Solid-state storage has become ubiquitous in mobile devices and increasingly in laptops as well. But it's also revolutionizing storage in corporate datacenters, cloud computing services and beyond.

Forget the portability factor, solid-state drives, or SSDs, are finding massive growth potential as a way for companies to speed up large-scale storage systems.

Historically, storage devices used in business have been either magnetic tape or hard disk drives, both of which spin, use a lot of energy and throw off a lot of heat (which usually requires expensive cooling).

SSDs, on the other hand, are much faster and more efficient, and generate much less heat - making them ideal for use in datacenters. The only reasons they haven't already become a direct replacement for rotating disks is due to their relatively high cost per gigabyte and the high volumes of data writing required in many datacenter applications.

Although SSD vendors try to engineer around these issues with advanced compression and deduplication techniques - as well as redirecting how and where data is stored - SSDs today essentially provide answers for limited use cases (e.g. small databases), but fall short when it comes to working with large loads of data. This includes the massive amounts of unstructured data that represents the bulk of storage growth today.

That said, the adoption of solid state storage as a complementary solution to standard hard disk (HDD) storage for enterprise applications continues to grow quickly. Worldwide solid state storage industry revenue reached $5 billion in 2011, a 105% increase from the $2.4 billion in revenue achieved in 2010, according to analysts at research firm IDC. SSD vendors are also giving enterprises and storage companies improved technical options. Some 18 million higher-capacity SSDs (ranging from 80GB to 512GB) will ship in 2013, and that number is expected to grow to 69 million units by 2016, estimate analysts with IHS iSuppli.

But if solid state drives aren’t going to kill off spinning hard drives or magnetic tape, where do all those SDD units fit into the storage ecosystem in efficient and cost-effective ways?

Today's Best Uses For SSD In Storage

Solid state drives are most useful for access to data that is needed fast but not in high volumes. SSD technology is also justifiable in applications where lag time or latency could mean lost dollars - such as in trading platforms and financial systems. These attributes also make SSDs valuable as the first line of access for cloud-based storage offerings. Data that needs to be accessed fast goes on the SSD, while less-critical data can be stored on more traditional slower, less expensive spinning disks. This arrangement lets cloud storage providers leverage SSDs along with other storage technologies to provide a broad range of services at the lowest cost.

“The challenge they are solving is that the IOPS (input/output - or I/O - operations per second) are superior in SSDs but the cost per gigabyte storage is orders of magnitude higher than rotational hard drives,” explains Sanjay Parekh, an early participant in solid-state-hard-drive-cloud-storage startup SolidFire. “They have developed a layer on top of SSDs that drive the effective storage cost down while maintaining high IOPS.”

As prices eventually come down, Parekh notes, SSDs should replace most other storage technologies. But there will always be a role for backup systems like tape and magnetic hard drives. A distributed system using multiple storage technologies is best for long-term data security, he adds, as it isn't wise to put all of your data on one storage medium.

Room To Grow With SSD

For now, using SSD as an acceleration tier on top of traditional storage can provide the best of all storage worlds. Relatively small, high-performance SSD units can be used to speed up all applications by replacing or augmenting memory caches.

“It instantly delivers performance on demand, while enabling hot data to stay on higher-cost SSDs and majority of data at rest to sit on well-protected traditional disk drives,” says Kirill Malkin, CTO of Starboard Storage. “That way, the SSD subsystem delivers performance efficiency and the disk subsystem optimizes capacity efficiency. Furthermore, using multiple SSD layers with varied performance and capacity characteristics enables highly effective, just-in-time I/O optimization for consolidating multiple applications on a single storage platform with right sized resources for every workload and use case. Notably, this approach requires a complete rethinking of the storage stack involving dynamic pooling of all resources and implementing performance controls.”

When used as a performance tier in a more traditional storage environment, SSD can extend the life of that architecture. But this kind of architecture is inherently inefficient because it involves heavy "shadow" transfers between the solid state and rotating storage devices, he adds. Successful "tuning" of such storage systems requires an intimate knowledge of the application behavior, making it more difficult to set up and use.

Given these issues, properly sizing the solid state storage tier can be very difficult, often ending up with significant over-provisioning to achieve the required performance target, Malkin adds. The SSD tiers in traditional storage systems architectures are often limited in the way they fit in with current complex storage systems or legacy RAID [redundant array of independent disks] controllers and RAID group management.”

Beyond SSD - What Does The Future Hold?

