Seasoned Salesman

An insurance agent calls his possible propsect who was a lecturer and ends up calling a film prodcuer. Unfortunately the film producer picks up the telephone which adds costs to the agent for the wrong number dialed. The agent identifies himself and asks for the lecturer and gets to know that he is a film producer. The producer is angry and tries to hang up. But the agent persists and continues: "Why waste a rupee on a wrong call, let us speak for sometime". And the call goes on for about 5 minutes and the agent sucessfully gets an appointment with the film producer. The agent used the telephone as a business instrument and gained an appointment as he was conscious about the telephone costs, energy spent on the call, and time spent. After having sold a few policies to the film producer, they have now become good friends and share this story among friends and relatives. The agent saw a movie titled "Gharana Mogadu" starring Chiranjeevi with his family which was produced by the same producer. Truly the agent seems to be a seasoned one. Don't you think so?

Data Centers – This is a better way

The last article “Trends in Technologies” provided a snapshot of the technologies that are going to hover on us in the IT space. We shall see how storage creates a place for itself in this already crowded market.

Tomorrow’s enterprises whether small or large will build and deploy content rich and media driven applications that will rely completely on storage in the coming days. Storage holds a significant stake in the hardware technology space in the years to come.

What is storage? Is it hardware? Nah, it is the “FOUNDATION” on which an enterprise stands.

We are used to seeing close-by CPU’s, servers, monitors with weight, routers, and portable devices such as removable disks and we really cannot live without them. Hardware infrastructure is scattered here and there and it is difficult to manage and get the return on the investment made. Many businesses have thronged to offer remote infrastructure to help businesses for these un-organized businesses!!

Can businesses imagine developers having a small laptop with IE installed with a wireless mouse without CPU’s and other storage mediums?

Storage/server technologies have few promises to make and I am talking about having a data center facility for the enterprise that significantly reduces huge IT asset investments. Selling the existing extra infrastructure and moving to web platforms will enable the enterprise to be web focused, centrally hosted, available 24/7 and accessible for any part of the globe and accessible from the device you want. Can you expect more?

With many enterprises surging ahead with mobile computing and web platforms, data centers are at the center stage. Data centers boast of providing 99.9999% reliability, security with audio and video recordings, proactive monitoring services, rack spaces, cooling, backup systems (UPS), quality networks, high bandwidth and also come with additional features.

Setting up a data center and managing it in-house or outsourcing it can be decided based on the operational challenges and skill set available.

Technology trends 2008 - Review

Technology Trends for 2008.

I had seen the a report on “Hype cycle on Emerging Technologies” last August and was wondering whether software companies would accept such a dynamic marketplace with innovations happening as per Moore’s law on hardware.

I will pick up few technologies that interests me and that are predicted for extensive implementation in the years to come throughout the IT industry.

Portals / Web 2.0 / SAAS
With new and small startups emerging from every corner of the world, it is imperative that they have limited budget but niche services to offer to the “WORLD”. With or without VC, the startups have shown to the world what the Internet highway can offer.

I was recently researching Wealth Management Product Companies and was astonished to see so many small companies who sell such a product via Internet but as a service and I could shortlist a few ones who have products that can be touched/ felt. Gone or the days when we install a product through CD’s. Everything including patch upgrades is delivered via web.

Last year, I used to type google on the location bar of IE 10 times a day for my work. But now, I use Web 2.0 to surf the Internet content which I frequently need to see. Web 2.0 is something that brings different applications together on one platform. Examples of Web 2.0 are:
 YouTube (High quality streaming videos) – Politicians are using it for campaigning and producers with no work history sell movies!
 Flickr (Photo Sharing)
 WordPress (Blogs) – Infosys has created an outsourcing blog on its web site to promote its technical and consulting knowledge
 RSS Feeds – I am using many RSS feeds which help me to categorize content as per my interests and work

Simply put, “Web 2.0 gives the handle of YOUR site to the user”

Flex / AJAX / Silver light / Rich Internet Applications
One of the ways to measure an application’s functionality over the web is to see how much time it takes to respond to a user’s request. The PC user is impatient and does not like to see static content for long time and wishes to see updated content every time s/he blinks his/her eye. AJAX one of the concepts of developing rich internet applications has changed the way how the user interacts with the server. The fast and highly responsive communication makes healthy web surf.

