Got a new domain for my Blog

Today I got time to register a domain name for my blog.

Yes from today(Sep 27th 2006) you can read my blog at http://www.wingsoffreedomxpress.com

See you there. 

Keep your Heart Healthy

This week being the World Heart week I was thinking to post something related to Heart. Lately in one or two years
I have noticed many young people died due to heart attack. Their age range was between 30-35. And if you see the
profiles most of them were from IT or Computers related background.Does this send any Signals?

Why do People at Young age get Heart attack?. Few main reasons

1. Being Workalcohlic. They spend most of the time at work and get stressed
2. Less Exercise. Life has become so busy these days that most of us hardly do any exercise
3. Not having full sleep. It is advised to have a normal heatl we should have minimum 8 hours
   of sleep if not atleast 7 hours.
4. Consumption of Excess Fat

Simple ways to keep your heart Healthy

1. Excerise well. Keep this in your schedule. You need to workout for minimum 30 minutes. Brisk Walking
   for 30 minutes is more than enough to keep your heart Healthy
2. Try to relax , donot spend all your time at office. Take a break from your work and spend time with your family,relatives and friends.
3. Reduce Fat Consumption and stick to a nutritious, well balanced diet
4. If you are a smoker try to stop it.Keep your heart clean and drug free

If we follow these simple steps we can keep our heart healthy and avoid heart attacks at Young age.

Company’s Right and Left Eye

Company’s Right and Left Eye

In today’s fast moving world Companies put in place a lot of strategies to emerge them as a market leader.There are two important things which is always considered when doing these strategies.

1. Customer Focus
2. People Focus

For clear vision we need both eyes, similarly for a company to be successful they should lay strategies which focuses on Customer’s and Associates of the Company. If both are taken care the rest of the things fall in place and you see your numbers rolling automatically.

All the companies try to do this but as time goes when the customer gives continuous business and as time fades the focus also fades down. The amount of focus given for the first project is not the same given for the nth project for that customer. As this happens the customer tends to look for second vendor and the companies loose their share of pie. Very few companies do continuous Client focus and Mining and those companies stay ahead of their competitors.

Second most important thing in strategy should be focused on associates of the company. They are the building blocks of the company and  if they are taken care to the fullest extent by all aspects (professionally and personally )then the productivity of the company goes high there by achieving Operational excellence. In today’s collaborative world it is more important for Corporate Management to make sure  that the associates feel that they own the company.

If these two are kept on top of all other strategies then the company can sit back and reap the benefits

Spiceworks - Free Network Management Software

We came across this IT Network management software which was very cool. This is a asset management S/W which scans whole of your network and displays the details of the machines and softwares in the network. This is installed locally on your server and the service scans the whole network and displays the details of the network. This can be used for a small network which contains upto 250 devices. This is totally free and web enabled and You get google Ad’s on the side(If you have internet connection in your network). To download visit http://spiceworks.com/

Resourcing - Challenge to Overcome

Believe me the biggest challenge that IT industry needs to overcome is the resourcing. Let it be Big or small startup the problem is the same . Today the demand is high but do we have enough resources to meet the demand. Answer might be yes but if we ask do you have quality resources Answer is no. Quite a few days I have been going through various resumes and believe me I have not seen a single resume which has impressed me looking at it first time and People do not realize the resume’s importance and create them for sake of it.

Where is the Quality going? Is it getting diluted because of the demand we have in the industry? Are the companies compromising with the quality they get  to meet their demands?

We are going through this challenge to find quality resources and we have decided not to compromise on quality at any cost. We are spending our time on weekend’s and evenings to do interviews and we are sure our nets will catch the right fish that we are looking at.

Setting up Concurrent Version Control System(CVSNT and TortoiseCVS)

I just became Techie today and wanted to setup a Concurrent Version system for my Company to manage the documents
My choice was for CVS as it is available free of cost,extensive features and ease of use. These steps will help the users to setup the CVS Server and Client systems in 10 minutes. I spent almost one whole day, was stuck up with two issues.

I installed the server on Windows XP professional machine and client also on Windows XP Environment.

1. Download the CVSNT server and install it on the server machine. Just follow the install
instructions and install with default settings. URL for download http://march-hare.com/cvspro/prods.asp?

Once you install restart the machine and all your services will be up and running.

2. Create a Repository in the server. Open the CVSNT Control Panel and goto Repository Configuration tab and Click Add.Specify the Location of the repository and give a name and Click Ok.

3. Goto Server Settings tab and in Run as User drop down choose the user who has admin rights.

4. In server settings tab you need to specify a Temporary folder. Specify the location of the directory and
make sure the directory is not a sub directory of your Root(ie your Repository)

5. Download the CVS client. There are lot of Clients available and I used TortoiseCVS.
URL to download http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/tortoisecvs/TortoiseCVS-1.8.27.exe

6. Install the CVS Client on the client desktops and make sure you restart the system so that
TortoiseCVS integrates with windows explorer.

7. To add a project(assume we have all documents under one top folder) first we need to add the
module.Goto to Top folder and right click and you will see CVS and when you scroll to CVS you will
see Make New Module.

