Certified Scrum Master Stephen Forte will be presenting a half day seminar on Agile Development, Tools and Teams on Wednesday February 24th at the MCCIA in Pune. The event is brought to you free by e-Zest, MCCIA, and Telerik. Seats are limited, to sign up in advance, please email seminar@e-zest.net.

The Program Details

One of the most popular Agile project management and development methods, Scrum is starting to be adopted at major corporations and on very large projects. After an introduction to the basics of Scrum like: project planning and estimation, the Scrum Master, team, product owner and burn down, and of course the daily Scrum, Stephen (a certified Scrum Master) shows many real world applications of the methodology drawn from his own experience as a Scrum Master. Negotiating with the business, estimation and team dynamics are all discussed as well as how to use Scrum in small organizations, large enterprise environments and consulting environments. Stephen will also discuss using Scrum with virtual teams and an off-shoring environment. We’ll then take a look at the tools we will use for Agile development, including planning poker, unit testing, and much more. There will be plenty of time for Question and Answer. This seminar is a jump start for a certified scrum master exam. 

Who Should Attend 

Developers and development managers, especially those using the Microsoft .NET platform. 

Schedule and Agenda

The Speaker

Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik, a leading vendor in .NET components. He sits on the board of several start-ups including Triton Works and is also a certified scrum master. Prior he was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder of Corzen, Inc, a New York based provider of online market research data for Wall Street Firms. Corzen was acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007. Stephen is also the Microsoft Regional Director for the NY Metro region and speaks regularly at industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development including Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press). Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO of Zagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently is an MVP, INETA speaker and is the co-moderator and founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group. Stephen has an MBA from the City University of New York. Stephen currently lives in Hong Kong and will be returning to Mt. Everest again in September 2010. 

Final Details

Pune, MH, January 11, 2010 – e-Zest Solutions Ltd., an Outsourced Product Development and Enterprise Application Development Company, added another feather in its cap by achieving the (ISO) 9001:2008 certification, after an efficacious analysis of its quality systems. While e-Zest was previously ISO 9001:2000 compliant, this latest certification represents the enhanced commitment to quality and reliability that their customers expect from the company, and its many product offerings.

For e-Zest, the ISO 9001:2008 certification means that each step of the Software Product Development and Software Solution Process is tightly controlled and applied consistently. The ISO 9001:2008 maintains that a number of requirements need to be fulfilled in order to achieve customer satisfaction through qualitative products and services that meet customer expectations (also including a requirement for continual, or planned, improvement of the Quality Management System).

Elaborating on this achievement, AVP – Operations & Quality, e-Zest, Rajendra Babtiwale commented, “Our recent upgradation to ISO 9001:2008, without any non conformance is not an accident. It is a consequence of the culture that e-Zest is groomed with. The culture of ‘Customer, Process and People’ is inculcated in every team member of e-Zest, which has culminated in getting accredited to amended version of ISO with ease.”

“Our continuous focus on software excellence is evident through our ISO 9001:2008 certification. We place a high value on the quality of both, the software and the services, that we provide and this independent certification is proof of that commitment” says Vishant Sarodia, Quality Assurance Leader for e-Zest.

With its recent ISO 9001:2008 certification, e-Zest customers are the biggest winners. The certification represents affirmation by a third-party registrar that when opting for e-Zest services and solutions, the customer is assured of world-class quality and reliability.

About ISO 9001:2008

The ISO 9001:2008 Certification established by the International Standards Organization is a quality management system that sets a global standard for quality assurance processes. This certification also ensures that a company’s products and services are among the best in the world.

About e-Zest

e-Zest Solutions Ltd. (www.e-zest.net) is an Outsourced Product Development and Enterprise Application Development Company, having special expertise in Web 2.0, SOA and SaaS technologies. For over a decade, It has been serving clients in more than eighty industries, in four continents, with over 150 software professionals on board. e-Zest offers its services to ISVs/IT services, Healthcare, Finance, Manufacturing, Legal, Education, Sports, HR & Travel Business verticals with focus on CRM, BI and ERP solutions.

With dedicated Microsoft & Sun Competency Centers that focus on solutions and services based on Microsoft .NET (2.0/3.0/3.5) and Sun Java EE (2.0/5.0) respectively, e-Zest is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Sun Associate Partner and Oracle partner for BI solutions. e-Zest is also a member of various industry associations like NASSCOM, Indo-German Chamber of Commerce and MCCIA. It is a 100% export-oriented unit (EOU), registered with the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), and has two subsidiary offices viz. e-Zest (UK) Ltd. at London UK and e-Zest Inc. at Chicago, USA.

Recently, I have attended Hands On Lab for MS Exchange 2000. It's really amazing product with valuable enterprise features.

MS Exchange 2010 is part of new generation of Microsoft server technology built from the ground up to work on-premises and as an online service. Exchange 2010 introduces a new integrated e-mail archive and features to help reduce costs and improve the user experience.

