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.

Introduction to Information Rights Management

Information Rights management

There is only one technology that fully secures access to the data regardless of where it travels. The solution is to build the classification metadata, the access controls, and the information about which rights are allowed to individual users’ right in to the data itself. This solution is known as Information Rights Management (IRM). The software development companies use this as a solution to protect the data. 

IRM is essentially a combination of encryption and access controls that are built into document creation and viewing software applications, so that encrypted content can be decrypted and viewed based on access rights.We examine the history of rights management technologies that began with the digital entertainment industry and led to today’s IRM solutions that apply similar controls to any unstructured data.

IRM shrinks the security perimeter to the information itself. With IRM, you are not protecting the location where the information lives, nor the network it lives on. Instead, you are applying access control, encryption, and auditing to the information itself. That way, regardless of which disk the information resides on, which networks it travels across, or which database it may be resident in, IRM is able to provide a persistent level of security to the information wherever it goes.

IRM provides security protections not only for data at rest and data in transit, but also for data in use—which, is hard to accomplish. IRM technologies are able to prevent things like data being copied to a clipboard and pasted into another application. IRM can allow authorized users to open content while also limiting their ability to edit that content or make printed copies of it. With this level of control for data in use also comes auditing of all access to the information, even after it has left the perimeters of your network. These controls are basically impossible to implement with any other technology. 

With its fine-grained data-in-use features, the most valuable thing that IRM brings to the security landscape is the ability to control access to information, every time it is accessed, from any place it is copied to, and for every single copy, anywhere—along with the ability to revoke that access at any time. Imagine the scenario where your custom software development company has shared millions of e-mails, images, spreadsheets, documents, presentations, and so on with your business partners, customers, potential acquisitions, and employees (both current and long gone). Now imagine being able to revoke access to all that information and ensure that, as your business relationships and trusts change, you can maintain appropriate access to information even when it has long left the confines of your file servers, content management systems, and networks. The security of the data is persistent. Unlike nearly every other data security technology, the information is never given to the application or end user in an uncontrolled manner.

IRM technology extends the reach of information access control to well beyond places where you can typically deploy identity and access control technology. However, as with any technology, IRM has pros and cons.

Thus, every software development organization take into account IRM for data protection. IRM is not a replacement for existing security solutions, but it is an excellent tool to complement them. IRM represents a powerful tool for reducing risk of data loss.

Author Signature - Venu Majumdar

Automated Software Testing and related Tools

Software testing is major part of software development life cycle in all the software development companies. There are so many methods for software testing. One method is automated software testing. The objective of automated testing is to simplify testing using minimum scripts. It uses automated software tools to run tests based on predetermined algorithms to compare the developing program’s expected outcome with the actual outcome. If both the outcomes are aligned the program is running properly otherwise there is need for improvement. If two programs are not aligned with each other you have to do changes in the code and test it again until the outcomes align.

Automated testing is best to use when you’re working on a large project, and when there are many system users. Advantages of automated testing, for the custom software development companies, are its relative quickness and effectiveness. You have to set up initial test then it’s an easy process to repeat tests, continuously fill out the same information and everything is done for you automatically.

Many open source automation testing tools are available for almost all types of testing such as functional, Web, UAT, regression, performance etc. There are several criteria’s based on which a custom software development company can select tool for doing automated testing. Those are:-

• Target Testing Team
• Application & Platform support
• Testing Types
• Programming ability
• Application Technology
• Test Data Sources
• Testing Tools Outputs
• Technical Support
• Pricing Policy

Some of the tools that can be used for doing the automated testing are:

1. Silenium

Selenium is the best option for automated testing of Websites today. It is becoming popular and it is the first choice of automation testers as well as custom software development organizations for automating the testing of Web-based applications for both the GUI as well as the functionality. It  can also be used as a unit testing tool for JavaScript. Silenium  is package of various test components.  Selenium has following three modes for executing the test cases and test suites: Record-Playback mode (Selenium IDE)‏, Selenium Remote Control (RC) Mode, Test Runner Mode.

2. Watir

Watir is a set of Ruby libraries for automating web browsers. It  allows to write tests that are easy to read and maintain. It drives browsers the same way people do and also checks results such as whether expected text appears on the page. It is open source.

3. Windmill

Windmill is web application testing tool.  It supports cross-browser test recorder, JavaScript integration and an interactive shell to automate web browsers. It is open source.

4. SoapUI

SoapUI is a tool for automation of web application testing. SoapUI is available as a free open source edition as well as a commercial Pro edition.

5. Tellurium

Tellurium is a web automation tool that allows you to design and write your automated tests using plain English without any scripting or programming experience. It has a full library of “Plain English” commands – plus the ability to create your own – Tellurium’s natural language makes it easy for everyone to read and write advanced automated tests. No programming experience is required.

6. QTP

HP QTP uses Visual Basic Scripting  for automating the applications. Scripting Engine is available as a part of the Windows OS thus it is not installed exclusively.

Thus, for doing automated testing, a custom software development company have to analyse each tool in detail and as per requirement you have to choose best tool which fulfils all the criteria.

            

 Author Signature - Venu Majmudar

Importance of Project Management in Software Development Companies

In software development companies, Project Management is the art and science of planning and controlling the software projects. Project management helps you control scope, time, quality, cost, human resource related all the detail plan. It streamlines the process of developing any project and provides effective way to conduct the implementation. Project management helps in setting the goals, the actions needed to achieve those goals, plans how these goals are achieved.

Projects are completed by teams of people who are specially chosen because of their skills, potential and knowledge to contribute to the final output. Unless there is a structured and scientific approach to the managing projects, custom software development company in India would find themselves not familiarize and hence would be unable to meet the challenges that the modern era throws at them.

Major reasons for project failure are lack of communication between stack holders, failure to establish control over requirements and scope, lack of risk management, poor quality implementation, schedule slippage, poor plan, under estimation of the complexity, changing requirements, etc. Denver airport baggage system Originally billed as the most advanced system in the world, the baggage handling system  become one of the biggest examples of project failure. Originally planned to automate the handling of baggage through the entire airport, the system proved to be so much complex than some had original believed. Implemented system never functioned properly and  the system was scrapped.  The $2M monthly cost to maintain the system was outweighing the value the remaining parts of the system offered and using a manual system actually cut costs. Major Issues were Underestimation of project complexity, schedule and budget, Dismissal of advice from experts ,Changes in requirements, Complex architecture  Failure to build in backup or recovery process to handle situations in which part of the system failed is major reason for project failure .If they had develop proper project management plan this situation could have been avoided.

There are so many examples of project success in the custom software development company in India due to proper project management. An example of project success due to project management, Hotel management system for Wahda master development located in Abu dhabi city in UAE. They implemented project using this method and ensured that project management and cost consultancy to the development of software involved in every element from the master planning of the development to the concept development and management of all the details related to hotel. EC Harris developed detailed and systematic procedures through a project management gateway approach, which involved design verification checks, employer sign-off at various phases, value engineering workshops, and risk management. They worked step by step according to the plan for making user friendly and employee friendly hotel management site using proper project management and they succeeded.

Thus, project management is about creating the structure and managing  project commitments and proper delivery. By using the methods of project management, custom software development company can seek to achieve control over the project environment and they ensure that the project deliverables are being managed. Thus in this competing environment every software development company should ensure that they make proper project management plan to implement projects successfully. Without using Project Management, the managers and organizations face an unpredictable situations on which they have little or no control. Thus, Project Management is both necessary and essential to the success of the project and the software development companies.

Author Signature

Venu Majmudar