RadYes

radyes

If you’re a restaurateur who's been relying on third-party delivery platforms and shelling out ridiculous amounts on commissions and whatnot, to merely stay afloat in the throng of competition, you may have wondered if there is any light at the end of the tunnel? The truth is that your restaurant's online ordering system is waiting at the end of the tunnel to help you stand out in a crowd. What Made Restaurants Choose Aggregators? When the pandemic battered its way into our lives, one thing was certain - everyone was gravely unprepared to deal with the situation at hand. The economic and social turmoil spawned by the pandemic was devastating in every sense; businesses, schools, colleges, offices, restaurants, malls, and everything else shut down overnight and the world pivoted on its axis. With social distancing becoming the new normal, people took to the comfort of their own homes. And then it happened. Dining out was disrupted by ordering in. Even since the online ordering industry has taken a meteoric leap, but there are always like restaurants going online for example. challenges that accompany the metamorphosis of a key market trend Although this appeared to be a lifeline for many restaurants at first glance, who were at this point looking to catch a breath from the rampage of the pandemic, there were more problems piling up for restaurateurs. Restaurants were rapidly scrambling to partner with third-party online ordering platforms and aggregators, without seemingly better options at hand. With little or no knowledge of the market landscape, this hasty decision was quickly replaced with the realization that the restaurant's online ordering system was turned into a cut-throat, hostile environment by aggregators. As a result, restaurants ventured into uncertainty, with bleak chances of survival. It’s not just the pandemic and aggregators that catapulted restaurants into taking the online route but even technology recalibrated to meet the , hence pushing restaurant businesses further out of their comfort zone. This drove restaurants to explore previously uncharted territory, providing them with a ray of hope. changing consumer demands Restaurant Online Ordering System Vs. Third Party Aggregators With time, restaurants realized that their best bet at crossing the hurdles that surround online ordering was to switch from aggregators to their own direct ordering journey. But there are some who have fallen deep into the trap. If you're a restaurant owner who’s still grappling to make ends meet because you chose to fall into the aggregator trap, chances are you're at a crossroads right now. There are many more reasons that you as a restaurant owner are likely to be inclined towards getting your own online restaurant food ordering system in a bid to become more independent. A struggling restaurateur is not something you’d like to add to your resume. I can completely relate to what you're experiencing - it's not an ideal situation to feel out of options and neither is it easy being on the fence. But the awareness about how third-party aggregators are hampering your restaurant business could be a deciding factor. When it comes to taking a call between your restaurant’s own online ordering system and aggregators, there are various aspects that place a restaurant's online ordering system ahead in the race. Although it may seem like aggregators can get you a significant volume of orders, In fact, when I analyze why online restaurant food ordering systems are leaving a mark today and overtaking the aggregators, here are some reasons I could specifically pinpoint: there are hardly any other tangible perks that they offer. Higher Cost and Lower Profit Margin For starters, with your own direct online food ordering system, as a restaurant, you hold on to your profits and skip paying high commission charges to third-party platforms. Where on the one hand, third-party middlemen seem to be getting you the orders you need, on the other hand, you're being drained of your hard-earned revenue that is pocketed by middlemen. This means your operational costs are tipping towards the higher side, thereby reducing your profit margin with all those big bucks wasted away on commissions. No Engagement with Customers A huge disadvantage of choosing a third-party aggregator over your restaurant’s own online ordering system is that you forfeit any possibility of connecting or engaging with your customers. Since your orders are being routed to the third-party website as opposed to your own channels, you’re losing out on a large database of customers that could have been yours. And without any head or toe about who these customers are, there is absolutely no way to engage with such customers. No Customer Insights It goes without saying, if you’re unable to engage customers, you have no way of even knowing who orders from you or any other key insights about your customers that could support you in refining your customer experience for the better. This becomes a roadblock for you as a restaurant owner, especially if you ever decide to stick to aggregators rather than invest in your restaurant’s online ordering system. Benefits Of Direct Online Ordering System for Restaurants With a deeper understanding of how direct ordering can even the playing field in your favor, should come as a huge relief to restaurant owners who were conflicted so far. Third-party platforms may have been a temporary solution but with your own online restaurant food ordering system, you're presented with a more stable and permanent alternative. You’ll be glad to know that who want to make the switch to direct online ordering. direct ordering comes with a whole lot of advantages for restaurants More Sales, Higher Profit Margin and Faster Business Growth The best restaurant online ordering system would come with an upper hand, for instance, there is no middleman involved and you don't have to sweat the commissions either. You can save a lot on commissions and eventually expand your profit margin. This will leave you with quite a bit of spare money to reinvest in growing your business. Clients working with have been able to grow their revenue after bypassing food aggregators who were charging them 10 to 40% commission on each order! Radyes Seamless Dine-in and Takeout Order Processing Although aggregators may be able to get your restaurant online orders, they have no hold on dine in and takeout orders whatsoever. In fact, middlemen have no feasible way to actually track dine-in and takeout orders or even process such orders. Realistically speaking, it’s highly unlikely that you can stay on top of all your orders - online and offline. This is where having your own online restaurant food ordering system can come in nifty. Radyes hands restaurants the unrestricted freedom to take charge of their orders, and their brand itself which in turn creates an opportunity for seamless order processing all across. Improve Customer Experience The best restaurant online ordering systems guarantee a far superior customer experience because unlike aggregators, or what it is they’re looking for. with your own direct online ordering system, that provides you customer-centric insights, you’re not left wondering what your customers want Radyes has enabled several restaurants to mold their brand as they saw fit, empowering them to enrich their customer experience with access to key user data, taking the first step towards creating a seamless customer experience. New Opportunities for Growth with In-Depth Customer Data One of the biggest problems with routing your orders via third-party aggregators is that you’re left without consumer insights, and this is a real issue especially if you have any hopes of growing your restaurant business. It is unimaginable to grasp the gamut of growth you can experience as a restaurant, only if you can dig into the goldmine of customer insights that should ideally be available