Category: General

Collaboration with your remotely located employees, work-from-home and mobile stafferswere never as easy as now. There are plenty of cloud storage services available in themarkets today which offer you file storage, sharing and syncing across various platforms.But before you choose an appropriate service make sure that you consider some important arameters such as the security measures taken by the service provider, customer reviews and satisfaction, value for money as per your business needs, data back-up capacity and frequency. Following are the most popular cloud storage services useful for small business owners: 1. Dropbox for Business – Dropbox is the most widely used storage service wherein you create a folder on your computer and drop the files you want to sync in it. It is extremely fast, secure and syncs easily across all computers and mobiles devices where it is installed. It has the capacity to manage 250 users with unlimited storage in its advanced account. Dropbox allows you to share and edit the files among your employees and gives you the option of letting them invite other employees. As an added security measure for signing-in, you can opt for its 2-step verification process as provided by Gmail. Dropbox applies AES-256 encryption for securing at- rest corporate data and uses SSL technology for creating secure connection between data center and employee. Besides this, it helps in tracking and recovering previous version of files in case someone accidently deletes or overwrites an important file. It works swiftly with Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android and Blackberry. 2. Box – This cloud service provider is known for its out-of-box features. Apart from offering the basic features, it allows the chief operator of the account to grant selected access to its employees to certain files meant to be private. It helps you with online file viewing and editing. Box even lets it users to share screenshots and screencasts, search for text content within the files and integrate with various third-party applications. It too configures very well with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Blackberry. 3. Google Drive – The best thing about Google Drive is the reliability on its brand name and its secured servers spread across the globe. Furthermore, it supports more than thirty file types and facilitates you to create and edit the documents via web browser which is useful even if you don’t have the relevant program installed to open a certain file. And its amalgamation with other Google services like Gmail, Google+, etc gives it an added benefit by avoiding multiple sign ups and allowing for offline editing with Chrome web browser. Though it is available for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android phones, it is not yet available for Blackberry devices. 4. Microsoft Skydrive – Skydrive is another popular cloud service with all the basic features as storage, sharing and syncing plus integration with Office Suite 2013 and Windows 8 added recently. And to access your files without Skydrive application installed on your device as in the case of Google Drive, you just need to login with your Windows Live Skydrive account. Office web apps are turning out very well for many users to edit word, excel and powerpoint files with their Skydrive account. However, a distinguishing feature about it is “Fetch” which lets you pull the files from online Windows PC even if you didn’t upload them to Skydrive folder. And in its latest version 17, it allows selective syncing which means you can sync only selected files in your Skydrive folder. Lastly, its 7 GB of free storage space has attracted many users towards it. Skydrive is best usable with Windows operating system though it can easily sync across Android, Mac and iOS, but it is not available for Blackberry devices. 5. SugarSync for Business – SugarSync has gone a step ahead from its contemporaries by incorporating a distinctive set of features. It lets you encrypt certain files as read-only in order to limit the users to edit them. Even more, you can control the accessibility of your files and allocate storage limits for certain users.  Another interesting feature by SugarSync is an Outlook plugin which enables you to email links to larger files instead of attaching them. This turns out quite fruitful when you are often unable to send large files owing to attachment size limitation. It easily syncs with Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Blackberry and even Symbian devices.  

Writing blogs has become quite popular nowadays. The current generation thinks it to be one of the most effective means of mass communication. In fact, some of the blogs are good enough to attract millions of readers each day; and this is what motivates a blogger even more to write. Now, writing a blog can really be an enjoyable task provided you know how to write it. After all, writing an effective blog is not everyone’s cup of tea. Hence, before you plan to write a blog, it is utmost important that you know what a blog is. A blog is an online journal that is updated regularly. Such a journal can be both short as well as long. However, there is one attribute that makes a blog stand unique from other forms of writing – that is a blog is informal in nature. Blogs are written quite casually and often they are found to be about unpredictable topics. Another most noticeable feature about blogs is that they include engaging and interesting subject matters. However, if you are creative enough you might make a mundane topic to attract audience that an interesting topic cant. After all, its about how you present the topic to the readers. If you use an engaging voice and writing style, then the blog written by you is sure to be more effective. No matter how you write, ensure that you follow the following three key principles to blog writing: Develop your own writing style and use an appropriate tone for the topic This is believed to be the most important aspect of blog writing. Developing and maintaining a particular writing style and voice is not that easy. You need to keep a number of things in mind: First and foremost, try to pen down your thoughts the way you normally speak. Remember, blog is nothing but a conversation. Avoid using jargon and over-using the Thesaurus. You might find it helpful to read the content aloud. It would help you identify whether it is written the way you speak to your friends. Secondly, it would be great if the topic chosen by you allows you to write it keeping any of your family members of close friends in mind. It would relax the writing style and make the content of the blog sound more like you are speaking. A blog should never sound like a lofty essay. Thirdly, identify your target audiences. This would not just help you choose a topic appropriate to them but even help you know which information to be included in your writing and which is already known to them. Finally, develop a habit of reading other blogs that are similar to your chosen subject matter. Reading a few of such blogs before you actually start writing would help you gain an insight about blog writing. Post frequently Writing a blog doesn’t necessarily mean that you will write it once in a while. Its just the contrary. If you write well, you have to continue writing blog frequently. The more you blog, the more would it be visited by online readers. In fact, writing a good blog would necessitate spending some time for it everyday. It might not be the case that you write everyday but keep blog writing on the back of your mind in everything you do. You never know when you come across an interesting topic or subject matter that you might want to write about next. Allow the readers to post comments on your written blog Though it is not directly related to writing a blog but allowing the readers of your blog comment on it can really enhance your blog writing skill. After all, readers are the best people to judge the quality of your content; and those comments would help you understand whether the blog written by you is perfectly alright for the readers or whether they are expecting something different from you. Apart from following all of the aforementioned guidelines, you need to ensure that your blog is completely free of grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. Sangeeta Roy IM Dept

