Offshore Engineering Services to Cut Aerospace Manufacturing Costs

Globalization of engineering is driving companies to offshore work to companies providing low-cost engineering services consulting solutions. With increasing competition in the aviation industry, there are a number of challenges being faced in the industry, with businesses struggling to maintain effective costs, delivering quality products and increasing the profit-line. It is a known fact that aerospace engineering requires advanced and sophisticated tools and strategies for the designing and development of products, testing and collaboration processes. As these processes incur massive expenditure and the engineering businesses have to implement innovative techniques for increased efficiency and effective results.


Producing innovative and technologically advanced engineering products requires expertise, precision and rigor that meet the specifications and often exceed the expectations of your most demanding customers, and to mitigate risk and develop products in quick time, smart engineering services are needed. With outsourced engineering services it becomes easy to build and deliver products that are better and cheaper. It has helped minimize development costs, reduce lead times and maximize resources.


Offshore Engineering Services Consulting – Latest Industry Trends


Globalization of engineering is driving companies from developing countries for offshore engineering work to companies that can provide low-cost engineering services consulting solutions. These service providers render valuable contributions for power packed performances. With reputed service-providers, it becomes easy to receive support across the entire product life cycle, as an able offshore engineering service-provider can  transform your company into a global force. These service providers provide proficient, robust, stable and secure solutions to ensure the completion of the entire process right from conceptualization to designing, modeling, analysis, prototyping, automation, data documentation, instrumentation and controls, embedded systems development, validation and vendor management. They suggest best practices for optimization of processes with their technical expertise and extensive experience.


Most of the outsourced engineering services have global expertise ranging from concept design, detailing and analysis, to product realization solutions in aerospace, civil structures, power generation, industrial products, oil and gas and transportation. They can ensure advanced global product development framework to provide better, faster and more value-optimized solutions. A reliable service provider also supports  long term strategic customers by getting involved in their new product design cycle and capturing their marketing and field inputs.


Partner with a service provider who can be cognizant of the industry needs and provide effective engineering services for potential customers who are keen to understand, evaluate and offer outstanding support to help them live up to the expectations of the customers.


Related Links: integrated engineering services, engineering outsourcing services

Developments in Oil and Gas Engineering Industry

There has been constant innovation going on in the engineering industry which in turn has resulted in remarkable developments. The oil and gas engineering vertical is an essential sector and presently has been witnessing specific regulatory alterations, advancements, price volatility in technology. In addition to that, there are other market trends and operational bottlenecks that the industry has been facing on its way to development. Other than the costing factor, there is yet another major concern. That is it is becoming a little problematic to source oil and gas. To cater to the demands important discoveries of resources have been made over the past few years. Hence, there are still certain oil and gas resources that the engineering enterprises can use and cater to the consumer demands.


Companies specializing in oil and gas engineering solutions offer product development, plant-designing services, field services and accessory systems designs to the end users. In this growing engineering market scenario, these companies are all prepared to offer advanced solutions to the numerous and rising oil, gas and petroleum demands. Some of the services they offer include:


Development of upstream accessories that includes:-


* Exploration

* Re-injection

* LNG


Development of mainstream accessories that includes:-


* Pipelines

* Power generation

* Sea lines


Development of downstream accessories that includes:-


* Petrochemicals

* Fertilizers

* Refinery


Along with the above mentioned and other facilities, engineering outsourcing companies assist their consumers to improve the quality of supply, reduce the production development expenses, bring down the time to market, and maximize the capacity and improve sustenance engineering. They have appointed a team of expert engineering consultants who assess the engineering requirements of their consumers and offer the needed solution.


There has been significant amount of outsourcing taking place in the oil and gas engineering industry over the past few years. This has led to the advent of advanced and cost-efficient services in the market that has automatically resulted in higher productivity. Simultaneously, the consumers and end users are able to access a vast talent pool and network globally with other engineering brands. However, in order to succeed in the future years the oil and gas engineering industry requires efficient business models that would predict future challenges along with the prospects. Well experienced oil and gas engineering consultants are conducting extensive research and development programs for challenging projects resulting in quality deliverables.


