Pocket Technology

What began with striking two stones together to create a fire, went on evolving to create new devices for our daily use. It is said that, "Necessity is the mother of all invention." As man began to evolve his necessity began to evolve as well. From the invention of radio, camera, telephone, television in the 20th century, we would all agree to the below image of having all those large gadgets in one place a mini device called the mobile in our pockets.

 Martin Cooper of Motorola made the first publicized handheld mobile phone call on a prototype Dyna TAC model on April 4, 1973. It has been 42 years since Motorola rolled out this model, today the mobile phone, not just does the basic job of calling and texting. It has completely changed in size and shape and has the functions of all major devices in one gadget.

Since the phone is so smart, light to carry and can do multiple tasks for us, it is changing our life style by the day.

All phones have the same hardware component with just a few changes. The major changes of a mobile device is the software versions. The user experience of the phone defines the look and feel to the device.Most companies target on the look and feel of the application a user uses.

2014 saw mobile apps overtake PC websites in terms of Internet usage. As this trend is bound to continue in 2015, marketing strategies should evolve to keep up. On a average approximation 63% of the world population are mobile users with the total number of mobile subscriptions globally topping seven billion. The mobile market is big business, and it’s showing no signs of letting up.

Recent studies show that users spend more time on their phones than at their desktop. As new apps continue to flood the market there is a significant change in the way users download and engage with them.

The creation of applications intended to execute on newer mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets involves unique requirements and challenges. Thanks to a robust app developer community and a growing number of cross-platform developer tools, there is clearly wisdom in developing and delivering content on more than one platform.
As enterprises strive to make their business more approachable, while allowing their customers to manage work seamlessly – business apps in a way is helping them work smarter and emphasize on what actually matters.
Apps are gaining momentum and are becoming  an important aspect of our daily lives. Take an example Indian Television Channel Star Plus, they have an app called Hot star app which allows one to watch TV serials, news, sports, reality shows and submit comments. Its is a mini package of the whole channel for all those working women and men who do not like to miss their serials or matches can now catch their latest updates on this app.
Banks have their mobile banking system, restaurants have mobile ordering systems, E-commerce have their mobile shopping apps. In simple sense all industries are looking at a seismic shift to mobile platforms because you and I own the latest smart phone. It all lies in the demand and supply curve of the economy, where the demand for more and advanced technology lies there the competition for supply also lies.
So if you already have an idea of an app for a particular stream or industry why wait for someone else to come up with the idea which you already have in the pipeline, but never created. Why not go ahead and create an app of your own.
If you have a web based product think of an app for the same as customers get attracted to the app rather than the web product. Websites have already changed style and design to suit and integrate on a mobile platform.
With IoT and BYOD sneaking into work places and changing work trends the demand for mobile apps will increase by yet another 30% in the coming years.

Mobile app development is experiencing a tremendous growth in the industry, with the growth of E-commerce the scope for app development will always be on the rise. Mobile application development is the present and future of the IT industry.

Reference: http://www.infinitemonkeys.mobi/blog/category/app-of-the-week/

Party on our Minds

We enjoy nothing more than spending time with our friends and colleagues, at least once a year we get together for a formal family event.

Family event? Yes, family event, researchers have proved that when a working individual spends nearly 60 percent of their time at their work place, ideally a workplace becomes your second home, colleagues and teammates become your family members. A get together event becomes a workplace family event.

The Arowana family has had several get togethers, just as wine gets better with time so does fun. This year Arowana organized a gala Annual meet. We used technology to its best, connected two oversea cities and hosted one event.

Arowana Bangalore and Dubai organized Confluence along with Arowana Reward and Commendation ceremony on 23^rd May 2015.

An event is like a building yet to be built, just before the foundation for construction is layed, a blue print is required. The HR teams of both the locations sketched out the event blue print in the month of March. After several discussions, hotels and resorts were scouted for the hosting. The design team was the architect of the event as they began to execute designs which included fun mailers, videos, banners, standees, and trophy and certificate designs.  The admin and volunteering committee were construction members of the event; they organized the stage decoration, the video conference, photo booth, games and activities. The hosts and performers were the final touches of the gala event.

