A 36-year-old inmate at Bhondsi jail — serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife in 2007 — proved to be an asset for employees at the facility after he managed to tweak a software, sanctioned by the government for use at the prison, so that it gave them all the information they needed “in a single click”.
Rohit Pagare, who is a Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) alumni and a chartered accountant by qualification, has been lodged at the prison for the last “eight or nine years”.
Harinder Singh, Superintendent of the Prison, describes him as an “outstanding” inmate and says Pagare tweaked the software at the recommendation of staff at the facility. The software, which was earlier only used to mark attendance, now also provides information about an employee’s career history, such as his earlier postings, awards appreciating his work, charge sheets against him, as well as the terms of his current posting, including the number of leaves he has taken and his attendance.
“He has modified the software so that it is like an electronic service book for us, where we can get all the information we need in a single click. It has reduced our workload, and also helped to fix accountability,” said Singh.
According to Singh, the original version of the software, made by the National Information Centre (NIC), is currently in use in all departments in the state for marking biometric attendance. “We had also started the same at our facility, but there were some issues with it. A normal office works in a 9 to 5 shift, but in our case, there are no such fixed hours,” said Singh.
In 2013, Pagare had assisted another inmate, Amit Mishra, a software engineer who was later acquitted, in making a prison management software called Phoenix. This was later among the four approved by the Ministry of Home Affairs for use in the prison department.
“Since Pagare already had some experience with that kind of work, we suggested he modify this software as per our requirements,” said Singh.
Pagare started working on the software in December and by February, it had been implemented on a trial basis at Bhondsi jail. Authorities intend to extend its use and implement it within the prison department across the state within the next six months, said Singh.Minor kills schoolmate

 

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Singapore: Seventeen years ago an Indian man from New Delhi mesmerized the technology departments of global corporations with a doomsday story many times more puffed up than the luxuriant crop of hair he sported.

The latter was a wig, and the former was just bad science fiction packaged by consultants as a $600 billion hair-raiser. But Dewang Mehta, the chief lobbyist for India’s fledgling software services industry, carried off both with aplomb, convincing businesses that at the stroke of midnight of the new millennium, their computer systems would crash because old programs measured years in two digits instead of four. The solution, he persuaded them, was to let a horde of techies from Bangalore and Hyderabad go through each line of code and fix the Y2K bug.

That was the birth of India’s massively successful software services industry, which died on Friday after a short battle with newer digital technologies. At the time of its demise, the business was worth $110 billion in annual export revenue.

The first hint that the end near came on Thursday when Tata Consultancy Services, the biggest Indian software vendor by market value, announced a virtual stalling of its business in the September quarter from the previous three months. After Infosys followed up by slashing its full-year revenue guidance for the second time in three months, it was time to turn off the ventilator.

Infosys revenue growth pre-Lehman

A coroner’s inquiry unearthed three signs of decay, the first of which shows how Indian companies’ cheap-talent-fueled growth ran out of breath. In the four quarters before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Infosys saw revenue increase an average 29% in constant-currency terms. Back then, Dublin-based Accenture’s growth was just half as high. But there’s nothing exceptional about Indian companies’ expansion anymore. All that investors have heard from management’s this year is the gloomy commentary on how challenging it’s become to get clients to open their wallets. When the companies do make news nowadays, it’s more often for dodgy business practices, regulatory slaps on the wrist, and senior-level exits.

A slowdown alone wouldn’t have stopped the Indian industry if it had been able to embrace “smack,” or social, mobile, analytics and cloud-based technologies. But the vendors wasted so much time defending their legacy business of writing code for and maintaining purpose-built enterprise applications that they failed to make a mark in the new digital world Page Design Hub.

