Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Volume- II
Issue-1
Year-2011
ST. ANNE MARY EDUCATION SOCIETY Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends
ISSN-0976 – 9706
PUBLISHED BY ST. ANNE MARY PUBLICATION All copy rights © reserve with St. Anne Mary Education Society published by Sister Concern St. Anne Mary Publications Corp. Offices In UK- Crown Works,Wellington Road, Bilston West Midlands,UK In India-B1/1, Sanjay Enclave, Bindapur Matiyala Road, Uttam Nagar, New Delhi-110059 INDIA. In Australia- 10, Clifton Street, Camdan Park, S. A. 5038 Email :
[email protected] Email :
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends
ADVISORY BOARD INTERNATIONAL DR. MARIA FERNANDA
DR. TONY ORME
DR. STEVE OLIVER
DR.CHEY TAE
DR. HENRY KAISER DR. VAL VALERI ERI KOVALE KOVALENKO NKO
DR. MATTHEW BOULTON
DR. ALFRED NOBEL DR. KUNIO BUSUJIMA
DR. BILL ROSENBERG
DR. HIROKO TAKEI DR. JIM CAVANAUGH
DR. ROBERT B
DR. KIM PETERSON DR. LEONARD ROBBINSON
DR. DAVI DAVID D P DOUGLAS
DR.SHIN C JAE
DR. ANITA RAMMURTHY
DR. VENU VENUS S METHEW
DR. TIM KELLY
DR. CAL FUSSMAN
DR. D. PATRICIU
DR. ENN PANT
DR. RUBEN VARDANYAN
DR. ATOM KHACHATRYAN
ADVISORY BOARD NATIONAL MAJ. GEN. DR. M. L. MADAN DR. A. S. RAO
DR. BHAVNA AGARWAL
DR. ANOOP PANT
DR. VIPIN AGARWALD AGARWALDR. R. HEMANT SHARMA
DR. K. S. THAKUR
DR. P. K. GUPTA
DR. R. NACHIKA NACHIKATA TA
DR. ILA CHATURVED CHATURVEDII
DR. RAJIV SIJARIA
DR. RUPALI KUMAR
DR. BIPIN AGARWA AGARWAL L
DR. VISHAL GUPTA
DR. RACHNA SHARMA
DR. SANJAY SHARMA
DR. K. L. KULSHETRA
DR. BINKEY SRIVASTAVA
DR. R. K. BHATT
DR. AMITABH RAO
DR. D. K. NARANG
DR. D. K. GAUTA GAUTAM M
DR. D. PATHAK
DR. H. S. SHYAM
PROF. RUPALI KUMAR
DR. N. PANCHANA PANCHANATHAM THAM
DR. RUCHI SRIVASTAVA
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends EDITORIAL BOARD CHIEF EDITOR- DR. A. S. RAO DR. MARIA FERNANDA
DR. TONY ORME
DR. STEVE OLIVER
DR.CHEY TAE
DR. HENRY KAISER
DR. ENN PAN
DR. MATTHEW BOULTON
DR. ALFRED NOBEL
DR. R. NACHIKA NACHIKATA TA
DR. KUNIO BUSUJIMA
DR. ILA CHATURVE CHATURVEDI DI
DR. SANJAY GUPTA
DR. BHAVNA AGARWAL
DR. ANOOP PANT
DR. VIPIN
DR. HEMANT SHARMA
DR. K. S. THAKUR
DR. P. K. GUPTA
DR. ATOM KHACHA KHACHATRYAN TRYAN
MAJ. GEN. DR. M. L. MADAN
DR. VALERI KOVALENKO
DR. RUBEN VARDANYAN
All copy rights © reserve with St. Anne Mary Education Society published by Sister Concern St. Anne Mary Publications
Corp. Offices In UK- Crown Works,Wellington Road, Bilston West Midlands,UK In India-B1/1, Sanjay Enclave, Bindapur Matiyala Road, Uttam Nagar, New Delhi-110059 INDIA. In Australia- 10, CLIFTON STREET CAMDAN PARK, S. A. 5038 Email :
[email protected] Email :
[email protected]
Phone : +91-880-2121-906 Fax :+91- 11-28565342
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Table of Contents Title of paper ETHICAL ASPECTS OF INTERNET BASED BANKING By :- V.V.R.Raman and Veena Tewari
Page No. 05
AN ANALYSIS OF E-COMMERCE SECURITY ASSURANCE DIMENSIONS IN THE WEBSITES OF INDIAN ONLINE TRAVEL AGENTS By :- Victor Anandkumar and M. Sunderrajan 19 POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS INTERVENTIONS ON MENTAL HEALTH OF IT PROFESSIONALS IN BANGALORE By :- B Rose Kavitha and Maya Salimath G 31 SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION By :- Dinesh Chandra, P.M.Rewatkar, Sweta A. Kahurke, and Vijay D. Rughwani 38 A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON WEP and WPA in IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi) By :- D.M. Gharge, S. V. Halse
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E-CRM: A DRIVING FORCE FOR MAKING ONLINE EDUCATION AND TRAINING BY TECHNICAL INSTITUTES - “A SELF- SERVICE ACTIVITY” By :- Sharat Kaushik, Manpreet Kaur and Neeraj Chopra 59 A CASE ANALYSIS OF TELECOM INDUSTRY OF CHINA AND INDIA WITH FOCUS ON CELLULAR SUBSCRIBER BASE By :- Sk Samim Ferdows 69 SOFTWARE RELIABILITY FOR A RELIABLE SOFTWARE SYSTEM By: - Babita and Naveen Verma
91
APPROACHES TOWARDS ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYBODY LEARNING By : -Anju Sharma and Sonam Singh 101
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends ETHICAL ASPECTS OF INTERNET BASED BANKING By :- V.V.R.Raman and Veena Tewari
Abstract: Issues of IT Ethics have recently become immensely more complex. The capacity to place material on the World Wide Web has been acquired by a very large number of people. At the same time, once the initial reluctance to use the Internet and the World Wide Web for commercial purposes had been overcome, sites devoted to doing business on the Internet mushroomed and e-commerce became a term permanently to be considered part of common usage. The assimilation of new technology is almost never smooth. As the Internet begins to grow out of its abbreviated infancy, a multitude of new issues surface continually, and a large proportion of these issues remain unresolved. Many of these issues contain strong ethics content. As the ability to reach millions of people instantly and simultaneously has passed into the hands of the average person, the rapid emergence of thorny ethical issues is likely to continue unabated. In this paper we have paid attention to the very essence of the ethics in economy, and especially in banking. There is an always present dilemma between ethics and economy. Nowadays the attention is much more dedicated to this topic, because the lack of ethics norms in business operations produces great damage at the micro and macro level. More than anything else the significance of ethics becomes apparent through establishing of socially accepted ethical norms, affecting in consequence all aspects of life. In the present study we shall try to explain the business ethics as a social responsibility of an individual as well as of collective moral actions followed during all aspects of business activities up to the point where they do not disturb business relations within the business system, as well as within the wider surroundings. Finally, in the conclusion of the study, the code of ethical principles is pointed out, the application of which would establish a defensive mechanism in the field of ethical values application.
Key words: business ethics, morals, ethical principles, ethical code, Ethics, Proliferation, Issues.
Introduction: The area of Information Systems (IS) ethics has received, deservedly, a fair amount of attention in recent times. IS Professionals generally agreed that we need adequate ground rules to govern the use of present day Information Technology (IT). We have also recognized for many years the need to incorporate ethics into IS curricula [Couger, 1989, Cohen & Cornwell, 1989]. Current mechanisms which attempt to make IS professionals 5| Page
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends and students more sensitive to the ethical concerns within IT and IS may, however, be too tightly focused in terms of both issues and audience, especially in the light of the rapid proliferation of Internet use. To properly analyze the impact of the Internet on IS ethics; we would need to establish the appropriate context. To this end, this paper explores several aspects of computer ethics that are relevant to today's users of IT. For example, who are the people that need to be educated on these issues? What are the issues, and what has been the impact of the Internet on these issues? What are current attitudes, perceptions, and behavior in situations involving computer ethics, and again, what is the effect of the Internet? Do we have guidelines and codes that provide assistance for these ethical situations? What else needs to be done to help address some of the problems in this important area? The creator of ethics as a study of morality was the Greek philosopher Socrates (470-399 BC), who used ethics to define the terms of human virtues. The most important personal values are: righteousness, courage, honesty, tolerance, goodness, sincerity and fairness. In the field of ethics, Socrates and the entire Hellenic world saw the issue of goodness in human life or "eudemonia", i.e. happiness, as the most important. Goodness is a human characteristic and the greatest moral value. Socrates believed that virtue can be taught, i.e. that virtue is knowledge. A man must know what good is in order to do well. According to Socrates, knowing oneself is a prerequisite for happiness. Essentially, happiness is being good. Ethics as the study of morality examines the meaning and goals of moral norms and establishes the criteria for moral evaluation. The main ethical terms include: morality, goodness, conscientiousness, evil, freedom, happiness, love and virtue. Righteousness, morality and economic rationality and self-interest frequently overlap and intertwine.
Defining "BUSINESS ETHICS": Public attention has lately turned towards debates about business ethics, as the social responsibility of the individual and the collective. The question arises as to whether business has anything to do with the morality of the individual and the collective. Many people deny the connection between ethics and business, believing that the place of morality is within religion, while others perceive the interconnection between morality and religion. Every business activity has certain things in common with morality and moral actions of an individual or groups. Business ethics has two basic dimensions of expression and demonstration: • Collective ethics and • Individual ethics. Collective ethics includes the application of ethical principles in the management's decision- making that refers both to external subjects and the environment and the ethical relations within the business system itself. Individual ethics involves adherence to the norms of customary business morality. If an individual has a deficit of ethical morality it means that they put their interests before the collective and legal norms, and before the 6| Page
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends norms of customary business morality, which can damage the business climate. Individual ethics is the basic element of group or collective ethics. The lack of ethics destroys trust, and trust is a precondition for successful business operations and development. Therefore, each segment of work and operations of a business entity should respect ethical principles. All the employees in a company, from a director to a doorman, should stick to ethical rules. In doing their job, they should always bear in mind the general welfare. The respect of business ethics can be analyzed by monitoring the obligations arising from such principles.
Role of Ethics in Banking: Ontologism based on the concept of good as opposed to evil helps us define the banking business from the point of view of ethics. The idea of awareness or conscience of the need for banking products or services inevitably comes to mind. This simplified parallel leads us to the conclusion that full awareness of and the related ethics about the importance of banking products and services is imminent to all economies, regardless of their economic development. The basic ethical principles in banking are: • Principle of mutual trust is of special importance for successful functioning of the business system. Important and valuable deals are very often contracted over the phone, in the absence of witnesses, while the relationship between the participants is dominated by the inviolable principle of mutual trust. • Principle of mutual benefit and interest means that none of the partners in a business relationship should feel cheated; • Principle of good intentions is very important for business ethics and moral behaviour. This principle means that there is no intention to treat the business partner in an immoral way, whether it refers to deception, theft or some other undesirable way of treating a business partner; • Principle of business compromise and business tolerance refers to the harmonization of the conflicting interests of participants in the business process; • Principle of ethical improvement of business behavior represents the business partner's readiness to accept the mistake that has been made as a result of his own actions. He should admit the mistakes and respond in an appropriate way; • Principle of de monopolization of one's own position, because monopolistic behavior on the market does not contain any ethical market value and • Principle of conflict between one's own interests refers to the inability to relate common to personal interests, with simultaneous adherence to the same ethical values. The violation of ethical principles in banking occurs when the lenders take too much risk, trying to find a loophole that allows them to approve more loans. Strict adherence to the law and regulations in the field of banking makes it possible to grant loans to all the qualified clients in a fair wa y.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends The theoretical assumption that banks with higher capitalization rates and a better liability structure can enter long-term credit arrangements with a higher risk level has been empirically proven. It stems from the above that each bank should respect the general and the specific principles in formulating its credit policy. Since banks are trying to optimize their micro economy, they perform a significant macroeconomic function through their activity. The bank's non-objectivity is most evident when it comes to establishing accurate information about the character of the debtor. Based on its subjective evaluation, the bank makes conclusions about the debtor. This indicator is most obvious when it comes to personal loans, and less obvious when it comes to corporate loans. The analysis of every loan application requires one or several loans officers who have contacts with the client, one or several analysts who evaluate the client's financial abilities, a board for loan approval or a loan administrator who finally approves or rejects the loan request. By protecting themselves, the banks also protect the efficiency of using the macro system’s accumulation. In this way, the loss of banking and financial resources in the macro system is restricted and the selective and allocate functions of the total system are improved. A bank is liable to run business books in compliance with the banking chart of accounts, preparation of bookkeeping documents, evaluation of assets and liabilities, drafting of financial statements in accordance with applicable regulations and professional standards (the Central Bank may prescribe, for the purpose of public announcement, a type, form and content of statements, method and deadlines for their publication). A bank must organize the internal audit which should conduct its activities in an independent and impartial manner, and contribute to the development of the bank's operations through its advisory services. The internal audit of the bank's operations should conform to the operating principles and business ethics code pertaining to internal auditors. In its work, the internal audit should harmonize the methods of its work with the work of external auditors. The person in charge of internal audit tasks should not be involved in other activities within the bank. If the internal audit unveils any case of illegal operation and violation of the risk management rules in the course of its inspection of specific fields of bank operations, it must promptly inform the bank's management thereof. If it fails to do so, the bank is running the risk of becoming illiquid, insolvent and its operations insecure. Banking business is attractive for illegal transactions only if the effectiveness of a controlling mechanism for a consistent conformity with the operating principles is missing. Continuous monitoring is a significant activity for banking operations, since the very nature of this activity involves a rapid change along with innovations. In traditional banking activities this problem is clearly seen, since some sort of records is kept on transactions. However, there is an obstacle in the e-banking domain, particularly in regard to detection of illegal money transfer from an account to a card with a deposit amount. 8| Page
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends It is to be expected that a more extensive use of e-money will lead to an increasing misuse of ethics. Even though banks, financial companies and clients gain multiple benefits by using the e-banking system, at the same time the application of e-banking jeopardizes the ethical domain, since it gives rise to increased cyber crime. Hackers usually disrupt the operation of information systems and transfer financial funds to their own accounts. The most common targets of such criminals are ATMs. It is not to be neglected that banking technology is getting better, but hackers also develop their skills to steal funds from banks and thus undermine legitimate banking transactions. In order to prevent the identity frauds, legislative institutions notify the clients that they safeguard the sources of private information. Bankers should provide more detailed instructions to clients to check the balance on their accounts at least once a month and to report immediately any observed irregularity. Owing to the introduction of e-banking services, clients can check their account balances on a daily basis. Electronic business is possible to apply only if a mechanism for securing financial and other transactions on the Internet is developed. By using encryption systems and digital certificates it is possible to realize four basic functions of the transaction security, such as: confidentiality, authentication, integrity and incontestability. The efficiency of such measures should be proved by more extensive use of electronic money. The most important benefit of ebusiness is that financial flows assume different profile, whereas the banks move their desk operations to the clients' computers. Time will show whether we will reach statistical figures from the developed west where more than 80% of transactions are affected electronically.
Issues and Concerns: How they’ve grown and changed: In everyday life, "Ethics is the practice of making a principle-based choice between competing alternatives" [Kallman & Grillo, 1996, p.3]. The issues in IS ethics would certainly fit comfortably within this larger umbrella. We ought to be able to assume that to use IT ethically, a person would first need to possess appropriate ethical standards for day to day living. It comes as a surprise, therefore, that, that many people who consider themselves ethical have less stringent standards when it comes to using computers and related technology [Solomon & O’Brien, 1990, Cohen & Cornwell, 1989]. Many people feel that using a computer to do something that is illegal or unethical is somehow not as "wrong" as other "real" criminal or unethical acts. For others, the term "IS ethics" refers just to issues of software piracy and unauthorized access to computer systems. Neither perception is correct. Criminal or unethical acts performed with the help of a computer are just as criminal or unethical. They usually just take less time or are harder to trace. Ethical concerns in IT actually encompass much more than just software piracy and computer hacking. Wood (1993) states that generalizations from many studies on IS ethics have been limited because most studies have concentrated solely on software piracy problems rather than a broader definition of IS ethics. Malone (1993) argues that ethical concerns in IS must go beyond behaviors that are considered illegal. He includes such topics as computer crime, software reliability, privacy and matching, employee 9| Page
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends displacement, and artificial intelligence. Hall and Hamilton (1992) find the issues even more extensive. In their recommendations on the ethical concepts that should be integrated into the MIS curriculum they include the issues of privacy, security, ownership of property, race, equity in access, the environment, internal control responsibility of IS personnel, misuse of computers, artificial intelligence and unemployment and displacement. In their discussion of what constitutes unethical computer use, Kallman and Grillo (1996) include social and economic issues, issues of individual practice, development process issues, issues involving managers and subordinates, processing issues, issues relating to the workplace, issues of data collection, storage, and access, issues about electronic mail, resource exploitation issues, vendor-client issues and issues of computer crime. The rapid growth of Internet access and use seems to have made many of these issues more significant and pervasive. This growth has also spawned a host of new issues. Issues involving intellectual property rights, ownership of data, copyright laws and violations, and plagiarism now affect millions of people rather than just a few. From perhaps an opposing standpoint come the issues of free speech and censorship. There is reason to believe that the ethical management of IT poses some special difficulties as well. For instance, information created and stored using IT is more easily altered, destroyed or accessed without authority or permission. Privacy, unauthorized access, and the theft of information become increasingly relevant concerns. Also, the use of computers and technologically advanced communications equipment changes the way people communicate with each other. Personal, face to face contact is reduced, decisions are made more quickly and less thoughtfully, and the potential for unethical use is increased simply because not enough time is devoted to careful consideration of all the ramifications of a particular act. Information sharing often conflicts with concerns of confidentiality and privacy, and the lack of access security can often make unethical use far too easy. The interaction of people with this new technology can create problems too. Because the tremendous growth in computing power has been coupled with a similar decline in costs, many more people today have ready access to enormous quantities of information and the inexpensive means to manipulate it. Even a decade ago, the situation was dramatically different and far less hazardous. The potential for unethical computer use has increased along with this growth in accessibility [Kallman & Grillo, 1996].
