Offshore software development blog

Browsersize - new tool from Google

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:15:00 +0000

A new handy tool invented in Google Labs. The tool allows to see what portion of the site users can see without scrolling. Check browsersize

Let's leave our digital world for 4:33 minutes and immerse ourselves in pure meditation

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:26:00 +0000

Google apologized over racist image of Michele Obama, but refused to remove it. Should search engines take control over offensive search results?

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:31:00 +0000

The story with the picture appearing at the top of the list in Google search results for Mrs. Obama query has gained a rather controversial tone lately. As a result Google placed a text ad above the image with title "Offensive search results", however web giant denied to remove the image from search results completely saying that its apologizes someone has an upsetting experience using Google, but the search engine does not remove images simply because of unpopular content or complaints."Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority" it says.

However, the web giant says it will take down certain images, if required by law to do so. Such cases already took a place in countries like China, where Google conform to moral and cultural principles set by the government of Republic of China.

Is there a need to introduce some kind of regulation for search results? And who should regulate it, search engines or competent authorities?

Finally, Linkedin and Twitter interconnected!

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:42:00 +0000

The largest professional social network Linkedin and the fastest growing social-micro-blogging service Twitter established a linkage.

The two very concepts which just recently might have seen as a complete antagonisms, as Linkedin stand for clear identity online, while anyone can set up an account in Twitter without revealing real identity, nevertheless have combined their efforts in attempt to make social media better.

Now, according to Allen Blue, a co-founder of Twitter, all of those armies of LinkedIn and Twitters members are able to cross-post their updates to each other's services, by checking a box on either Twitter or Linkedin. Blue said users can select what materials send to Twitter.

In addition to increase visibility and audience there are additional searching capabilities for both Linkedin and Twitter users. By cross-posting they appeal to followers and to the broader Twitter audience that searches for tweets by keywords, location and other filters.

Will Twitter take advantage of the strong identity of Linkedin members? And, will Linkedin enhance its delivery power through Twitter wide audience remains to be seen.

Hymn of Offshoring - Chicane

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:24:00 +0000

Multi-language web addresses set to appear next year.

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:44:00 +0000

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has approved the plans to allow non-Latin-script to be used in the names of web addresses.

The board of Internet regulator voted at its annual meeting in Seoul to allow domain names on non-Latin scripts, including Arabic, Chinese and others. It is notable that the internet language issue has recently been raised on the highest political level in Russia, where president Medvedev expressed the necessity of Cyrillic lettering to web addresses. While China and Thailand, have already introduced workarounds that allow computer users to enter web addresses in their own language. However, these were not internationally approved and do not work on all computers.

This introduction has been described as the biggest change to the way the internet works since it has been created more than four decades ago. This change will affect more than a half of the 1.6 billion internet users who speak non-Latin languages.

Plans for Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) were first approved at a meeting of the regulation body in 2008, however according to Icann testing of the system will be until the next year, and the first Internationalised Domain Names should appear next year.

The main goal of this vote was to create a universal internet address code that will work in any language and every place so all the world's computers can connect with each other. Such action will incredibly facilitate to development of the Internet in countries using non Latin-based languages.

Series of Outsourcing Studies eximining latest industry trends and changes

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:40:00 +0000

Dear Readers,

Sorry for the delay in posting. Several reasons for it. First off is that we launched second collaborative blog with real IT Pro's possessing years of experience in programming, cool! The blog is dedicated to Microsoft .NET domain and offering useful information on the latest software releases, testing new technologies and sharing practical knowledge that our technical specialists gained after years of developing on the .NET platform. So, I appreciate if you find several minutes to check this out

The second reason is that we initiated an Outsourcing Research Unit aimed to provide an independent overview on latest trends, emerging practices and business relationships that surround Outsourcing practice at the international level. As world political, economical and social events during last years have irreversibly changed outsourcing industry. The realities of changed world have fully overrun into outsourcing strategies and decisions. Weighing the risks against the savings and improvements provided by outsourcing faces corporate development managers daunted by the task to determine the best solution for their organization. So we tried to help them and undertook series of studies of latest industry surveys and researches and published some useful reviews analyzing latest trends, business practices etc. All materials can found on the following details.

1.Analysis of Outsourcing Relationships Before and During the Global Financial Crisis
2.Specific Research of Outsourcing opportunities in non-BRIC countries
3.Review of Top Security Trends for Outsourcing in 2009 by Black Box Research
4.Central & Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2008 – Nearshoring Gains Momentum
5.The ORN Survey Report Overview - Offshoring Finally Has The Attention of the C-Suite

Hope it useful for those interested :)

Short URLs for Google

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 06:58:00 +0000

I think each of us at least one time deal with links to a Google search results trying to share something interesting or useful with friends via e-mail or IM, and undoubtedly everyone knows that there are various problems can occur, some of the popular are that the links just can break, or you can accidentally select just a part of line, also many social services mask the ultimate link location.

Previously, I heard about some link shortening services before, but I were lots of other things preventing to think of that. However, when I recently came across one very interesting service I found it very, very useful and would like to share it. The name of that service is Gog.is and it has been developed by one very smart Norwegian Mr. Calzone. The main feature and purpose of the service is to simply create and send a short Google search result URLs.

