Fundamentals of Project Management

A project can simply be defined as any set of activities which used to achieve a per-determine objective with in a specific time. Key features of a project is that they are

1. Unique one to another
2. Have a specific objective
3. Includes specific resource allocation
4. Specific time frame for complication

But who is a project manager? A project manager is a person who drives above process into a real practice; but in order to achieve the predetermined project objectives, what should be done by a project manager?

Business change analysis

This is also known as Business analysis, which is the methodology of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems. Solutions often include a systems development component, but may also consist of process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy development.

Critical path analysis

This involves identifying what are the critical activities that must be addressed and given top priority in order to achieve project objectives. Most popular method used in this is PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Technique).

Sample Diagram:
Using these values, critical path can determines the longest path of planned activities to the end of the project, and the earliest and latest that each activity can start and finish without making the project longer. This process determines which activities are “critical” (i.e., on the longest path) and which have “total float” (i.e., can be delayed without making the project longer). A critical path is the sequence of project network activities which add up to the longest overall duration. This means the shortest time possible to complete the project. Any delay of an activity on the critical path directly impacts the planned project completion date (i.e. there is no float on the critical path). A project can have several, parallel, near critical paths. An additional parallel path through the network with the total durations shorter than the critical path is called a sub-critical or non-critical path.

Develop a Work Break down Structure (WBS)

The work breakdown structure provides a common framework for the natural development of the overall planning and control of a contract and is the basis for dividing work into definable increments from which the statement of work can be developed and technical, schedule, cost, and labor hour reporting can be established.

Sample Diagram:

Implementation

Having identified the critical factors and work break down structure project manager can start the implementations. This is the most stress full period of the project for a project manager. However if things got planned well in advance and if the project managers equipped with ideal resources on right time this will not be a difficult task to accomplish.

A gap analysis has to be carried out in as an evaluation method of the work that has been carried out in order to find out what are the issues had during the implementation and their impact on the project objectives.  By doing so, project manager will be able to figure out what were the expected results and what they actually achieved. Main aim of this is to develop contingency plans in more strategic manner and also to use the experiences as learning when laying out future project plans.

In conclusion, this is just a few stages of project management, and there can be many more phases/process involved depending on the scope of the project and the risk aptitude of the project stakeholders.

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Author: Ranidu Gunarathna

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Cryptology – Symmetric Encryption

Symmetric Encryption has a long history. People have been using this even before digitized data came into place. Symmetric encryption consists of a key and an algorithm to help generate cipher text. You might be wondering what an algorithm is and what the association between the key and the algorithm is. This can be explained easily if we go back in history and learn how Romans encrypted their messages by using “Caesar Cipher”. So let us go back in time and see how a simple algorithm helped them to securely transfer messages.

Caesar cipher also known as Caesar’s code or Caesar’s Cipher is a simple and widely known encryption. It works by replacing the plain Text from a letter shifted with a fixed number that was taken from the alphabet or the character map. And for this encryption we can say the Key is the Number and the algorithm is sifting the letter.

Example :
Let’s assume Key : 3 Algorithm : Sift “Key” Front and get character.
The way this works is it uses the Key and gets the letter from the plain text and sifts with the key and replaces it with the character. This will be then turned in the cipher text.

By doing that we can generate the bellow character table to get for cipher text.

When you send a message “HELLO” using the cipher table we can replace the characters with the cipher characters and you will get a meaningless word like this “KHPPR”. This is a basic encryption and an easy one. Because this is a simple encryption anybody can break the encryption. When decrypting the cipher text this is reversed so they can get the readable plain text.

By using Caesar’s cipher One-Time Pad was born, and this is a special case of a Caesar cipher where the key length is the same as the plain text length. And also key is generated randomly and it will be destroyed after using it. If the key is properly protected and the key is used not more than once One-Time Pad is an unbreakable code & perfect encryption that ever existed.

So why doesn’t everybody use One-Time Pad?
1. Key size is the same length as the plain text.
2. Key distribution is difficult because the key is generated randomly.
3. To decrypt they have to use the same key otherwise this won’t work.