In the dedicated hiring model, you pay us fixed fees on a monthly basis, based on blend of people that are assigned to your project. On the contrary, as the name implies, the fixed price quote is one final price that is given to you for completing the entire assignment. Fixed Pricing, from the vendor’s perspective, generally has a built-in contingency, usually between 10-30% of what it would cost on hourly hiring basis. This figure generally depends on the clarity and complexity of the job. For example, if it has been estimated that the job will take 300 man-hours, and the going billing rate is $10/hour, then the “estimated” fix price would be $3000.  The price that is presented to the client would be 1.2 or 1.3 times that much — $3300 – $3900. So, as a client, you are “paying extra” to ensure that the job comes in at a fixed fee. There are a number of reasons why we have to do this: The initial estimation may not be very accurate. This may be both due to insufficient details or very optimistic expectations. No project has a fixed scope, some changes are generally required in every project Management overhead on the project is quite high. The entire risk for timely project delivery within specific budget lies with vendor organization.   Let see how dedicated hiring model saves cost. Let us assume that the project involved 20% (60 hours) design and 80% (240 hours) programming. We assume an average rate of $1100 for a dedicated offshore designer and $1450 for an average offshore programmer. Let’s calculate the costs: Skills Rate per 176 hours Hours Required Total Cost Programmer $1450 240 $1977.27 Designer $1100 60 $375 Total 2352.27 Thus, there I an outright saving of 21% against hourly rates and 39% against fixed price contracts. Note: We do not accept project of less than 3 man-months duration on dedicated hiring model. 

This article points out some advantages of outsourcing, not just in a context of IT but in general context as well. Economist Simon Domberger published a study in 1998 called “The Contracting Organization” in which he published the results of his study of various organizations. According to this Study, the following are the benefits of outsourcing: Specialization If an organization focuses its attention on the activities at which it is very good and efficient, the value that it can add is maximized and it benefits from the economies of scale as well. This can be seen in organizations like Nike or Nokia or iPod which focuses just on product design and outsourcers all its manufacturing activities elsewhere. Market Discipline When an organization contracts out the delivery, support or maintenance of its product of service, the focus shifts to right place i.e. Customers, Competitors and Markets. Thus it becomes better at spotting trends and responds to changing market conditions. With outsourcing, the company starts to focus on outputs and not inputs and that leads to process innovations and reengineering to deliver maximum customer value. Flexibility As an organization works with a network of vendors it will find it easier to add or change vendor organization in response to market demand. This leads to huge financial benefits. It is always more difficult jettisoning an in-house department than stop working with a vendor organization, when the demand for goods and services are no longer there. Similarly, in a short-run an organization cannot build up a department immediately for a new product or services. Cost Savings Of course, outsourcing delivers significant cost savings in comparison to delivering the product or service in-house. This is because of two main factors 1) Specialization in vendor’s organization: A specialized vendor passed on its benefits of engineering processes and economies to scale to your organization which results in cost savings 2) Low Cost labor: An organization can benefits from access to low cost labors in other countries such as India. More and more customer wants a single point to manage all their IT requirements and saying a “no” means loosing an account forever. In such a scenario outsourcing what you cannot do yourself is matter of survival. Here is a summarized list of reasons why you might consider outsourcing as a strategy for your business: 1. You can get access to product or services that you cannot produce internally 2. You can get access to more skills / expertise 3. You use your in-house staff in more profitable ways 4. You can match any increase or decrease in demand more effectively 5. You can concentrate on your core, most crucial businesses 6. Allow and encourage more efficient work practices 7. Penalize non performance at contract level agreements 8. Reduce cost of operations 9. Improve cash flow in your organization 10. Improve the flexibility of your business Thus, there is more to outsourcing then just saving money. When you start looking at the bigger picture, you realize that outsourcing as a strategy is crucial to compete effectively in the future.