Related Links: engineering services, engineering services outsourcing

IEEE-CS Software Engineering Assessment Tutorials with CEU

IEEE-CS Software Engineering Assessment Tutorials with CEU Credit Now Available in IEEE Xplore eLearning Library , the first software engineering assessment tutorials ,developed by the IEEE Computer Society . The IEEE Software Engineering Assessment Series (SEAS) consists of 14 tutorials, each aligned to a knowledge area of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK). Each tutorial consists of several subtopics that fully review each SWEBOK Guide knowledge area. Quizzes are presented within every subtopic to measure the student’s comprehension of the topic.

 

The IEEE SEAS Certified Software Design Professional tutorials are designed to help software engineers: 


• Earn CEU/PDH credits in standard software engineering topics,  
• Gain additional knowledge in a particular SWEBOK knowledge area,  
• Prepare for the IEEE Computer Society Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) certification exam,  
• Earn credits towards CSDP recertification, and  
• Demonstrate knowledge proficiency for career advancement. 

 

The courses can be accessed at http://ieee-elearning.org/course/category.php?id=38

 

“The Computer Society's software development certification and education programs provide an effective and efficient way for software professionals to enhance their career potential by gaining knowledge and perspective on the software engineeringdiscipline,” said Dennis Frailey,” co-chair of the Educational Activities Board’s Professional Development Committee. 

 

SEAS courses will also be useful to help corporations: 


• Introduce a new professional development option for employees, 
• Measure staff software developers’ knowledge in a particular knowledge area, 
• Develop and maintain a knowledgeable workforce, 
• Protect the investment in company workforce, and 
• Establish and maintain process efficiencies by employing best practices in the software life cycle. 

 

Each tutorial consists of several subtopics that review each SWEBOK Guide knowledge area. Quizzes are presented within every subtopic to measure the student’s comprehension of the topic. Within each course module is a list of textbooks, papers, and websites designed to provide the student with a comprehensive listing of essential references. 

 

The Xplore platform uses Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (MOODLE), a state-of-the-art e-learning system that includes: 


• full professional voice narration on each slide 
• enhanced quizzes and graphics, and 
• enhanced course navigation. 

 

Brought to you by the IEEE Xplore digital library, the IEEE eLearning Library includes engaging and highly interactive online learning tutorials based on the best IEEE educational content from IEEE conferences around the world and unique materials developed specifically for the eLearning Library. The IEEE-CS Software Engineering Assessment Tutorials have been developed by recognized experts in a wide range of engineering and research technologies.

 

Making Use of Social Intelligence for Business Generation

According to E.L. Thorndike who came up with the theory of social intelligence, it means to “act wisely in human relations”. There are numerous ways to analyze social intelligence, though not all assures promising results. This is owing to the fact that sometimes credence is given to specific expressions and words depending on the situation.

Social intelligence has gained prominence in online trade and ecommerce and is an important gateway to understand consumer behavior. With internet innovation, social gaming and the flourishing commerce the is a greater scope for enterprise’s to analyze, observe and understand the various aspects of user initiatives, demographic profiles and other mass behaviors.


Social media intelligence plays a crucial role in understanding organizational and consumer psychology and other anomalies. Though an interesting subject, it is essential that end users and organizations follow certain guidelines else the concept might get completely misinterpreted. In order to make the task easy and simple service providers have come up with advanced social media analytics applications that helps you to gather valuable and perceptive insights instantly and incorporate them into your online media campaigns.


Benefits of Social Intelligence Applications

There are numerous benefits of resorting to the new age social intelligence solutions that are available. Some of them are mentioned below:


  • It aptly measures the effectiveness of acquisition campaigns and carries our funnel analysis on viral promotions and features

  • Easy to set up and operate

  • Allows the users to monitor the virtual currency monetization and other trend metrics for instance ARPPU, ARPU, payment type, conversions and many others

  • Helps in understanding the trending metrics such as ARPPU over the last thirty or sixty days or drill down by payment types

  • Allows the users to gain predictive insights into their application features that are used most and on what drives monetization make smarter, faster operating decisions

  • Helps in creating user profiles for targeting and customizing application content to the most-engaged and valuable users, such as frequent visitors or frequent purchasers

  • Allows the users to derive deeper and useful insights into the demographics of users with information provided through Facebook’s Social Graph API


Market players specializing in social media analytics tools have converted this analytics into  automated business process that assists in enhancing the end user’s reach, retention campaign and revenue generation. When used in an efficient way this helps to increasing the social intelligence.