Information Technology and Codes of Ethical Behavior: Codes of behavior for IS professionals have been in existence since the 1960's. Why then, the sudden fuss over IT ethics? Several factors have contributed to the situation. First, the growth in technology, its complexity and its use, including access to the Internet, has been unprecedented. Ethical codes developed even a decade ago can't possibly address the bewildering range of possible situations involving ethical conflict. Second, because technology use is so 10 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends pervasive, the majority of the people who should be targeted by these codes of conduct do not belong to the professional organizations that developed them. In fact, many IT professionals do not belong to any professional organizations. As a result, much of the audience remains untouched. Third, different organizations for IT professionals have different codes and guidelines. Although most have similar objectives, the treatment of these objectives differs from one organization to the next. Even if an IT professional were to belong to a particular organization, the standards by which he or she would be expected to live and work by would be different from those adhered to by a member of a different organization. There is no single set of widely accepted codes and guidelines for ethical decision making [Oz, 1992]. Finally, a code of ethical standards is not the law although most codes of ethics do incorporate sanctions to deal with misconduct. Although legislation to deal with a variety of computer and technology related crimes has been enacted, statutes fall far short addressing potential wrongdoing. In a call for a unified ethics code for IT professionals, Oz (1992) examined the differences between the ethical codes of 5 organizations for IS professionals. The study found similarities as well as differences between these codes when examined in a framework of obligations to society, employers, clients, colleagues, the professional organization and the profession. One flaw in all 5 sets of standards was a lack of guidelines for prioritizing ethical conflicts. A unified code, the study concluded, would better serve IT professionals and would enhance public perception of the profession. Business does not operate isolated. Inevitably, their activities have social and ecological consequences. Maybe the ecological impact of financial activity is not easily seen, but we have to recognize a possible indirect impact through the financing of certain economic activities. Therefore, to answer to the new social demands, many banking institutions apply 'ethical policies' that have to do with the bank working inside and then, with bank investments. A business can take financing from the bank only when no conflict with the ethical policy is identified (so that, some investment opportunities shall be declined by the bank). The following are examples of how the customer's money should or should not be invested:
* Human Rights: Not to invest or provide financial services to any regime or organization that oppresses the human spirit or takes away the rights of the individual. * Armaments: Not to invest in or provide financial services to any business involved in the manufacture, sale, licensed production, or brokerage of armaments to any country which has an oppressive regime. * Trade and social involvement: 11 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends To support and encourage: * Organizations that promote the concept of Fair Trade. * Businesses, customers, and suppliers to take a pro-active stance on ethical sourcing with any Third World suppliers they may use. * Organizations participating in the UK social economy (cooperatives, credit unions, and charities). To be sure not to finance activities, such as: * Money laundering, drug trafficking, or terrorism * Investments and currency trading in developing countries which does not support productive purposes * Tobacco product manufacturers. * Ecological impact: To encourage business customers to take a proactive stance on the environmental impact of their own activities and not to invest in businesses involved in activities, such as: * The extraction of fossil fuels, which contribute to problems, such as global climate change and acid rain. * The manufacture of unnatural chemicals that may contribute to problems, such as ozone depletion. * The unsustainable harvest of natural resource that leads to deforestation. * Animal welfare: Not to invest or provide financial resources to organizations involved in activities, such as: * Animal testing of cosmetic and households products or their ingredients * Exploitative factory farming methods * Blood sports that involve the use of animals or birds to catch, fight, or kill each other. * Fur farming and animal fur trading
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends * Customer consultation: Banks regularly appraise views of the customers on precedent issues to develop the Ethical Policy accordingly. The previous examples were examples of how modern banks have to go about their business in a profitable but ethical manner. Banks also have to be flexible when integrating social changing values. This process has to be public, open, and supervised by external social auditors in order to maintain and strengthen trust, which is an essential value for banks and financial systems to perform well.
Summary and Conclusions: The number of people touched by and affected by this technology is enormous and is growing rapidly, especially with the increased availability of the Internet. This makes a target audience difficult to define and difficult to reach. The ethical issues themselves are also difficult to define, increasingly complex and diverse, and are growing as rapidly as the technology. Attitudes, perceptions and behavior among users of this technology leave much to be desired. Codes of ethics and professional conduct vary from one professional organization to the next and are incomplete or obsolete. In addition, membership in these organizations makes up only a minuscule part of the relevant audience. Classes in computer ethics, when part of an IS or IT curriculum, don't appear to make much of an impact and reach only a small proportion of students who use IT. Obviously, the importance of IS ethics cannot be overstated in the age of the Internet. There are too many people involved for us to remain unconcerned. It is probably not possible to develop comprehensive ethical guidelines to cover every possible situation of IT misuse. It is possible, however, to realize the pervasiveness and the magnitude of the problem. It is also possible to develop ethical guidelines on an ongoing basis to keep pace with changes in the issues. Finally, it is vital that these guidelines be a part of all school and college curricula rather than just IT related disciplines. Any culture and any country have a ready supply of stories and adages for teaching children the values of society. As Americans, we have a full supply of adages ranging from "honesty is the best policy" to "the early bird gets the worm." These adages were designed to teach children the values of society. "Mother Goose" and "Grimm's Fairy Tales" taught children about proper behavior - and what would happen to children who didn't behave. Ben Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac" was a uniquely American tool for teaching values such as honesty, hard work, and generally making some form of contribution to the corporate good. Now, however, we as a society have lost sight of the original messages or changed for ourselves what they mean. "The early bird gets the worm" was advice to get up, get going, and work hard. Now, however, getting that worm - no matter what or how - seems to be the only part of that message that survives. As a society, we have become focused on winning. The American legends are those who came to the country as paupers and 13 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends became
very,
very
rich.
However, leaving aside such blatant examples of unethical behaviour, even the most well meaning of banks are going to confront moral dilemmas in the course of business. These dilemmas are more complex than the simple: "should I lie, cheat or steal variety?" They pose difficult choices that have the potential to damage reputation and lead to financial losses. The problem is that in an increasingly complex business environment the choice is not always the simple one between what is right and wrong. It is more often between what is right and less right - in other words between shades of grey. This increases the need for organisations to adhere to a strong set of values to steer them through the minefield of ethical choices with which they are faced as they make business decisions. It is also necessary to ensure that the behaviour of the organisation is in practice aligned with these values and that employee’s buy into them, so that the organisation actually practices what it preaches. Some of the practical examples of ethical dilemmas involving banks that have been in the news recently are, as banks reach out beyond their home market, they become exposed to unfamiliar business environments and customers whose ethical standards may be very different from their own. This puts extra strain on the "know your customer" policy upon which regulators are so insistent. Business dealings with Russia are a case in point. Here you have the situation of a country that is making the transition from a communist to a capitalist economy. This naturally creates profit opportunities for Western banks. It could indeed almost be argued that these banks have a moral responsibility to assist in transforming the Russian economy. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line, this transformation has gone wrong, and the borderline between what is legitimate and illegitimate business in Russia has become blurred, to say the least. Ethics is a set of moral values and principles related to society. The application of ethical principles contributes to the attainment of financial moral. The domination of ethical principles implies the elimination of criminal operation of commercial banks, i.e. less frauds, bribery, and corruption. Given that economy cannot successfully function in the absence of ethics and morals, the necessity of introducing ethical code is frequently advocated. In the banking sector, the business ethics principles would be implemented in an organized fashion, aided by normative and legal regulation in the field of bankers' business activities. The application of the code of ethical principles would establish a defensive mechanism in the area of application of ethical values since the position of a particular profession requires more stringent moral standards and involves sanctions for the breach of the same. In developed countries, the issue of ethics is closely attended to. In each profession there is an ethical – moral code of behaviour. Such moral norms are established and applied in order to govern internal relations and the relations with other groups.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends The adoption of ethical standards in the form of a code of appropriate conduct could contribute to understanding broader community. To that end, it is necessary to do the following: • Ethical standards should be formalized in regulations. The law and other regulations may provide a framework for advisory, reprimanding measures and other restrictions. • Professional ethics-related advice contributes to moral reasoning. An unbiased advice alone can contribute to the resolution of ethical dilemmas. • An adequate responsibility mechanism should be established. In case of a violation of ethical principles, a formal chain of responsibility should be established. There should be clear rules and procedures to be followed by the officers. • Bank managers should serve as role models for ethical behaviour and professionalism. Consequently, they have a leading role since they promote ethical behaviour. Policy and practice pursued by managers should underscore bank's commitment to ethical principles. Usually moral conscience has been forgotten after the individualist and utilitarian analysis. However, many people guide their behavior by a value system that is sensitive to social problems, such as equilibrium with nature, respect of human rights, and the equality of opportunities. People have the power to change the society: As consumers and as savers. As savers, people have the opportunity to choose, in financial markets, between institutions and products.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends REFERENCES: Daniel Daianu, Events Spur Re-examination of Business Ethics, Social Responsibility, Southeast European Times, 23/12/2002 Eseji, Savjest. Noebius. com, 2005 John, Dalla Costa, The ethical imperative: Why moral leadership is Good Business, Perseus Publishing, 1998 Kar, Albert, Z. Is Business Bluffing Ethical in: John Drummond and Bill Bain, Business Ethics, Clio, Belgrade, 2001
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Elster, J. "Emotions and Economic Theory," Journal of Economic Literature, XXXVI, 1998, pp. 47-74. Fitoussi, J.P. La democracia y el mercado, Barcelona: Paidos Studio, 2004. Guzman, J. "Etica y ciencia economica", In Fontela and Guzman (coord), Economia etica y bienestar social, Madrid: Piramide, 2003. Inglehart, R. "The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in PostIndustrial Societies," The American Political Science Review, 65, 4, 1971, pp. 991-1017. Inglehart, R. and Welzel, C. (2005) "Exploring the Unknown: Predicting the Responses of Publics not Yet Surveyed," International Review of Sociology, 15, 1, January, 2005, pp. 173204. Peirefitte, A. La societe de la confiance: essai sur les origines et la nature du developpement, Paris: O. Jacob, 1995. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (1992). Communications of the ACM, 35(5), 94-99. Anderson, R.E., Johnson D.G., Gotterbarn, D., & Perrolle, J. (1993). Using the New ACM Code of Ethics in Decision Making. Athey, S. (1990). A Comparison of the Fortune 500 and AACSB- Accredited Universities' Software Copying Policies. CIS Educator Forum, 2(4), 2-11. Bloombecker, J.J.B. (1991). Computer Ethics: An Antidote to Despair. The Mid-Atlantic Journal of Business, 27(1), 33-42. Campbell, R. (September 24, 1984). Testimony before Congress on Computer and Communications Security and Privacy. Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Transportation, Aviation and Materials, US House of Representatives, 98th Congress, 2nd Session. 17 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Cohen, E., & Cornwell, L. (1989). A Question of Ethics: Developing Information Systems Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 8, 431-437.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends An analysis of e-commerce security assurance dimensions in the websites of Indian Online Travel Agents By :- Victor Anandkumar and M. Sunderrajan
Abstract: Travel is the biggest segment of the e-commerce domain in India, as well as on a global platform. Therefore it is vital that travel e-commerce sites are secured to ensure safe transactions for customers. Yet little research has gone into what Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are doing to incorporate consumer assurances into their sites. To address this gap, this research has identified 18 Indian OTAs to see how many carried e-commerce assurance seals and of what types—privacy, security or business integrity. The research also looked for associations between OTA characteristics (such as traffic rank to suggest online popularity and years since incorporation to differentiate first movers and late entrants) and the presence of these seals. The findings highlighted a preference for security assurance than privacy or business integrity assurance. The implications of the findings for OTAs are discussed.
Keywords: Travel e-commerce, OTAs, e-commerce security, security assurance
Introduction India's e-commerce market is increasing at the rate of 42-50 per cent CAGR, which is set to continue in the same manner in the next five years (2008-13) and travel (including hospitality) is the major contributor to this growing segment (ExpressHospitality.com, 2008). Travel is the biggest segment of the e-commerce domain in India, as well as on a global platform. Therefore it is vital that travel e-commerce sites are secured to ensure safe transactions for customers. The overwhelming response of the consumers towards the online travel segment was triggered by the entry of low cost carriers (LCCs) such as Air Deccan (now Kingfisher Red), IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir. Also, IATA (an air travel regulatory agency) had set 2008 as the deadline for e-ticket rollout. As a result, the industry saw an upsurge of bricks-and-mortar and brick-and-clicks tour operators and emergence in the pure-clicks travel aggregators and online travel agents (OTAs). The industry has since then witnessed an increase in the number of travelers as well as number of travels per traveler. However, the biggest issue facing this industry is limited penetration of credit cards, coupled with consumer’s apprehensions towards online security and privacy issues. If travel ecommerce is to live up to its full potential, OTAs must gain an understanding of which risks online customers are most concerned with as well as what specific steps can be taken to help reduce such risk perceptions by making security assurances (Garbarino and Strahilevitz, 2004). 19 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Travel-Tourism and Internet – made for each other Many studies have highlighted the fit between the Internet and the travel and tourism industry. Tourism products appear to be well suited to e-marketing because of their distinctive high-priced, high-involvement, intangible, heterogeneous, high-risk and welldifferentiated characteristics [Peterson et al, 1997, Smith and Jenner, 1998, Anandkumar and Jeyakumar, 2007]. The nature of the travel-tourism product being information-centric makes it a search product that is evaluated by perusing product-related information. Being dependent upon effective information flows makes it a complex product, as it needs to be ‘distributed and made available to both intermediaries and end consumers’ and is almost entirely dependent upon representations and descriptions, provided by the travel trade to help consumers make a purchase decision (Buhalis, 2003).
The Online Travel Agents (OTAs) market Dominated by players like MakeMyTrip.com and Yatra.com, the Indian OTA market is hot and happening. In the recent years, the Indian online travel portal market has seen a lot of action - new players have emerged, VC investments have been made, aggressive online marketing campaigns have been undertaken and now even several international players (such as Travelocity and Orbitz) have entered the Indian market. As a result, an all out race to get the biggest market share in the fastest growing e-commerce sector in India is on. The international OTA market is dominated by firms like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and so on.
Barriers and inhibitors to travel e-commerce Studies probing the intention of the customers in B2C e-commerce context have lead to identifying the motivations and inhibitions of the users. The most frequently cited reasons for not purchasing travel products online are, in the order of precedence: credit card security, no assessment of product quality, privacy issues and ‘rather purchase locally’ (Weber and Roehl, 1999). Previous research (Jarvenpaa et al. 2000; Reichheld and Schefter, 2000; McCole and Palmer, 2002; Gefen et al. 2003) has proposed that one of the most important reasons for not using an online channel for purchasing is the lack of trust: unfamiliar vendors as well as insecurity of transactions and personal information. Discussion has focused mainly on security of transactions, privacy of customers’ personal information and general trust in the vendor of whom the customer has not any prior experience (Anandkumar, 2008).
Prior research on travel e-commerce security assurance Assurance is the degree of confidence that security measures, both technical and operational, work as intended or planned. Information assurance aims to improve the 20 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends quality or state of being secure at situations where the consumer is not quite familiar with the background of a business (Colwill et al. 2001). Runyan et al. (2008) examine the impact of Web assurance services on e-commerce. They conclude that doing business online has become a necessity, not an option. However, not all consumers are completely comfortable using the Internet for transacting business because of concerns regarding security of their transactions. For these situations, consumer trust and confidence can be enhanced by web assurance services. Pathak (2004) examines risk associated with ecommerce. His study concludes that e-commerce requires auditors to identify risks and show their impact on the information system and suggests the American Institute of CPAs and Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants Web assurance programs. The most widely used computer security model is the CIA (confidentiality, integrity and availability) triangle framework (Parker, 1994) which addresses the fundamental concerns regarding the vulnerability of information security. Sivasailam et al. (2002) have developed six web assurance dimensions: security, transaction integrity, authenticity, privacy compliance, business integrity and financial settlements. Assurance seal services are based on the idea of making the vulnerable entity (the consumer) more comfortable with the transaction and ensuring that the other (the company) follows through on its promises. The purpose of assurance seals is to provide assurance to consumers that a website discloses and follows through with its operating practices, that it handles payments in a secure and reliable way, that it has certain return policies, or that it complies with a privacy policy that says what it can and cannot do with the collected personal data (Koreto, 1997; Castelfranchi and Tan, 2001).
E-commerce security assurance concerns Every third-party assurance service must satisfy certain concerns of e-commerce security. Although the AICPA-Yankelovich (1997) study identified six e-commerce security assurance dimensions, viz., cluster security, transaction integrity, authenticity of parties, business integrity, financial settlements and privacy compliance, standard industry practices tend to cluster security, transaction integrity, and authenticity of parties into one overarching area - security. Business integrity and financial settlements combine to form the business integrity area, and privacy compliance forms the third area, privacy.
Privacy Assurance Services: TRUSTe and BBB Online were among the first providers of privacy assurance in ecommerce. As first movers, they may be vulnerable to traditional competitors (CA/CPA firms) who have proven reputations and expertise in the assurance business. The ability to develop high quality standards and proven reputations for independence are key attributes that could give CA/CPA firms a competitive advantage. These two programs have similar requirements. To be eligible for a TRUSTe license, websites must comply with its 21 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends principles of the privacy program (http//www.TRUSTe.com). User right to choice and consent over how their personal information is used and shared is one of these principles. Other principles concern the posting of a privacy policy, and disclosure about the collection and use of personal information, use of cookies, and third parties using cookies to collect data on the website. TRUSTe monitors its licensees’ compliance with their own posted privacy policies and the TRUSTe program requirements. The oversight processes include initial and periodic website reviews, ‘seeding’ and online community monitoring. TRUSTe also resolves privacy complaints and requires its licensees to cooperate with its reviews and inquiries.
Integrity Assurance Services: WebTrust and a related service by PWC (called PWC BetterWeb) offer assurance to consumers about the integrity of transaction processing, ability of the website to provide goods and services, sales terms, and handling of customer complaints. These items provide some assurance to consumers that the website is an authentic business with some ability to provide legitimate goods or services. This is however, quite incomplete because it provides no assurance that controls are in place to monitor or prevent misbehavior by outside agents.
Security Assurance Services: VeriSign assurance seals are popular and they focuses specifically on security level issues. The basic requirement for VeriSign are (1) third-party verification of the business entity’s registration information, (2) domain name confirmation, (3) export controls confirmation in regard to encryption practices, and (4) use of VeriSign’s products that facilitate transmission of encrypted data and verification of parties involved in a transaction. WebTrust is another comprehensive security assurance services. While most of the other certifications are done on an annual basis, WebTrust must be renewed every 90 days. Three principles form the guiding framework: (1) business practices and information privacy must be disclosed on-line and transactions must be executed as prescribed, (2) transaction integrity (i.e. customer transactions are completed and billed as agreed), and (3) the entity maintains effective controls over customers’ information (Khazanchi and Sutton, 2001). OTA websites have also subscribed to the credit card companies (such as Visa and MasterCard) for security validation service.