But for SSDs to take over the storage ecosystem, manufacturers will have to shrink the technology's price premium compared to traditional storage solutions. Today, an HDD might cost $0.24 cents per gigabyte, while an SSD could cost $2 or more per gigabyte. That's a hefty difference when you start talking about equipping large data centers with SSDs.

One way vendors have tried to balance price, capacity and performance is with multi-level cell (MLC) SSDs. However, due to their inherently low endurance, MLC-based SSDs quickly wear out in write-intensive uses. Another approach is TLC flash or triple-bit-per-cell flash SSDs - but the problem then becomes one of physics. Adding cells means shrinking the components smaller than 14 nanometers, making it difficult to manage and more of a work in progress than an actual solution to today's storage problems.

"Since SSDs became a viable option for the enterprise performance, cost and reliability have been critical points of evaluation. However, as IT purchasers begin to better understand the technology's strengths and weaknesses, we are seeing more importance placed on the balance between endurance and cost," according to John Scaramuzzo, president of SMART Storage Systems.

As an alternative, many companies are now considering hybrid storage systems. Hybrid systems combine spinning disk and SSD storage media to balance capacity and performance. Large-capacity hybrid storage devices can cost $500 a terabyte, making them appropriate for a single super-system but not necessarily as a way to cut costs in a large datacenter storage array.

For the foreseeable future, all types of storage formats will likely coexist, with SSDs added to traditional storage systems as the predominant model. (That's largely because of the large installed base and well-understood architecture of traditional storage systems.) Ultimately though, as SSD prices fall due to Moore's Law, experts expect the industry to gradually migrate to a world where all-SSD systems are used for a continually growing subset of applications. For workloads where SSD's performance improvements can't be financially justified, SSD-accelerated systems will continue to be used until the SSD price premium becomes insignificant.

We tend not to think about storage - until we don't have enough. We carelessly store documents, emails, images, video, and massive amounts of all kinds data only to wonder why there never seems to be enough places to put our company's stuff. But as new technologies combine to provide storage over the Internet, easing fears of limited capacity and the promise of virtualized architectures are helping shape the next phase of the Internet.

Storage Isn't Sexy, But...

Virtual storage is neither as flashy nor as sexy as virtualized servers. Historically, enterprises set up a storage device, backed up data and content in regular intervals and forgot about it. But because hard drives offer limited capacity, it has become necessary to manage multiple storage strategies. Additionally, archiving digital content traditionally meant burning to a disc or transferring data to magnetic tape. The archived data and content was not readily accessible.

As cloud computing has emerged as a basic networking practice, more and more content is stored in virtualized, interconnected storage devices. Not only does this make it possible to access massive files online in an instant, it also makes storage more affordable, efficient and easier to manage.

By abstracting how storage functions from a set of individual physical hard drives to logical storage (or partitions) spread across any number of physical drives, storage can be made less expensive and much more flexible. With virtualized storage accessible in a cloud computing environment, companies and even individuals can now add as much storage space as they need, pretty much on demand. 

Hardware vs. Management

For consumers, this means devices like smartphones and tablets do not require massive storage drives. For enterprises, virtualized storage means spending less on hardware and more on efficiently managing data and content. The trend meant companies can protect their remote office data and remove the need for multiple storage networks. Virtualizing storage also helps with disaster recovery by spreading the information to remote locations and providing multiple copies of data. The trend is toward continued efforts to make cloud-based virtual storage even more efficient and less expensive. Some enterprising companies have already managed their cloud architectures with multiple storage technologies so well that they've adapted their own capabilities to deliver Storage as a Service to other companies.

There's still potential for further migration toward virtualized storage. Forecasts for the global cloud virtualization software market (currently estimated at $6.7 billion) between 2011 and 2015 show a year-over-year growth rate of 14.98%. Virtual machine and cloud system software represents the fastest growing segment, with research firm IDC pegging growth at 17.8% in the first half of 2012.

Investments in cloud-based storage also suggest future growth. Venture funding for storage companies totaled $458 million through the first three quarters of 2011, according to analysis from Strategic Advisory Services International. That is 42.4% more than the $321.5 million storage startups received in the same time a year before. Storage mergers and acquisitions are also on the rise with 23 deals adding up to $8.7 billion through the first three quarters of 2011.

Benefits Of Virtualized Storage

Outside of the obvious benefits of being able to access content from multiple locations on multiple devices, virtualized storage also allows for information sharing between large numbers of people. While it's still a relatively new technology trend, storage virtualization isn't hype. "But it's all about the use cases," says John McArthur, president of Walden Technology Partners and a board advisor at Starboard Storage Systems. "The use cases will evolve and mature over time, just as they are with server virtualization."