As an analysis from Mint shows, the dominant trio of Tata Consultancy, Infosys and Wipro between them had 1.5 times more workers doing digital stuff last year than Accenture. But the revenue they garnered was 40% less than what the latter chalked up from newer technologies. That makes the typical digital-tech employee of an Indian vendor 25% as efficient as his counterpart at the global consultant. This gap sets the clock back on Indian companies, which have taken years to narrow the productivity differential:

Maybe it’s just banking clients and their inability to pay like they once did. Or perhaps it’s a combination of weak global growth, Brexit, protectionism and Donald Trump’s vacillating stance on US visas for Indian technology workers. Hoping that turbulence is temporary, investors are still paying a hefty premium for future growth. They may get lucky for a while. Still, a dead-cat bounce from delayed orders coming through would hardly count as proof of life.

The millennium scare got Indian software a foot in the door at global corporations. But now the shoe is on the other foot. Robotics and artificial intelligence are putting the vendors’ labour-intensive business at risk of obsolescence. Even if the concern is as puffed up as Y2K, with plenty of growth candidates in the Indian start-up world, at least for some investors it may be time to back new horses rather than flog dead ones. Bloomberg.

 

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In March this year, Red Hat became the world’s first open source software (OSS) solutions company to cross $2 billion in revenue. The term open source implies ‘free’ access to software which developers can modify. Not many thought Red Hat would be successful when the company was founded in 1993. However, it has proved its naysayers wrong with a $14.78 billion market cap (as on September 30), $600 million revenue in Q2 FY17 and entry into the Forbes list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2016 for the fourth time. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat’s president and CEO, and Rajesh Rege, its India MD, tell Forbes India why enterprises are now opting for open source software. Edited excerpts:

Q. How do enterprises use open source software?
Whitehurst: Open source refers to the fact that the source code is open and one can modify it. In terms of enterprise use, there are typically OSS alternatives at almost every layer of the software stack. It would be impossible to get through a day without using a fair amount of open source. For instance, if you go on the web, the things you are touching [by browsing, streaming or chatting] are open source; if you get money out of a cash machine, you are going to hit banking systems built on open source; airlines’ reservation systems are almost entirely built on Linux (an open source operating system).

Q. What are the benefits of using OSS?
Whitehurst: It is dramatically lower cost because you are not paying the license fee for the software upfront; you are paying a subscription, service and maintenance fee. Plus today, most new innovations happening in technology are happening in open source—from big data to DevOps (a combination of development and operations). Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn do their entire infrastructure work using open source. If you want to build a private cloud, you could use the same technology that Google uses to do that. The alternative is to wait until a proprietary software (whose source code is known only to the person who created it, thereby not allowing any modification) vendor builds something that looks similar and then buys that.

Q. How are companies in India using OSS?
Rege: The Bombay Stock Exchange is built end-to-end on open source on Red Hat. The Indian Railways uses it for managing the IRCTC portal which they re-architected using Red Hat components. We also serve customers in banks, e-commerce and other sectors like oil and gas and telco. Even the UIDAI—Aadhaar project—is built end-to-end on Red Hat Page Design Shop.

Q. How important is India as a market for Red Hat?
Whitehurst: In terms of employees, it is our second-largest market after the US. It’s a great market for us not only because of its size but also because it is dynamic. There are a lot of massive projects happening here and we get a large share of the new projects. As a company, we are growing at 20 percent; we are growing more than twice the figure here. Also, there are more developers here than anywhere else in the world.

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Introduction

What to Buy – That is the Question

Buying choices are the essence of lifestyles inside the trade-driven 21st century. From normal decisions like deciding on lunch from a restaurant menu to getting a new vehicle, to primary company acquisitions, much of our time is spent “buying”.

And these selections are anything but simple. Each marketer professes to be the only champion of our customer rights and pummels us with enticing advertising messages, approximately how their wares are “the great”. Seductive as these messages are, no products or services is quite the identical. The distinction may be obvious – that of “higher vs. Worse”, or a subtle tradeoff between price, first-class, function set, customer service, or sturdiness.

