Microsoft Business Solutions owns and promotes several Microsoft Dynamics family ERP applications: Axapta, Solomon, Navision, Great Plains, Microsoft CRM. All of these inherit some legacy and have obligations to the existing clientele: Great Plains has large number of clients in USA, Canada and English speaking countries, Navision has strong legacy positions in Europe, Solomon has Project Accounting clientele base, Microsoft CRM or now Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 is probably the only one new product, which has good chances to become CRM front end for all the back-end MRP systems in Microsoft Dynamics family. We would like to share with you, potential or current Microsoft Dynamics AX customer some analytics on Microsoft Project Green, however these can not be considered MBS official point of view

• Initial Phase of Project Green. Well, obviously things are changing, but we were given the impression of some so-called Microsoft Business Suites: Financials, Human Resources, Manufacturing, Project, Logistics, Supply Chain, etc. These suites will or should be built based on the best functionalities of MBS purchased ERPs: Great Plains, Axapta, Navision, Solomon

• Microsoft Office & Sharepoint integration emphasize. The trend itself is great, plus it helps in-house Microsoft-oriented development team to take initiative over, however this trend might be the way to shift away the attention from Microsoft Business Suites integration and four ERPs merge conception

• Axapta move. Initially, and this is again our opinion Axapta was purchased as the bundled addition to Navision, we should remind that Navision had excellent accounting/MRP market place in Europe: Germany, France, UK, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Spain, later on it was localized for Poland, Russia, etc. Axapta had advanced ERP functionality and was purchased by Navision Software (prior to its acquisition by Microsoft) to compete with major ERP brands: SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, JDEdwards, etc.

• Microsoft Dynamics AX or GP. This is probably the most confusing and compelling question in the USA and Canada. Well, lets look at the history. Great Plains Software had at the end of XX century its major competitor Solomon, to give you long story short - GPS mastered to acquire Solomon and made it auxiliary option, prior to be in turn acquired by stronger player - Microsoft Corporation. Now Axapta/Dynamics AX is localized for Europe, Latin America: Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador. Axapta supports Unicode (China, Japan, Burma), at the same time Microsoft Dynamics GP Great Plains is Great Plains Dexterity application. To give you some background facts - Dexterity was designed in the beginning of 1990th - MorphX/X++ is definitely a step forward, but we would like to wait more signals from MBS

• Large, Mid-size and Small Business. We expect that Microsoft Dynamics is the answer for “all of us”. However the “answer” might depend on the world place and the legacy ERP scenario, which is understood and respected

• XML Web Service. This seems to be the “troyan horse of Microsoft Business Portal and Microsoft .Net”. Even if we are in MS partners program to facilitate Microsoft Dynamics sales, we are not sure what is the future interrelations between AX and GP.

Please do not hesitate to call or email us: USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com

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Every programmer has her own style of coding like some use ‘inum’ for declaring an integer variable while some use ‘num_i’ for declaring the same. Like wise some programmers are lazy enough to add comments. These small drops when added together can create an ocean of confusion.

What is a coding standard?

Coding standard is establishing one single coding style (convention) for whole project or organization and making programmers strictly follow it. This is also known as programming style or coding conventions. Usually coding styles differ from language to language, but it is better to establish one standard for one language. Later in this article we shall discuss ways of coding standards

Why one should use it?

1. Easy to understand others code - Due to differing programming styles of programmer; it is sometime hard to easily read coding done by someone else. If all programmers starts using same convention this problem can be eliminated up to some extend.

2. Easy to use and debug program - if coding standard is followed, it will be easy to debug the program due to two factors, firstly some bugs can be totally eliminated which are caused due to poor naming and indenting of code, and secondly, it will be easy to debug programs of fellow programmer. It is important to consider the second reason sometimes, when debugging, if you are stuck at a point, just ask any of your friend, she will get the error in no time. This is due to your ignoring of a portion and considering it is right, but a second person will try to understand your logic and will search more thoroughly than you.

3. Increase in productivity - as I mentioned earlier that Nagaraja is facing complains of new employee on his RAD team. This will certainly not come to you if your development team is following a coding standard. This way productivity will ascend.

4. Decreasing program complexity - program can become complex not only due to logic of program but also due to gibberish coding done by the developer. If better indenting and naming convention is followed, this problem will not come.

5. Staffing Flexibility - New people can be easily added to the project because it will be no problem for new member to start producing. The only need is to understand the coding standards.

6. Re-use of code - If the code is not complex and based on standards, one can easily re-use it in some other project. This re-use can be direct or with some modification. In any of these two cases coding standards will really pay-off.

Few standards used worldwide

Different computer languages need different coding style, but there are some basic points where we can discuss coding styles on.

