Posts Tagged ‘Software Products’

No matter which type of computer operating system you own, it can be very confusing deciding what software you should purchase. Since updates continually take place, you definitely don’t want to spend money on something that is going to be changed in the near future. Software can also be quite expensive, so you want to make sure you are getting the best possible price.

At free software download websites, you can take advantage free software for your computer system. Many free software sites contain a wide variety of applications for computer system maintenance and security. For those of you who depend on your computer for more than entertainment, you know how vital that is. Other types of software available include billing, system recovery, and software to help you develop your website.

Since software is so expensive, why not check out what free software sites have to offer for free before you spend your money on it? Chances are you will find a variety of software products available that will work well for you.

One of the disadvantages of free software sites is the risk of spyware or adware. This problem is easily avoided by using sites such as CNET’s download dot com, which does not allow any software with adware or spyware. Many other sites also use a scanner system to alert you if a piece of software contains any adware, spyware, viruses, or other unwanted components.

Another possible disadvantage of free software is the lack of support available. This is something you should consider – if the software you need is crucial to you and you will need good support, you may need to buy the software. If you can make do with lesser levels of support, free software may be the best way to go, though. Many free applications do offer support via user forums and online help centers.

Find Utilities Software [http://www.net-matrix.com/Utilities-Software] and Education Software [http://www.net-matrix.com/Education-Software] at NetMatrix.

Author: Gabriel J. Adams
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Synopsis
The evolution of custom build software development goes back when the organizations felt the lack of software products addressing their customized needs and growth parameters. Most of the on the shelf products had ready made functionality as a result organizations at times find the need of localized environment for the employees and management to be in sync for using the software and deriving its core benefits to its maximum. The standardized features in ready made software were few leading to demand on customizable fields due to the business variations. Software Development Vendors has observed the business processes like Purchase, Sales, Manufacturing, Logistic and Finance and have standardized them to some extent. However if we go deeper into these functions they vary from business to business creating the need for custom build software.

Enterprises prefer customized software solutions, whereas SME’s and mid size Enterprises finds it’s easy to use on the self products as it doesn’t need any expertise on domain knowledge contribution, or skilled and dedicated resources to be part of the software development activity. Depending on the need, size and usability, organizations opt for Ready made or Custom Build software solutions to meet their IT needs.

The Start Point – Accessing Need!
The usual functioning in departments, sometimes are encountered with roadblocks hampering the growth. The reasons may range from the systems not being automated or the legacy system not being scalable to adapt to the growing and ever changing dynamic requirements. The departmental head raises the alarm to scrutinize the alternate way of maximizing the productivity leading to assessing the need to develop custom build application. The need factor is thoroughly evaluated giving rise to requisition for new custom build software. In this stage the internal requirements should be properly documented as major scope of work to build the custom build software matching organizations core objectives.

Vendor Evaluation – Technical and Commercial Feasibility Check
This stage draws many software vendors to put themselves to litmus test. The company invites several vendors and activates the evaluation cycle. Organizations have different evaluating criteria’s broadly classified as technical Feasibility and Commercial Feasibility. The vendor is asked to furnish his credentials and expertise in the project that needs to be awarded. His prior experience of delivering similar such deliverables acts as an added advantage in favour of the software vendor. The vendor is asked to demonstrate his expertise and is evaluated technically in terms of the technology suggested, hardware compatibility, Project Execution methodology, Team size and Skillsets and experience of the teams. Post the vendor is qualified technically he is tested for his commercial viability in terms of software cost, customization cost, and AMC and Support parameters. The recurring cost of AMC is always indented to be kept to as low as possible. The TCO (Total cost of Ownership) is taken as the benchmark evaluating parameter before finalizing on the project. Same Evaluating cycle is repeated with other vendors who are participating in the evaluating cycle.

Key Objectives behind tailor made Software:

1) The new software should be highly Localized
2) Use of Best Practices in terms of Industry are Mandatory for build software
3) Userfriendlyness and Escalation matrices should be part of new development
4) Pop ups and customized Dashboards should be key highlights for hawk eye view.
5) Upward scalability is needed to avoid further expense on buying new software later.

