Are you looking to incorporate AI tech in your existing business model or are you generally curious about this technology? Get an insight into how Artificial Intelligence technology increases the productivity of the business and accelerates performance.

In either case, there are some mind-boggling essential facts that you must know about AI. 

Starting with the basics, we are quickly briefing you about this technology.

In the current industry scenario, some industry sectors are at the start of their AI journey, while others are veterans. 

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are now considered one of the significant innovations since the microchip. 

We have come a long way since they set foot in the market. Machine Learning used to be a fanciful concept from science fiction, but has now become a reality.

Neural networks paved the way for “deep learning” breakthroughs in Machine Learning. While the previous Industrial Revolution has harnessed physical and mechanical power, this new revolution will harness mental and cognitive capacity. Many experts in the field believe that Artificial Intelligence Technology is ushering the next “Industrial Revolution”. 

Someday, not only manual labor will be replaced by computers, but also intellectual labor. But, the question is how exactly is this going to happen? Or has it already started?

By 2025, it is projected that 463 exabytes (EB) of data will be produced globally each day — equivalent data in 22 crore DVDs per day. That’s huge!

How Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will impact our day-to-day lives in times to come?

 

1) AI into Automated Transportation

Have you been flying on an airplane recently? If so, you’ve already experienced the automation of transportation at work. Such modern commercial aircraft use FMS (Flight Management System) to control their location during flight, motion sensors, a combination of GPS, and computer systems.

 

2) Self Driving Cars and AI

It is more difficult to leap into self-driving car business. Since there are more cars on the road, many obstacles to avoid, and the traffic patterns and rules restrictions which we need to adhere to. 

According to a report of 55 Google vehicles that have traveled over 1.3 million miles overall, these AI-powered cars have even exceeded the safety of human-driven cars.

With Google Maps’ assistance on your smartphone about location data, we have already conquered the GPS forefront. A similar GPS is used in these cars, which can calculate how quickly the device is traveling by comparing the position of a device from one point in time to another.

It can decide how slow real-time traffic is. It can combine information with user-reported incidents to create a traffic image at any given time. Maps will determine the fastest route between you and your destination based on traffic jams, construction works, or accidents.

What about the ability to drive a car? Well, machine learning enables self-driving vehicles to adapt instantly to changing road conditions while learning from new road situations at the same time. Onboard computers can make split-second decisions much faster than well-trained drivers by continuously filtering through a flow of visual and sensor information.

All this is based on the very same machine learning principles used in other industries. You have input characteristics (i.e., real-time visual and sensor data) and output (i.e., a decision on the next actions for a car). Amazing, right?

 

3) Cyborg Technology

Our minds and bodies are less than perfect. Technology will improve to the extent that we can increase some of our computer weaknesses and limitations, enhancing many of our fundamental skills.

But, wait before you start to imagine dystopian worlds of steel and blood, consider for a moment that most people walking around are in a certain way “cyborgs.”

How many people do you know that without your trusty smartphone would survive the day? For contact, navigation, information learning, receiving important news, and a host of other things, we still rely on these handheld computers.

 

4) Taking Over the Dangerous Jobs

Bomb disposal is one of the most dangerous jobs. Today, among other things, robots (or more technically drones) take over these risky jobs.

Currently, most of these drones need to be operated by a human.

But as machine learning software is evolving in the future, robots with artificial intelligence would do these tasks entirely. This technology has already saved thousands of lives on its own.

Welding is another work outsourced to robots. This type of work produces noise, intense heat, and fumes toxic substances.

Such robot welders would need to be pre-programmed to weld at a specific position without machine learning. Improvement in computer vision and deep learning, however, has allowed greater flexibility and accuracy.

 

5) How AI helps in nursing elders?

Everyday tasks can be a struggle for many senior citizens. Many have to hire help from outside or rely on members of the family. 

For many families, elder care is a growing concern. In-home robots can support elderly relatives who don’t want to leave their homes.

This approach provides more flexibility to family members to handle the care of a loved one. The in-home robots can help seniors with daily tasks and allow them to stay as long as possible independent and live in their homes, improving their overall well-being.

Health and Artificial Intelligence scientists even have infrared-based systems that can identify when an older adult falls. Scientists and medical specialists can also track sleeping, feeding, decreasing mobility, fluid intake, chair and bed comfort, urinary frequency, restlessness, fatigue, food and alcohol consumption, and many more.

 

6) AI into enhanced Health Care

Hospitals might soon put your well-being in the hands of AI.  Hospitals that use machine learning to help treat patients have fewer accidents and fewer cases of hospital-related illnesses, such as sepsis.

Artificial Intelligence also tackles some of the most intractable problems in medicine, such as helping scientists to understand the genetic diseases with the help of predictive models better.

Initially, health professionals must manually check the information reams before they diagnose or treat a patient. High-performance computing GPUs have become primary resources for deep learning and AI applications.

Deep learning models can offer real-time insights and, in conjunction with an abundance of computing power, help healthcare professionals diagnose patients more quickly and accurately, create innovative new drugs and treatments, minimize clinical and diagnostic errors, predict adverse reactions, and reduce healthcare costs for clinicians and patients.

 

7) Artificial intelligence is capable of changing the business forever

It is a promise to take care of all the tedious things that employees are already doing, freeing their time to be more imaginative, and doing the job that machines are unable to do.

Today, emerging technology is mainly used by large companies through machine learning and predictive analytics.