It is, therefore, crucial to preserve our wits about & develop a scientific method to the buying selection. Our view must be large & farsighted, instead of shopping for primarily based most effective on what right now meets the eye. Hasty selections leave us with flashy functions in no way used or hefty repair payments of products that came cheap.

An accurate example of a systematic approach is whilst you buy a vehicle. A myriad of things is considered & weighed, which effect the owner for the next decade. This includes an emblem, performance vs. Fashion, price, protection, terms of finance, mileage, preservation, resale price & so many different factors.

Selecting Software

In our new “stressed out” modern truth, the software program is no less important than products & services in our normal lives. Whether it’s a personal electronic mail program, chat software for immediate connection, collaboration software program to organize scattered employees, or an ERP implementation to control business enterprise procedures – there may be no surviving without them!

But we’re relatively greater used to shopping for merchandise & offerings than software, which is an enormously latest phenomenon. In many approaches, selecting software isn’t any exclusive from choosing a service or product. Although intangible, software, additionally deal with a very real need, on which personal & expert success often depends. Naturally, some of the identical purchase factors follow – emblem, carrier, & upkeep charges.

In spite of the patronizing obviousness of the above, software choice is a gray area; an underdeveloped area. This money owed for the high incidence of “shelfware” – software that is bought with grand intentions, however, emerge as on dusty shelves. This is due to the fact not like merchandise & services, it isn’t so intuitively obvious that software program has “existence cycles” & want to be “maintained”, “updated”, & “repaired”.

Therefore, purchases are made based on what right away meets the eye – technical functions. This mistake is comprehensible because technical functions are well documented & advertised, & smooth for the buyer to apply as selection criteria. But with this approach, factors that are just as pertinent, however no longer so without delay obvious, get not noted. Some studies & critical wondering is needed to gauge those “hidden” factors.

Key Factors To Consider

1) Company History & Experience

The dealer needs to be sized up earlier than we even go on to recollect the software program itself. Company heritage is critical due to the fact, unlike conventional companies, software agencies are often small, & regularly beyond countrywide obstacles. Since those groups might probably be coping with our sensitive records, we want to do a history test. Some associated questions are:

How Long Have They Been Around?

As in maximum cases, we are able to reasonably assume that past report is a superb indicator of future overall performance. Important questions are – How lengthy have they been round? How long have they been inside the discipline? If they may be presenting business collaboration software, have they been in this industry lengthy enough? Even if the software program is new, do they have experience growing associated software program?

What is Their Niche?

Does the agency recognize your niche properly enough to recognize your desires? If you are a small/mid-sized business, a company particularly serving the Fortune 500 isn’t for you. If you earn a living from home, it’s miles not going an answer serving large workplaces will meet your needs.

The Ultimate Testament – The Customer

The final decision of software is its users. To get a real image, it’s miles vital to examine how customers are the use of the software & what their remarks are. Does their site include a consumer’s listing or web page? Check out what customers say under testimonials, or you can even get in touch with the customers your self for remarks.

Dangers

There are sure matters approximately the software enterprise that a client needs to be wary of. Software startups have shorter lifestyles spans than traditional corporations & trip high on a success wave, but cross “pop” while the industry bubble bursts. This was exemplified by the aid of the “dot-com bust” of 2000. Whether the cutting-edge spate of “Web 2.0” companies constitutes every other increasing bubble with the intention to inevitably burst is debatable, however, it makes sense to be wary & bet your cash on dependable companies with established tune statistics.

2) Cost

There’s no denying the significance of price effectiveness in buying choices throughout the board. Yet fees ought to be seen in a broad perspective because low entry expenses can also properly result in better overall expenses alongside the product’s existence.

Features vs. Price

A cost-advantage evaluation makes sense, & charges want to be in comparison with the software program’s range of capabilities & functionalities. A document management system may not be the most inexpensive, but it may assist you to also install a digital office. Going for hundreds of functions also constitutes a lure, because users never get around to the usage of half of them.