Exchange 2010 will help organizations reduce costs, protect communications and delight e-mail users with capabilities to do the following:

•    Lower costs with more flexible deployment and management options. Exchange 2010 provides organizations with the same enterprise-grade capabilities whether deployed on-premises or as a service from Microsoft or partners — or as a mix of both. Further, for customers deploying the server, the new release simplifies the way organizations provide always-on communications and disaster recovery, meaning administrators spend less time managing their e-mail system. Exchange 2010 further improves performance running on lower-cost direct-attached storage, enabling organizations to dramatically reduce storage costs by up to 85 percent without sacrificing performance or reliability.

•    Protect information and meet compliance requirements with the new e-mail archive. As e-mail volume grows, companies must address increasing compliance, legal and e-discovery concerns Exchange 2010 introduces an integrated e-mail archive. The new solution makes it easier to store and query e-mail across the organization using the Exchange software that organizations already know and use.

•    Improved user productivity with the ultimate inbox experience
Exchange 2010, together with Microsoft Outlook 2010, will give people more control over their communications with features such as these:

-MailTips. Warn users before they commit an e-mail faux pas such as sending mail to large distribution groups, to recipients who are out of the office or to recipients outside the organization, helping protect against information leaks and reduce unnecessary e-mail messages.

-Voice Mail Preview. See text previews of voice mail directly in Outlook.
-Ignore Conversation. This e-mail “mute button” allows people to remove themselves from an irrelevant e-mail string, reducing unwanted e-mail and runaway reply-all threads.

-Conversation View. Combine related e-mail messages in a single conversation to reduce inbox clutter.

-Call Answering Rules. Create customized “Press 1 for …” call-routing menus with Exchange voice mail.

-Consistent Experience. Use Outlook on the PC, a mobile phone or a browser for the same experience with enhancements in Outlook Mobile and Outlook Web Access.

Exchange 2010, Provides a full e-mail, calendar and contacts solution, built-in information protection, built-in mobile e-mail and mobile device management, a full voice mail replacement, and a brand new archiving, retention and discovery solution.  Exchange administrators have seen their roles grow from simply providing great e-mail to providing an end-to-end communications solutions.

With the new high availability, disaster recovery and back up capabilities combined with the significant IO reduction a few very cool things become possible.  First, what used to take multiple applications to achieve mailbox resiliency becomes possible using just Exchange.  Second, a very large mailbox – even 10 gigs+ becomes very affordable and supportable.

From the improved OWA UI with integrated IM/presence, to conversation view in mobile, to EAS device management – every user can now have a rich mobile experience.

I recommend upgradation to all existing MS Exchange 2003 enterprises & also to enterprises considering implementation of email server technology on Windows platform. It's worth investment!

With the iPhone is leading its place in the consumer market, it is now also making inroads within enterprises. Especially with OS 3.0 iPhone have made great strides in adding security features geared specifically for the enterprise. Many believe that the iPhone will be the most adopted enterprise device in 2009-10. So the next time you see the iPhone/iPod touch around, it may be in the hands of your competitors, clients, partners, or colleagues.  iPhone is becoming hottest device for the mobile Enterprise & mobile workforce. Business users are actively embracing iPhone and bringing it into the mainstream enterprise.

After success of salesforce.com, Quickbooks, Zoho, Oracle on iPhone, most of the enterprise application / software developers (enterprise ISVs) are seriously planning & working on launching their products or its interfaces on iPhone. Early adopters are mostly Enterprise SaaS (Software As a Service)/On-Demand providers focusing on online CRM, PM, ERP, BI solutions.

Major Challenges of designing & developing iPhone Enterprise apps development are:

• Keeping your enterprise iPhone app extremely user-friendly. Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology.
• Keeping enterprise iPhone app agile to enable high performance accessibility by short listing key functionalities & making them only available on iPhone/iPod
• Ability to push software/application updates automatically
• Control to install and uninstall/logoff applications remotely
• Deciding right commercial model. Most of the companies are offering Enterprise iPhone Apps as a free download from Apple App store but charges additional monthly cost.

e-Zest actively help its Enterprise ISV customer's to make their products available on iPhone/iPod Touch. Interesting Enterprise apps on iPhone : http://www.infoworld.com/d/mobilize/enterprise-apps-iphone-879 & http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/iphone/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100911

RIA is already excelling in B2C environment with all sorts of applications being developed on it. Adobe AIR, Flex, JavaFX has contributed heavily to its popularity with their capability to animate, 3D UI with simple programming and lot many other things.

Enterprise applications’ RIA requirements are different than B2C applications. Enterprise RIA applications need complex graphics (charts, pie diagrams) and reports, large data sets, offline and online support through sync feature, high scalability, SOA and standards, platform independence, high performance, better security, and manageability with ease.

Curl is catering to enterprise RIA audience through its language built for text, graphics to computational logic. Curl has JIT compiler that compiles Curl applications to the native client hardware for fast runtime performance.

Curl offers better performance, better visualization, and low cost support. With proper development vendor enterprises can reap all its benefits.