What you should do is just to type the following line http://gog.is/ followed by your query and the link will automatically redirect to the corresponding Google search result page. Ultimately, it proved to be very fast and useful, you just need to store in your memory that short line: http://gog.is/ + your query.

That's all! Hope it will be useful!

LinkedIn discussion: Outsourcing of small -mid project - Freelancer or Service Provider?

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:15:00 +0000

With the recession hit hard companies across industries and economies worldwide are under incredible pressures to cut costs and derive more value from outsourcing contracts. As a result, some of the them are studying their relationships with providers seeking to reduce service level agreements and cost of service delivery, while another are focusing on improving business models and management processes, including provider selection and monitoring of performance and coordination capabilities. The latter ones have contributed to emergence of new business practices, such as multisourcing model, where organizations engage in network partnerships with multiple suppliers, and source various components to best-in-class suppliers. This growth of various outsourcing models along with the shift in focus on cost-saving can also contribute to another trend in global outsourcing industry - freelancing, the model which soon might be considered as an alternative option to classical service contracts.

Although, freelancing model already exists more than a decade it didn't established itself as a serious competitor to service providers in a corporate level yet. However, playing in a smaller scale work playground the model proved to be a viable option by delivering good results in a best-possible delivery and cost way. Among the main reasons preventing freelancing from entering into corporate level experts indicated legal problems with contracts and payments, intellectual property problems, quality supervision, and the handling of resources. Although, freelancers can form teams with different areas of expertise for the project they still lack of processes, effective communication and quality management.

However, there is a number of good examples when companies discovered that there's often a better value for their dollar when they hire freelancers. In addition, with the recession taking away jobs for many and hours for those that are still employed, more specialists joined the ranks of freelancing marketplaces enriching their offerings of highly-qualified resources. That means that clients are able to choose for their work from an almost unlimited field of skill-sets for each specific project they need help with. On leading marketplaces, interesting projects can attract 100 and more bidders. Yes, of course there is sometimes a mess of proposals as there are providers from various parts of world with offerings considerably vary between areas with low cost of living and developed countries, in addition "some" individuals trying to mislead buyers by underestimating how long it takes to complete a project in a good quality and proposing unrealistic bids. As a result there is a risk of poorly finished or failed project.

But, as companies finally take outsourcing seriously and included outsourcing as a part of their corporate-wide strategy they are planning to focus more on all management processes spanning around outsourcing, including resource selection and monitoring of performance, coordination capabilities and optimizing processes. By investing in management and organizational capabilities companies will be more skilled in coordinating outsourcing resources which help them to mitigate freelancing risks, moreover increasing demand for one-off projects and overwhelming desire by leading freelance marketplaces to provide clients with the best service and quality warranties (e.g oDesk’s guarantees that an hour paid is an hour worked, while Guru provides safety payment through their SafePay payment service), of course for the proper commission, nevertheless can provide a good future prospects for freelancing.

At the time there are a lot of questions should be answered and a lot of things should be done for freelancing to comply with all corporate requirements, however freelancing is seemed to be a good option for small businesses and ventures with their initiatives not requiring complicated well-defining organizational and quality processes and methodologies. I decided to appeal to reliable LinkedIn community asking what option they already use or would prefer for small and mid-size project. Beating the gun, I would like to say that the question has been taken rather controversially as it conflict of interest arose, however some interesting theories were expressed by the participants of discussion. And I express my greatest gratitude to the participants of the discussion for their meaningful and valuable answers. I think in this case nothing can deliver the sense of discussion better than discussion itself, and it is my privilege to introduce the LinkedIn discussion "Outsourcing of small -mid project - Freelancer or Service Provider?" that can be found on the link below,

http://www.linkedin.com/answers/startups-small-businesses/small-business/STR_SMB/543477-19925334

Outsourcing - silver bullet for retailers during the recession?

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:11:00 +0000

Recent report by independent market analyst Datamonitor suggests that outsourcing in retail sector set to grow during the recession.

Increasing economic challenges and failing consumer spending have increased importance of operational efficiency and cost reduction in order to mitigate budget and bottom line pressures.

According to the mentioned report IT and Business Process Outsourcing will become an increasing trend in retail. The rise in demand for external service providers will be driven by the need to more efficiently generate revenue, while making cost savings across organization. As retailers forced to cut staff and inventory expenditure they will be looking to technology and services to help reduce operational costs and provide effective solutions to enhance operational efficiency under tough budgets and staff shortage.

From that perspective effective cooperation will require from service providers solid sector expertise and knowledge of demand and challenges of specific retail sectors. According to Datamonitor, retailers will expect strong partnerships that can evolve with their business. This type of relationships, in turn requires closer interaction between both parties and significant initial investment, so that provider understand the nature of business in order to work in partnership with the retail.

However, experts claim that one of the biggest hurdles for outsourcing during the recession is the industry-wide reduction of capital expenditure, and report said something about retailers are looking to change existing contracts requiring flexible payment structures and shorter contracts. Moreover, retailers complain about previous experience with service contracts, with social problems, e.g unrest caused by offshoring jobs, language barriers and lack of retail sector expertise, and expressed concerns whether benefits of outsourcing outweigh the challenges accompanied.

Although, reduced capital expenditure and previous experience could lead to a reluctance in signing new contracts within the sector, yet incredible pressures along with alarming numbers of retailers are going bankrupt will push retailers to outsource in order to improve efficiency and achieve cost reduction so that they can survive the recession. Outsourcing can help retailers to improve and maintain the customer service levels with fewer staff and smaller budget.