Arowana was established in the year 2006 and it has walked 9 years of milestones. This company has grown from 2 to 200 and grows every year because of a shoal of talent. Every resource has contributed their percent to build a skyscraper of the company. As the going gets tough the tough gets going and some members have worked hard and carved a way for better growth. It is said that, “A little bit of desire in life is necessary to keep life in motion. “ The desire to do better can be created only through appreciations. The highlight of this year’s get together was the reward and commendation ceremony that took place at Bangalore and Dubai.

Confluence was held at Ramee guest line in Bangalore and at The Address in Dubai. A day before the Admin team and a few performers set out to the location to ensure the stage was set for the event. The performers had a dress rehearsal on the stage as we rolled the banner and set it in place.

On the day of the event the HR team and volunteers ran through the schedule and set finishing touches of the arrangements along with the resort members. 

We left Arowana office at 3PM to the venue. Hooting, shouting and singing added spice along the journey to the resort. All Arowana registered members were welcomed along with their family members and friends. We walked the red carpet and posed for photographs. At 4 Pm fun activities began at Ramee guest line. We played musical chairs and had friendly tug-o-war matches. The tugs of friendships were stronger than the ropes leading to draw matches. A warm cup of tea and sizzling starters energized us as we began to explore other activities at the resort. Children enjoyed jumping on the trampolines, swinging thru and fro, playing games of tag and sliding down slides. As the adolescences and adults of Arowana played indoor games and took a dip in the pool.

At 6PM all Arowanites had gathered in the Conference hall dressed smart and crisp in formals. Once indoors, we began playing tambola a fun game of numbers and luck. 5 people who wore their lucky socks that day won exciting prizes. The hosts and dosts Kavya and Deepak greeted the gathering in a fun and frivolous manner. Rhythm and beats ended with a bang of karaoke singing and twist and turns of fusion dances.

At 7.30 PM IST Dubai office joined us on video conference. We began our Award ceremony with Unni Vijayan’s words of wisdom and welcoming of important dignitaries of the company. Mr Chandrappa, Verabadrappa, Murthy, Padmanaba, Murli and Sameer were awarded for their 5 year long service toward the company.

Prateek was the host of the Dubai event. He honored and welcomed the dignitaries. He finally broke the ice of anticipation and excitement we had all been holding from the past one month; the excitement of the Award winners. Mr. Ainan won The Golden Beacon (Best employee) award, Mr. Sameer Patil won the Silver Beacon (Best TNM) award, Mr. Kishen Gajanan won the Chrysalis award (Best freshman), Mr. Rashid and Mr. Zain won Nebula award (An experienced new member) the last but not the least award Orion Dream team award (Best team) won by Mr Sadiq Sikandar and team.

 The ceremony was closed by Kavya and Deepak in Bangalore. While Prateek continued hosting a series of fun games and activities.

An event is incomplete without the rock and roll. Lights out… Disco music on mere ganna baja de DJ DJ mere ganna baja de. We soon picked our bodies up and dropped it on the floor, let the rhythm change our world on the floor. The event closed with a bang as we dragged out worn out dancing shoes and hungry bellies to feast on sumptuous dinner.

All good things must come to an end, but memories keep all things lasted. We headed puffing tired yet happily chattering about the success of the big event. Adults become children when it comes to fun. We all require appreciation, fun and enjoyment once in a while.

Get togethers get each one of us closer. Our hidden talents are brought out naturally and recognized at such gathering. Above all letting our hair down and dancing like no one is watching is the best stress buster for all of us.

The Arowana Family day out was indeed memorable for all of us. The fruit of hard work is gratitude. We give Arowana our work and Arowana pays us with a platform to have fun.

