Challanges of the Hybrod TV

Hybrid Television, a product, a service or a technology?

Wise man say that Hybrid broadcast and broadband television combines and leverages the benefits of broadcast and Internet technologies, in order to offer new services to viewers, and boldly go where no man has gone before in the field of Television and Home Entertainment.
"Hybrid Tv" is the new name  given to the new technology resulted from the symbiosis between the Broadcast and Broadband services.

After, having the concepts cleared and proofed, other wise men requested for standards and frameworks, in order to have clear boundaries (and limitations?) for the newly architectured service.
 Also, the European Commission made some explicit sttments on this topic
Here some standards:

MHEG-IC (Interaction Channel) was eveloped in the UK  by DTG as an extension of the MHEG interactive middle-war.
Besides the  United Kingdom  (Freeview HD, Freesat DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 platforms), this standard was also used in Germany and Ireland (MHEG-5)
 
GEM/MHP Is a Javabased environment created for  DVB platforms, an open standard for interactive services.
Italy is probably the major MHP market in Europe with over 10 million MHP-enabled receivers. However, there are other countries havingMHP on at least one television platform: Belgium, Germany, Poland, Spain and Switzerland.

HbbTV
HbbTV was created by a group of 10 broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers, as an  interactive middleware that relies on of existing broadcast and web technologies
 HbbTV was standardized by ETSI in June 2010.
As of July 2010, commercial services are available in Germany while the Czech Republic, France and Spain have announced plans to adopt the standard.

Every product in the world is about revenue/profit. In order to achieve this basic goal, some market requirement are to be fulfilled. Some of these requirements are already fulfilled, some of them will be implemented in the future and some of them are currently under debate fr their legal, social, moral or ethical implications (Controversial requirements)

Future implementations requirements
This section provides requirements that could be implemented in hybrid television receivers in the
future. They are forward-looking and may best be considered as aspirations rather than agreed
requirements. It will not be possible for hybrid television receivers to include such requirements when they are deployed as of 2012.

New receiver features
These requirements relate to features that can be included when developing receivers in the future.

• Devices should be able to display broadcast and broadband contents simultaneously (e.g. PiP
  functionality)
• It should be investigated what mechanisms and subtitled formats should be adopted as mandatory requirements in streaming content on demand mp4 format.
• In the case that a receiver can support more than one output screen, the application should be able to manage the content displayed in each screen.
• Platforms and devices should accommodate systems, with a maximum of communality, which allow broadcasters and other content providers to provide a linkage between their linear and non-linear offers (permitting, in particular, enhanced or synchronised audiovisual content by a combination of linear and non-linear elements, e.g. online voting, sports statistics and sign language).
• Receivers should implement an event synchronization mechanism coming from the broadband channel similar to the broadcast “stream event” mechanism.
• The HBB system should accommodate advanced on-screen graphics.

Cookies management
These requirements relate to the use of cookies.

•  A method should be available for HBB applications to know if the user has refused cookies.

Recording features
These requirements relate to the recording functionality of a hybrid television platform. 

• If record functionalities are enabled on the HBB system, end-users shall be able to find, organize, schedule and record TV shows, including single episodes and series, taking into account broadcast and broadband content. The ability to record live broadband streams will need to be clarified based on the availability of technical standards.

Controversial requirements are those, for which the consensus has not been achieved among the different interest groups. These requirements may be specific to one country or market or may be pan-European broadcast requirements.
Such requirements could be implemented should alternative business models be adopted such as
subsidy allowances to offset the cost of receivers by the service platform operator.

Principles pertaining to broadcasters
These requirements relate to the rights of broadcasters to avoid overlays of third-party content, to
request the removal of widgets and to be given access to data regarding their programmes and
services.

• Receivers must not allow the overlay of third-party content or commercial communications on the broadcaster’s content without the broadcaster's consent or an active decision by the viewer, whenever it is technically feasible. While accepted as a principle, legal backing may be necessary for enforcement.
• The same conditions as for overlays must apply to commercial communications which appear anywhere on screen at the same time as the television broadcast.
• Broadcasters must be able to request the removal of those widgets or applications that appear to facilitate access to pirated content.
• Broadcasters must be informed about and, upon request, given access to, any data which that may be collected via hybrid systems relating to the use of their programmes and services, with due respect for data protection rules.