Talk to us: Mechsoft
Mechsoft has been in the business of custom build software’s for more than a decade. With Offices in Mumbai and Pune the organization has successfully catered to software development project in the overseas market like USA, UK and Thailand with deep presence in Indian Market. The custom build application across verticals like manufacturing, BFSI, IT and ITES, Real Estate, Hospitality and services has been the core forte. Backed up by pool of experienced functional and technical consultants, Mechsoft Management has always succeeded client’s expectations in terms of delivery and Innovative solutions.

Mechsoft as a Software development company gives absolute control over outsourced work to client: Mechsoft clients get enterprise EICMS suite to get detailed micro level tracking of projects. So why wait, Talk to us on +91 20 32606499 or reach us at contactus@mechsoftgroup.com You can visit us at www.mechsoftgroup.com

Author: Sakshi Thorat
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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In our business, we hear this question a lot. And the answer is easy: business complexity and market size. Perhaps the same question about business software for other industries has the same answer, but I will attempt to shed some light for the trucking business looking to purchase new software as to why the cost of trucking software seems high.

On the surface the trucking business sounds simple. Most people not in freight transportation might think to themselves “Trucking is easy. All you have to do is take something from one location to another. I do that every day in my car as I go to work, go to the store, take the kids where they need to go, etc.” And if all you had to do in the trucking business is move the freight, they would be correct. However, that is not the case.

Those of us in freight transportation know how many details must also be managed just to move that freight from A to B. Beginning with time scheduling to make sure there is enough time for your driving staff to accommodate the move. Then there are the Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations governing the legal parameters within which the truck driver and trucking business must operate. Then there are the high up-front costs to operate such as fuel, insurance, and maintenance, all totaling to approximately $60K/yr per truck. These details explain the complexity side of the answer.

A trucking company with 10 trucks and drivers has at least 5 times the details and twice the cash flow to manage as most other small business with the same staff size. The software designed to manage all of this must consider these trucking specific details, and manage the cash items with much more visibility and efficiency than standard business software. This level of software design doesn’t come cheap. Just ask those who have done it well, or better yet ask those who have purchased the cheaper trucking software products to hear how poorly those systems performed.

Now lets discuss the market side of the answer. While the trucking industry is a very large segment of our national economy, there are actually very few companies operating within it. According to the most recent US Census, approximately 100,000 truckload trucking companies exist in the US and another 25,000 in Canada. That’s a total market of about 125,000 potential customers. Of that total market, over half of the companies are really quite small, with fewer than 5 trucks. These would be your start-ups and ultra-small fleets either in growth mode or phasing out of the business, and usually do not have the cash or personnel to purchase specialized software. At the other end of the spectrum, there are the large fleets of 500 trucks plus, making up the top ten percent of the list. These multi-million dollar corporations have internal IT staff and spend tens to hundreds of thousands each year on technology. That leaves about 35% of the market, or less than 45,000 companies as a “mid-level” target, most of which are not convinced that software can help their trucking businesses. The best case scenario a software provider can hope for is that 0.5% or 250 companies in the mid-level group will actually purchase software in a given year. That number must be shared among all the companies with trucking software products competing for that business. These companies must sell their products to recoup the development costs, marketing costs, and still have something left over for profits from a very small buying market.

To make a comparison, QuickBooks, the #1 small business accounting package, sells roughly 2 million copies of their software each year. That’s nearly 1000 times the market size of the trucking software market. If that many companies purchased trucking software annually, then it too would only cost $200 per copy. Taking that example one step further, trucking software should cost 1000 times what QuickBooks cost, or $200,000 per copy. With that math, you can see that most trucking software on the market is currently offered much cheaper than QuickBooks. All it would take is for the companies buying trucking software to double to 500/yr and the price of software would drop.