Welcome to the next best thing

“The only way to do great work is love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

-Steve Jobs   

A few days ago our company had to let go of two of their best resources. Vidya was Senior Oracle HRMS specialist, she with us for five years now she is relocating to San Francisco to begin a new journey of her life- A married life. Jagadeesh worked with us for 3 years as a Dot Net engineer. He joined as a fresher, just out of college He wanted to do his Masters in UK and left us to complete his career.

Their places are currently empty and are waiting for someone to fill their shoes. The world is not a large place with networking on social media platforms we are sure that there is another Vidya and Jagadeesh out there who are determined and passionate to work with us for a long term.

Arowana is headquartered in Bangalore with offices off shore in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Jeddah and the US. We are family to close to 250 plus members working together. Arowana provides a canopy of resources to all its employees to succeed personally and professionally. The work we do here as an impact on the world and you can be a part of it.

The world of software and technology is so dynamic that it is rapidly changing even as you sit and read this, so we are changing too. Our Vision is simple to be the icon company of the 21^st century, but we need you to achieve this.

Most of our work is grounded on the platforms of Oracle, Dot Net, Java and Mobile application development and heart of everything we do is incite: helping to create work force for our clients that brings people together, tell stories, provoke and generate conversations.

We strive to give our clients products and solutions which tune all the five senses.  To do this we are constantly looking for a diamond in the ruff. We want more people who are unique and filled with special talents, who can pull a rabbit out of a hat with their work.

When we recruit we ensure that all our staff stay and grow with us. We ensure that no applicant or staff member receives less favorable treatment on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital status, social status, caste, race, ethnic origin, religious belief, age, HIV status, disability, or any other factor that cannot be shown to be relevant to performance.

We are as open and broadminded as our doors, our success rates are as high as our buildings, and our hearts are as large as an ocean. Our environment is free, crazy, fun, jovial, challenging. We do not compete against each other, but we complete tasks with each other.

Our work culture is colorful and warm. You are welcomed with warmth and assurance, you are given a tour of all the benefits you avail while you work with us, explore as much as you like the limit to expose to talent before us, share any of your grievances our ears are always open to your problem and enjoy all you can while you produce the best.

We are waiting for you to fill those empty seats of Vidya and Jagadeesh. What are you waiting for? If you are a dynamic, hardworking, innovative and creative, talented, determined, focused and a fun loving person then drop in your resumes before the door of opportunity closes.

In words of Steve Jobs “I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.”

Now stop search for your dream job and start applying. We want you onboard soon.

Techno vacation experience

Why do people go on a vacation? To relax, get away from daily mundane lifestyle, keep the mind away from coding and many such reasons.

When people go on a vacation they are not just looking for a good holiday spot, but a good hotel which makes their stay a memorable one.

Several hotels in the hospitality industry are striving to provide their customer with not just a room with basic amenities but a room which is technologically censored to provide comfort and relaxation.

When I state technologically censored in simple terms I mean room automation. Room automation is a remote controlled mechanism which helps guests to a hotel to operate several hardware devices with a remote controlled system.

The Idea is simple. All appliances in a room such as lights, room security cameras, locks, curtains, television, music systems are all connected with a hardware chip which in turn is coded with software on a remote or mobile platform to synchronize and work on one touch mechanism.

Hotels upgrade to automated rooms to provide that extra luxury and comfort to clients. When one device can control the entire appliance in a room, a traveler has to just sit back and enjoy the luxury technology has to offer.

Hotels have a Building Management System or a Property Management system. These systems control data of property, staff, bookings, reservations, cancellations, security. The data is vast and can be connected with an automation device.

So as a guest utilizes certain amenities such as reserving a conference room, or booking a dinner table, this data is routed to the PMS which in turn helps hotel staff to keep a check on the activities of the guest.

A guest does look out for a relaxing holiday; a luxurious hotel makes the guest feel heavenly. The idea of Automation is to provide luxury and comfort. If a person has taken a holiday to feel lazy, hotels are striving to give their guest the same. A lazy holiday with a technology smart tool.