Also read more about: Engagement Metrics

Outsource Your Data Center Solutions for Innovative Computing & Storage

As businesses continue to drive for growth and manage costs, they are challenged to respond to an unpredictable economic climate, escalating levels of regulation, technological advances and ever greater volumes and complexity of data that businesses need to rely on.  With the volume of data that a business has to handle, it is imperative that the system for storing and accessing the information is efficient and secure. Systems are vital to revenue generation, and the ever-increasing demands for online and near-instantaneous access have stretched budgets and staff. Maintaining a competitive enterprise is becoming more difficult every day.

 

Even if IT is your core business, setting up your own data center or computer room is an expensive proposition both in terms of money, time and deployment of human resources. Your data center needs to be looked at as a long-term project. It needs to be part of your big picture plans for your company. The goal of outsourcing IT is to strengthen the business. You can do it in-house, outsource it or combine the two. Figuring out which way is best requires a strong analysis of what you need and what it will cost. Outsourcing data centers is the best way for organizations to align IT and business in the most cost-effective manner.


There are many data center solutions that can successfully meet the needs of various businesses all over the world. It needs a complete calculated assessment involving asset inventories, facility requirement estimations and budgetary considerations. Outsourcing is a great option, as this helps free up time to focus on core activities. Outsourced data center solutions are run by professionals with more experience and expertise in the practice of running an efficient and highly available data center facility. It allows organizations to realize cost savings, reduced capital expenditures, improvement in quality, operation expertise and efficient risk management. They also provide service round the clock, ensuring that your needs are met consistently.


Outsource your data center solutions for innovative computing and storage by selecting the right service provider. The decision should be made based on the thorough assessment of the data center offering and its ability to answer your business’ needs in terms of cost, reliability, and security. The solution that you choose must have Server, Storage, and High Performance Computing (HPC) features along with open architecture, best-of-breed industry standard components that allow for future growth and easy upgrades.


Read More About: unified storage solution, high performance computing cluster, data centre solutions, custom computer systems, storage server

Taking a Balanced Agile Career Approach

Going by the modern day software engineering environment, agile, resilient and nimble are three qualities that are needed to develop the future. This further goes on to depict the organizational culture that would survive in an intense competitive evolving market. An “agile” or in other words a “change ready” enterprise can quickly adapt to any changing situation such as the changing consumer needs and fluctuating market conditions. The agile organization can quickly innovate, with consumers and suppliers in unprecedented ways and further incorporates contractors, employees, consumers and suppliers to share skills and knowledge.

 

All this takes us to the concept of “innovation” that is prevalent in today’s scientific era. As asserted by Jim ("Cope") Coplien, partner in the Scrum Foundation “The  good of innovation drives out the perfect of invention. Optimizing those innovations that the market yearns can cause entire companies, or perhaps entire nations, to lose their vision”. He talks of the government’s urgent call for action to the Finnish industry back in the year 2009 where a disproportionate amount of research in the universities concentrates on application and product development at the cost of basic research. The key policy documents over the couple of years have substituted scientific research totally in an economic and technological context. Other essential aspects might comprise of the vast amount of doctoral students in a research community and the defects in the principles of scientific management and research funding.

 

The rest is known, i.e. the apt approach needs courage and balance. One needs to innovate but also need to nurture invention as well. This indicates emphasizing on the long term and the global ecosystem rather than just merely catering to the market one is being paid to develop. Software engineering is all about turning the human hands for the betterment of mankind. The IEEE Computer Society defined engineering as “promoting the development and application of Electrotechnology and allied sciences for the benefit of humanity, the advancement of the profession, and the well-being of our members.” Hence the three keywords advancement, benefit and well being are the ones that need attention.

 

The majority of software engineers whilst mulling on the agile approach associates benefit with some kind of economically measurable benefit at a societal level. The term well-being too indicates the notion of benefit and takes it to a personal level. However, it would be best if engineers on their way to agile career approaches draw their attention to contributions that not only maximizes utility and durability, but also touches on the life quality.

