I am happy to announce that from now on CI accepts Credit card payments for its products & services.

Clients can now pay using their VISA, MASTER CARD, AMEX, DINNERS, DISCOVERY & even e-check.

Hope this gives a lot of flexibility to our clients.

In case you need any information about this, please contact me @ 201 256 6533.

Red Five Labs announcing .NET CF for Symbian OS and an application built using Visual Studio for .NET can run on Symbian device. Cool! Isn’t it.

What I understand from the Tech-Ed online video,

• Build using Visual Studio and target Symbian
• VS going to give a Symbian application install builder and even debug using a device (no simulator now)
• Support to SQL Lite , no SQL CE or Mobile
• Support to web services and other controls like tree view etc.
• Now support to Nokia 60 series devices

This means, our Mobile SalesPerson, Mobile Inventory Suite will be soon ready for Symbian – we had soo many requests in the past for a Symbian compatibility.

This is a great opportunity for VS .NET developers to write apps for Symbian, previously we had to use C++ or Java, some tough tools – it was hard to learn & write.

I really excited with this news and would love to see my first “Hello world!” program using VS runs on Symbian device.

Here is the video interview: http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=1649ce84-8ca3-44a6-a168-ec92aee3bfd8

We have completed the registration process for Sage Insights 2009 and will be available in booth # : 758.

Looking forward to see you there.

Mobile Salesperson :  

As part of the Sage GOLD partner program, we had to send one of our product to Sage and get it tested and certified.

The testing was done be VeriTest, a LionBridge company.

I had showed them the demo and given the build. I had few sleepless nights, I should confess. Basically they are No.1 testing company in US. I know their process and testing would be stringent.

Finally I got the news from them after few days that MSP satisfies all the necessary requirement to be a Sage Certified product. WoW!

After all, me and Nirmala involved with MSP product right from the day 1, from the concept to product, promoting during Sage conferences, hundreds or thousands of demo, and supporting many clients. It’s been 5 years, we have been living the product.

I am ENJOYING every moment of this achievement. Thanks to my team, my boss & my clients.

Going back to 2001, immediately after attending the viva-voce for my M C A (Master of Computer Applications) project, I joined CI. In fact I got the offer well before my viva-voce mainly due to the project success – I did that @ CI. After going thru’ my project, Mr.Ramani offered me the job.

I joined as a Project Trainee in 2001, then I got a double promotion and became Senior Software Engineer – Grade 1…..then Grade 2, Systems Engineer, Sr. Systems Engineer, Associate Consultant and now “Consultant”. Now more frequently referred as “Growth Manager”.

Its been a journey with challenges, experiments, freedom and joy.

Looking back, what I have achieved in the 7 years, 3 top things,
1. Mobile SalesPerson – our product
2. Team size from 2 to 20
3. Positioned my team in both Mobile & QB segments

May be my targets are too far away from my site now, but still I want to take a pause and enjoy this moment.

At this point I have to thank many people who have helped me, especially few in the list below.

• Nirmala
• Mahadevan
• Manick
• Sundararaman
• Venkatapathy
• Prabakar
• Srinivasan
• Rajakumar
• Ravishankar
• Thilak
• Ramani & Sarada without whom I wouldn’t have this opportunity

I thank all my fellow CIIANs, my team and my ex. team mates.

Hope I can achieve more in the coming years with all your wishes.

My collegues Prasad, Krish will be there. Stop by the CI.COM booth (#819) to say hello.

Things you can get from them:

• Products demo like Mobile SalesPerson, Mobile Inventory Suite
• Discuss any custom project in Sage Pro, Sage Accpac ERP, Act!, Peachtree, BusinessVision
• Discuss any any other .NET project requirements
• A nice compliment too !

So don’t miss this oppurtunity to meet our people.

No idea what we’re talking about? Check out the Sage Software Insights site.

If you are using SQL CE or SQL Mobile, this SQLite is an alternate. This is from OPEN SOURCE !
This can also be used in Desktops, apart from PDA apps.

I am yet to explore the DB, so I have no comment as of now. I need to do some R&D.

Thanks to Kishore who sent this information.

Basically I want to start this as an experiment basis, so that I can talk to my management to get budget later on.

Interstingly I found many tools in “open source” and after several tries I got dotproject for Project Managment and Time sheet & Mantis for Issue logging and tracking.

Onething I had problem was, as windows user I have been addicted to the installers and never bothered about configuring anything. But when it comes to open source, I found it difficult, lot of them are still manual. You have to read the readme.doc carefully, install and configure. That’s the challenge I had.

But today when I look back, both these tools are really wonderful and I had never looked at some other tools after that because of the comfort. Both these tools are used extensively in my team.

Start ups, small & medium companies can definitly use tools like this and do better production & management.

dotproject – www.dotproject.com
Mantis – www.mantisbt.org

I have one more – Forum. Will write about that shortly.