Monday, January 3, 2011

PLCM: Cradle to Grave Assessment of a Product

Once upon a time, there were some products which were very popular and the most sought after by the consumers all over India. Few of such products were iconic success stories that started a wave of marketing and created history in the minds of the consumer those days. But such products have vanished suddenly without leaving a trace in the market and the minds of the consumers. To name some, Ambassador, Vanaspathi Dalda, Pagers, Scooters, VCRs/VCPs, Gramophones etc.

By looking at the above mentioned examples we assume products to have life cycles just like human-beings. Human beings move through various phases like birth, growth, maturity, decline and death. Similarly products have their own life cycle, commonly known as Product Life Cycle. And, Product Life Cycle Management is the succession of strategies used business management as a product goes through the following stages of its life cycle:

• Product development: Here the company finds and develops a new product idea. It involves idea generation to analysis, production and commercialization

• Introduction: This is a stage where a new product is launched commercially and made available for the purchase. Here the promotional expenditures are high and sales growth tends to be low. The profits are also usually negative or very low.

• Growth: Here the firm observes a rapid growth in sales. Prices remain the same and profits increase rapidly as promotional costs are spread over the diversified market. Here we also see that the firms reduce their manufacturing costs due to experience curve effects and in turn resulting in higher profits.

• Maturity: This is a stage of saturation where the product’s rate of growth slows down and the firm attains stable sales in the market irrespective of the promotional activities. Maturity stage is the most common stage for almost all established companies. Here the competition is more intense by the companies trying to maintain their market share.

• Decline: This is the last phase of any product, wherein the brand name and corresponding sales decrease eventually. Here a lot of investment is made on re-launching the product by adding additional features to enhance the customer expectations or even liquidate the product from the market.

Get related information on Product Life Cycle Management, Software Engineering

Service Oriented Architecture

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is set of designed principle that is basically used in developing phases of systems & integrating components while computing. SOS offers the complete pack of functionalities based interoperable services which are used specially with multiple systems under different business departments. SOA is not only used in business segment, but also for consumer services like enabling web-based applications. SOA has wide range of applications in the field computing especially in Security & Centralized data sharing management. XML is commonly used for interfacing with SOA services, though this is not required actually. SOA has lots of extensions in Web 2.0, Mashups, Digital Nervous System, and Software Development programs.

SOA works as integrating platform between the web based applications & multi-integrated systems. Instead of defining APIs & other parameters, it is designed on the interface of connecting different protocols & functionality. SOA functionally works as
Layering Notations
Enterprise Service Layer
Domain Service Layer
Application Service Layer

SOA system is fully dependent on the mesh of software’s. All these services comprise of unassociated, loosely coupled units of functions. Under the action of first implementation, each service offers as filling out an online application for an account, or viewing an online bank account or booking air ticket etc. Within this system, aligned embedded calls pass through the source code, which are usually defined for description of metadata. Further applications are built by considering all these major sources. Underlying and enabling all of this requires metadata in sufficient detail to describe not only the characteristics of these services, but also the data that drives them. Analogously, the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) typically describes the services themselves, while the SOAP protocol describes the communications protocols.

Get more information on Service Oriented Architecture, Software Outsourcing India

A Systematic Approach for Problem solving and Cost Effectiveness

We have been depending on computer software directly or indirectly for a long time and I believe life to be very hard for anyone to even imagine without any computers and software products around. The main reason for people to use the software products is that to make their task a lot easier and in reality, they actually do by taking off the user’s burden. Recently the demands for proper software are high and this is the reason for the developers to be one of the highest paying professionals today.

It is really hard to imagine a super market without cashing software or a computer without an operating system and a browser being used to read this article; these are also software. I would really appreciate the efforts of developers of every software who help in minimizing the tough tasks of a customer. So what is that which makes the software to be so effectively executable with minimum or no flaws? During the development of every software product, it is imposed by a developmental process structure called Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Earlier writing software had no procedures to be followed, some try to carry out projects without any project management. The result being software products delivered late to the customer and seemingly crossed the budget. With a huge number of software products not meeting their expectations with respect to its functionality, delivery time and the cost, we observe the fact that effective project management is somewhere missing.

Today software development is not only based on addressing to the customer needs, but also ensures that effective software is developed.