Hit and Run

Smashing Mavericks after their win.

Played in almost 130 countries, cricket is one popular sports played across the globe.  Just as the English colonized and left their language to grow in several places, in the same way they left cricket around to grow as a game of passion in various countries across the globe.

GB once quoted -This bat and ball game played by 22 flannelled fools being watched by 22,000 flannelled fools “. Although this quote has a negative connotation yet it has a hidden parody in it.

 A lot of people would not be interested in playing this game but would definitely enjoy watching it just for the amount of thrill, spectacle it provides. It’s is a game of uncertainties and swinging fortunes and that’s what makes it more watchable and enticing   . During a game a brilliant player may get out in the first over, another player may hit an unexpected boundary while on the other hand a whole team may get bundled out within a paltry score. All these only make the spectators wanting for more and biting their nails in anticipation to watch their favorite team win.

The cricket fever is felt throughout the year in the form of Premier Leagues, One day matches, Bi-lateral test series or just a magnanimous Tendulkar in flamboyant form scoring double centuries and creating records of mammoth statistics.

The most awaited season for the cricketing fraternity is the World cup carnival. It’s a quadrennial event that gives a platform for cricket playing nations all over the world to showcase their mastery over the game.   The last edition of world cup held in 2011 was won by India. It was a record of sorts as India was the first and only country to win a world cup in their home soil.  Never has any country done that before and it was a reason to be cheered by millions. The 2015 edition of world cup is on-going and the results are awaited.

As the fever has spread across the globe and there is talk of cricket in every nook and corner of the town, why not hold a mini tournament to boost the cricketing fan’s spirits.

With that thought in mind the fraternity of Arowana family enjoy beautiful game as well. Every Friday afternoon is spent by playing friendly cricket matches. This cricket tournament season Arowana organized a mini three day tournament, intra- company.

All interested members were divided into teams of four each with 11 players and an 8 over match. The Pool A teams were Smashing Mavericks and Challengers. Pool B teams were Rockstars and Himse. The qualifying teams from each Pools were Smashing Mavericks and Rockstars.

Playing among your colleagues has a different level of fun and enjoyment. There are no professional sports men here every team had their strengths and weakness and every team put up a fair fight.

There were fun moments, there were sorrowful moments, there were hilarious and painful ones too in the end only the joyful win remains as a lasting memory.

The final match was played between Team Smashing Mavericks and Rockstars an intense match with Smashing Mavericks smashing their win by 69 runs. Jithin Vatakara from design team was the Man of the Final Match and the man of Series with (108 runs through series)

Pool A man of the match was Sheikh Zakirulla and Pool B man of the match was Lokesh from Dot net team.

All said and done, but there is one detail which I would not like to miss... The women of the match. Each team had two ladies who played the match. The ladies were given one over to bat and one to bowl. If you wondered what a lady can do in a cricket match? our dear ones would have stunned you with their hit and run. One had a good partnership, one hit a four, one took a wicket but let me not forget to mention they were good fielders at the boundary of the ground.

The captains of every team were encouraging, hooting, shouting and screaming. Every player was hooted for, every four and six was cheered with tremendous enthusiasm, every wicket that fell had an oh no! and face palm. Every game won had somersaults, hi-fives, hugs and selfies.

All in all the umpires had a hard decision to take when a how is that ? was screamed. When a team argued against a run taken for a no ball most of all when a bowler could not help bowling just wide balls.

Three cheers! was a slogan that was shouted after Smashing Mavericks won the match. When the players were told that the trophy was a rolling one and must be returned to the administration to be show cased for the year. Every player took turns to take a Facebook profile picture of themselves holding the winning trophy.

A grand after party ended the three day tournament. Teams continue to practice to try their luck for the next year win. Our Arowana Dubai office colleagues are practicing hard for their upcoming cricket tournament. We are eagerly waiting to see which team wins the Dubai tournament.