Research problem Despite the fact that online travel sales are now a substantial and growing proportion of total sales in one of the world’s largest industries and online trust is an important issue, there still exists a lack of comprehensive literature on the OTAs and their security assurance mechanisms. While some studies have focused on demand- and supply-side constituents in this industry, little or no analysis has focused on the intermediaries such as 22 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends OTAs. The aim of this research is to identify the OTA websites in India and pose the following research questions on them: What are the characteristics of OTA websites? How do they assure customers of e-commerce security? What are the popular third-party assurance seals popular among OTAs? Are there associations between OTA characteristics and their security assurance mechanisms? This research has certain limitations. First of all, the consistency of OTA websites across different browsers was not studied. All the observations were made using Microsoft Explorer (version 7) browser. Secondly, this study considered only third-party ecommerce security assurance seals. And finally, the researchers’ subjectivity in data observation and interpretation might have introduced data error. However, precautions were taken to address these limitations. For example, the observation for data collection was done independently by two observers and then compared to ensure commonality.
Research methodology This is a descriptive study using passive primary data collected through structured observation method. It studies the travel e-commerce security assurance measures among the popular OTA websites by analyzing the third-party assurance seals. The objects of observation were the websites of OTAs identified through judgment sampling with certain inclusion/exclusion criteria. The inclusion criteria implied that only the pure clicks OTA websites offering air travel booking (wherein perceived risk and need for security assurance are high because of the monetary value of the transaction) were considered for this study. Bricks-and-clicks OTAs, OTAs offering only bus or train tickets (such as redbus.co.in and irctc.co.in) were excluded from the study. Also travel deal aggregators such as Rediff Faresearch were not considered since they permit only online search and then redirect to the corresponding airline’s booking engine to complete the online purchase. A comprehensive list of the URLs of Indian OTAs was prepared using organic search and web traffic results (by determining online popularity using Alexa.com). Each URL was verified and the 18 websites were evaluated. Table 1 lists the OTAs that were observed for this study. Each site was examined in detail and the various e-commerce security assurances given by the site were noted. To record the data collected through observation method, a structured data entry table was designed. Each cell in the table represents a dichotomous scale measurement describing the presence or the absence of an ecommerce security assurance dimension. The assurance indicators across all the sites were then grouped and analyzed. Table-1. List of Online Travel Agents (OTAs) observed for the study www.FlightRaja.com www.TravelGuru.com www.zoomtra.com www.ezeego1.com www.indiatimestravel.com www.90di.com
www.MakeMyTrip.com www.ClearTrip.com www.AtYourPrice.in www.TripMela.com www.desiya.com www.bookngo.com
www.Yatra.com www.arzoo.com 23 | P a g e www.ixigo.com www.TravelChacha.com www.sweetfare.com www.timesofindiatravel.com
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Data analysis and findings Sivasailam et al. (2002) have developed six web assurance dimensions: security, transaction integrity, authenticity, privacy compliance, business integrity and financial settlements. But the observation of OTAs in this study provided scope to identify one more dimension, namely user-agreement compliance. Further observation of privacy policies posted on the OTA website indicated a demarcation between intra- and interorganizational privacy compliance. The revised web assurance dimensions addressing the three major customer concerns, viz. security, privacy and business integrity are shown in Table 2. The issues addressed by them and the potential remedies are also highlighted. For the purpose of data analysis, the OTAs were classified into early/late categories based on their years of existence. The OTAs that are less than three-years old were considered ‘late’ and more than three-years old were considered ‘early’. The popular web traffic measurement service, Alexa.com was used to find out the online popularity (in terms of daily pageviews) of the OTAs and a cut-off of 0.001 daily pageview percent was used to distinguish OTAs as high and low in popularity. The findings of the study relating the OTA demographic characteristics (namely, years in existence and online popularity) with the e-commerce security dimensions are summarized in Table 3. Table-2. Dimensions of e-commerce security assurance
Customer Assurance concerns Dimensions Transaction Security Security
Security
Security
Privacy
Issue Potential Addressed remedy Unauthorized access Intrusion detection software Distributed denial of Firewalls, traffic management service attacks software, back-up servers and IP numbers, proper password generation guidelines, prompt application of software patches and proxy servers Transaction Alteration/deletion/ Software controls integrity duplication of docs Encryption, electronic receipts Diversion/nonreceipt for Sender of docs Authenticity Identity theft Digital signatures/certificates of parties to (such as transaction those from VeriSign) and encryption IntraUnauthorized access Software/electronic controls organizational Inappropriate use Physical conrols, managerial 24 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Privacy Compliance
Privacy
InterData theft organizational Unintended use Privacy compliance
Integrity
Business Integrity
Grievance redress
Integrity
Agreement compliance
User agreement violation
Integrity
Financial Settlements
Diversion of payments Escrow Services Unauthorized usage of financial data Non-repudiation
controls/restrictions to access data that could aid in profiling; and privacy seals like TRUSTe, BBBOnline, WebTrust and so on Physical conrols, managerial controls/restrictions to access data that could aid in profiling; and privacy seals like TRUSTe, BBBOnline, WebTrust and so on Comprehensive audit of business practices, role of arbitrator/mediator, and seals like BBBOnline reliability Enforcement (like Children’s online privacy protection act) Role of arbitrator/mediator Escrow Services
[Source: Adapted from Sivasailam et al. 2002] Table-3. Demographic characteristics and Security assurance dimensions of OTAs observed
Assurance dimension Security
Assurance Seal VeriSign Thawte BBB Online Visa verification
Years in existence Web traffic ranking Early (9)
Late (9)
High (3)
Low (15)
7 4 0 2
6 0 0 2
7 0 0 0
6 4 0 3 25 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Privacy
Business integrity
Mastercard Securecode TRUSTe BBB privacy EU Safe harbor OpinionLab BBB reliability
3 0 0 0 0 0
1 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0
3 0 0 0 0 0
[Note: A website may have more than one seal in the same assurance dimension]
Discussion of results The results reveal startling facts about the state of e-commerce security assurance among Indian OTAs. None of the observed OTAs have privacy seals such as TRUSTe and BBB Privacy which are extremely popular with international travel e-commerce websites (such as travelocity.com and expedia.com). This could be because of the nascent stage of the travel e-commerce market in Indian. Since this market is relatively younger in India, perhaps the security dimension overshadows the privacy and integrity dimension. Nevertheless, at a time when people are increasingly concerned about their online privacy (by disenabling cookies or having reservations about their information being shared with other e-commerce companies), the absence of privacy assurance seals indicate a gross negligence on part of the OTAs. In providing security assurance, the Indian OTAs have adopted the trend of subscribing to the credit card companies (such as Visa and MasterCard) for security validation service. The low but slowly increasing credit card penetration in India may necessitate such a direct and affirming validation service from the credit card companies themselves. As Table 3 shows, VeriSign is by far the most popular security assurance seal. The first movers had more security assurance seals on their websites when compared to the late entrants. When it comes to providing business integrity assurance, the surveyed OTAs seem to pay no attention. While most of them had detailed user agreements posted on their websites, a third-party assurance about complying with those agreements was found missing.
Conclusion E-commerce security assurance is important, yet this study reveals an ignorance (or negligence) toward security assurance among Indian OTAs. Companies must become more proactive in obtaining assurance seals. We live in times when customers’ distrust of companies is high. If consumers have no confidence in assurance seals, they are likely to 26 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends avoid online transactions. Affirmative action by the government, coupled with selfimposed reforms by assurance service providers could possibly discourage corrupt practices and boost consumer confidence in assurance seals and also the state of travel ecommerce. As e-commerce transactions become increasingly complex, coupled with increased regulations and liability exposure, the need for assurance in e-commerce protocols is likely to grow. Future directions for this study may include assessing the effectiveness of e-commerce security assurance using the following research questions: Would customers be more likely to buy with than without an assurance seal? Would customers or users feel safer in the cyberspace with assurance service? Which of the assurance dimensions has the greatest impact on customers’ perceptions regarding trustworthiness of OTA websites? It may be worthwhile to conduct a comparative research on the differences of assurance dimensions between the service providers (say, hotels and airlines) and the OTAs.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References AICPA and Yankelovich Partners, 1997. Electronic Commerce Assurance: Attitudes Toward CPA WebTrust. (Available at http://www.aicpa.org/webtrust/yankel.htm). http://www.aicpa.org/webtrust/yankel.htm). Anandkumar, V., (2008). “E-Marketing for Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises in Mauritius and Andaman Islands,” AIMS International Journal of Management , , 2(2), 93114. Anandkumar, V. and Jeyakumar, A., (2007). “Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder: Why and how island tourists look at SMTE websites”, In Li, E. and Soe-Tsyr, Y. (Eds.), Service Innovation and Value Creation in Experience Economy, Taiwan, 312-317. Buhalis, D., (2003). eTourism: Information technology for strategic tourism management, Harlow: Pearson Education. Castelfranchi, C. and Tan, Y. H., (2001). Trust and Deception in Virtual Societies, Kluwer Academic Publishers. Colwill, C. M., Todd, M. C., Fielder, G. P. and Natanson, C., (2001). “Information Assurance,” BT Technology Journal, 19, 107–14. ExpressHospitality.com, 2008. “VeriSign offers secured solutions for travel ecommerce.” (Available at http://www.expresshospitality.com/20080915/market10.shtml) Garbarino, E. and Strahilevitz. M., (2004). “Gender differences in the perceived risk of buying online and the effects of receiving a site recommendation,” Journal of Business Research, 57, 768-775. Gefen, D., Karahanna, E. and Straub, D. W., (2003). “Trust and TAM in online shopping: An integrated model,” MIS Quarterly, 27(1), 51–90. 28 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Jarvenpaa, S., Tractinsky, N. and Vitale. M., (2000). “Consumer trust in an Internet store,” Information Technology and Management, Management, 1, 45-71. Khazanchi, D. and Sutton, S., (2001). “Assurance services for B2B electronic commerce: A framework and implications,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 1(11), 1-55. Koreto, R., (1997). “In CPAs We Trust,” Journal of Accountancy, Accountancy, December, 62–64. McCole, P. and Palmer, A., (2002). “Transaction frequency and trust in Internet buying behaviour,” Special joint issue of Irish Marketing Review & Journal of Korean Academy of Marketing Science, 15(2), 35-50. Pathak, J., (2004). “A Conceptual Risk Framework for Internal Auditing in Ecommerce,” Managerial Auditing Journal, 19(4), 556-564. Peterson, R. A., Balasubramanian, S and Bronnenberg, J., (1997). “Exploring the implications of the Internet for consumer marketing,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 24, 329-346. Runyan, B., Smith, K. and Smith, L., (2008). “Implications of Web Assurance Services on Ecommerce,” Accounting Forum. 32, 46-61. Reichheld, F. and Schefter, P., (2000). “E-Loyalty: Your secret weapon on the Web,” Harvard Business Review, July-August, 105-113. Sivasailam, N., Kim, D.J. and Rao, R., (2002). “What companies are(n’t) doing about website assurance,” IT PRO / IEEE, May-June, 33-40. Smith, C. and Jenner, P., (1998). “Tourism and the Internet,” Travel and Tourism Analyst, 1, 62-81. 29 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Weber, K. and Roehl, W.S., (1999). “Profiling people searching for and purchasing travel products on the World Wide Web,” Journal of Travel Research, 37, 291-298.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS INTERVENTIONS ON MENTAL HEALTH OF IT PROFESSIONALS IN BANGALORE
By :- B Rose Kavitha and Maya Salimath G
Abstract Life is moving at an increasingly fast pace, the consequences of having one or more of the essential life elements out of order are becoming more and more severe. If one is not highly employable and good at work or if one does not have the character and competencies to be good human being or if one is in debt over head and constantly pressed by economic concerns or if one is stressed and feel as if s/he never have enough time and that important things in one’s life are not getting done, these things are going to have negative significance, and will increasingly impact on the quality of life. It is also said the satisfaction and happiness comes from within an individual and the way s/he takes life. This paper is a summary of the research conducted to analyse the impact of positive psychology on the mental health and the means of personal change of IT professionals in Bangalore. The survey of 200 IT Professional was conducted to find the impact of different components of positive psychology on the individuals during moving towards mental happiness and well-being.
Key Words: Positive Psychology, Mental Health, Mental Happiness, Life Satisfaction
1. Introduction Since ancient times, humans have been searched for an answer as to what makes a good life. Scientists who study psychological well being assume that an important feature of a god life is that the person himself likes his life. As wellbeing refers to the degree to which an individual’s judgement regarding enduring mood (happiness as well as evaluation of the self (satisfaction with one’s physical and mental health and functioning) and its relation to the material and psychological environment (life satisfaction and hope) Many factors need to be studies in a professional’s life. Psychological wellbeing concerns optimal psychological functioning and entails the perception of engagement with existential challenges of life, for example pursuing meaningful goals, growing and developing as a person, and establishing quality ties to others (Keyes et al., 2002)
2., Background Present days IT companies are experiencing attrition as the biggest problem, in-spite of giving almost every amenity to the employees. According to the research it is found that the environment of an IT organization plays a very vital role as to why employees are 31 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends finding it difficult to stay back in the organizations and also it is found that they are not happy and unsatisfied. It is also said the satisfaction and happiness comes from within an individual and the way s/he takes life.
2.1., Emotional well being & Mental Health In the mid-19th century, William Sweetzer was the first to clearly define the term "mental hygiene", which can be seen as the precursor to contemporary approaches to work on promoting positive mental health. Isaac Ray, one of thirteen founders of the American Psychiatric Association, further defined mental hygiene as an art to preserve the mind against incidents and influences which would inhibit or destroy its energy, quality or development. Mental health can be seen as a continuum, where an individual's mental health may have many different possible values. Mental wellness is generally viewed as a positive attribute, such that a person can reach enhanced levels of mental health, even if they do not have any diagnosable mental health condition. This definition of mental health highlights emotional well-being, the capacity to live a full and creative life, and the flexibility to deal with life's inevitable challenges. Many therapeutic systems and selfhelp books offer methods and philosophies espousing strategies and techniques vaunted as effective for further improving the mental wellness of otherwise healthy people.
2.2., Positive Psychology Positive psychology is increasingly prominent in mental health. The field of positive psychology at the subjective level is about valued subjective experiences: well-being, contentment, and satisfaction (in the past); hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness (in the present). At the individual level, it is about positive individual traits: the capacity for love and vocation, courage, interpersonal skill, aesthetic sensibility, perseverance, forgiveness, originality, future mindedness, spirituality, high talent, and wisdom. At the group level, it is about the civic virtues and the institutions that move individuals toward better citizenship: responsibility, nurturance, altruism, civility, moderation, tolerance, and work ethic (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5). Some researchers in this field posit that positive psychology can be delineated into three overlapping areas of research:
2.2.1., Research into the Pleasant Life, or the "life of enjoyment", examines how people optimally experience, forecast, and savor the positive feelings and emotions that are part of normal and healthy living (e.g. relationships, hobbies, interests, entertainment, etc.). Martin Seligman says that this most transient element of happiness may be the least important, despite the attention it is given.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 2.2.2., The study of the Good Life, or the "life of engagement", investigates the beneficial affects of immersion, absorption, and flow that individuals feel when optimally engaged with their primary activities. These states are experienced when there is a positive match between a person's strength and the task they are doing, i.e. when they feel confident that they can accomplish the tasks they face.
2.2.3.,Inquiry into the Meaningful Life, or "life of affiliation", questions how individuals derive a positive sense of well-being, belonging, meaning, and purpose from being part of and contributing back to something larger and more permanent than themselves (e.g. nature, social groups, organizations, movements, traditions, belief systems).
3., Research Methodology At the outset the study is a Descriptive Research. In this study an attempt is made to identify the variables, which are critical and mostly are the causes for the problems associated with mental health and well being of employees which lead to personal change and growth of the IT professionals.
3.1 ., Objectives of the study 3.1.1., To find the present level of satisfaction Life among the IT Professionals. 3.1.2., To evaluate the present factors leading to mental happiness and well- being at workplace 3.1.3., To investigate the influence of factors of being happy at the work place 3.1.4., To identify the variables those are critical to positive psychology and personal change.
3.2., Data collection The data for the research is collected both from secondary as well as primary sources.
3.2.1., Primary data: Primary data is collected through a combination of a structured questionnaire consisting of 26 questions divided across 9 questions on Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS), 5 questions on Satisfaction with life scale (SLS) and 12 questions on Adult Hope Scale (AHS). 3.2.2., Secondary data: Secondary data is collected from various sources like :
Reports from the office of Ministry of Health & Family Welfare.
Journals of Organizational Behaviour, HRM
The journals of positive & applied psychology, and so on
Research Articles on Mental health, positive psychology, well being and personal change. 33 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 3.3., Sampling methodology 3.3.1., Population: The population for the study includes all the people who are working in various IT companies in Bangalore. 3.3.2.,Sampling method: The sampling method for the research is a combination of quota sampling and judgment sampling with the basis of quota being the people considered from various areas divided according to geographical locations. 3.3.3., Sample size: Sample size constituted of 200 Professional who work for IT & ITes companies at team members’ level. The age range was, 25-35 years with the experience range of 3-10 years.
4., Measures 4.1., The adult hope scale (AHS) measures Snyder's cognitive model of hope which defines hope as "a positive motivational state that is based on an interactively derived sense of successful (a) agency (goal-directed energy), and (b) pathways (planning to meet goals)" (Snyder, Irving, & Anderson, 1991, p. 287). The adult hope scale contains 12 items. Four items measure pathways thinking, four items measure agency thinking, and four items are fillers. Participants respond to each item using an 7-point scale ranging from definitely false to definitely true and the scale takes only a few minutes to complete. See Snyder (2002) for a review of hope theory and research. 4.2., The PGIS (Personal Growth Initiative Scale) is a self-report instrument that yields a single scale score for personal growth initiative. Personal growth initiative is a person's active and intentional involvement in changing and developing as a person. The PGIS consists of nine items that are rated on a Likert scale from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree. Item scores are summed to obtain a total PGIS score. There is evidence that the PGIS is strongly positively related to psychological well-being and negatively related to psychological distress. Reliability and validity evidence has been strong. 4.3., The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) was developed to assess satisfaction with people's lives as a whole. The scale does not assess satisfaction with specific life domains, such as health or finances, but allows subjects to integrate and weigh these domains in whatever way they choose.