Because of this not everyone uses One-Time Pad. This is widely used among spies to send classified information.

The most famous symmetric encryption currently is Data Encryption Standards (DES).The Data Encryption standards was created by the United States government to protect sensitive data. The DES works by combining substitution(s) operations such as Caesar cipher and transposition (P) by simply moving them around instead of changing them, into the Feistel function (F). The Feistel function is combination between the substitution and the transposition 1.1 figure illustrates the operation. Feistel function(F box) is one part of a DES encryption. And this is repeated 16 times to complete the encryption.

Even though DES uses a 56-bit key, providing 72,057,594,037,927,936 options, it’s proven to be vulnerable. You might wonder why we need to learn these if they are breakable encryption. This is because these concepts have been used to make stronger encryption by using Data Standard encryption – remember longer the key the harder to break. So by doing DES three times there is much stronger encryption called 3DES. And also the longer the key is more the computing power needed to encrypt and decrypt the message.

I hope you have gained a basic knowledge of symmetric encryption. The first thing you have to keep in mind is not to share the key and key should be changed from time to time. And also it is better to have symmetric encryption between server to server than giving the key to a public user. Because If the key is exposed your data is not secure anymore. And main problem of the symmetric encryption is key distribution, this is the biggest challenge that we face till today. We will see on the next article how Asymmetric encryption overcame the problem.

As a summary of this article, symmetric encryption shares one key to encrypt and decrypt. And the step taken to scramble the letters is an algorithm. The key can be a number or collections of characters that help the algorithm to scramble and get the cipher text. Also the longer the key the more it is secure (in theory). Symmetric encryption’s main disadvantage is the key distribution.

If you have any queries please use the comment box below so that I can answer your queries.

Author: Lasitha Senanayake

Posted in Data, Tech | Tagged | 2 Comments

HSDPA Technology

What is HSDPA?
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is also known as High-Speed Downlink Protocol Access. HSDPA is a protocol for mobile telephones. It is a third-generation (3G) High-Speed Packet Access technology designed to speed up network capacity and data transmission rate of cellular phones.

High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) technology are evolutions of the UMTS standard that enhances the capabilities of 3G by enabling higher data transfer rates. Releases 5 and 6 of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) will enable downlink transfer speeds up to 14.4 Mbps and uplink transfer rates of up to 5.76 Mbps.

In order to get users to upgrade their handsets and pay a premium for higher-speed services, network operators will need to invent and market new, compelling services. HSDPA and HSUPA can help them do just this. Higher data rates will enable more complex applications and a richer end user experience. 3GPP Releases 5 and 6 also specify a wide range of speeds that device manufacturers can take advantage of to provide different services at different rates.

HSDPA is associated with various Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks. These include the Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications.
Currently, HSDPA can support speeds ranging from 1.8 Mbps to 14.4 Mbps. While this is not very fast compared to various wired networks, it is a major milestone considering the speed available to cellular technology.

Although HSDPA is mostly identified with its downlink speeds, it also has the ability to greatly expand transfer capacity. HSDPA networks can transfer up to 30 GB of data monthly and as much as 300 minutes of cellular television viewing and 1000 minutes of talk time.

Current HSDPA Technology
At present, there are 100 HSDPA-capable networks operating in 54 countries worldwide. A large number of these networks offer 3.6 Mbps downlink speeds. However, more networks are beginning to switch to faster 7.2 Mbps downlink speeds. Only a number of networks presently offer a full 14.4 Mbps speed
HSDPA competes with a rival format, the Evolution Data Optimized (EVDO) provided by Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) cellular providers.

HSDPA Capable Devices

Aside from having a cellular plan with a company offering HSDPA access, the only requirement for logging into the HSDPA network is having a cellular device capable of using the technology. A current total of 171 handset models and other mobile devices can use an HSDPA network. Some of these HSDPA capable devices are famous cellular brand and model names such as the Nokia N95, the Palm Treo 750, and the Motorola RAZR as well as many of its various versions.
In addition to the various HSDPA handsets in the market, several HSDPA notebooks and laptops with access to the data network are available. Several major computer manufacturers including Dell, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, Siemens, Fujitsu, Panasonic and Lenovo offer these products.

