Being a successful consultant

January 21st, 2012

Not that I yet am. But many have asked me what it takes to be a successful consultant. And my answer would be same if one were an employee.

A consultant is an enabler. Our success lies in the ones that we have enabled. So making our customers successful (not ‘happy’) should be our ONLY objective. In order to do so, we need to understand their business, their success criteria, their limitations, their teams and even their boss/sponsors. With the above, we should put ourselves in their shoes and do what we think it takes to be successful.

When is a product done?

January 17th, 2012

We have been working on StudiDesk for a time. It has been continually evolving. But as a sponsor of the product, I’m not sure when the product is done. In fact I’m not even sure what ‘done’ means.

Licensing Models

January 15th, 2012

Most licensing models make sense to the manufacturer or publisher – not always to the customer. Lets take Microsoft MSDN licensing as an example – its a recurring annual charge for all (or most) of the dev software from Microsoft. The logic is that if I’d end up using 2-3 of those software anyways, it might be cheaper to just buy all of it. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet. But I CAN’T eat all that anyways. So while its easier for the restaurant or Microsoft in this case to just bundle it all together to make the decision easier, that’s not really how the customers would want it.

Understanding Software Development

January 12th, 2012

A lot of us are technical folks and we love solving technical problems. When we realize that we can scale our solution using a messaging solutions like Service Broker, we are kicked. But unfortunately the reality is a bit different.

In reality, getting a great solution is just the tip of the iceberg. The solution needs to be understood by the team working on it, the testing team needs to figure out how to test the solution, the admin team needs to figure out how to automatically configure it for multiple environments, the IT team needs to figure out how to manage it and all this would probably need to work with multiple versions (1.x to 1.y) and bug-fix patches all together.

Asthrasoft Roadmap

January 9th, 2012

It’s always great to read about successful businesses. But it would also be nice to read about businesses that are trying to be be successful (without yet knowing if they will make it or note). That, I guess, is where Asthrasoft is at.

Social?

January 7th, 2012

Social networking is so great. But I have a very confused identity online. There is a my personal identity, there is my public identity, there is the asthrasoft identity and a studidesk identity. I have not built up any of these over time. There are just so many facets of me. And they are all over – twitter, facebook, wordpress.com blogs, youtube,Microsoft Live services and other services like Blip.tv, HootSuite and a host of others I don’t even remember any longer.

Organizing the blog

January 3rd, 2012

One of my biggest pains has been the decision on how to organize the blog. I realize that in the current world, it does not matter. No one really looks at how your blog is organized – they search for stuff and once they hit your blog the look at the tags and archives. But the way the blog is organized matters to ME. For me to know and plan on what to write on, I need it to be organized.

Making IT Work

January 2nd, 2012

This is my 7th attempt at blogging. I have been a very bad and intermittent blogger. I know that I have a ton of interesting things – both around software and technology in general, but also around life. But when I have all the thoughts – that’s not when I can blog about it. I have realized that I find it tough to SIT down and blog about things. This is one more and hopefully and more sustained effort at blogging.

Asthrasoft Times

Making IT Count