to you as a restaurant owner. Unfortunately, no aggregator would give you this data. Fortunately, the best restaurant online ordering systems in the market would. Numerous restaurants have leveraged customer insights successfully as Radyes opened the door to expansion and growth opportunities for these restaurants. The possibilities are limitless! Enhanced Order Accuracy Oftentimes, there is a lapse in order taking that can lead to far worse consequences for your restaurant business, even more so if you’re dependent on a manual ordering system such as taking orders over the phone or in person. You could even be relying on an aggregator, who is surely not going to take responsibility for your order mishaps. Exactly why you’re better off having an online restaurant food ordering system that awards you complete authority over every touchpoint of the ordering process. With an automated tool in place like Radyes, there is zero room for error. On an average, restaurants have experienced a 5x increase in order volume using Radyes, with their orders being fulfilled more efficiently. Why Choose Radyes as Your Restaurant’s Online Ordering System? If there isn't enough reason already, let me give you some more. Radyes is a complex ecosystem that is meant to simplify your operations and ordering process. Additionally, it also allows you to: Integrate Online Ordering Menu to Social With Radyes, you can integrate your digital storefront or your menu onto your social media channels and get started with your social commerce journey. Get Direct Orders from Anywhere Radyes can help you generate orders on any platform - be it Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, anywhere! Gain In-Depth Customer Insights One of the unique selling points of Radyes is its ability to leverage the goldmine of customer data and intelligently spin it towards the growth of your business. Maximize Growth Radyes is essentially an end-to-end solution that arms you with the complete package - right from order generation to point-of-sale, delivery fulfillment and a whole lot of other solutions! It is tailored to give your restaurant the edge that it needs as you grow your restaurant business by staying on top of your customer journey. All these advantages position Radyes as a game changer in the direct ordering market and I can confidently vouch for its efficacy, that is rebuilding the very grounds on which the direct ordering landscape stands. If that's not all, Radyes has empowered hundreds of restaurants on their direct ordering journey, building an avenue for growth. Where To Get Started? Radyes is much more than just the average restaurant online ordering system and is an all-in-one solution for every problem you encounter along the way as a restaurant owner. With access to plausibly the best restaurant online ordering system there is, you can expect your restaurant business to take off and prosper. and discover its multifold advantages for your restaurant business right away! Book a demo with Radyes

Why Your Restaurant Needs a Direct Online Ordering System

Investigating Ad Targeting on YouTube: Implications and Legal Analysis

Authors:
(1) Tinhinane Medjkoune, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LIG France;
(2) Oana Goga, LIX, CNRS, Inria, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris France;
(3) Juliette Senechal, Université de Lille, CRDP, DReDIS-IRJS France. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Background Legislation on Advertising to Children Mechanisms for Targeting Children Usage of Placement-Based Targeting Limitations Related Works Conclusion, Acknowledgements and References Appendix 7 RELATED WORKS There is a large body of work on advertising and children. Many of the seminal studies have been done by child developmental psychologists and have focused on ads on television. Next, we present some works that look at a child’s understanding, perception, and effect of ads. In 1982, in the context of television, Stephen, Levin, and Petrella found that children as young as three years old could distinguish between TV programs and advertisements. Still, they had no understanding or awareness of advertisers’ motivations and sales intentions [56]. In 1992, Bijmolt et al. [6] further investigated the question and analyzed whether gender, age, and parental influence have an influence on whether children can distinguish between advertising content and other content, as well as understand its commercial intent. For this, they conducted verbal and non-verbal measurements on children between five and eight years old. This paper shows that, according to non-verbal measures, most children can distinguish commercials from programs and have some insight into advertising intent. Whereas verbal measures are not as conclusive, it shows that the percentage of children who show understanding of TV advertising is substantially lower. For the effect of age on understanding the ad, the study shows that the older the child is, the better they understand the ads. However, the effect of gender and parent-child interaction is relatively small. Other works such as [43] have shown that children tend to misunderstand the message of ads and focus more on the negative side of the message than the positive side. However, this work has also emphasized the potential positive effect of ads as children can be better informed on many subjects. For example, an advertisement for toothpaste can make them aware of problems with their teeth if one does not brush their teeth regularly. Related to this, a children’s psychology study claimed that young children do not realize that a message (of an ad) can only present positive information while retaining negative information to manipulate the mental state of people [15]. The study analyzed the development of self-promotion in 6- to 10-year-old children. Children were asked to submit a description of themselves to be chosen for a fictional team. Younger children included both negative and positive information. In comparison, older children were better at self-promotion and included only positive descriptions. Hence, older children can understand that ads only present positive information, while younger children do not. A large body of research and reports have specifically focused on the negative effects of food advertising on children [7, 24, 25, 38– 40, 49, 57]. According to all these studies, it is clear that we need to take measures to protect children from possible manipulation and harm from advertisers. A survey by Raju et al. [51] said that targeting children has been part of the corporate business since the appearance of ads. Among the reasons that push a company to target a child: is the size of the business; there were 14 million children/teenagers between 0 and 17 years old in France in 2018, according to INSEE. The second reason would be the purchasing power of children who receive more and more money nowadays; their consumption is mainly focused on snacks and sweets, followed by toys and games. One of the other most important reasons remains the power of persuasion that a child can have on their parents; a child actively contributes to the purchasing choices in the family, from breakfast cereals to the color of the car to buy. In addition, the children of today are the adults of tomorrow and those who will be able to spend their own money. They also discussed that the content of advertisements could influence a child’s consumption, especially when it is about food. Among other points, they concluded that advertisements targeting adults could influence children’s vision of the world of adults, their preferences, and choices when they grow up. A more recent body of work has studied online advertising and children [5, 8, 9, 14, 44, 59]. A recent (2020) report from Common Sense [13] analyzed what videos children are watching on Youtube and what is being advertised to children. To gather children viewing