 

Here’s a look at AI’s current county and what lies ahead:-

1. Nowadays, only 15% of companies use AI whereas 31 percent said it was on the agenda for the next 12 months.
2. For those companies already in the Artificial Intelligence range, high-performing companies have said that they are more than twice as likely to use technology for marketing as their peers (28% vs. 12%). Unsurprisingly, data analysis is a key Artificial Intelligence focus for businesses, with on-site customization being the second most frequently cited use case for AI. 
3. The survey respondents have described customer personalization (29%), AI (26%), and voice search (21.23%) as the next dominant marketing pattern. These top three responses, totaling 75% of all AI applications, indicate that AI is more widespread and accessible than the respondents are aware of. 
4. 47% of digitally mature organizations or those with advanced digital practices have established a specified AI strategy. 
5. Business leaders said they agree that AI will be fundamental in the future. In reality, 72% said it was a “business advantage.” 
6. Of those who have an innovation plan, 61% said that they are using AI to find information gaps that would otherwise be overlooked. Just 22% said the same thing without a strategy. 
7. Consumers use more AI than they know. While only 33 percent claim that they are using AI-enabled software, 77 percent currently using AI-enabled products or phones. 
8. 38% of customers said they believed that AI would boost customer service. 
9. Out of 6,000 people surveyed, 61% said they thought AI could make the world a better place. 
10. In a survey of more than 1,600 marketing professionals, 61%, regardless of the size of the company, pointed to machine learning and AI as their company’s most significant data initiative for next year. 
11. The effect of AI technology on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40% and allow people to make more productive use of their time. 
12. The largest companies, those with at least 100,000 employees are most likely to have an AI plan, but only half of them have one. 
13. More than 80% of the executives see AI as a strategic tool. 
14. Voice assistants are incorporated into a wide range of consumer products; almost half of US adults (46%) are now using these apps to communicate with smartphones and other devices. 
15. When asked about requirements for marketing software providers to have native AI capabilities, more than 50% of the communicators said it was essential or appropriate to do so. 

 

Winding Up

As many people have rightly noted, the idea of Artificial Intelligence is not a new one. It’s been around since the very early days of computing. Pioneers always have invented ways to build smart learning machines.

At present, the most promising method for AI is the use of applied machine learning. Instead of trying to encrypt machines with everything they need to know beforehand (which is impossible), we want to allow them to learn, and then learn how to learn. 

The time for machine learning has arrived, and it is in the process of revolutionizing all of our lives.

Liked our content? Then visit us today at GoodWorkLabs and learn more about us. For any feedback or suggestions, you can comment in the drop-down section.

 

 

We all have heard people chatting and walking around the streets of tech cities, talking about the great UX service, about the bad websites, or experts talking about UI and UX Design. UI makes interfaces excellent whereas UX makes them helpful and useful. In this article, we will share the major and primary difference between UX and UI design.

‘Are you never going to be privy to a secret language? Or these people are using slang to look cool!! Let us see what UI vs. UX is in detail.

The User Interface (UI) is at the most basic level a set of screens, pages, and visual items such as buttons and icons which allow a person to interact with a product or service. 

User experience(UX), is a person’s own internal perception when communicating with every component of the products and services of an undertaking.

 

UX is not UI

The process through which a pain point or user need is identified is UX design or user experience design. A raw prototype is drawn from there that is subsequently validated (or invalidated) by testing.

The product is produced when both the business model and the value offer are validated.

User Interface Design = Interaction Design + Visual Design

Visual design is the look and feel of the website. 

Visual Design provides look and feel to your site. The way people communicate with your page is interaction design.

Designers of both UX and UI can still consider UX designers as architects of macro-interactions while UI designers can look after specifics, as developers of micro-interactions. 

A UX developer would typically model the interface experiences, such as steps to register for your newsletter. Which actions are they going to take, and how are they going to know if they succeed?

The model is passed to the user interface programmer. In the newsletter registration process, the UI developer will enhance these experiences with color and focus on the original design. It is a crucial point to consider when it comes to UI vs. UX.

 

User Interface makes the interfaces beautiful whereas UX makes them useful

A valuable service meets the need which is not already being met in the market. A UX designer’s research process includes a competitive analysis, the recruitment of working individuals, and then the production of a minimal, viable, product, or more appropriate, suitable, valuable product. It is confirmed by trials throughout the product’s life cycle.

Upon prototyping and checking the user flow and wireframes, it is the duty of the developer to make them appealing esthetically. It involves choosing an appealing and easy to use color scheme and typography. 

Color choices, typography, and interactions, however, are not based on the personal preference of the designer but on clearly expressed reasons for the people created by the UX developer. 

UI developers create a graphical hierarchy. It directs users to know what to do and when to do so to achieve their goals.

One main goal per page is illustrated by a well-designed hierarchy, which makes clear where and what the user is on the web.

You are going to do this with user-known conventions or patterns. Such patterns can act as instructions for the consumer on how to get there.

 

UX helps users meet their goals, UI allows emotional connections

People visit your site in search of information. You ask questions, you observe people, you interview people, and you can create samples and run a guerrilla experiment to see if you can verify your ideas for company and goods.

 

How do UX and UI designers work together during the design process?

The first step to determine whether to create a service or application is typically UX development and analysis. Most of the work by UX designers is validated or invalidated and guides product development.

After several prototypes have gone through the model, the UI designer has now substantially completed the project and begins the visual design and the micro-interactions.

Many factors depend on this. It may never be a straight road, however. Who manages UX and UI, for example? Is it the same person or another team?

 

UI pertains to interfaces whereas UX employs across the interfaces, services, and products

The design of user experience is a vast field and becomes increasingly popular every day. Today, not just web-based companies, but many others who develop products and offer services can gain an understanding of their customers and test their hypotheses before building them up.

The development of the User Interface is, of course, for UIs only. This doesn’t mean it’s limited to laptops, tablets, and handheld phones’ graphical user interfaces. We also see interfaces for many other items such as watches, washing machines, dashboards, sales machines, ticket kiosks, and many more these days.

You must have read about the application on the iPhone, which unlocks your car door. This array of interactions proves to be much more complicated than just using your key to open the car door. 

