A Model for Making Everybody Happy

Posted on July 31, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

No matter if it is a small company that you work for, Enterprise, Family, or may be school, here are the inevitable facts:

You have one or more bosses. Everywhere.
- All of them want you to keep up fulfilling their demands.
Your bosses have personal traits. Everyone of them.
- They prioritize few things more over the rest.
If you don’t have a boss, get one or become your own boss, because it is better to be under control rather than roaming like a free animal.

This post is for you if you are struggling to satisfy all of your bosses somewhat equally.

The Deliverables and Priorities

You cannot skip any deliverables. You have to produce them all. But, the good news is each deliverable has different quality aspects/attributes, and also can be broken down into chunks. There are always must haves and a few nice to haves, and not all of the aspects and chunks are always must haves. Planning for what’s critical in your tasks at hand is very important. It becomes even more useful if you keep your stakeholders in mind.

Let me draw a sample case here. Assume that you have four tasks at hand and your are to report to Solution Architect, Delivery Manager, Test Architect and Deployment Manager. All of them have a few things for themselves that matter to them most according to their roles. Until you become one of your bosses, you will not likely to realize the philosophies behind such priorities. The person at the senior levels usually have a broader idea about the project/product is being worked on. S/he knows what’s critical to the success of the project, hence s/he from her/his role tries best to ensure the quality attributes are met.

The Workflow

Keeping three things in mind: Stakeholders, Deliverables, and Priorities, you can attempt to follow this workflow and see if this brings better result for you:

(1) Identify your stakeholders

If you have prior knowledge on them skip to 2
If it’s not clear upfront, keep observing them and try to understand their wants and turn-ons. Slowly a few patterns will emerge, and you will start to gain insights as to what each role wants from you. For example, from the diagram above, you see: Solution Architect focuses on getting the sequence diagrams done with priority.

(2) Write a sticky note for each of them

His/her name and title
Deliverables to him/her along with deadlines if you will
List of priorities that matter to him/her the most

(3) Now pick incomplete tasks from the sticky notes

While you’re performing it, focus on the priorities (must haves)
When priorities are met (doesn’t mean the task is 100% completed), go to 3 (pickup next incomplete task)

(4) When all priorities are met, you must have some spare time

Utilize that time to finish the leftovers (nice to haves) in each task. Leftovers are those which were not covered by the priority lists, but necessary to complete the tasks.

(5) Even if you can’t complete all the tasks 100%, perhaps due to bombardment of multitask, you have focused your time and energy on the priorities, hence at least you have got the most important jobs done. Your boss will appreciate the hardwork.

So, there you have it. A model for making everybody happy somewhat equally. You can apply the same pattern to your family, personal life, schools, too. Hope this works for you.

TechFire – Introducing Technology To the Youngsters

Posted on July 23, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

Fact: I lived my whole life in a village. I came to Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh) just about 4+ years ago. My objective of life was to get a job that pays $130/month. When I was 11, I had calculated that that was enough for a family of ours of 5.

In a country with 142 million population in such a small area as Bangladesh, it increasingly becomes difficult to improve without exporting the brains to onshore. You do not have enough money to industrialize. You do not have enough lands to spread production factories without cutting down trees and taking over increasingly deficient lands per head. In addition, Governments we had over the decades in Bangladesh, none of them were famous for being a world class leader ever. It’s rather a reality for many developing countries and more like a vicious cycle. Inhabitants of those unfortunate lands, live clueless as to how to improve their conditions, because Governments appear to be the biggest blocker to the development for most developing nations. Therefore, to improve your own condition without much external help, the most practical solution seems to be, like I have started this post with – be skilled in technology and export your brain either physically or via internet.

When Pointers to Technology is Unavailable

So, why wait? Get a computer and internet and start learning everything. Oh, you can’t afford one? Go to the school library and start now. Come on now – don’t tell me your school don’t have it! Wait, they don’t?

They really don’t.

With 53% literacy rate, 30% population in poverty and almost dysfunctional guardian of the nation, it is expected that the future of tomorrow may not have access to the wonder of the technology world. Growing up in traditional lower/middle class family system, their targets are orthodox jobs as a result of being paralyzed by the system – it’s not their fault.