As the cricket fever continues world wide and we are eagerly waiting to see if India wins today's match against West Indies. All of us are glued to our phones for a timely updates on the score. Cricket is a game played by 11 spirited sportsmen and watched by 11,000 thrilled supporting fans who love this game and find it contagious.

The best team won our tournament... may the best team win this year's World Cup.

Go Green with Green Cloud Computing

We are aware of this metaphorical based technology called ‘cloud’ which helps companies to host their services over the internet. Cloud allows companies to consume compute as a utility. It is similar to how a telephone or water department works; you consume all power from this single utility at a flexible price and not invest in your own power supply department.

Cloud Computing Data application centers consume voluptuous amounts of energy, this in turn contributes to increased operational costs. A less know fact data centers increase carbon emissions. Recent research shows that excluding the energy consumed by the cooling equipment for the server, a single 300-watt server running throughout a year can cost about $338, and can emit around 1,300 Kilos CO2. According to a McKinsey report, $11.5 billion was the total estimated energy bill for data centers in 2010.

If in the year 2010 1300 kilos of CO2 was produced then with increase use and expansion of cloud computing data usage the production of CO2 will increase by 3 fold. Network based cloud computing is rapidly expanding as an alternative to conventional office based computing. As cloud computing becomes more widespread, the energy consumption of the network and computing resources that underpin the cloud will grow. This is happening at a time when there is increasing attention being paid to the need to manage energy consumption across the entire information and communications technology (ICT) sector. While data center energy use has received much attention recently, there has been less attention paid to the energy consumption of the transmission and switching networks that are key to connecting users to the cloud.

With the increase in energy there is a rise in energy cost. The data centers need a more efficient energy that reduces the production of increased Carbon. Green cloud is a buzzword that refers to the potential environmental benefits that information technology (IT) services delivered over the Internet can offer society. The term combines the words green -- meaning environmentally friendly -- and cloud, the traditional symbol for the Internet and the shortened name for a type of service delivery model known as cloud computing.

Green cloud which reduces the operational cost and carbon footprints. Achieving green cloud computing is a complex and challenging task as the applications and data requirements are growing. This means that more servers and disks are required to carry out requests with given QoS (Quality of service) within the defined SLA (Service Level Agreement). Hence green cloud computing which not only saves energy but which also reduces operational cost is the need of the hour.

According to market research conducted by Pike Research, the wide-spread adoption of cloud computing could lead to a potential 38% reduction in worldwide data center energy expenditures by 2020. The savings would be primarily achieved by consolidating data centers and maximizing power usage efficiency (PUE), improving recycling efforts, lowering carbon and gas emissions and minimizing water usage in cooling the remaining centers.

Because so much of a data center’s energy expenditures support data storage, the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has promoted new technologies and architectures to help save energy. Advances in SAS drive technologies, automated data duplication, storage virtualization and storage convergence reduce the amount of physical storage a data center requires, which helps decrease its carbon footprint and lower operating expenditures (OPEX) and capital expenditures (CAPEX).

Information and communication technology (ICT) profoundly impacts on environment because of its large amount of CO2 emissions. In the past years, the research field of “green” and low power consumption networking infrastructures is of great importance for both service/network providers and equipment manufacturers. An emerging technology called cloud computing can increase the utilization and efficiency of hardware equipments. It can potentially reduce the global CO2 emission.

Because the color green is also associated with paper money, the label green cloud is sometimes used to describe the cost-efficiency of a cloud computing initiative.

References: http://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/definition/green-cloud

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5684759&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5684759

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5559320&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D5559320

http://www.compassitesinc.com/blogs/green-cloud-computing

Goodbye 2014, Say Hi 2015!

“Did you just say 365 days are over?” That means a year has come to an end! It felt like just yesterday we wished each other happy new year and now the year has come to an end.

Every day is a routine for each one of us, we only know a change in the day when we wrote a mail or looked at our calendars to see if our project deadlines had neared.  Each of us mourned and pinned on a Monday mornings and danced crazily on Friday afternoons to celebrate the beginning and the end of the week. Four weeks completed a month and soon 12 months have nearly closed a year.