Future HSDPA Technology
Although 14.4 Mbps is the current cap on downlink speed over HSDPA, networks are preparing to upgrade to a new type of HSDPA system. Dubbed as HSPA Evolved, this new HSDPA technology is designed to increase download speeds to 42 Mbps upon release, with the possibility of reaching greater speed values in the future.

Author: Achira Liyanage
http://www.achira.info

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Green computing – An Overview

Green computing or Green IT refers to the usage of computing resources more efficiently while maintaining or increasing overall performance. Green computing practices include implementation of energy-efficient central processing units (CPUs), servers and peripherals, as well as reducing the recourse consumption and proper disposal of electronic waste (e-waste). Even though the term began to circulate widely in the recent years, its origin dates back to two decades ago. In 1991, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) of the United Sates Introduced the Green Lights program to promote energy-efficient lighting. In the following 1992 the agency introduced the Energy Star Program.

Harmon and Auseklis (2009) list the following trends driving the adoption of green computing practices.
1. The rapid growth of the Internet
2. Increasing equipment power density
3. Increasing cooling requirements
4. Increasing energy costs
5. Restrictions on energy supply and access
6. Low server utilization rates
7. Growing awareness of IT’s impact on the environment

Techopedia lists four complimentary approaches needs to be implemented to promote green computing.
• Green Use
• Green Disposal
• Green Design
• Green Manufacturing

According to the EPA, in the United States, 2.6 million tons of e-waste was generated in 2005, totaling 1.4 of the overall discards. Gartner has estimated that 133,000 personal computers are discarded by US homes and businesses each day. Additionally, 130 million cell phones are retired annually. In 2009 Gartner, an information technology research and advisory firm, identified that in 2010 green computing was amongst the top 10 technological trends that were strategic to the most companies. Gartner noted that it enhances the businesses green credentials.


Works Cited

  1. Definition Green Computing. (2007, March). Retrieved January 30, 2012, from techtarget.com: http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/green-computing
  2. Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010. (2009, October 10). Retrieved January 30, 2011, from gartner.com: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1210613
  3. Green Computing. (n.d.). Retrieved January 30, 2012, from Techopedia: http://www.techopedia.com/definition/14753/green-computing
  4. Harmon, R. R., & Auseklis, N. (2009). Sustainable IT Services: Assessing the Impact of Green Computing Practices. Retrieved January 30, 2012, from www.ischool.pitt.edu: http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~dtipper/3350/GreenICT1.pdf
  5. Schneider Electric. (n.d.). Go Green, Save Green. Retrieved January 30, 2012, from softchoice.com: http://m.softchoice.com/files/pdf/brands/apc/SLAT-7DCQ5J_R0_EN.pdf

Author: Chanaka Lekamge

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Service Chain & Value Generation in IT

Value generation (increasing value to the end customer/user) has become one of the key ingredients for the success of a business. As we know, even though Michael Porter came up with a theory called Generic Value chain , it has certain limitations when it comes to service organizations such as banking and software development, as the Generic Value chain was developed by focusing on manufacturing entities.
As a solution, a team of researchers from Harvard University (James L. Heskett, Thomas Jones, Gary Loveman, W. Earl Sasser, and Leonard Schlesinger), came up with a concept called Service chain in their publication The Service Profit Chain in early 90’s to explain how service organizations can create more value to their customers.
Service chain has following framework:

  • Profitability and Revenue Growth – Most companies strive towards profit and growth
  • Customer loyalty – Companies with profit and growth are characterized by a large number of loyal customers and that execute well against the 3 Rs: retention, repeat business, and referrals
  • Customer satisfaction – Loyal customers result from satisfied customers by having service designed and delivered to meet targeted customer needs
  • External Service Value – Satisfaction depends on the company’s ability to create value for the customer through a well defined service concept
  • Employee retention – Value is created by loyal employees
  • Employee productivity – Satisfied and loyal employees are far more productive
  • Employee satisfaction – Employee loyalty is driven by employee satisfaction
  • Internal service quality – To engage employees and ensure employee satisfaction the company has to build up the best possible internal quality through effective workplace design, job design, employee selection and development, employee rewards and recognition, and tools for serving customers.