1. Variable Declaration and naming conventions
In declaration of variable some conventions can be followed. Some rules must be defined for declaration variables -

a.Name of variable must not be randomly chosen. The name must clearly state the purpose of that variable.

b.Datatype of the variable must be included in the variable name. As this is suggested in VB 6.0 manual to use “txt_textboxname” as name of a textbox and “lbl_labelname” as name of a label object. This should be used and also a fixed convention for this should be clearly stated.

c.All variable should be declared in small letter and all constants in capital letter. This is very important for case sensitive languages.

d.No re use of any variable name. It is easy to use same variable name in more than one block of coding. This practice should be highly undesirable and should be avoided at first place.

e.All global variables should use a naming pattern this will help developer to avoid accidental modification of global data.

2. Commenting standards
First of all, all developers should be encouraged to do maximum commenting. This is never considered as wastage of time, it increases readability of coding. Some comments should be enforced as mandatory, one of such comment can be the comment at the top of all programming page like -

——————————————————–
Name of Module
Last Modified By -
Date -
Modification History -
Status -
——————————————————–

This comment will always be very useful for the software configuration team to get the latest version of codes.

3. Indenting and formatting
This is also called beautifying the codes. Indenting is cascading your codes in such a manner that all nested blocks of your code can be easily separated with each other. This is highly recommended. Normally one can use one tab for each inner nesting and so on. This is the best indenting followed by programmers.

4. Program return value
Usually when a main function of program is terminated, it returns an end status value in integer. There is no set convention for this value, but we can set this as a convention. For all successful termination program should return a value of ‘0′ and for any error it should return the proper error code in integer. This error code should be a non negative integer value greater than or equal to 1.

The above suggestions are only few, one can call upon developers to generate a more comprehensive list of coding standards.

How to apply it on our project?

Coding standards are useful for Rapid Application Development (RAD) teams. You as a project manager or leader can apply coding standards but if programmers are not really using that it will remain as a futile piece of opulence. It is very important to enforce coding standards.
Many software firms have conventions but it is never enforced correctly. One better solution I can think is to check coding standard in a code walkthrough. In a code walkthrough, all developer considers any code and dry run it for finding any logical error. If in normal code walkthrough, coding standard is also considered on the agenda, developers will start using it.

Conclusion
Finally, Nagaraja (the project Manager of an IT firm in India), called upon a meeting will all the developers and concerned admins and ask them to create a coding standard. This coding standard was then enforced on the developers. This soon helped Najaraja to handle his quickly changing team. No! I am not saying that his employees stopped leaving, but now their leaving has no bad impact on the development process.

In this article we just saw that how some simple convention can be useful in producing high class and flexible codes. These can seem very simple but their impact is not just simple it is more than that.

Manu Dutt Tripathi is a young energetic computer professional working as a consultant DBA in leading IT firm of Bangalore, India. He has a master degree in computer science. He is an active member of many technical forums and help users and computer professionals throughout the world.

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Features
Additionally, Vista will include many other new features.

Aero
Vista will include a completely re-designed user interface, code-named Aero. The new interface is intended to be cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than previous Windows interfaces. The most visible addition to the interface is the sidebar (however this feature has been removed in the last alpha release), an area at the side of the screen consisting of tiles which display dynamic information about whatever window is currently in the foreground, which is essentially an extension of the “system tray” on the Windows task bar.

Search
Vista will feature a new search engine that will allow for instant display of results for a given search. This is in contrast to the search engine of Windows XP, which can take several minutes to display results. The Vista search will allow you to add multiple filters to continually refine your search (Such as “File contains the word ‘example’”). There will also be saved searches that will act as Virtual Folders, where opening a folder will execute a specific search automatically and display the results as a normal folder. The search will also feature other usability improvements. The Vista search is actually built on an expanded and improved version of the indexing service for the search in Windows XP. This feature is similar to Apple Spotlight.

Metro
Metro is the codename for Microsoft’s next generation document format, which is based on XML. It is similar in many ways to Adobe Systems’ PDF. Metro is intended to allow users to view, print, and archive files without the original program that created it. The name Metro also refers to the print path in Vista. With Metro, documents can remain in the same format from the time they are created to the time they are printed. Microsoft states that Metro will provide better fidelity to the original document by using a consistent format for both screen and print output.

While many analysts suspect Metro is intended to be a “PDF-killer”, Microsoft insists that they are not attempting to duplicate all the functionality of the PDF. For example, at the time of this writing, Metro is not planned to have the capabilities for dynamic documents.

Shell
The new shell is a significant change from previous versions of Windows. Combined with the new desktop searching feature, the shell gives users the ability to find and organize their files in new ways. Apart from the typical file organization practice of using folders to contain files, a new collection known as Lists let you organize files from multiple locations in a single place.

A new type of folder known as a Shadow Folder enables the ability to revert its entire contents to any arbitrary point in the past.

Additionally, the shell contains significant advancements in the visualization of files on a computer. Previous versions of the Windows Shell would display thumbnails to represent different files on your computer. In Windows Vista the thumbnail concept is taken further by overlaying different imagery to communicate more information about the particular file such as a picture frame around the thumbnail of an image file, or a filmstrip on a video file. Windows Vista helps the user identify the file easily by more intelligently generating the thumbnails. Using algorithmic analysis, images are cropped around their likely subject, and interesting key frames are automatically chosen from a video file. Also, the ability to zoom the thumbnails in the shell greatly increases their usefulness.

