Announcement and Analysis of Google Pay...ah Google Wallet

In early May 2015, a panel of merchant services and payment experts forecasted the future of the payment industry. The main trends spoken about were PCI compliance and EMV, Apple Pay and Mobile POS. I asked this panel of the status of Google Wallet and it seemed like an uneasy silence. They did not know.

Yesterday, a mere 2 weeks later, we have a clearer picture. Google announced Android Pay. Android phones are already built with Near Field Communication (NFC). The solution is to pay for products with a wave of your phone at the merchants Point of Sale terminal. Apple Pay was first to market and launched in September 2014.  Android users, which accounts for about a 62% of the US mobile phone market share and 79% of the worldwide mobile phone market share, were blocked by the cell phone carriers.   Reason:  AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon (Not Sprint) were promoting their mobile payment darling; ISIS.  Ironically, as of today, Walmart, Home Depot and other major retailers have turned off NFC at their Point of Sale terminals.  And there is another reason for that.

Major retailers don’t like paying the credit card processing fees, typically in the 2-3% range.  They got together and formed Merchant Customer Exchange, another mobile payment platform with the app called Current C.  They want to cut into those processing fees.

As the players jockey for position, let’s examine a few mechanically differences between Apple Pay and Android Pay.  Apple uses a fingerprint scanner, Android uses a Pin. I have a feeling Android manufacturers will change this soon because of this announcement.

Google says your data is secure. They are working with major payment processors and banks “to deliver industry standard security tokenization”.  Tokenization is another way of saying that the real credit card number is not transmitted for obvious security reasons.  Apple creates a token in a chip called the Secure Element.  Android token is created in the Cloud.  If you are in a cell dead zone, Android will not work.

If your phone is lost or stolen, just use the Android Device Manager (ADM) to lock down the device. However, ADM does not work all the time as advertised. If you need to use ADM to reset a forgotten password, you may be surprised that you have to reset the device to factory settings. You loose all your apps, configurations…everything.

It’s clear Google went to the major retailers to get early buy-in.  Google Pay will be accepted at 700,000 store locations.

Sources: http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2015/05/pay-your-way-with-android.html by Pali Bhat, Google
Director, Product Management

Despite iPhone 6 hype, Android continues to dominate iOS market share
http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/android-market-share-2014/

A Primer on Android Pay and Google Wallet
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/a-primer-on-android-pay-and-google-wallet/

The Android Pay details Google didn’t tell you
http://www.cnet.com/how-to/android-pay-phone-how-it-works/

Latest Google Wallet update doesn’t fix original problem, NFC payments still at the mercy of carriers
http://phandroid.com/2013/09/19/google-wallet-nfc-payments-blocked/

poprockscandy.com is closing down

It's official...poprockscandy.com is closing down.  Started in 1997, we helped individuals and businesses with getting Pop Rocks candy.  Restaurants and bars used Pop Rocks on desserts and rimmed specialty martini drinks with Pop Rocks.  A few Japanese restaurants used Pop Rocks in their Sushi.  Some of the notable businesses; Flo at Progressive Insurance did a promotion with Pop Rocks, MGM Studios promoted a movie, Google did a employee appreciation gig with Pop Rocks and the producers of the Big Bang Theory TV show bought Pop Rocks.

Why close down poprockscandy.com?

A couple of reasons.

1.  Dwindling demand.  I started poprockscandy.com as a pure play e-commerce site.  Our organic SEO was very high because we started so early in the internet game.  We ranked #1 in search engines for many years.  However, around 2008 time frame, I noticed sales peaked and the order rate was moving slightly downward.

I started looking into the web stats and our online competition.  Stats were slightly lower too. Competition from more traditional candy distributors had certainly caught up.   We were inline in most other candy websites in terms of pricing.  Candy.com sold Pop Rocks, but their prices were 25% more, so I was not priced out.

It soon became apparent that the pay to play advertising and sponsored websites were moving to the top of search engines and getting the attention of the end users.  I had a philosophical aversion to pay Google and Yahoo.  I looked into it, but just did not want to pay.  It was a part-time business and not enough sales to justify the payment.

2.  The manufacturer of Pop Rocks would not sell.  I would order from Pop Rocks Inc every few months.  Sometimes it would take them several weeks to fulfill an order.  In the Summer of 2014, I placed an order and after 4 weeks, I called Customer Service to inquire on the status of the order.  Their answer - we can not fulfill your order with no answer to why.  I called the VP of Sales of North American.  I told him the situation and he seemed shocked and said he would look into it.  A couple of more weeks go by.  I called again and he said the decision was blocked by the parent company, Zeta Especial.  I exchanged an email with Dotty, President of Zeta Especial.  She would not give me an answer.  Conclusion:  Close down poprockscandy.com

Now, I need to change the title of my Blog.