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. – Muhammad Yunus

What if their schools have computers and internet access? Well, the teachers they have – many of them don’t even know how to use computers let alone guiding their pupils to the right direction. They don’t even have clear idea about Computer and Information Technology. How can their students learn from them? Most students don’t know what’s out there, possibilities and their potentials.

Super Heroes Have Responsibility

Like I have said quite a few times before – there’s no international company at Microsoft’s scale has opened an office in Bangladesh. When Microsoft, the first and the most successful software company in the history first opened their office in Bangladesh, many so called intellectuals were skeptic that Microsoft’s sole purpose would be selling Windows in the market. They never welcomed Microsoft because they thought if they had to buy Windows from the stores (not by $1 DVD, rather full retail price), that will limit access to Computer and Information Technology through out the whole country. Not only Microsoft didn’t negotiate any deal with the Government or put restriction on pirated Windows selling, but also they have created more opportunities to get students and rest of the Bangladesh population get even better and official access to the resources Microsoft has to offer – most of the time those are FREE! I will talk about some of those in later posts, but today I’ll point out what Microsoft did keeping those pupils in mind who have nobody to point at the potentials they have with the possibilities of Computer and Information Technology.

The Launch of TechFire Series

Microsoft Bangladesh contacted two prominent schools of Dhaka St. Francis Xavier’s Girls High School and St Gregory’s School to send their curious students to attend a brand new series of seminars named “TechFire" where they will be able to learn what’s out there, what they can do now, and how they can prepare themselves for future. It was held on June 11, 2011 in presence of honorable Member of Parliament Mr. Mizanur Rahman Khan Dipu (Dhaka-6) as the Chief Guest of the event and was hosted by as usual Omi Azad, Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Bangladesh. It comprised of brief yet interactive sessions.

Ahmed Niaz Morshed – Opening Speech
Hassan Tanvir Mansur – Windows 7 and the Ultimate Features
Zikrul Ahsan Shawon – Customer Relationship Management systems
Khan Reaz – What can be DONE when Technology is FUN
Kazi Mamun – Microsoft KODU
Tanzim Saqib – Show me the Money
Omi Azad – Power of Students

Clockwise: (1) Me presenting, (2) A student asking questions, and (3) Students collecting gifts in the end

Show Me the Money

The sessions were fun, engaging, interactive yet informative. And obviously I was more passionate about money than the rest on that day. While I was choosing my topic for the seminar, only thing that mattered to my thought for some reasons, was money. So, I took Jerry Maguire as my inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA

Let me tell you something about my life. I lived my whole life in a village. I came to Dhaka just about 4+ years ago. My objective of life was to get a job that pays $130/month. When I was 11, I had calculated that that was enough for a family of ours of 5. I am no rich, but in later part of my life, I got employed by world’s leading software companies. For someone whose life’s mission was a job of $130/month salary background, I thought my story from the very childhood was worth sharing with the future of tomorrow and as the matter of fact it’s the best that I can remember – every little piece of it!

So I told them how to learn skills, export their brains and make money.

Conclusion

We should all need to find our own ways to give back to the community. TechFire is one of the great ways to do it. I hope this seminar series will go a long way. Microsoft Bangladesh will continue to arrange in different parts of the country hopefully starting with quite a few in Dhaka and so on. I am happy being part of the inaugural episode of it. I also hope that they will extend the core idea to make it even more fun and engaging in future. All the best to them!

5 Effortless Investments You Should Make NOW to Uplift Your Career

Posted on June 15, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

I have seen star developers to rise and fall, mostly because of their attitude towards work, employers and work environment. Many of them either did not succeed to achieve what they wanted career-wise or miserably failed to meet invaluable aspirations of life. Here are a few things that I would like to recommend that require no cash, or heavyweight lifting to master the art of personal attitude and behavior in workplace that will help automatically hop you on the career bus quickly. Trust me – the results are sweet.