Amidst these mundane working days, every employee at Arowana has had fun along the days of work. If we were to wind the grandfather’s clock of 2014 and take a look at all the activities that have taken place at Arowana. Then here is a gist of it:

Set a resolution target, what are we going to do this year? How many projects will go live? Some resolved to join Arowana toastmasters club, some resolved to learn new software and a few others decided to take up challenges. January brought with a year of challenges, expectations and resolution breaker as well. Arowana Bangalore decided to open the year with a corporate outing to Mango Mist. 

The month with 28 days. Count down began for project go lives from this month. Two Projects had gone live Emaar Retail development Phase II and Du Recon Application Development. The Amazing team award went to Sadiq and his team for their meticulous work.

The month when the ice begins to melt, mostly in countries where it snows. At Arowana the ice began to melt with the rigorous work and effort for CMMI appraisals. The heat began to rise; projects were lined up, project heads and team leads trained for vivas. It was like Arowana appearing for its 10^th board exam. We                                also celebrated International Women’s Day, leaving all the men in envy’s fury.

The summer heat had set in and so were the results of CMMI appraisal. All the members behind the CMMI process bit their nails in anxiousness as the results were announced, “Arowana has been appraised at CMMI Level 3.” It was a midsummer’s night dream come true. The team celebrated at “The Metro” (not the                              station, restaurant to be specific).

Jet Airways Staff travel Management system took its first flight, with the project go live. STMS was rebranded as DART. The creative team of Arowana decided to screen movies every Friday and they began their small initiative with le’ Club. Our most awaited self cum reporting manger’s appraisal results were out. This is the                                    month of actual yearly target  setter

Woh! 6 months already? What is new this month? NBAD development PADGRS project goes live and Lagarccon POS Project goes live. Arowana Toastmasters Club became a distinguished Toastmasters club, completed a year and nominated a new set of Role bearers. 

We all know that Women are 'Kitchen Queens', what we do not know is that women seldom get bored eating their own cooked meal. All the women of Arowana decided to stir their pots and pans together and cook for each other which they called ‘pot luck’.  Arowana has recognized a whole lot of talent in its resources. Each of these talents need to appreciated for their efforts in making the                              company better. A whole lot of employees were recognized and appreciated for                                    their work.

“Sare jahan se acha, hindustan hamaara”, Arowana celebrated Independence Day with a patriotic spirit. All the employees dressed in their best Ethnic attire. As the August rush ended and the monsoons set in OIC HRMS project went live. Design and Content team released the first corporate Newsletter of Arowana “Impressionist”.  Arowana Toastmasters club completed 50 meets.

The month of festivity and flowers. Onam, the harvesting festival of Kerala was celebrated in all grandeur.  TA team of Arowana celebrates the arrival of their 100^th candidate. 

Leaves fall the weather gets pleasant. 10 days of Dasara begins, Arowana celebrates Dasara with Ayudha pooja. This time Kenya Airways Staff Travel Management Development Phase II takes a flight. At the beginning of this month TALK committee began their month long cultural preparation for Kannada Rajyotsava. Arowana featured as one of the top 20 promising enterprise in CIO                                    review magazine. Arowana Toastmasters Club had their first area level contest.                                   Arowana won fastest five Award and Chetana from design team won Triple Crown                             award.

“Elladaru iru enthadaru iru endendigu nee kannadavaagiru” TALK committee put up a Cultural extravaganza on the occasion of Kannada Rajyothsava. Emaar development booking engine went live. The best Talefin edition Halloween was celebrated in a spooky manner. Arowana Dubai had their first pool table tournament. All the men who got envious in the month of March had their day as                                  Arowana Celebrated International Men’s day this year. Our website got good                                         visibility through SEO activities.

Time to pull out your warm clothes, deck the halls of Arowana. Close all those pending projects and wait for your secret Santa task. Arowana Dubai and Bangalore celebrated Christmas. Bid farewell to 2014 and began to prepare for a challenging new year.

