Octaware organizes guest interaction with Prof. Ranjan Das, Professor – Strategy Management – IIM Calcutta.

Octaware Technologies had organized a guest interaction with Prof. Ranjan Das at its Mumbai Development Center on 14th December, 2011. Prof. Das is a celebrated professor of Strategy Management at IIM-Calcutta and has his own specialist MBA training program in Strategy Management.

Prof. Das was in Mumbai on a visit for some high profile meetings and leveraging the personal contacts of Mr. Aslam Khan, President Octaware Technologies, an interactive session was arranged for the staff at the Octaware Development Center in Mumbai. It is very rare that one gets to interact with such a sought after personality and share their experiences and organizing such a session was an enriching experience for the Octaware staff which was well appreciated by all of them.

(Professor Ranjan Das interacting with the Octaware Mumbai Team)

Prof. Das who is a Master of Strategy shared his ideas about how he envisages an organizational environment, where each and every person thinks like an entrepreneur. Where the employees do not behave just as performers but are thinkers as well. He shared various examples of corporates such as Microsoft and back home of the IPL Team ‘Kolkata Knight Riders’ as to demonstrate how clear the leaders are there in their vision and how well it is translated across the team. He emphasized upon the fact that in order to out-perform in today’s competitive environment just being a good performer is not enough until and unless you start thinking like a Business person, that’s when one start thinking about how one can influence the revenue stream of the organization and usher in positive growth not only for himself but the organization as well. That’s when one can come up with ideas on how to optimize the process, increase productivity and explore new channels of growth within oneself, within the department, within the organization and with the customers.

Prof. Das said that investment in education is the smartest investment ever and it sure will give greater returns in the long run. Even if a person is involved in the technical field as an employee, he will surely grow someday to manage a team as such he needs to learn the art of Management. Further as suggested that every employee needs to start thinking like an entrepreneur, as a business person as such he needs to equip himself/ herself with adequate business education and that’s where a Post-graduation in Business Management helps fill that lacuna and helps develop an employee as a wholesome manager.

(Octaware Team members listening to Prof. Das with rapt attention)

As an insight, Prof. Das himself runs his own academy of Management studies going by the name of “TSA” = The Strategy Academy and his vision is to create 1 lakh MBA’s at least from his own institute. And he has engrossed himself wholeheartedly to achieve that mission of his. The success of his vision can be gauged from the fact that even participants from overseas are enrolled in his management programs.

This is a first of its kind concept (for MBA) started by Prof. Das in order to implement his vision. 

The USP of his institute is the “Fixed Time – Anywhere” concept of learning which is very advantageous for those executives who wish to do an MBA but have the paucity of time to go to a dedicated MBA class. They can log-in from anywhere to connect to the live –online sessions by expert professors from IIMs and much acclaimed Universities, twice a week. (260 hours), These are 2 Years programs (MBA/ PGDBM) for such professionals.

(Prof. Ranjan Das with the Octaware senior Management Team)

Prof. Das also runs a lateral program as MBA in Strategy Management which is an extensive one-year program developed specially for MBA’s with min. of 5 years work experience who are somewhere at a mid-management level where they would be starting to implement strategies. This is a one-of-its-kind program which is not available in India not even in the IIMs. But Prof. Das wants to bring his profound vision and extensive experience for the masses to take advantage and develop a ‘cut-above-the-rest’

As they say “Be The Best, Have A Cut Above the Rest”

Octaware Technologies winner of “Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2011 Award

Octaware Technologies has been conferred with the “Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2011” award, a prestigious award honoring the year's most promising public and private technology ventures in the region. This award was presented in recognition of Octaware’ s significant achievement, commitment to technology and commendable efforts towards implementing industry best practice, at a celebrated function in Hong Kong.

At a significant function in Hong Kong on 01^st December,2011, Deloitte announced its “Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific 2011 Award” synonymous with one of the finest in the industry of Software, Biotechnology, Semiconductors, Computers/Peripherals, Media and Telecommunication where Octaware Technologies attained a ranking of 278^th in the exclusive list of top 500 companies in the Asia Pacific region.

