What are the best software companies in India?

As IT industry is emerging at pick level these days, it becomes very essential thing to choose the right company for our requirements. Best Software Company is the one which understands the customer requirements and provides best software solutions in limited budget.  I have been a part of iFour Technolab Pvt. Ltd. custom software development company since a long, I assure that this is a company which has the perfect portfolio in each specialization.

Company is providing all kinds of solutions in each platform. Having numerous skilled workforce company has deepen the roots in IT industry.  The company not only provides best software solution but also maintains a great relationship with the customer at longer period.

Here is a list of services provided by iFour Technolab Pvt. Ltd.

• Web application development
• Software development
• Software and application maintenance
• Website design and development
• Mobile application

Company uses all kinds of technologies like Microsoft .Net, android and iPhone, PHP and open source, windows media development, SharePoint development, etc. In addition to that company is at the prime location in Ahmedabad which gives huge exposure in terms of market networking.

Introduction to Project Management

What Is a Project?

A project is defined as a temporary attempt undertaken to make a unique product, service. The project achieves when its objectives are met or when the project has been terminated. The time taken to complete a particular project depends upon its size. It can be a large or small project. Software development companies define the project similarly except that the objectives are different and business oriented.

Project Attributes

The attributes of project includes a unique purpose for which the task is undertaken. To carry out a project different resources are required from different domain or areas.
Projects are temporary and they should have a sponsor or a primary customer. There is always an uncertainty attached with a project.

The project sponsor is the person who is responsible for providing the direction and funding for the project.

Project and Program Managers

Project managers work with the entire Project Team, Project Sponsors, and all the other people involved in a project to meet project goals and objectives whereas a Program is defined as group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually

What is Project Management?

Project management is the use of knowledge, skills, various tools and techniques to achieve goals and meet the requirements of the project. The triple constraints of project management are scope, time and cost.

The project stakeholders are part of project. They are the people involved and affected by the various activities carried out in the project. Stakeholders can be the project sponsor, project manager, project team, clients/customers, users and suppliers.

The key competencies required by project managers are described by the Knowledge areas.

The four core knowledge areas are scope, time, cost, and quality. They lead to some specific project objectives. The other four facilitating knowledge areas through which the project objectives are achieved are given as HR, communication, risk, and Procurement management.

To assist project manager, various Project management tools and techniques are used. Some specific tools and techniques include Project charter, Scope and Work Breakdown Structure, the Gantt charts, Network diagrams, Critical Path and chain scheduling. The knowledge are taking into cost are given as cost estimates and Earned Value Management (EVM).

As a part of Project management, Super tools have high use and potential for improving project success and achieve project goals such as Task scheduling software, Scope statements, various requirement analysis, and the report for the lessons learnt.

Tools, as suggested by some software development companies in India, which are extensively used and found to improve the importance of project includes the project progress reports, scheduled Kick-off meetings and Change requests.

The following points should be taken care for a successful project. They are given as:

• Support from Executives
• There should be continuous User involvement
• Experienced project manager
• Clearly defined Business objectives
• Minimized and focused scope
• Standard Software infrastructure
• Formal Methodologies
• Reliable cost and resource estimates
• Other criteria such as milestones, proper project planning, competent and reliable staff.

Most Important Skills and Competencies for Project Managers for a successful projects :

• People skills
• Leadership skill to guide and lead all the people working in the project.
• Listening skills to take better decisions to achieve project goals.
• Should be strong at building trust
• Verbal communication
• Managing and Building project teams
• Project manager should be an ideal decision taker to Conflict resolution, conflict management.
• They should have a Critical thinking to carry out effective and unique project.
• Project manager should have problem solving skills to manage the problems arising during the project development.

Sniffers & Sniffing Attacks

A sniffer is an application that captures network packets. Sniffers are known as network protocol analyzers. While protocol analyzers are actually network troubleshooting tools used by software development companies in india, they are also used by hackers for hacking network. If the network packets are not encoded, the data inside the network packet can be recited using a sniffer. Sniffing refers to the process used by attackers to capture network traffic by a sniffer. Once the packet is seized using a sniffer, the contents of packets can be examined. Sniffers are used by hackers to capture delicate network information, such as account information, passwords etc.

Different types of attacks are as following:

1.1 A LAN sniff

A sniffer arranged on an internal LAN can scan the whole IP range lasciviously. This helps in providing more details such as live hosts, server inventory, open ports etc. Once a list of open ports is collected, a port-specific vulnerability attack is possible.

1.2 A protocol sniff

This technique involves sniffing data associated to the network protocols being used. First, a list of protocols is formed based on the captured data. This is further isolated to create special sniffers for each attack. For example, in a system sniff capture, if the ICMP protocol is not seen, it is expected to be blocked. However, if UDP packets are seen, a distinct UDP sniffer is started to capture and decipher Telnet, PPP, DNS and other connected application details.