data, they asked parents to participate in a study and provide the URLs their children viewed by copying and pasting a list from the browsing history of YouTube [12]. They coded more than 1600 videos afterward according to the topic and analyzed the ads on these videos. They found that about 20% of the videos contained age-inappropriate ads. Other works have looked at the frequency and duration of advertising on popular children-focused channels on YouTube [62]. Jenny Radesky encourages pediatricians to discuss with parents and children the dangers of advertising and explain children’s cognitive capabilities when faced with ads [50]. Finally, three other works have looked at mobile applications used by children: one study provides a content analysis of advertising [42]; a second study looked at data collection practices [65], and a final study looked at the compliance of mobile applications with COPPA [52]. While many studies are emerging in recent years around online advertising [1–4, 16, 53, 54], to our knowledge, no study has investigated how advertisers can target children with ads on video streaming platforms and analyze the available targeting techniques from the perspective of current and future laws. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. Authors: (1) Tinhinane Medjkoune, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LIG France; (2) Oana Goga, LIX, CNRS, Inria, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris France; (3) Juliette Senechal, Université de Lille, CRDP, DReDIS-IRJS France. Authors: Authors: (1) Tinhinane Medjkoune, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, LIG France; (2) Oana Goga, LIX, CNRS, Inria, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris France; (3) Juliette Senechal, Université de Lille, CRDP, DReDIS-IRJS France. Table of Links Abstract and Introduction Abstract and Introduction Background Background Legislation on Advertising to Children Legislation on Advertising to Children Mechanisms for Targeting Children Mechanisms for Targeting Children Usage of Placement-Based Targeting Usage of Placement-Based Targeting Limitations Limitations Related Works Related Works Conclusion, Acknowledgements and References Conclusion, Acknowledgements and References Appendix Appendix 7 RELATED WORKS There is a large body of work on advertising and children. Many of the seminal studies have been done by child developmental psychologists and have focused on ads on television. Next, we present some works that look at a child’s understanding, perception, and effect of ads. In 1982, in the context of television, Stephen, Levin, and Petrella found that children as young as three years old could distinguish between TV programs and advertisements. Still, they had no understanding or awareness of advertisers’ motivations and sales intentions [56]. In 1992, Bijmolt et al. [6] further investigated the question and analyzed whether gender, age, and parental influence have an influence on whether children can distinguish between advertising content and other content, as well as understand its commercial intent. For this, they conducted verbal and non-verbal measurements on children between five and eight years old. This paper shows that, according to non-verbal measures, most children can distinguish commercials from programs and have some insight into advertising intent. Whereas verbal measures are not as conclusive, it shows that the percentage of children who show understanding of TV advertising is substantially lower. For the effect of age on understanding the ad, the study shows that the older the child is, the better they understand the ads. However, the effect of gender and parent-child interaction is relatively small. Other works such as [43] have shown that children tend to misunderstand the message of ads and focus more on the negative side of the message than the positive side. However, this work has also emphasized the potential positive effect of ads as children can be better informed on many subjects. For example, an advertisement for toothpaste can make them aware of problems with their teeth if one does not brush their teeth regularly. Related to this, a children’s psychology study claimed that young children do not realize that a message (of an ad) can only present positive information while retaining negative information to manipulate the mental state of people [15]. The study analyzed the development of self-promotion in 6- to 10-year-old children. Children were asked to submit a description of themselves to be chosen for a fictional team. Younger children included both negative and positive information. In comparison, older children were better at self-promotion and included only positive descriptions. Hence, older children can understand that ads only present positive information, while younger children do not. A large body of research and reports have specifically focused on the negative effects of food advertising on children [7, 24, 25, 38– 40, 49, 57]. According to all these studies, it is clear that we need to take measures to protect children from possible manipulation and harm from advertisers. A survey by Raju et al. [51] said that targeting children has been part of the corporate business since the appearance of ads. Among the reasons that push a company to target a child: is the size of the business; there were 14 million children/teenagers between 0 and 17 years old in France in 2018, according to INSEE. The second reason would be the purchasing power of children who receive more and more money nowadays; their consumption is mainly focused on snacks and sweets, followed by toys and games. One of the other most important reasons remains the power of persuasion that a child can have on their parents; a child actively contributes to the purchasing choices in the family, from breakfast cereals to the color of the car to buy. In addition, the children of today are the adults of tomorrow and those who will be able to spend their own money. They also discussed that the content of advertisements could influence a child’s consumption, especially when it is about food. Among other points, they concluded that advertisements targeting adults could influence children’s vision of the world of adults, their preferences, and choices when they grow up. A more recent body of work has studied online advertising and children [5, 8, 9, 14, 44, 59]. A recent (2020) report from Common Sense [13] analyzed what videos children are watching on Youtube and what is being advertised to children. To gather children viewing data, they asked parents to participate in a study and provide the URLs their children viewed by copying and pasting a list from the browsing history of YouTube [12]. They coded more than 1600 videos afterward according to the topic and analyzed the ads on these videos. They found that about 20% of the videos contained age-inappropriate ads. Other works have looked at the frequency and duration of advertising on popular children-focused channels on YouTube [62]. Jenny Radesky encourages pediatricians to discuss with parents and children the dangers of advertising and explain children’s cognitive capabilities when faced with ads [50]. Finally, three other works have looked at mobile applications used by children: one study provides a content analysis of advertising [42]; a second study looked at data collection practices [65], and a final study looked at the compliance of mobile applications with COPPA [52]. While many studies are emerging in recent years around online advertising [1–4, 16, 53, 54], to our knowledge, no study has investigated how advertisers can target children with ads on video streaming platforms and analyze the available targeting techniques from the perspective of current and future laws. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. This paper is available on arxiv under CC 4.0 license. available on arxiv

How Do Children Perceive Ads?