Multi-sourcing - Next Generation of Outsourcing?

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:44:00 +0000

Brief overview on the history

During its long history originated in the 1960s IT outsourcing has made a long journey. In the early days of IT outsourcing, the focus was primarily on short-term cost reduction. Outsourcing was not much more than a traditional make-or-buy decision where clients normally dedicated projects with control and ownership clearly spelled out in a hierarchical relationships. Focusing mainly on reducing costs and extending productivity clients were concentrated on their short-term benefits without considering outsourcing providers motivation. As a result what was good for client might not necessarily be the best for outsourcing provider. This form of outsourcing is known as a conventional outsourcing or the first stage of outsourcing relationships.

However, limiting outsourcing to short-term cost cutting was then heavily criticized by many experts, who at that time already proposed the idea of strategic outsourcing. The main idea behind the concept was that the companies should concentrate their scarce resources on the company's core competentcies and strategically outsource activities which are of no critical strategic need. It was argued that companies too often just see short-term benefits of outsourcing, instead of decreasing long-term capital investments through strategic outsourcing. Strategic outsourcing gained momentum after benchmarking Japanese with Western production and supply systems, the so-called "westerniztion of kieretsu model".

With further development of information and telecommunication technologies their role became more critical for businesses and IT penetrating into core business functions and activities. As a result the number and scope of IT outsourcing projects dramatically increased and service providers begun to take a management responsibility and risks, eventually joining clients as a stakeholders in the process. Emphasis has shifted towards closer interaction and mutual trust between clients and providers, rather than pursuit of self-interest organizations have recognized that the mutual-exchange relationship in a long-term is a win-win strategy. The focus of strategic form of outsourcing lies on long-term strategic partnerships where risks and rewards are shared and where vendors can expect long-term revenues and thus are willing to invest in innovation, which will in the end be benefit the client.

This increasingly strategic importance that IT has gained for many organizations has given IT outsourcing a new direction. The focus has shifted from outsourcing IT in order to reduce costs, to forms where strategically outsourcing creates competitive advantage and fully exploits benefits of IT. Emphasis has moved from contracting out IT hardware and IT facilities towards intellectual based forms of outsourcing, to get access to expertise and knowledge of best providers complementing missing internal capabilities and skills. Instead of achieving more effeciency of just one single function at a time, outsourcing is employed to redesign complete business processes and increase value across the whole value-chain. The so-called business process outsourcing (BPO) has appeared as the main business trend and the largest IT growth sector in a last years. Along with it we can see a further development of the strategic outsourcing idea has appeared in literature - transformational outsourcing. An emerging practice transformational outsourcing aims to facilitate major and rapid organizational change, to enable the lunch of new strategies and to reshape organizational boundaries.

As a result we can see that IT Outsourcing arrangements have changed dramatically over the last couple of years. While some organizations still follow the traditional path of conventional outsourcing, many have begun to use IT outsourcing as a strategic tool to complement missing capabilities and skills, to exploit the full business potential of IT achieving business transformation.

Multi-sourcing era

As Outsourcing relationships continued to mature and clients became more sophisticated the quality aspect of outsourcing relationships and their management has been gaining increased attention. The changing structure of the IT outsourcing market and the continuously developing business models have had a significant influence on the type of outsourcing relationships. The growing complexity of IT and IT Outsourcing processes along with increasingly sophisticated customers require a different approach in establishing and managing outsourcing relationships. New types of organizational arrangements and alliances appeared, among them multiply vendor contracts (multisourcing), joint ventures or shared services. Organizations which outsource for strategic benefits are pioneering new types of outsourcing relationships with emphasis on closer interaction between client and supplier as organizations engage in network partnerships with multiple suppliers, each of which is best-in-class for the respective outsourced function. One of the key feature of outsourcing industry over the past few years is the trend away from the large end-to-end outsourcing deals. As a result we can see a growth of the so-called multisourcing trend.

Gartner defines multisourcing as a new operational model that obtains business services from multiple sources inside and outside corporate walls to obtain the best business outcomes. The main topic of the conference organized by Gartner earlier this year was " Strategic Multisourcing" or the ability of companies to work with multiple vendors for undertaking the work that is better to source to third party providers while company concentrates on its core activities.

One of the main drivers of the multi-sourcing approach is the perception that it better leverages competitive pressures. Critics of the single sourcing approach argue that sourcing out IT to a single supplier leads to the provider becoming "indispensible" making it difficult to award new project to other suppliers. Multi-sourcing contracting structure allows customer to reduce its reliance on a single provider enabling client to source various components to "best-in-class" suppliers. Experts argue that the essential value of multi-sourcing is its flexibility.

Emerging country competition is another favorable factor for development of multi-sourcing trend as competition among destinations and providers has increased and suppliers have been forced to specialize to gain market share and competitive advantage.

Although, the multi-sourcing model is still new development for many companies which requires the philosophical change on the buyer's side for many of the world's leading companies, this is not a new theme, some of them have developed and sustained outsourcing relationships with providers for over a decade now.

Its main advantages are that it allows a customer to seek best-of-breed service offerings from a range of suppliers, gives a customer more direct relationship with suppliers along with flexibility to move work from internal departments to vendors and even across providers whenever the needs arises.

