This Week I Learned - Week #13 2021

This Week I Learned - 

* Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) is a software-defined, unified system that combines all the disparate and siloed elements of a traditional datacenter: secure storage, compute, network, and management. This integrated solution runs on off-the-shelf x86 servers to replace expensive, purpose-built hardware. Azure Stack HCI is built from the ground up to leverage an advanced level of HCI without sacrificing legacy functionality.  Azure Stack HCI connects to Azure hybrid services through Azure Arc.

* The initial version of Azure Stack HCI, launched in 2019, was based on Windows Server 2019 Datacenter. Now, Azure Stack HCI is decoupled from Windows, becoming its own operating system

* The difference between Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI is that the latter targets customers that still need to run key workloads in-house but also want to start their cloud journey. Azure Stack is a totally managed environment, meaning you really can't get at the lower-level virtualization tools. Both Azure Stack and Azure Stack HCI are built on top of server systems from a range of partners. The Azure Stack HCI catalog page lists fifteen OEM partners selling "certified" solutions.

* VMware captured 40 percent of the HCI software revenue, followed by Nutanix with 25 percent, and Cisco with nearly 6 percent market share during the 2020 third quarter.

*  VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) automates deployment and operations for the full software defined infrastructure stack, including networking, enabling a fully automated private cloud. VCF also serves as the foundation for your hybrid cloud because the same core software-defined infrastructure stack leveraged in private cloud deployments of VCF is also the underpinning technology of VMware-based public clouds like VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services and other VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) partners.

* Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) was one of the first ‘killer’ use cases for HCI

Anthos is a managed application platform that extends Google Cloud services and engineering practices to your environments so you can modernize apps faster and establish operational consistency across them. With Anthos, you can build enterprise-grade containerized applications faster with managed Kubernetes on Google Cloud, on-premises, and other cloud providers.

* Oracle Cloud VMware Solution now supports support vSphere 7.0. 

Intelligent Automation (IA) or Hyperautomation, it is one of the most recent trends in the field of artificial intelligence. IA is a cutting-edge combination of methods and technologies, involving people, organizations, machine learning, low-code platforms, robotic process automation (RPA), and more.

Touchless commerce means QR codes are now the fastest growing threat vector.

* The SolarWinds breach showed that state-sponsored actors can penetrate the software supply chain and modify the executable files, all the while mimicking protocol traffic to avoid detection.

* The top three cloud security threats are configuration errors in production environments, lack of visibility into who has access in production environments, and improperly configured identity access management (IAM) and permissions. 

* Distributed File System (DFS) is a set of client and server services that allow an organization using Microsoft Windows servers to organize many distributed SMB file shares into a distributed file system.

* PagerDuty is an incident management platform that provides reliable notifications, automatic escalations, on-call scheduling, and other functionality to help teams detect and fix infrastructure problems quickly.

Wikistats uses Vue.js as its web framework

* India is the second largest consumer base for Webex globally (second to only the US) and the Cisco campus in Bangalore marks the company's largest presence outside of its San Jose headquarters. Webex was founded in 1995 and acquired by Cisco in 2007. Cisco has been an 85% work-from-home enabled enterprise at the global level and in India as well even before Covid. Cisco employs about 12,000 in India. There are over 1,000 patents filed from Cisco's India R&D. - FE

Women professionals form around 38 per cent of the Cognizant’s overall workforce in India and nearly 45 per cent of its workforce in tier-2 cities.

* Just Dial, India’s first search engine covers 11,000 pin codes.

* Personality types

Roughly 50% of New Yorkers speak a language other than English

Chung Ju-yung or Jung Joo-young (family name is Chung) was the founder of Hyundai Groups of South Korea. Chung was an integral part to the rapid development of Korea's economy, growing Hyundai Heavy Industries to be the largest ship builder in the world, as well as growing Hyundai Motor Group into the largest automobile manufacturer in Korea, and the third largest in the world.  Born to a large impoverished family of peasants in North Korea,  he escaped from home multiple times to find jobs in cities that would get himself out of poverty. 