We should be vigilant to (again) hold our users at the center of our design process, whether we design for interfaces or experiences.

 

The user experience covers all aspects of the engagement of the end-user with the business, its services, and products

It is a wide definition that includes the interaction a person could have with a product or service— not just a virtual experience.

Many UX practitioners have chosen to call on the expertise of their customers, and others have taken a further leap to refer simply to the field as experiential design.

The original definition of UX is the essence of every logical application layout, all-encompassing, and always human-centered.

UX developers ensure that the organization provides a product or service that meets the customer’s expectations and enables it to reach the desired result smoothly.

UX developers work closely with UI designers, analysts from UX, marketing, and product groups in their research and experimentation on their clients.

We use their observations to iterate and refine services consistently on the basis of both quantitative and qualitative user research.

 

Significant Difference between UX and UI

UI comprises all the elements that allow someone to connect with a product or service at the most basic level. On the other hand, UX takes away the whole experience from the person who interacts with this product or service.

For example, take Google. Its familiar Spartan interface shows how a pleasant experience does not need whistles or bells.

Through focusing on the client, Google knows that they are after one thing: data when they come to the web. 

The fact that Google is a generally-accepted term demonstrates the success and ambition of the business. Almost anything a person has ever wanted to know can be found at a glance, and few other search engines still exist.

Imagine now that it took 15 seconds to get a result each time you searched for Google–the question could not be answered instantly anymore.

The interaction with Google would be quite different, even if the interface remains the same.

 

Does UI weigh  more than UX?

• Different people take on this subject differently.
• UX focuses on the experience of the user; the user interface focuses on how the surfaces of a product look and work
• The UX developer deals with the development issues so that the client concentrates on more specific elements
• UI is the bridge we want to get to, UX is our feeling of arriving.
• UI concentrates on the service, a selection of images in time. UX focuses on the consumer and the brand journey.
• UX covers all the interactions that the user has with a product or service, and UI is unique to how people interact with a product or service.

 

In a nutshell

When UX began to be a household term — at least on a corporate level— it was not rare for people to mix and swap words. Although the user experience sector will no doubt continue to develop, the vital role played by each discipline in the broader domain of human-centered design is crucial to understand.

What do you think? What is UI vs. UX? Does this mean different things, if it is used interchangeably? Think about it and visit us today at GoodWorkLabs. 

Software outsourcing was seen a decade ago as an appealing alternative for companies that wished to reduce general operating costs when the organization’s aim was not mainly concentrated on the IT sector.

Today, as demand for IT resources continues to rise exponentially, the only appropriate course of action can be the development of offshore software. There are many benefits of offshoring, read to find out more:

The outsourcing method has been further categorized into two methods; outsourcing and offshoring at home. As the name indicates, domestic outsourcing is where a business seeks outsourcing from another business or the same country’s freelancers.

While this type of outsourcing has its charms, individuals are more willing to opt for outsourcing their jobs to foreign firms or freelance experts.

As per the statistics, it is proven that the market size of outsourcing industry across the globe has reached to $85.6 billion in the year 2017 which will increase in the upcoming years. Almost, 59% of the businesses outsource in order to reduce the cost.  

An offshore software development center is called the center where you can outsource your software.

Have a look at some of the proven advantages the offshore development centers offer those:

 

The primary advantages that your software development can achieve by outsourcing can be broken down into the following:

 

1) Cost reduction in salaries and infrastructure

As stated above, this may be the primary issue to consider when choosing to contract a service rather than constructing and operating with your own.

In relation to the apparently reduced costs of equipment and facilities, your budget can be affected by salaries.

Even with the same level of qualified professionals, when looking at nations known for their software development centers, there may be essential variations in general wages paid abroad.

 

2) Recruitments become more comfortable when you delegate and expand your search across the world

The increasing global demand makes recruitment and staffing increasingly hard; this is another one of the best benefits of offshoring.

Outsourcing eliminates this issue almost entirely while supplying you with the most excellent experts worldwide, depending of course on your selection of offshore software development.

 

3) You get quality as well as innovation

The primary issues of outsourcing businesses are innovation and quality. You can get extremely skilled experts to the greatest norms in software development, depending on your demands. 

If you need to construct your own team with the same quality standard, either contract very costly resources (which may not be accessible at all) or invest in training that could take years for young practitioners to become as productive as a senior professional with several years of experience.

 

4) Time Zone differences do exist when you work with overseas

This is either a benefit or a problem depending on how you look at it. It is always desirable to overlap some of the working hours between local and remote, so that issues can be solved quickly. Furthermore, a team several hours ahead or behind your local times is also one of the best benefits of offshoring.

If your teams have a decent time gap (i.e., 4-6 hours) that enables for some overlap but also has some working hours outside of your local time, you can address problems that arose at the end of your business day and work on them outside your business hours.

If you only work with on-site resources, you need to work overnight to introduce improvements without interrupting essential facilities used during business hours.

Having your own IT department, working with an offshore software development team in a separate time zone facilitates the execution of a 24-hour development cycle that enables you to catch up more rapidly with the demands and modifications that are significantly impacted by real-time behavior (typical for internet solutions that are used globally).

If you only have a local team, the midnight execution would require your team to work additional hours. But if you have an offshore team that works 4-6 hours ahead or behind your hour, then your changes may be implemented during your normal working times by this offshore team.

 

5) One can focus fully on his/her own business

If your company is not IT one, when treated as a distinct region, having to cope with your own IT department imposes tremendous operating costs. Most of the moment, you find a cost-benefit trade-off when you execute a feature in your business.

If your IT department is not skilled enough in software methods or lacks the additional resources you need, these limitations will restrict your decisions to determine how to implement a fresh feature. 

You are likely to end up with an insufficient option in this situation that could be addressed by your own IT department.