And even though many experts claim that multi-sourcing is the next phase of outsourcing wave there are lots of things to do for both buyers and providers to adopt the practice, including revising management processes, overall governance structure and compensation models so that providers can add value to clients businesses and make a fair return at the same time.

Linkedin Discussion: Australia - IT Outsourcing Provider or IT Outsourcing Buyer

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:19:00 +0000

It was my great pleasure recently participate in one very interesting Linkedin discussion aimed to determine whether Australia is more IT Outsourcing supplier or IT outsourcing buyer. The question is very interesting for me and there is an obvious lack of covering of the given subject, so I tried to make my own study of the question both analyzing perspectives of Australia as an IT Outsourcing provider and look at the buying potential of the region.

Considering the destination as an IT Outsourcing provider Australia is ranked by most analytics as one of the best place in the developed world to base software development operations. (The Indian boutique IT vendors have already opened their centers in Sydney city and Melbourne locations along with IBM, Accenture and EDS). According to countless reports, Australia coming right after Canada in terms of setting offshore R&D and delivery centers. The reasons are clearly evident, low-cost and highly skilled multilingual IT resources combined with advanced IT infrastructure and business-friendly regulations and laws promote country as an attractive and low-risk outsourcing destination.

The latter one (low-risk) is especially important in the modern world, where realities of politically, economically and socially unsafe world have influenced on outsourcing decision process, and investor and clients' interests are no longer motivated by only English language skills and high-numbers of unemployed locals. In turn, the ability of outsourcing supplier to ensure that customer's sensitive data and processes remain safe has been included into offshore strategic planning and considered as the main diferentiator.

According to the main trends for outsourcing for next years by Black Box Research there is an increased role of safety and vulnerability measurement which can promote Australia as one of best outsourcing locations for operating with low downstream risk.

With India has been hit hard by 2008 terrorist attacks, accounting scandals that rocked an Indian outsourcing industry and increased attrition and labor cost levels there is a good opportunity for destinations such as Australia, Canada and Mexico to attract US investors and clients. However, growing US unemployment has already driven domestic wages much below where they previously were.

as a buyer....

From other side as it was specified in previous answers the discussions of the growing market in IT outsourcing in Australia has been stimulated by decisions of several biggest corporations and the Australian government to outsource their IT operations. Australia's state governments adopted outsourcing 10 years ago to reduce costs and improve services. This year, the Australian Taxation Office announced it plans to shed thousands of full-time jobs and drastically increase outsourcing as part of a new efficiency drive. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have signed long-term outsourcing deal as well.

It also worth to mention that over 40% of information and communication technology purchased in Australia is by government. With this kind of leverage, what the government purchases has the potential to determine the shape of an Australian information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

In general, Australian outsourcing market is still smaller that in leading developed countries, but it is gathering momentum, and its value may increase significantly in next few years. This is due in part to the fact that the market does not shy away from innovations and large-scale contracts. Australian firms now have a better understanding of what could be outsourced and how it should be outsourced.

The fact that world-known ICT industry exhibition CeBIT 2009 has been organized in Australia already shows a positive signs to the development of industry in the region. With the ICT industry worth an estimate of $123 billion a year (ABS 2008), CeBIT Australia connected local and international key players of main business sectors to find out how to achieve long and short term savings through technology-based business solutions.

However, recently I came across one interesting debate called "Stop Outsourcing Australian Jobs" criticizing the Coalition's IT Outsourcing program that effectively excluded participation of Australian IT companies in government projects bidding resulting in the high level of fear about job security among Australians. In response, Labor has announced a set of measures to improve procurement process and pursue enhanced opportunities for domestic suppliers to bid for government business.

Summarizing I would vote for Australia as IT Outsourcing buyer, due to its belonging to developed nations circle therefore with higher cost of IT services than in other emerging outsourcing destinations, however world events in 2008 have irreversibly changed risk/reward calculations and outsourcing decision making process, and Australia has enough potential to ride the second (or third) wave of outsourcing.

Discovering Outsourcing Opportunities in Ukraine

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:51:00 +0000

GoToMyPc – the fastest and easiest way to access your PC from anywhere...

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Recently I came across one very interesting application “GoToMyPc” being advertised on Linkedin.

GoToMyPC is a technology that was acquired by a Citrix a few years ago and represents Citrix Online “Remote Access Services” product-line. It enables users to remote control their PC’s from any internet-connected computer using a web-browser. It also allows transferring files between an original machine and the one you use for the access.

Although I have an experience with another Citrix product “GoToMeeting” I was very surprised with simplicity and quickness of the service. After several minutes I successfully connected to my PC and transfer some data back and forth.

Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) as a main tool to remotely connect to our corporate network I clearly understand that VPN is the main solution for true remote network connectivity, but sometimes I face inconviniences with slow operational speed and blocking policy from corporate networks, internet cafes and WiFi spots. And although I've read several articles trumpeting that remote access solutions like GoToMyPc are not secure enough I still hope GoToMyPC can be a good easy-to-use solution for small business and individuals providing reliable remote access to their PCs. One good example might be a community or family “helpdesk”, when a technical specialist (or relative) would be able to resolve technical problems by remotely connect to required PC from his home.