5., Results and Discussions The scoring of the scales was done according to the respective manuals. The weighted average mean was used to analyze the obtained data. Further chi-square test is used to find out the level significant influence among the variables considered all the three sets. Further one way anova was performed in order to check the internal consistency of responses across the groups of question. The level of significance for all the above mentioned statistical interventions is α = .05 34 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 5.1., The responses of the IT Professionals about the statement “I am satisfied with life” in the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) which ranges from 1 (Strongly disagree) 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of 200 respondents on the above mentioned statement is found to be 2.79 which is less than 4, Which means the IT professional are highly dissatisfied in the life. So it is interpreted that they need some change in their life in terms of satisfaction. 5.2., The responses of the IT Professionals on the statement “The conditions about my life are excellent” in the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) ranges from 1 (Strongly disagree) - 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of the 200 respondents is found to be 3.77 which is less than 4, Which means the conditions of life of IT professional is not found to be good. They are not satisfied with their life. 5.3., The responses of the It professionals on the statement “There are lot of ways around many problems” in the Adult Hope Scale (AHS) ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) - 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of the 200 respondents is found to be 5.83 which is more than 4, and this states that they have hopes that they can come out of any kind of problems in the life. 5.4., The responses of the IT Professionals about the statement “My past experiences have prepared me well for my future” in the Adult Hope Scale (AHS) ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) - 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of the 200 respondents is found to be 6.32 which is more than 4, Which means the IT professional are mentally prepared for any kind of changes in their life and they can face the future changes 5.5., The responses of the IT Professionals about the statement “I have a good sense of where I am headed in my life” in the Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS) ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) - 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of the 200 respondents is found to be 4.29 which is more than 4, Which means the IT professional are conscious about where what is happening and are aware of the futuristic situations and they are more confident in accepting the change. 5.6., The responses of the IT Professionals about the statement “I have plans for making my life more balanced” in the Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS) ranging from 1 (Strongly disagree) - 7(Strongly agree), the weighted average mean of the 200 respondents is found to be 5.19 which is more than 4, Which means the IT professional are pre-planned and are self efficient enough to guide themselves. 5.7., For the set of questions representing Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS), the anova value of 0.43. It reflects that the responses are internally consistent across the questions. 5.8., For the set of questions representing Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS), the anova value of 0.24. It reflects that the responses are internally consistent across the questions. 5.9., For the set of questions representing Adult Hope Scale (AHS)., the anova value of .31. It reflects that the responses are internally consistent across the questions. 35 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 5.10., The computed Chi-Square value taking Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS) and Adult Hope Scale (AHS) variable in to consideration happens to be 3.28 which is less than the critical value 12.81 . Hence it can be concluded that there exists a significant relationship between Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS) and Adult Hope Scale (AHS). 5.11., The computed Chi-Square value taking Adult Hope Scale (AHS) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) variable into consideration happens to be 1.96 which is less than the critical 12.81 . Hence it can be concluded that there exists a significant relationship between Adult Hope Scale (AHS) and Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS). 5.12., The calculated Chi-Square value taking Satisfaction with Life Scale (SLS) and Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS) variable into consideration, is got to be 0.91
which is less than the critical value for the combination of α=.05 and the corresponding degree of freedom (12.81) . Hence it can be concluded that there exists a significant relationship between Adult Hope Scale (AHS) and Personal Growth Initiative Scale (PGIS).
6., Conclusion Throughout the research it has been found efficacy of positive psychological interventions is imperative to increase happiness and life quality of IT professionals. The life satisfaction, well being, personal growth initiative and hope about life, which are at an outset considered to be the critical factors involved in the positive psychology. Hence the practice of positive psychology has much to offer for the wellbeing and optimal functioning of individuals and their societies at all levels, from the person themselves, through the group, community, and organization, to the society and culture as a whole. In being reflective of the assumptions and values on which it rests, positive psychology in practice may be more fully aware of the strengths and limitations of its approach, using this knowledge mindfully in the quest for genuine progress of an individual and scientific discovery.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References Books: Diener E, Lucas R E and Oishi S (2002) subjective wellbeing: the science of happiness and life satisfaction” in C R Synder and S J Lopez (eds), handbook of positive psychology, pp.463-473. Oxford university press, oxford, UK Seligman, M., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An Introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5-14 Pavot, W. & Diener, E. (1993). Review of the Satisfaction with Life Scale. Psychological Assessment, 5, 164-172. Pavot, W. G., Diener, E., Colvin, C. R., & Sandvik, E. (1991). Further validation of the Satisfaction with Life Scale Robitschek, C. (1998). Personal growth initiative: The construct and its measure. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 30, 183-198
Journals: Keyes C L M , shmotkin D and Ryff C D (2002), Optimizing well being: the empirical encounter of two traditions”, journal of personality and social Psychology, Vol 86 no.2, pp 1007-1022 Diener, E., Emmons, R.A., Larson, R.J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The satisfaction with life scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49, 71-75. Bartley, D. F., & Robitschek, C. (2000). Career exploration: A multivariate analysis of predictors. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 56, 63-81. Robitschek, C., & Cook, S. W. (1999). The influence of personal growth initiative and coping styles on career exploration and vocational identity. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54, 127-141. Whittaker, A. E., & Robitschek, C. (2001). Multidimensional family functioning as predictors of personal growth initiative. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 48, 420427.
Worldwide Webs: Positive psychology www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/ppsnyderchapter.htm accessed on 24th December 2010.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION By :- Dinesh Chandra, P.M.Rewatkar, Sweta A. Kahurke, and Vijay D. Rughwani
Abstract Search Engine Optimization is a technique, which can be applied to any website (may be personal, professional or, any type), which may be in index of Google or, not, this is a project which is capable of carrying any website to the top of the Google page. This paper also describes that how it is possible to takes any webpage on the top of the page which are among in this category. This paper is capable of improving the Google Page Rank of the website as well as improving the profit from that website. 46% website sharing and technology is captured by Google, so, we have concentrated our project on Google, so that we can get more competition with respect to other website, and if anyone can get top rank in Google, that can get top in other search engine too. Keywords: Optimization, On page, Off page, Page Rank,link,image
I. INTRODUCTION 90% user visit and satisfy from result of search engine, only 5% user don’t go beyond 2nd page and only 2% user visit beyond 3rd page. Now, suppose your page is after 2nd or, 3rd page, then only a few chances are left for visiting your website and your business going through that website would be negligible.
Fig. 1.SEO Process There are more than 400,000 search engines. Average 300 - 400 million search per day. 81% of 38 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends user visit any website through search engine. Google has 60% market share, 90% in technology industries. 30% of users believe companies found in the top search results are a major brand in their product or service category.
Description Introduction to Search Engine database In the world wide web, there are only three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN), who uses different databases, otherwise, other search engines use same database. Sometimes, even Google and Yahoo uses same databases, too. For example, if we type “Population of Israel” in Google search engine and same text on the Yahoo search engine, then, we can see that the result is same.
Definition of Search Engine An internet based tool that searches an index of document for a particular term, phrase or, text specified by the user.
WHY SEARCHING IS DONE? Search engines are the most powerful medium to reach the customer, because you meet them at their point of need. 90 % of web sessions begin with a search. 81 % of users find web sites they were looking for through search engines.
Anatomy of Search Engine In any search engine, there are three parts. a. Search Box –In this portion user enters the query whatever user want to search in the web or, in his/her own country also. b. Sponsored Listing – These are the links which are provided by the some sponsored websites related to user query; all these links are from payable sites. c. Matching the users query, arranged according to their best matching keywords.
II. GOOGLE PAGE RANK Google page rank shows the popularity of that particular link or, any website. If the page rank is much better than, any one consider that the particular website which has improved page rank will give more optimized result or, he will succeed in his / her marketing strategy, he can sell whatever he want to sell. Suppose there are two websites A & B, the website A votes for B, and in the same way website B votes for A, more no. of votes for the webpage, more the page rank will be for 39 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends that particular website. In other words, we can say that if there are 100 webpage connected to webpage A and there are 500 WebPages linked to the website B then, the page rank of website B will be better.
III Calculation of Page Rank
Fig 2 SEO Ranking Process Page Rank extends this idea by not counting links from all pages equally, and by normalizing by the number of links on a page. Page Rank is defined as follows: We assume page A has pages T1...Tn which point to it (i.e., are citations). The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. We usually set d to 0.85. There are more details about d in the next section. Also C(A) is defined as the number of links going out of page A. The Page Rank of a page A is given as follows: PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)) Note that the Page Ranks form a probability distribution over web pages, so the sum of all web pages' Page Ranks will be one. Page Rank or PR(A) can be calculated using a simple iterative algorithm, and corresponds to the principal eigenvector of the normalized link matrix of the web. Also, a Page Rank for 26 million web pages can be computed in a few hours on a medium size workstation.
IV Google Architecture Overview Google Architecture Description Most of Google is implemented in C or C++ for efficiency and can run in either Solaris or Linux. Google, the web crawling (downloading of web pages) is done by several distributed crawlers. There is a URL server that sends lists of URLs to be fetched to the crawlers. The web pages that are fetched are then sent to the store server. The store server then compresses and stores the web pages into a repository. Every web page has an 40 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends associated ID number called a doc ID which is assigned whenever a new URL is parsed out of a web page. The indexing function is performed by the indexer and the sorter. The indexer performs a number of functions. It reads the repository, uncompresses the documents, and parses them. Each document is converted into a set of word occurrences called hits. The hits record the word, position in document, an approximation of font size, and capitalization. The indexer performs a number of functions. It reads the repository, uncompresses the documents, and parses them. Each document is converted into a set of word occurrences called hits. The hits record the word, position in document, an approximation of font size, and capitalization. The indexer distributes these hits into a set of "barrels", creating a partially sorted forward index. The indexer performs another important function. It parses out all the links in every web page and stores important information about them in an anchors file. This file contains enough information to determine where each link points from and to, and the text of the link. The URL resolver reads the anchors file and converts relative URLs into absolute URLs and in turn into doc IDs. It puts the anchor text into the forward index, associated with the doc ID that the anchor points to. It also generates a database of links which are pairs of doc IDs. The links database is used to compute Page Ranks for all the documents.
Crawling the Web Running a web crawler is a challenging task. There are tricky performance and reliability issues and even more importantly, there are social issues. Crawling is the most fragile application since it involves interacting with hundreds of thousands of web servers and various name servers which are all beyond the control of the system. In order to scale to hundreds of millions of web pages, Google has a fast distributed crawling system. A single URL server serves lists of URLs to a number of crawlers (we typically ran about 3). Both the URLserver and the crawlers are implemented in Python. Each crawler keeps roughly 300 connections open at once. This is necessary to retrieve web pages at a fast enough pace. At peak speeds, the system can crawl over 100 web pages per second using four crawlers. This amounts to roughly 600K per second of data. A major performance stress is DNS lookup. Each crawler maintains a its own DNS cache so it does not need to do a DNS lookup before crawling each document. Each of the hundreds of connections can be in a number of different states: looking up DNS, connecting to host, sending request, and receiving response. These factors make the crawler a complex component of the system. It uses asynchronous IO to manage events, and a number of queues to move page fetches from state to state. It turns out that running a crawler which connects to more than half a million servers, and generates tens of millions of log entries generates a fair amount of email and phone calls. Because of the vast number of people coming on line, there are always those who do not know what a crawler is, because this is the first one they have seen. Almost daily, we receive an email something like, "Wow, you looked at a lot of pages from my web site. How did you like it?" There are also some people who do not know about the robot exclusion protocol, and think their page should be protected from indexing by a statement like, "This page is copyrighted and should not be indexed", which needless to say is difficult for web crawlers to understand. Also, because of the huge amount of data involved, unexpected things will happen. For example, our system tried to crawl an online game. This resulted in lots of garbage messages in the middle of 41 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends their game! It turns out this was an easy problem to fix. But this problem had not come up until we had downloaded tens of millions of pages. Because of the immense variation in web pages and servers, it is virtually impossible to test a crawler without running it on large part of the Internet. Invariably, there are hundreds of obscure problems which may only occur on one page out of the whole web and cause the crawler to crash, or worse, cause unpredictable or incorrect behavior. Systems which access large parts of the Internet need to be designed to be very robust and carefully tested. Since large complex systems such as crawlers will invariably cause problems, there needs to be significant resources devoted to reading the email and solving these problems as they come up.
V Optimization Technique
Fig. 3 Optimization Techniques
VI On Page Optimization Technique Getting a good ranking in a search engine hasn’t been the easiest thing for many. Search engines are getting more smarter & intelligent everyday, so now it takes more than just good content to top your competitors. On page optimization is one of the very first step of SEO which every webmaster should look into. It probably won’t even take you an hour to learn and implement some of these on-page optimization techniques. But you may ask me, why it is so important? – Well literally speaking, if you can do proper onpage optimization for your website you can not only rank well in a search engine but also can increase the overall readability of your website for your visitors. Below I have tried to summarize some of the most important on-page optimization techniques for you. You can implement some of these if not all to give your site a better exposure to the search engines as well as to increase your overall CTR (Click-Through-Rate) ratio. a. Title Optimization 42 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends A site’s title tag is by far the most important on-page optimization element. A title tag should be short but descriptive enough for your visitors to identify you and your business. Title tag is the first thing that is shown & indexed by the search engines. So naturally it is given a very high importance – out of thousands results that a searcher sees, your site’s title has to be appealing enough for him to want to find out more information. On the other hand, your title has to be appealing enough to the search engine in order to rank you above thousands of other similar websites like yours. b. Meta Tags Optimization
A site’s Meta tags may not be as important as it used to be before, however I feel that Meta Description is something you can’t just ignore. A site’s Meta description should contain a brief description of your website focusing on the areas and services that your business is specialized in. This small piece of text can be considered as a selling snippet, if a searcher finds it appealing he is likely to click and go inside your page to find out more information. But if your Meta Description is too generic and isn’t written too well then there is a good chance that your site will simply be ignored. c. Important HTML Tags
It is necessary for you to highlight certain parts of your website that you want your readers to look at. There are several tags in html which allows you to do so. For instance – the header tags [h1] [h2] [h3], Bold [strong], Italic [em] etc. The text inside your header tags (e.g. [h1]) is given very high importance by the search engine. Usually you can use them to define the page/post titles or the important sections of your website. d. Keyword Optimization & Synonyms
Your site’s content needs to be optimized in such a way that it can suit both search engines & your readers. Stuffing your site with too many keywords can make your site unreadable. So you will need to have some sort of balance between your keywords & your content. e. Link Optimization
It is important to optimize your internal & external outbound links for search engines as well as to give your visitors a better navigation. f. Image Optimization
If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning. 43 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends VII. off Page Optimization When you consider the type of optimization techniques to use you must consider 2 factors: give the search engines what they need and give your web site visitors the information they need. The major search engines display 2 types of results on the SERP (search engine results page) as a result of a user search query: paid advertisements and natural non-paid listings. Web sites can utilize one or both of these methods to acquire top listing positions. The paid advertisement exists on the results page due to an agreement by the advertiser to pay the search engine when a user clicks on their ad. The natural listing depends on the optimization techniques employed on the web site. This article will focus only on the natural listing. Each search engine has their own algorithm to determine which web sites meet their requirements and therefore obtain the higher SERP natural listing positions (or ranks) for a given keyword or keyword phrase in a user search query. There are a large number of on-page optimization factors that are considered in the search engine evaluation process. These factors include but are not limited to: words in the web page url, title tag, meta tags, headlines, sub headlines, keyword density, words at the beginning of the page, page content, words that are bold, words in the links, site navigation, the structure of links and a number of other considerations. You want to make certain that you do not over optimize your web site and have the search engines consider your site spammed. There are also a number of things you can do "off your web page" to improve your search engine page rank and increase targeted visitor traffic to your web site. This is the area known as off-page optimization. Off-page factors should be carefully considered and implemented to achieve a higher search engine ranking. These factors are primarily tied to the site's linking (inbound and outbound) techniques. This is commonly known as link popularity. How popular are the web sites that link to you and the sites you link to? Are the inbound links to you relevant to your site's content? How popular is your web site? Each link to your web site from another web site (i.e., back link) is considered a "vote" to your site's popularity. These votes can increase the importance of your web site from the search engine's prospective. Some of the factors considered by the major search engines in evaluating the off-page optimization of your web site include: * Which web sites are linking to your site? It's critical that the web sites linking to your site are relevant to the content on your site and the linking site is considered an authority in its field by the search engine. * How many web sites are linking to your site? The number of relevant sites that link to you is a significant plus for your site.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends * What is the Google page rank (1-10) of each web site that links to your site? This is a major factor because a high page rank relevant site linking to your site is much better than a low page rank site. A site's voting power increases as the page rank of the site increases. * What is the anchor text of each link to your site? The anchor text indicates the area of relevance the linking site places on your site. This anchor text should include your primary keywords. The text in the linking anchor text should not be the same in every site linking to your site. This is not seen as natural linking by the search engines. You need to get variability in the anchor text. * What is the page title of the web page that is linking to your site? It is better if the title page of the linking web page is relevant to your site and contains one of your keywords in its title. If it just says "link directory" then that is not good. * Is the link to your site a reciprocal link or a one-way link? A reciprocal link means you have linked back to the web site that linked to you. This can be a negative to your site because you lose some of your site's page rank to the other site. If you do resort to reciprocal links, make certain the page rank of the other site is the same or higher that the page rank of your linking page. The one- way link to your site is a much better deal because you do not lose any of your site's page rank. * How many inbound and outbound links are on the web page linking to your site? The page rank of the site linking to you is influenced by the inbound and outbound links. The linking site will pass you more of its rank as it decreases the number of outbound links. * How important is the web site that is linking to your site in its area of relevance? You will get more bangs for your buck if the site linking to you is considered an authority in its area. In conclusion, you need to evaluate and utilize some of the factors in both on-page and off-page optimization if you want to achieve high natural page listing on the search engines. searchengineoptimization family/ Our project can be visited on sites.google.com/site/ Cached
VIII. SEO Impact Percentage S. No.
Ranking Factor
Impact %
1.
Keyword Focused Anchor Text from External Links
73%
2.
External Link Popularity
71%
3.
Diversity of Link Sources
67%
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 4.
Keyword Use Anywhere in the Title Tag
66%
5.