Russia is the natural mediator between Europe and Asia

DISTORTION IN DREAMS

Today, DevOps has emerged as the future of the software delivery process. Companies are shifting their focus on optimizing software quality and time to market while leveraging automation tools across different phases of the product development lifecycle (Design, build, test & Deploy). Over the past couple of years, IT companies have rapidly shifted to DevOps business models. . The main reason behind its quick adoption is the ability to deliver applications and innovation faster with minimum time-to-market for dynamic software products. Around 77% of organizations today use DevOps to deploy software or plan releases The latest stats show that DevOps popularity has taken a significant hike in the past few years. DevOps consulting has become an integral part of IT companies' revenue generation. Based on the experience of the , the overall 2021 DevOps market will be worth around . top survey firms USD 5,114.57 Million and reach USD 12,215.54 Million by 2026 One may say that the purpose of DevOps implementation is to reduce the IT budget. Still, we can’t deny that its adoption can generate additional revenues for an organization because top companies claim that . DevOps adoption saves around $1.3 million annually per 100 DevOps users due to improved infrastructure performance by 66% and increased deployment frequency 85% Undoubtedly, DevOps implementation has skyrocketed over the past several years. These striking figures are testament to its potential as a business outcome game-changer. Therefore, DevOps implementation has become a popular buzzword in the IT industry, and many software companies are considering it as their next move. But is DevOps implementation worth investing in at an IT company? This article will provide you with the correct answer and share deep insights about DevOps, its popularity, and the benefits of implementing it into your business. So, let's get started. What is DevOps? DevOps is basically a software development method that emphasizes communication, collaboration, and integration between the various roles in an IT company. It aims to improve relationships between developers and other departments such as operations or QA to produce better products for their customers. In addition, DevOps also offers numerous benefits, from improving productivity to increasing revenue growth. Let's look at the rise of DevOps, how it works, why it has become popular, and how it’s beneficial. The Rise of DevOps Patrick Debois initially coined DevOps in 2009, but its popularity started to skyrocket after Amazon's CTO Werner Vogels published his keynote speech about their success with implementing DevOps practices in 2012. In addition, many tech giants like Facebook and Google also started to use DevOps in their products. Since then, it has become a popular buzzword in the IT industry. How Does DevOps Work? brings together development, QA, and operations into one team. They work closely to share their knowledge to achieve the best product at the end of it all. It involves automating processes that allow developers early access to production code without compromising security standards or compliance requirements. DevOps Solutions Why Implement DevOps? Now that you know how DevOps works let's see why it has become popular. According to Gartner, the . It means companies are willing to invest more money in their business because of its astounding benefits. rise in IT spending is expected to hit $4.2 trillion in 2021, a hike of 8.6% from 2020 DevOps is a way for companies to keep up with the market demands by providing more flexible, agile software products that adapt quickly to changing needs or trends. Furthermore, it also helps IT companies improve their organizational culture and boost innovation within their team. Many studies have shown how DevOps implementation can increase productivity across departments by up to 200%. Business Advantages of DevOps Implementation Besides increasing your profits and revenue growth faster than ever before, here are other benefits you can gain from implementing DevOps: 1. Continuous Delivery & Deployment Implementing a DevOps culture will allow you to release new updates faster which improves the customer experience. In addition, the updates are also more stable since both developers and operations have tested them before being released. Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce companies in India, has reduced the time it takes to release new updates from several weeks down to just a few minutes. It is possible because Flipkart's developers can deliver any software changes they want directly into production without involving other roles first. "We don't have separate handoffs between teams," said Flipkart's VP of engineering Ravi Garikipati. "Our developers can deploy code to production whenever they want." 2. Increasing Revenue Growth Faster Than Before Since DevOps allows you to release new updates faster, it means that your customers can receive the benefits of these changes much earlier than before. And when they are happy with their experiences using your product, they will probably recommend it to their friends or colleagues, which will help you increase your revenue growth. "The goal of our DevOps transformation is to reduce deployment failure rates, increase deployments per day, shorten lead times for releases (time between code check-in and release), improve customer satisfaction through faster time-to-market responsiveness," said Radhesh Balakrishnan, Director of Product Engineering at Capital One Financial. When Netflix decided to switch from a monolithic architecture based on JVM and Tomcat, they were expecting their whole development suite would take them at least nine months. However, thanks to the DevOps culture that has been implemented in their company, it took them only three months instead. "We had researchers who knew Java develop some libraries using a new framework, and a team of experienced front-end engineers who knew JavaScript develop some applications on top of these libraries. The next step was to have the two teams work together to share their code," said Chris Pinkham, VP Engineering at Netflix. "Once we had both sides working off of common code that they both wrote, we were able to have them working together in a single-day code review. The team was so excited by this that it took us longer to negotiate an agreement on how the remaining pieces would come together than it did for us to get the code merged," said Pinkham. 