McArthur points to making storage asset management less of a problem, where the goal is migrating data from one device to another without having to physically link them together. Other benefits include replicating data between locations, making point-in-time copies of data, expanding storage capacity, and shrinking storage costs. Additionally, virtualized storage allows for a "pay as you go" subscription model that can increase storage capacities as needed, without having to grow data center footprints.

"Some companies will embed storage virtualization in an appliance to make their appliance simpler to manage and control," McArthur said. For example, hedge fund Thames River Capital virtualized its storage area network and saw a 40% improvement in the performance of its virtual machines as a result.

Virtualization Meets The Cloud

As the technology improves and devices continue to be connected to each other, cloud computing will increasingly merge with virtualized storage. One consideration is using cloud versus physical storage for high-performance computing at scientific research centers, according to John Bates, co-founder and CTO at TwinStrata.

"Cloud storage can solve some of the problems associated with big data, particularly in the areas of resource planning and infrastructure growth costs," Bates told industry reporters. "Cloud storage offers massive and automatic scalability, without requiring heavy capital expenditures on fixed storage systems that may reach capacity too fast."

The Internet Of Things, And More

Another use case for cloud-based virtualized storage is enabling a wide variety of non-computing devices connected to the network, also known as the "Internet of Things." In its estimates for 2020, IDC believes approximately 30 billion devices will be connected, each requiring cost-effective use of software and storage for the information gathered.

Considering the capabilities being developed for the next phase of the Internet, it's not much of a stretch to think that virtualized storage could be used to recreate virtual versions of specific events at specific points in time. A wide array of networked storage devices would hold the information from computers, sensors, cameras and other information sources to quickly recreate almost any event or scenario.

Perhaps the holographic event simulator (the "holodeck") from Star Trek might someday be a reality.

Storage has always been important to the enterprise - but the rise of big data applications puts unprecedented pressure on storage strategies and technologies. It's also delivering unprecedented benefits to the companies that figure out how to do it right.

So how big is big data? Approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data being created every day - 90% of it unstructured, according to IBM's estimates. Given that data can be in the form of customer sales interactions, corporate logistics information, or communications with partners and suppliers, companies are faced with tough choices. Data centers full of standard 2TB hard drives were not designed to handle big data.

What is needed is a combination of robust storage hardware and software that allow for quick access to relevant information.

Some Need Storage More Than Others

While big data and the information storage needed for analyzing and containing giant data sets are common amongst mid- to large-scale enterprises, some need big data storage solutions more than others. Earth scientists, engineering modeling, media and entertainment, and rapidly growing online services all contribute to the massive amounts of data being generated. The U.S. Library of Congress, for example, had 235TB of storage in April 2011. For this information to be analyzed, it must be stored properly for instant access.

"Whether it is storage systems architectures or storage devices enabling big data applications, the growth of content is increasing the amount of large data sets that enterprises must work with," wrote Tom Coughlin, president of Coughlin Associates, a storage analyst and consultancy, in a recent blog post. "These big data applications require managing, protecting and analyzing large and complex data content."

Analysts with McKinsey and Co. estimate nearly all sectors in the U.S. economy had an average of at least 200TB of stored data per company with more than 1,000 employees. That's twice the size of U.S. retailer Wal-Mart’s data warehouse in 1999. Many sectors had more than a petabyte in mean stored data per company. European companies have also amassed a massive storage capacity (almost 11 exabytes). That's 70% of the computer storage space created in the U.S. (more than 16 exabytes) in 2010.

But storing this information for data analysis can prove pricey, prompting enterprises to look for innovative ways to consolidate data sets and reconfigure connections between big data applications.

Overcoming Cost Constraints

While data warehouses cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to start with, the cost of storage can increase astronomically from there whenused for big data projects.

The average cost of a supported Hadoop distribution costs about $4,000 per node annually. A Hadoop cluster requires between 125 and 250 nodes and costs about $1 million, according to John Bantleman, CEO of big-data database developer RainStor. And companies like Yahoo have 200PB data sets spread across 50,000 network nodes!

"We know one thing is proven: The benefits of leveraging Big Data will outweigh IT investment," Bantleman wrote in a blog. "Cost by how much is the question."

