Technology Due-Diligence is focused towards supporting an investment decision. The reviews and due-diligence is intended to address areas such as validating the technology claims, valuation of the technology, future potential (e.g. functional and load scalability) and future investment required to realize the roadmap/business plan. The clients are typically Investors or parties in an M&A discussion, looking for an independent assessment of the technology strength before making an investment decision.

Engagement Model & Methodology

The engagement is typically short duration, between 2 to 4 weeks. We work with the executive team to understand the business vision, roadmap and the specific concerns that need to be addressed during the review. Based on that, we outline the objectives and the process that we follow to conduct the reviews. The architecture, design and code artifacts are reviewed jointly with the engineering team. The observations, feedback and recommendations are documented and we conduct sessions with the team to explain the feedback and recommendations

Value Proposition

• Expert perspective: We combine multi-platform and technology expertise and business understanding with standards for architecture assessment such as ATAM to produce unbiased perspectives of architecture and development team capabilities
• Practitioner’s point of view: Unlike academic or theoretical reviews, our reviews reflect the realities of designing and implementing systems in the real world and are based on years if practical experience.

1. What is the performance characteristics of the system with respect to changing load patterns.
2. What are the factors that affect the performance (e.g. no of simultaneous users, volume of data etc.)
3. How much can the system scale before performance degrades, or it breaks down
4. What kind of resources are required to guarantee the performance expectations (e.g. memory, no of CPUs, no of servers etc.)

Engagement Model

These are typically short term engagements, lasting for 2-3 months. We use our own team to plan and conduct the audit, without needing too much involvement from the client’s engineering team. Typically, the client’s QA team may be involved in discussing and planning for the performance scenarios.

We do a static analysis by reviewing the design and code for any obvious performance bottlenecks. To do the runtime evaluation, we use our scenario based methodology. We identify the important factors that affect the system’s performance and isolate them into distinct scenarios. Each scenario is designed to vary one factor, while keeping the others constant. We design & develop the test drivers for running the scenarios, generate test/simulation data and add any instrumentation required to measure the performance indicators. As we run the scenarios, we gather the performance measures and analyze them. We document our observations, conclusions and recommendations and conduct working sessions with the team to explain the feedback and techniques for building high performance systems.

Value Proposition

• Systematic Approach – We use our own methodology to conduct the evaluation that is based on identifying and isolating performance impacting factors through the use of multiple scenarios.
• Tool & Technology Agnostic – Our approach is independent of the technology platform or profiling tool. We select the most suitable tools depending upon the scenarios.
• Asset Creation – The test drivers, data generators and scenario execution tools that we create are left behind as assets to the team who can continue to use them to do the evaluation in future.
• Code Review & Mentoring – We also review the code and design, and mentor the team in aspects related to building efficient & high performance systems

Engagement Model

These are typically short term engagements,that require around 2-3 months. We bring our own specialist programmers who work with the client’s developers during implementation. We design the architecture and create the low-level design for the specific problem at hand. We jointly establish the processes to be followed while developing the solution, for example, an agile process such as XP or Scrum, or any particular processes followed by the client. The development is done using a pair programming type metaphor, where the client’s engineers work with our programmers during the implementation cycle. We develop the first version of the project, and establish the future roadmap/evolution methods etc. for maintaining and enhancing the product. After that, the development is handed over to the client team and we support them while they take over the project.

Value Proposition

• Access to Expertise – Organizations get access to very skilled, expert programmers for a short duration. Getting access to such expertise is often difficult because it is rare, or not the core strength of the organization.
• Rapid Engineering – We leverage our own technology frameworks, open source components and the platform services to very rapidly design and implement the solution, which otherwise may take a much longer timeframe.
• Hands-on Training – During co-development, we train the client’s engineers on the specific skills required to develop & maintain the solution going ahead. This ensures that the client team develops the required skills.

Engagement Model

The engagement is typically over a 2-3 month timeframe. The starting point is a requirement specification created by the client team. We analyze the requirements, use methods such as our Supportability Framework to frame various quality attributes, design the architecture, document it and transfer the knowledge to the client’s engineering team.
The implementation of the system is done by client’s development team. We support the team during the implementation by conducting design and code reviews as well as clarifying doubts and questions. We setup an online project space for each client team with knowledge capture and collaboration tools such as wikis and forums.

Value Proposition

• Access to Architecture Expertise – Organizations get access to experienced software architects for the duration of the project, often enterprises struggle to recruit the architecture expertise.
• Complete System Architecture – We cover all aspects of architecture solution, platform, deployment and quality engineering and describe it from multiple viewpoints, ranging from software structure to deployment.
• Training – We train the team so that they can understand and implement the architecture without needing our involvement.
• Ready Assets – We reduce the time to develop and improve the quality of the architecture by using eady design frameworks and patterns, and reusable code components that we can use to accelerate the design and development.
• Platform Expertise – We have expertise in enterprise platforms such as .Net and J2EE and focus on leveraging best services of the platform to realize the software system.