3. Increased Collaboration & Communication A DevOps culture allows your employees, whether developers or operations professionals, to work together more closely than ever before to deliver new updates faster without sacrificing the quality of their software development efforts. It is one of the main reasons why many companies have been implementing DevOps. It allows them to work more efficiently and have better coordination between the roles and operations professionals. "In a DevOps world, development teams can provision their environments for testing purposes with full access to production data if needed," said Alan Lepofsky, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. "Testing gets done, often with production data. With more testing and better quality software releases, you can get to market faster." According to a survey conducted by Puppet, companies implementing DevOps were able to reduce their downtime from an average of five hours per week down to only one hour and thirty-two minutes per week. In addition, they also managed to achieve this with fewer required resources, which means that the success rate was much higher. "It is one of the main reasons why companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google have been able to remain competitive in today's market. They are constantly improving their software development process by increasing collaboration between developers and operations professionals," said Sam Fell, VP of Product Marketing at CA Technologies. 4. Improved Business Agility Companies implementing DevOps can improve their overall software development process, allowing them to be more agile and adaptable to the ever-evolving needs of today's market. It is one of the main reasons why so many businesses have begun adopting this strategy. It can help companies remain competitive by allowing them to adapt to their customers' ever-changing needs quickly. E.g., companies implementing DevOps have also experienced a much higher success rate when it comes to delivering their software updates since they don't waste time going back and forth with developers to resolve any issues, which means that fewer resources are needed overall. "DevOps is about breaking down barriers between development and operations and creating a culture that fosters collaboration and communication. DevOps increases the speed of business by allowing development teams to be more agile, collaborate better with other departments in their organization, and ultimately produce higher quality software," said Travis Truett, Co-founder & VP Product at CloudBees. 5. Improved Business Results Organizations have to be committed to implementing it as a way for their teams to collaborate and converse with each other more effectively to deliver better software updates faster rather than focusing on traditional methods frequently becoming inefficient over time. In fact, by improving communication between your employees, you can see a wide range of benefits, including higher productivity levels and better in-house collaboration, which ultimately results in improved business performance. Copado's results after Investing in Devops. Source By implementing DevOps, your company will improve its overall software development process by allowing all team members, from developers to operations professionals, to work together without wasting time on traditional methods that often become inefficient. 6. Increased Software Quality When you have your entire team involved in the development process for new or updated software, the chances of delivering better results are higher. Everyone has their unique perspective on what needs to be improved rather than simply relying on developers alone. It means that when teams are all working together towards achieving one common goal, the chances of success are higher than working in isolation. Amazon, for example, has reduced its software bug backlog from hundreds of thousands down to only an average of fifteen per month. It is partly due to their commitment towards DevOps, which has allowed the entire team, including developers and operations professionals, to work together more effectively to deliver their software updates faster without wasting time on traditional methods that frequently become inefficient. 7. Boosts Return on Investment DevOps improves the software development process by allowing all team members, from developers to operations professionals, to work together without wasting time on traditional methods that often become inefficient. It means you can see better business results overall and increased ROI for your IT Company. However, this is only possible if the entire team is committed to improving their communication and collaboration skills. E.g., Alibaba has reduced its time for software build and deployment by almost 75% since it began implementing DevOps, making its developers much more productive overall. DevOps Implementation Roadmap: A Step-by-Step Guide Implementing DevOps is only possible if the entire team working on new or updated software updates is committed to improving their communication and collaboration skills. However, you can quickly achieve this by following a specific roadmap that includes small incremental changes in your company's processes over time. "You can achieve small wins, which are crucial to building momentum in the organization," Travis Truett added. Below is a roadmap that you can follow when implementing DevOps in your IT Company: DevOps Initiative The first step towards improving communication and collaboration skills is to designate a small team within your organization that will oversee this process. E.g., Alibaba has appointed a chief architect who oversees their DevOps initiative, which was the first step towards implementing it in their entire IT Company. "He's the executive sponsor for DevOps," Travis Truett said. "So he has to have a seat at the table." Since it is often difficult to get your entire company on board with this idea, you should consider forming a small team that will spearhead this initiative and help build momentum throughout other departments in time. You can do this by appointing a senior manager who is already respected within your company. Communication Once you have your small team in place, the next step is to improve communication within it. E.g., "There's no way of getting around that if we want DevOps implementations to