The frame work has following link:

As illustrated, a software development company’s profitability and growth has a major impact on the organization’s leadership. Having better leadership in an organization drives a better internal quality where it drives better amount of employee satisfaction. As a result, the employees are satisfied and they obviously becomes more loyal to the organization. This will clearly improve the employee productivity level.
Having better internal quality leads to generate more value to customers as the organization’s employees are the key contact points for their customers. With the better value customers get from such employees, customers become more satisfied when in the long run they become loyal customers who do not leave the organization because of competition. This will help the organization to retain their customers in long run, which leads to a sustainable growth.

Visit www.bizbingo.blogspot.com for more information.

Author: Ranidu Gunarathna

Posted in Duo Software | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Importance of Adopting Green Policies & Strategies

The ultimate millennium goal of sustainable development pared with environment factors has been challenging for mankind for centuries. The quest to find resources for present human needs while preserving for next generation has been indeed a struggle. With the increased influence of Information Technology to the business, consumer patterns and general life created new energy need.  It’s estimated about 900 million to 1 billion computers running now and estimated it will increase to 2 billion by the year 2014.

The energy need of computers for approximately 1 billion running computers is so great, that an emphasis on adopting green IT strategies towards energy consumption while increasing the efficiency of computing is very desirable. Green IT can be described as  ”the study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of computers, servers, and associated subsystems—such as monitors, printers, storage devices, and networking and communications systems—efficiently and effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment.”

There are number of Green IT approaches

  • Algorithmic Efficiency- Algorithmic has a wide impact on carbon requirement of a computer. Computing functionality is entirely based on the effectiveness and efficiency of trade offs. For an example even average Google search require co2 carbon dioxide, this is due to the algorithmic impact.
  • Effective Resource allocations - The energy requirement when routing data at the network traffic level. Very effective algorithmic approaches can reduce the energy consumption quite significantly. Simply, these improved algorithms reduce the number of computing cycles needed for allocation of network traffic.
  • Virtualization- This is comprised of working several hardware units as one virtually. With virtualization, system administrators are able to combine several physical drives into one powerful unit.
  • Terminal servers -  central operating in the server, client processing is handled by the server end and the consumption is handled at the server. Examples of terminal server software include Terminal Services for Windows and the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) for the Linux operating system.
  • Power management- Open standard features such as The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI allows an operating system to directly control the power-saving aspects of hardware. These automatically turn off components such as monitors and hard drives after set periods of inactivity. In addition, a system may hibernate, where most components (including the CPU and the system RAM) are turned off.
  • Operating system support- several years ago the most popular operating system Windows doesn’t support many features to limit the PC power consumption. But with power management feature since the Windows 95, such as monitor low power state, hibernate and many other power management features enabled preserving energy at operating system level.
  • Hardware units (Power supply, Storage, Video Card)-Typically with the increase of technology manufacturers are able to produce more effective devices with less energy needs. The power requirements of these electronic devices significantly reduce and has impact on the green energy and harness of the IT.

Although there are number of approaches with wide potential and significant importance to the industry, the most common approach is selecting software & hardware which supports power management features such as virtualizations, operating systems, utilizing carbon neutral products to minimize the impact on carbon consumption of an organizations. It is utterly important to adopt long term green policies & strategies towards betterment of our next generation.

Author: Buddi Tharanga

www.budditharanga.blogspot.com

www.techwavemagazine.com

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Cryptography and why we need it today

Cryptography is the science of using mathematics to encrypt and decrypt data .This technique has a long history, since 1900 BC this was used and improved by many civilizations. Cryptography is an interesting subject and has afascinating history. From the beginning, humans have tried many ways to secure their data and they have came up with many different techniques. As time moved on,cryptography has developed more and more to secure data. Today’s cryptology become more personalized for each organization as data can be access anywhere and any place because of the internet.