To summarize, software customized for a single industry must accomplish two goals: manage the details in that industry, and be sold at profitable price point. Good trucking software that properly manages the details of the trucking industry, just can’t be offered for cheap. Always remember two things. Not only do you get what you pay for, but when you buy quality, you only cry once.

To find out more about Masslogics Trucking Software, visit our website or call our toll free number. We look forward to speaking with you about your trucking software needs.

http://www.masslogics.com

866.360.5506

Author: Ben R Evans
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Since there has been much technological advancement in the recent past, jobs that involve handling large chunks of information, keeping track of each and every detail in any field is not difficult anymore. With technological advancement, the invention of softwares makes everything simple for all tasks. These software can take care of everything, making you feel light and less burdened. Even people in the medical field like doctors or office assistants enjoy the facility of medical software. The most critical thing related to a doctor’s practice is the appointment book and the medical appointment scheduling software which helps you maintain smooth management of the organization.

Types of Medical Practice

Whether the doctor is a single practitioner or a part of a health organization, appointment medical scheduling software solves all problems related to management. A good and the most suitable software should be able to integrate and work in tandem with other software. Some software products are designed for huge organizations at numerous locations and some are meant for small practices.

Medical scheduling softwares

Medical scheduling software use color coding to indicate when exactly the doctor is available at the hospital. This software is so flexible that it allows to place the pictures of the patients. The doctors and the medical assistants can enjoy the ease of knowing their names and recognize them. These software products have appointment trackers for patients based on the doctors availability at that given point of time. The best part is that free demo is also provided so that the medical practitioner can run it and check it whether he is able to run it comfortably or not. It’s only after the trial that the practitioner needs to finalize the choice.

The software can also set the appointment exactly the way you want.

These software products have interesting features like information about referrals, payments and checkout and outstanding balances. You can even set up an appointment waiting list if it is mandatory. This can be integrated into the patients medical record which is part of the software. Let’s see how this happens.

First the medical appointment scheduling software are downloaded and then installed on the computer. The requirement needed is a voice modem which most computers have installed be default. The appointments are created by specifying the time duration and phone numbers along with the name of the patient. The time for making reminder calls also would need to be mentioned. When the time is almost reached, the appointment reminder system will call out the appointment. As soon as it detects the call has been answered, the software plays a message specifying the details and the person answering has the option of confirming or canceling it.

With such benefits, you should definitely opt for a medical appointment scheduling software.

Sandra Stammberger owns and operates http://www.medicalmanagementsoftware.net Medical Management Software

Author: Sandra Maria Stammberger
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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There are many places on the Internet where you can download software for free. Although most of the software is a trial version of the real software, there are some free programs that are excellent to use. The terrifying part about downloading free software is that you do not know the intention of the person that created it that allows it to be distributed for free. There are a few methods that a person can use to determine if the free software that they are downloading it is legitimate and legal, and at the same time is useful and not just a spyware or adware program. Here are a few tips on getting software downloads for free.

With thousands of web sites proclaiming that you can download their software for free, it is a little hard to believe everyone, especially with all of the problems that are usually associated with free software. The other problems that you can run into are legal problems by people that have pirated software and not paid for it. An example of this would be downloading a “free” affiliate management software, yet you are provided with the terms and conditions for downloading it.

More reputable companies that have literally millions of users, such as WordPress blogging software, are legitimate products that can be downloaded for free. It is worth a few minutes of your time to research products that you would want to download for free just to make sure that other people have done the same and have had positive results.

Once you have located a place to get software downloads for free, check to see if there is a form where you can ask questions about the various software products that are offered. If there is a blog or perhaps a newsletter, subscribe to it and see what the latest news is and the latest programs that have been uploaded to their database. If everything is current, then more than likely this company is legitimate as they are actually attempting to add value to their own site.

Finding software downloads for free is actually very fun and rewarding if you can locate software products that make your life easier and simpler. Although most of the web sites that you will encounter may be questionable in regard to why they are offering free downloads, by doing you are due diligence, you will find sources for free software that you can download without worrying about the consequences.