Needs vs. Price

Another question is whether there is an overlap between capabilities & wishes at all. Many features might not relate to needs sought to be addressed. You have to surely define your needs, & classify features as “needed functions” & “functions not wanted”. Another feasible scheme of classifying functions could be “need to have”, “satisfactory to have”, & “future necessities”.

3) Ease of Use/Adoption

An adoption & learning curve is involved with every new software program purchase. It needs to be integrated with modern-day systems & software, & the quit users have to be delivered up to speed the usage of it. If the software program is chunky & too complex, adoption resistance can arise.

Ease of Use

The software program need to have an intuitive interface, & use of capabilities have to be pretty a great deal self-obvious. The shorter the getting to know curve education a new consumer, the better. The software must additionally have the capacity to easily healthy into the present structures with which it’s going to have to speak. For instance, a collaboration software might let you use a few functions out of your Outlook itself or even share Outlook information.

Adoption

To get a degree of “shelfware”, i.E., a software program that is purchased but by no means used, some studies peg the number of shelved content material management solutions at 20-25%. At one million dollars according to implementation, it truly is quite highly-priced shelfware! According to another take a look at in the US, 22% of purchased business enterprise portal (ERP) licenses are by no means used.

No doubt, “Shelfware” is an end result of ill thought out buy decisions. These research clearly underline the importance of creating a knowledgeable purchase. One viable manner to protect against shelfware is the new idea of software program as a carrier (SAAS) hosted software. The software is hosted by way of its developer, & shoppers should pay a monthly subscription, which they could choose out of every time.

Support

No, be counted how exact a software is, there are bound to be instances when one cannot discover the way to paintings a specific characteristic or a glitch vegetation up. Some software program solutions may also require you to rent committed help group of workers of your personal, whilst others may be easy to use, and no specialized group of workers can be needed, and still, others can also offer unfastened help. The cost of hiring help body of workers wishes to be factored into the shopping for choice.

Provider aid can be in the shape of stay human guide, or automated assist engines. In case of humanitarian assistance, the quality of solutions, availability & behavior of assist executives counts number. Support also can be in the form of an extensively documented assist engine or massive help statistics on the agency web site. This shape of the guide is frequently more activate & efficient than human assist.

Training

Training is another shape of help which merits special point out. Free education seminars or their new avatar – webinars (on-line seminars) – significantly assist in getting up to speed with the software at no greater fee. In a few instances the agency may provide paid training, which can be important, & for this reason, this fee needs to be factored into the purchase decision.

Maintenance

Maintenance prices & efforts have a first-rate impact on the performance & adoptability of software program, & subsequently, form vital standards of the shopping for choice. In case the software program is hosted on the enterprise’s cease, it is of extreme significance that the software is to be had on-line at all times, or the “uptime”. Uptimes are protected under the “provider level settlement” & variety from 98% to ninety-nine .99%. A minimum uptime of ninety-nine % is what one has to search for.

The organization’s maintenance is also essential. Efforts to continuously improve upon the software underline a dedication to providing quality provider. Are bugs fixed directly & on an ongoing basis? Are they simply releasing software program & no longer updating it? One should broaden a dependancy of preserving up with the company publication, launch notes or the “what is new” section on their site. Periodic newsletters & a “what is new” phase are indicative of a dynamic enterprise.

Four) Familiarity

The “experience” of the software is any other vital criterion. The software program should keep with the basic format & navigation schemes we’re used to. This makes for a faster transition.

One precise way is to compare with the OS in which we’d use the software. Does it have the same basic schema because of the OS environment? A software with Mac schema on Windows wouldn’t sit that nicely. Or we should compare it with another software program which we’re used to. If you are switching to an affordable answer from an highly-priced one, choosing software with a comparable “sense” could make sense. Does it maintain most of the principle capabilities you’re used to?