The Award Function was organized at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Hong Kong which incidentally is the highest hotel in the world.

Mr. Aslam Khan (on the right hand side) - President, Octaware Technologies was in Hong Kong to participate in the Awards function where he had received the award by the hands of Mr. V. Srikumar (0n the left) - Country Leader - Technology Media & Telecommunications, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, India

This award was presented in recognition of the achievements of leading public and private companies from India, celebrating these emerging companies’ technical prowess across the respective industries. The Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific Program is the region's most objective industry-ranking standard created to recognize the effort and dedication of the top 500 fastest-growing technology companies in Asia Pacific region.

Close on the heels of winning the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India Award where we secured the 21st Rank just about a month back and having won the Red Herring Asia Top 100 Award just last year, this completes the hat-trick for Octaware.

The Four Ps of Persuasion

Did you know that there are four "Ps" that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both your work and personal life? They are power, positioning, performance, and politeness. And they are all based on perception.

Develop Personal Power
The first "P" is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level employee.

Shape Their Thinking About You
The second "P" is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced by you.

In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.

Be Good at What You Do

The third "P" is performance. This refers to your level of competence and expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an average job.

Commit to Excellence
The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.

Treat People Politely
The fourth "P" of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish your goals.

Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you in almost anything you need.

Perception Is Reality
Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the things that they will do for you.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, think continually about the impression you want to make on others and then make sure that everything you do or say is consistent with that perception.

Second, be nice to people. Practice the Golden Rule in your interactions with others. Always be polite and make others feel important.

The more people like you, the more open they are to being influenced by you.

- Shared by Haroon

Octaware Technologies winner of “Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2011"

Dear Friends,

It is a great pleasure to announce that this year our organization has been declared as one of the winners of the prestigious “Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2011” award, which makes us one of the top 50 fastest growing technology companies in India!!!

Close on the heels of winning another prestigious award “Red Herring Asia Top 100” Award just last year in November,2010, where we were recognized as one of the emerging companies from the top 100 emerging technology companies in Asia, this is another shot in the arm for Octaware, where we have received the recognition as being one of the Top 50 fastest growing Technology companies in India.

This has all been the result of the continuous team efforts of our Octaware family members  known in general terms as employees and the able leadership of the management who have been leading from the front. And the credit goes to each and every one of us starting from the top of the Hierarchical ladder (President) till the lowest rung (office boy & helpers)

(Will be share more on this later.)

A Heartiest Congratulations to each and every one of us for this well-achieved  success.

The Key to Long-Term Success

Successful people have been studied in depth for more than 100 years. They have been interviewed extensively to determine what it is they do and how they think that enables them to accomplish so much more than the average person.

In this Newsletter, you learn the most important single factor of long-term success and how you can build it into your personality and your attitude. You learn how to virtually guarantee yourself a great future.

The Harvard Discovery on Success

In 1970, sociologist Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University wrote a book entitled The Un-Heavenly City. He described one of the most profound studies on success and priority setting ever conducted.

Banfield's goal was to find out how and why some people became financially independent during the course of their working lifetimes. He started off convinced that the answer to this question would be found in factors such as family background, education, intelligence, influential contacts, or some other concrete factor. What he finally discovered was that the major reason for success in life was a particular attitude of mind.

Develop Long Time Perspective

Banfield called this attitude "long time perspective." He said that men and women who were the most successful in life and the most likely to move up economically were those who took the future into consideration with every decision they made in the present. He found that the longer the period of time a person took into consideration while planning and acting, the more likely it was that he would achieve greatly during his career.

For example, one of the reasons your family doctor is among the most respected people in America is because he or she has invested many years of hard work and study to finally earn the right to practice medicine. After university courses, internship, residency and practical training, a doctor may be more than 30 years old before he or she is capable of earning a good living. But from that point onward, these men and women are some of the most respected and most successful professional people in any society. They had long time perspectives.