If you are looking for more software downloads for free [http://www.free-software-directory.com/software-downloads-for-free.html], please visit: [http://www.free-software-directory.com]

Author: Michael Kohler
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The standard answer to the QA testing interview question of: ‘What is the difference between verification and validation?’ is as follows:

Verification answers the question “Are we building this (software) product correctly?

Validation answers the question “Are we building the correct (software) product?

Whilst there are variations on the definitions of these two terms, within the broad software QA and testing fields, there is general consensus that verification refers to correctness whilst validation refers to the value of the final product.

Applying these general definitions to software testing, we see that the practical differences apply to the context and goals of the testing, rather than any difference in software testing methods or tools. The context and goals of ‘validating’ software is the end user or customer context whilst the context of software verification is ‘meets the specification’. Indeed many software products are built correctly, that is they meet standards and specifications, but they fail to meet the real end user (i.e. customer) requirements.

Ultimately validation is the focus of what the customer is paying for and whoever does validation represents the voice of the customer (or end user in the case of software applications developed for internal use). In practical terms this means separating the software quality control teams (i.e. test teams) into two broad groups, one that has intimate knowledge of the customer context of the finished product and another group that has strong knowledge of how a software product should be produced.

By way of example consider an accounting application that records general ledger bookings. The business requirements would be produced which outline the business (accounting) rules to be followed. From the business requirements a technical specification would be produced which would document the behavior (i.e. program specification) of the ‘to be’ delivered software.

In the above example software validation would include the initial walkthrough of the business requirements, with the business representatives, to ‘validate’ that the requirements do in fact reflect what the application is required to do for the business. When the final application has been developed any testing against the business requirements is also a validation activity. The walkthrough of the technical specification to make sure it contains all the functionality of the business requirements is a verification activity. Also the testing of the delivered software against the technical specification is also a verification activity.

In essence validation can only be done by people with knowledge of how the delivered software is going to be used whilst verification can be done by anyone who can read a specification (or standard) and determine if it is correct. Although we use the phrase ‘only’, this is not to demean the value of the verification team but rather to convey the fact that strictly speaking the act of verification only requires knowledge of standards and specifications.

In practical terms the degree of complexity of the business requirements will determine whether or not a specialized software validation team needs to exist. If there is considerable complexity and effort in understanding the business requirements then the business analyst would typically take on the role of software validation. In instances of high business complexity the analyst would specialize in given business areas in order to breakdown the problem domain.

Given a business facing team, to perform validation, a supporting team of software testers could be formed to perform verification. The advantages of splitting off the verification team, for large complicated projects, are concerned with efficiency (cost) and effectiveness (on communicating the business requirements to developers).

Many organizations will offshore the verification of a software application but keep the validation onshore (e. g. in the US) as this arrangement optimizes cost whilst respecting the value of communicating the true voice of the customer.

Regardless of how a QA team is organized, identifying validation and verification activities (together with skills and resources to optimally perform them) will yield higher degrees of productivity in the development of software that is truly fit for the intended purpose.

Further information on software verification and validation can be found at the software testing directory, which is manually maintained by the author of this article, Alex Goodyear.

Author: Alex Goodyear
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Today many companies as well as advertisers manage their personal in-house affiliate program with affiliate software. Nowadays, many kinds of such software is becoming popular. Many people use their individual affiliate programs. However, other companies choose to make use of the services of some other marketing team for the software. What any company is required to do is assessing the traffic log on their websites or the sales, which the marketers submit. This type of software is also known as affiliate management software as it aids in managing a particular affiliate program. People can select from two kinds of such software depending on the business and nature of the company as well as their budget.

One form of affiliate software is standalone software. When you run this software on any website, it helps in attracting the required traffic. You can do this without outsourcing the marketing to any other website. Another equally attractive service is the hosted service or the affiliate networking. Technically people refer it to as the hosted service. You can make payments for any affiliate network straightaway to the marketers or even to the network. That will then be distributed to the all those websites who got commission from a merchant.