Architecture and design is neither a process nor delivery related work that can be put into a manual, instead it tends to be deeply involved work from a conceptual and technical perspective. Doing architecture is in reality a problem solving exercise – it is not a methodology, or a set of algorithms. It is a craft which has to be learned on the job – and we invite you to join us on this journey. Whether you are an established architect, or aspiring to be one, we would like to hear from you.

At Canopus, we have already carved a niche for ourselves. We are redefining how Software Architecture is practiced in India, at par with the world. We work with latest standards, techniques and frameworks in this space, following the latest global trends and applying them and contributing back. Our work on Supportability Framework, which is codified experience of over a decade was recently published at the 9th Working IEEE/IFP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2011).

We are pushing the frontiers across a few selected areas. On one side of the spectrum is semantic web and cloud based systems and technologies, and on the other is real-time embedded systems. For example, we are working on very large scale collaborative content management system, designing the ontological foundation and working with technologies such as RDF/OWL, non-relational databases and SPARQL. In the cloud space, we worked with Amazon EC2, Salesforce.com and creating mashups with Google services. In real-time systems, we are working with data driven systems, real-time streaming, CEP and technologies such as OMG-DDS.

We firmly believe that it is important for us to reflect upon our experiences and give back to the scholastic community. We spend nearly one third of our time in pursuing research in the areas we are working, publishing our experiences and insights across various fora and teaching. We actively work with IIT Kanpur and IIIT Hyderabad and have conducted courses at these institutions.

We are currently inviting:

• Experienced Architects, with 14+ years of experience in designing and building large scale enterprise systems. You should have experience across multiple platforms such as Java, .Net, C++, LAMP stack and Drupal. Exposure to Semantic technologies, RDF/OWL and SPARQL, or cloud based systems will be an advantage. Experience with deployment architectures, hardware sizing, large scale database architectures (such as Oracle RAC) is desirable.

• Budding Architects, tech leads and senior engineers with 6-9 years of experience, aspiring to become a top-notch architect. You should be a polyglot programmer, with hands-on programming experience across platforms such as Java, .Net, C++ and PHP. You should be a super-expert in frameworks like N/Hibernate, LINQ, Spring/.Net and Web Services and you should understand UML like the back of your hand and be an expert in modeling.

At Canopus, all of us have a passion for teaching and an insatiable appetite for learning, and we expect you to possess the same. Write to us at invitations@canopusconsulting.com, along with your profile in PDF format.

It is not a workshop on social computing, or building social media etc (which is often seen as the most popular face of Web 3.0), nor is it a scholarly discussion of Semantics and RDF & Ontologies which is touted to be the power behind Web 3.0.

This workshop is instead intended to be a recipe, where collaborative computing, semantics, etc are ingredients and discusses the techniques of bringing them together to build juicy, new age enterprise applications.

Summary
Web 3.0 brings with itself a new wave of computing paradigms, predominantly around the collaborative computing & semantic technologies. At the face of it, these may seem divergent. Semantic techniques aim at making the machines understand the content & leverage it to achieve intelligent paradigms. Collaborative computing on the other hand puts the focus on people & communities in shaping the content, behavior and direction towards the outcome. Bringing the two together effectively is a challenge for enterprise architects today. From an architect’s point of view some questions that are critical to unravel this paradigm are:

• How can the concepts of semantic web & semantic technologies be applied to enterprise applications
• How relevant are social and collaborative computing paradigms to the enterprise
• What are the salient features that identify a Web 3.0 (& Web 3.0) application
• How can we use the web as a platform for developing and delivering new age applications
• Why are the technologies like PHP, MySQL, Drupal, Ruby on Rails gaining popularity in this paradigm

This two day workshop addresses the above questions & presents practical approaches of leveraging these concepts to build everyday enterprise applications. This workshop has a special focus on how to “THINK Web 3.0” and presents distilled experiences working with IIT Kanpur and leading educational organizations in India.