 

6) The Responsibilities get shared

Most non-IT companies typically underestimate software development risk management. When selecting to outsource a component, the parties agree on what to do and share the impact and risk management among them.

The offshore company can better handle and mitigate the risks produced by development as it is a element of its vitally important business.

 

7) The need for new infrastructure is eliminated

One of your significant advantages is that you don’t need to build and handle a development team whenever you hire the offshore development company.

The implementation of the projects can get underway faster if your infrastructure and setting up of your development center is not necessary. The first and foremost thing is to start the project.

 

8) Auto-Scale the IT team

While the word mainly relates to hardware infrastructure scale-up, it is also a significant factor in offshore growth. Your company may not always need the same funds.

There may be a stage in your products and services where you have to work with a larger group of experts, and then you can reach a maturity level that makes continuing the same level of skilled experts pointless.

You may choose to reduce the team at this stage or change roles and positions to a more operational level. This degree of IT resource management could be tremendously complicated when dealing with employing staff directly, rather than delegating all this to your offshore development center.

 

9) The cost-saving infrastructure

The primary benefit of offshoring the development centers is its cost-effectiveness. Work offshoring will reduce direct and indirect costs, such as recruitment, oversight, compensation, infrastructure, etc.

 

10) Work quality is innovative and the best

The best thing about the offshore development firm is innovation and quality work. You can get extremely skilled experts following the greatest norms in software development according to your business needs and specifications.

 

11) Concentrate on your key business 

If your business is not completely IT, the management of your own IT department needs large operating costs when it becomes a separate area. Leaving this complex IT tasks to an outsourcing development center will eliminate important issues and free up time to spend on more particular tasks for your primary business.

 

12) 24/7 Services

Continuous day and night work is feasible, and the job can be accomplished effectively using the difference in the time zone. The work is done concurrently with the assistance of offshore development operations, and the work is finished earlier with a high rate of productivity. 

 

In a nutshell                                               

While most of the benefits of offshoring the software development center would affect cost reduction by delving deeper into the advantages, one will understand it’s not just a matter of budget. The experience and specialization you can have when considering outsourcing software, enabling you to concentrate on the primary objectives of your company, are important considerations to believe, even with equal or higher expenses.

So, what are you waiting for, to know more about us, visit us today GoodWorkLabs

For software architects, microservices are the wave of the future. Sounds convincing? To learn more about the advantages of microservices architecture, check out the top 10 reasons.

Also, make sure that you know about all the barriers in terms of technical complexity, stack, and more moving to the microservices architecture.

Java is a language that has been around for some time, and people wonder if it is useful in a microservices setting. This article explains the advantages of microservices architecture and why Java still has a lot of significance in contemporary apps such as microservices.

The Need for writing the microservice applications in Java

For excellent reasons, Java is a common linguistic option. The language is strong, with years of experience working with critical apps for missions and evolving with the emergence of fresh planning models. The near-omnipresent use of Java in company apps has developed an extensive pool of Java-based software developers. Even when fresh apps are created, it is useful to use current abilities.

The intensive learning curves are provided by microservices with the addition of a language to the mix which may increase the danger. It presents yet more unidentified information about the creation, deployment, and administration of a manufacturing microservice implementation.

To revolutionize your organization, it’s always positive to keep an eye on the upcoming technologies, frameworks, languages. If in your monolithic framework you are still cemented in your cube messing around with code, then you probably live in the past, where you have a small application and some employees to handle it.

JavaScript is usually used for the application front end (particularly for web-based applications). Java for battle-tested data management is also common in the background. While there is still a lot of space for spectral variations, Java is great for writing micro-services.

Nowadays, things have been changing. You have to go a step forward and walk with the revolutionary technologies where microservices are among the leaders. Are you looking for the best reasons to invest time in learning microservices with a view to becoming an architect and developing applications using them?

This article will help you in learning various advantages of microservices architecture and various reasons so as to why learn microservices.

• Various Tools can be used flexibly as and when required

The architecture of microservices encourages the use of the most suitable technology for the service’s specific needs. Each service is free to use its own language, framework or auxiliary services. The services still communicate easily with the other services in the application even with the use of such diverse frameworks.

 

• High-Quality code is provided

The entire framework is modularized into discrete components following the microservices architecture. This helps the application development team concentrate on one specific job at a time. In turn, this simplifies the overall process of coding and testing.

 

• Various Applications can be easily Built and Maintained

The team of developers divides into the following activities as and when the products built by developers become stable and are available for customers.

• Implementing various new features
• Bug fixing
• Modifications in the existing features

If the product is based on a monolithic framework, each change to the codebase must pass through all stages of construction, maintenance, and deployment. Microservices are a savior in these situations!

 

• The Technology Stack

The technology stack is difficult enough to decide for a monolithic application, but for every microservice, this decision must now be taken. What seems theoretically attractive can become difficult in practice if your services are too heterogeneous. Standardization is becoming a problem and cowboy behavior is possible. It’s also more difficult when every team has a totally different stack for people to move between teams.

It is always recommended to have a balanced approach where the application has a preferred technology stack. If any team wishes to override this default stack, it should justify the fact that it is better suited for microservice with advantages and disadvantages. Your stack of technologies should include the language of programming, test, and logging, cloud providers, facilities, storage, monitoring, etc.

 

• Improvements in the Scalability

The main aspect of microservices is scalability. Since each service is a separate part, a single function or service can be expanded without the application being scale-up in full. Business services for increased availability and performance on multiple servers can be used without affecting the efficiency of other services.

 

• Faster Market Time

Due to the fact queuing up of microservices, you don’t need to rewrite all the codebase for a feature to be included or modified. Only a specific service will be changed. You can quickly market your application and services by the development of applications in smaller increments that can be independently tested and deployed.