Bantleman suggests there are two key areas that will continue decreasing the cost of big data storage:

1. Re-using existing SQL query language and existing business intelligence tools against data within Hadoop.
2. Compressing data at its most basic level, which not only reduces storage requirements, but drives down the number of nodes and simplify the infrastructure

Another factor affecting cost and complexity centers on where these storage arrays are physically located. New technologies are bringing some storage and storage functionality back much closer to the server and moving some further away in cloud storage. Increasingly, storage functions will be distributed inside and outside of the data center, in internal and external clouds.

More importantly, storage will be a key enabler of new business process and business intelligence applications that will be able to digest and present orders of magnitude more data than current applications, says Wikibon.com CTO David Floyer.

Storage-as-a-Service Meets Big-Data-as-a-Service

The economics of data movement are tipping the scales towards distributed compute services. Processing the data where it is sitting will be the model for the next generation of platforms. The infrastructure for this is falling into place.

As big data transforms from traditional closed data collection and analysis, companies are increasingly considering the benefits of cloud-based services. Online applications and services now create new sources for expanding data that create new challenges for fast access and fast use of information. Big data therefore results in big storage and big business opportunities.

While storage housed on-premise provides a controlled advantage for some storage systems dedicated to big data analytics, the more logical extension would be the expansion of online storage services for big data analytics. The concept of Big-Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS) is expected to debut in the Asia Pacific region in 2013, according to analysts with research firm IDC.

"We have seen cloud services, hosted data centers, service providers, and system integrators all expanding their XaaS offerings," Craig Stires, research director for big data and analytics, IDC Asia/Pacific predicted in his 2013 outlook. "The implementation and execution of a provisioned BDaaS solution will leverage platform, networking, storage, and compute services. IDC expects to see a breakthrough BDaaS offering in 2013, which will leverage all of these assets, as well as solve the challenge of how customers will on-board their data."

Whether in the cloud or in the data center, companies will look for ways to effectively cut costs without having to reduce the amount of information they work with. IT departments will be faced with the challenge of how to integrate these new sources of data within existing well-structured data management systems.

Organizations have invested considerable time in agreeing on what data is to be included into traditional analytical data storage, how it is to be defined, ownership, and permissions. The inclusion of new sources of data, streaming in at high speeds, with potentially large issues around data quality, will be a massive challenge. Finding the most efficent way to store this data will competitive advantages to organizations that do it right.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

ReadWrite's Michael Singer explains how online payment services are evolving to include mobile wallets that give you unprecedented flexibility when shopping at major retailers and small businesses. Get a walk through on using your mobile phone and PIN - or an associated PayPal card - to pay quickly and conveniently without having to share your financial information with retailers. Plus, learn how to get the deals and discounts you want automatically applied to your account.

It might be time to leave your wallet - and your cash - at home.

While paying with cash or credit cards won't go out of fashion anytime soon, but they're getting some serious competition. Online payments and e-wallets are about to shape not only how, but where and when we buy things. Even more important, they will give consumers the power to choose the payment methods that work to their advantage.

Catching Up To The Future

Advanced payment systems are not a new concept. Science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury predicted electronic commerce and futuristic payment systems long before they existed. Both men pointed to a time when people and machines come together, exposing the possibilities of individual identity within a larger ecosystem.

In 1974, Clarke predicted personal computers, the Internet and online banking. Bradbury's Guy Montag from "Fahrenheit 451" used an ATM years before they were invented.

Today, futurists today like Ray Kurzweil opine about the "Eternal E-Customer" offering tantalizing glimpses of how devices and people combine in symbiotic relationships. Take the world's current fascination with smartphones. The fact that we can check our bank balance, pay for groceries and give our kids their allowance all with one small device that we carry around with us all day, indicates the intense desire for a simple, portable and personal way to interact with our finances.

What's Possible Now

A variety of companies and industries have been working hard to transform online and mobile systems. The larger credit card issuers have recreated their services online, while companies like PayPal transcend the traditional approaches to online payment. Mobile device makers, telecom carriers and others are now weighing in, with the likes of Google Wallet, Apple Passbook, ISIS Mobile Commerce (a collaboration between AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile), and Visa's E-Wallet making the most noise.

As more providers enter the fray, the benefits to consumers become clearer, including electronic coupons, discounts and reduced fees. In the U.S. alone, the redemption value of “deal-a-day” offers – offers distributed via digital channels that typically expire within a few days – will reach $3.9 billion by 2015, according to a McKinsey research report. These coupons are partially a result of brand loyalty, according to Jip de Lange, a consultant at Innopay.