Access to broadcaster’s content
The below requirements relate to the access of broadcast content on hybrid TV portals, menus,
homes screens and broadcaster’s television channels.

• Hybrid TV portals, hybrid TV menus and home screens must guarantee non-discriminatory access for all broadcasters and content providers.
• Broadcasters' complete on-demand offering should be prominently displayed and easily
  accessible in an appropriate category on the hybrid TV menu or home screen.
• Viewers must be able to access any portal site/application provided by the broadcaster from the
  home screen (where it should be identified by the broadcaster's logo or icon) and also while watching one of the broadcaster's television channels by pressing the red (or similar) button on the remote control

Receiver features

• The below requirements relate to the reception of live content using the broadband network.The device should incorporate the feature "+ RTSP" that will allow reception of live content via the broadband communication channel.
• The ability to record video on demand content streamed over broadband shall be under the control of the content provider.
• In receivers with the technical capability of connecting external devices (e.g. microphones or cameras using USB connection), the HBB applications should be able to access the external devices.
• In receivers supporting Bluetooth communication interface, HBB applications should be able to send or receive messages through this interface to and from external devices.

Reference http://www.digitag.org/DiscussionPaperV1.0.pdf

Credit card vs mobile payment equals Past vs Future?

The Roman Empire was in many ways a similar construction to the modern European Union.

The main currency (trough all the Republic and later in the West of the Empire) was the silver Denarii (besides the golden Aureus and the brass Sestertius and Dupondius).

Golden, silver and copper coins remained the main but not unique currency during the Middle Ages.





In the mid 20th century, the European Union's foundations were laid in Germany and France.

In parallel, a the plan for a unique, trans-European currency was forged. As an effect, in 1979 the ECU (European Currency Unit) was introduced, acting as a basket of the currencies of the European Community member states. The ECU was used as the unit off account of the European Community, until replacement by the Uuro on 1 January 1999, at parity.



Finally, the dream came (almost') true. (Almost) all over the European Union, the Uuro is accepted as formal currency, payments can be made using Euro bills and coins.
The price paid by the Euro-zone states in order to achieve this goal was (by some opinions) very high: renouncing to the traditional national currency. Germany gave up the Deutschmark, Italy renounced the Lira, France gave up the Franc, etc.

















Besides the Euro, the 20th century brought us also another revolutionary unique payment tool : the Credit Card.
Credit card equals electronic payment, "plastic money", a revolution (considered by some) in the retail financial world.
Major credit card solution providers as Maestro, Delta, Visa, Mastercard, American Express "conquered" the world during the last 40 years. From Europe to America, from Australia to Africa trough Asia, every country has at least 1 ATM machine or a shop were credit cards are accepted as a payment tool.

Is the credit card in danger of extinction? If yes, who/what can replace it?

The smart-phone.

Bell invented the phone. Someone invented the wireless phone (radio). After that came the GSM ant the satellite phone. Today we have the INTERNET-phones, also called Smartphones.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile are planning a joint venture to develop a mobile payment system which will use the smartphones as the payment tool.

The technical details are not published yet, however, the service would let customers make purchases by holding a smartphone in front of an electronic reader in stores and the transactions would be processed by a third party .

Retailers will play a key role trough this "migration" process. Migration ( implementation) costs for the new technology, consumer's feedback, the solution's popularity are still unpredictable variables for this equation.

Good news for the software and IT industry: new solutions are to be designed and built in order to support the new technology, equals income for the industry.

Visa and Mastercard - playing in defense.

All credit card companies did benefit during the past decades as people abandoned cash and paper checks in favor of the plastic money. and electronic payments.

According to The Nilson Report, (http://www.nilsonreport.com/charts.htm) an industry newsletter, over 50% of the US consumers operate their purchases using credit cards.

It seems that Visa and MasterCard are currently developing their own mobile payment systems. working with Telecom carriers, handset makers, and banks in order to develop mobile payment technologies all over the world,
Mastercard's CEO Ajay Banga stated in august 2011. "While the business model for mobile payments is yet to be proven in a tangible way across the world, I have no doubt that it will get proven in some form," .