I also tried to mention some other benefits here:

Fast and easy access to files stored on office/home PC – sometimes, not being able to foresee everything we have an immediate need to pull some information from our desktop
Accessing applications installed on work/home PC – as long as we have complex desktop applications storing sensitive data only in one place (due to security reasons) we need a solution to access applications from other sites.
Easy-to-useness – to familiarize yourself with GoToMyPc you’ll need just several minutes, so there is no staff trainings required
Serviceable remote support – with GoToMyPc it is a very easy to provide a remote support or consulting

Citrix's GoToMyPC has received several popular Ultimate and Editors’ Choices Awards from popular tech magazines. Three years in a row GoToMyPC has been named the Ultimate Choice in remote access software.

Here is the link to GoToMyPc (with 30 days free using) - https://www.gotomypc.com/

Integrating our strenghts for readers' benefits

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Dear Friends and Readers!

In this entry I'd like to share an information not directly related with the main subject of this blog which is latest news and updates from Information Technology, Software Application Development and IT Outsourcing spheres, but the news related to the blog itself and its authors.

As I represent Ukrainian IT outsourcing provider I belongs to IT community and try to keep up with industry evolution. Exploring large amount of information every day I am trying to share most relevant findings with other professionals by providing natural and independent information covering various IT subjects. As my company, Mirasoft Group, was founded in 1989 by the group of scientists of the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics (leading research institute of National Academy of Science where the first computer in continental Europe was built :), it remains the oldest one among East European IT companies employing specialists with more than 20 years of experience in IT sphere. Cooperation with such experts gives me a deep insight on many problems and challenges in IT industry. Attending numerous technical seminars organized by global power-houses and possessing years of development expertise our R&D experts helping me to cover very actual and complex subjects for today's IT world thereby attracting other respected professionals to join our discussions in world's leading communities and networks (Linkedin, Ecademy, Facebook, Plaxo etc). Receiving such a great support from my technical colleagues I am always so proud to write entries from our whole company, Mirasoft Group, mentioning all professionals stayed behind and contributing to our work.

However, due to recent merger of our company with one well-established European IT Network - Levi9 Global Sourcing we need to integrate and operate under one brand which is already connecting development centers and delivery operations throughout Europe. By uniting with other professionals from various areas under one roof we’ll try to integrate our knowledge and expertise in various technology fields for readers' benefit. Combining our strong expertise in Microsoft domain with Levi9 Global Sourcing multiple competence knowledge, including Java, SAP, Progress and Compuware we’ll work hard to keep you updated about latest innovations and software releases from leading Software and Technology powerhouses.

The main focus of our blogs as well as our commitment to provide independent and natural information about IT sector will remain. We just continue to inform you under Levi9 brand – globalization, you know…

Please see the full list of our blogs available for you:

1. Software Development Blog
2. Software Testing Blog
3. Nearshore Outsourcing Blog
4. Ukrainian IT Mission Blog
5. Technology and IT news, Video Blog

Thank you for time and attention, we’ll work hard to repay :)

Microsoft starts to work on Windows 8

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:22:00 +0000

With approaching of Windows 7 on the offer there are some questions arise whether Windows 7 will be the last Microsoft traditional operation system. And will the next version of Windows be completely cloud-based?

So what's the next? Windows 8, of course, and Microsoft has posted several job listings for developers to help with work on Windows 8, however in can have another naming by the time its launched. There is an example of those listings:

“For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.”

It looks like Microsoft already works hard on the new storage technology "Distributed File System Replication", which is focused on keeping data synchronized across multiple servers. And another Windows 8 job posting focusing on Windows file system tells that Windows 8 Server will also show up.

Linkedin discussion “Will SaaS replace traditional ERP in nearest future?”

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:50:00 +0000

As our company has developed its own traditional ERP-system Virtuoso, which is a ERP solution for small and mid- enterprises in Ukraine, and we are specializing in the development of custom object-oriented systems (ERP/CRM and XRM solutions), we are very curious to know the state of things in this market, the balance between traditional ERP and SaaS solutions and what are the forecasts for the nearest future (Is SaaS going to replace traditional ERP systems anytime soon). Especially in the light of great success of Salesforce.com and other well-known providers of customer relationship oriented Software-as-a-Service solutions.

Recently examining some data from the report by Accenture, where 150 UK and 150 US IT executives from largest 2000 companies were questioned I found that most of UK and US companies do not see the value in utilizing SaaS model to upgrade their ERP systems. Research stated that only 7 percent of UK firms, and 15 percent of US firms polled believe that current ERP systems would be replaced by new technologies any time soon.

However, there are other opinions that disagree with survey suggestion that large companies don’t see the value of implementing SaaS. A Forrester reports claims that SaaS projects are on hold and calculates that majority of large Global organizations (75 per cent) already use SOA and SaaS to some extent, and 60 percent plan to expand the reach of their using in the future.

As we can see the given data is controversial and not sufficient enough to make any predictions or conclusions. After reading several others reports I noticed that representatives of each side trying to turn the scale proposing their own version of situation and benefits/risks. So, as usual I decided to turn to Linkedin hoping to finally find the answers.

And I’d like to tell that the question got a welcoming and warm reception as many other professionals took this issue very seriously. The discussion has been started and answers fell at incredible pace. There were different opinions and facts from CIO’s, CTO’s, Enterprise Architects, various Senior Consultants and Analysts, Strategists, Evangelists and other IT related high-level professionals, however, the hottest dispute raised within the Enterprise Architect Network, seems like it was very touchy subject for them.

