All posts by Navin Kabra

Understanding RPO and RTO in backups

Technology, , , , , ,

This post is based on an article posted by Jaspreet Singh on the Druvaa Blog. Druvaa is a Pune-based startup based on Continuous data protection (CDP) technology.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovey Time Objective (RTO) are some of the most important parameters of a disaster recovery or data protection plan. These objectives guide the enterprises in choosing an optimal data backup (or rather restore) plan.

RPO – Recovery Point Objective (wikipedia)

“Recovery Point Objective (RPO) describes the amount of data lost – measured in time. Example: After an outage, if the last available good copy of data was from 18 hours ago, then the RPO would be 18 hours.”

In other words it is the answer to the question – “Up to what point in time can the data be recovered ?“.

RTO – Recovery Time Objectives (wikipedia)

“The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in continuity.

[…]

It should be noted that the RTO attaches to the business process and not the resources required to support the process.”

In another words it is the answer to the question – “How much time did you take to recover after notification of a business process disruption ?“

The RTO/RPO and the results of the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) in its entirety provide the basis for identifying and analyzing viable strategies for inclusion in the business continuity plan. Viable strategy options would include any which would enable resumption of a business process in a time frame at or near the RTO/RPO. This would include alternate or manual workaround procedures and would not necessarily require computer systems to meet the objectives.

There is always a gap between the actuals (RTA/RPA) and objectives introduced by various manual and automated steps to bring the business application up. These actuals can only be exposed by disaster and business disruption rehearsals.

Some Examples –

Traditional Backups

In traditional tape backups, if your backup plan takes 2 hours for a scheduled backup at 0600 hours and 1800 hours, then a primary site failure at 1400 hrs would leave you with an option of restoring from the 0600 hrs backup which means RPA of 8 hours and 2 hours RTA.

Continuous Replication

Replication provides higher RPO guarantees as the target system contains a mirrored image of the source. The RPA values depend upon how fast the changes are applied and if the replication is synchronous or asynchronous. RPO is dependent only on how soon the data on target/replicated site can be made available to the application.

About Druvaa Replicator

Druvaa Replicator is a Continuous Data Protection and Replication (CDP-R) product which near-synchronously and non-disruptively replicates changes on production sever to target site and provides point-in-time snapshots for instant data access.

The partial synchronous replication ensures that the data is written to a local or remote cache (caching server) before its application can write locally. This ensures up to 5 sec RPO guarantees . CDP technology (still beta) enables up to 1024 snapshots (beta) at that target storage which helps the admin to access current or any past point-in-time consistent image of data instantly, ensuring under 2 sec RTO.

More Information – http://www.druvaa.com/products/replicator/

Upcoming Event: Seminar on CRL’s Supercomputer (4th fastest in the world)

Events, , ,

A presentation on CRL’s EKA supercomputer will be held next Thursday evening. Considering that it is one of the fastest supercomputer in the world, and considering the qualifications of the speakers (see below), it promises to be an interesting talk.

Details

When: 27th March 2008, 6.30 to 8 pm.
Where: MCCIA, Crossword Building 5th Floor, Hall 4 & 5, Senapati Bapat Road
Price: No entry fee.

CRL’s EKA Supercomputer – Architecture and Applications

Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) has recently designed and built a high performance computer (HPC) system called EKA (Sanskrit word for “one”) which has been rated fourth fastest in the world and fastest in Asia. This rating was announced in the recent Supercomputing 2007 conference held in Reno, Nevada in USA. Of the top ten supercomputers in the world, this is the only computer funded by private sector and is available for usage on commercial terms. CRL is a fully owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Limited. The Tata group has always contributed to scientific research in India and EKA will strengthen this cause with appropriate public-private partnerships.

The senior team from CRL will cover salient aspects of EKA — architecture and applications.

About the Speaker – Dr. Rajendra Lagu

Education
B.Tech, Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay, 1978, M.Tech, Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay 1981, Ph.D., University of Florida, Gainesville, USA, 1985

Experience

  • Member of Technical Staff, Computational Research Labs, Pune, June 2006-present
  • Project Director, Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay, June 2000-May 2006
  • Adjunct Professor, School of Management, IIT Bombay, June 2000-May 2006
  • Group Software Manager, Mastek Limited, January 1995-May 2000
  • Assistant Professor, IIT Bombay, June 1986-May 1990

About the Speaker – Dr. Sunil Dattatraya Sherlekar

Education

  • B. Tech (Elect. Engg.), I.I.T Bombay, April 1978
  • M. Tech (Computer Sc. & Engg.), I.I.T Bombay, July 1982.
  • Ph.D., I.I.T. Bombay, Sept . 1987

Experience

  • Larsen & Toubro Ltd., Graduate Engineer Trainee, June 1978 – Nov 1978.
  • CSRE, I.I.T. Bombay, Sr.Research Asst, Dec 1978 – July 1979.
  • Computer Centre, I.I.T Bombay, Sep, 1979 – Oct 1982.
  • Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Head, Embedded Systems ( R& D), June 2002 – date.