The content of this posting and the related comments are property of Mr. Racz Sandor

Tsunami economicae :Seismic waves from Middle East

Introduction:
Middle East and Northern Africa. Fascinating but Volatile in the same time. Luxury and Poverty, Evergreen Gardens and Deserts coexist for centuries in the same area.
Traditionally, the economy of the norther African and Middle Eastern states, from Mesopotamian times until our days is mainly focused on trade.
Trading either with foreign goods, or with their own "internally" manufactured products, the inhabitants of this region have a long tradition of being skilled traders and shipowners. The coast of northern Africa with it's Mediterranean harbors or the trading hubs in the Arabian Peninsula were strategic elements in the development of this region.
19th and 20th century. Industrialization. Engines. Crued oil. Among other locations in the world, like Siberia, Venezuela, Norway, Russia, Middle East became of interest for the Western World as well. After discovering probably the largest oil reserves on the globe, the interest and the struggle to influence this area became a fact.

Preconditions
Crued oil is used mainly in the petrochemical industry for producing plastics, fuel, paint and others.
What happens, when major North African or Middle East political regimes begin to shiver, while armed forces fight on the streets of the capital? Recently in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bachrein, Oman. And these are minor oil exporting countries, imagine the same type of ryots in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates..
Allthough most of the oil producing & exporting countries have joined the OPEC organization (headquartered in Vienna, Europe), the world's energy market is not yet predictible enough.
For example, after the Libyan crisis started, US light crude rose by $1.95 to $106.75 a barrel, the highest since September 2008, and Brent crude gained $2.43 to $118.4.

Concerned that the recent events in Egypt (turnover of the Mubarak regime) could disrupt oil shipments passing through the Suez canal and engulf thMiddle East drove the price of Brent crude oil through the $100 barrier for the first time in over two years. The price of a barrel of the benchmark Brent soared by more than $1.50 up to $101.08 a barrel.

In the central end Eastern part of the European Union, countries do not poses natural crued oil reserves, with one exception - Romania. Hence, importing the oil became a necessity.a major dependency for the local economy.

Effects:
Petrol prizes increased all over Europe in 2010,Greece (+43%), Romania (+24%) Cyprus (+20,9%), Switzerland (+5%), Slovakia (+7,9%) si Sweden (8,7%).

What effects will cause the increase of the price of the barrel up to $200 , in Romania?

Gasoline price: > 7 RON (vs 5 RON 2010]

Inflation: > 10 % [7% 2011]

Euro: > 1,5 USD [from 1,4]

Profit margin of the major Romanian oil company > 2 bn. euro [~0,5bn ]

Weight of crude oil in the GDP: > 10 % [ 5,5% at this point in time]

What new business opportunities (for the IT market) can be identified trough this changes?
Let's see and observe

The content of this posting and the related comments are property of Mr. Racz Sandor

EMEA a (past) emerging market for ERP& related Enterprise products?

Trough a recent consultancy assignment in the Middle East (Gulf region), I've managed to obtain some useful insights into the ERP & Enterprise Solutions / IT Consultancy market of this region.

Regardless of cultural, social and economical differences, the business environment and the "business infrastructure" in the GCC (focusing on UAE and Saudi-Arabia) is fairly similar to western type environments.

Also, the headcount of western educated and highly qualified "Expats" (foreign citizens living as residents in the GCC ) increases the level of transferred knowledge, the "Know-How" is being transferred on a very accelerated path.

The emerging market:

Anyone will associate Middle East (from the economic development's perspective) with oil and OPEC. Being the worlds second largest Oil exporter, Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries develop their economy based on their income -mainly crude oil,
Saudi Arabia plans to invest over 400 bn USD in infrastructure development, in order to assure logistical communications and to optimize the movement of goods and services.

Dubai is a fair example for "How to manage when the oil runs out". Having major investments in infrastructure -highways, water, electricity, Dubai also started building the "Business center of the future" .
All the recently built 80-120 floor tall sky-scrapers are meant to replace the desert-view with a modern Metropolis. By becoming a major international business -hub (node), Dubai will increase his income and recover from the 2008-2009 crisis. Business and shopping tourism is also a considerable source for income for the Emirate of Dubai.