But, I’m not going to copy and paste all answers and comments, as you can see them personally (the links will be provided at the end of article) I just would like to classify the answers of those highly-qualified professionals who responded on my call (thanks them a lot!) and give their vision on this issue.

So, consider the main pros and cons for SaaS ERP model underlined in the answers:

Pros:

1. Simplicity. In general, SaaS is simpler to deploy, from a technical perspective as you don’t need to purchase any hardware or physically install and configure the software by yourself. To start you just need to simply sign up.
2. Initial costs. While traditional ERP has high initial costs to buy, deploy and config all needed hardware and software SaaS can be launched considerably cheaper without installing hardware and hiring consultants to implement it.
2. Access. SaaS provides with the possibility of having a system totally independent of your position in the world. If you're connected to the web, you can access the system, using a notebook, for example.
3. Better infrastructure and staffing benefits. Few organizations can match the infrastructure and security investments made by SaaS vendors, by offering complete cycle of maintenance services SaaS vendor allows organizations to reduce staffing needs.
4. Free Trials - Almost all SaaS vendors give a free trial. Try out the service, keep it if you like it. Customers can assess the value of the application before paying for it.
5. Risk Free – if the company is not satisfied using the application it is easy to put an end. Just export your data and close your account. And because of this one of the main vendor’s task is to focus on customer service and needs, since it is on subscription model a vendor is judged on month-month basis.

Cons:

1. Integration. ERP applications have many complex transactional integration points with other systems and applications, both inside and outside the company and this is something that is very hard to achieve with SaaS. Each customer instance of a given ERP package will have a different set of suppliers, contractors, customers etc, each with different applications and processes, and a different array of internal systems for manufacturing, accounting, reporting, etc, all of which must be integrated with the ERP system. SaaS is best for applications with uniform use cases, limited integration requirements, and simple transactonal behaviors. ERP is none of these.
2. Security. Companies, especially large ones, are very reluctant to move into SaaS due to security concerns, they want to protect their core data and do not want to have a third party responsible for protecting that information.
3. Costs. There are several aspects should be taken into account:
- Investments. Given the significant investment that most have made for implementing, integration and customization of their ERP-systems switching is not that easy and customers will wait until the investment is depreciated.
- Running costs. Although the SaaS can be deployed relatively cheaper than on premise system an ongoing cost of cloud based offering are high, especially as the company matures.
4. Operational control. Due to the fact that ERP is their core systems, the majority of companies still want to have control over the availability of the service. If the ERP system is down, the companies main processes stop. If CRM is down, only the sales process stops. Although SaaS suppliers are delivering most often a better service than internal ICT-departments, it is still difficult to accept that you do not have any control over your most important system. And what if the SaaS-provider gets bankrupt?
5. Standartization. There is the lack of standardization of SaaS solutions. The industry is still nascent and there is no clear solution upon which a company can design and build a solution around. Given the complexity and high customizability of ERP offerings, it is a risky proposition to bet it all on an offering that is not the industry standard (e.g. PeopleSoft or SAP)
6. Restricted offering. Integrators and other companies that earn money for implementing ERP systems are not willing to implement SaaS-services. The earnings of implementing a SaaS-service is just a fraction of the earnings of a on premises implementation. By CRM-implementations we see sometimes that those earnings are just 10 % of the original 'old'-implementations. These companies are normally in the lead of selling ERP, so they have will hesitate in advising a SaaS offering.

Summarizing, I can say that there are a lot of tradeoffs between two options and although the SaaS model is relatively new all factors should be accurately prioritized and evaluated to identify the best suitable software for each organization. As it was mentioned in discussion SaaS model is seemed to be a good option for small and medium businesses which haven’t made a huge investment in on premise ERP systems. Smaller businesses that did not have access to ERP systems would be of the first to adopt SaaS ERP as their requirements would be lower. Especially, if you look at total costs of ownership of SaaS versus on premise solutions the SaaS will be considerably cheaper meaning that there will be market forces encouraging the SaaS model. As for security reasons the ability to physically isolate instances in a multi-tenant architecture using virtualisation will go a long way to address some of the security concerns, however other data governance and data legislative related questions would also need to be addressed. But as a robust and hosted CRM solutions are so successful and new generation of Rich Internet Applications will deliver a rich and high performance user experience there is an evidence that the market will migrate towards SaaS, the ERP market will follow this development. It only takes a little bit more time.

P.S. Also, I forgot to mention an existing problems with network traffic and bandwidth which can result in productivity and revenue lost on SaaS model. I agree that in some locations the quality of networks remain bad with bandwidth is too expensive, however there are different trends in the world. Moreover, most of large enterprises are already network dependant, so it can be a disadvantage for both models.

Will software-as-a-service replace traditional ERP in nearest future?

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 25 May 2009 13:40:00 +0000

With growing popularity of web-based business applications and Software as a Service (SaaS) business models with spreading success of Salesforce.com and other well-known companies the question arises: Is SaaS going to replace traditional- ERP in the nearest future?