Trustworthiness of the Domain Based on Link Distance from Trusted Domains
66%
Table I IMPACT OF VARIOUS FACTORS REGARDING SEO POINT OF VIEW
IX. Factors for SEO Ranking
24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page 20% Anchor Text of External Links to the Page 15% On-Page Keyword Usage 7% Visitor/Traffic & Click-Through Data 6% Social Graph Metrics 5% Registration & Hosting Data
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References Brian Pinkerton. "Finding What People Want: Experiences with the WebCrawler" (PDF). The Second International WWW Conference Chicago, USA, October 17– 20, 1994. http://www.webir.org/resources/phd/pinkerton_2000.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-07. Danny Sullivan (June 14, 2004). "Who Invented the Term "Search Engine Optimization"?". Search Engine Watch. http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=2119&postcount=10. Retrieved 2007-05-14. See Google groups thread. Cory Doctorow (August 26, 2001). "Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven strawmen of the meta-utopia". e-LearningGuru. http://www.elearningguru.com/articles/metacrap.htm. Retrieved 2007-05-08. Pringle, G., Allison, L., and Dowe, D. (April 1998). "What is a tall poppy among web pages?". Proc. 7th Int. World Wide Web Conference. http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tilde/InterNet/Search/1998_WWW7.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08. Brin, Sergey and Page, Larry (1998). "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Proceedings of the seventh international conference on World Wide Web. pp. 107–117. http://wwwdb.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html. Retrieved 2007-05-08. Thompson, Bill (December 19, 2003). "Is Google good for you?". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3334531.stm. Retrieved 2007-05-16. Zoltan Gyongyi and Hector Garcia-Molina (2005). "Link Spam Alliances" (PDF). Proceedings of the 31st VLDB Conference, Trondheim, Norway. http://infolab.stanford.edu/~zoltan/publications/gyongyi2005link.pdf. Retrieved 2007-05-09. Hansell, Saul (June 3, 2007). "Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/business/yourmoney/03google.html. Retrieved 2007-06-06. "Search Engine Ranking Factors V2". SEOmoz.org. April 2, 2007. http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors. Retrieved 2007-05-14. Christine Churchill (November 23, 2005). "Understanding Search Engine Patents". Search Engine Watch. http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3564261. Retrieved 200705-08. "Google Personalized Search Leaves Google Labs - Search Engine Watch (SEW)". searchenginewatch.com. http://searchenginewatch.com/3563036. Retrieved 2009-09-05. "Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?". www.webpronews.com. http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/11/17/seo-about-to-get-turned-on-itsear. Retrieved 2009-09-05. "8 Things We Learned About Google PageRank". www.searchenginejournal.com. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/8-things-we-learned-about-googlepagerank/5897/. Retrieved 2009-08-17. 47 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends "PageRank sculpting". Matt Cutts. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pageranksculpting/. Retrieved 2010-01-12.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON WEP and WPA in IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi) By :- D.M. Gharge, S. V. Halse
Abstract Wireless networking provides many advantages, but it also coupled with new security threats and alters the organization’s overall information security risk profile. A wireless network transmits signals over radio waves and there is a possibility or a certainty in most cases that attempts to capture signals and hack your network will be made. To protect your wireless network from such attacks, you need to install wireless security standards like WEP, WPA or WPA2. They encrypt the data transmitted on the network and ensure that nefarious schemes of hackers don't work! In this paper I am compared a WEP and WPA on the basis of practical work, which will point out the main differences between the two standards and help you choose between the two. At the end we come with many conclusions and suggestions that will help in order to provide better security while deploying Wireless LAN.
Keywords: Wireless Network (802.11), Wireless Security, WEP, WPA, WPA2, RC4, TKIP.
1. Introduction: Since the beginning of wireless telegraphy and radio communication, the threat of data being intercepted and stolen for malicious purposes has always been there. To counter these threats, with the advent of wireless networking, encryption methods were developed to prevent data from being stolen. Cryptology developed as a science to counter these hacking attempts made on wireless transmissions [7]. To protect wireless networks, first the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) technology was developed. However, WEP proved to be inadequate and was easily hacked due to inherent flaws in the encryption methods. WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) was developed as an improvement over WEP for the IEEE 802.11i wireless network standard. As a WPA vs WEP2 comparison would reveal, WPA did succeed where WEP failed. WPA2 is the successor of WPA with even more improved encryption methods. Let us compare WPA and WPA2 according to their encryption methods and overall performance.
2. Security in WLAN This paper describes the different security solutions for IEEE 802.11 standard like WEP, WPA, and WPA2 with their architecture, drawback and explanation of different attacks on these security solutions in detail and how they overcome each other and which one is considered to be best in which environment 49 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 3. WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy) WEP is a first security technique that is used in IEEE 802.11 standards. The main purpose of using the WEP is to provide the security to WLAN like the wired LAN. WEP helps to make the communication secure and provide the secret authentication scheme between AP and the end user which is going to access the WLAN. Basically WEP implemented on initial Wi-Fi networks so that the user can not access the network without the correct key. WEP uses symmetric key encryption that ranges from 64 to 128 bit long encryption key. Usually, the same encrypted key is used for all the nodes in the network and manually forwarded to each node means WEP is unable to provide the key management function. WEP is using the shared key authentication method in which the user needs two things in order to access the WLAN, one is SSID and second is WEP key generated by the AP. The IEEE 802.11 standard defines the three different parameters for the WEP i.e. access control, data privacy and data integrity 3.1 WEP Architecture The IEEE 802.11 standard uses the RC4 encryption algorithm for WEP in order to provide the privacy to Wifi Network because it is easy to implement in software as well as hardware and very cheap in comparison with other encryption algorithm. RC4 is considered to be an initial and reasonable encryption algorithm. The WEP uses the 32 bit cyclic redundancy code (CRC-32) as an integrity algorithm that is generated at the transmitting side. It is generated for each frame of data that is to be transmitted by performing some polynomials calculation, and after that checksum is added with each data frame. At the recipient side similar polynomial calculations are performed on the data frames, if the checksum calculated at the both side is same, than it assumes that data is safe otherwise it is assumed as altered data. WEP used to encrypt the information at transmitting side and decrypt the data at receiving side. 1. Encryption of information at sender side. The following are the steps which take place during the encryption process:
Compute the ICV using CRC-32 over the plaintext. Concatenate the ICV to the plaintext. Choose an Initialization Vector (IV) and concatenate this with the secret key. Input the secret key into the RC4 algorithm to produce a RC4 key stream. Encrypt the
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plaintext by doing a bit-wise XOR with the RC4 key stream to produce the cipher text. Communicate the IV to the peer by placing it in front of the cipher text.
Fig.(01) Encryption process of information at sender side by using WEP technique 2. Decryption of information at receiving side. The following are the steps which take place during the decryption process:
Use transmitted IV and secret key to generate RC4 key stream. XOR cipher text with RC4 key stream to get ICV and plaintext. Check the checksum ICV’ using the data integrity algorithm. If it is the same as the ICV generated from step 2 accept transmitted message otherwise reject it. Hence the message is successfully decrypted and the original message is available at the recipient side. The whole process is clearly defined in the figure 2 below.
Fig. (02) Decryption of process at the recipient side by using the WEP technique
3.2 Flaws in WEP
WEP is considered to be a weak security technique for WLAN now a day. Below are some major reasons due to WEP is unable to provide the security to WLAN, It uses the RC4 stream cipher algorithm for authentication and privacy point of view. The problem is not available with the RC4 algorithm even though it s a ‟
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good encryption algorithm but unfortunately it was not applied correctly for the WEP technique. At every stage of RC4 it is clearly defined not to use the same key material for more than one time, it is not specify that whatever the payload is. RC4 simply performs the XOR operation for the data. Another problem with the RC4 algorithm is that its adding the IV with the WEP pre shared key. If there is lot of traffic available in the wireless networks, there is chance for many packets to drop in between the communication that will require resending. So in WEP for every resend of packet the IV is changed, which only has 224 key spaces. It uses weak authentication algorithm. It uses weak data encapsulation method. Size of IV is very small that is 24 bit long. The use of improper integrity algorithm i.e. CRC-32. Unable to prevent from replay protection.
Lack of mutual authentication and key management. As the previous studies and the current research it is proved that the WEP is failed to provide security to WLANs 3.3 Attacks on WEP WEP is a kind of security protocol that is based on encryption algorithm called "RC4". Its purpose is to provide security to WLAN similar to the security which is provided in the wired LAN. There are few drawbacks in WEP like small RC4 encryption key and also utilization of small IV. Another drawback is to use XOR procedure for cipher key with plain text to create cipher text. This section describes some attacks on WEP.
Brute force attack. Attack against key stream re-uses. Weak IV attacks. Modern attacks.
4. WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) Wi-Fi provides a new technique for wireless security that is WPA in order to solve the problems that is available in initial security solution WEP. WPA has several advantages over WEP that are depicted below.
Overcome with a strong, interoperable and replacement of security flaws of WEP. 52 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Improved data encryption, because WEP has very weak data encryption method.
Strong user authentication, which is also not available in WEP. There are many of attack relates to static key, so WPA minimize shared secret key in accordance with the frame transmission.
WPA uses a secured and complex encryption hashing function for the ICV algorithm that works in a passion that it shared the secret key between user and AP.
Use the RC4 algorithm in a proper way and provide fast transfer of the data before someone can decrypt the data.
WPA avoids the repetitions by using of larger IVs. WPA is an intelligent security solution then the WEP and work in a passion that it transfers the WEP key by using the TKIP encryption mechanism as fast as possible before somebody decrypts the key. When this technique is correctly configured then the automatically data confidentiality is available to all the authorized users that are connected to the wifi network. On the other hand all the components used in WPA are considered to be subset of 802.11i extension and all the components of WPA is backward compatible with 802.11i devices. 4.1 Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) A new data encryption and integrity methods are developed by the 802.11i i.e. TKIP because the WEP has many flaws. TKIP has the two basic goals first to get clear from the problems that are available with WEP and secondly it also performs as legacy hardware this is because of why almost all the encryption algorithm of the WEP is implemented on hardware point of view. Basically the TKIP is cipher suite and known as a secure encryption algorithm in comparison with the WEP encryption algorithm, TKIP provide the best solution and suggest to use the different base WEP key for the every packet in order to solve the Problem available in the WEP encryption i.e. the reuse of RC4 key more than one time and usage of some weak RC4 keys. Mainly TKIP consists of three basic protocols.
A cryptographic message integrity algorithm. A key mixing algorithm Extension of initialization vector according to size TKIP cryptographic algorithm is avoiding the problem that is available in WEP i.e. to generate the separate key for each packet rather than only one key for all packets in WEP technique. The hashing algorithm is avoiding the alteration of packets in the medium. TKIP also solve the drawback available in IVs by increasing the size of IV which will 53 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends help in order to solve the problems by using a longer packet counter and avoid the replay protection. 4.2 WPA Architecture The main goal of WPA is to provide the more complex encryption method and authentication by using the TKIP with the help of MIC. The purpose of MIC is to prevent from the attacks of bit flipping also known as the alteration of message that can be easily performed in the WEP hashing technique. The architecture of WPA is shown in the following fig. (03). 1. Encryption of information at sender side. The following are the steps which take place during the encryption process:
The key mixing function accepts the initialization vector (IV), Destination Address
(DA) and the Data encryption key as the input. It calculates the per-packet encryption key. The Michael algorithm accepts the Source Address (SA), Destination Address (DA), Data and the Data encryption key as the input to produce MIC as the output. The ICV is calculated using the CRC-32 checksum. The per-packet encryption key and the IV are input to the PRNG to generate a Key stream which has the same length as the combined length of Data, MIC and ICV. These are XORed to produce the encrypted Data. The IV is added to the encrypted data along with Extended IV fields, and the result is encapsulated with 802.11 header and trailer
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Fig (03). Encryption process of WPA
2. Decryption of information at sender side. The following are the steps which take place during the decryption process:
The key mixing function accepts the initialization vector (IV), Destination Address (DA) and the Data encryption key as the input from the encrypted data. It calculates the per packet encryption key. The IV value is obtained from the IV and the Extended IV fields The per-packet encryption key and the IV are input to the PRNG to generate a Key stream which has the same length as the combined length of Data, MIC and ICV. The ICV is calculated using the CRC-32 checksum. The Key stream is XORed with the encrypted Data, MIC and ICV to output the unencrypted Data, MIC and ICV. The ICV is calculated and compared to the value of the unencrypted ICV. If the ICV values do not match, the data is discarded. The DA, SA, data, and the data integrity key are input into the Michael integrity algorithm to produce the MIC. The calculated value of the MIC is compared to the value of the unencrypted MIC. If the MIC values do not match, the data is discarded otherwise the data is accepted.
Fig (04). Decryption process of WPA
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Flaws in WPA WPA provides the drawback with the use of Pre-shared Keys (PSKs) that is considered to be a substitute authentication device for small business and home client that do not need to use the individual authentication server and entire 802.1 x key architecture. Anybody is having little understanding of the PSK can conclude some PTK in the ESS during passive sniffing of the wireless network, by eavesdrop for all those necessary key that exchange data frames.
WPA tools are using handshake process for interchanging the data encryption keys for the wireless session between the access point and the end user, attacker who do not know the PSK can make a guess that is known as dictionary attack or bruit force attack. PSK is supplied in the standard to make simpler deployments in small and less hazard networks. The hazard of using the PSK against internal attacks is comparatively as worst as WEP and hazard of using the passphrase based PSKs against external attacks is greater than WEP.
4.3 Attacks on WPA It is necessary for every attacker to first capture the data traffic of the network until and unless attacker founds the encrypted ARP request or response. In some cases these types of packets can easily be recognized by the attacker depends upon the length of characteristic. On the other hand WEP and TKIP are unable to protect the source and destination addresses and always sent these addresses to broadcast address of the network. In this case the hacker knows overall of the plaintext excluding the last eight bits of source and destination IP address, 64 bits of the MIC code known as MICHAEL and 32 bits of ICV. The last portion of the plaintext is the combination of MIC and ICV that is 12 bytes long.
Firstly, if the end user received the packet having invalid ICV, network assumes that mistake as a transmission error and in result that packet is rejected. Secondly, if the MIC code is incorrect then network think it as an attack, no matter ICV value is correct and the AP is informed by exchanging MIC failure report frame from the client side.
If a packet is successfully received at the end user side, a Temporal sequence counter (TSC) is checked if the TSC number is lower than the current counter received (the received packet is assumes as out of order and simply it is rejected). Following table shows the difference between WEP, WPA and WPA2. Cipher
WEP RC4
WPA RC4
WPA2 AES
Key Size
40-bits
128-bits encryption
64-bits Authentication 128-bits 56 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends IV Packet Key Data Integrity Header Integrity Replay Attack
24-bit Concatenated CRC-32 -
48-bit TKIP Michael Michael IV Sequence
48-bit CCM CCM IV Sequence
Conclusion: Wireless security has undergone major changes in the past few years. WEP, the original security standard, is widely considered as broken. Hence, Wi-Fi Alliance along with the major network equipment manufacturing companies is working to develop a new level of security standards. WPA is an interim solution to the WEP vulnerability. WPA is generally believed as a major security improvement in wireless environment. WPA supports existing wireless infrastructure. The transition from WEP to WPA has been made possible through a software or firmware up-gradation. This was expected to provide a robust security for wireless environment in the future. In wireless security WPA only supports TKIP encryption while WPA2 supports AES. However, due to more complex and computation intensive authentication and encryption protocols, WPA becomes difficult to implement. A considerable amount of research is being made to come up with new wireless security protocols like WPA2 in order to overcome the limitations of WPA.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References Graham, E., Steinbart, P.J. (2006) Wireless Security Hardjono, Thomas & Dondeti, Lakshminath R. 2005. Security in Wireless LANs and MANs. Artech House, Incorporated. Benny Bing & TK tin. 2003. The worldwide wifi technological trends and business strategies. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken New Jersey AvHarold F. Tipton & Micki Krause. 2009. Information security management handbook. Auerbach Publications. Arinze Nwabude. 2008. Wireless local area network (WLAN): security risk and counter measures. Blekinge Institute of Technology. Wi-Fi Protected Access: Strong, Standard based, interoperable security for today s Wi-Fi networks. Retrieved june 28 2005. Online available http://www.wifialliance.com/opensection/pdf/whitepaper_Wi-Fi_Security4-2903.pdf ‟
ISS Technical Paper Internet Security System, Wireless LAN Security 802.11b and Corporate Network. Barfiled Road, Atlanta. F. Cao & S. Malik, 2005. Security Analysis and Solutions for Deploying IP Telephony in the Critical Infrastructure, Critical Infrastructure Assurance Group Cisco Systems, Inc. Patrick C.K & M. Vargas. 2006. Security Issues in VOIP Applications. Hung University of Ontario Institute of Technology Oshawa, Canada. Joon S.Park & Derrick Dicoi. 2003. WLAN Security: Current and Future „Wireless LAN deployment improves users mobility, but it also brings a range of security issues that affect emerging standards and related technologies. IEEE computer society. ‟
Nguyen The Anh & Rajee Shorey. 2005. Network sniffing tool for WLANs: Merits and Limitations. IEEE Computer Society
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends e-CRM: A Driving Force for Making Online Education and Training by Technical Institutes - “A Self- Service Activity” By :- Sharat Kaushik, Manpreet Kaur and Neeraj Chopra
ABSTARCT e-CRM stands for Electronic Customer Relationship Management, concerned with managing relationships with customers using IT enabled services. Online Education and Training is valued added service which improves the scope of e-CRM and it makes online education and training of various Technical Institutes - A Self-Service Activity. The purpose of this paper is to capture the full picture of online education and training as a self service activity due to e-CRM and its components which includes intranet and extranets. This study is aimed at strengthening the scope of e-CRM as a tool to build an effective relationship between trainers and trainees. The underlying thought is that Technical Institutes realize that they can effectively impart education and training by acknowledging different groups of tra inees that vary widely in their behavior and requirements. Key Words: eCRM, Education, Training, Self Service Activity, Trainee, Learner.
Introduction Every year lakhs of students nationwide explore for the desired universities for highereducation and the administrators of technical institutes make budgets and guess about how many would apply for their campus. As the number of universities grows nationwide, Higher-education institutions need to successfully recruit, inform, service and retain students to be competitive in a market where the competition from other institutions is intense. The Universities have come to realize that they will have to compete far more aggressively than they have in past to recruit and train students. Also, a very stiff competition from the international market is forcing the universities in India to turn to CRM to compete efficiently. The students are being attracted not only to foreign universities and but their collaborative ventures in India. Currently there are 213 UGC approved universities in India. The endeavor of Universities in this context is restricted by the limited funds so they have to find out more efficient ways to deliver the most with the least. Keeping in view the same the universities have been investing in IT infrastructure so that CRM can work effectively and hence eCRM. The automation of the education & training by a Technical Institution is distinguishing indicator of eCRM. There is a fundamental difference between the business industry and the sector of higher education where the students are not customers but learners / trainees. So, a greater challenge for the universities is to allocate initial investment for eCRM and also a deeper understanding of the contemporary eCRM practices in the field of higher education. 59 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends CRM (Customer Relationship Management) focuses on management of relationship with customers. eCRM being a subset of Customer Relationship management employs electronic means for managing relationship with customers. According to Furash, 1999 and Ab Hamid & Kassim, 2004 interactivity and the ability to capture useful information via Internet technology have spurred interest in the feasibility of streamlining information provided, forecasting customer’s needs, understanding preferences, delivering personalized services and enabling customization. It is being accepted as the process of following students from prospect to alumni and supporting them all the way. eCRM is a driving force for making Online Education and Training a Self Service Activity. Online Education and Training is a catch all term that covers a wide range of instructional material that can be delivered on the Internet. The online education and training empowers the University to deliver training & critical information to its wide spread student base across different time zones ensuring as a self service activity. This paper is focused on studying the current eCRM practices adopted for online education and training by various universities in India. For the purpose of study Universities have been studied as Technical Institutions and the students as customers or trainees. The universities are using eCRM to gain attention, acquire, understand, deliver value and improve by training and retain the students. This paper focuses on studying the effective usage of eCRM for value generation and creation of environment for delivering education and training as a Self Service Activity.