 

• The Complex Operations

The complexity of operations is much increased by microservices as operations must be revised from a fundamental point of view. The following aspects must be considered:

 

Infrastructure

The definition of microservice infrastructure requirements and subsequently the provision and maintenance of infra for each microservice creates a level of complexity which most monolithic Ops engineers are not used to. Furthermore, as these services are expanded and reduced, the infrastructure must be automatically provided and reduced, thus requiring a very advanced level of automation.

 

Load balancing and scaling

It is likely you will need a much more complex, scaling strategy than with monolithic, ever-scale(x-axis) applications. If you need to scale all the services or just a subset when there’s a high demand, you’ll need to figure out with Microservices. The y-axis scaling is essential for the operations team, as the microservices approach and z-Axis scaling are consistent to obtain x and y.

 

Service detection

Dynamically, due to scaling and upgrades, the set of service instances of a world with microservices. Services also have dynamic network locations, so you need a way to discover new services. For this, it is always recommended to go for a registry service such as Consul because it works very well.

 

Monitoring

This must be configured and maintained on every microservice to make the operations team engineers more complex. In addition, the surveillance solution must manage situations for increasing and downloading a subset of facilities.

 

• Delivery is Continuous

In contrast to monolithic apps where devoted teams operate for each individual function like database manipulation, server logic retention, microservices utilizes the continuous delivery model to manage the entire application lifecycle.

The developers, the test teams and the operations team work together on the construction, testing and debugging of a single service.

 

• Risk Reducer

Every service in the microservices framework is a distinct entity, which enables localization, increased confidence in quality, and end-to-end regression scenarios. Even if one service or application element is down, the entire application will not decrease. Rather, the designers only need to rebuild that specific service or element. This decreases the danger of your company application being completely dropped!!

 

• Delivery is Continuous

In contrast to monolithic applications in which dedicated teams are working on discreet functions such as UI, database, server logic and technology, microservices employ cross-functional teams to operate on a continuous delivery model for the entire life cycle of an application. Testing and deployment become simple and instantaneous when developers, activities and test teams operate on one service concurrently. Code is constantly being created, tested and implemented through this strategy of incremental development, and instead of reinventing the wheel; you can use code from current libraries.

 

Conclusion

As you can see, Java is greatly suited for microservices because of many reasons along with the advantages of microservices architecture. For more information and some good practice tips, check out our official website of Goodwork Labs  and learn more about us.

So, what you are waiting for, contact us today.

With a boom in the use of smartphones among customers, application development has been growing at a rapid pace. Different devices, carriers, and software have created their own identity in the everyday lives of people around the globe. Almost anything gets done with the help of a smartphone.

In terms of global market share, Android tops the list with around 76% of market share. The next in line is Apple’s iOS and Windows, respectively. Being a mobile developer, it gets confusing at times to figure out the best platform to run your app, other than its native platform.

Learning a new language, the API’s, and other related stuff is not only tedious but can keep you stuck on your platform. Xamarin can help you there. You can build cross-platform mobile applications to facilitate similar functions like platform native apps.

 

Know Xamarin:

Xamarin is the name of a software company founded in the year 2011. Acquired in 2016 by Microsoft, Xamarin provides tools to developers to help them create cross-platform mobile applications. All these applications have their natural features intact while sharing a standard code set at the same time.

Xamarin tools are readily available, and they get downloaded with Visual Studio. You can directly develop apps for Android, iOS, and Windows apps from the Visual Studio itself.

A significant part of the standard code gets written in C#, eliminating the need to learn any other language like Objective-C, Swift, or Java as well. Using Xamarin instead of the usual learning procedure will prove helpful to you in learning app development on multiple platforms.

How Does Xamarin Work?

On a very elementary level, Xamarin converts the total iOS or Android SDK to C# to facilitate coding in a more familiar language for the developers. With one style to code for both platforms, you do not need to remember too much of syntax as well.

This makes it easy to access any Android or iOS API through Xamarin tools.

 

The Benefits of Xamarin:-

There are several reasons Xamarin is used by a lot of companies, with brands like Trello, Slack, and GitHub a few of the ones.

We bring you some of these profound benefits Xamarin has over other technologies-

A SINGLE TECH STACK FOR CODING ON ALL PLATFORMS:-

Xamarin takes the help of C# integrated with a.Net framework for creating apps for a mobile platform. Through this, you get to reuse about 96 percent of source code leading to a speedy engineering cycle. Xamarin also does not need to switch among the development environments.

All of the Xamarin apps can be entirely built in Visual Studio, a replacement for the Xamarin Studio. The tools to facilitate cross-platform development come without any added cost.

PERFORMANCE ALMOST AS GOOD AS NATIVE:-

With the traditional hybrid solutions based on web technologies, a cross-platform app can never get the classification as native. With Xamarin, however, a cross-platform app can still get classified as a native app. The performance metrics can be easily compared with those of Java for Android and even Objective- C, or Swift to create a native app for iOS. 

The performance of Xamarin is also improved continuously to meet the standards of native application development. Visual Studio provides a total option to build, test, and track the performance of an app.

NATIVE USER EXPERIENCE:-

With Xamarin, you can create a superb experience with the help of platform-specific UI elements. A lot of simple apps for iOS, Android, and Windows get designed with the help of Xamarin. 

The use of Xamarin with the Forms tool brings about a significant increase in the pace of application development. With such a speedy process of development, it becomes a fantastic option for business-oriented projects.

However, you might always have the chance to see a slightly depleted performance, due to the presence of an extra abstraction layer. For a customized user interface and increased performance, you can use Xamarin for iOS and Android separately to get the best out of it.

TOTAL HARDWARE SUPPORT:-

Xamarin provides your solution with native-level app functions. The tool eliminates every hardware compatibility issue through plugins and particular API’s. This allows Xamarin to work with conventional device functionality across all platforms.