Well!! This was Arowana’s 12 month long journey of 2014. A little bit of tension, A little bit of fun. Arowana enjoyed every bit of the old year and are ready to welcome the new. Let us see what is in store for our upcoming year 2015.

Wish you all a joyful and a prosperous New Year 2015.

A small gist of 2014 events

Oracle Tender Management Solutions

Organizations that desire to procure products or services generally try and get the best deal in the market. The more organized ones have empanelled vendors for almost all items the organization wants. They also will have a procurement policy and procedures to ensure that they get the best possible products at the right price from the market. This will enable them to provide in turn, to their customers the best possible products and services.

So what is tender management? In today’s competitive business world, many potential projects and services are put out to tender. That is numerous potential companies are provided with the opportunity to bid for the work.In their bids, they will describe how their company will solve a business problem, provide the service required or supply the goods requested. They will also need to provide a competitive price for this work.The process of designing and writing these proposals or tenders, complete with the competitive pricing, is called tender management, proposal management or bid management.

Managing tenders is a time consuming exercise and a lot of paper work is involved. Manual systems have some merit but are prone to errors and cannot deal with growing volumes of tenders to be managed by both buyers and sellers.A tender management system, either manual or electronic, is required to ensure an effective and efficient process for the buyer who is wishing to source products and services and a seller who bids supply to a company.

A tender management system manages the information content of   a tender being issued. The sourcing professional is often under pressure for time so it is important that the administrative tasks are streamlined and minimized. Securely managed tenders can be issued to selected bidders error free and on time. The content and structure and production of the bid submission and time and resource management for the bidder are managed and the record keeping and audit trail of changes by documenting all material in a repository.

A simple electronic tender management system that permits procurement organizations to manage the main activities in sourcing is a good place to start. It should at least be able to compile online tender documentation, allow the pre-qualifying of suppliers, be able to invite and receive bids. A really good feature is to have a function that allows internal messaging and provides collaboration tools.

There are standard bid management processes available to manage these activities and one published bid methodology. There are also some computerized systems that will manage the workflow of a tender management process but bid management is nowhere as formalized as project management.

This makes experience proposal writers with a history of winning highly sought after.

A tender or bid writer manages risk very well and is always organized and able to manage staff within a very highly charged environment.

Pre- qualification of suppliers is the first part of the system that provides business with one source of accurate, up to date and validated supplier information. Being better informed about the suppliers enables better decision making which in turn reduces risk, saves money and frees up time to focus on higher, value added procurement tasks.

Procurement Tendering Process is the second part of the system, which facilitates the corporate services to streamline and manage the procurement tenders in a centralized manner.

While the concept of tendering may seem daunting at first, it can be easily tackled by having a plan of ‘attack'. When becoming involved in a tendering process, it is important to understand your business' suitability for the project; whether your business' current situation will allow for you to tender, as well as your ability to manage the contract if you are successful in winning the tender. [i]

                                 

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References:

http://toolkit.smallbiz.nsw.gov.au/

http://www.arowanaconsulting.com/

http://www.purchasing-procurement-center.com/

http://www.etenderer.co.uk/

Bridging the Public Cloud Trust Deficit

The dynamicity of dataset in business makes it difficult to maintain the accuracy of data storage. The use of traditional business applications are daunting as business being dynamic the variations of hardware and software required to run these applications are complicated and expensive.

For those businesses which have been living under a rock cloud computing is not just a fad and a big hue and cry, it is the new face of IT. ‘Cloud’ is an umbrella term, but its usage is equally efficient.

CISCO global cloud index forecasts, by 2018, more than three quarters (78 percent) of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers; 22 percent will be processed by traditional data centers, which simply means that more number of businesses will shift to cloud computing.

With the constant change of your business needs, you would require a solution that offers you the possibility to scale resources up and down in real time based on your current needs. Cloud- based services ensure users can make use of additional services and resources immediately with provisioned and automatically deployed services.