 

Also read more  about  Online Digital Library & software certification

 

SM Analysis With SM Analytics Tools

Tracking social media analytics can be a polarizing issue. On one hand its accurate measurements, evaluations and metrics can offer invaluable, scientifically examined data essential for fine tuning your website. On the other hand, its accurate nature can fast escalate into an obscure haze of befuddling lexicon, a puzzling amount of metrics, and intricacies that remains unclear to even social media specialists.


According to few, social media advanced analytics is all about a numbers game. There are numerous services that cater to analytics metrics, for instance Adobe Omniture, Google and many more  but one thing that they all center around is numbers almost like that of tallies. In its elementary form, social media analytics tell its end users one thing in a seemingly infinite amount of multiple ways i.e. how many people visited a website? The count could vary from a few hundreds to several thousands of people.


However, the concern is that how often these people visited the website. It is a different thing if a browser came back to the home page several times in an hour's time. It is yet another time if these people went to the homepage the next day. The question lies in the fact that how long “duration” of a particular visit or a session can can be defined. Mulling on that, it is also interesting to estimate how much time browsers have been spending on the website i.e. seconds, minutes, hours or milliseconds. In case it is the latter, then the website is being visited by bots or search engine spiders and not individuals. This cannot be counted as “web traffic”. Simultaneously, it is also crucial to estimate if the people who are visiting your website are spending a healthy amount of time.


With the advent and growth of social media i.e. Facebook, blogs and Twitter marketers are required to assess about the future analytic needs in today’s web 2.0 world. Solution providers of social media analytics tools offer enterprise hosted solution based on a company’s unique business challenges. Features of these solutions are as follows:
 
  • Offers quick results for businesses to keep a track of social media behaviors instantly and get instant feedback on what is working for a particular product.

  • Offering trending views and drill down capacities.

  • Perceptive insights to make smarter, faster operating decisions all through huge amounts of social data.

  • Helps in revenue acquisition.

  • Offers quicker insights into the key impacts on the K-factor and viral campaigns.

  • Understands what keeps the consumers engaged and uncover the levers that can influence the revenues the most.


This apart the major uses of social analytics tools are for social media brand, audits and brand monitoring for offering valuable data.


Also read more about: Engagement Metrics

Why Companies Should Invest in Efficient Data Centre Solutions

Today the demand for data centre solutions is expanding fast and aims to continue in the future. The evolution that is taking place is “societal” in its nature. HD Video, social networking and 3D Video, increasing regulatory issues, expanding file size, compliance and so on has been resulting in a huge rise in the consumption of data center supply.


The old data centers are fast becoming outmoded and the average data center in the US is almost 11 years old. For instance, a data center that has been designed and set up back in the 1990’s without undergoing any major overhaul shall cease to be efficient as the new offerings from the other data center hosts. One of the concerns of data center users is about issues pertaining to the fact that their data center was no longer state-of-the-art. Today customers are gradually realizing the significance of outsourcing the things that are not the real strengths all through the board and especially in data centers. It is obvious that they are reluctant to host their own data center and then worry about connectivity, climate control, power, security and managing facilities.


When you are outsourcing data centre solutions you actually develop the capacity to scale and that goes in both the directions. It is always preferable to have access to more power and space owing to staying in one data center. However, the advantage is to scale down as required. Today leading service providers of unified storage solution can cater to all the cabinet, product-level and rack assembly requirements. These companies integrate hardware, software and peripherals for a ready to execute a solution Furthermore, the companies work in close cooperation with the engineers on design enhancements, configurations and optimization. Data center solution providers also offer racks for database servers, industrial applications, networks and web servers that are apt for the laboratory commercial and workshop environment.


These companies with its storage server, high performance computing clusters and data centre solutions feature the world class industry standard components and open architecture that results in future growth and simple upgrades. When extensive software and hardware integration solutions are assessed it shows that the cost and risk could be able to improve. Furthermore, the data center solution offers warranties that showcase its competency. Companies specializing in data centre solutions can undertake a test and then warranty all devices.


