook, thinking "Wow, How did they get inside my head like that."

The Visible-Ops Handbook analyzes what makes great IT organizations great. One of the core concepts is the idea of "cheap-prints" Infrastructure should be built on easily replicable systems that are easier to replace than to repair. Commercially available solutions reduce the complexity and variability of solutions by standardizing their solutions. This feeds the ability of creating cheap prints.

Both supportability and variability can increase costs across your infrastructure. Supportability costs are apparent; variability costs are not. Variability costs are realized through downtime for failures, upgrades, additions, and changes.

T is for total, as in Total cost of ownership. Ensuring you understand the true costs involved in supporting an IT solution can better enable you to choose correctly. Free is almost never free. The costs involved in purchasing a solution are only the start: ongoing supportability and variability add exponential costs to any solution. Be sure you are not choosing poorly and drinking from the wrong cup just because it's labeled FREE!

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