succeed," Travis Truett explained. "We need great collaboration between development and operations." Communication plays an important role here since all team members involved in developing new or updated software should communicate more effectively. Travis Truett adds: "We need to make sure we're all working together and there's good communication between developers, operations professionals, and IT managers." Since it is easy for some team members to feel excluded from this process due to their lack of communication, you should ensure that everyone feels comfortable contributing their ideas. Automation Once the team is on board with improving communication and collaboration skills, it's time to automate some parts of the development process. The next step towards implementing DevOps in Alibaba was automating their software build processes to reduce its deployment timeframe by almost 75%. It has allowed developers to be more productive overall, which was the primary goal of implementing DevOps. "It's a process that automatically builds and deploys code," Travis Truett added. "From development to production." Automation should be implemented in stages where your team can easily monitor its progress until it becomes second nature to them. Small wins are crucial here because they help build momentum in the organization. Collaboration After your team has taken on more responsibilities through automation, it's time to improve collaboration between all members. One way Alibaba achieved this was by introducing a new chat platform that allows developers and operations professionals to quickly communicate with each other in real-time once they encounter problems or need some advice about something. If there's a problem in the middle of the night, operations can pop into a chat room," Travis Truett explained. "And tell developers what they're seeing and ask them to look at something." It has helped Alibaba decrease its mean time to recover from failures by almost 95% and reduced production incidents by over 40%. "You should always have to keep your eyes on the prize and focus on making things better." Travis Truett added. "That's what we've done for Alibaba Cloud, and it has paid off in spades so far." Collaboration plays an important role here as all team members should work together towards a common goal. By focusing on small wins and keeping an eye on the big picture, your team can successfully implement DevOps in Alibaba Cloud. Important Success Factors At this stage, your team has already implemented some of the essential DevOps principles. E.g., one of the most important things to consider at this point is making sure that everybody is on board with these changes and they become second nature for them, which you can achieve through constant communication, transparency, and training. As for critical success factors, you should ensure that all team members are responsible enough to implement DevOps properly. You should provide them with the necessary tools and resources they need to get started. Your company can successfully achieve its goals through this process. Final Thoughts Implementing DevOps at your company can be a complex process, but the benefits outweigh the challenges. As you have read in this blog post, you can improve teamwork and collaboration within your company by offering them the right tools and resources they need to succeed. With all your company's efforts, you should ensure that it's worth the investment through constant communication and transparency with your team. That's what becomes possible with DevOps implementation, which can be a challenging yet rewarding process for your organization. For better assistance, you can also connect with a DevOps services company. They can help you achieve your goals through this process and provide the right solutions to meet your business needs. FAQs Q. What is DevOps? A software development methodology that allows developers and IT professionals to work together more productively. A. Q. Is it necessary to work with a third-party company for DevOps implementation? Yes, you can take the help of DevOps Company to implement successfully. A. Q. What are the benefits of implementing DevOps at my company? You will be able to reap various business advantages when it comes to improving teamwork within your organization, enhancing communication, increasing transparency, and more. A. Q. How will the implementation of automation improve my business processes and infrastructure? With automation, your company can become more efficient and save time. You will be able to improve collaboration between all team members through the implementation of DevOps. A. Q. Can you provide some examples of companies that have successfully implemented DevOps in their organization? Alibaba Cloud, Netflix, and Amazon are examples of companies that have successfully implemented DevOps. A. Q. What does the roadmap look like for a company looking to implement DevOps? There is no specific road map required as it's all about how you want your organization to work. It can be anything from improving transparency within your business to improving communication, etc. A. Q. Will anything change after implementing DevOps principles at our company, e.g., training and communication? Yes, it will be a positive change in the long run. You might experience some resistance initially, but eventually, everyone will get used to their new roles and responsibilities, which is good for your business. A.

DevOps Implementation: Is it Really Worth an IT Company's Investment?