In the last few years, you must have noticed that the marketing industry has taken a forward lunge and become more innovative and advanced. Online media advertising has turned out to be more effective and better than conventional offline marketing in some niches. With the help of online advertising, a company gets a more professional feel. It even appears more upbeat. Thus, online advertising can make a company seem more competitive. As a result of this, the software for an affiliate program is becoming better equipped and more efficient to adapt to the needs of the client in a better way. The clients too are specifying on more requirements in terms of performance and quality. These software products are made in such a manner that they can be coordinated with various marketing programs.

Marketers today are becoming much better and improved at their job every day thanks to software for affiliates. With the help of such software, online marketing has now reached it summit in these few years. Finding this type of software is not difficult and get one online is the best way to go about it.

By adding software to track the different affiliate memberships to your website, you can find one of the most successful ways of achieving more traffic as well as more sales. Choose software which is easy to install. With the help of smart templates as well as built-in integration wizards, modern affiliate software integrates easily into an existing website. That is the advantage of using modern day software to help track your affiliate memberships.

Affiliate software is useful in the modern world because it helps in managing as well as keeping a tab on the affiliate programs to any website. Different types of affiliate software are available today and they are very effective.

Steve Callen has been contributing to leading magazines for the past 10 years. He’s also an accredited researcher on the subject for leading research institutes in the US.

Author: Steve M Callen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process adopted and followed during the development of software. Also known as software life cycle and software process, there are quite a few stages for SDLC.

Requirements analysis

Being acquainted with the specific requirements of the desired software is the first important step. This requires skill and experience in software engineering so that the exact software is developed

Specification analysis

A software development process enters the specification stage once the deliverables are figured out. This is the stage when the software is properly described and written to understand. Specifications are most important for external interfaces that must remain stable.

Architectural analysis

Architecture refers to a conceptual representation of the software system. A well-defined architecture ensures that the software has all it needs to meet the requirements, and accommodate future requirements if any. The architecture step also addresses interfaces between the software system and other software products, as well as the underlying hardware or the host operating system.

Coding

The coding stage is a widely followed step in software development. Here the design is reduced to code for better understandability.

Testing

The coding stage is followed by the testing phase. This is the most important stage of any software development life cycle where extensive testing is done to ensure that coding done by different software developers work together in harmony.

An important part of software development is documentation. Many a times this step is overlooked, only to land up in problems whenever future maintenance and additions are a necessity. Meanwhile, many software projects are found to fail because of lack of training among end users. Ideally, training is an important part of the software development life cycle where end users have all their queries solved by the developers.

Earlier, the entire process of software development consisted only of a developer writing the code of software. However, today the scenario is quite big, complicated, and involves teams of architects, analysts, programmers, testers and users who work in tandem to create codes. This is the main reason why SDLC has become such important. In other words, without a well-defined development life cycle, software often have found to either fail, or lack performance.

Anirban Bhattacharya is a journalist in the field of offshore IT outsourcing as a whole and has written more than 250 articles for various websites. The ideas behind these articles have been drawn after performing comprehensive research on offshore IT outsourcing. To know more about offshore IT outsourcing and to have a look at other research based articles written by Anirban Bhattacharya please visit SynapseIndia offshore outsourcing services.

Author: Anirban Bhattacharya
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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What’s the single biggest cost you have as a Mainframe manager? Software licensing costs – the regular costs required to run software, and to get support if it breaks. This article gives ten ways to bring these costs down to earth.

Check you really need it.
Don’t laugh. This sounds obvious, but it’s only too easy for software that is no longer needed to slip through the cracks. For example, you may have some software that was originally needed for CICS applications that have since moved elsewhere.

You may also have software licensed for all z/OS images, but only used on one.

Check you really use it.
As your Mainframe workload changes over time, it’s only too easy for the use of a software product to quietly decline without Mainframe managers noticing. You may be paying thousands of dollars for a product that only a couple of people are actually using.

You need to regularly analyse the usage of your software, and schedule the removal of any software no longer needed.

Check you don’t have two products doing the same thing.
You may use all your software, but have two software products performing the same or similar function. You need to fully understanding your software inventory, and exactly how each product is used.