Experts agree that there is an interest in SaaS-based ERP and that plenty of vendors are promoting the concept, but most user companies aren't ready to make the move. According to recent research from consultant firm Accenture, where 150 UK and 150 US IT directors from the largest 2000 companies were questioned, many UK companies do not see the value in utilizing software-as-a-service (SaaS) model to revamp existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Only seven per cent of UK firms polled believe that current ERP systems would be replaced by new technologies any time soon. In the US however, the figures are a bit higher where 15 percent of questioned companies have a positive attitude towards SaaS model.

Among the main reasons for reluctance there are security concerns of storing ERP data on a service-provider, shortage of ERP offerings in specific segments, lack of flexibility and customizing comparing with traditional ERP.

However, some market watchers disagree with the survey's suggestion that companies do not see the value of implementing SaaS. A Forrester report states that SaaS projects are on hold and calculates that majority of large Global 2000 organisations (75 per cent) already use SOA and SaaS to some extent, and 60 per cent plan to expand the reach of their using in the future.

While there is a whole set of questions and controversy let’s try to identify the key differentiators between SaaS and Traditional ERP and how they will impact on ERP software selection:

1.Simplicity. In general, SaaS is simpler to deploy from a technical perspective as you don’t need to purchase additional servers or physically install the software in yourself. However, on the other hand, the high level of technical ease may create additional business complexities that you may not otherwise experience with traditional ERP.

2.Flexibility. As traditional ERP is installed on your own servers you can change and modify it as you need. You may decide to customize it, integrate it to other software, etc. Although any ERP software will allow you to configure and set-up the software the way you would like, SaaS is generally less flexible than traditional ERP in that you can't completely customize or rewrite the software. Conversely, since SaaS can't be customized, it reduces some of the technical difficulties associated with changing the software.

3.Control. Many companies find that they don't have control over SaaS software as they would like, relative to traditional ERP. This is especially true of mid-size or large companies with well-defined business processes that are not able to be changed to fit the software. Smaller companies generally are able to adapt their business processes to the software easier than a larger organization.
4.Accessibility. Since SaaS is entirely accessed through the web, you are in a world of hurt of the internet goes down. Alternatively, traditional ERP does not require internet reliability, provided your users are accessing the software from inside your company's network.

5.Cost. In general, SaaS can be deployed at a much smaller initial cost, which can be attractive to smaller businesses. However, the ongoing annual payment can be higher for SaaS becuause you're paying to use the software. Much like leasing vs. buying a car, that payment never goes away as long as you're using the software and can become costly as you grow and add employees to the system.

Clearly, there are tradeoffs between the two options, and all factors should be accurately prioritized and evaluated to identify the best suitable software for each organization. However, the forecast from analyst firm Gartner suggesting that enterprise adoption of SaaS model would be on two-to five-year lifecycle and will not culminate until 2013 is seemed to be realistic due to the declared reluctance by European and in a less degree US companies to replace their existing ERP systems.

IBM brings Lotus Notes to iPhone users

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:26:00 +0000

The newest version of Lotus Notes and Domino will push e-mail, contacts and calendar items to iPhone users. It will also includes some other updates to functionality. But the main new feature is the addition of Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol in Lotus Notes Traveler, the software that supports replication of Notes e-mail, calendars and contacts to smartphones.

IPhone users can check their Notes e-mail through an optimized Web site. However, they must refresh to get new messages. Early last year, Apple licensed ActiveSync so that businesses could push their corporate Exchange e-mail messages to iPhones. Since the ActiveSync client is already embedded in the iPhone, adding ActiveSync to the Traveler product was a good way to enable push Notes e-mail to the iPhone, he said.

IBM launched the new version of Notes and Domino for 600 beta users. The full commercial release is scheduled for the second half of the year.

Users of other kinds of phones can already get Notes e-mail pushed to their phones. With the SyncML standard, Notes pushes e-mail to Windows Mobile and some Symbian devices.
Businesses can also push Notes e-mail to the iPhone using third-party products. Sybase iAnywhere, for example, supports push Notes e-mail on the iPhone through its Information Anywhere Suite. That offering launched in March and only supports e-mail, not calendar or contacts sync.

Earlier this year, IBM said it planned to support ActiveSync in order to push data to iPhones, but it didn't say when.

As we reported and our previous articles in the beginning of this year IBM reported 4% growth in licensing of Notes and Domino in 2008 that foot up to 145 million Notes licensees comparing to 140 million licensees IBM reported last year. Spokesman of "Big Blue" claimed that IBM won as much as 12,000 customers and many of them former users of MS Outlook and Exchange. The list of new customers includes: Southern California Edison, Nationwide, Global Hyatt Corp., CEMEX, 3M, State Bank of India, The Hartford, Banco do Brazil, and The Coca-Cola Company.

Notes from the author:

Mirasoft Group has been selected as offshore supplier of IT services to IBM.

Mirasoft Group is a Ukrainian provider of software outsourcing services with development centers in Kiev and Vinnitsa (Ukraine) has been selected as offshore supplier of IT services to IBM. The company provides software engineering services using IBM technologies for more than 7 years and runs Lotus Notes and Domino development center with highly-qualified team of certified specialists on staff.

During last year most of IBM specialists have been certified as IBM Certified Application Developer thereby confirming the company’s commitment to provide customers with high quality and service in software development using latest IBM technologies.

The Vinnitsa high-qualified team has a profound experience in Lotus Notes/Domino development and successfully completed various software projects belonging to different vertical industries.