Awards

  • Fellowship of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, 2007
  • IEEE Test Technology Committee award for contributions to the Asian activities of the committee.
  • UNESCO / ROSTSCA award for young scientists for contribution to the field of Computer Sc. & Informatics, 1989.

About the Speaker – Mr. N. Seetha Rama Krishna

Education
B.E (ECE), 1986, MBA (Dual) Indira Institute, Pune

Experience
21+ years handling Complex IT infrastructure & Data Centre solutions to verticals like:

  • Space, Defense, Research, Academic
  • Energy, Industry, Public Sector, Finance.
  • E – Governance (Govt), Medical Informatics.
  • Executed several turnkey & consultancy projects in all above mentioned areas.
  • Currently working with Computational Research Laboratories Ltd (Wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Sons) from May 07.
  • Earlier was working with C – DAC.

Other Upcoming Events: Startup Lunch, OpenCoffee Club and VC Circle.

LordsOfOdds – Betting on Prediction Markets

In Depth,

LordsOfOdds is a startup based on the concept of prediction markets. It enables users to “bet” on the outcome of Indian events in sports, politics or entertainment. But betting is just a small part of it; the prediction market concept has a far greater potential as a source of information. Did you know that Rahul Gandhi has a 44% chance of becoming the congress prime mininsterial candidate?

What is a prediction market

A prediction market is like a stock market, except that instead of buying or selling stocks in a company, you are buying or selling “stocks” in a prediction. The prediction can be something like “India will win more than 3 gold medals at the 2008 Olympics”. At the end of the 2008 Olympics, if India actually wins 3 or more medals, each stock will pay out a dividend of 100 units. Otherwise, you get 0 units. After this point, this particular stock ceases to exist.

However, before the 2008 Olympics, nobody knows for sure whether India will win 3 medals or not. Hence, it is not clear whether the price of the stock will be 100 units or 0 units. Somebody who thinks that the probability of the prediction coming true is about 30%, should be willing to pay about 30 units for each stock. Someone else who thinks that the probability is 60% should be willing to pay 60 units for each stock. And the guy who bought at 30 units should be happy to sell it to the guy who is willing to pay 60.

As new information becomes available, the price goes up or down. If Anju Bobby George gets injured, the probability of winning 3 medals goes down and the stock will fall. If KPS Gill is removed as IHF chief, the stock will probably go up.

LordsOfOdds has a really nice, detailed example if you want to understand it better.

Why bother?

At the very least, the game can be a lot of fun once you get hooked.

But there is more. Prediction markets are actually useful to get an idea of what the crowd thinks of the probability of success of any prediction. (The current stock price of the prediction directly gives the predicted success percentage.) Combine this with research that says that the average wisdom of the crowds is as good as that of highly-paid experts, and you can suddenly see how a prediction market is a great tool for getting “expert opinion” on any topic.

This has been found to be rather useful in the context of large corporations. Anybody who has worked in one, can attest to the fact that communication and information flow are rather pathetic and nobody really has an idea of what is going on. Enter prediction markets. They actually become sneaky way of getting information out of the employees while they think they are playing a fun game.

HP started using prediction markets internally in sales forecasting. Now they use prediction markets in several business units. Intel uses them in relation to manufacturing capacity. Google uses them to forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and many other things of strategic importance to Google. Microsoft uses it to predict number of bugs in a software package. GE uses it to generate new product ideas from employees. (Sources: wikipedia, and LordsOfOdds)

LordsOfOdds – What’s there now

Currently, LordsOfOdds is being pitched more as an online betting site. You pick favorites in sports events (“Sachin Tendulkar will be man of the match for the first India-South Africa Test” is trading at 23.5), or entertainment (“The movie Race will be a hit” is trading at 34.4), or politics (“Rahul Gandhi to be Congress Prime Ministerial candidate” is trading at 44).