Managing Institutes and Trainee Relationship in Internet Environment Relationship marketing refers to broader organizational efforts involving personnel across organizations (Zineldin,2000), directed towards establishing, developing and maintaining customer loyalty and stimulating repeat purchase over time (Foster & Cadogan, 2000). It embraces the idea of treating each customer in an individualized way; delivering individualized products/services to each and every customer (one-to-one marketing) (Moon, 1999). This research paper focuses on e-CRM which is one of the aspect of CRM opted by different technical institutes offering different technical courses for trainee of different categories as a Self Service Activity. The portal of technical institutes is a strong Front End tools for the trainee, which they can access via internet to collect information about the different technical courses being offered and the online mode of doing these courses. Internet-based services continue to grow in importance in the technical institutes to trainee environment. From a student perspective, Internet based services significantly reduce the cost for searching appropriate institute, provide wider selection, education services at lower prices, customized course contents with convenience as the main element. The Indira Gandhi National Open University is one of the best examples of the Online Training and Education and the university had started a virtual campus concept for the students and it has been widely acceptance by the students nationwide.
Objectives of the Study 60 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends The objectives of this study are: 1. To study any time and any where concept of learning by trainees making online education and training a Self Service Activity. 2. To arrive at the value chain model of E-learning systems of virtual campus for delivering education and training as a Self Service Activity.
Hypothesis and Model Development This study gives a new dimension to e-CRM which is called Self Service Activity and also known as E-learning system opted by different technical institutes and the quality of the user interface and navigation speed may reduce trainee efforts to fulfill their requirements of higher education. This study also highlights numerous activities such as Virtual Campus and EduNxt etc which comprises online education system of different universities and improves trainee and trainer relationship and thereby improves relationship of trainee with technical institutes. This next generation interactive study environment is normally used by those universities which offer distance education courses for the trainee who are employed but want to pursue higher education to enhance their qualification for their promotions. Previous studies made in the context of e-CRM only highlight the improvement of relationship with customers from business perspective but this study gives e-CRM a new facet of A Self Service Activity for the learner / trainee for pursuing higher education and thereby generating value for the business of technical institutes and indicates a revolutionary change in the study pattern of students i.e. any time and any where study.
Model of e-CRM as Self Service Activity 61 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Framework of e-CRM as Self Service Activity based on the student initiative for ELearning
In the academic sector, the e-CRM is gaining popularity day by day through the usage of E-Learning system. E-Learning consists of all types of electronically learning and teaching where the base is computer network. E-Learning application and process comprises of Web based learning, Computer-based learning, Virtual Class room arrangements and digital collaborations. In this, content is delivered to trainees via the Internet, intranet or extranet, audio or video tapes, satellite TV etc. It can be self-driven or trainer-driven and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio. Developments in the field of networking and multimedia technologies are the primary enablers of this open learning system and making it a self service activity. Many higher education universities and institutes are moving rapidly towards online education and training system for the sake of profits as well as to serve society with skilled people. The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) took a remarkable initiative in the area of online education and training by creating virtual campus facility for students of its technology courses like BIT (Bachelor of Information Technology) and ADIT (Advanced Diploma in Information Technology) which helps the university in targeting more students in the market and develop a cordial relationship with them. The objectives of a virtual campus are to improve access to advanced educational experiences 62 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends by allowing students and instructors to participate in remote learning communities using personal computers; and to improve the quality and effectiveness of education by using the computer to support a collaborative learning process.
The Trainer modes for Online Education and Training are: Online Education and Training using the Internet is also called Virtual Education or ELearning where the course is not taught in a traditional face to face classroom but through computer network based learning mode. 1. Virtual Classroom: It is an interactive learning environment to improve access to advanced educational experiences by allowing trainees and trainers to participate in remote learning using computer networks. 2. Hypertext Courses: In these courses all material is provided electronically and can be viewed with a browser where hyperlinks connect text, multimedia images and exercises in a meaningful manner. 3. Video-based Courses: In this video streamlining technology is used to deliver recorded lectures of the instructors or trainers for trainees. 4. Audio-based Courses: In this only sound track of the trainer is given to trainee for the sake of lecture delivery. 5. Web-supported textbook Courses: These courses are based on specific textbooks where students read and reflect chapters by themselves. Review questions, topics for discussion, exercises, case studies, etc. are given chapterwise on a website and discussed with the lecturer. Class meetings may be held to discuss matters in a chat-room. 6. Animated Courses: It gives an enriched experience of learning to trainees by animated movies or Power Point slides which provides gives retention of learning to students.
Research Methodology The study was conducted by collecting secondary data to address the research objectives. For the purpose of research objectives web sites of different universities were studied namely IGNOU, SMU, GOA University, MDU Rohtak, GJU Hisar, etc. The study surveyed 10 different websites of national and international universities which gave a comprehensive view of the E-Learning systems being used world wide. This comprehensive view of E-Learning system divides the E-Learning pattern of the universities in to two broad categories: 63 | P a g e
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Synchronous mode of E-Learning System: It involves the exchange of ideas and information with one or more participants during the same period of time and it is also called as Full-supported E-Learning system. These activities occur with all participants joining at once with an online virtual class room facility.
Asynchronous mode of E-Learning System: In this pattern of E-Learning system, participants may engage in the exchange of ideas and information without dependency of the other participant involvement at the same time. It is also called as Partial-Supported E-Learning system.
The sample has been drawn by adopting stratified sampling and selecting the websites randomly from above mentioned different categories of websites. The websites selected in the survey for the study purpose is optimal mix of both the categories.
Findings
Some of the universities Nation-wide have started recognizing the needs of E-learning system for better management of trainee and trainer relationship for increasing business share and market opportunities. They had developed functional competencies along with the leadership. For example IGNOU. This university is into distance education and now they have combined the distance education facility with more enriched experience of virtual campus. This would give rich learning experience to a student targeting a distance education course and encourages a two way communication between trainee and trainer. It also falls into the category of Self Service Activity because the trainee has to log-in to the system time to time for the knowledge gain.
Some of the universities Nation-wide have entered in to the E-learning system partially and they are giving facility of online enrollment, downloading of study materials and video lectures from their web-sites but they are not giving full support of virtual classrooms etc. This would decrease the burden of manual labour of enrollment of students and speed up the system of providing the study material to the students. Here also the study found the self service activity of getting enrolled with the university and downloading the material.
Conclusion The present piece of study leads us to the conclusion that Online Education and Training is the requirement of modern education system. Customer Relationship Management is the need of modern education system as the universities grow in number and their appetite to capture and retain not only domestic but also global students. Online Education and Training have the following advantages:
It offers interactive learning experience for a distance education learner. 64 | P a g e
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It is cost effective training.
Online help can be given to students any time and any where through services such as e-counseling, online registration, online examination etc.
Mix and Match of Audio and Video learning enrich learner experience and give him better retention of learning.
Speed-up communication between universities and trainees.
Ease of handling the student information by universities.
Collaborative mode of learning gives in-depth learning to trainees.
Customized course can be offered to the trainees.
All these activities mentioned above are based on the initiative of the trainee and so we call it as Self-Service Activity. Based on the study, a value chain model of E-Learning as self service activity is suggested.
This above pictures highlights the various functions of E-Learning system which includes: 1. Inbound logistics: Here, the Electronic Data Interchange methods E-learning system is given place. The students are give Login-Ids and passwords for security purpose. 2. Operations: It deals with Computed Aided or Electronic Aided methods of ELearning which includes Chatting, access to e-resources, Video conferencing and on-line Tutorials etc. 3. Outbound Logistics: It deals with automated process of E-Learning System and relates to accessibility any where and anytime. 65 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 4. Sales and Marketing: It deals with tie-ups with various industry and academic exports for lecture and notes delivery which creates a positive picture of university in the minds of learner and thereby helps in increasing the business and gaining strategic advantages. 5. Service: It deals with error free and timely online delivery of lectures, material, examination schedules, assignments, evaluation and result to the learner. eCRM certainly is an invaluable tool for the universities aiming to expand their domestic as well as global share in the field of online education and training. The education system based on E-learning are so designed to motivate the learner / trainee and enrich the learning experience in distance education mode as a Self Service activity. The availability of and the ability to use the net infrastructure by the learner / trainee may be the deciding factor of the success of online education and training services. So, this study further enhances the scope of studying the factors affecting the success and effectiveness of Online education and training which otherwise seems to be a very promising mode of education in the future.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References: Anton, J. 1996. Customer relationship management, Prentice Hall, New York. Anton, J., Hoeck, M. 2002. e-business customer service, the Anton Press, Santa, Monica, CA. Ab Hamid & Kassim, 2004 Evaluating the adoption level of electronic customer relationship management by telecommunication companies
Chandra, Satish, & Ted J. Strickland (2004) Technological differences between CRM and eCRM, Issues in Information Systems, 5(2), 408-413. C-H Park and Y-G Kim, “A framework for dynamic CRM: linking marketing with information strategy.” Business Process Management Journal vol. 9 no. 5 (2003): 652671. Furash, E. (1999), ``Internet strategy: why banks may be getting it wrong, and how to get it right'', Journal of Retail Banking and Finance, Vol. 14. Foster, Brian D. and John W. Cadogan (2000) “Relationship Selling and Customer Loyalty: An Empirical Investigation Gefen, D. "Customer Loyalty in E-Commerce," 2002. Journal of the Association for Information Systems (3) 27-51. Gabarino, E., Johnson, M.S., 1999. The different roles of satisfaction, trust and commitment in consumer relationship. Journal of Marketing 63 (2): 70–87 Morais, Shanti A. (2010) eCRM: Striking the Balance Between Business and Privacy Issues Moon(1999), Connection network and optimization of interest metric for one to one marketing Miller, Roger (2002). The Legal and E-Commerce Environment Today (Hardcover ed. T. Coltman, “Why build a customer relationship management capability?” Journal of Strategic Information Systems 16 (2007): 302. Turban et al., Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy, 6th ed. ( John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008), 335.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Zineldin,M(2000) ‘Beyond Relationship Marketing: Technologicalship Marketing’ Journal of financial services marketing vol.5
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends A Case Analysis of Telecom Industry of China and India with Focus on Cellular Subscriber base By :- Sk Samim Ferdows
Abstract: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had carried out a comparative study in 2005 on the status of telecom service sector of India and China. The comparison of performance indicators between two fastest growing telecom markets help to draw strategies for new investment and expansion of telecom networks, tariff and pricing of retail and wholesale services, usage pattern and related capacity requirement etc. The paper earlier published by the Authority was extensively used by policy makers, academicians, investors and service providers etc. The paper had also drawn interest of the media and was also reproduced in reputed journals. The Authority in continuation of its endeavor to provide such benchmark studies is publishing this revised and more extensive comparative study of performance indicators of Indian and Chinese Telecom service sectors. In this study paper financial/ economic indicators and regulatory indicators in China have been compared with the Indian Telecom sector. The inputs for this paper on Chinese telecom companies’ arc taken from Annual reports
Section-1 1.1 Overview of Chinese Telecom Industry: China is now the world's largest telecom market. China has six key telecom service providers viz. China Mobile Group, China Unicorn group, China Telecom group, China Netcom group, China Railcom and China Satcom. AU Chinese telecom companies are state owned. The total Chinese telecom revenues during 2005 were $72.70 billion, representing an increase of 11.8lYcJ over the previous year. During 2005, 100 million new subscribers were added- 38.68 million new fixed line users and 58.60 mobile users. At the end of 2005, there were 740 million phone users mi11ion fixed line users 350 and 390 million mobile users. At the end of 2005, the tele density for fixed line services was 27'Yc) and 30% for mobile services. The total tele density was 57%. At the end of 2005, there were 37.5 million broadband internet users. Net addition during 2005 was 12.63 million users. Short message Services (SMS) remained a major contributor to telecom growth. About 304.65 billion massages were sent, an increase of 40% over the previous year. The total revenue from SMS surpassed 30 billion Yuan (US$ 3.72 billion). Usage of other valueadded services (VAS) like multi message services (MMS), ring tone downloads also 69 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends increased.
1.2 Objectives of the study: The study was undertaken with the following objectives: 1) To analyze the Comparison of subscriber base of China and India and coverage of Telephone services in villages. 2) To measure the growth of telecom revenues in China and India. 3) To measure the growth Comparison of direct employment in China and India. 1.3 Methodology: To compare the growth of coverage of Telephone services in villages and direct employment in China and India I have used Bar Chart. I have also used t-test to measure the significant difference between the subscriber base of China and India. I have done a comparative study and used Bar chart to explore a quick idea about the real picture in China and India. I have taken data from Annual reports of Chinese Telecom companies and TRAI, China Daily and Dept. of Telecommunication of India to make a comparison study and get a valid conclusion.
Section-2 2.1 Comparative Analysis: a) Comparison of Indian and Chinese Telecom industry: The Growth of mobile services in India over the past few years has been phenomenal. Mobile subscribers’ arc growing at a CACI. (of around 85(% since 1999 but fixed link subscribers arc not growing at a similar pace. Now over 4 million mobile subscribers’ arc added every month. On the other hand China has registered a growth h of 16(% in the mobile subscriber base in the year 2005 with monthly addition of 5 million subscribers every month. The Chinese fixed line services registered 12% growth during 2005. The expansion was mainly on the wireless platform and now over 23% of fixed line subscribers are connected through wireless local loop. Indian on the other hand registered an annual growth of 2%.Summary of subscriber base of China and India is given below. Table -2.1 about here
Graph-2.1 about here
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends
Graph-2.2 about here
Broadband Subscriber: The monthly addition of broadband users in China is around 8.5 Lakhs per month against 1.3 lakh in India. Total broadband users in China and India are given in the following table: Table.-2.2 about here
I Year ended 31 st December 2 Year ended 31 st March # March 2006
3 At the Year ending 31 st December 2005 4 At the Year ending 31 st December 2006 5 Total of China Telecom and China Netcom 6 Average of last three month.
b) Coverage of Telephone services in Villages: Telephone service is available in 971X) of villages of China against 89% in India. Comparisons table is given below.
Table.-2.3 about here
c) Telecom Revenue: Total telecom revenue of Chinese telecom companies increased from $ 65 billion to $ 72.70 billion during the calendar year 2005. Telecom revenue in India during 2005-06 was $19.50 bill1on. The comparative statement of growth of telecom revenues is given in the following table:
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Table -2.4 about here Average Revenue per User (ARPU): ARPU in India and Chinese is comparable in CSM pre paid segment but ARPU for post segment in China is much higher. ARPU for CDMA services are also higher in China in comparison to India. ARPU for Basic Telephone Services is higher in India when compared to ARPU for Basic Telephone in China. A comparison of ARPUs is summarized in the following table:
Table -2.5 about here
Graph -2.4 about here
Graph -2.4 about here d) Minutes of Usages per Subscriber of Mobile (MOU): The comparison of usage pattern of mobile cellular services in India and China is In the table below. Usages of cell services arc much higher in India compared to China. Minutes of Usage of GSM and CDMA based cell services in India are 32% and 70% respectively higher when compared to Chinese services. In spite of higher MOU the ARPU in India is lower than China for reason that tariffs in India are lower. 10-For the year ending 31 st December 2005 11 For the year ending 31 st December 2006 12 based on China Telecom and China Netcom 13 based on China Unicom 14 based on China mobile and China Unicom
Table -2. 6 about here A comparison of EBlTDA margins of India and China show that the Chinese companies are able
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends to generate higher rate of EBITDA. The comparison table is given below.
Table -2.7 about here The capital employed per subscriber for the Basic Service is much lower when compared to India. However, capital employed for the cellular segment is lower in India. Higher capacity utilization in the mobile sector could be the reason for lower capital employed in the mobile segment. Details are summarized in the following table:
Table – 2.8 about here Chinese Companies earn higher rate of return on the capital employed than Indian companies. The returns on the capital employed for the previous financial year has declined for both countries. Details have been summarized in the following table:
Table – 2.9 about here The capital investment for expansion/up gradation of telecom networks during 2005-06 by Indian and Chinese companies is given in the following table. The Chinese companies have projected to make investment to the tune of $ 23 billion during 2006. It is expected that investment by Indian companies will also increase by at least 15%.
Table – 2.10 about here Indian mobile market is much more competitive when compared to the Chinese mobile market. Higher competition is also reflective in the lower Indian ARPUs in spite of higher usage of telecom services. The competition level has been compared using HHI Index of China and India is given below:
Table – 2.11 about here The World Information Technology Report 2005 of World Economic Forum has ranked India at 40th position, China at 50 th position in Networked Readiness Index Rankings 2005 in terms of Network Readiness. As this indicates availability of opportunities that could result in greater inflow in the telecom sector in India.
Table – 2.12 about here The picture of India & China is shown in the following diagram.
Graph – 2.6 about here e) Direct Employment in Telecom Sector 73 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Comparison of direct employment is given below:
Table –2. 13 about here
Graph-2. 7 about here China's corporate tax is 33% against 30% in India. The effective tax rates for telecom companies in China were also estimated using actual payout of tax and found that it lies between 18% to 32%. The results are summarized in the following table:
Table –2. 14 about here In China a 3% business tax on telecom revenues is payable against 12.24% payable as service tax in India. The results are summarized in the following table:
Table –2. 15 about here 15 China Mobile’s MOU 16 Based on China Mobile and China Unicom GSM’s MOU 17 Average of all Mobile Operators 18 China Unicom CDMA’s MOU 19 Weighted Average of all network services for the year ending 2005. 20 Average SMS in respect of GSM Cellular service providers for the quarter ending December 2005. 24 Based on BSNL and MTNL. 26 China Telecom’s Capital Employed per Subscriber at the year ending. 27 BSNL’s Capital employed per subscriber at the year ending 28 China Mobile’s Capital employed per Subscriber at the year ending. 29 Average of all mobile operators as per accounting separation reports. 30 China Telecom’s Return on Capital Employed (RoCE) 31 Based on BSNL and MTNL 32 HHI Index 1=Monopoly, 0=Pure Competition and > 0.50=moving towards competition 74 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 33 Networked Readiness Index (NRI) measures the propensity for countries to exploit the opportunities offered by information and communications technology. 34 Effective tax rate means tax payable by the companies under Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) under section 115JB of the Income tax Ac, 1961 or tax payable after taking in to account the benefit of section 801A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (applicability of provisions of “Tax Holidays”)
Table – 2.16 about here The industry carries a burden of high levies *Backbone spectrum charges extra GST – Goods and service Tax **Estimated from spectrum fees & revenue of China Mobile
Table – 2.17 about here Mobile Tariffs in India compared to global Benchmarks.