Networking
Windows Vista is expected to have a brand new networking stack. A significant change is a more complete implementation of IPv6 which is now supported by all networking components, services, and the user interface. Vista also takes advantage of P2P technology to provide a new type of domain-like networking setup known as a Castle. Castles make it possible for user credentials to propagate across networked computers without a centralized server making them more suitable for a home network.

The ability to assist the user in diagnosing a network problem is expected to be a major new networking feature. Using technologies such as UPnP, Windows Vista has a greater awareness of the network topology the host computer is in. With this new network awareness technology it can provide help to the user in fixing network issues or simply provide a graphical view of the perceived network configuration.

Other features
Full support for the “NX” (No-Execute) feature of processors. This feature, present in AMD’s AMD64 architecture, as well as Intel’s EM64T Architecture, can flag certain parts of memory as containing data instead of executable code, which prevents overflow errors from resulting in arbitrary code execution. This should not be confused with trusted computing facilities provided by a so-called Fritz-chip.

Built-in DVD recording capabilities, including Mt. Rainier support.
A new installation program that will install Vista in about 15 minutes (which is present in alpha build 4074 of Windows Vista).
Native Raw Image support (a format used by most professional digital cameras).

Native, embedded RSS support, with developer API.
A new level of file encryption support from that available in Windows XP, which will make it easier and more automatic to prevent unauthorized viewing of files on stolen laptops/hard drives.

Monad. A new command-line interface called MSH, and codenamed Monad will not be fully implemented in Vista, but will exist in it to some extent. It plans to combine the Unix pipes and filters philosophy with that of object-oriented programming.

The “My” prefixes will be dropped, so “My Documents” will just be “Documents”, “My Computer” will just be “Computer”, etc.
Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat), a built in benchmarking tool which analyzes the different subsystems (graphics, memory, etc), and uses the results to allow for comparison to other Vista systems, and for software optimizations. The optimizations can be made by both windows and third-party software. Tom’s Hardware Overview

File Virtualization, when an individual program’s permissions are restricted, allows that program to use its own ‘fake’ set of certain files so modifications to those files from said program does not alter the original files.
Transactional File Transfers, prevents a half updated set of files from being created during updates for example, which can cause stability problems.
InfoCard, a user interface to the Identity Metasystem.

Features and technologies delayed until future releases
WinFS (short for either Windows Future Storage or Windows File System): a combined relational database and filesystem, based on the next version of SQL Server (codenamed Yukon). Working on top of NTFS, it will provide abilities to represent objects and their relationships, rather than just a hierarchy of files and folders. The removal of WinFS from Windows Vista was announced in August 2004, and is expected to be released as an update to Vista, entering beta stages at about the same time as Vista is released. Microsoft’s promotion of this technology has spurred the recent trend towards desktop search tools.
Full implementation of Monad.

Graphics hardware requirements
Vista’s graphics requirements are defined in relation to the different desktop experiences.

Aero Glass
This graphics mode adds support for 3D graphics, animation and visual special effects in addition to the features offered by Aero Express.

Intended for mainstream and high-end graphics cards.

At least 64 MB of graphics memory, 128 MB recommended, or 256 MB for 1600×1200+.

At least 32 bits per pixel.

3D hardware acceleration with capabilities equal to DirectX 9.

A memory bandwidth of 2 GB / second.

Capable of drawing ~1.5M triangles / second, one window being ~150 triangles.

A graphics card that uses AGP 4X or PCI Express 8-lane bus.

It is likely that such a configuration will be entry-level or lower by Vista’s release in 2006.

Aero Diamond
A graphics mode customized for the Vista Media Center Edition, and will not be made available in the other editions. Not much information is currently available, but it appears that it will be the most advanced level of graphics in Vista, requiring hardware at the same level or greater than the Aero Glass visual style.

Aero Express
The lesser Aero visual experience offering only the basic visual improvements introduced by Vista, such as composition based DPI scaling.

Intended for mainstream or lower-end graphics cards.

Uses the Avalon Desktop Composition window manager.

A Vista Driver Display Model (LDDM) driver is a requirement.

Some graphics cards already support LDDM. In some Vista builds (4074, 5048), LDDM is already supported to run Aero Glass.

To Go
The new Vista look & feel without any visual special effects, similar to the visual style Luna of Windows XP in that it resembles merely an application skin. As with Luna, no additional hardware requirements compared to the classic Windows interface.

A simple option for consumer upgrades, and mobile / low-cost devices.
No additional requirements compared to the lesser Classic mode.
Fallback mode in case the hardware requirements for Aero aren’t met.

Classic
The most basic user interface offered by Vista, which is also seen in Windows 2000, or Windows XP with its visual style Luna deactivated.

An option for corporate deployments and upgrades.
Requires Windows XP Display Driver Model (XPDM) or LDDM drivers.
No graphics card hardware requirements exceeding those of Windows XP.