For more information about our IBM Lotus Notes/Domino experience please contact:
Email: sergey.lesnikov@mirasoft-group.com
Tel: +38044 492 99 62

Internet World 2009 exhibition in London

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:26:00 +0000

The biggest names in the Digital Age - over 200 speakers in keynotes and a multi-streamed seminar programme. New products and services from over 300 exhibitors providing solutions to boost your online strategy. Dedicated zones covering all the key digital marketing and business internet areas. This year Internet World 2009 showing at Earls Court 2 in London between 28th - 30th April.

Internet World is Europe's largest, longest running and best attended event for Digital Marketing and Internet business, each year an exhibition attracting over 13,000 visitors and more than 300 exhibitors. In this year Internet World will pass in 17th time and brings everything you need to formulate and implement your online strategy, from Digital Marketing to eCommerce, Content Management to hosting. It showcases the UK’s leading suppliers, delivers Europe’s best free education program and brings together Europe’s largest collection of visionary individuals from marketing, IT, digital and eCommerce.

The exhibition annually collects hundreds of participants, among them representatives of large international companies, such as The Butler Group, DaimlerChrysler, ICI, GMTV, Virgin, Oracle, IBM, Google, Overture, Ask Jeeves, Orange and thousand visitors, who are professionals responsible for presence of firms in the World wide web. This year exhibition will also have key speakers from all areas of the industry, including Barclays and John Lewis, each offering their own expert insight.

Remarkable that over the last 4 years Internet World has experienced unprecedented growth with exhibitor numbers swelling from 100 to over 320 and attendees increasing from 5,000 to over 13,000. It is now firmly established as Europe’s leading event for this Digital Marketing and online business.

Product groups Internet World

-Marketing
-Internet
-Mobile phones
-Software
-Service provider and security
-Management
-Personification users

Each key group will have a dedicated seminar theatre and its own area on the show floor grouping relevant exhibitors together to make it easy for visitors to find everyone they are looking for.

Notes from the author: Mirasoft Group will also participate in Internet World 2009 and will be very glad to arrange a meeting with companies interested in offshore software services and discuss opportunities for possible co-operation. I believe it will be a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the current needs and to discuss how our services can enhance a capacity for innovation while reducing operating costs.

CNN video: Design your Twitter

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:05:00 +0000

New Linkedin group "Global IT Professionals Network"

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:22:00 +0000

Dear IT professionals across the world, I’m so delighted to invite you to the new Linkedin group “Global IT professionals network”. The aim of this group is to provide IT professionals across the world with a perfect platform where they can communicate, exchange best practices and address various issues in an information technology fields.

Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term has become very recognizable. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. Some of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, web design as well as the management and administration of entire systems.

Let’s create together a perfect platform for IT folks all over the world - join this group if you are an IT Professional!

Join the group here: Global IT Professionals Network

The Internet warm “Conflicker” wakes up!

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:28:00 +0000

Conficker, the Internet worm that caused a panic reminiscent of Y2K late last month, but didn’t make anything serious, has finally woken up. At the end of the week the worm started to update itself via a peer-to-peer network between infected machines after downloading its payload from a server in South Korea.

It’s not clear how many machines were infected, but approximately the figures range from 9 million to 15 million.

While earlier variations of the Conficker worm prevented infected machines from accessing the servers of most antivirus companies, this new variant also blocks access to sites that offer tools for removing the worm like BitDefenders bdtools.net. This version of the worm includes an instruction that tells the worm to remove itself on May 3, but , it will keep a port open on these machines that will allow the hackers to get back into these computers at any time.

According to Symantec, Conficker downloads a variant of the well-known Waledac malware, which is one of the world's most active spambots. There are some speculations around here that Conficker was created by the same group of hackers that created Waledac.

Kaspersky Labs stated that Waledac will download a rogue antivirus application along with email-worm onto infected machines. The fake antivirus software will ask users to pay $49.95 for "Spyware Protect 2009," which, of course, is anything but an antispyware product.

IBM and Sun acquisition talks broke down.

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:10:00 +0000

In my previous entries I wrote about negotiations between world's No. 1 and No. 4 makers of server computers IBM and SUN Microsystems respectively, and potential consequences of that deal where merged company would hold 65 percent of the $17 billion market for Unix servers. But things have been dramatically changed since recent developments of the story.

According to The Wall Street Journal IBM has withdraw its offer for Sun Microsystems, its main rival servers supplier, after Sun has sent a notice to IBM terminating its right to exclusive negotiations. Two companies are reported to have been in merger talks for a couple weeks, but they had reportedly been haggling over a price. Eventually last week Sun's board has rejected a formal offer from IBM, considering the offer price too low and declaring concerns that the offer gave IBM too much authority to walk away from the deal.

IBM is believed to have made an initial offer for Sun worth $9.55 per share, but subsequently cut that to $9.40, after its lawyers pored over the details. While Sun shares had risen to $8.49 on last week, from $4.97 on March 17, a day before talks between the two technology companies were first reported. But Failure to secure a deal will raise questions over the future of Sun. By entering into negotiations, its board has potentially signalled a lack of faith in its ability to operate as a standalone company. Shares of Sun Microsystems fall 23 percent on Monday after the company rejected rival IBM's $7 billion offer.

CEO of LinkedIn.com gives you tips on how to use LinkedIn - CNN Video

sergey.lesnikov@gmail.com (Sergey Lesnikov) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:33:00 +0000