"We see payment methods that were originally offered online are now being offered in offline contexts as well, as the PoS [point of sale] terminal functions basically as Internet-enabled device," de Lange wrote in the Ecommerce Europe: Online Payments 2012 report. "This move not only secures growth potential for years to come, but also increases the relevance of these payment methods as they become part of consumers’ day-to-day routine."

Uneven Progress

Many governments are already moving toward supporting online payment systems. The U.S. Government's Pay.gov service lets citizens pay and be paid by the government using online accounts. People in Latin America, China, India and Africa are even more likely to incorporate mobile devices in their online payment transactions. Europeans trend toward using online accounts for shopping the Internet, with 58% having done so in 2011, Ecommerce Europe notes.

Not all online payment technologies will emerge at once, and not all will eventually succeeed. Researchers at Gartner estimate that Near Field Communications (NFC) is at least five years away from mass adoption. In the meantime, security concerns and the lack of immediate adoption is making many companies disillusioned with aspects of NFC as a payment method: Google is all in, while Apple and PayPal are not.

Perceptions of security and privacy remain key issues for all online and mobile payment systems. A recent study by Edgar, Dunn & Company and sponsored by MasterCard noted that the lingering negative public opinion associated with online payments is hindering broader adoption.

Even as the industry finds ways to address these issues, experts agree that the potential benefits are too great to ignore. So just about every company in the financial industry is doing what it can to explore the concept with early adopters and build products that will eventually appeal to everyone.

Toward A New Normal

A $5 bill in your pocket may not buy much these days, but it still comes in handy when you want to leave a tip or buy a bag of fruit at the farmer's market. The need for cash will be around for a long time, but over time it's likely to become the exception rather than the rule.

The ascendancy of mobile and online payments will be clear when we stop talking about "online payments" and "mobile payments" as something different or exotic, noted Innopay's de Lange in his report. It will just be another way to buy stuff:

"The world is becoming more and more ‘e.’ So the merger of offline and online is basically the disappearing of the first and the latter taking over. In a few years’ time, we will not be writing about e-payments or online payments because it will no longer be a meaningful category. We do still recognize channels and contexts and online payments will diversify to cater for all these channels and contexts."

As buyers and sellers become more and more comfortable with the online and mobile payments, the more likely they will reach for their digital wallets over their real ones. Without even noticing that they're doing anything noteworthy.

The first time I got a check for mowing the neighbor's lawn, I was faced with a vexing problem. "What should I do with this slip of paper that I can't directly take to the store?"

What an inconvenience to have to go the bank and deposit the check and wait for it to clear before spending my earnings!

Thankfully, the way we exchange funds keeps getting simpler and more convenient. New technologies and social changes are driving the development of new payment systems that can make all kinds of financial transfers easier, faster, and more ubiquitous than ever before.

Online payments may be the most truly portable and personal of all - but they're still only a small part of the larger financial environment. Why haven't they become completely mainstream?

The Only Thing We Have To Fear…

Online transaction authentication firm Entersekt's 2012 survey of online banking and purchasing found consumers remain split about carrying out online transactions on their mobile devices. Men are more inclined to participate (32%) than women (25%).

The big thing holding back further evolution of online payments seems to be fear. "In today's world, consumers are not only aware that fraud exists, but many have either experienced it personally, or know someone that has," wrote Enterseck's CEO Schalk Nolte. "This criminality impacts all of us through increased insurance, increased prices, and increased hassle. However, what I think is interesting and actually quite comforting, is that people are happy to be inconvenienced if it means they're better protected."

Clearly, people need to feel comfortable using online banking and payments. But what will it take to make that happen?

Technology is part of the answer, especially encryption methodologies strong enough to keep out hackers without overly delaying transactions. Merchants and banks today exchange SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption protocols in less than three seconds, allowing for fast funds transfers. The residual authorization and payment settlements may take as long as three days.

Doing The Mobile Math

The spread of mobile devices are another key contributor to the growth in online payment transactions, according to a 2012 report by Ecommerce Europe (PDF). Some forecasts indicate that due to the rapid adoption of smartphones, by the end of 2013, 12.5% of all e-commerce transactions will be mobile.

"It needs to be stressed, however, that such prospects will not materialize unless online payment services providers keep constant track of market trends, consumer demands and competition in this challenging market environment," Ulric Jerome, with Ecommerce Europe, said in the report.

Established financial services companies have not ignored the inroads from online payment providers - and they are essential to full adoption of these services. Banks, credit card issuers and other financial institutions are focusing efforts on customer satisfaction by supporting online and mobile devices. Ecommerce Europe suggests the next step for banks is to establish competitive online payment systems.