Five) Security

Security is a top attention because he software program organization will probably be managing information vital to us – enterprise, economic or private. We want to be nicely assured of our facts’ protection & there are no dangers of it being compromised. This desires studies, & the extensiveness of which relies upon on the sensitivity of our statistics.

What protection functions does the company have?

Encryption, or coding of facts, is used by most groups to guard the integrity of their clients’ data. There are different sorts of encryption, every of which is associated with a one of a kind degree of security. DAS is one, once popular but now recognized to have loopholes. SSL 128-bit encryption is related to terrific security. Password protection is some other crucial aspect. Is the software geared up to face up to manual & computerized attempts to hack your password? The potential of the system to detect a hacking try & lock up in time is crucial.

Data Backup

In severe cases of gadget breakdown resulting from a facility fireplace, natural disaster or technical glitch and so forth, it’s far essential that your facts are regularly & properly backed up. Data backup have to be common & good enough.

Certain elements are to be considered in backup practices. The first is the frequency of backups. If there is a long gap, there may be a possibility of data being lost in intermittent periods. Secondly, what are the security arrangements at the facilities where your records is living? Is it manned & guarded by using security employees? What other safeguards are in region? Is there a terrific firewall? What is the safety against virus attacks? What strategies are in place for disaster management?

Track Record

As with organization heritage, a little study on the security music file makes feel. Has the employer ever been prone to assaults earlier than? What had been the losses? How did the organization react? How a few years has the business enterprise had a terrific file? New organizations can have an easy record, but that isn’t necessarily indicative of appropriate security.

The Server System

The server device wherein the sensitive facts without a doubt lies may be very vital. Is it brand new? The server infrastructure will be owned by way of the software program provider themselves or outsourced to a committed organization presenting hosting solutions. Outsourced website hosting is a superb thing due to the fact website hosting groups have sizable know-how & infrastructure for protection, & this frees up the software company to concentrate on the software itself. The organization won’t have a complex setup in any respect, jogging the software & processing statistics through computer systems installed in the garage somewhere acting as servers. This should get your alarm bells ringing!

Conclusion – A Systematic Selection Approach

Now that we have mentioned all of the applicable factors in element & have a better attitude of the subject, it’s miles essential to broaden a scientific approach to reading those elements.

What elements are essential to me?

Although all of the above factors are applicable, their relative significance may range from consumer to consumer. For an organization with deep wallet, the fee comes a decrease in the listing. For a corporation the use of collaboration software to system enterprise data, security is an excessive priority. Again if an answer paperwork an important a part of an organization’s enterprise, it’s far crucial that it integrates well with existing systems. For dynamic industries like actual property, brief schooling times are important.

Know Thy Software

By this step, you’ll have decided on software. But that is nevertheless not the give up. For all our theorizing & getting to know, the software nevertheless has to skip its hardest take a look at. The most software permits you a loose trial length. It would be a great concept to noticeably use this period to research the software.

It is important to live centered at some point of this trying out duration due to the fact the effect is going to be long-lasting. Follow systematic making plans. Identify objectives & wishes, develop a checking out plan, lay out the timelines and designate people from different departments to strive out special functions. Set responsibilities & desires so that testers take their task severely.

THE DECISION!

Don’t hesitate to put the load on the agency to show itself. Let the company show to you the features that seem important to you. For example, if safety is of prime importance, ask the enterprise to show how their answer scores high on protection. Don’t hesitate to name them if you have questions.

Test their service degrees to peer if it lives as much as their guarantees. If you submit a price tag, is it promptly replied to? Is a great solution provided? If the trouble calls for the live assist, do you get it speedy sufficient? When you call in with a hassle, is it a stay man or woman or an automated message you speak with?

This is as considerably as you can analyze software. You’re educated sufficiently to make a desire to be able to maximum possibly no longer fail you. You shall without a doubt now not be disappointed with your choice.

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