Career Profile

• 10 years of software architecture, development and R&D experience in India and with international customers
• CTO & Vice President of Engineering for Veloz Global Solutions Inc
• Lead Architect at Planetasia Research Center
• Hands-on developer and actively codes across various languages and technology platforms
• Expertise in large scale XML based systems, Transformation Engines, Workflow Based Computing, Distributed Systems Architecture & Performance engineering
• Experience in Healthcare, Education & Infrastructure Management domains
• Research pursuits in Semantic Computing, Business Intelligence and Cloud Computing
• Managed multiple delivery organizations and projects from conception to realization
• Speaker at prestigious conferences

Summary of Consulting Assignments

• Consulting Architect, Manipal Education, Bangalore
  • Designed and developed a large scale technology enabled learning platform
• Consulting Architect, ServiceMax Inc, California
  • Designed and developed optimization engine for multi-depot, time window based vehicle routing problem

Summary of Employment Experience

• CTO & Vice President of Engineering, Veloz Global Solutions Inc, (Oct’04 to Nov’09)
  • Instrumental in establishing the India R&D center for Veloz Global Solutions
  • Built a high performance engineering team
  • Managed and released multiple versions of the Veloz MCUBE^RT product
  • Managed, conceptualized and launched Veloz Healthcare practice
  • Architecture and design of MCUBE^RT platform
    • Technologies used – J2EE, ActiveMQ, SQL server
• Lead Architect, Planetasia Research Center (now Collabera) (Aug’2000-Oct’04):
  • Part of the prestigious Planetasia Research Center
  • Developed core intellectual property for the company
  • Important Projects:
    • Passive Optical Network Management product for a leading optical network provider in US
    • Large scale data aggregation platform with a high performance XML engine built on .Net
    • High performance workflow based environment in J2EE for automating port operations in Hong Kong
    • Complete ERP system for the IC manufacturing industry
  • High performance UniTransform^TM engine, customized for ACORD XML formats
  • Built a fault-tolerant distributed workflow engine

Summary of Teaching Experience

• Enterprise Application Management, Sep’06
  • Three-day workshop on enterprise application management techniques, tools and methodologies
• Upcoming Workshop on Unlocking the Semantic Web, Feb’10
  • Workshop on conceptualizing and building enterprise applications for web 3.0

Accomplishments

• Facilitated by the Prime Minister of India at the Republic Day Parade 1995, for academic excellence
• Led a team of students that successfully developed & demonstrated India’s first Super Conductor at Liquid Nitrogen temperatures in coordination with National Physical Laboratories, Delhi
• Led an astronomy expedition that conducted several experiments during the total solar eclipse, 1995, and demonstrated several successful experiments in astronomy and astrophotography at National and International platforms

Contact Me

Professor Bhushan Patwardhan Ph.D. Chief Academics – Manipal Education

“Your efforts during your consulting engagement with us at Veloz over 2004-2005 have led to the creation of a potentially powerful platform and technology and most importantly intellectual property of great value.”

Debashis Basu, Chairman and CEO Veloz Global Solutions

“As an organization, we greatly benefited from Mr. Pappu’s problem-solving capabilities, as well as his deep understanding and experience of computing science, programming and object technologies.”

Daniel Kornitzer President Transworld Payment Solutions Ltd (Bermuda)

“We look forward to your continuing association with us, your mentoring and guidance as we continue our journey over the next few years towards building the Veloz Enterprise Performance Mgt. product line.”

Ronald Chwang, Member of the Board, Veloz Global Solutions

“Certainly the work delivered was a masterpiece.”

K S Ganesan, CTO & VP Engineering, Microland Limited

“The architect mentoring program has been of great value in improving the design and communication skills of our architects. The program has delivered high end architecture and design techniques to help us develop multi-faceted architects. The participants have responded with enthusiasm.“

Krishna T Kumar Vice President – Corporate Delivery Unit Collabera, Inc

]]> http://www.canopusconsulting.com/index.php/client-testimonials/feed/ 0 http://www.canopusconsulting.com/index.php/collabera-inc/ http://www.canopusconsulting.com/index.php/collabera-inc/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:20:26 +0000 Satish http://canopusconsulting.com/canopusarchives2/?p=602

Canopus Consulting ran a one year architect mentoring program where we mentored a select set of individuals from Collabera to help them become effective architects. In this highly appreciated program we worked with different architecture teams from Collabera and used their projects as real-world examples for mentoring. We covered over 25 mentoring topics ranging from the design of high performance systems, documenting and communicating software architecture, methods of estimation, supportability transformation, building design platforms etc.

“We believe the architect mentoring program from Canopus Consulting has been of great value in improving the design and communication skills of our architects. The program has delivered high end architecture and design techniques to help us develop multi-faceted architects. The participants of the program have responded with enthusiasm.”

Krishna T Kumar
Vice President – Corporate Delivery Unit, Collabera, Inc.

Canopus Consulting conducted a four day architecture mentoring workshop on Product Lines and Systems Thinking for a selected group of software architects from Cognizant Technology Solutions in Bangalore. Topics covered included the design of stable systems, product lines and their context in services companies and using systems thinking to develop design platforms.

In the words of the workshop sponsor, a Vice-President from CTS: “the workshop has made a significant difference to the attendees and for the first time, one can see different people intellectually bonding at a technology level instead of just discussing transactions”.