1.3 An ARP sniff

In this popular method, the hacker captures a lot of data in order to create a map of IP addresses and the associated MAC addresses. Such a map is further used to create ARP poisoning attacks, packet-spoofing attacks, or to dig into router-based vulnerabilities.

1.4 TCP session stealing

This method is a simple form of sniffing, in which a network interface in licentious mode captures traffic between a source and a destination IP address. Details such asservice types,port numbers, TCP sequence numbers and the data itself are of interest to hackers. Upon capturing packets, advanced hackers can create fictitious TCP sessions to fool the source and destination, and be the man in the middle to take over the TCP session.

1.5 Application-level sniffing

From the data packets sniffed and captured, a few complicated application details are found out for information burglary or to create further attacks. As an example, the capture file can be analyzed to perform SQL query analysis, OS fingerprinting, reveal application-specific TCP port data information, etc. In alternative approach, generating a mere list of applications running on a server is decent enough to plan an application-specific attack on it.

1.6 Web password sniffing

As the name suggests, HTTP sessions are stolen and analyzed for user ID and password stealing. While the Secure Socket Layers (SSL) are combined for securing HTTP sessions on the network, there are many internal websites that still use standard but less protected encryption. It is easy to capture Base64 or Base128 packets and run a deciphering agent in contrast to crack the password. In modern sniffers, SSL sessions can also be captured and analyzed for information, though this method is not very simple.

1.7 Detecting sniffers

As mentioned earlier, since sniffers work mutely, it is very difficult to perceive them on a network. There are few tricks that can provide a clue to a likelysniffer presence. There are two ways to detect a sniffer, network-basedand host-based.In host-based detection, you can use small services to detect if the NIC is running in a licentious mode on any host in a network. Since the elementary requirement for a sniffer to work is to put the network interface in “read all” mode, restrictingit can very effectively help shutting down stray sniffers.In case of network-based discovery, anti-sniffer software can be run to sense the presence of specific signature packets. In alternative approach, scripts can be run to check each network host for the occurrence of known processes, sniffers etc. Modernanti-spyware or anti-virus software are proficient of detecting sniffing software and disabling it.

Marketing a Custom Software

Custom software is specially developed for some specific Custom Software Development company or other user with specific needs. As such, it can be contrasted with the use of software packages developed for the mass market, such as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, or existing free software.

Custom software development is often considered expensive compared to off-the-shelf solutions or products. This can be true if one is speaking of typical challenges and typical solutions. However, it is not always true; custom software development by a reputable supplier is often a matter of building a house upon a solid foundation and, if managed properly, it is possible to do this quickly and to a high standard. In many cases, COTS software requires customization to correctly support the buyer's operations. The cost and delay of COTS customization frequently adds up to the expense of developing custom software.

Business processes are an important intellectual property for any software development organization. Fine-tuning and enforcing your processes through smart, fully-automated applications can help set your company apart from your competitors. Most custom software companies in India don't market their product correctly. Marketing should focus not on products but on customers. If marketing were supposed to focus the product, it would be called “producting.”But it's not is it? It's called “marketing,” which means that marketing is supposed to focus on the marketplace—and the marketplace is made up of people: customers and prospects. This focus on marketplace instead of product must form the basis of your strategic and tactical marketing—when you lose this focus your marketing loses its meaning. Start off by segmenting your market.

There are some option for creating marketing strategies. Try company size and industry sector as variables. i.e. you are looking for medium sized companies in the financial services sector. The company size and industry sector would be dependent on the previous experience of your team. Speaking of that, have you got case studies on your previous engagements? Client testimonials are also good. Your revenue comes from services. Your revenue does not come from custom software development in isolation. Position yourself to as a services firm that provides solution. Your solutions should solve business problems. What problems do your solutions solve? What problems do your clients/prospects have? Do you provide customization of 'boxed product'? Do you improve system performance or functionality? Do your solutions provide benefit to the technical side or the end-user side? What does your service methodology provide that other service providers don't? Who benefits the most from your solutions and how? The answer to these questions will build your value proposition and create a compelling story that clients will want to hear!

Identify your niche by analysing your past project successes. And ask some questions to yourself. like:

• What technologies were used?
• What business department did you serve?
• What business process or function did you improve?
• Did you save your client money?
• Did you improve a process?
• What industry did you serve?

Break these criteria down into a basis and you will start to see where your company has been successful - then you can begin to replicate that success.

According to those criteria plan strategy for marketing your custom software.

Some common marketing methods are as follows :

• Continuous Search Engine Optimization
• Affiliates marketing
• Write newsletters and press releases
• Get involved in online forums and blogs

Thus, the custom software development companies in India should use these strategies and points while marketing the custom software.