Average = 0.20
Graph – 2.8 about here Tariffs have fallen further to around 0.01 Levels
Section-3
3.1 Statistical Analysis : Here we want to test the Hypothesis that the Null Hypothesis a) H10: there is no significant difference between the subscriber base of China and India in Cellular Line (Mn). Against the alternative Hypothesis
H11: there is significant difference between the
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends subscriber base of China and India in Cellular Line (Mn).
b) H20: there is no significant difference between the subscriber base of China and India in Fixed Line (Mn). Against the alternative Hypothesis
H21: there is significant difference between the subscriber base of China and India in Fixed Line (M n).
c) H30: there is no significant difference between the subscriber base of India Fixed line and India in Cellular Line (Mn). Against the alternative Hypothesis
H31: there is significant difference between the subscriber base of India Fixed line and India in Cellular
Line (Mn). d) H40: there is no significant difference between the subscriber base China Fixed and China in Cellular Line (Mn).
Against the alternative Hypothesis
H41: there is significant difference between the subscriber base of China Fixed and China in Cellular
Line (Mn).
Paired Samples Statistics Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends CHINA1
207.4000
10
108.6515
34.3586
INDIA1
32.6710
10
11.8984
3.7626
Pair Samples Correlations
CHINA1 & INDIA1
N
Correlation
Sig.
10
.973
.000
Paired Samples Test Differences Mean
CHINA1 INDIA1
Std. Deviation
174.7290
t
df
5.690
9
Std. Error 95% Mean Confidence Interval of the Difference
97.1160
30.7108
Lower
Upper
105.2564
244.2016
Paired Samples Statistics
Pair 1
Mean
N
Std. Deviation
Std. Error Mean
CHINAFXT
207.4000
10
108.6515
34.3586
CHINACEL
20.5850
10
30.7226
9.7154
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Pair 2
INDIAFXT
32.6710
10
11.8984
3.7626
INDIACEL
191.9000
10
153.1538
48.4315
Paired Samples Correlations N
Correlation
Sig.
Pair 1
CHINAFXT & CHINACEL
10
.841
.002
Pair 2
INDIAFXT & INDIACEL
10
.972
.000
Paired Samples Test Paired Differences Mean
Std. Deviation
t
df
Sig. (2tailed)
Std. Error 95% Mean Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower
Upper
Pair 1 CHINAFX 186.8150 TCHINACE L
84.4516
26.7059
126.4020
247.2280
6.995
9
.000
Pair 2 INDIAFXT -159.2290 INDIACEL
141.6154
44.7827
-260.5346
-57.9234
-3.556
9
.006
Section-4 Conclusion: From T-testing the calculated value of t-statistic is greater than tabulated value of tstatistic. Calculated value of t-statistic is 5.690 and tabulated value of t-statistic is 2.101 78 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends at 95% Confidence Interval Therefore H0 is not accepted so there is a significant difference between the subscriber base of China and India. Indian mobile market is much more competitive when compared to the Chinese mobile market. From Table -16 we can conclude that Direct Employment in Telecom sector in China is much higher than that of India. Chinese Telecom companies have employed about 6 lakhs direct employee where as their Indian counterparts have employed about 4.30 lakhs direct employee. Turnover tax on telecom revenues in China is effectively less than that of India. Service Tax GST in China is considerably less than that of India. Mobile Tariffs charges in India are lowest when compared to global Benchmarks. India has to develop a lot to exist the competitive market. India Government has to take new policy & strategy to achieve a great success in the market. Also we found that there is a high correlation between the subscriber base of India Fixed line and India in Cellular and the subscriber base China Fixed and China in Cellular Line.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends References: Bhattacharya, R.N: Environmental Economics: An Indian Perspective, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS (New Delhi) Published in India 2001. Bhalla .A.S and Bifhani.P : Some Global Issues Gujrati .D: Basics of Econometrics, International Editions 1995, by Mc-Graw-Hill Book Co. Rauccher, M (1997), Environment and International Trade, New York: Oxford University Press. www.cygnusindia.com ; Cygenus Business Consulting and Research, Vol.510; Economy & Industry Monitor- West Bengal; October, 2005. Annual reports of Chinese Telecom companies and TRAI. China Daily Dated 14/03/ 2006 and Dept. of Telecommunication of India . www.weforum.org
Appendix: Tables: Table-2.1 Comparison of subscriber base of China and India Fixcd Line (Mn)
Year
China1
Cellular Line (Mn) India 2
I China1
India2
1997
70
14.54
15
0.34
1998
90
17.8
20
0.88
1991
110
21.59
40
1.2
2000
130
26.51
85
1.88
2001
180
32.44
145
3.58
2002
210
37.94
210
6.43
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 2003
263
40.62
269
12.69
2004
312
42.58
335
33.6
2005
350
45.91
390
52.21
2006
359#
46.78
410#
93.04
Source: Notional Bureau of statistics of China, MIl and TRAI
Table-2.2
Particulars
Unit
China3
India 4
Broadband Connection
Mn
10.16 5
1.13
Average Addition per month
Mn
0.85
0.13 6
Source : Annual reports of Chinese Telecom companies and TRAI Table-2.3
No of Villages with telephone services: Particulars
Unit
China
India
Total No of Village in the Country
No
701031
607491
No. of Villages with Telephone Services
No
6890000
539572
97 %
89 %
Percentage coverage
of %
Source: China Daily Dated 14/03/ 2006 and Dept. of Telecommunication of India .
Table-2.4
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Year
China
India
2004-05
65
-
2005.06
72.7
19.5
Growth
11.8 %
14.7 % !
Table-2.5 Average Revenue per User (ARPU) Particulars
China
India
US$ 2004-05
US$ 2005-06 10
2005-06 11
2004-05
ARPU Basic
9.14
8.5412
15
14.5
ARPU MobileCDMA
10.31
9.3113
5.74
5.56
ARPU GSM
9.62
9.4314
8.89
8
ARPU MobileGSM post paid
20.18
19.98
20.34
14
ARPU MobileGSM Prepaid
6.77
5.94
5.25
6
Mobile-
Source: Annual Reports of Chinese Telecom Companies 2005, TRAI.
Table-2.6
Minutes of Usage per subscriber (MOU) Particulars
Unit
China
India
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends US$ Year
US$ 2005-06 10
2004-05
2005-06 11
2004-05
MOU-GSM Total
Minute
297 15
30016
330
300 17
MOU-GSM Pre-paid
Minute
194
214
233
308
MOU-GSM Post-paid
Minute
517
524
599
675
MOU-CDMA Total
Minute
292
27718
NA
470
Source: Annual Reports, TRAI.
Table-2.7
Earnings before Income Tax, Depreciation and A mortization (EBITDA) Margin (%) Particulars
China
India
Year
Dec 04
Dec 05
Mar 05
Mar 06
Basic
53.59
50.48
44.13
41.36
Mobile
49.41
49.85
32.60
31.33
24
Table-2.8
Capital Employed per Subscriber (US $) Particulars
China
India
Year
Dec 04
Dec 05
Mar 04
Mar 05
Basic
169
153 26
362 27
370
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Mobile
152 28
163
167 29
147
Table-2.9
Return on Capital Employed (RoCE) as % Particulars
China Year
India
Dec 04
Dec 05
Mar 05
Mar 06
Basic
14.79
13.25 30
10.92
8.10 31
Mobile
22.87
21.9
7.83
7.42
Table-2.10
Projected Capital expenditure Particulars
China
India
Year
2005
2005-06
Capital Expenditure (US $ Bn)
20
6
Proportion of Revenue (%)
28
31
Table-2.11
Competition Position (HHI Index32) Particulars
China
India
Fiscal Year
2004
2005
2004-05
2005-06
HHI Index in Basic Services
0.58
0.55
0.67
0.58
HHI Index in Mobile Services
0.40
0.36
0.16
0.15
Table -2.12
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends The Networked Readiness Index Rankings (NRI Index33) Country
India
China
Year
2005
2006-07
2005
2006-07
Score
0.23
4.06
- 0.01
3.68
Rank
40
44
50
59
Source: www.weforum.org Table-2.13
Direct Employment in Telecom Sector
Particulars
China
India
Year
Dec 05
March 06
Direct Employment (no.s)
596002
429400
Particulars
China
India
Corporate Tax Rate
33%
30% 34
Effective Tax Rate
18%~32%
11.22~%33.66%
Particulars
China (Business Tax)
India (Service Tax)
Turnover Tax Rate
3%
12.24%
Table-2.14
Corporate Tax
Table-2.15
Turnover Tax on Telecom Services
Table-2.16
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends China
India
Regulatory Charges
% age of revenue
% age of revenue
Service Tax GST
3%
10% + GST
License Fee
Nil
3-10%
Spectrum Charge
-0.5%*(China Mobile)
2 – 6 %**
USO
Nil
Incl in License Fee
Total Regulatory Charges
0.5% + 3% (Tax)
17% - 26% + GST
Source: COAI Pre-Budget Memorandum 2007-08 Table-2.17 Countries
Call Charges per month in US $
Australia
0.24
Brazil
0.11
China
0.04
Switzerland
0.45
Japan
0.33
India
0.03
Source: COAI Pre-Budget Memorandum 2007-08
Graphs : Graph-2.1
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Fixed Line Subscribers In ( Mn) 400
) n M ( s r e b i r c s b u S
350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0
7 8 9 9 1 9 9 1 9 9 2 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 1 r r a r a a a r a r a r a r a r a r a r Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e Y e C hi na
Indi a
Graph-2.2 Subscriber base cellular line in China & India
600 ) n M (
400
e n i L
200 0
Year19 Year19 Year19 Year20 Year20 Year20 Year20 Year20 Year20 Year20
Cellular Line (Mn) China
15
20
40
85
145
210
269
335
390
410
Cellular Line (Mn) India
0.34
0.88
1.2
1.88
3.58
6.43
12.69
33.6
52.21 93.04
Year
Cell ular Line (Mn) China
Cellular Line (Mn) India
Graph-2.3
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Coverage of Villages
800000 600000 400000 200000 0 China
India
Total No of Village in the Country
No. of Villages with Telephone Services
Graph-2.4 Average Revenue Per User 2004-05 25 $ S 20 U n 15 i e u 10 n e v 5 e R
0
ARPU Basic
ARPU MobileCDMA
ARPU ARPU ARPU Mobile-GSM Mobile-GSM Mobile-GSM post paid Prepaid China
India
Graph-2.5
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Average revenue Per User 2005-06 25 $ 20 S U n 15 i e u n e v e r
10 5 0 ARPU Basic
ARPU MobileCDMA
ARPU ARPU ARPU Mobile-GSM Mobile-GSM Mobile-GSM post paid Prepaid China
India
Graph-2.6 Networked Readiness Index Ranking in China & India 70
g n i k n a R d n a e r o c S
60
59
50
50
40
44
40
30 20 10 0
4.06
0.23
3.68
-0.01
-10 2005
2006-07
2005
2006-07
India Score Rank
China
0.23
4.06
-0.01
3.68
40
44
50
59
Score
Rank
Graph-2.7
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends
Direct Employment (no.s)
Direct Employment (no.s), 42% Direct Employment (no.s), 58%
China 5-Dec
India 6-Mar
Graph-2.8
Mobile Tariffs in India compared to global Benchmarks. Call Charges per month in US $ e g r a h C l l a C
0.5
0.45 0.33
0.24 0 Mobile Tariffs in India compared to global Benchmarks. Call
0.11 Australia
Brazil
0.24
0.11
0.04 China Switzerla 0.04
0.45
Japan 0.33
0.03 India 0.03
Country
Mobile Tariffs in India compared t o global Benchmarks. Call Charges per month in US $
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Software Reliability for a Reliable Software System By: - Babita and Naveen Verma
Abstract Now a day’s software problems are the main causes of system failure i.e. both hardware and software failure. There are many consequences of software failures and the most common is due to software reliability. For a reliable and consistent system, very high reliability is expected as the enormous investment and the credibility of the software developer is at stake. Studies have shown that reliability is regarded as one of the most vital attribute by potential customers. Generally all software’s developed will have a significant number of defects, thus programs must be tested and debugged, until sufficiently high reliability is achieved. In order to estimate as well as to predict the reliability of software systems, failure data need to be precisely measured during software development and operational phases. Software Reliability is the probability of failure-free software operation for a specified period of time in a specified environment. Software Reliability is also an important factor affecting system reliability. It differs from hardware reliability in that it reflects the design perfection, rather than manufacturing perfection. The high complexity of software is the major contributing factor of Software Reliability problems. The IEEE defines reliability as "The ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specified period of time." For the project and software development managers, reliability is equated to correctness and precision, that is, they look to testing and the number of "bugs" found and fixed. Finally, we discussed here about software reliability and different types of models, factors and approaches for software reliability..
1. Introduction: Reliability of a software product essentially denotes its trustworthiness or dependability. Alternatively, reliability of a software product can also be defined as the probability of the product working “correctly” over a given period of time. It is obvious that a software product having a large number of defects is unreliable. It is also clear that the reliability of a system improves, if the number of defects in it is reduced. However, there is no simple relationship between the observed system reliability and the number of latent defects in the system. For example, removing errors from parts of software which are rarely executed makes little difference to the perceived reliability of the product. It has been experimentally observed by analyzing the behavior of a large number of programs that 90% of the execution time of a typical program is spent in executing only 10% of the instructions in the program. These most used 10%instructions are often called the core of 91 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends the program. The rest 90% of the program statements are called non-core and are executed only for 10% of the total execution time. It therefore may not be very surprising to note that removing60% product defects from the least used parts of a system would typically lead to only 3% improvement to the product reliability. It is clear that the quantity by which the overall reliability of a program improves due to the correction of a single error depends on how frequently is the corresponding instruction executed. Thus, reliability of a product depends not only on the number of latent errors but also on the exact location of the errors. Apart from this, reliability also depends upon how the product is used, i.e. on its execution profile. If it is selected input data to the system such that only the “correctly” implemented functions are executed, none of the errors will be exposed and the perceived reliability of the product will be high. On the other hand, if the input data is selected such that only those functions which contain errors are invoked, the perceived reliability of the system will be very low. Software reliability is comprised of three activities: 1. Error prevention 2. Fault detection and removal 3. Measurements to maximize reliability, specifically measures that support the first two activities
Software Reliability It is becoming increasingly impossible to create a software product that is generous in the sense of simultaneously providing high quality, rapid delivery, and low cost. The view that such characteristics are simply desired objectives to be achieved is obsolete. For example, it would be nice to have programs that are correct, but in this real world we must settle for something less. The need for trade-offs is pressing, and the characteristics of the software must be carefully selected to meet customer needs. This means that measurement and prediction of software product characteristics is essential before going on to what exactly do you mean by software reliability, we’ll see what is the importance of it what is the Importance of Software Reliability It has been already indicated that three of the most important software product characteristics are quality, cost and schedule. Note that these are primarily, useroriented rather than developer-oriented attributes. Quantitative measures exist for the latter two characteristics, but the quantification of quality has been more difficult. It is important, however because the absence of a concrete measure for software quality generally means that quality will suffer when it competes for attention against cost and schedule. In fact, this absence may be the principal reason for the well-known existence of quality problems in many software products. Reliability is probably the most important of the characteristics inherent in the concept software quality. It is intimately connected with defects, and the defects represent the largest cost element in programming. Software reliability concerns itself with how well the software 92 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends functions meet the requirements of the customer. We can define software reliability simply as the probability that the software will work without failure for a specified period of time.
Hardware reliability vs. software reliability Reliability behavior for hardware and software are very different. For example, hardware failures are inherently different from software failures. Most hardware failures are due to component wear and tear. A logic gate may be stuck at 1 or 0,or a resistor might short circuit. To fix hardware faults, one has to either replace or repair the failed part. On the other hand, a software product would continue to fail until the error is tracked down and either the design or the code is changed. For this reason, when hardware is repaired its reliability is maintained at the level that existed before the failure occurred; whereas when a software failure is repaired, the reliability may either increase or decrease (reliability may decrease if a bug introduces new errors). To put this fact in a different perspective, hardware reliability study is concerned with stability (for example, interfailure times remain constant). On the other hand, software reliability study aims at reliability growth (i.e. inter-failure times increase).
Reliability as a Quality Attribute There are many different models for software quality, but in almost all models, reliability is one of the criteria, attribute or characteristic that is incorporated. ISO 9126 [1991] defines six quality characteristics, one of which is reliability. IEEE Std 982.2-1988 states "A software reliability management program requires the establishment of a balanced set of user quality objectives, and identification of intermediate quality objectives that will assist in achieving the user quality objectives." Since reliability is an attribute of quality, it can be concluded that software reliability depends on high quality software. Building high reliability software depends on the application of quality attributes at each phase of the development life cycle with the emphasis on error prevention, especially in the early life cycle phases. Metrics are needed at each development phase to measure applicable quality attributes. IEEE Std 982.2-1988 includes the diagram in Figure 1, indicating the relationship of reliability to the different life cycle phases.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends
Figure 1: Quality Factors Impacting Reliability In focusing on error prevention for reliability, we need to identify and measure the quality attributes applicable at different life cycle phases. As discussed previously, we need to specifically focus on requirements, design, implementation, and test phases. 1.1
What are the main factors that affect the reliability of software?
A number of factors affect the reliability of a software product; however they can be grouped under a few key areas. Firstly, cost (or budget) of the project will dictate the resources available for accomplishing the project goals. Producing reliable software costs money. In some cases, it can cost an exorbitant amount of money for software with an extremely high need for reliability such as space shuttle software. Secondly, the time allotted to a project can have a large impact on its quality. Often business software is written with a very tight schedule in order to be first to market with a new idea. Microsoft’s adoption of the “Good Enough Software” approach has led them to dominant market position while ensuring their products are not of very high quality. Other factors dictating software product quality include the people involved in the project. By getting the good and experienced team members, the chances of the project succeeding are greatly increased. As well, choice of technology can have a large impact on product quality. By choosing new and untested technologies, a project is likely to face more challenges than one using well-known technologies. 1.2
How can one determine the current reliability of the software under development?