Read More About: custom computer systems, storage servers, unified storage solution

Stay Safe From Phishing Attacks

With the increased amount of Phishing attacks it has become essential to understand what exactly a phishing email is. Any internet user can come across a phishing mail that at the first glance might seem to be an authentic mail. Phishing emails come from unauthentic sources and claim to from banking, financial, online auction and lottery websites. They send users compelling content that in terms of huge prize money, international products and discounted price and aim to rob an individual of his or her personal data.


The mode of inquiry is very thrifty and often the users are not able to grasp dangerous phishing attacks targeted at them. Though you might hear less about Phishing mails as compared to virus, spyware or malware attacks, they all are equally hazardous.


The Way Phishing Attacks Operate?


The most common way in which hackers and third party intruders make a phishing attacks work is through the mails. There are situations when they take the names of reputed brands. For example, the MSN or Yahoo lottery mails that people receive as mobile messages or mails, with huge amounts as winning prize money are all phishing mails. These mails ask you give away your email passwords and bank details and end up hacking your email, accounts and even corrupting your computer system.


Hence, phishing mails generally operate on human emotions and play on individual unpreparedness and vulnerability. Today phishers have devised sophisticated attacks that are difficult to decide. Most of the time these mails will have no contact details. Hence protection from phishing is a necessity today. This is especially applicable for eminent brands that have employees unaware of such attacks.


Advanced Anti-Phishing Solutions


Today leading solution providers have introduced anti-phishing software that assists organizations to evaluate whether their employees have the required knowledge of social engineering and its side effects. The software helps in the following ways:-


* Helps enterprises in estimating the probable hazards associated with phishing

* Offers elastic reporting and incorporate them back into the company’s chief performance-indicator framework

* Offers a “road map" solution concentrating on security awareness and training within an enterprise

* Helps to recognize weakness within people, method and technology links

* Helps in prioritizing remediation attempts through useful benchmarking and maturity analysis

* Helps in increasing employee awareness and expertise to safeguard crucial information


Only investing in antivirus or antispyware protection is not sufficient today. In order to stay secured from hazardous phishing attacks anti-phishing solutions offered by eminent service providers are useful.


Read More About: Simulated phishing attack, phishing protection, anti phishing tool

Understanding the Basics of OVDP 2012

The IRS started an open-ended Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) back in January 2012 and may end it at any given time in the future. The IRS is providing individuals with undisclosed income from overseas accounts a chance to get current with their tax returns. The 2012 OVDP comes with a higher penalty rate than any other programs but provides benefits to encourage taxpayers to disclose foreign accounts instead of risk detection by the IRS and probable criminal prosecution.

 

Objective of OVDP

 

The objective of OVDP 2012 is the same as 2009 and 2011 i.e. to bring those taxpayers who have utilized undisclosed foreign accounts and foreign entities to evade taxes into compliance with the U.S tax laws.

 

Reasons to make a Voluntary disclosure

 

Taxpayers having undisclosed foreign incomes must make a voluntary disclosure as it helps them to stay compliant, avert substantial civil penalties and eradicate the chances of criminal prosecution and other penalties. An overseas voluntary disclosure also offers the scope to estimate with a logical degree of certainty, the total expense of resolving all overseas tax concerns. Today the IRS is proactively involved in searching out individuals who have undisclosed foreign accounts and the information is available to the IRS under tax treaties.

 

In order to aid the situation tax planning agencies today offer taxpayers with a comprehensive insight into the tax codes that is applicable to resident individuals in the U.S comprising US Citizens and Green Card Holders. It also helps the taxpayers and other individuals with the following:

 

  • Complete compliance
  • Consultation and impact analysis
  • Planning and analysis to minimize FBAR Penalty
  • AMT Strategies
  • Foreign Tax Credit
  • A review of 2009, and 2010 OVDI cases
  • Mutual Fund or PFIC computations
  • Form preparations that are required to take part in the OVDP program
  • Preparation associated with Tax Amendments and Delinquent FBAR

 

United States residents, citizens and certain other individuals need to annually report their direct or indirect financial interest in or signature authority or any other authority that can be compared to signature authority over a financial account that a financial institution maintains located in a foreign country, in case in a calendar year the total value of all the foreign accounts surpass $10,000 at any time during the year. Typically, the civil penalty for willingly failing FBAR reporting can be as high as $100,000 or 50 percent of the total balance of the foreign account per violation.

 

Read More About: IRS Amnesty