Get more information on Software Development Life Cycle, Test Automation

E-Commerce Consulting Services

E-Commerce Consulting deals with retail and online industries spanning brick & mortar, catalog and e-commerce channels. It helps companies of all sizes with merchandising, marketing, product development, website operations and strategic planning for the online world.

E-commerce is undeniably a part of everyday consumer life. Much as we predicted years ago, consumers have woven the web into a shopping process that now spans channels, devices and touch points. The internet influences nearly half of all retail sales. In spite of online transaction, the web plays a vital role for the discovery, research, and consideration & decision process. E-commerce has become a specialized discipline, or rather, a set of specialized disciplines. For many companies who are either in the early stages of online selling or who to whom digital DNA is not a given, the "e" is necessary, as it provides a foundational symbol for a specialized core competency.

A critical decision manufacturer’s face when establishing their e-commerce presence is "What is the meaning of life?", or more practically, "What is our site's role in e-commerce?" The obvious answers of "we want to sell more product" and "we want to build our brand" immediately surface, but the how you plan to achieve more sales or build a brand can be much more interesting and complex. While manufacturer websites are cited as one of the first places shoppers go to get product information, these sites, while growing, aren't getting a lion's share of the online sales.

Get more information on Ecommerce Consulting, Enterprise Technology

Outsourcing to India: A Better Understanding

When you think about outsourcing, the next thing that pops up in your mind is India. India has been a hub to where many services have been outsourced by the U.S. and by the other countries of West for long which started dating back to the early 1990’s. With the growth of technology favoring the communication process, now a variety of jobs are being outsources to India varying from software development to billing, transcription and data entry jobs which support the companies in the financial, medical and the IT sector. Now, in the prevailing circumstance in India, the nation has become capable enough to effectively handle any job that is outsourced by any firm on any part of the globe.

The more familiar reason for outsourcing to India is the cost effectiveness of the process that is much lower when compared to carrying out the process in the home country. Besides being cost-effective, there are other reasons involved that makes the process lucrative.

Unlike the conditions prevailing in the western nations, India has a lot of skilled professional who are more talented compared to an average person in any other part of the world. Besides being talented, the professionals in India are hard working and spend more time in working. In comparison with the other nations where services are being outsourced to, India has the largest English speaking population second only to the U.S. which improves the quality of the correspondence between the business holder in India and the client in the U.S., the U.K. or any other nation in this regard.

Get more information on Offshore Outsourcing Services, Software Maintenance

Cloud Computing: Sailing through the Internet Storms

Imagine you are in need of milk, so would you go and buy a cow for it?? This is the analogy behind Cloud computing. We all are aware of the fact that clouds in the sky are responsible for getting storms; in the same way even cloud computing is responsible for gathering Storms across the internet based industries. Cloud computing is a technology that makes use of the internet, central remote servers and applications to maintain your personal data.

It allows the user (business and individuals) to use the applications and services without having to install any, and access the user data from anywhere in the world through any device connected to the internet. A Typical example would be your email applications like Gmail and Ymail. Here you need not have a server or software to use them.

The cloud computing concept is composed of three segments:

• Application
This segment has proved itself to be useful as a business model. This helps the companies to reduce the maintenance costs, hardware costs and licensing costs. Some of the companies offering application software are SAP and Oracle.

• Infrastructure
This segment of cloud computing is the backbone of the concept and allows users to build applications within the cloud. The key examples being Google Gears and Amazon’s S3

• Platforms
This segment of cloud computing refers to products that are used to deploy the internet. The main companies to develop this segment are Netsuite, Amazon, Google and Microsoft.


To know more about Cloud Computing, Embedded Consulting

Application Software: The Development of soul for any Hardware System

Well, software in general term refers to a collection of procedures, programs and documentation that perform specific tasks on a computer system. In more simple words, the parts of your body constitute the hardware part and brain is the software which controls and co-ordinates the hardware parts. There are mainly two types of software, System Software and Application Software. System software is one which provides an interface between the hardware and the user. A common example would be the operating system on which you are working on right now.

Application software is computer software designed to help the user perform single or multiple tasks. It helps to solve problems in the real world. It also helps in manipulating texts, numbers, graphics or a combination of these. Till date, application software has been classified into many types:

Enterprise Infrastructure software, Content Access software, Entertainment software, Media Development software, Educational software, Product Engineering software, Simulation software.

Get more information on Application Software Development, Automation Software