The models discussed above all require that one have an existing data set from the running system. However in determining the reliability of a software system currently under development, one could use early life-cycle models to estimate reliability. These 94 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends models typically rely upon information gathered during the requirements and design stages as well as measures of staff effort, code size, and error injection rates and trends. The key point for determining software reliability on newly developed software is that one does not have a previous history of test metrics to rely upon. Therefore the estimates of reliability will naturally have a wider margin than mature products. 1.3
How can one determine whether the product is reliable enough to be released?
The first task to determine adequate reliability in an SRE sense is to define the necessary level of reliability required. Each software system will have different reliability needs based upon the market, customers, and the environment of the system. To clarify the terminology, a failure is a user-oriented concept which represents a departure from expected system behavior. A system needs to have its failures categorized into failure severity classes in order to determine the failure intensity objective. Having defined the failure intensity objective, an engineer shall make use of the techniques of fault tolerance, fault removal, and fault prevention to meet the objective. Fault prevention efforts center on not allowing faults to enter the system through design and requirements reviews among others. Fault removal includes code reviews and testing, while fault tolerance covers techniques such as redundancy. Once the reliability goals have been addressed, the next stage of SRE involves developing the operational profiles of system use. An operational profile consists of the initiators of the operation and a consolidated operations list with the occurrence rates and probabilities for each. Having a realistic operational profile of the system is invaluable for allocating test resources in later stages. After generating the operational profile, one must prepare for testing by generating test profiles consisting of test cases. The number of test cases is dictated by both the budget and staff time allocated to the project for quality assurance. The test director needs to allocate the overall number of test cases among the system to best leverage the test effort. The majority of the test cases cover the developed software product with a smaller number allocated to supporting hardware and the operating system. As well a certain number of tests are allocated to features, some to regression, and some to load testing. Having devised a test plan which best covers the most critical and/or frequently used features of the system; one will execute the test strategy. Various levels of testing are preformed including unit testing, integration testing, external function testing, system testing, acceptance testing, installation testing, and regression testing. From all these test runs, it is possible to determine the true failure intensity of the system as it currently stands. One can then compare this to the failure intensity objective and determine whether the goal has been met. If the reliability goal has been met, the system is ready to be released. 95 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 3. Software Reliability Models In the field of software reliability engineering, a number of models have been proposed for predicting the failure intensity of systems over time. The ability to predict failure intensity rates in the future is important as it allows for industry practitioners to better set release schedules. These models make use of simplifying assumptions in order to achieve their goals. They assume that the chance of discovering a failure in the system at any given time follows a random distribution. As such, it can be modeled using statistical random distributions. Another assumption is that the observed failure intensity for any time interval is independent of all other intervals. a. Classification Approaches
Musa has produced a classification scheme for software reliability models which considers the following traits of each model:
Time unit: Whether the natural time is measured as calendar or execution time. Category: Whether the model allows for a finite or infinite number of failures in an infinite time.
Type: The distribution of the failures over the time interval. Class: Functional form of the failure intensity which applies to finite failure category models only.
Family: Functional form of the failure intensity which applies to the infinite failure models only. A number of models have been proposed which cover a wide range of scenarios. In terms of practical use however, Musa argues that only those using execution time as the time domain are of use. As well, he argues that a model must not be overly complicated to apply such as the Bayesian model of Littlewood-Verrall. Empirical evidence based upon industrial applications has demonstrated that the Musa Basic model and the Nonhomogenous Poisson Process model meet these criteria. Both of these models are exponential failure class models.
4. Exponential Failure Class Models This class of models includes those who assume a finite number of failures will occur in an infinite time. As well, they all make use of execution time as their natural time domain. The following will consider the mathematical representation of the model, its assumptions, data requirements, and discuss possible usage scenarios.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends a. Musa Basic Model
The Musa model is named ‘Basic’ as it provides a simple approach to modeling failure intensity. It assumes that the execution time between failures is exponentially distributed. As well the per-fault hazard rate is assumed to be constant. The failure intensity ( is a function of failure intensity at the start of execution (o, the expected number of failures at a given time (), and the total number of failures occurring in an infinite time (o).
( ) o1 o Given this formulation, it is clear the Musa Basic model requires existing failure data be gathered from a running system such as a beta-test in order to be applied. This model is particularly recommended for use in a majority of industry situations by its author.
He stresses its
applicability to a wide variety of software projects as evidenced by its usefulness in a number of efficacy trials in industry performed by many researchers listed in the Musa text. The Basic model meets the goals defined by Musa for an effective model in that is widely applicable, simple, computes useful quantities, and is based on sound assumptions.
5. Reliability metrics The reliability requirements for different categories of software products may be different. For this reason, it is necessary that the level of reliability required for a software product should be specified in the SRS (software requirements specification) document. In order to be able to do this, some metrics are needed to quantitatively express the reliability of a software product. A good reliability measure should be observer-dependent, so that different people can agree on the degree of reliability a system has. For example, there are precise techniques for measuring performance, which would result in obtaining the same performance value irrespective of who is carrying out the performance measurement. However, in practice, it is very difficult to formulate a precise reliability measurement technique. The next base case is to have measures that correlate with reliability. There are six reliability metrics which can be used to quantify the reliability of software products.
A) Rate of occurrence of failure (ROCOF).
ROCOF measures the frequency of
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of unexpected behavior (i.e. failures). ROCOF measure of a software
product can be obtained by observing the behavior of a software product in operation over a specified time interval and then recording the total number of failures occurring during the interval. B) Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). Once failure occurs, some time is required to fix the error. MTTR measures the average time it takes to track the errors causing the failure and to fix them. C) Mean Time between Failure (MTBR).MTTF and MTTR can be combined to get the MTBR metric: MTBF = MTTF + MTTR. Thus, MTBF of 300 hours indicates that once a failure occurs, the next failure is expected after 300 hours. In this case, time measurements are real time and not the execution time as in MTTF. D) Probability of Failure on Demand (POFOD).Unlike the other metrics discussed, this metric does not explicitly involve time measurements. POFOD measures the likelihood of the system failing when a service request is made. For example, a POFOD of 0.001 would mean that 1 out of every 1000 service requests would result in a failure.
6. Conclusions Software reliability engineering uses quantitative measurement to increase the efficiency of the testing effort. By developing operational profiles of the system’s use, SRE requires that tradeoffs between time, cost, and quality be made explicitly for the project. There is still much room for improvement of quality assurance practices within the software development industry and software reliability engineering provides a set of practices that is certain to help. A key challenge to software reliability engineering however is its reliance on heavyweight documentation processes; particularly in the face of the Agile development movement. Metrics to measure software reliability do exist and can be used starting in the requirements phase. At each phase of the development life cycle, metrics can identify potential areas of problems that may lead to problems or errors. Finding these areas in the phase they are developed decreases the cost and prevents potential ripple effects from the changes, later in the development life cycle. Metrics used early can aid in detection and correction of requirement faults that will lead to prevention of errors later in the life cycle. The cost benefits of finding and correcting
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends problems in the requirements phase has been demonstrated to be at least a factor of 14, making a strong argument for pursuing this approach and building in reliability starting at the requirements phase. For any software industry, achieving software reliability is the key task. Achieving Software reliability is hard because the complexity of the software tends to be high. Reliability is an attribute of quality and software quality can be measured .So reliability depends on high software quality. So at each development phase, some quality attributes are applied and the reliability and quality of the software can be improved by applying software metrics at each of these development phases. This metrics measures software reliability in Requirements, Design and coding, and testing phases.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends 6 References Musa, John. Software Reliability Engineering. McGraw-Hill. 1998 Far, B.H. “Course Notes”. SENG 635: Software Reliability and Testing. Date Accessed: February 2005. Software Metrics and Reliability by Linda Rosenburg, Ted Hammer, Jack Shaw satc.gsfc.nasa.gov/support/ISSRE_NOV98/ software_metrics_and_reliability.html - 26k IEEE Standard 610.12-1990 Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology Kitchenham, Barbara, Pfleeger, Shari Lawrence, Software Quality: The Elusive Target, IEEE Software 13, 1 (January 1996) 12-21. Gillies, A.C., Software Quality, Theory and management, Chapman Hall Computing Series, London, UK, 1992. IEEE Standard 982.2-1987 Guide for the Use of Standard Dictionary of Measures to Produce Reliable Software. NASA Software Assurance guidebook, NASA GSFC MD, Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, 1989.
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Approaches towards Anytime, Anywhere, Anybody Learning By : -Anju Sharma and Sonam Singh
Abstract With the explosive growth of World Wide Web (WWW); Web-based educational system are coming into force to upgrade the quality of education. There are numerous ways to teach and study, but learning is the ultimate key and goal for any educational system. A novel form of WWW-based education is E-learning. E-learning has been advanced to educate conventional courses through web-based training and distance learning in a fresh form. To accomplish Anytime, Anywhere, Anybody Learning formally known as AAAL; this paper analyzes different approaches to support E-learning namely: Multi-agent approach, Adaptive E-Learning Approach, Semantic Web-based Educational Systems in real terms. AAAL is a meaningful adaptation towards the goals of learners. The drive behind AAAL analysis is realization of interoperability between adaptive learning systems; and the facilitation of adaptively supported, distributed learning act ivities.
Keywords: WWW (World Wide Web), E-learning, AAAL (Anytime, Anywhere, anybody learning), AIED (Artificial intelligence in education), SWBES (Semantic Web Based Educational System), Semantic Web Services (SWS).
1. Introduction: World Wide Web is an influential means for research and education. It is used to promote Web-based educational systems to make better quality of educational services. A novel form of WWW-based education is E-learning. This has been advanced to educate conventional courses through web-based training and distance learning in a fresh form [Vouk et al., 1999]. The main motive of E-learning is to provide effortless access to learning from its resources to realize AAAL (i.e. Anytime, Anywhere, Anybody Learning) [Bittencourt et al. 2008a]. It is not confined to this but is also concerned to sustain features like personal definition of learning goals, synchronous & asynchronous communication and collaboration between learners themselves along with their instructors. Recently, Web-based learning systems incorporate Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) after replacing the traditional Computer Aided Instruction (CAI) approach.
1.1
Artificial Intelligence in Educational (AIED) :
A computer plays an important role in education to prop up E-learning. Initially, Computer Aided Instruction and Microworlds were used to educate students with a set of learning objects but the instruction was not individualistic according to learner’s 101 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends requirement. So, Intelligent CAI (ICAI) systems were used to impart individualized instruction which employ students in a dialogue game. Afterwards, intelligent tutoring system and interactive learning environments are used as an AIED system which helps to interact with a student or a collection of students. Designing of an AIED systems rely on interaction between two entities i.e. a machine/AIED System and a human. This interaction process may require others agents (or an environment) with an intent to help them in decision making. Each entity must make a decision about what and how to interact with the other player. For the fulfillment of these requirements a viable model, a Multi-Agent AIED System has been proposed as shown in Figure I [Jennings 2001] which depicts that Multi-agent AIED system improves interaction process and facilitates adaptation to a student or a group of student by taking into account more than two entities. Multi-agent AIED system extends educational interaction with a set of students or an environment to perform tasks with the help of knowledge support. Multiple users and environment, interacts with each other through a certain protocol which may act as an interface. Similarly, Figure II exhibits an Adaptive E-learning system to facilitate adaptive interactions between students, environment and AIED systems. AIED population is specifically interested in the combination of two approaches of Web-based educational systems namely, AIED systems and E-learning systems. AIED Systems uses artificial intelligence practices to provide personalized interactions to improve the learning and problem solving processes. E-Learning systems, improves interaction process between multiple users and environment with the use of different E-learning tools which may provide better service for learners to adapt knowledge, goals and interests of the learners. There are many E-learning systems, but they provide only the same materials to all students regardless of individual ability. However, the students may have very different goals, backgrounds, knowledge levels and learning capabilities. Adaptive E-learning systems try to solve these problems by altering the presentation of material to suit each individual student.
2. Adaptive E-learning Systems: An Adaptive E-learning system has the capability to adapt individual’s needs and is influenced by characteristics such as previous knowledge, learning styles, background, etc. of a particular user and provides individualized instructions to each student. There are various types of Adaptive E-learning systems:
2.1 Types of Adaptations:
Instructional Model Adaptation: In this type, at project time, the course author specify features a user may have, different content, activities and access to services. At execution time, the student model is verified that whether referred content, activities and services will be provided to the student as per specifications. 102 | P a g e
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Adaptive Interactions: This type offers support to the students and the tutor during interaction in a certain course. User support is provided by using suitable approaches for adaptive interactions like Intelligent Learning Systems (ILS) approaches and Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). Presentation Adaptation: This type builds the presentation for specific user learning. It provides a different user interface for each student on the basis of particular adaptation the user has customized including the system learning from user’s previous interactions. To generate educational systems that are more personalized, adaptable and intelligent; a new system came into existence which is termed as Semantic Web-based Educational Systems (SWBES). It is the name given by the AI in education community to generate educational systems that use resources available on the Web through standard based technologies in order to accomplish AAAL: Anytime, Anywhere, Anybody Learning.
3. Semantic Web-based Educational Systems (SWBES) Semantic Web is the burning research and development issue in AI community as well as in Internet community. It is about making the Web more understandable by machines. SW broadens the classical Web by offering a semantic structure of web pages to give support to multiple users to understand the content. Semantic Web provides an interface to provide interaction between students and the Web environment and give personalized learning material and other services to students [Bittencourt et al. 2008b].
3.1
Three basic factors for foundation of Educational Semantic Web
Competence for effective information storage and retrieval. Competence for non-human autonomous agents to supplement learning and information retrieval of human beings. Competence of web to support, open out and enhance communications capabilities of humans [Anderson and Whitelock 2004].
3.2 Components of Semantic Web-based Educational Systems (SWBES) Components of Semantic Web-based Educational Systems have been depicted in Figure III. The important terminologies used in this figure are briefly explained as below:
Ontologies: It is a major component of the Semantic Web which may be defined as a representation of a shared conceptualization of a particular domain. Ontologies describe web data and allow interaction between data in different formats [Shadbolt et al. 2006]. This assure interoperability between educational systems and means to solve complex problems like knowledge representation, knowledge sharing and application reuse, annotation and search of learning objects, personalization of learning content etc. [Bittencourt et al. 2008b]. Tools: A system must provide a number of sophisticated tools to different users for interaction and to perform various tasks. The kinds of tools that can be 103 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends developed and used in an educational system are educational tools, tools to support semantic web and administrative tools etc. Semantic Web Services (SWS): Semantic Web Services play a vital role in bringing closer to its users, agents and tools; according to their interest. It provides an option for automating the integration of activities through creation, automatic discovering, and automatic composition [Brambilla et al. 2007, AlMasri and Mahmoud 2007]. Intelligent Agents: Agents are responsible to ensure the automatization of the activities, dynamic evolution of the requirements, and so on. Agents provide interaction between the features of the system and its multiple users; with respect to their roles e.g. discover new knowledge about users, interoperation content between applications, content personalization of users etc. Semantic Web Environment: It represents the interaction environment available to discover, browse, select, and invoke resources on the Web according to several technologies and architectures semantically described. Remarkable efforts are going on to represent information on the Web so that computers can recognize and manipulate any kind of task [Bittencourt et al. 2009].
5. Conclusion: This paper presents steps towards web-based educational systems. E-Learning systems attempt to provide better service for learners by adapting knowledge, goals, and interests of the learners. Semantic Web Ontologies is an approach of E-learning have the ability to view the student's learning strategies and adapt their learning requirements observed during interaction with the system. Web-based learning systems incorporated AIED to further explore the benefits and opportunities by developing new tools and methodologies to improve AAAL.
References:
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Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Anderson, T. and Whitelock, D. (2004), “The educational semantic web: visioning and practicing the future of education”, Journal pf Interactive Media in Education - JIME, 7:1–15. Aroyo, L. and Dicheva, D. (2004), “The new challenges for e-learning: The educational semantic web.Educational Technology and Society”, 7(4):59–69. Bittencourt, I. I., Costa, E., Soares, E., and Pedro, A. (2008a), “Towards a new generation of web-based educational systems: The convergence between artificial and human agents. IEEE Multidisciplinary Engineering Education Magazine”, 3(1):17–24. Bittencourt, I. I., Isotani, S., Costa, E., and Mizoguchi, R. (2008b), “Researchs directions on semantic web and education”, Scientia Journal, 19(1):59–66. Bittencourt, I. I., Costa, E., Silva, M., and Soares, E. (2009), “A computational model for developing semantic web-based educational systems”, Knowledge Based System, Journal, Special Issue on AI and Blended Learning. Brambilla, M., Ceri, S., Facca, F. M., Celino, I., and Cerizza, D. (2007), “Model-driven design and development of semantic web services applications”, ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), 8(1):3. Brooks, C., Greer, J., Melis, E., and Ullrich, C. (2006), “Combining its and elearning technologies: Opportunities and challenges”, In 8th International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS). Devedzic, V. (2006). Semantic Web and Education. Springer, 1 edition. Devedzic, V. (2003), “Key issues in next-generation web based education”, IEEE Transaction on Education, 3(33):339–349. Dietze, S., Gugliotta, A., and Domingue, J. (2007), “Context-adaptive learning designs by using semantic web services”, Journal of Interactive Media in Education (Adaptation and IMS Learning Design), 3. Gasevic, D., Jovanovic, J., and Devedzic, V. (2004), “Enhancing learning object content on the semantic web”, In ICALT ’04: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’04), pages 714–716, Washington, DC, USA. IEEE Computer Society. So ciety. http://www.elearningadaptive.com/ Jennings, N. (2001), “An agent-based approach for building complex software systems”, COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM, 44(4):35–41. Koper, E. J. R. (2001), “Modeling units of study from a pedagogical perspective - the pedagogical metamodel behind eml”, In Open University of The Netherlands. 105 | P a g e
Asian Journal of Computing Updates and Trends Mizoguchi, R. (2004), “Tutorial on ontological engineering - part 2: Ontology development, tools and language”, New Generation Computing, 22(1):61–96. Shadbolt, N., Lee, T. B., and Hall, W. (2006), “The semantic web revisited”, IEEE Intelligent Systems, 21(3):96–101. VOUK, M.A.; BITZER, D.L. and KLEVANS, R. L. 1999, “Workflow and end-user quality of service issues in web-based education”, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 11(4):673-687.
Figures :
Figure I. The Multi-agent Approach[Jennings 2001]
Figure II. The Adaptive E-Learning Approach[Mizoguchi and Bourdeau 2000, Brooks et al. 2006, Bittencourt et al. 2008a].
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Figure III. Semantic Web-based Educational Systems Approach [Bittencourt et al. 2008b].
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