Ciena to Acquire Cyan for $400 Million

A couple of years old a Ciena VP asked my opinion about Cyan.  The question was posed because Cyan had an innovative user interface to their management system that created some buzz in the industry.  They didn't build, it was outsourced.  Did Cyan design the requirements or did the outsourcer come up with the design - It's an unknown to me.  Back then, Cyan was getting market penetration with small, regional telecom operators, but no major customers.  I said it's someone to watch, but not worry too much about.   The Ciena VP shock his head in agreement.  

Then in March 2015, CenturyLink selects Cyan.  Not exactly a Tier 1 operator, but big enough to get noticed.  Ciena noticed enough to acquire.  Cyan was doing about $100 million in sales for the last 2 years and unprofitable.  4x revenue seems like a good deal for Cyan.

It is reminiscent of when Ciena acquired WorldWide Packet about 10 years when they got into AT&T.  

The deal is subject to certain approvals of Cyan stockholders, regulatory approvals in the U.S. and other customary approvals.

http://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/Ciena-Announces-Intent-to-Acquire-Cyan.html

MPLS Monitoring, Provisioning and QoS

As the world has become a global village, everyone and everything is interdependent! Hesitation to break geographical boundaries will give any business undesirable consequences. Fast, secure and reliable techniques to share information across the networks are vital for people across the globe to work together, share information and even learn.

 In this use case, the schools in the City of Lodz, Poland, had a problem. The schools realized that a collaborative effort in sharing resources was needed to enhance the standard of education. That is the reason they wanted to establish a MPLS network and a management system to help monitor, provision and control the quality of service (QoS).

The main challenges faced were time and expertise. They needed a complete solution, yet flexible enough to match their specific networking needs. Comp, a leading system integrator, was assigned the task of establishing and rolling out the network within a short period of time, just 8 weeks.

Provisioning was a very critical feature needed by Comp. They provision features like creating new LSPs, provision services, modifying and decommissioning them in a point-and-click manner. Automated rollbacks in case of errors is essential.

Besides the expected automatic device detection, they render a graphical visualization of the topology for a quick analysis. Fault monitoring with instant notification and diagnostic capabilities allow users to view the alarms and outage/degradation root causes. Security is key and they would not compromise it. User security is enforced by a local authentication, authorization and auditing (AAA) database.

Implementing the MPLS management solution has resulted in benefits with a remarkable increase in the ability to control traffic and prevent congestion and has offered sophisticated traffic-engineering options. They are able to see bandwidth and traffic patterns at an interface-specific level. Keeping network downtime to a minimum, they increased the productivity considerably and reduced personnel and equipment costs.

Australia pays it forward.

Australia pays the Central Bank $8.5 Billion to strengthen their balance sheet.  Are they looking into their crystal ball and seeing the future or just hedging a bet?  Or is it just a situation like where a business does a stock buy back?  In terms of the amount for a country like Assieland, it is not a lot, but it does send a signal.

Source:  http://www.nasdaq.com/article/australia-gives-central-bank-billions-citing-global-risks-20131023-00071

Broadsoft VoIP Management and Continuous Monitoring

When you pick up the phone, there's an expectation of the call going through. Voice over IP (VoIP) has been with us since the mid-to-late 1990s and the expectation remains the same. In the early days you could hear the choppy latency. Yet now, carrier-class scale and new functional features are just as important as call clarity and reduced latency. Switching to VoIP saves on service and infrastructure costs and has moved from Hobbyist to a mainstream alternative to the old switching gear and POTS line. 

Seattle Municipal Archives

An innovator and leader in software-based VoIP solutions for service providers is Broadsoft. Their product portfolio is called Broadworks and is used to delivery unified communications for voice and multimedia services over Ethernet, fiber, mobile or cable. The Broadworks solution offers voice messaging and conferencing, and personal calling functions such as call forwarding, simultaneous ring and dial-by-name. 

The components include an Application Server database that maintains user and group profiles, as well as service and subscription data, a centralized SIP Network Server responsible for location services, dial plan/digit translation and routing policies, a Media Server enabling announcements, record, playback. digit detection, mixing and repeating functions over scripting languages like VoiceXML and CCXML, as well as media control protocols such as NetAnn and MSCML and an Access Mediation Server supporting Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP) and SIP device across the enterprise.