* French pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was captured by the Prussians during the Seven Years' War and was fed a constant diet of potatoes, which the French considered as hog feed at the time. After surviving and emerging in good health, he made it his life's mission to promote the merits of potatoes in his country. Thanks to his efforts, potatoes were declared edible in 1772. 

Mamaearth was founded in 2016 by husband-wife duo, Varun and Ghazal Alagh. The baby skin care brand has generated a revenue of Rs 100 Cr in 4 years. Most of their product web pages have the list of  ingredients used.

* In the Asia-Pacific region, Singapore has the highest population of salaried ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs, $30 million plus) with 31 per cent of the ultra-wealthy being salaried employees, followed by the Philippines (18 per cent), Chinese Mainland (16 per cent), India (14 per cent) and Hong Kong (13 per cent) according to international property consultant Knight Frank's recent Attitudes Survey 2021. The rise in the number of salaried employees, who now occupy space in the UHNWI list in India, can be largely attributed to the growth of the country as a key regional and global economy. 

* The world's largest idly dosa batter factory has been launched by iD in Anekal on March 30, World Idli Day. It is believed the idli probably arrived in India from present-day Indonesia around 800-1200 CE.

* The Khallikote Autonomous College, Berhampur, Odisha is one of the oldest educational institutions of India. It was started as a school in 1856 in Berhampur and became an intermediate College in 1878. Its earlier name was Native College. The present name Khallikote Autonomous College was conferred on it in 1893 in token of the good gesture shown by Raja of Khallikote who donated 16.5 Acres of land.

* Shaik Mohammed Salauddin, who heads the Telangana Gig and Platform Worker’s Union & is the National General Secretary of Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT), tweeted that 22-year-old Uber driver Srikanth who has completed 1,428 trips, and holds a 4.67 star rating could not log in to his Uber partner app as he could not clear the selfie verification process. He has raised a concern that due to software decisions of the cab aggregators, drivers’ IDs get blocked. Customer complaints lead to immediate drivers’ ID blocks. If there is a conflict of any other app with Uber app on phone the IDs gets blocked (issue of false location). Uber responded that the driver didn't lose Uber app access due to change in appearance but due to repeated violation of community guidelines. 

Morgan Stanley Mutual Fund first came to India in 1994 as a 50:50 joint venture with SBI Mutual Fund, for an offshore scheme. The venture came apart when SBI officials discovered that it slipped in a clause into the deal giving it veto powers over investment decisions, effectively making it the dominant partner in the deal. Over the next few years, Morgan changed several fund managers amid whispers of their arrogance, wrongdoing and nexus with brokers.....despite desperately revamping its portfolio, Morgan Stanley had delivered a 3% return on its 20-year scheme. The fund house never regained investors’ trust that was lost by its arrogant hyped up entry and poor performance. In 2014, it finally sold out to HDFC Mutual Fund.Sucheta Dalal

* The total assets under management of the Indian mutual funds is up 2.5 times—from Rs13 lakh crore in 2015 to Rs32 lakh crore (as of February 2021)—in just over five years.

IRCTC was incorporated in 1999 as a ticketing and catering service provider for Indian railways. It is a PSU with Mini-Ratna (Category 1) status. It is the only authorised ticket booking portal for Indian Railways. 

* With the ‘Tap & Pay’ method one can tap a debit or credit card at the POS machine for upto Rs5,000. This payment method does not need an authentication pin. While this payment method is very convenient, it comes with its risks too. There have been instances where scamsters are present with a contactless POS machine in crowded places and rub the machine against people’s pockets in the hope of picking up a few contactless payments." Thus, to prevent these scams, it is important to make sure that the cards are not lying loose in our pockets and are kept in a wallet which prevents the NFC (Near Field Communication) signals from getting through. Furthermore, several banks have now come up with digital mobile applications which empower a customer to enable or disable contactless transaction by toggling a button on the application. - Mint

* The early-1600s witnessed a growth in trade between Mughal India and the Dutch East India Company, and many artists, including Rembrandt, were exposed to Indian objects and works of art for the first time. In his late career in the 1650s, the Dutch artist Rembrandt created drawings that were inspired by miniatures from Mughal India.

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