India a blooming E-commerce market and maintaining a consistent online presence is an important characteristic for all companies on today’s market. In order to maintain a large online promotion boost some companies look at investing in new servers which include a whole team of experts to install, configure, test, run, secure, and update them. With Cloud computing a company does not have to invest in additional hardware, when the website can be hosted in cloud. A company’s dynamic servers can be cope with traffic during peak hours without the usage of extra resources. So a company pays only for the services and resources   they need eliminating CapEx costs and there is no tension of unused data either.

If you are looking out for an effective cloud product for collaborative working and a storage solution with a simple and a neat interface, Arowana is a recommended robust cloud solution. The USP of this solution is to provide its users a safe cloud service. As most companies find cloud an efficient solution, on the other hand there is a scepter of risk being involved.

Arowana believes that Public cloud deficit must be breeched, they allow you to store away data on any public cloud or storage systems without worrying about data security and privacy. You are allowed to take complete control of your digital assets irrespective of how or where you are storing your data.

It is important for every business to feel secure about their data. A lot of data requires privacy and control, secure means of transfer and storage therefore a reliable and a patient partner is what any company would require.

Any cloud computing enterprises reputation is built on providing secure, elastic and constantly available services to their customers. Individual companies would not find it efficient to invest thousands of pounds on IT hardware services, but as cloud users they benefit economically since cloud service provides invest a significant amount of money securing their servers, data centers and connections which in turn helps the end users.

Now companies can rein in IT costs, because the best thing about cloud computing is that the services can help companies be more responsive to market conditions. Depending on the need of a company cloud computing can do several different things in a secure way.

Since more companies have begun drifting towards cloud usage, the security will be ensured bridging the gap of risk factor and public deficit.

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STAFF TRAVEL SIMPLIFIED

My mother announced, “let us go to Mumbai this weekend, can you go and book the flight tickets tomorrow?” I calmly looked at her and opened my laptop, typed the names of a few booking sites checked the itinerary and voila! In a matter of 10 minutes the tickets were booked. I showed my mother a printed form. A surprised mother exclaimed “booking has become this easy?”

Well yes, booking has indeed become so easy. In the age of gadgets where everything is either at the click of a mouse or at the touch of a tab any transactions can be made in a fraction of a second.

With the e-commerce industry blooming day by day, all manual activities have become lazy and easy to do. All this is achieved by a set of back end coding done to the software.

As I sat at the airport waiting to catch my flight, I noticed a bunch of flight attendants giggling and checking in for duty. It is a fact that ground staff members of an airline get incentives in the form of free or discounted ticket claims based on their designations and grades. When it comes to business, it is not as easy as I booked a flight ticket. There are various claim procedures which an airline staff member has to follow to claim his duty travel ticket. This is a manual job for both the employer and employee.

In that case how about an easy booking system for an airline? This will reduce a lot of paper work, manual update errors, easier claim approvals and a better maintenance.

The concept of a staff travel management system is not new, there are several airlines using this software, which has been inbuilt. Arowana is not an airline company, it is a software development company which provides ready to use products that are customizable to suit your needs.

DART is one such product of Arowana, created for staff travel management systems. A product which has been used as a solution by three large clients, is software simplified for booking process.

DART means a quick movement, in a similar way Arowana’s product dart is a fast and easy tool for airline staff members, a product which can be access easily without hassles from anywhere at any point of time.

DART has various features developed under the same roof for different department purpose such as booking system for the staff, HR tracking and maintenance for the admin department and the approval sessions for senior and reporting officers. A staff member can avail a ticket for either duty purpose or for leisure travel. A claim can be made based on number of tickets available for a staff or based on the discounted rates.

A staff member has no major hassles while booking a ticket and can enjoy a wonderful weekend away from work. If booking sites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Goibibo have made my booking easy, fun and fast, in the similar way DART has made the booking of airline staff members simple and fast.

DART, an airline staff travel management system simplified.

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