Naming considerations
Vista means “the visual percept of a region”, with these synonyms: aspect, panorama, prospect, scene and view. Translated from Spanish and Italian, vista means: sight, vision, ability to see; look, glimpse; spectacle; viewfinder; range of view; point of view.

In Latvian, however, vista means ‘hen’ (grown-up female of a bird, [2]) and ‘chicken’ (as in food), and may also connote something or someone not particularly agile or clever.

Windows Vista has been unofficially abbreviated to Windows VI, staying with the traditional 2 character motif, as in 95, 98, Me, NT, XP. VI is also the number 6 in Roman numerals, and Windows Vista will carry the version number 6.0 (Windows 2000 and Windows XP being Windows NT versions 5.0 and 5.1, respectively).

Windows Vista sound like “bosta” in Argentinian culture.

In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Vista is a part of the atmosphere that surrounds the world of Arda before the cataclysm at the end of the Second Age. Vista forms the inner layer of normal air: above it is Ilmen, and above that Vaiya.

Get Windows Vista: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/14/1/Where-to-get-Windows-Vista?
Windows Vista Wallpaper: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/16/1/Windows-Vista-Wallpaper
Windows Vista Theme: http://www.vistaarticles.com/articles/16/1/Windows-Vista-Wallpaper

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Content Management Systems are a great way to maintain the integrity of your web site by allowing you, not a web designer, to have control of your content.. When you look for a CMS, look for one that is designed to provide a user-friendly environment that can accommodate multiple users with varying skill levels. Some CMS systems are designed as software that installs on your servers or your PC, while other CMS’s are hosted by the system’s developers and accessed over the Internet via a browser. This type of CMS is generaly less expensive than those installed on your server. Not only will they be less expensive in most cases…you should shop around…but many are suppied as “software-on-demand” and are priced per session. That means you only pay when you use it.

Another thing you should look for is the features of the CMS. It should have all the features of MS Word and be so simple to use that your content developers will be able to begin creating and editing content with ease. CMS systems come in multiple flavors and can be deployed for both small and large companies.

Many of the better-designed CMS’s are based on authentication level, which means that content developers are granted permission to access the authorized areas within the system. This permission-based content access management utility is very popular and is designed and developed for creating, accessing, and managing menus, submenus, hyperlinks, new page creations, etc. It should offer authorized content developers the ability to navigate quickly and intuitively, using pull-down and drill-down menus to get to specific areas of your web site. Most CMS’s have an auto-log-out procedure that can be implemented if a content editor leaves an active session open without making any changes for a certain predetermined length of time. In such cases all unsaved work should be queued for immediate review once the content developer logs back in.

Find a CMS that is designed with no restrictions on page lengths and quantity of content, and allows your content developers to preview new or changed content easily. Users should be able to make multiple content changes that will be made immediately without extensive wait or reload time.

Pictures and images are extremely important for some companies web sites. They may need to upload new photos often, or remove them when they are obsolite. Therefore you need to find out if that option for your photos is avaialbe in the sytem you choose. An important question to ask is, how much control will you have of where and how your pictures appear within the layout of your web pages? This may seem like a very simple question, but you would be surprised how many people do not ask it. Another question is, how easy are the tools within the CMS to use and how much training, if any, and support you will get from the CMS’s developer?

Your web site is a critical connection between your company and your customers/visitors. Keeping your content up-to-date can be the most effective way to sell your products and services and ensure that your web site works for you, not against you.

Judith Stolpner is the Director of Marketing at Blue Robin Inc.-Blue Robin is recognized as experts in building customized eBusiness Infrastructures. Blue
Robin also designs web-based solutions for small to mid sized companies including cost effective Content Management Systems. Judith has been involved with web marketing since 1995.
http://www.bluerobininc.com

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In a Short Period of Time, New Outsourcing Wave Called On-demand Sourcing Will Be Here to Change the Way People Work and Force Companies to Revisit Their Corporate Strategy Yet Again. In fact, New Way of Doing Business in the Future Will Dictate Having No Permanent Employees other than Core Business Builders and Top Decision Makers in an Organization.

Jack Welch joined a conference that was held in Duke Fuquay Business School where he was invited to promote his new book called “Winning”. He told audience about how culture is important in a company. Culture builds integration and integration guarantees better products and services for customers. In GE’s 1994 annual report his statements were no different. “Boundaryless behavior…” he said “…has become the right behavior at GE, and aligned with this behavior is a rewards system that recognizes the adapter or implementer of an idea as much as its originator. Creating this open, sharing climate magnifies the enormous and unique advantage of a multibusiness GE, as our wide diversity of service and industrial businesses exchange an endless stream of new ideas and best practices.”

A little over 10 years, does his story still stick? Yes but only in theory… Many multibusinesses have figured out harshly that they need to understand their core business competency and capitalize on that in order to survive, rather than surrendering their many businesses with one culture like Welch said. Simply because, it was not working! Since that was understood plainly, across the globe, multibusiness managements have been under increasing pressure, as they struggle with decisions about what businesses they should be in and how they should structure and influence these businesses. GE, Siemens, Tyco, 3M, and few others have escaped from this fact as they could answer the crucial question: What is your corporate strategy? But this doesn’t mean that they could answer the upcoming question: What is the value behind having permanent employees?