Adobe’s flex and Microsoft’s Silver light are similar technologies but are proprietary in nature but can really help software vendors to build highly interactive and rich Internet applications.

These applications are used by startup firms that wish to come online within no time, and enterprises that have legacy systems in place find it difficult to implement.

RFID / Location Aware Technologies
RFID is no more a branding phenomenon used to tag tamed animals by its owners. It is now a tracking technology for employee attendance or missing goods at a retail store. Early adopters include a company in Bangladesh which has implemented this technology in Hospitals to check Doctor’s and Nurse’s attendance every day!. Another hospital uses RFID to track in real time, employee’s location within its facility. WOW!

Mashups
This is the technology that really interests me. A highly recommended technology to offer services via web by the user to the user!

You can mix photos, videos, feeds, blogs, data, maps and provide niche services over the internet highway.

Visit http://www.songza.com/ to see how mashups work.

- Gururaj

Pre-Sales

Hi All,

Gururaj here. Have been in the Pre-sales industry for some time now and find it to be more challenging a career than ever before.

I have created this blog as a starting point for people who wish to express their experience and knowledge in the industry.

Responsibilities of the Pre-Sales professional
Over the years, the profession has changed to a new dimension. The Pre-sales professional does not just respond to RFPs, RFQ's or in general RFX's but is a part of coordinated effort in procuring projects for a company. People say that it is a thankless job and does not require technical skills to manage a proposal but i feel it is mandatory to have technical skills to successfully procure a project.

Who is a Professional?
A person who has the drive, passion in the field chosen and is dependent on the field for his income and has dedication and belief in the field is a true professional.

Single point of contact for Business Managers

The sales professional is completely occupied in meeting with a new prospect or talking to the existing clients for the new projects that may be in the pipeline and needs to have a support available all the time to respond better to the prospective or new client. With the proper support, s/he can concentrate on new deals with a focus on sales pitch, customer presentations and meeting face to face. Pre-sales professional can be a single point of contact for business managers and support them in multiple timezones.

Business Writer

Although, this profession is not about writing, it involves lot of technical and business writing for the clients. For example, it might involve writing a case study with a clear focus on what benefits did client's get with the company's offerings, writing technological whitepapers talking about domain strengths, writing understanding documents and so on.

Clear Communicator

In this role, the professional is an intermediary between the business managers and the project managers (Onsite, Offshore or Near shore) and plays a crucial role in understanding the clients' requirements clearly and precisely and to express the knowledge gained to the respective team either through speech or through writing. Communicating clearly will help the colleges/ respective people to comprehend early and better.

Document Repository Manager

The profile stated above might be awkward but a necessary evil for most of the companies. First of all, it is very difficult to create and maintain document repositories;making it accessible is another. The Pre-sales professional should have the responsibilities of maintaining such document repositories. This has its own benefits; Any one at any time can ask for any document and the documents should be accessible with the help of this professional. This acts as a single, centralized repository of information for the management, business managers and somebody needing information at their fingertips.

Coordinator

People are the first and vital resources for any organization. Without people, there will be no companies. Different people have different skills and every skill must be utilized for winning a deal. Here, the pre-sales professional talks at various levels to get the job done. Whether it is an RFI or an RFP or a proposal, s/he will need to talk to many people to get the data and submit it as a collective information to the clients. Coordination skills prove to be an asset for this position.

Research and Development

It is required that the professional is aware of the latest happenings in the technological space, where businesses are heading, what applications are running in the surroundings while proposing a solution to the clients. This will ensure the company's existence in the business environment, know how and know why of technologies and also the quality of Pre-sales staff.

Conference Calls
Though the calls are set for technical resources with intention to know the technical requirement, Presales should be proactive in participating in such calls for a better understanding of the requirements directly from the client since s/he will be the one who will be doing the proposal. Clients would either demo their product, share their applications and talk about the scope of projects. It is always beneficial to attend the conference calls.

Asking the right questions
We hear lot about "I know everything". This statement can sometimes mislead the team in understanding the scope of project. It is always better to ask a stupid question and get answers than submitting the quote without a proper gauge of the requirements. Asking questions to the customers, internal technical resources would result in a quality proposal that can be a project winning document for the company.

Please free to add your experiences and thoughts.

Thanks,

Gururaj,