Thursday, January 23, 2020

Google Launches Premium Support to Meet Business Needs

Google
Google recently launched Premium Support. These are a set of services and systems to meet the needs of their cloud platform customers. This is mostly geared towards meeting the enterprise and mission critical needs of the tech giant’s various clients. Google is building on their current technical account manager and 15 minute SLO’s to allow for a more proactive approach to managing businesses. This premium support is customer centric with a proactive and unified approach capable of meeting the diverse business needs of various customers.

Value of being a Premium Support Customer: 


By being a premium support customer you can have your cases directly handled by a team of experts. These experts will be aware of your unique case with knowledge of your application stack, implementation details as well as the architecture.

These experts in collaboration with the Technical Account Manager will be better abled to provide a more customer focused service. This means that you will get your problems handled faster with a higher level of customer satisfaction.

What More do you get with Premium Support? 


With premium support you also get more consistency between plans of Google cloud Platform as well as G Suite. Besides this you will also get, more competitive features at a more simplified pricing structure, intelligent systems like third party tech support, Support for APIs and Recommenders. There will also be better interaction between the customer as well as experts as they will be aware of specific customer cases. Overall this system with its new features will provide a better customer experience than ever before.

Addsons in Addition to Premium Support: 


The tech giant will also be providing addons. This can be purchased in addition to the premium support. As businesses expand and their needs become more diverse, these addons will come in handy. These addons will be in the form of a more advanced set of services and features.

Some of the advanced services or addons are- Advanced Event management service- this service is geared towards a deeper architecture review and an ability to meet peak events.

Expanded TAM Coverage- this is mainly for companies operating in different countries with varying time zones.

Mission Critical Support- These services will be performed alongside the customer. It will help clients evaluate their DevOps/ SRE practices. After this, suggestions will be recommended that will reduce downtime and increase support.

Premium support has been released with further plans and features set to come out later in the year.

Prices and promises of Premium Support: 


The premium support plan launched by Google recently is all set to have a minimum price tag of about $12,500/ month with rates varying according to your monthly GCP. Google has made promises of a 15 minute response time for handling P1 cases. P1 cases cover situations when an application or infrastructure is unfit for production. You will also get training features, new product reviews as well as trouble shooting when it comes to third party systems.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Avoid Feast or Famine with Demand Planning


How do grocery stores know how much food to buy and when to buy it? This has been a long-standing problem for the retail food industry, but data analysis techniques are coming to the rescue. Demand planning is a process whereby data gathered on many variables can be analyzed to make a forecast of future sales.

Planning vs. Forecasting 


There is a difference between planning and making predictions. Demand planning is a process by which data are analyzed to make a forecast. If a retailer wants to know how much of an item to order, they can look at sales data from past years. For example, let's look at an item like butter. For most of the year, butter sales remain fairly constant, but at certain times, such as the weeks before Christmas, demand for butter goes up because of holiday baking. But what if there is a shortage of butter for some reason, or a viral news story about how eating too much butter is unhealthy? How will this affect the forecast?

Avoiding Empty Shelves 


One of a grocer's worst nightmares is a row of empty shelves and a crowd of unhappy customers who are not able to find what they want in that store. Today's business software pulls data from past sales, as well as market trends, weather events, media input and other variables to make accurate predictions of how much of an item consumer will want. These forecasts help to put the products on the shelves when customers want them. If running out of something is such a fear, why not just order extra? That leads to problems of its own.

Reducing Food Waste 


Overstocking leads to two major issues: loss of revenue and food waste. In the United States alone, food waste costs as much as $160 billion per year, with dairy products being the largest contributor to that figure. Not only does food waste cost money, it is also a growing environmental concern. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that as much as one-third of all the food produced in the world ends up in landfills.

Being able to make accurate forecasts for demand is crucial for business planning and today's analytical tools make that possible. Business intelligence analytics can take many variables and use this information to come up with predictions that are much more accurate than in the past. The next time you stop by the grocery store to pick up a package of butter, pause and think about how it came to be there when you needed it.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Apple Pencil Could be Getting a Lot More Interesting!

Apple Pencil
Two generations of Apple Pencil have gone by, each with their own set of gizmos. Which I might add have impressed us. But apparently Apple is not done yet with their Apple pencil. News is that the latest in the line- up could be getting a lot more interesting. In a latest patent filed by Apple we get to see what we can expect from Apple pencil 3.0- Just a name given.