The question is not only directed to multibusinesses but concerning medium and large organizations too. Why do companies have marketing, operations or sales departments? Is that really their core competency to have lots of employees working for them? Most probably, not! Multibusinesses are more akin to danger of fading away, though, because employee means culture and power to them, and one of their core business value is orchestrating them to work together. With the new wave of doing business through on-demand sourcing, every organization will start demoting the role of conducting non-core side of their business in order to be swifter. That role of conducting business will belong to specialized firms, which are future version of today’s consulting companies.

What Lies Ahead?

Futuristic terminology, on-demand sourcing, is about hiring workforce when it is needed and discarding them when the mission is accomplished. Specialized firms will address to the need of on-demand sourcing such as complete marketing, sales, operations (unless they are core values) etc. Specialized firms’ efforts will not only end on forming strong groups to address organizations. They will also be responsible from building a customized incentive package for those groups of temporary employees to work together.

Consequently, everybody except the core business builders and top decision makers will be outsourced by organizations to specialized firms. Specialized firms will come up with their own group of people to serve on-project basis.

What Should Be Done to Be There? The Real Opportunity

Jack Welch mentioned a genius idea in the conference. “Why are we not grading our mature boys (employees)?” Welch asked, explaining that evaluation should not stop after education. In an on-demand sourcing situation, employees will be hired by specialized firms. But they probably need to use a grading system before going ahead and forming a group of employees for an organization. Organizations, in parallel, need to see grades of specialized firms before hiring them. So grading and analytical proof on core-decision making will be key. If there were sufficient proofs supporting top organizations’ decision makers, it would be easier for them to take critical steps and hire right specialized firms for their needs. Rating firms will give organizations the historical success of specialized firms and grade them just like S&P does it for countries. Rating will bring auto control system to both employees and specialized firms.

Through on-demand sourcing, optimizing cash reserves will be easier than ever. Also organizations can be much more agile, business-oriented and focused. The other side of the story, employees, will be more satisfied as the on-demand way of employment will fulfill their incentives more than today in the business environment. Also, how much they earn will depend on their grade, which translates into how trained they are on a specific subject. This will force them to learn more and hone their skills continuously. With all outsourcing craze going on in the world, we don’t have more than 5 years to see this trend shaping our lives so better get prepared for it.

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If you haven’t heard or read about the outsourcing trend,
argument, discussion, fervor, whatever your side of it may
be - especially the digital bridges of gold-pressed latnum
being built in India, China and other places outside our
backyard; then you need to Google-it or Yahoo to your
heart’s satisfaction and move out from the cave of silence
youv’e had been in lately. What we are focusing on here is a
simple case - ‘Build IT and they shall come…’

India is closing the digital divide in the unique way that
is being championed in our neck of the woods - digital
divide education. By educating their people in what major
companies like IBM, Intel, SAP, Oracle, J.P. Morgan and a
whole host of others, all global companies with technology
based services and/or products who need tech-savvy employees
to stay global and thereby attracting investments in tech
centers and other knowledge warehouses to communities
worldwide. It has begun changing the way global companies
do business to the degree where thousands of jobs are going
overseas - outsourcing to India as it is called.

Teach you children and they shall come…Build IT and they
shall come, sound familiar. The reason for digital divide
education in our own backyard should become clear by the
end of this article. Stop looking for handouts or
complaining about the problem, when the solution has been
within our reach for decades - and is being applied
globally. In Ireland, China, Japan, Taiwan, India and other
countries they have been bringing in billions and changing
the economy for years - while it looks as if we in the U.S.
have been asleep at the wheel.

Other companies in the U.S. have been complaining about
competing with companies that outsource in other countries
to take advantage of lower wages or less taxes. Employees
are complaining about losing jobs to other countries for
the same reasons.

My viewpoint again is for the same companies and employees
invest time and money in their own backyards and return the
billions that the global companies are spending overseas
back to the U.S.

Don’t have the resources to build a tech center for
training, then use your neighborhood church, community
center, library, public or private schools, daycare centers
or mansion from a very eleemosynary community leader. Take
the time to retrain employees to certify in what is being
sought overseas and at home in the U.S., educate children
in the community with math, science, technology and other
required courses. Invest time in staying in the public or
private schools to interest children in working to fill the
digital divide that is fracturing America.

I’m sure the question of time involved in training people or
getting children thru school or interested in these fields
may seem like a greater hurdle than the digital divide
itself. Has anyone considered what it would cost in time
and money as we continually have to layoff employees and
consolidate projects to burden a smaller workforce? If our
companies have laid-off employees in the past - how much
time is left before Acham’s razor fall’s on another
department? Is your company spending time and/or money in a
work-study program of any kind? Any time being spent at
local colleges and universities? Local or private schools?
All these options are being used in outsourcing to India,
and other countries. Outsourcing to India creates a digital
bridge of gold-pressed latnum to not only this country but
several others. And where do you think they learned all
these options, whether the programs are true to the
original or added variations? In America.