And since betting is illegal in India, the site operates using a virtual currency (“Loots”). And the only thing players get out of the exercise is bragging rights. But stay tuned, because they are building a prize inventory.

LordsOfOdds – The future

I am hoping to get answers from the founders on the following questions:

  • In the future, are you planning on using the predictions that your market produces in some way?
  • What is your monetization strategy?

The answers to these should be interesting.

LordsOfOdds – The founders

Rajesh Kallidumbil who was working in London, and Siddhartha Saha who was in Hyderabad debated the idea for over a month on Google Talk and then decided to start it up in Pune. Hariharan K who has a tremendous passion for Sports, decided that his job as an Investment Banking analyst wasn’t half as interesting as LordsOfOdds and joined the team.

Read the company blog if you want to follow their progress. LordsOfOdds has also been covered by StartupDunia.

Tech Community Building: Startup Lunch, OpenCoffee Club and Bloggers Meet

Events, , , , , ,

Startup Lunch, Pune

[A StartupLunch] is roughly the same as the SpeedDating concept. The startup founders are seated on one side and the candidates get to say hello and have a quick conversation to talk about what the background of the founder is, why he started the company and what sort of person he is looking for, while asking questions to the candidate about the reason to join a startup and what his/her passions are and ten minutes later the same process continues with the next founder. Within an hour, you would have met/spoken to most of the startups, and by the end of the day would know whom to get in touch with for your first/next job.

Something like this would be really useful, especially in Pune, because most job seekers are not aware of the startups that exist in the area, and where to find them. The Startup Lunch is an attempt at fixing this.

More details

Register here if you are looking for a job. And register here if you are a startup. Jaspreet Singh (jaspreet.singh _at_ druvaa.com) from Druvaa has taken the lead in organizing this in Pune.

VC Circle Growth Capital Forum

VC Circle is holding a day long event targeted towards the venture capital, capital investments and entrepreneural community. Basically, companies seeking funds to grow, and people with money who are willing to give it out.
Snapshot of the Event
Venue: Le Meridien, Pune
Date: April 4, 2008
Time: 10.30 am-5.30 pm
Registration fee per attendant: Rs 3,000 inclusive of all taxes.

The confirmed list of speakers:
George Thomas, Partner, India Value Fund

Nikhil Khattau, MD, Mayfield Fund
Srini Vudayagiri, Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners
Cyrus Driver, MD, Helix Investments
Gaurav Mathur, MD, India Equity Partners
Deep Kalra, CEO, MakeMyTrip
Niren Shah, MD, Norwest Venture Partners

Kartik Parija, MD, Zephyr Peacock
Shantanu Surpure, Managing Advocate, Sandhill India Advisors
Subba Rao, Chairman, Robo Silicon
Abizer Diwanji, Executive Director, KPMG
Shiraz Bhugwadia, Director, o3 Capital Partners
Kuntal Shah, Co-Founder, Axis Holdings

More details

Pune OpenCoffee Club

The Pune OpenCoffee Club is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors, advisor’s, (and anyone else) in a totally informal setting.nurture the startup eco-system through Community participation

Pune OpenCoffee Club was started by Santosh Dawara, co-founder of Bookeazy.

If you are interested, please sign up

Bloggers Meet

Pune Bloggers Meet organized by Vineet in conjunction with IndiBlogger and Microsoft last weekend was attended by over 50 people.

There was quite a diverse crowd:

There are lots of interesting and enthusiastic people in Pune.

InfoBeanz: Free web-based platform for “digital signage”

In Depth, , ,

Have you seen the TV screens at McDonalds or Inox that are showing advertisements? Have you ever wondered what exactly it takes to set up a system like this – in terms of software, hardware, and how much it costs?

Well, I don’t know the general answer to that question, but Pune-based company InfoBeanz is trying to ensure that people don’t need to ever find out. Because they have just released a web-based software platform for “digital signage” that that allows anybody to this using any old computer and monitor (or in a pinch, even an old TV screen will do). No software download is required. Just upload the content that needs to be shown on the screen to InfoBeanz website from a regular internet browser (Windows XP+ and IE6+ only). Then hookup the screen to any computer (windows or linux) that is running any browser (IE or firefox) and point it towards the InfoBeanz site. The InfoBeanz webpage will display ads (or whatever the customer wants) on the screen.

All of this is available to anybody free of cost. Basically, InfoBeanz is trying to democratize the process of digital signage. According to their press release:

Globally players in this segment are charging a hefty price for their digital signage solution and licenses.