New Patent and All we can expect from the - to – be - Apple Pencil: 


A new patent discovered by the one and only Apple Insider details how the next Apple Pencil will come. Apparently we’ll be seeing a lot more gestures with the new Gadget than its second gen counterpart. In the 2nd version of the Apple pencil we merely had a double tap input scenario going on but this time around that input range will get a lot more wider.

An example of things to come is a touch sensitive panel found on the side of the pencil which will allow the user to slide up and down to scroll through web pages.

The whole idea in making an Apple pencil with a lot more range if I may, is that normally when a user is holding a stylus or some other sort of writing impetus they are kinda limited by what they can do. To overcome this limitation Apple has decided to introduce a new and improved Apple pencil with more gesture capabilities.

Newer Ways of Making the Apple Pencil More Interesting? 


Another method as outlined by the patent, to make the Apple pencil more interesting is by allowing the user to roll the stylus or pencil in their hands to control something on screen.

There is also mention of a camera on the stylus in the patent that could probably help it in understanding what it is writing on and such. A little AI here and there wouldn’t be so bad eh!

However this is something that Apple has had in the wood works for some time now. So it is unclear whether it will make an appearance anytime soon.

Things of the Past…


Taking cue from previous patents Apple has also included support for other Apple devices. The so mentioned devices include the Apple TV and Apple Watch. But then again these are things of past mention as well. So who knows if they’ll be making an appearance in the Apple Pencil 3.0

As with all patents by all tech companies there is no surety when or even if these gadgets and gizmos will ever make it to any production belt, let alone any market. Tech companies keep patenting stuff that will never see the light of day. But one can only hope that the next Apple Pencil we see will have all that is expected and more.

A little side note- Apple’s pencils are some of the more advanced stylus’ out there. At present the latest of them comes with a double gesture tap system that we hope will get better.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Future Apple Watch is about to Incorporate Joystick-Like Digital Crown

Future Apple Watch
When it comes to interactive methods, the Apple watch is the winner. There are numerous interactive methods combined in an Apple watch. Some of the ways that you will find in this watch are voice control, side screen, touch sensor, as well as the Digital Crown. However, they think that their technology is not enough, and they need further improvement.

Recently, the Trademark Office and US Patent granted a patent. The patent states that "Capacitive gap sensor ring for an electronic watch." Besides, Apple is planning to convert the digital crown into a kind of joystick. Also, it will serve the purpose of the direction controller.

There is a possibility that the Digital Crown can be created through a shaft or a cap. After that, they will cover it with some of the capacitive elements in the middle of the two surfaces. Therefore, you can understand that one surface will rotate and move from another surface. To be precise, it will work like a shaft located within a ring.

Besides, they will comprehend the position of the internal element concerning the outer version. They will do it by pointing out the changes in the capacitance in the different layers of capacitors. To be precise, they check the capacitance difference in the touching points of the capacitors.

The measurement depends on the values, comprehended by the capacitive elements present in the fixed-in-place structure. The orientation of the other section with relation to the rotations doesn't matter. There is a possibility that they will use some of the measurements to find out the central element, which is connected with the outside section. Thus, it will help to determine how you must rotate the crown during the time of contact.

In case, if you want to determine the length where the crown is pressed into the watch, you can use numerous rows of capacitive elements. From the fundamental ground, it will help you to determine whether the crown is pressed or not. However, if you can add some more rows of capacitors, it will help you in precise, granular detection.

Just like the joysticks, the company will follow a return mechanism where the central element will come back to the center.

Besides, Apple is also planning to add some graphical elements to its watch. We all know that Apple doesn't use a cursor, and for that reason, they are planning to incorporate the graphical elements. Also, they are trying to make the movements compatible with the interface of the screen.

Well, Apple places a lot of patent applications regularly. However, those applications convey their field of interest. To be precise, they are trying to make efforts in these specific fields. But, there is no guarantee that they will incorporate these features in the future.

There are other filings related to the apple watch like EMG sensors, which will help you to measure your muscle movements. There is also the feature of hands-free tilts control.

So, these are the things that you must know about the future of apple watch.