1. A friend in need is a friend indeed

Not only your employer pays you money for the service that you render for them, but also they help your family excel. They give you the necessary money to survive in this wild flat world, educational expenses for your brothers and sisters or such dependents, medical fees for your parents, seed money for your wife to start own business, a better and securer childhood for your kids. When you’re sick or you have family programs, your employer grants you leave. What not. If there’s a single friend indeed for you in the whole world, that’s your employer. Another point to remember is that your employer’s clients are not more important to you than your employer. Whatever happens, you employer is your ultimate client and they are always right.

source: unknown (internet, of course)

2. Know that smile is free at least, if you can’t laugh out loud

Not just because it keeps your heart healthy, it is important because it helps to create a very positive atmosphere which is incredibly helpful to create and maintain very healthy relationships with the coworkers. Humor works, or at least responding to the humor broadcasts positive messages from you. What does it take for a smile by the way? A little peace of mind? Don’t push it. Try to earn that peace – the rest comes automatically. A very common myth is that creating a culture in the company is hard. It’s not hard – it just starts from YOU. When you’ll be leaving your workplace, and even your kitchen boys/cleaners/peons smile at your when you enter and exit the room, you know you have set the trend that not many people have the courage to do.

3. The WOW factor

Deliver “WOW!” It’s a priceless investment. No matter how shitty your boss is and how least much s/he appreciates your great effort, good work and awesome dedication round the clock, if you can be consistent about successfully delivering WOW, chances are your boss will call you again in new ventures down the road s/he will be on with may be better offer. If you boss is even meaner than you might have imagined that he will not look forward to working with you again, s/he doesn’t deserve to work with you anyway.

Even when you are applying to new workplace, if there are ex-coworkers of yours working there and your soon-to-be-boss waves your resume in front of them, chances are that your ex-coworkers will shout out loud, too: “WOW! Steal, Tanzim Saqib. He’s just so awesome!” The bottom line is do not makes foes, just make friends.

4. Little more about your friends at work – not just all about you

Do not work like a fat selfish cow. Help others to get helped. Become so friendly with your coworkers that even the meanest of them will start to have a very hard life not to be friendlier with you. Remember, friendship is not made. It’s not something you can build in a workshop or get by/from charity. Friendship is earned and it goes a long way in your career. If your coworker wants a help from you, help him/her by all means. Just do not expect immediate return. Every individual is unique, so is their thought pattern. May be it takes more time for him/her than the rest to return the favor or be even friendlier. It is just too essential for teamwork that you cannot ignore.

5. Be not try to be that icon by yourself

Do not follow company idols blindly. You were given an unique personality. You do not have to be Scott Gu or Scott Hanselman if you’re lucky to be working with them. The way how ScottHa measures his blood sugar not necessarily you have to follow that. Learn from them, but try not to be that person. Do not sacrifice the identity associated with your individuality. I have come across people at workplace, whose only thought in their lives, is wishing if they could be X, Y or Z. That is just plain wrong. Folks such as those have no peace of mind. Set goals according to your life’s demands, aspirations, tasteful to your soul, and beneficial to the world. Both employers and employees effortlessly remember the individuals with unique personality. So, invest deeply on that.

Change can start to happen any time. Like right now. The moment you really decide to change, things already start to change. So, start today and young!

A Must Read: The Thank You Economy

Posted on May 29, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

You can call me a mean guy, because I rarely buy books as much as for the reason I have put miserly less priority on reading books of my monthly free time, if there’s any such thing called “free time”. As you can imagine, books have been replaced in my life by more than 50 blogs delivered via RSS everyday. I have stumbled upon one of such blog posts and come to know about Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank You Economy. I have quickly read the review on Amazon, decided to purchase the book and discovered myself reading it on my Kindle immediately. Gary consumed me for straight 2 days by his amazingly addictive write up. Most interestingly it took me by surprise, many of the concepts described in this book, I have been following lately in my personal life, without even being aware.

