In A huge relief to the IT industry, software companies have been allowed to enjoy benefits of the software technology parks of India (STPI) scheme for another year.

Indian government has declared extension of tax concessions under Section 10A of the Income Tax Act to March 2010. The scheme was to expire in March 2009 under the sunset clause provided in the scheme. On an average, IT companies would have a revenue benefit of at least 5-7% (on the effective tax rate) because of this extension. The IT companies specially small & medium companies have been demanding the extension. In fact, it was on the top of their Budget 2008 wishlist.

This decision would certainly help the industry, especially the Small and Medium IT companies, which have been under tremendous pressure due to the rupee appreciation, wage inflation and several other factors.

I am sure that Web 2.0 is a jargon that is living its own place and fame for now. It is no more mere marketing gimmick that web entrepreneurs were selling to its investors and venture capitalists.

In the first place some small players came with their own creative applications for Web 2.0. I will call this Web 2.0A age or rather Web 2.0.1 beta. Such applications then got popularity among users and created a news in web world. That was public version of Web 2.0.1. Some big players of web ignored what was happening around then and some took serious note and started building Web 2.0 applications. Very few intelligently bought the potential competition and started working on integration activities. This was version Web 2.0.2.

With some biggies participating in this with user base increasing day by day everybody jumped on creating and integrating web applications. Seamless movement from one application to other with single login was the mantra with 'unified user experience' tag. This was version Web 2.0.3.

So far every activity happening was limited to coding or development part of the web game. Recently IBM lauched new blade servers that are specially designed for Web 2.0 kind of web applications where traffic is heavy and computing power requirement is high. This I call a version Web 2.0.4. And I suppose the world is now ready for upgraded version of web i.e. Web 3.0.

Interesting  post from Gordon Ritter founder of Emergence Capital Partners on future of Software as a Service(SaaS) on Venturebeat.   

Yesterday night Microsoft launched its highly awaited 'tech preview' version of Live Mesh which is its latest platform. This new platform will link devices to the internet through Windows software. By the end of the year Microsoft Live will support Mac systems and mobile phones for connecting to internet.

Microsoft Live Mesh will enable variety of devices to be connected such as game consoles, set-top boxes, auto PCs, and more. With this newer platform Microsoft perceives the web as "the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh." The web has spread its wings but still people consider desktop or laptop as their personal asset. The thought has not grown beyond that. With Live Mesh Microsoft is trying to create mesh as a personal asset that will have your devices, desktop, laptop, gaming consoles all interconnected. Once your mesh recognizes device connected to it as your personal then its configuration and personalization settings, its applications and their own settings, and the data it carries will be seamlessly available and synchronized across your mesh of devices.

The URL for Windows Live Mesh is https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx. Sign in to experience what it has to offer.

Let's keep our finger crossed to hear more on this integration platform from Microsoft. 

Forrester research recently released vendor strategy prediction stating enterprise spending on Web 2.0 ie. Enterprise 2.0  technologies will grow strongly over the next five years, reaching $4.6 billion globally by 2013, with social networking, mashups, and RSS capturing the greatest share.

Many blogger rushed to post their opinion on this research & these numbers. Most of them think these numbers are absurd, I strongly feel these number are irrelevant here. What is more important is trend that indicates steady & strong growth in adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies. Also important observation is over the period Enterprise 2.0 will become integral part of enterprise collaboration software/ initiatives &  it will disappear into the fabric of the enterprise.

This research is definitely a great value for software vendors' who wish to focus enterprise 2.0 technologies & allied offerings. It focuses on "Can Software Firms Make Money Selling Enterprise Web 2.0 Tools?" & scope of vendor offerings while segmenting down its market(s). Most of important comment is 'Vendors' web 2.0 skills & delivery models will outlive their Products'. Its real big clue for e-Zest to further enhance its enterprise 2.0 competencies & to its enterprise 2.0 clients as well.

Every another week, new social network is launched by innovative entrepreneurs. This makes really challenging for social application entrepreneurs & companies  who wish to develop  & implement their social applications across the all popular social networks. Previously there was no choice of generic social application development platform. You need to almost re-engineer social application to make it work on another social platform eg. MySpace/Bebo if its originally developed to work on Facebook. Almost all top social networking sites/plaform have their own proprietary API platform to support social application development & integration.

But now OpenSocial is coming to rescue. OpenSocial is recently launched by Google & it defines a common API for social application development across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers/social entrepreneurs can create their social applications that can access all OpenSocial supported social network's friends and update feeds.

Another major challenge faced by social app entrepreneurs & companies is cost of bandwidth & server requirements. Many social apps which became very successful instantly due to viral marketing failed to stay-up due to lack of proper bandwidth & application hosting environment. Right now Amazon EC2 webservices & similar services are of assistance, still there is a considerable cost & technical management required.

OpenSocial is built upon Google gadgets technology framework. With the Google Gadget Editor and a simple key/value API, complete social applications can be build without separate application hosting i.e. no server at all. OpenSocial also provide option to host social application on social app owner's independent hosting servers. In both cases, Google's gadget caching technology provide breather for bandwidth demands  in case social application suddenly become a  huge success & faces sudden surge in traffic.

OpenSocial looks like will help to tackle both major challenges (multiple application platform & cost involved in bandwidth/hosting) faced by social application developers & entrepreneurs. Still we need to wait for some time to judge its success, as its still in beta & not supported by few key social networking platforms like facebook.com.