The countries where all these billions are going toward
closing the digital divide in their part of the world by
using digital divide education I might add - have sent their
citizens here to the U.S. to get their degrees,
certifications and knowledge of technology. They in turn
went home to their respective countries and educated their
communities where they once lived, grew up and shopped.

The same can be done right here at home in the U.S., digital
divide education works and we have proof - even if it isn’t
in our own backyard…yet.

Digital divide education - Build IT and they will
come…home.

Daviyd Peterson: 10-year consultant, instructor, trainer of
digital divide solutions for both home and business. Helps
African American and minority Small business enterprises bridge the digital divide by becoming wireless Small Office Digital Offices (SODO).
Free articles on Wireless Internet Security, Internet marketing and other

http://www.mogendaviydtechgroup.com/RSS_FEED/webmarketingstrategy.xml
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The outsourcing history of India is one of phenomenal growth in a very short span of time. The idea of outsourcing has its roots in the ‘competitive advantage’ theory propagated by Adam Smith in his book ‘The Wealth of Nations’ which was published in 1776. Over the years, the meaning of the term ‘outsourcing’ has undergone a sea-change. What started off as the shifting of manufacturing to countries providing cheap labour during the Industrial Revolution, has taken on a new connotation in today’s scenario. In a world where IT has become the backbone of businesses worldwide, ‘outsourcing’ is the process through which one company hands over part of its work to another company, making it responsible for the design and implementation of the business process under strict guidelines regarding requirements and specifications from the outsourcing company. This process is beneficial to both the outsourcing company and the service provider, as enables the outsourcer to reduce costs and increase quality in non core areas of business and utilize his expertise and competencies to the maximum. And now we can see the benefit to the service companies in India as they mature, prosper and build core capabilities beyond what would generally be possible by the outsourcing company.

Since the onset of globalization in India during the early 1990s, successive Indian governments have pursued programs of economic reform committed to liberalization and privatization. Till 1994, the Indian telecom sector was under direct governmental control and the state owned units enjoyed a monopoly in the market. In 1994, the government announced a policy under which the sector was liberalized and private participation was encouraged. The New Telecom Policy of 1999 brought in further changes with the introduction of IP telephony and ended the state monopoly on international calling facilities. This brought about a drastic reduction and this heralded the golden era for the ITES/BPO industry and ushered in a slew of inbound/outbound call centres and data processing centres. Although the IT industry in India has existed since the early 1980s, it was the early and mid 1990s that saw the emergence of outsourcing. One of the first outsourced services was medical transcription, but outsourcing of business processes like data processing, billing, and customer support began towards the end of the 1990s when MNCs established wholly owned subsidiaries which catered to the process off-shoring requirements of their parent companies. Some of the earliest players in the Indian market were American Express, GE Capital and British Airways.

The ITES or BPO industry is a young and nascent sector in India and has been in existence for a little more than five years. Despite its recent arrival on the Indian scene, the industry has grown phenomenally and has now become a very important part of the export-oriented IT software and services environment. It initially began as an activity confined to multinational companies, but today it has developed into a broad based business platform backed by leading Indian IT software and services organizations and other third party service providers. The ITES/BPO market expanded its base with the entry of Indian IT companies and the ITES market of the present day is characterized by the existence of these IT giants who are able to leverage their broad skill-sets and global clientele to offer a wide spectrum of services. The spectrum of services offered by Indian companies has evolved substantially from its humble beginnings. Today, Indian companies are offering a variety of outsourced services ranging from customer care, transcription, billing services and database marketing, to Web sales/marketing, accounting, tax processing, transaction document management, telesales/telemarketing, HR hiring and biotech research.

Looking at the success of India’s IT/software industry, the central government identified ITES/BPO as a key contributor to economic growth prioritized the attraction of FDI in this segment by establishing ‘Software Technology Parks’ and ‘Export Enterprise Zones’. Benefits like tax-holidays generally enjoyed by the software industry were also made available to the ITES/BPO sector. The National Telecom Policy (NTP) introduced in 1999 and the deregulation of the telecom industry opened up national, long distance, and international connectivity to competition. The governments of various states also provide assistance to companies to overcome the recruitment, retention, and training challenges in order to attract investments to their region. The National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) has created platforms for the dissemination of knowledge and research in the industry through its survey and conferences. NASSCOM acts as an ‘advisor, consultant and coordinating body’ for the ITES/BPO industry and liaisons between the central and state government committees and the industry. The ardent advocacy of the ITES/BPO industry has led to the inclusion of call centers in the ‘Business Auxiliary Services’ segment, thereby ensuring exemption from service tax under the Finance Bill of 2003.

These measures have led to a steady inflow of investments by large foreign companies such as Reuters, for establishing large captive ITES/BPO facilities across India. Moreover, the existing ITES/BPO operations of major multi-nationals are also being ramped up to cater to the ever increasing demand for better and speedier service. Almost all of India’s top ITES/BPO giants have announced some form of expansion and are in the process of hiring manpower to fill the additional seats. India’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to provide huge cost savings thereby enabling productivity gains and this has given India an edge in the global ITES/BPO marketplace. NASSCOM studies pinpoint the following factors as the major reasons behind India’s success in this industry (Source: www.nasscom.org):

• Abundant, skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is being harnessed even by ITES hubs such as Singapore and Ireland.