As we are living in a digitized world all your information is being transferred by wire or wireless. This information can be accessed easily because our transport layer opened to all. Because of this, your information is not secure and it can be read by anyone knows how to. Because of this digital cryptography plays a big role in this digital century. On March 2000 – President of the United States Bill Clinton says “he doesn’t use e-mail to communicate with his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, at college because he doesn’t think the medium is secure”. This is because pop email is insecure and data can be read by sniffing the network because the message transmitted is in plain text. This is because when email architecture was created, it was without taking data security to their mind. Even if we implement encryption, good cryptologists can crack the encryption and this can be used to read the data, so cryptology is a growing and evolving every day.

As hackers are after data they learn the technology inside out and this makes them more knowledgeable. Even the kids today can use the tools hackers use to crack passwords, sniff data & to amend data. By now hackers can read information transmitting through SSL / HTTPS thought to be secure (SSL / HTTPS has been hacked refer) .Though the SSL layer has proved to be vulnerable, many of the banks, social media sites, payment gateways use them.

In the coming blog posts I will post on this area the tips and tricks the ways you can secure data so your information will be secured. This will help the applications you build are more secure so that the people use them can really rely on your product.


Encryption and Decryption.

Data can be understood by without any special measures are called plaintext or clear text. And because it can be read, the method of making it unreadable is called Encryption. This cryptic text is called cipher text. And method of getting the “cipher text” to readable plaintext is Decryption. Shown in the below figure 1.1illustrates the process.

To get the cipher text people use different kinds of algorithms to make it unreadable. There are so many types of encryptions being used around the world today. The main two types of methods used widely used are.

  1. Symmetric – in which encryption and decryption keys are the same.
  2. Asymmetric – in which encryption and decryption keys are different.

Author: Lasitha Senanayake

Posted in Software Development, Tech | Tagged | 7 Comments

Reusing WCF Service across several Applications

Windows Communication Foundation services need to be accessed through different type of client applications. However, those clients need different types of bindings. As an example, web based clients need the WCF service to be a web Http binding and a windows application needs it as a basic Http binding.

Let us see how we can achieve this -

The Problem:
When we are developing our WCF services, we first develop it to access through a silver light application. But a problem occurs when there a new Android development starts and it also needs to access the same WCF service we gave to Silver light application. The Android application needs a JSON enable binding and silver light client needs a basic binding.

The Solution:
Let’s develop a sample WCF service.
I write a service that has one test method and in the interface convert it to JSON too:

Let’s edit the web configuration file using service configuration editor.
First, we need to add the service .so go to the new service and add the test service.
Under the service select the end point link:

Let’s create the end point with the web Http binding to support a JOSN Client. In here, it needs to give a address too.

Then what we need to do is add another endpoint with a different binding.

We add two different end points to one service.
Now the Configuration file looks like this:

Now we have to check this service works for different clients.
First, let’s check if it works for normal basic http binding client using WCF client tool:

Ok its working fine! Now let’s check if it is working for web client.
Run the service in the browser and use the address related to the web http binding client and see if it’s working for web client:

Like this we can give any type of binding to the service and access the same WCF service even from a Client like PHP.

Author: Chinthaka Thiyambarawatte

Posted in Software Development, Tech | 3 Comments

Duo Software powers Nexmedia, to serve its customers with a state-of-the-art Subscriber Management System.

Duo Software, a leading provider of subscriber management systems (SMS) has joined hands with Nexmedia, powering their Latest Operation to support their pay-tv business, with Duo Software solutions.

Mr. David Goldstein, the President Commissioner of Nexmedia stated that Duo Software has provided excellent support to us and will be a key factor in our future growth.

Nexmedia was formed as a subsidiary of the Emtek Group to develop the business of Pay TV in Indonesia. The main driver for the formation of Nexmedia is to influence upon the convergence of Technology, Multimedia, and Telecommunication (TMT) to offer differentiated services to the customers.