With access to platform specific API’s, Xamarin provides the function of linking native libraries. It gives a better degree of customization and a native-level functionality with just a little added cost.

OPEN SOURCED WITH A STRONG CORPORATE SUPPORT:-

When Microsoft acquired Xamarin in the year 2016, the licensing policies underwent quite a lot of significant changes. Xamarin SDK, with runtime, command line tools, and libraries have all become open sourced and available as per MIT license through Visual Studio.

The cost of license tends to be a significant barrier, and by eliminating this, Microsoft opened up the doors to further development of this platform.

EASE IN MAINTENANCE:-

Because of its cross-platform ability, Xamarin makes maintenance and providing updates easier. Developers can deploy the changes or updates to the source file itself. These updates then automatically get applied to both the iOS and Android applications.

It is important to note that this only works for the applications running on Xamarin. In short, with Xamarin, you save a lot of time and money spent on keeping your apps up to date.

 

Conclusion

As we mentioned before, these are just a few of the benefits of Xamarin for mobile app development. A lot more is in the store that makes Xamarin the undisputed leader in cross-platform development. The feature-rich layout and subsequent benefits make Xamarin an almost perfect option for cross-platform development.

Apart from the many benefits, Xamarin has also become a community of more than 700,000 developers. This number is only increasing as collaboration and enhancement of software becomes more comfortable than ever with Xamarin as the app development tool.

Contact us and we will get back to you shortly.

Keeping the business at a constant level of growth is a priority for everyone today. With quickly evolving trends in technology, DevOps is the perfect response to ensure that growth.

DevOps makes growth hacking for your business considerably by delivering the features your customers expect, quickly in the market. DevOps came into existence after a long history of software development, and this is why it is a very well-thought approach.

With software, an integral part of every tech company today,  DevOps has a high value among companies.

DevOps has been a crucial factor for the success of well-known companies like Netflix, Google, and Amazon. Amazon has been able to successfully automate their releases, speeding up its software development lifecycle in the process.

Everybody is looking for ways to faster releases and high-quality services. If you too, fall under the same category, then for increased customer satisfaction, applying DevOps principles in the right way is an important key.

The primary motive of DevOps is pretty straight-forward: Deliver better quality software updates regularly, with a high degree of reliability. In a concise perspective, DevOps is a mental model shift for the entire company to provide higher organizational flexibility.

This transformation to DevOps can be a smooth process, through the hacks we have in store for you.

7 Hacks/Tips for DevOps Transformation:-

 

GETTING PREPARED FOR A CHANGE AND ACCEPTING A CLOUD-NATIVE APPROACH

Accepting and going with the change is the only way to keep your business growing. As a business owner, you may get apprehensive of this change, but not changing as per the technology trends is the worst thing you can ever do to lose amidst the competition.

DevOps aims to solve one of the most significant problems of the IT industry, by acting as a bridge between the Dev and Ops people. It is an urgent need, looking to get addressed as soon as possible.

The change cannot be an abrupt one. Consistent and small progressive changes can only achieve it. The management of a company should ensure that they convey the advantages and benefits of DevOps to everyone before actually going ahead with the change.

This change will initially be through the IT managers and architects of individual teams in the company.

The term cloud-native, too, is not just a trendy word. On the contrary, it is a complete methodology, taking advantage of a lot of modern techniques; it combines Agile methodology, DevOps and Continuous Delivery. The technologies and architecture of Microservices, Containers, Cloud and Serverless.

A cloud-native strategy is responsible for increased speed, performance, power and margins for business enterprises.

TAKING NOTE OF FAILURES AND LEARNING QUICKLY FROM THEM

Because DevOps is related to accomplishing tasks quickly and learning fast, the chances of failure initially are quite vast. This may look a bit rough at the start, but with the right approach and a correct set of guidelines, the problematic situations get handled with a lot of ease.

What is more important here is the acceptance of failure, because any scenario otherwise will lead to people blaming each other. Teams should understand that DevOps is there to eliminate the confusion between groups, but to reach that stage, the initial chaos will have to get managed tactfully.

LEARN TO BE CONTINUOUS EVERYWHERE AT ALL POINTS OF TIME

The meaning of being continuous everywhere is to be able to apply the practices of continuous testing, continuous integration, continuous deployment, and continuous improvement.

These things slowly build up the value in the learning curve of a company and help in making processes more lean and accurate.

With the end goal being a continuous presence everywhere, a well-developed software will become liquid wherein the products and services will tightly get connected to the appropriate points in the software.

It will lead to a constant stream of updates into the devices and systems, with the software automatically updating the operations without any human involvement.

PUT A KEEN FOCUS ON AUTOMATION

A significant part of DevOps deals with automation, and there too, zero-touch automation if possible. DevOps leads and IT managers should be involved to select the tools and DevOps processes, having the motive of achieving DevOps at scale.

Once the right set of tools are available, it is the perfect time to define the policies and steps for each tool. Tools like Kubernetes, Terraform, Slack, Chef, and the likes help you build up your automation capabilities. Automating the repetitive tasks of developers provide them with extra time to focus on the other things necessary for the business.

HAVE A FEEDBACK LOOP IN PLACE TO COMMUNICATE BETTER

The lack of coordination between Dev and Ops can be taken care of with the help of a feedback loop. A feedback loop is capable enough to identify the bottlenecks and remove them. A feedback loop assists teams in rectifying their errors, while keeping a keen eye on patterns disrupting continuous software delivery.

A stable feedback loop will help teams to outperform by removing the bottlenecks causing the problem, leading to a growth in the overall productivity.

There are several simple processes to validate a feedback loop in software development- code reviews, Daily Scrum, unit tests, etc.