• Improving telecom and other infrastructure which is at par with global standards.

• Strong quality orientation among players and their focus on measuring and monitoring quality targets.

• Fast turnaround times and the ability to offer 24×7 services based on the country’s unique geographic location that allows for leveraging time zone differences.

• Proactive and positive policy environment which encourages ITES/BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures.

• A friendly tax structure, which places the ITES/BPO industry on par with IT services companies.

Outsourcing to India offers significant improvements in quality and productivity for overseas companies on crucial parameters such as number of correct transactions/number of total transactions; total satisfaction factor; number of transactions/hour and average speed of answer. Surveys by NASSCOM also revealed that Indian companies are better focussed on maintaining quality and performance standards. Indian ITES/BPO companies are on an ascending curve as far as the quality standards are concerned. Organizations that have achieved ISO 9000 certification are migrating to the ISO 9000:2000 standards and companies on the CMM framework are realigning themselves to the CMMI model. Apart from investing in upgrading their CRM and ERP initiatives, many Indian ITES companies are beginning to acknowledge the COPC certifications for quality and are working towards achieving COPC licences.

Despite being a fledgling in the global ITES/BPO industry, the Indian ITES industry recorded a growth rate in excess of 50% in 2002-03. Industry experts consider this a positive indication of the times to come and a look at the ranking and the revenue and headcount statistics show the potential of the industry.The global ITES/BPO industry was valued at around US$ 773 billion during 2002 and according to estimates by the International Data Corporation worldwide, it is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9% during the period 2002-2006. NASSCOM lists the major indicators of the high growth potential of the ITES/BPO industry in India as the following (Source www.nasscom.org)

• During 2003-04, the ITES-BPO segment is estimated to have achieved a 54 percent growth in revenues as compared to the previous year.

• ITES exports accounted for US$ 3.6 billion in revenues, up from US$ 2.5 billion in 2002-03.

• The ITES-BPO segment also proved to be a major opportunity for job seekers, creating employment for around 74,400 additional personnel in India during 2003-04.

• The number of Indians working for this sector jumped to 245,500 by March, 2004.

• By the year 2008, the segment is expected to employ over 1.1 million Indians, according to studies conducted by NASSCOM and leading business Intelligence Company, McKinsey & Co. Market research shows that in terms of job creation, the ITES-BPO industry is growing at over 50 percent.
Surveys of the Indian ITES/BPO industry in 2004 expected it to follow the trends given below:

Customer care: Customer care and support services will continue to lead in terms of revenue generation, with a turnover of around US$ 1200 million in 2003-04., up from last year’s turnover of US$810 million.

Finance: With the financial services segment moving into value added domains like insurance claims processing, financial management services and equity research, this segment is expected to clock the highest growth, with estimates of US$820 million in revenue in 2003-04, up from US$510 million in 2002-03.

HR services: HR services are also expected to grow and revenues are expected to touch US$70 million during 2003-04, thereby providing latent opportunities to the industry’s dominant players.

Payment services: This segment has also been identified as a high growth area within the industry, and is expected to generate revenues of around US$430 million for 2003-04, up from US$210 million in 2002-03.

Administration: Revenues from the administration services segment are expected to increase from US$ 310 million in 2002-03, to US$540 million during 2003-04.

Content development: The content development services segment which includes engineering and design services, digitization (GIS), animation, network management and biotech research, is expected clock a turnover of around US$520 million in 2003-04.

The availability of technically trained and skilled manpower in India is making companies across the world look at the country as a profitable base to shift their high-end support services. Companies like COLT Technology Services are considering outsourcing their technical back-office support work to India. Other areas are high-end network engineering/management support. Another field which is showing immense potential is that of digital content creation and animation. Animation studios like Walt Disney, MGM and Warner Brothers are already outsourcing low-end work like clean-ups, tweening and modelling to India. The availability of skilled and trained manpower and India’s ability to keep in step with the latest technological advances in the industry is prompting foreign studios to consider India as a base to shift other high-end animation work like storyboarding and developing original content for animated films ad TV series. Tele-radiology is the next segment that holds great promise, mainly due to the time zone differences and the availability of highly skilled radiologists and companies like Teleradiology Solutions have been offering their services to US and South-East Asian hospitals for the past two years. Engineering services like CAD/CAM 2D, 3D and CAE modelling and design automation are the latest additions to the ever increasing list of processes being outsourced to India.

For more reading on outsourcing, log on to outsource2india.com

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The software giants don’t do everything and don’t always produce the result that we want. At least if you’re like me, and you’re not where you would like to be (profitwise).

The fact is that there are tons of small software companies looking for niche markets with products that do some very unique things such as: gather auction data from ebay, send masses of mail (not intended for spamming), keep track of your bowling league stats and so much more. The majority of these are marketing their stuff as shareware.