At our school we have an open wireless network with a captive portal as well as another WLAN (WPA Enterprise, 802.1X) which is only intended for teachers. For both networks we use a RADIUS server for authentication. Freeradius is the most widely used OpenSource RADIUS server, which we also use. In this article we want to set up a Freeradius server and certificates for an encrypted connection. In particular I would like to focus on the connection to linuxmuster.net 6.2 and the authentication with an LDAP server. A RADIUS server generally takes care of 3 things: authentication, authorization and accounting (often referred to as Triple-A or AAA). We will only deal with the first two “As”, i.e. whether the credentials are correct and whether the user is authorized to gain access (to the Wifi, for example). Installation of Freeradius We perform the installation on a current Linux installation (here Ubuntu 18.04 Server), e.g. in an or a virtual machine. LXD container $ apt install freeradius freeradius-ldap freeradius-utils Configuration Basic Configuration To test our freeradius server, we comment out the following line in or insert it at the beginning of the file: /etc/freeradius/3.0/users # Remove the “#” before the next linesteve Cleartext-Password := “testing” By default, the file should contain the localhost as client: /etc/freeradius/3.0/clients.conf client localhost {ipaddr = 127.0.0.1secret = testing123} Now we can run a first test. Therefore we stop the freeradius service and restart it manually in debug mode: $ systemctl stop freeradius.service$ freeradius -X…Ready to process request It is important that at the end there is “ “. Ready to process requests Testing the Basic Configuration Next, we check if our test user “Steve” can log on to the RADIUS server (preferably in a new/second terminal): $ radtest steve testing 127.0.0.1 10 testing123 If everything is OK, we should get the following answer: Sent Access-Request Id 234 from 0.0.0.0:40302 to 127.0.0.1:1812 length 75User-Name = “steve”User-Password = “testing”NAS-IP-Address = 10.18.10.60NAS-Port = 10Message-Authenticator = 0x00Cleartext-Password = “testing”Received Access-Accept Id 234 from 127.0.0.1:1812 to 0.0.0.0:0 length 20 It’s important that we get a . If this request was successful, the freeradius server is basically set up and the following authentication procedures should work without any further problems: Received Access Accept PAP CAP MS-CHAPv1 MS-CHAPv2 PEAP EAP-TTLS EAP-GTC EAP-MD5 These methods are different protocols that are different “secure”. All use a username and password for authentication. You can read more about the different (P)EAP methods . MS-CHAPv1 and v2 are protocols from Microsoft. here We should comment or delete the line with our user “Steve” now! Note: In the following we will configure the LDAP module and create new certificates for EAP-TTLS. Set up LDAP connection We configure the LDAP server in the file . If this file does not exist, we must first create a symbolic link. /etc/freeradius/3.0/mods-enabled/ldap $ cd /etc/freeradius/3.0/mods-enabled/$ ln -s ../mods-available/ldap ./ Quite at the beginning of the file we configure our LDAP server: server = “ldaps://linuxmuster.internal.example.com”identity = “cn=admin,dc=internal,dc=example,dc=com”password = superSecretPasswordbase_dn = “ou=accounts,dc=internal,dc=example,dc=com”…group {…membership_filter = “(|(member=%{control:Ldap-UserDn})(memberUid=%{%{Stripped-User-Name}:-%{User-Name}}))”…} You have to ensure that all necessary ports for communication between the RADIUS and the LDAP server are open. If you want to use Freeradius 3.0 together with linuxmuster.net v6.2, you have to adjust the following lines to make authentication with Windows work ( ): Note: … update {control:Password-With-Header += ‘userPassword’control:NT-Password := ‘sambaNTPassword’…} Test LDAP connection After we configured LDAP server in freeradius, we have to restart freeradius once and can then test whether a user from the LDAP can log on to the RADIUS server. $ systemctl restart freeradius.service$ radtest testuser password localhost 10 testing123Sent Access-Request Id 213 from 0.0.0.0:46425 to 127.0.0.1:1812 length 73User-Name = “testuser”User-Password = “password”NAS-IP-Address = 10.18.10.60NAS-Port = 10Message-Authenticator = 0x00Cleartext-Password = “password”Received Access-Accept Id 213 from 127.0.0.1:1812 to 0.0.0.0:0 length 20 If we receive a “ ” as answer again, the connection between RADIUS and LDAP server works. If it doesn’t work, we should start the RADIUS server manually and see what errors the RADIUS server gives us. Received Access-Accept $ systemctl stop freeradius.service$ freeradius -X…Ready to process request Create certificates (for EAP-TTLS) As default, Freeradius uses so-called Snake-Oil certificates, which of course are not intended for productive use. Therefore we create a new root CA and a certificate for the server in the following steps. You will find the certificates and the corresponding configuration files at . First we open the file and change a few settings: /etc/freeradius/3.0/certs/ ca.cnf …[ CA_default ]…default_days = 3650…default_md = sha256… [ req ]…default_bits = 2048input_password = supersecretandlongpasswordoutput_password = supersecretandlongpassword… [certificate_authority]countryName = USstateOrProvinceName = My StatelocalityName = My TownorganizationName = My SchoolemailAddress = admin@my-school.orgcommonName = “CA Freeradius”… We now make similar settings for the file : server.cnf …[ CA_default ]…default_days = 3560…default_md = sha256… [ req ]…default_bits = 2048input_password = supersecretandlongpasswordoutput_password = supersecretandlongpassword [server]countryName = USstateOrProvinceName = My StatelocalityName = My TownorganizationName = My SchoolemailAddress = admin@my-school.orgcommonName = “Freeradius Server Certificate” Now we have to change the password also in the file : /etc/freeradius/3.0/mods-enabled/eap tls-config tls-common {private_key_password = supersecretandlongpassword…} We create the certificates with a simple : make $ cd /etc/freeradius/3.0/certs/$ make Test EAP-TTLS Login Compile epol_test does not support a test for EAP-TTLS authentication. For this we need the tool , which is part of the package. Unfortunately, this tool is not built by by default, so we have to do it ourselves. We download the source code, unpack it and have to install some dependencies. radtest eapol_test wpa_supplicant wpa_supplicant $ wget $ tar -xzvf wpa_supplicant-2.7.tar.gz$ apt install build-essential pkg-config libnl-3-dev libssl-dev libnl-genl-3-dev$ cd wpa_supplicant-2.7$ cp defconfig .config https://w1.fi/releases/wpa_supplicant-2.7.tar.gz Then we have to open the file and find the line and remove the “#”. .config #CONFIG_EAPOL_TEST=y $ nano .config# Remove the “#”CONFIG_EAPOL_TEST=y With the following commands we build the program and copy it to the right place: $ make eapol_test$ cp eapol_test /usr/local/bin Test login with eapol_test To test EAP-TTLS, we need a small config file for , which can look like this: eapol_test $ nano eapol_test.confnetwork={ssid=”example”key_mgmt=WPA-EAPeap=TTLSidentity=”user”anonymous_identity=”anonymous”password=”supersecret”phase2=”auth=PAP”} Now we can call : eapol_test $ eapol_test -c eapol_test.conf -a 127.0.0.1 -p 1812 -s testing123 If you get this issue at the end, everything was successful: MPPE keys OK: 1 mismatch: 0SUCCESS Setting