All this investments will require a strong technical support, an investment in the area of IT, in order to assure the proper management, controlling, reporting and maintainability for all the delivered investments.

Any infrastructure/logistics investment without the proper Monitoring system, without an ERP system, without an efficient project management tool will always carry a major risk of failure.

Most GCC country executives are aware of the necessity of the IT solutions, and for this reason,
major American market players like ORACLE, MICROSOFT are already present in the GCC region, having a multi-billion market share here.
Also ,major European players - German SAP is starting to brake trough successfully in this market.

As for the future (even if oil runs out in 20-30 years), if GCC countries will continue their present strategy of developing their business infrastructure, the business society and the organizational environment of 2030-2040 will reach his maturity, being able to offer an alternative for the "traditional" oil business

The content of this posting and the related comments are property of Mr. Racz Sandor

Casus belli economicae- The Greek precedence,

Greece is today on the brink of macroeconomic collapse.
The research compiled by the World Economic Forum, the World Bank and Transparency International present Greece as a nominally developed country with increasing problems. On the competitiveness scale, Greece ranks 71st, behind Hungary, Turkey, Colombia and Egypt-Switzerland, the United States and Singapore are first.
Greece lies currently in a very unstable fiscal environment, Greece rippled through global stock, bond and currency markets for weeks as investors worry about a new credit crisis based in Europe. Repeated promises by Greece to get its fiscal mess under control amid severe austerity measures have failed to win investors over, leading to the latest plan being considered by the wider EU.(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/eu-set-to-pull-greece-from-the-brink/article1462020/ )
Other former socialist economies in the South-East of of Europe evolved during the last 20 years into competitive restively healthy systems. This means, that the state -owned enterprises together with their assets were subsequently privatized, and eventually, restructured, into a profitable stream.
During the 2009 recession, major American and European private and state-owned companies tried to restructure their expenditures, trying to reduce their costs and improve the profitability. In some cases, even the financial survival of the company was at stake.
Pubic investments were also meant as a partial solution to the crisis. The "State" intended to finance the following types of investments:

1. Highways, Motorways, Interstate infrastructure investments (constructions)
   
2. Thermal rehabilitation of older buildings (constructions)
   
3. Construction of Water and gas pipes, residual waste systems for remote villages where this kind of utilities are currently missing.
4. Food damage prevention constructions on major rivers
   

This kind of investments had the primary role to absorb surplus labor and secondarily to generate some dynamics trough the involvement of the horizontal component.
Romania is no exception in the region. The country received recently a new loan from the IMF.
Hopefully, Romanian politicians will not drag the country into the recent Greek experience.

"The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today completed the second and third reviews of Romania’s economic performance under a program supported by a 24-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA). The completion of the reviews enables the immediate disbursement of SDR 2.18 billion (about €2.45 billion or about US$3.32 billion), bringing total disbursements under the program to SDR 8.26 billion (about €9.32 billion or about US$12.60 billion).

In completing the reviews the Executive Board also approved Romania’s request for a waiver of non-observance of the end-December 2009 performance criterion pertaining to the ceiling on the accumulation of general government domestic arrears."

How deep do political changes affect enterprise environment?

The political system of a state designs and implements the fiscal policies.
As a result of the 2004 elections in Romania, taxes were lowered at 16% .
Mid and long-term foreign investment decisions are usually influenced by a list of factors.
One of them is the fiscal policy of the targeted country.
After the actual start-up of the business investment, it's financial performance will be also influenced by the country's fiscal policy and political stability.
So, after having at point 0 (at start-up) a Corporate income tax of 35% and after 5 years this tax is to be modified at 16%, represents a decrease of costs for the investor.
Certain European countries have different levels of taxes for resident (national) corporations and non-resident (foreign) corporations. Furthermore, many countries have a progressive tax calculation formula, depending on turnover, profit or other criteria. In this article, we'll use only the corporate tax-where it is appreciable.