8.In the window choose Protocol as Windows authentication(sspi) and enter your server name or IP,Port
which will be defaulted to 2401(if you have not changed) and Repository name which you have created in the
server.Give all these details and Click Ok. You should see a successful message.After this step you can add
individula files or folders.
In Step 8 if you face cvs_encrypt_wrap_input failed error message then you can create a registry value of type DWORD under HKCU\Software\TortoiseCVS named ‘Data Encryption’ and set it to 0 - this will cause TortoiseCVS to not instruct CVSNT to use encryption.(This is where I got stuck up and almsot spent half a day to figure this out). Thanks to Torsten Martinsen for his post at  http://search.gmane.org/?query=cvs_encrypt_wrap_input&author=&group=gmane.comp.version-control.cvs.tortoisecvs.user&sort=relevance&DEFAULTOP=and&%3E=Next&xP=cvs.encrypt.wrap.input.&xFILTERS=Gcomp.version-control.cvs.tortoisecvs.user—A
9. Now you are set to add,update and checkout documents.

Procedure involved to Start a Company (Private Limited) in India

This information will be useful for those who are looking in a nutshell the steps involved to start a Private Limited company in India 

1. First and foremost identify the Directors of the Company. Minimum of two directors need to present and Maximum of 8 is allowed.
2. All Directors should have DIN (Directors Identification Number). If you do not have one you can apply DIN online
at www.mca.gov.in. FAQ on DIN http://www.mca.gov.in/MinistryWebsite/dca/faq/faq1.html
Documents required for DIN

A. Identity Proof (Any one of the following)
PAN Card
Driving License
Passport
Voter ID Card
Others (to be specified)
B. Residence Proof (Any one of the following)
Driving License
Passport
Voter ID Card
Telephone Bill
Ration Card
Electricity Bill
Bank Statement
Others (to be specified)

3. Once you have got your DIN then you need to apply for Company name. You need to go with 5-6 names in the order which you prefer.If the name is not available then they go to the next one in the order you have provided.

4. You need to apply online for the name availability . You need to Fill in Form 1A. Forms are avilable at this
location.http://www2.mca.gov.in/MinistryWebsite/dca/downloadeforms/eformTemplates/1030-Form1A_help.zip

5. Once you have got your name approved you have to apply for the Incorporation of Company. For this you
will have to prepare Memorandum of Association which will detail what the company;s operations the first list of directors
who are going the be in the board need to be defined in this document. This should be applied along with Form 1
http://www2.mca.gov.in/MinistryWebsite/dca/downloadeforms/eformTemplates/1022-Form1_help.zip. Ocne this has been approved make atleast 10-15 copies of your Certificate of Incorporation and Memorandum of Association and have it in a booklet form.

6. Once your company has been incorporated you can open a Current account in any of the leading banks
for carrying out your operations. You will need to submit a copy of Certificate of Incorporation and Memorandum of Association along with Borad resolution to open the bank account.

7. Thenyou need to apply for TAN and PAN for the Company
https://tin.tin.nsdl.com/pan/form49A.html
https://tin.tin.nsdl.com/tan/form49B.html

8. If your services are in Software related area you can apply for STPI license which will give you certain benefits
like Company need not pay tax for 5 years, there will be no import or expurty duty levied on software/hardware,
You will get office spaces at lower rates at STPI units. These are few of the benefits of becoming an STPI member.

All this you can do on your own or you can outsource these to professional auditor. We did it through Auditor and it took almost three weeks (Upto Step 7 excluding STPI) and all charges(excluding sTPI) would approximately cost you Rs.25,000.

I am not sure how much it would cost if you do it on your own. I read in one of the blogs that in Delhi the whole
process was completed in 30 minutes after the e-Governance was launched.

Good Luck and If you need more information or any guidance drop in a mail.
 

The Road Less traveled

We college buddies(Senthil Kumar usually called as PK, and myself (Kumaran)) Alumni of College of Engineering Guindy Anna University, Chennai, of 1995-1999 batch decided to travel our rest of the journey in the Road less traveled. Yes we have decided to become entrepreneurs. We decided to start IT Outsourcing Company where we had core expertise. Many appreciated our decision of starting a company of our own. 

But we know it is not an easy job and for the next few years it is going to be challenge to get the company established well and build the brand for our company. We were ready to face the challenge and we resigned from highly paid corporate jobs to start our journey. 

We had a big struggle in identifying the right name for the company. We came up with several names but most of the names already existed and finally we decided to name it as kCube Technology Solutions , but unfortunately during registraion we did not get this name and we renamed it as kCube Consultancy Services Private Limted. kCube stands for three K’s one k for Knowledge and the next K for Kumar (of Senthil) and next K of Kumaran (my name) 

kCube Consultancy Services Private Limited was officially registered on August 9th 2006 by Registrar of Companies, Tamil Nadu Chennai. 

We launched our first version of our corporate web site on August 14th 2006. www.kcubeconsulting.com is the registered address on Internet space. 

We have started the journey and from day one we are enjoying the journey!!!!