ReadWriteWeb today published post on Top 10 traits of Rockstar software engineers highlighting following required skill-set with relevant reference books for acquiring those skills for software engineers 

1. Loves To Code
2. Gets Things Done
3. Continuously Refactors Code
4. Uses Design Patterns
5. Writes Tests
6. Leverages Existing Code
7. Focuses on Usability
8. Writes Maintainable Code
9. Can Code in Any Language
10. Knows Basic Computer Science

It was great to see that most of the highlighted skill-set is already part of e-Zest team culture.

At e-Zest we strongly believe that apart from highlighted technical skills,which are must haves for building scalable & high-performance solutions, supporting agile enterprises,customer & business facing skills of software engineers with commitment to customer success are essential requirements for becoming "Rockstar Software Engineer @e-Zest"       

Increasing popularity of Amazons elastic computing cloud, recent launch of Google Docs offline platform developed on Google Gears and leveraging cloud computing is generating lot of interest in this space.

Cloud computing is a subset of grid computing that includes utility computing and other approaches to the use of shared computing resources. Cloud computing is an alternative to having local servers or personal devices handling users' applications.

Once cloud computing approach start maturing, we can see lot of opportunities coming up in offline data access and Rich Internet applications (RIA) platforms. Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Gears based Dojo Toolkit ,  Virtualization along with Platform as a services(PaaS) are the technologies worth watching.   

Swedish startup Xcerion providing Operating System as a Service( Internet OS) platform based on cloud computing is generating lot of buzz in this area.  

If you are a technology startup, ISV or established technology or business services provider, Gartner strategic technology predictions for 2008 needs to be closely watched.  Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.

Out of 10 strategic technologies, I think following will have major opportunities for software technology startups

• Business Process Modeling:  Agile business processes are key for agile business enterprises.Business process modeling solutions with complementary technologies such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) will drive demand for business process modeling solutions.
• Metadata Management: Enterprise information management(EIM) solutions with data-driven and service oriented architectures will be key drivers in metadata management space. In addition data mining, cleansing and data integration of master data presents lot of product opportunities. 
• Virtualization: Virtualization and automation technologies in integration will offer tremendous possibilities in solution portability, hardware and software scalability along with application delivery models.     
• Mashup & Composite Apps: Web mashups are becoming dominant model for the creation of composite enterprise applications and these technologies will have significant impact on enterprise application architecture strategy and business process integration. 
• Web Platform & SaaS: Software as a service (SaaS) is already becoming a viable option in more markets and we must look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.
• Social Software: We can expect significant consolidation in Web 2.0 space with consumer applications delivering robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise customers. Social software technologies will be increasingly integrated within enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.

These opportunities in conjunction with each other and other proven fully-matured technologies could drive lot of future product innovations in business processes and consumer Internet space.

Day was bright and sunny with a wicket that suits both batsman and bowlers. Time was 12:30 pm when two captains went to the field and toss was won by e-Zest. e-Zest selected batting and was quietly sitting in the pavilion. They know exactly about the challenge laying in front.

Soon the field was set for the match and umpires were on the field. Then comes the turn of the two openers to take guard. Ashish was opening the innings with Binoy all set on opposite side.

First five balls of the over were quietly judged by Ashish. But then came the storm on the ground with Ashish hitting a huge six with a dashing pull on the last ball of the first over. Binoy on the other hand was quietly taking singles and doubles to move the score board ticking. Ashish in his knock of 28 had hit four glorious sixes on consecutive overs to set a perfect start of e-Zest innings. On the fall of Ashish’s wicket Sandeep Patil accompanied Binoy with his small but quick knock of 7 runs. Binoy on the other hand was playing a perfect sheet anchor role with doubles, singles and occasional boundaries to move the score board in the right pace. Sandeep Patil was followed by Amol with a brief score of 4 runs. After Binoy getting run out with a score of 28, e-Zest were already heading for a big score. Then came Rohit (skipper) who played a useful knock of 16 runs with runs flowing all around the field. Rohit was well accompanied by Prashant Gaikwad, (vice captain and wicket keeper) out on 4 and Vishant not out hitting 4 runs on last delivery of the innings to take e-Zest score to 111 in 12 overs.

While chasing the score Agribuys were set to a revised target due to slow over rate and was made to chase the score of 112 in 10 overs.

In the bowling department e-Zest used 4 bowlers and restricted Agribuys with a total of 63 (allout) in 7.3 overs for a convincing 49 runs win. Binoy's (4 Wickets) 3 wickets haul in 1 over turned the table towards e-Zest. Binoy got great support from Narendra Singh Rajput and other bowlers like Hemant (2 Wickets) and Rohit; Narendra's 3 wickets and a run out at the crucial point had shuttered all the hopes of the opposition.

At last one can surely say that e-Zest played like a champion team and is now one of the dark horse in the tournament. Cheers e-Zest.

Brief Score Board:

Batting

O Ashish Gupta                                                  28

R Binoy Kumar                                                    28

1 Sandeep Patil                                                  7

2 Amol Pandey                                                   4  

3 Rohit Dekhane(C)                                             16

4 Prashant Gaikwad(VC and wk)                            4

5 Nitin Kale                                                        0

6 Hemant Kapadnis                                              0

7 Vijay Aneraye                                                  2 (Not out)

8 Vishant Sarodia                                                4  (Not out)

9 Narendra Singh Rajput                                       DNB

Total: 111/8        Overs: 12             Extra: 18

Bowling

                Name                    Overs                    Runs                      Wickets

                Rohit                     2                            23                           0

                Hemant                  1                            12                           2

                Narendra                2.3                          16                           3

                Binoy                     2                            12                           4

Result: e-Zest Won 

Man of the Match: Binoy Kumar