Managing and controlling their system infrastructure is the Broadworks Element Management System (EMS). It performs fault processing, performance metrics and configuration of BroadWorks Application Servers, Network Servers and Media Servers. The Broadworks EMS is a single pane of glass for the system management functions and a network wide view for health and performance.

The Operations, Administration, Maintenance, and provisioning (OAM&P) interfaces utilize SNMPv3, XML and CLI and runs on a NEBS-complaint, x86-64 hardware with the Linux operating system. Fault-alarm collection is done via SNMP to diagnose system and network problems and looks for potential performance degradations. Alarming indicates server issues, protocol problems, system failovers and supports alarm suppression, auto-clearing and correlation. Solaris and Linux syslogs are converted into EMS events and are used to do further troubleshooting for malfunctioning end points in the network.

From an EMS GUI perspective, operators can view all event and alarms conditions and dynamically customize performance thresholding to tune the system for better health status accuracy. Performance monitoring looks at server metrics like CPU utilization, memory, swap spaces and database counters. In addition, operators can generate exportable XML system performance reports and perform routine system polices such as software imaging and backups. All configuration changes, adds and deletes are logged into a audit trail.

Administrators can push server upgrades via the Broadworks EMS without bringing down the system. The CLI interface provides commands in quick, easy-to-understand syntax for system administration. For Northbound integration, Broadworks EMS supports SNMP, HTTPS and SOAP and also integrates with RADIUS or LDAP to authenticate for security and for real-time call data for third-party accounting applications.  The Broadworks application can be extended to third party developers and integrators via REST APIs.

The total system is architected for automatic geographic redundancy to achieve the highest levels of reliability and performance. Server and device agents generate alarms in the event of a failure. It addresses potential points of failure at several points: the Broadworks EMS, the BroadWorks servers and the service provider’s IP network. All layers are deployed in primary/secondary redundant pairs or clusters. In the event that the primary server fails, or is inaccessible, it is routed the secondary server. This is not a trivial exercise and requires specialized engineering at the EMS, OS, database and hardware levels to achieve 99.999 percent uptimes.

As the Broadworks system is deployed by several Tier 1 carriers in their IMS systems, Broadsoft is geared up for Voice over LTE (VoLTE) and supports 3GPP Release 9 specifications and IR.92 compliance, thus expanding capabilities, increasing operational efficiency and reducing operating costs for service providers.

Management at Mobile World Congress, 2013

Mobile World Congress can be described in one word – massive. It is by far the largest mobile trade show in the world. The venue was changed to the Fira which gave it a more intimate feel. The show floors were closer together and it seems people have more access to the vendors than last year.

The business needs still remain. The growing number of devices requires scalable management software to monitor and control them. One contrast from last year appeared to be fewer vendors in the performance management and Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) space.

Another observation was there were less mobile app developer firms, but interesting to see Firefox and Ubuntu getting into the mobile OS space.

The Mobile Device Management (MDM) and how to deal with BYOD has picked up. ManageEngine Desktop Central introduced MDM last year at the show and has continued the R&D and marketing efforts.  It supports iOS and Android tablet and smartphones.  Just handling the inventory/asset management and configuring policy settings within the enterprise is the first step. Then baseline security policies and being able to distribute and manage both in-house and commercial apps are next. Lastly, performing audits and reporting on what is in the enterprise is part of rollout. The typical customer is the enterprise, but it's interesting to see specialty device vendors looking to OEM Mobile Device Management to offer an all around solution.

As in last year’s blog, the M2M was starting to gain momentum. This year it's really taking off.  There are many new vendors offering Smart Home/City and Power Grid equipment. Several of the big players were touting M2M management. When pressed to see a demo, one admitted that it is in the very early development stage  When they heard of the WebNMS M2M framework and how it could be customized and extended with flexible GUI look and feel and open APIs, the tuned changed and there was some genuine interest. Build vs. buy decision points. And building is an expensive proposition.

Cloud infrastructure and Cloud Management is still center on people's foreheads. There was talk about Cloud management applications for small and medium sized customers. Think of it as a Cloud NOC. 

I feel the Element and Network Management Systems will be an on-premise type of application for the near future. Scale and dependences around the OS, hardware and database and especially around security are the driving reasons. However, pushing customer fault and performance data to the Cloud is in demand and doable today.