Ideally, a feedback loop should be as short as possible. This makes it easier to implement your process quickly.

CARVING OUT TRUST BETWEEN THE TEAMS

Trust is the first requirement for any business aspiring to succeed with DevOps. The performance of a business depends on a large extent to the team collaboration and trust among teams present in the company.

Because DevOps practices flow from downwards to the upper level of management, trust is of high importance because it will help the team collaborate and work more collectively. Developing confidence has always been a primary aim of DevOps.

Due to DevOps, the Dev and Ops team act as a support to each other rather than blaming each other. The team bottlenecks will considerably reduce with DevOps. This is why trust is essential.

HAVE PATIENCE

There is one critical issue generally present when people think that DevOps will give overnight results. The reality is otherwise. Because, patience is essential where DevOps is involved.

It takes from a few months to some years before the culture and fully gets embedded into an organization. It is never easy for an old company using all the legacy practices to adapt and execute DevOps practices.

Conclusion

Automation with DevOps can provide critical competitive advantages to the businesses. With the immense necessity in any software-driven company, rightly using DevOps will need the right mental approach. Adding to it, a growth mindset to understand procedures for easy automation will also make the coming years exciting for DevOps.

Wish to know more? Follow us for more such updates, link below:-

Facebook- https://bit.ly/2KPjBQY

Linkedin:- https://bit.ly/33HLbbj

Reach out to us for any Devops requirements.

One of the best phrases from the world of design is

‘if a picture is worth 1000 words, then a functional prototype is worth a 1000 meetings.’

From pure experimentation to see your vision turn into a tangible project, prototypes help a lot in the phases of testing and building. The best thing they do is the fact that also take care to preserve the overall design uniformity too.

Designers are under an obligation to design things according to the description of their clients, but not all understand the requirements clearly. Several meetings, emails and phone discussions then follow. All of these are done to arrive at a final design.

This hassle, though, can be avoided to a large extent by the use of correct prototyping tools.

Prototyping tools help the designers and clients to collaborate in a better way and not have any creative differences. The clients get a visual idea about what will get created. The teams too, build a better understanding and explore options becoming visible, only after building and testing.

The most crucial advantage of prototyping tools is the risk involved, because the sooner we get a failure, the faster we can learn. Failing in the initial stages gives us a soft landing. You have the opportunity to work and improve on those errors.

How are Prototyping Tools Used?

We know very well that user experience is a critical metric for the branding of any company. Companies, therefore, use different prototyping tools to show different versions of a product to clients as per their requirements. It allows the UI/UX designers to put a ‘Proof of Concept’, an essential factor for a stable commercial relationship between the customer and the client.

How to Choose the Right Prototyping Tool?

Choosing the right prototyping tool is the key to describe your thoughts and collaborate in a better way with your clients. However, getting the right prototyping tool is not easy. This is because there are too many tools available online; enough to confuse you to pick the best one.

Every tool is different from the other because each one either lacks a particular feature or has an added one to stand separate from the others.

To choose the right kind of prototyping tool for design, a few factors need to be evaluated to check if the tool addresses our requirements or not-

A LEARNING CURVE

It is essential to analyze how easy the tool is to adopt. In other words, a learning curve where it is determined how long it takes for a designer to understand the tool.

SHARING ABILITIES

Because collaboration is crucial in design, the perfect tool will be the one to provide a collaboration feature for multiple people and stay in sync with each other.

USAGE

This is another point to know when choosing a prototyping tool, about how well it merges with your design process and other tools you use regularly.

COSTS

There are several prototyping tools, and many of them have niche features. A lot of these tools fail to meet our budgetary needs, though. Hence, it is better to choose the tool according to costs and not just by the features on offer.

The 11 Top Prototyping Tools for UI/UX-

INVISION

Invision is the most popular prototyping tool available today. With its project management page, it is effortless to organize the design components into a status workflow.

Invision has simplified every single aspect of the workflow and collaboration between design and development. Better, faster and more collaborative design in real-time is what Invision does best.

ADOBE EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Adobe XD allows you to draw, reuse and remix vectors and create artwork and build wireframes, interactive prototypes, and screen layouts in the same app.

With Adobe, designers can be more productive as they can import files from their Adobe tools without any trouble at all. Clients too, can make comments on your shared prototypes and look at the designs in real-time.

ORIGAMI STUDIO

Facebook initially created this tool for helping teams build and design products. Origami enables you to show your designs in a presentation on full screen on various devices.

You can also export prototype components by a single click, and engineers can copy-and-paste in the project. The tool is more suited to freelancers just starting, due to lack of collaboration features.

SKETCH

WebSketch has a lot of similarities with Photoshop, allowing the user to edit pictures. The fully vector-based workflow makes it easy to create beautiful and high-quality artwork from scratch.

With Sketch, the reusable elements like lines and bubbles can be automatically copied and pasted.

AXURE

Axure is a tool providing some very powerful prototyping without any coding. It also makes the process of sharing a prototype for the team or client very easy.

Axure will also publish all your diagrams and prototypes to Axure Share on the cloud. With a single link, others can view your project in their browser.

WEBFLOW

The most significant benefit of Webflow is that the tool provides a very high degree of functionality without the need of writing a single line of code. The tool heavily focuses on web animations, interactions and very responsive web design.

You can either host a prototype with Webflow or even export the code in HTML, CSS or JavaScript.

FRAMER

Framer has the premise that with the right code, it is possible to prototype anything, resulting in beautiful designs. It provides an effortless workflow, further eased by version control, device previewing and easy sharing.

Framer also makes it possible to import graphics directly from Sketch, Figma or even Photoshop.

ATOMIC

Atomic is a web-based prototyping tool and requires Google Chrome. The tool provides you with the flexibility to tune your interaction. There is easy access on offer for all developers with a simple shared prototyping system.