I was never a big fan of Gary, and one of the reasons was he talks with too much enthusiasm, almost like a show-off, to provoke my suspicion that he is trying to acquire me by the material he is trying to deliver. And what sort of Software guy will hear lecture on Social Media from a Wine seller anyway? Now that I have read his first book for me, I know this guy put substantial amount of time thinking about the philosophy behind human nature, business, social media and how business is moving forward using social media and satisfying age-old static human nature. All my skepticism is gone by now, because no matter how technologically sound you are, social media is about people, and nobody understands better than a business guy whose only passion in life is pursuing incredibly happy customers.

I was becoming more skeptical by his almost show-off enthusiasm about social media (or you can say about everything!), as I had been progressing through the book. But behold, he is aware of the fact that I am not yet ready to accept his too much passion for what he does, and what a great disclaimer that was in “Why I Speak in Absolutes:”

I’d rather shock you in paying attention, and admit later that business rarely requires an all-or-nothing approach than take the chance that you won’t take the situation seriously enough.

He wants to give us an inch, so that we can run a mile with it as he claims.

The Bottom-line aka. Preface

Couple of points (mostly action items) that I have made out of this book, should be helpful for me in future as well. In his introduction he laid out two simple criteria for success in highly customer-focused businesses:

First step to liking something or someone is getting to know about that thing or person well. Hence, a conversation about the product or with the person is required to happen. Communication makes people happy, because it allows them to know about the thing that you want them to like about. This is where social media enters empowered by people’s chatty nature. Current businesses meanwhile, are changing themselves to take advantage of the social media thing. And this books tells us the philosophy, dos and donts.

Chapter 1: How Everything Has Changed, Except Human Nature

I am not associated with an underworld group, but I like a few concepts of Mafia. Make your customers so happy that they automatically owe something to you, and ready to return the favor like right now – it could be even by word of mouth or refer your products to their friends. A good business should expose its heart and soul, then people will respond. In one sentence: in order to be cared by your customers, you have to care them first. As he says:

Deliver shock and awe to your customers without investing a lot of money, just a whole lot of heart.

What is this social media driven Thank You Economy anyway? That is genuinely treating each customer as the most valued customer in the world.

We’re living in what I like to call the Thank You Economy, because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way—and do it authentically—are going to have a prayer of competing.

Care everyone. The tiniest customer of yours might be spending elsewhere, which could be yours in time.

Chapter 2: Erasing Lines in the Sand

A bit of historic essay why businesses should get rid of the resistance in adopting the new way of doing business.

Chapter 3: Why Smart People Dismiss Social Media, and Why They Shouldn’t

He, then goes over 11 myths that he frequently encounters with by the execs he meets.

Myth 1: There’s no ROI in social media

– turn customers into advocates, because people tend to buy things that are mostly recommended by F&F.

Myth 2: The metrics aren’t reliable

– SEO, Analytics, targeted Facebook Ads, Impressions.

Myth 3: Social Media is still too young

– the right time to start building relationships is right now, because Social Media will grow old.

Myth 4: Social media is just another trend that will pass

– it’s like jumping to a new car, so jump along with them; the relationships will not evaporate.

Myth 5: We need to control our message
– You can fix anything unless you’re doing something grossly wrong. As long as you’re keeping your communications civil and honest, there’s no point in worrying about controlling the message and image going out there on your behalf.

Myth 6: I don’t have time to keep track of what every Joe or Jane says, and I can’t afford/don’t want to pay someone else to do it

– the issue here is, you simply cannot afford not to! Your big spenders and casual browsers are all living in the same ecosystem, one where news of how you treat one customer can easily spread to hundreds of other current and even potential ones. That’s a big, big deal.

Myth 7: We’re doing fine without it

– if you are fine by it. So be it. You do not deserve to stay relevant anyway. A competitive company is always on the offense. Always. Always. Always.

Myth 8: We tried it; it doesn’t work

– it requires tons of patience.

Myth 9: The legal issues are too thorny

– varies by industry verticals.

Myth 10: It takes too long to pay off

– it’s a marathon, you can’t win it without much patience and determination

Myth 11: Social media works only for startup, life style, or tech brands

– works for any entity as long as you care your customers

Buy it now!