What Next?

As the number of people using online payments continues to grow, social factors are becoming just as important as the technology. Consumers are more likely to adopt new methods of currency exchange when they feel that everyone else is doing it too.

Achieving critical mass is, well… critical. Findings by researchers Andrew J. Setterstrom and J. Michael Pearson of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale suggest social influences affect people's purchase decisions - as well as their online gaming behavior - in complex ways.

"While micro-level influences, such as attitude, arguably serve as the best predictors of [willingness to pay], we found that macro-level social influence, in the form of reputation, played the greatest role in affecting the formation of individual attitudes and behaviors," Setterstrom and Pearson wrote.

Bottom line: The more people hear and see online payment systems in action, the more they will want to try them for themselves. In the meantime, only the bold are willing to go first.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Imagine yourself in line at the local coffee shop. You're getting impatient because there are nearly a dozen people ahead of you before you can order your morning wake-up call. Suddenly, the line starts moving faster. It's not that the barista has six arms; it's that a few customers are speeding things up paying by waving their smartphones in front of a scanner.

Later that day, you stop by a colleague's desk when he tells you to hang on for a second while he pays his mortgage, electric bill, phone bill and car payment. You think you'll both be late for a meeting, but a few clicks of the mouse on a single website and the payments are complete and you're ready to go.

After work, you attend your kid's PTA meeting. As in many school districts, funds are pretty tight. To help, the principal asks parents and school supporters to sign up online for electronic Scrip programs with the local grocery store.

On your way home, you stop off at Home Depot to pick up a new doorknob to replace the broken one that's been bugging you for months. It's getting late, so it's nice that you can pay simply by entering your mobile phone number and PIN code - without ever having to pull out your wallet. 

That night before bed, your son is playing his favorite video game, when he shows off a new avatar he purchased right in the game with tokens using his online account.

Time To Throw Away Your Wallet?

These are but a few examples of transactions that historically would have required cash, checks or credit cards. Whether using a PC or a smartphone, more customers than ever can now purchase goods and services online, pay in a retail location or transfer money without ever touching their wallet.

While it's not yet time to throw away your wallet, more people than ever are using e-wallets or "stored value" cards as a convenient one-step way to pay. A 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project report found these digital accounts allow customers to also transfer money, purchase goods, and engage in other types of financial transactions. By 2020, 65% of people are expected to have embraced the use of smart-device swiping for completing their purchases, nearly eliminating the need for cash or credit cards. Not surprisingly, younger shoppers are already more comfortable with the technology.

Don't worry, though, the arrival of digital payments doesn't spell the end of other payment methods. “When credit cards arrived, checks did not disappear, and neither did money,” said Amber Case, anthropologist and CEO of Geoloqi, a company that creates location-based software. “There are [currently] three main methods of payment. If another method of payment is added, we will likely have four methods of payment and retailers and businesses must accept another form of payment. Some systems may emerge that use completely smart payments, but there will still be other forms of payment available.”

These e-payment systems are expected to further online spending. Customers would spend $109.8 billion annually if offered a "no credit card required" way to pay online and at merchants, according to a 2011 Javelin Strategy and Research report. Four out of five of those surveyed in the same report said they would spend more online if they considered credit cards safer and had payment alternatives.

Getting Over The Fear Factor

Even as the use of electronic payment systems and e-wallets grow, some customers have legitimate concerns - mostly concerning security.

Recent accusations of cyber attacks on U.S. banks by the Iranian government, as well as high-profile hacking incidents such as the publishing of more than 400,000 credit cards online by a Saudi hacker, do little to ease customer fears that their digital wallets could get cleaned out.

For customers to confidently adopt these new payment methods, currency systems need to resolve safety, security and privacy issues, and just as important, remove the perception of risk. “There will always be people who are concerned with the security of their transactions,” wrote Laura Lee Dooley, a strategist for the World Resources Institute in the Pew Internet report. “So the concern of someone hacking into your financial flows will continue to grow, and personal security and device-tracking companies will become an integral and major component of the marketplace.” On the other hand, Lee Dooley also noted that consumers’ fears offers opportunties for businesses to succeed by solving these problems.

Putting Customers In Control

As the future of electronic payments plays out, customers will ultimately determine which systems survive and prosper.

“I already see the growing use of digital monetary transactions in my world," said Jon Lebkowsky, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation-Austin in Austin, Texas. "There are some serious discussions of alternate forms of currency, growing in volume as economies seem increasingly shaky. I suspect there'll be innovation here - evolution not just of the medium of exchange but also of the value it represents.”