If you haven’t heard that word before, it means that you can download software and test drive it for a short time (generally a month). If it does what you want/need done then you must register (pay).

Pricewise most of it is far less expensive than the major vendors, though it is usually more specific in it’s purpose. In other words they don’t try to be everything to everyone.

The good part is that when a company narrows its’ focus the results can be very impressive. If you’re not selling fluff you can get a lot done.

Of course, when you look for something among hundreds of producers it can get a little complex. There are dozens of sites that host these programs and put them in categories to make them easier to find.

If this sounds interesting try a few of these links to get started. When you get to the site and find something that looks good just follow the links, download it to your hard disk, double click on it and follow the installation program. The next thing you know you have a new program.

Sometimes they download as zip (compressed) files which means you need a program (winzip if you us windows) to unzip (uncompress) them. The evaluation copy of winzip (free trial) is at- http://www.winzip.com . Click on download, then evaluation.

Listed below are download sites with an unimaginable quantity of shareware.

http://www.bluechillies.com

http://www.download.com (the largest)

http://www.simplythebest.com

http://www.jumbo.com

http://www.shareware.com

http://www.sharewarejunkies.com

http://www.downloads.asp-shareware.com

http://www.tucows.com

http://www.galttech.com

http://www.superfiles.com

http://www.freewarefiles.com

http://www.passtheshareware.com

and on and on and on…

or go to your favorite search engine and type in shareware.

Copyright 2004 Dean Walden

About The Author

Dean Walden is the author of ‘50 Shareware Reviews’ which is an ebook with reviews of 50 shareware programs. The ebook gives the site name, the cost, a rating and size. To learn more or purchase go to http://www.freewebbook.com/sharebok.htm

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We know that all the good schools have best of everything in their campus namely well educated and dedicated faculty, best infrastructure in terms of class rooms, labs, sports arena, hostels and even swimming pools. They also have very best IT labs as well, but what they lack is connectivity among these resources.

Which means that teachers, students and the parents are seldom found to be on the same common platform, which is done by connecting through IT solutions. As the principal wants to monitor the attendance, collection or the schedule of events on his laptop, so the parents would like to see the report card of his child. Gone are days when parents have enough time to attend ‘Parents - Teachers Meet’ or even if they come to meet, would it not be a wonderful idea to show the performance of their child on the screen of a computer. This is what I mean by connecting parents, teachers and students on common platform, just by clicking on the mouse.

School Software plays a vital role or I can say a pivotal role to implement the above concept. Each and every person involved in the particular domain is commonly accessible to the software. The particular software I am talking about will deal with the queries put up by each member concerned to provide the reply.

If you want to experience a software solution for such a system you can visit http://aims.dgstonline.com.

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Trying to figure out a stream in banning one email client or another is no easy job. As soon as somebody rises up saying Outlook is bad, somebody else comes saying it’s good and the other one is bad. And the story goes on and on.

On one hand, email clients like Outlook Express and (even more) MS Outlook do a really good job when it comes to user friendliness. What email client allows you to use more options on the agenda, bell ringers, flag wavers and contact managing tips than MS Outlook?

The ease of use perfectly molds on human indolence. That means I would never question about Microsoft Outlook being or not a good email client if it comes together with my Office pack that comes together with Windows that comes together with my computer.

Here is another red flag: MS Outlook is not free as long as I’m paying for my Windows license. This should count when choosing an email client.

Moreover, everything is so easy to install with those cute wizards, and installing sessions are ready within minutes.

Until… well, until I spend enough time online, using email, starting to receive viruses, worms and other creatures that do bad things to computers. If you ever had to do one of the following when using Outlook or Outlook Express:

• try very hard not to click on a message subject that looked suspicious; anyway, not without using a small trick (that used to work for me): pressing Shift, selecting the suspicious messages and then hitting Del,
• try hard not to select some very good and very important messages together with the suspicious ones,
• accept phone calls from extremely upset clients accusing you of infecting their computers with God knows what worm (personally got in trouble with BugBear),
• working on an extremely low system because an efficient AV is doing its job scanning, updating, warning, locking etc.
• delete all your Outlook contacts in order not to become infectious for friends and clients in case your computer somehow got infected,

…then you know what it’s like. Both Outlook and Outlook Express, while different applications, with no related history, have security as their weakest link. And that’s why some people switch to other email clients that are said to be more secure.

It is true that most worms are today Outlook dedicated because Outlook has both more users and more security holes. It is also true that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates set security as a top priority back on 17^th January 2002 (it’s been almost two years by now). While I don’t mean to ban Outlook or Outlook Express, I’d like to choose the best for me, and the best doesn’t seem one of the fore mentioned, at the moment.

Iulia Pascanu writes for http://www.emailmarketingsoftware.org/ where you can find more information about Email Marketing Software.
Please feel free to use this article in your Newsletter or on your website. If you use this article, please include the resource box and send a brief message to let me know where it appeared: mailto:iuliap@gmail.com

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