up clients (e.g. access points) So far we have only tested directly on the RADIUS server. Normally the authentication request will come from an access point, a captive portal or a wireless controller. We have to set them up as clients on the RADIUS server. We open the file and insert all access points etc. with their IP and a password / secret at the end: /etc/freeradius/3.0/clients.conf $ nano /etc/freeradius/3.0/clients.confclient AP1 {ipaddr = 10.0.0.10secret = supersecretsecret} Now you can set up a WPA Enterprise (802.1X) network on the access point and configure the RADIUS server with its IP, port (1812) and the password/secret you just set. Now you should be able to log in to the WLAN with your mobile device. Restricting access to certain LDAP groups At our school only employees and teachers as well as high school students have access to the WLAN at the school. In linuxmuster.net there is a group . Everyone who is in this group should have access. So far our RADIUS server is configured in such a way that every user gets access in LDAP. To restrict access, we add the following lines to the file : p_wifi /etc/freeradius/3.0/users DEFAULT Ldap-Group == “cn=p_wifi,ou=groups,dc=internal,dc=example,dc=com”DEFAULT Auth-Type := RejectReply-Message = “Your are not allowed to access the WLAN!” Freeradius and linuxmuster.net 6.2 The installation of Freeradius for linuxmuster.net 6.2 is . Apart from a few details, the configuration is very similar. In Freeradius 2.0 the default settings for the certificates are no longer up to date, so there may be connection problems with some clients (e.g. with a current macOS). Here you should definitely use the defaults of Freeradius 3.0 (see above)! described in the documentation Different access restrictions according to WLAN network At our school we have a captive portal for guests and students, as well as a WPA 802.1X (Enterprise) network for staff and teachers. While everyone in the p_wifi group can log in to the Captive Portal, only teachers and staff are allowed to log in to the WPA 802.1X network. The requests from the Captive Portal come from a different IP ( ) than that for the WPA Enterprise Network. In the file we have therefore included a condition that checks which IP the request comes from and decides accordingly whether someone gets access or not: pfSense /etc/freeradius/sites-enabled/inner-tunnel post-auth {…#Only allow Teacher&Staff on WPA 802.1X Teacher and Staff networkif (NAS-IP-Address == 10.0.0.10) {if (LDAP-Group == “cn=teachers,ou=groups,dc=internal,dc=example,dc=com” || LDAP-Group == “cn=staff,ou=groups,dc=internal,dc=example,dc=com”) {noop} else {reject}}…} Conslusion This article describes only one of many possible configurations. A RADIUS server is complex, but thanks to the good standard configuration of freeradius (especially in version 3), you’ll quickly succeed. For a long time we only used the Captive Portal and it worked well, but the usability and security has increased with a WPA 802.1X (Enterprise) network. Without the RADIUS server this would not have been possible. Useful links: http://deployingradius.com/ https://wiki.freeradius.org/guide/HOWTO Originally published at openschoolsolutions.org .

How to secure your Wifi network with Freeradius

I am a Computer Engineer by training and an Manager by profession. While my current area of focus is Backend Systems, Data Analytics, I have developed multiple Skills in last one year. Engineering Alexa In retrospect, I wonder — how did I get hooked into it? It feels this process was so analogous to an e-commerce product funnel: Awareness -> Interest -> Desire -> Action I never realized that I was a part of this conversion optimization funnel put together by Amazon Alexa team and I ended up becoming a . Here is my effort to draw that comparison in parallel: repeat customer Looking one level deeper, here are 8 specific steps which contribute to attract and convert right people into Alexa development and build its largest community. 1. Personalized marketing: Publish Alexa Skill ad for US developers Publish Alexa Skill ad for University Students 2. Freebies for everyone Publish Alexa Skill and everyone get’s a T-Shit 3. New creative swags every month Sock + Echo swag Echo Spot and bottle swag 4. Spot on CTA’s (Develop an Alexa Skill in under 5 minutes) CAT — Build a Skill in 5 mins 5. Kick ass documentation When I first developed it, I referred to a step by step documentation to template skill. It had all a newbie could ask for: Step by step guide Screenshots Documentation links Github sources Customize with minimal changes Docs: link Documentation screenshot These documentations are even better currently. 6. All Infrastructure is Free Free AWS account: Alexa skills hosting free on AWS Test Simulator Beta (No device needed) Initially, I thought there would be a need of owning an Echo device to test and deploy the skill I build. Ecosystem provides a test simulator which replaces that need. Just input via voice or text, and you can validate Alexa’s understanding and see how the skill responds. https://developer.amazon.com/docs/devconsole/test-your-skill.html 7. Great customer service with prompt feedback: Customer feedback e-mail And my first skill was Live: DMV Trivia Skill Followed by: Swag, I received :) Not bad, few hours of work — a new skill, swags and a new tool in the pocket. 8. New Skill Emails: And there were weekly emails about new skills people are creating and also how top skills are getting incentivised. I used to mostly ignore them. A few months later, It was time for my company’s semi-annual hackathon. No wonder, a voice app idea came to my mind. It felt something doable in <24hrs, potentially cool to demo. And I ended up building another Alexa skill — . EchoMonkey: Taking Surveys over Voice While I was nowhere close to thinking about Alexa development; I have developed multiple, hackathon winning Alexa skills. I would give kudos to for doing an excellent job funneling engineers to develop skills and building a great community around it. Alexa’s Marketing Team No wonder, the outcome is: All in all, I can see a more enticing future ahead when I read things like: Make Money with Amazon Pay for Alexa Skills Make Money with Your Alexa Skills through In-Skill Purchasing Earn Money with Alexa Developer Rewards Alexa will soon gain a memory, converse more naturally Such efforts would keep the community captivated and more engaged.

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