Investigate sub-capacity pricing.
Most software licensing charges are based on the size of each LPAR running that software – the MSU rating. You can find this value from the IBM website or a program to call IBM’s IWMQVS service.

A few years ago IBM introduced another option: Sub-Capacity Pricing. This is where your software licensing charges are based on your CPU usage, not on your LPAR size. So software running on a lesser-used LPAR will be cheaper. It also makes upgrades easier to justify as you don’t get hit by increased software charges with the larger processor.

IBM isn’t the only vendor offering Sub-Capacity Pricing. Other vendors such as BMC and CA are also jumping on the bandwagon.

Reorganise your LPARs.
Many sites now run at least one ‘capped’ LPAR, meaning that the CPU resources available to it are artificially capped using Workload Manager (WLM). Software that is charged on MSU rating is run in this capped LPAR, reducing costs.

Users of Sub-Capacity pricing may consider doing the opposite: consolidating LPARs. This reduces CPU consumption by reducing the overhead of running a z/OS image.

Investigate similar products.
Compare the price of competing products, and consider moving to cheaper ones. For example, SAS users may consider the SAS replacement product WPS by World Programming.

It’s true that in some cases moving to different products can be very difficult and expensive. However it isn’t necessarily so, and many vendors offer migration tools to ease this pain.

Tune your systems.
Tuning your systems reduces CPU usage (good for Sub-Capacity pricing users), and delays upgrades to larger processors.

Move off the Mainframe.
Mainframe CPU resources are expensive when compared with other platforms. So it may be worth considering migrating some of your workload. For example:

Software products such as Tachyon Assembler Workbench and Microfocus Mainframe Express allow you to perform Mainframe software development on Windows and UNIX platforms.
Some products such as Websphere Enterprise Service Bus and CICS Transaction Gateway daemon run on both z/OS and other platforms.

Some workloads may easily be moved to other platforms. SOA and related services now makes Mainframe services and data easier to access from other platforms.

Upgrade your Mainframe.
For the past couple of zSeries processor generations IBM has been providing a 10% MSU ‘discount’. In other words, a z10 processor will have an MSU rating that is around 10% lower than an equivalent z9 processor. This translates to software license cost savings.

Invest in Speciality Processors.
IBM now offers Speciality Processors such as the Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) and Application Assist Processor (zAAP). These special processors cannot do ‘normal’ work, but can be given specific work by normal Mainframe processors. This can improve the performance of Java applications and other subsystems such as DB2. But the interesting advantage is that the work done by these processors doesn’t count towards your CPU usage if you use Sub-Capacity Pricing.

Many new software products are also off-loading work onto these Speciality Processors, including software from BMC and CA.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that implementing any of these ten methods is a large project, and needs to be performed regularly. However you do have some tools to make this easier.

Usage Software. IBMs Tivoli License Compliance Manager (replacing Isogon SoftAudit for z/OS and Ubiquity Dorana) will automatically list all software installed, who uses it, and how often.
Security Software. Mainframe security software has facilities that can help you track software usage. For example, enabling RACF program control to log access to specific programs can tell you who is using a product, and how often.
IBM. IBM provide a free Sub-Capacity planning tool to help you plan for Sub Capacity licensing.
Software Vendors. Ask them for information about software products you already have, and alternatives they may have for your existing software.

Your Systems Programmer. You secret weapon in the fight against software licensing costs. Systems Programmers install and customise all your z/OS software, so they usually know what it does, and possibly who uses it. They can also setup monitoring to determine who is using which software and how often, and will be your scout when looking for alternative software products and freeware.

So there’s ten ways to reduce software licensing costs. Regularly committing time and resources to managing your software licenses will almost certainly pay big dividends to your Mainframe budget.

David Stephens is a System z Mainframe Technical Specialist with over 18 years experience. He is currently the Lead Systems Programmer with the Australian mainframe consulting company Longpela Expertise http://www.longpelaexpertise.com.au

Author: David Stephens
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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