The technology innovations are already coming fast and furious. Person-to-person (P2P) payments can let you send funds to a friend. Retail POS (point-of-sale) systems can be activated using smartphones, merchant cards linked to your digital wallet or online checkout. Mobile checkin lets you connect with a store via a mobile app, sending your picture to the cashier's screen for identification and letting you pay directly from an online account. Near Field Communications (NFC) allows you to wave your smartphone over a scanner to pay for a cup of coffee.

A similar method currently being tested involves transitioning payments between the accounts of individuals - or Account-to-Account (A2A) transactions. These low-cost transfers could go viral as smartphones users increase their use of short-range file transfers. This so called "bumping" lets smartphones make payments to merchants - or to each other, simply by touching the devices together.

What could be easier than that?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Just as many companies won't hire the unemployed, new research suggests workers may tend to avoid jobs that have been open too long. A look at high-growth areas like Silicon Valley reveals some big disconnects between the expectations of tech job employers and job seekers - leaving many positions open and many professionals unemployed. 

Finding a tech job these days should be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel, right? Not since the dot.com boom of the late 1990s have so many companies sprouted up with a mission to create software and provide online services to the masses. Heck, even jobs in general seem to be making a comeback. The U.S. Labor Department's national numbers on unemployment claims dropped to 7.8% from 8.1% last week.

That optimism might be overheated, however. Information technology-related jobs (IT jobs) saw reductions of 1,700 workers last month, according to research released this week from Foote Partners Research Group. That's the first monthly drop in IT industry jobs that was not labor related since 2010. Compared to earlier this year, unemployment for IT workers mostly befell Web developers, network architects, computer systems analysts and software developers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Not Time To Panic For Tech Workers

While not cause for full-scale panic, the decrease hints at a broader industry problem: Employers can't find enough qualified employees even as job seekers can't find qualified openings.

In a perfect world, every manager fills open positions as quickly as possible. But even as many workers can't find appropriate positions, the market for technology professionals in certain geographies and skill-sets is remarkably tight.

Some 45% of surveyed hiring managers and recruiters told Dice.com it was taking longer to fill positions relative to last year (June 2012 compared to June 2011). The number one reason, according to Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com: an inability to find qualified professionals. That was followed by hiring managers being more discerning waiting for the perfect match.

The problem is that waiting for the ideal candidate may mean job postings remain open for longer than some job seekers are comfortable with. The longer a job is open, the less likely it will get filled, according to Randstad Technologies a technology recruiter based in the U.K.

Does A Job Posting Have A Shelf Life?

To test its theory that employers should not keep job postings open indefinitely, Randstad contracted a survey of 2,001 people asking, "How many working days does a vacancy for a permanent job have to be open before it starts to look like a bad job that no one wants?"

Technology professionals in the U.K said they thought a post that was vacant an average of 67 days was most likely a job that no one wants. The survey did not indicate what kinds of employers had postings that lasted that long, nor what kinds of jobs could not be filled in more than two months time. Typically, online job posting websites like Dice.com, CareerBuilder.com and SimplyHired.com keep each posting for only a month. Most fill up in two weeks time, according to Dice.com's Hill.

Just as important, there could be many reasons why it’s taking longer to fill a particular position and not necessarily because it’s a “bad” job.

"There are instances where consulting or staffing companies are constantly in need of certain professionals," Hill says. "The job may appear to be the same, but it’s really a unique role with similar qualifications and experience needed."

Testing The Theory In Silicon Valley

Does this theory really hold true - especially in the hyper-competitive market of Silicon Valley? To find out, we took a look at job listings for tech positions listed on four well-known job-search sites for in Cupertino, Calif., the home of Apple.

It seems that some employers do have a hard time filing software developer jobs. A simple search turned up the following un-filled positions posted for more than a month:

Dice.com

• Software Developer & Report Writer - posted September 5
• .Net Software Developer - posted September 7

Careerbuilder.com

• CloudSystem Software Engineer - VI for a high-profile company in Palo Alto - posted 3 weeks ago
• Software Developer at a lesser-known company - posted 3 weeks ago

Simply Hired

• Sr. Software Dev Engineer Wireless at a high profile company in Seattle - posted 29 days ago
• Software Development Engineer in Test Framework at a high-profile company in Seattle - posted 17 days ago

Craigslist

• SW. Developer - Music Apps at an unknown company - posted September 8
• Senior C/C++ Software Developer at an unknown company - posted September 7

Job Postings Are Like Real Estate Listings

"Recruiting for a tech post is like trying to sell your house. Leave it on the market too long and, for whatever reason, people start to think there is something wrong with it," said Mike Beresford, managing director of Randstad. "That leads to fewer applications and increased pressures on the rest of the staff left trying to cover the empty position."