The best feature is the history option, allowing you to rewind to previous designs and create new versions from any point.

PRINCIPLE

Principle has been built for OS X and has an iOS app to watch live prototypes. The app appears a lot like Sketch and other aspects like alignment, art-board creation and real-time previews.

Principle also permits designers to work offline at increased speeds so that you do not have any problem with a slow connection.

JUST IN MIND

A significant advantage of Just in Mind is that it can be downloaded on your system for offline work as well.

The tool comes packed with tutorials and guided videos for everyone, who is a beginner or even an expert. You also have access to use items from UI libraries and then download several other add-ons.

BALSAMIQ MOCKUPS

Balsamiq Mockups replicates the speed and convenience to create mockups on paper but at a digital medium. Designers get to choose from more than 500 pre-made icons or components.

If you are not a professional designer but looking for a tool allowing you to create static and straightforward wireframes, Balsamiq is ideal for use.

Still not sure, how to get on with it? Let us assist you, Contact us.

The arrival of Artificial Intelligence and its practical implementation in industries has paved the way for unlimited opportunities.

The term artificial intelligence (AI) first came up in 1965. AI has become the latest technology, incorporated in different industries across the globe. This technology, in turn, is a great combination when accompanied with techniques to enhance business operations.

Artificial Intelligence essentially means the development, theory, and execution of computer-based electronic systems.

These systems boost the ability of machines in the execution of tasks; tasks otherwise requiring human intervention. AI brings a boost to the profitability of businesses within a range of 38 percentage points.

Artificial Intelligence enhances efficiency and leads to a reduction in the overall costs. The primary objective of Artificial Intelligence techniques is to facilitate the machines to perform intellect-heavy tasks performed by humans.

AI technology is getting increasingly accepted in several areas with the common objective of achieving a reduction in redundant tasks, and attain a better level of performance.

 

 

AI Update:-

With time, AI has made its presence felt in all essential areas of work. With the pace AI adoption is happening in different fields, AI can rightly take up more positions of interest several times.

AI is present in self-driven cars, human resource planning, store management, and in the areas of medicine and science. AI has provided great results for all these jobs.

AI-Enabled Retail Outlet

The incorporation of an AI-based retail store in Kochi, India, dramatically shows the impact of AI. In this store, Artificial Intelligence is utilized to cut down repetitive jobs, demanded otherwise from the employer.

There are a lot of tasks monotonous in nature, having the potential to hamper the efficiency and cost utilization ability of human resource. This is a massive reason as to why AI has been such a significant influence on a global scale.

Benefits of this AI update:-

• The AI-based retail store in Kochi is entirely devoid of human interruption while the customers indulge themselves in shopping.
• The involvement of AI in this system sees automation to such an extent that the full payment process concludes by e-wallet. The entire store is cashier-free, making the whole shopping experience automated for the customers.
• The fact that a salesperson is absent in the store led to an experience of lesser interruption for the customers.

The purchase amount gets automatically deducted from the customer’s e-wallet. Here, a significant benefit that surfaces is related to the ease of purchase and reduction in time consumption.

The use of AI in retail stores has led to a noticeable decrease in the time invested in shopping. Long queues for payment get substantially avoided as the amount has a direct deduction from the e-wallets.

Customer Manual:-

• The customer is required to download the “Watasale” app, through which a QR code gets produced and scanned while a customer will enter the store.
• The store works with sophisticated camera technology and facial recognition. The shelves of the store have embedded cameras for keeping track of the items picked up.
• The algorithms then take care of the payment procedure based on the information transmitted through the cameras.
• All the customer has to do is download an app, scan the QR code, go in the store, shop on their own, and that is all because the store is free from cashiers and has hi-tech cameras working in tandem with the whole e-wallet, the needful gets automatically done at the time of payment.

AI has brought specific projections for the upcoming trends of retail in India for estimation through store visitor analytics. The store visitor analytics use the concepts of AI and machine learning to make a note of footfalls in the store.

AI For Forecasting Wind Farm Output

With the increasing need for renewable sources of energy, the world is making efforts for obtaining reliable sources of energy generation.  Wind farms are a great source of such renewable energy. However, there is a significant issue that wind farms have been facing lately.

Google has included Artificial Intelligence into this matter. In this case, AI is used to make accurate predictions and detailed calculations. The accuracy of these forecasts is an essential determinant for operators to meet the requirements.

The Benefits of AI in Wind Farm Output Calculation

• Future demands of wind power generation require assessment and analysis much before for staying prepared with the essential strategies and workload. AI is serving as a prospective solution to this issue by ensuring quick calculations and predictions.
• The system devised by Google can make accurate 36-hour predictions within the final output. This is considerably impressive, without a doubt.
• The system is beneficial as energy sources can be scheduled to produce extraordinary power at a particular time. Also, machine learning, when included in this system, aids in the enhancement of the value of wind energy generated.

Amidst the continuous optimization of the model, Google is claiming to have increased the value of wind energy by around twenty per cent so far. The upcoming optimization and work done on the system are targeting even higher returns in coming time.

Artificial Intelligence and The Future

Artificial Intelligence is a concept on the brink to reform every industry and the working and structure of every business. Spheres like inventory management, medical examinations, and prior predictions also get streamlined beautifully with AI.

Also, the involvement of AI-powered robots in retail stores is a prospective boon, expected soon by the store owners in retail management.

Besides this, bot chats, blockchain, and machine learning are some of the related areas that are under works.

Furthermore, right from the management of inventory, workforce, movement of materials in the organization to technical analysis, experts are working on making AI useful in every possible way.

Artificial Intelligence and the various concepts surmounting it are indeed capable of reforming a large part of our daily lives and businesses.

If there is any idea you have in mind, or any assistance required, do get in touch with us.