The Chief Executive Officer of Duo Software (Pvt) Ltd, Mr. Muhunthan Canagey added:

“We are indeed proud to be partnered with Nexmedia as the solutions provider for their entire BSS/OSS platform. The most interesting part is that Duo Solution has proved its ability to run across platforms servicing operator using different technology for market offerings. This solution will not only bring about another successful story of implementation and partnership but empowers Duo Software to bring about greater understanding of diverse cultures and to see truly the ability of the solution meeting Nexmedia expectations. We wish the Management and team at Nexmedia all the very best on its successful launch of the Pay TV service in Indonesia.”

Duo Software’s billing platform is the world’s fastest billing engines for the pay-tv industry, which generates one million bills in less than eighteen minutes, is definitely a key advantage for Nexmedia in ensuring revenue assurance. The system has been built on n-tier architecture, and is highly scalable, supporting an unlimited subscriber base, and a flexible module plug-in engine that allows for new/future modules to be easily plug-in to the system. The system also supports business activities such as activation, adding/changing channels and voucher top ups and prepaid services through short messages, Interactive Voice Response System, and the World Wide Web.

Duo Software’s latest achievement in making the company carbon neutral, will definitely add value to NEXMEDIA’s operations as well as their new brand Nexmedia, providing the ability to serve their customers with consideration for the environment.

For Further Information :
Ajeewan Aru
E : Ajeewan.a@duosoftware.com

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Duo Software powers Parabola Orange TV to serve its customer with the state-of-the-art subscriber and customer care life cycle management system.

Duo Software takes much pride in joining hands with Mega Media to support their Pay TV operation, which will cater to entire Indonesia, under the brand name Parabola Orange TV.

Duo Software is one of the leading providers of subscriber management & billing and customer care & life cycle management systems in the world. Duo Software markets its products under the brand names DuoSubscribe and DuoContact which have been currently implemented at Mega Media.

P.T. Mega Media is a pay TV operator, using state of the art direct to home, satellite technology, to provide sophisticated television experience to the Indonesian market.

Mega Media is using Duo Subscribes prepaid billing functionality, which supports physical vouchers such as scratch cards, as well as e- vouchers to top up subscriber accounts.

Mr. Supeno the chief executive officer of Mega Media explains

“ Duo Software is known for its flexible design philosophy, that suite Parabola Orange TV needs. It is also end to end solution for us”.

The chief executive officer of Duo Software (Pvt) Ltd, Mr. Muhunthan Cangey added

““Having worked with Parabola Orange TV right from the inception has enabled Duo Software’s consulting group to implement best practices and the best engineered process. Features that will ensure high levels of service for customer has been one of the key success of Duo Software Applications, and these strategies has now been brought to Parabola Orange TV. All at Duo Software wish the Management and the team at Parabola Orange TV all the very best on the successful launch of the DTH service in Indonesia”.

Duo Software, possessing one of the world’s fastest billing engines for the pay-tv industry, which generates ten million bills in less than eighteen minutes, is definitely a key advantage for Mega Media in serving their customers promptly and efficiently, while ensuring the smooth flow of operations.

  • The system has been built on n-tier architecture, and is highly scalable, supporting an unlimited subscriber base, proving the robustness of the system.
  • The system provides state of the art technologies such as activation, adding ala carte channels and voucher top ups through short messages.
  • Duo Subscribes fully automated disconnection module, with the scheduling option, is also a plus point which will assist Mega Media in identifying their debtors, and taking necessary action.
  • The system is capable of translating the language for convenience of the staff at Mega Media, thus ensuring efficient and effective services to their customers.

In addition Duo Subscribe is packaged with Inventory Management, Voucher Management and Credit Management functionalities.

  • Duo Subscribe Voucher Management system would ensure that Mega media would be ready to handle a very high volume of voucher transactions, to cater to the aggressively growing Indonesian Pay-TV market.
  • Duo Software’s comprehensive contact centre Duo Contact, with call, voice mail and fax integrations is an added feature, which will complete the customer care life cycle, ensuring that customers are served better.
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