While IT jobs continue to be in high demand, the nature of employees and those looking for work in tech remains a dance between employers looking for skilled workers and skilled workers looking for better opportunities.

It may seem that in this economy, just posting an open position should be enough to get it filled. But as the research shows, it's also important to manage expectations - and to refresh job listings left up too long - if we want to get those positions filled and people back to work.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

In many states, you could end up paying a stiff fine if you get caught driving while talking or texting on your mobile phone. But savvy consumers are learning that going car shopping without your mobile phone could cost you much, much more. For me, it saved my family $2,500 and wasted trips to dealerships across town.

U.S. auto dealers say they've noticed more new-car buyers on their lots equipped with mobile devices than ever before. And while comparison shopping with smartphone in hand is a frequent sight in grocery stores and malls, the influence of always-connected devices is creating both opportunity and anxiety in the automobile industry.

Sales of U.S. autos, trucks and SUVs reached 12.4 million as of September 2012. That's up 12.6% form the same month in 2011 (10.8 million)s. Mobile shoppers are contributing to those numbers. Out of all the mobile shoppers in the world, 17% search automotive websites and 53% of those buy a car from a dealership, according to Google/Compete Research. Mobile shoppers are also more likely to use a mobile device throughout the entire process.

A J.D. Power and Associates 2012 Autoshopper Study released this week confirms the influence of the iPhone and iPad on the American car industry. Of the more than 12,000 people surveyed who either purchased or leased 2010 to 2012 model-year new vehicles, 20% used a smartphone to assist in the purchase.

A slightly smaller but still surprisingly large percentage (18%) even brought a tablet computer along to the showroom as a shopping companion.

How Mobile Devices Affect The Sale

While a lot of legwork is done in front of the home PC, nearly 30% of car shoppers use a combination of home computer and mobile device to check out a possible purchase before stepping on a lot, the J.D. survey found. Car buyers used their smartphones and tablets mostly to look up manufacturer information, dealer address and stock availability. Only a small portion (5%) included car information from social media, the survey said.

"This interplay between the dealership experience and digital information has become more intertwined with the availability of shopping content on mobile devices," said Arianne Walker, senior director at J.D. Power and Associates. "Now that buyers can easily access information right from their pockets, it is essential that the dealer is as well versed as the shoppers in order to provide consistent information both online and in the dealership."

Indian Car Shoppers Are Truly Mobile

It's not just Americans who are crazy about shopping online for cars. In India, 65% of people do their initial research about the automobiles on the Internet, according to research from Google India. That figure is 62% for US and Europe. Sandeep Singh, managing director with Toyota Kirloskar Motors told local media his group spends about 10% of his marketing budget on digital media, including mobile.

"Mobile marketing is an important element in our overall digital campaigns," Singh told marketing publication Pitch. "We regularly include [wireless application protocol'] inventory for all our major campaigns. Spends on this channel depends on the type of campaign and its objectives."

Mobile Worked For Me

In my case, my family had been in the market for several years to purchase a new vehicle. We had been racing around town kicking tires and asking questions of salespeople.

We narrowed down our choices and decided the time was right to sign on the dotted line. Since we knew what make and model we wanted, all we needed was to find the right color at the right price.

We had an appointment set up with one dealership and were heading out the door when my wife suggested we check around one more time. Using our smartphones, we found the car we wanted in the color we wanted at a price $2,500 less at a different dealership.

Feeling empowered with smartphone-delivered knowledge that we were getting the best possible deal, we drove home that day with a new car.

What About The Dealer?

Although mobile apps are still used by a minority of car shoppers, the same types of online tools are being used at home. That has pluses and minuses for dealers,

On the plus side, customers with better information in their pockets tend to know exactly what they want and are confident enough to make decisions. They're ready to make a deal.

On the other side, dealers are quickly finding that customers can compare prices right up to the last minute. Had my family not checked our prices at the last second, fir example, the first dealership would won the sale - with a fat profit margin.

To stay competitive, manufacturers, dealers and salespeople need to keep up with the same tools that customers use and monitor customer mobile behavior closely. They need to carefully weigh the lowers margins of competitive pricing against losing the entire sale when the potential customer finds a better price on their smartphone.