In Chapter 4 and onwards there are whole lot of real life, granular level and fascinating examples from Amazon, Zappos, Boloco, etc. many big brands and gives a detailed framework on how exactly you can put the theories in action. But, that’s it for the review. The rest you should discover by yourself reading it. This book is a goldmine for anyone who wants to succeed in B2C. Worth every penny!

10 Ways Your Team Can Go Green Right Now Using Microsoft Technology

Posted on May 28, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

If you have seen one of my favorite films, Apollo 13, you know how mission critical strict power budget could be. Fortunately, most of us do not live up on the space, and we have supply of money to purchase power and in some cases, abundance of power supply even it is the result of burning trillion tons of coal and gallons of oil. Essentially, the environment as we know it, is changing and reacting, and we will continue to grow its rage as long as we will not stop being selfish and become sensible about our energy consumption.

1. Upgrade desktops to Windows 7

Monitor brightness can be responsible for drawing as much as 43% of overall power consumption. Automatic display dimming, hybrid sleep, USB Selective Suspend, etc. many features are there in Windows 7 to start stopping energy waste more than you should be needing. For more energy efficient workstations, upgrade your operating systems to Windows 7.

2. Choose the appropriate Windows 7 edition

Windows 7 has several editions, and if you start from Starter to all the way to Ultimate/Enterprise each of them are less energy efficient than the prior. Starter, ideal for Netbooks for its less power consumption, does not feature Windows Aero, multitouch, Desktop Window Manager, Windows Media Center and so on. In the same fashion, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional gradually have more features than the prior, hence requires more power. So, choose your edition friendly to the environment.

3. Upgrade servers to Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2 was designed to apply the same mobile and notebook energy saving technologies in server space. You will find role based feature installation in Windows Server 2008 R2, and that helps you cause lower carbon emission. There are also energy centric metrics available for the system administrators along with other so that they can monitor the consumption. There’s this very useful tool called System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) allows to monitor such activity in all the workstations across the company. SCOM requires separate download and installation.

4. Better Live on Cloud

Move your apps to the cloud. It’s the super environmentally optimized solution for server solutions. And also as an user, use more cloud based apps, than desktop apps. Cloud nodes are turned on automatically based on needs. So when apps are on low load, nodes are asleep. They are waken up only when they are needed. This saves tremendous amount of carbon emission which can take place in the datacenters that are not on cloud. Choose Windows Azure.

5. Switch to Windows Thin PC

Microsoft has made substantial progress on Virtualization technologies over the years. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is one of such fruits, which let Microsoft introduce Windows Thin PC, that is basically a lightweight and heavily permission driven version of Windows 7. It allows multiple workstations (instances of OS) from one server. Windows Thin PC is yet to make its debut in June 30, 2011 or so. Its predecessor was known as Windows Embedded Standard 7.

6. Get rid of daily bad computing habits

If leaving your desktop powered on is a habit, you need to change that. Either turn it off for the day, or at least put it in sleep/hibernation. Some companies even find it as much as $200/workstation/year waste for leaving workstations turned on. Use Windows Power Options from Windows Control Panel.

Always update Windows. Updates sensitive to power consumption are pushed via Windows Update. So, make sure you always apply those.

7. Use tools for green computing

I am confident a very few of you might know that Windows 7 has an excellent command line utility that generates a very comprehensive HTML report after diagnosing your system on how you can reduce carbon footprint by your workstation. Type it now in your Command Prompt:

powercfg /energy

Here’s a sample report:

For advanced view on how your machine is consuming power, use this tool: Joulemeter written by Microsoft Research. And if you live in the US, check out Microsoft Hohm which tells your energy consumption by street address. There’s this nice article on MSDN about how your computing behavior should be towards energy efficiency.

8. Commute together

Provide a shuttle bus for your team. Instead of everybody driving his/her own car, you can provide them a single mode of transportation so that you emit less carbon. Put up a WiFi router inside of the bus, so that their Windows Phone and Windows notebooks don’t have to access GPS/EDGE/3G or WiMAX modems for work while commuting. Even better if you could put up a solar panel on the root of the bus to supply power to the notebooks. Or at least encourage them to use public transportation.