Greece for example reduces step by step his corporate taxes by 1% every year, so Greece will reduce the tax from 25% (2009) to 20% (2009)

France has for example a combined taxing system, there is a minimum annual corporation tax (based on the companies turnover) followed by the actual income tax of 33%

Romania addopted in 2005 the unique tax of 16% . The direct result was an acceleration of economic growth. Many skepticists believed, that by lowering the tax, the GDP will decrease.
Reality proved this presumption wrong,
Here some examples of corporate taxes in Europe:

Country	Corporate income tax	Percent of GDP (for 2007)
Poland	19.00%	2.73%
Italy	27.50%	3.03%
Sweden	26.30%	3.28%
Netherlands	25.50%	3.27%
Lithuania	20.00%	2.74%
Finland	26.00%	0.26%
Hungary	21.28%	2.00%
Romania	16.00%	2.63%
France	33.33%	2.62%
Spain	30.00%	4.74%
Greece	25.00%	2.56%
Bulgaria	10.00%	2.96%
UK	28.00%	3.20%
Slovakia	19.00%	2.93%
Ireland	12.50%	2.73%

Romania, an emerging market for CRM Systems

Like most of the East European former communist countries, Romania went trough a lot of functional, social and economic changes.
From the centralized, state-owned socialist economy, Romania became a modern market-focused, mostly privately owned, capital-based economy. After joining the NATO and the European Union, all major international rating agencies improved the countrie's economical ratings.

So, regarding the economic growth\, Romania is slightly behind Greece, with a Growth Competitiveness Index (GCI) of 3.97 (as 4.08 for Greece or 4.62 Hungary and 5.55 for Denmark).
Source: World Economic Forum

All macroeconomic indicators show a healthy economic growth and an increase of foreign investments. (except of course the year 2009, where the worldwide financial crisis interfered)

	MU	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005
GDP growth	%	2.1	5.7	5	4.9	8.3	4.1
Industrial output growth	%	7.1	8.4	6	3.1	4.3	2.5
Final consumption	%	1.4	6.3	2.4	6.9	10.2	8.5
Gross Fixed Capital Formation	%	5.5	10.1	8.2	9.2	10.1	13
Foreign direct investments	Euro mill	1147	1294	1212	1946	5183	5197
Employment	Thou. pers	4623	4619	4568	4591	4420	4704
Unemployment	Thou. pers	1007	827	827	659	558	523
Unemployment Rate	%	10.5	8.8	8.4	7.4	6.3	5.9

So, while other countries in the region had in 2008 a GDP growth of 0.5% (Hungary) or 3.2 and 3.5 (Czeh Republic and Slovenia), Romania had a growth of over 7.1%.
The strength of the economy was proven again trough the 2009 crisis, compared with -15.9 and -18.4 GDP loss in Lithuania and Latvia, Romania resisted with a GDP loss of 5.7% (estim)

GDP Growth, % y-o-y	2007	2008	2009	2010 est
Czech Republic	6	3.2	-3.1	1.1
Hungary	1.1	0.5	-6.4	0.1
Poland	6.6	4.9	1.0	3.4
Slovakia	10.4	6.4	-4.2	1.3
Estonia	6.4	-3.6	-13.2	-1.2
Latvia	10.2	-2	-18.4	-2.3
Lithuania	8.9	3.2	-15.9	0
Romania	6.2	7.1	-5.7	0.3
Bulgaria	6.2	5.9	-5.3	0.4
Slovenia	6.8	3.5	-5.9	1
Croatia	5.6	2.4	-5.1	1.1
Turkey	4.7	1.1	-6.2	3.4

Source: http://www.emergingeuropemonitor.com


About ERP and CRM Systems in Romania.
The emerging Romanian economy offered in the last 10 years, for many multinational and transnational corporations a great relocation opportunity. As a consequence, major players in the Automotive, Electronics and Telecom industry relocated (or started Greenfeeld investments) in Romania. We're talking about companies like Siemens, Alcatel, Continental, Nokia, Ford, Oracle, IBM etc.