InfoSignz plans to serve the largest and the smallest of the digital signage customers across the world and aims to break the entry barrier of cost and proprietary hardware.

So how does InfoBeanz plan to make any money out of this venture? The standard open source model. From their FAQ:

There are various revenue models that we will earn money from. One of them is advertisements on the network. Another is paid premium subscription services.

The paid service will have enhanced file, playlist and location management features. Apart from that, the paid service will also have enhanced interactivity features.

The paid service will also be able to connect to the inventory backend of the customer. Consider this:

What use is it to keep on selling something that is not in stock? I am frustrated when there is a display in a store selling a 27″ TV for $149.99 but when I make up my mind to buy (after much haggling with my wife) the item is out of stock. The marketer was successful in capturing the moment of truth, but the supply chain guy missed out because the two of them did not talk after every piece was sold. The marketer not only lost out on selling something that is not even available, he could have shown something else and lost out on selling something which was readily available. Double whammy!!
[…]
How nice would it be if the display stopped showing the promotion related to the television when the TV went out of stock? Wouldn’t it be even better if the display started promoting something that was in stock?

When all the other systems are interconnected and act intelligently, why should the digital display network be treated poorly?

(From the CEO’s blog)

In general, I think this announcement is very cool from a number of perspectives. It is a new and disruptive way to enter into a field dominated by expensive and proprietary solutions. It is a leap of faith to be able to release a free product and hope that you can figure out how to make money later. It is also technically challenging to be able to deliver on the promise of “no proprietary hardware and no installation of software required”. And finally, scaling to the demands of all the freeloaders who will want to use this service will also be a challenge.

Badmash.tv: Pune-based animation studio

News,

Badmash.tv is a Pune-based animation studio that has just launched with the intention of developing animated content (think flash-based movies like The Singhsons, a parody of The Simpsons), that will be distributed through websites they create, and also mobiles, iPhones etc.

Their first project is Dishoom 2008, about Amitabh Bachchan’s historic bid to become the first Prime Minister of the United States. (Yes, “Prime Minister”. Less competition that way.) This candidate stands for change, as seen from his blog post:

Like today, during my visit to the holy city of Toledo, I met a woman named Bertha.

She used to be a steel worker. Just a few hours ago, she stood in front of me with sorrow in her eyes and begged for change. I said, “Lady, that’s exactly why I am here. Change!”

She extended her Dunkin’ Donuts cup. I tried to refuse, but she kept shaking it. Finally, I reached into the cup and accepted her $2.10 contribution.

Badmash used to be a comic strip with an Amitabh fixation out of Berkeley a few years ago that was quite successful with over 200,000 visitors per week. Turns out that the same guys, Sandeep Sood and Nimesh Patel, are behind Badmash.tv. VC Keyur Patel who likes giving birth to new companies got the idea of converting some of their strip ideas into animated TV shows and shorts aimed for mobile phones. Thus was born Badmash.tv. And another 5 such animation properties are on the way, including some joint ventures with US studios.

Related news: Design and animation institute planned in Pune – JV with CCIV France.

Upcoming Events: Pune Bloggers Meet, VC Forum

Events, ,

Pune Bloggers Meet, March 15, 4pm

Indiblogger is arranging a bloggers meet in Pune (sponsored by Microsoft). To get an idea of what the meet is likely to be like, see reports of their previous blogger meets at Hyderabad and Bangalore.

So far, it appears that about 30 bloggers have confirmed attendance (although I suspect that the final number is likely to be higher). I know that a bunch of bloggers from Mumbai are coming down to Pune specially for this, and it appears that some are coming from Kolkatta and Bangalore too.

VC Circle Growth Capital Forum, Pune, April 4, 10:30 to 6

VC Circle is holding a day long event targeted towards the venture capital, capital investments and entrepreneural community. Basically, companies seeking funds to grow, and people with money who are willing to give it out.

VC Circle is a news website tracking India’s deal economy – venture capital, private equity, investment banking, mergers, acquisitions, corporate law, and entrepreneurship. VC Circle was founded in November 2005 by Sahad P V. a journalist with 10 years of experience in Business Today (Assistant Editor), India Today Group, Business Standard (staff writer).

A similar event in held in Bangalore in November 2007 attracted over 100 attendees. Speakers were mostly from the venture capital and growth capital investments communitiy. To see a list of speakers at that event see here. The speakers and other details for the Pune event haven’t been announced yet.