9. Attend meetings together

If your teams are geographically dispersed, instead of attending calls in the individual cubicles, all should get in a conference room and initiate the call and switch to speaker phone and projector, so that it will save so many calls, hence less carbon. Also, if your teams are within a distant reach, make use of Microsoft Live Meeting and Microsoft Skype, Office Communicator, SharedView to share your screen and audio conversations among multiple users. Next generation to look out for is Lync 2010.

10. Write parallel code

If your code can take advantage of seamless parallelization features of .NET 4.0, that’s even better. It will save time on operation even though will use more processors, time saved will save uptime for other peripherals as well.

11. Non-technological free tip: Talk face to face when you can

It requires no technology. Talking in person is the most ancient, manual and cleanest technology to stop making server roundtrips for chatting to your peers. It will also give you opportunity to walk a bit may be to relax stressed muscles of your body, which will help you to stay away from RSI.

Hope this helps your team to respond to nature’s cry for less carbon.

What Changes Were Made in SVN?

Posted on April 22, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

This is a very common question for CTO of a small company or technical management to track what changes are being made when to the SVN everyday. It is not only applicable for small companies, but also large corporations who often tend to recruit a dedicated team to track everyday changes. Their only aim in life is to patrol like police and ensure what was supposed to change and what wasn’t.

I have recently written a PowerShell script to aid such effort. Obviously, PowerShell is just a scripting engine, and it has no power over SVN except for querying, so we need Subversion Command Line client to pull data out of SVN.

The SVN Command

The following svn command, returns an XML report on differential changes between two dates given the repository URL, username and password. If your repository is not password protected for read operation this will still succeed.

svn diff --username USERNAME --password PASSWORD --xml --summarize --revision {2011-04-15}:{2011-04-22} https://coding4fun.svn.codeplex.com/svn

The PowerShell Script

The script that I have written is very simple. First of all, I have declared the global variables. Then, I have written a parameterized method writeDiffToXml, which executes the svn diff command.

[string]$today = [DateTime]::Now.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")
[string]$yesterday = [DateTime]::Now.AddDays(-1).ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")
[string]$common_style = 'Style.xslt'
 
'Comparing codebase from: ' + $yesterday + ' to ' + $today
 
function writeDiffToXml
{
    param ($url, $fromDate, $toDate, $outputFile)
    ([string](svn diff --username USERNAME --password PASSWORD --xml --summarize --revision `{$fromDate`}:`{$toDate`} $url)).Replace('<?xml version="1.0"?>', '<?xml version="1.0"?><?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="' + $common_style + '"?>') | out-File $outputFile
    'Successful. ' + 'Now open ' + $outputFile + ' using a browser.'
}
 
writeDiffToXml 'https://coding4fun.svn.codeplex.com/svn' $yesterday $today 'D:PsScriptscoding4fun.xml'

One thing you will notice that before I am sending the output to an XML file, I am injecting an XSLT to transform the result into good looking browser friendly table (see the screenshot).

The XSLT

The style that I have written enables the XML to render in a table, including color codes, such as blue for addition, red for deletion, gainsboro for modified, black for none.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 
 <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 
 <xsl:template match="/">
   <html>
   <header>
     <style>
       body { font-family: Segoe UI, Tahoma; }
       table tr th { background-color: Gainsboro; padding: 5px; }
       .modified { color: Gainsboro; }
       .added { color: Blue; }
       .deleted { color: Red; font-weight: bold; }
     </style>
   </header>
   <body>
   <h2>SVN Changes</h2>
   <table border="0">
     <tr>
       <th>Kind</th>
       <th>Operation</th>
       <th>Filename</th>
     </tr>
     <xsl:for-each select="diff/paths/path">
     <tr>
       <td><xsl:value-of select="@kind" /></td>
       <td>
         <xsl:attribute name="class">
           <xsl:value-of select="@item"/>
         </xsl:attribute>
         <xsl:value-of select="@item" /></td>
       <td><xsl:value-of select="." /></td>
     </tr>
     </xsl:for-each>
   </table>
   </body>
   </html>
 </xsl:template>
 
 </xsl:stylesheet>

Running the Script

If this is your first time running the script, you may not be able to run your own script just yet:

.GetSVNDiffsSinceYesterday.ps1

Run ExecutionPolicy and see what’s the current execution policy of PowerShell scripts in your system. Default is Restricted, so you have to unrestrict it:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

When you are done, it is wise to set it back to the original.