The demand for CRM systems appeared together with the major multinationals.
Managing the relations with the customers, vendors and partners, the diversity of delivered/obtained goods and services,

Features like Customer contract management; References, Contract service and support; Commission management; Contact management; Channel management, Internationalization or Collaborative e-commerce (buy-side, sell-side, digital marketplaces) were eventually needed , in order to manage optimize and control the companie's business processes (focusing on CRM).
The BIG4 vendors for CRM (also ERP and other related software) are probably ORACLE, SAP, MICROSOFT and INFOR. Here a short list after a quick walk-trough in the ERP-CRM market.

Oracle - Siebel or Oracle CRM On Demand
SAP - SAP CRM
Microsoft - Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Infor - Infor CRM Epiphany, ERP XA CRM, ERP SyteLine CRM

• Sage Software - SageCRM.com
• Lawson - Lawson M3 Customer Sales and Service
• Salesforce.com - Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition
• SugarCRM - SugarCRM Suite
• Surado Solution - Surado CRM TOTVS S/A -
• Microsiga Protheus Maximizer Software - Maximizer CRM
• BizAutomation.com - BizAutomation CRM + Business Management
• Epicor - Clientele CRM.NET
• Sage Software - Sage SalesLogix
• b2bCRM A/S - b2bCRM
• Consona - Onyx Adaptive CRM
• Impact Profile - Health Care Management System
• Intélisis S.A. de C.V. - Intelisis ERP
• Kepler - Kepler
• Oncontact - Oncontact CRM
• SemaTree Inc - ECS 2003
• SuperOffice - SuperOffice
• SYSPRO - SYSPRO CRM
• Vertical Marketing, Inc. - crmEZ.net
• IFS - IFS CRM
• Exactus de Costa Rica - Exactus CRM Metrix LLC -
• Metrix Deltek Systems - Deltek CRM & Propoals
• TOTVS S/A - LOGIX CRM

Bottom-line is, that the demand for Data and Process Management Tools is growing.
The Romanian economy within the global market is a continuously evolving organism, with various and many business opportunities.

MBA's, Distance Learning and the Middle Ages

Distance learning. This sounded 30 years ago like a strange paradox. Two centuries ago it would have been impossible to achieve.
MBA: How to teach managers and leaders to become even better managers and leaders.
All the Leadership trainings, management, financial analysis and other types of professional improvements can not be subtituted (a leastnot yet, in my opinion) with some strange distant learning or online courses. The ''student' must attend the classes, the physical presence, the immediate experience of the course, the teachers charisma, the interactive style is a key succes factor for the efficiency of the pedagogical exercise.
The classical approach towards the academic-level teaching was focused on the direct, personal and face to face approach.

Since the early middle ages, the famous Chines, Middle-East and European universities -like Nanjing University, University of Al-Karaouine (Fes, Marocco), Nizamiyya (Iran), University of Bologna or the Charles University of Prague-prepared their students to become the intellectual elite of their society, and not necessary to become good managers.

Most uf the medieval universities (word derived from the latin "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" which means"community of teachers and scholars"- received a strong influence from the national church.

So, the benefited education was a result of the strong combination of scientific theses with religious dogmas. A good example towards this example is the famous geocentric vs heliocentric debate within European universities during the Renaissance period.
Let us imagine a Project Management training in the University of Oxford at the year 1167...

How can soft skills, communication or sales technique inherited by a student trough online courses? Is this the future way to form the knowledge of our children, is this the way the future generations will learn their competences, just by sitting in front of the monitor and completing exams?
The future's right, the future's us.

The first ERP & CRM implementation in the world

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. John 1:1
At the beginning was the DEMAND. As a response, came the OFFER.
Mr Keynes described it more gracefully, including a large and complex explanation set into his dissertation.
In the late 60's came the computer. Actually, a Grandfather-like role model of what we call today a PC.
IBM, Apple, HP, Compaq, Fujitsu-Siemens-Nixdorf, Commodore 64, HC, Felix, TIM S ...all of them contributed somehow to our present state.
On a separate branch, let us call it "Software-branch", a new era begun.
Primitive, simple basic applications from the late 80's evolved into complex, multi-platform million dollar ERP solutions.
This overwhelming offer of "business optimization" products had a predictible outcome:
a new species came alive- The Project Manager.