There you have it. By tweaking the yesterday variable you can generate daily, weekly, month reports. Hope this post helps to track SVN history in your company.

Is Google a Major Software player?

Posted on April 20, 2011 by TanzimSaqib

All the Google fans out there, this is not a hatred post. I am a Google fan myself as well. This post is going to be informative, and an eye-opener to some people, because they have many misconceptions.

Google has an excellent branding strategy. For many people web is all about Google, while it’s not all wrong, except for social networking but definitely software is all web is wrong. Software is a huge market. Due to Google’s web branding general people tend to think Google is a major software player. This post is not going to be a hypothesis based/futuristic statements using Crystal balls (eg. Chrome OS will be a blast – they’re gonna be profitable), but rather facts, and valid logic with no biasness which I hope would reflect present software industry.

Head to Head

Please not another Microsoft vs. Google. Oh, come on now. If someone needs to be compared with, it obviously should be done against a model or standard. Microsoft is the first software company in the world, most successful as of now since its establishment 36 years ago, most revenue earning gigantic software company. And also I have worked with Microsoft and their tools for 13+ years and I know one or two things about them, it would be wise to compare two different entities on their products available in all verticals of software to establish whether Google is a major player in software industry or not based on impact in those verticals. Based on dominant visibility I will score 0 to 5. Just to make sure what it takes to be a giant, I’ll score Microsoft alongside.

Web & Cloud

Backed with Search & Ad, Google has a series of excellent products such as Google Maps, GMail, etc. Since they built almost flawless cloud for their products, they decided to put it up to the market. It works for many, but with less interoperability and lack of SLA, this makes a unsuitable option for most enterprises. (Have they started to offer SLA lately?) Who does business without SLA anyway? Not to mention they couldn’t beat Amazon, yet they have visibility in the cloud space.

Oh, one thing, we are not going to repeat the same product of it’s different flavors in other categories. For example, Google Maps has a variant in iPhone/Android and a desktop version. So, we are not going to mention those again in phone and desktop category.

Google’s web history is not all about successes, though. AFAIR, Buzz, Wave, Orkut, Knol, Lively utterly failed faster than the hypes were risen.

Google’s Score: 5. Microsoft’s score: 3 (Live Services + Azure – Bing – Ad, again Ad is the heart of web as of now).

Mobile

Android rocks, and there’s no doubt. It probably has equal market share of iOS, if not more. Microsoft is fighting hard with Windows Phone 7, really hard.

Google’s Score: 5. Microsoft’s score: 1.

Desktop

Which desktop software have you used lately from Google? Chrome and Picasa? That’s it? Both works really well in their categories. Chrome although has only 13% market share whereas IE (45%) and Firefox (30%), but its visible in the browser market. But, let’s not forget there’s a whole universe left in desktop business.

In order to indulge their urge to start something in desktop, they developed Chrome OS for years, and it is still not available to the masses, and everybody says on the internet that it’s way way too basic. I don’t even credit them for Chrome OS, since it is just another distribution of Ubuntu. Credit goes to the extremely hard working and passionate open source activists out there around the world. Sometimes I just don’t understand why a major player (for the sake of argument) in software takes 3+ years and still counting to complete one of the tiniest OSes for desktop given that the source is taken from ready-made Ubuntu!

We see no collaboration and communication, education, entertainment, music, science, media, finance, drivers, firmwares, classroom, digital typography, standards, runtimes (like Flash, Silverlight), biometrics/identity management, training simulation, AntiVirus, utility, backup, compression, multimedia authoring/editing software from Google. You name it. Google is totally absent in desktop.