Measure the Potential Future Impact

The key to success in setting priorities is having a long time perspective. You can tell how important something is today by measuring its potential future impact on your life.

For example, if you come home from work at night and choose to play with your children or spend time with your spouse, rather than watch TV or read the paper, you have a long time perspective. You know that investing time in the health and happiness of your children and your spouse is a very valuable, high-priority use of time. The potential future impact of quality time with your family is very high.

If you take additional courses in the evening to upgrade your skills and make yourself more valuable to your employer, you're acting with a long time perspective. Learning something practical and useful can have a long-term effect on your career.

Practice Delayed Gratification

Economists say that the inability to delay gratification-that is, the natural tendency of individuals to spend everything they earn plus a little bit more, and the mind-set of doing what is fun, easy and enjoyable-is the primary cause of economic and personal failure in life. On the other hand, disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem and personal satisfaction.

The long term comes soon enough, and every sacrifice that you make today will be rewarded with compound interest in the great future that lies ahead for you.

Action Exercises

Here are three steps you can take immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, think long-term. Sit down today and write out a description of your ideal life ten and twenty years into the future. This automatically develops longer-time perspective.

Second, look at everything you do in terms of its long-term potential impact on your life. Do more things that have greater long-term value to you.

Third, develop the habit of delaying gratification in small things, small expenditures, small pleasures, so that you can enjoy greater rewards and greater satisfaction in the future.

- Shared by Haroon Baig

How to become a good programmer/developer?

Working towards becoming good programmer is very important in the life of programmer since they chose their career as a Software Engineer. To become a good programmer, need to follow some basic important points which I would like to convey through this blog.

Programming is a skill which is improved by practice and experience. True, people are born with different programming capabilities, still many techniques can be learned only with experience.

What is that distinguishes a good programmer from others? Here is a list.

1. He thinks – A good coder never jumps straight away into coding when he gets a work. He first *thinks* about the problem and decides on how to approach the solution. He may try out some code snippets and write something which typically thrown out later. But once he starts the actual coding he proceeds at lightning speed.

2. He never duplicates code – A good programmer never repeats/duplicates code. Code duplication is one of the worst sins for a programmer. In the initial coding some duplication may be there, but an expert removes them gradually.

3. He writes extensible code – Writing extensible code requires considerable experience. This is what makes coding a creative activity. You need to be aware of the full impact of what you are writing in the code’s future life cycle. Design patterns are a collection of techniques which helps in writing extensible code. A good programmer may not know the names of all patterns but he is aware of them nonetheless.

4. He is not afraid to re-factor – It means "disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior" No one can write software in a perfect way at the first try. You write a good amount of code, analyze it and then re-factor it. This is a continuous process during coding. I have seen that re-factoring requires considerable amount prior experience.

5. He comments for a purpose – A good programmer comments what is relevant. If he has spent some time thinking about a portion of code, he will comment his thoughts in the code. This helps another programmer to understand the thoughts and design decisions behind the code he is reading.

Obviously there are other qualities (such as code optimization) which can be seen in a good programmer. But the above 5 items are the most important.

Let's inculcate these to our code writing skill and other qualities will come automatically.

-Shahnawaz

Record your FISHES

I am back with you my friends and yes please don't be misled with the title, I am not discussing seafood with you (you can better discover that for yourselves with a trip to Mahesh Lunch Home or Only Fish) neither am I talking about any visit to the aquarium or not even census count of the fishes in the deep seas and oceans.

This my friend was a learning from the soft-skills training program conducted at our organization Octaware Technologies in the Mumbai Development Center title "Get Set Goal".

As a part of its regular Training & Development program for its employees through knowledge sharing sessions Octaware Technologies arranged a program on Goal Setting through MyCareerMate a part of Burooj Realization which is into Corporate & Management Training Programs. This session was held on the 10th of September, 2011.

The program was aimed at instilling the importance of Goals and how to set SMART Goals in life in whatever field we endeavor.

It is said about goals that:

- Goals give you direction in all areas of life - Personal, Career, Spiritual, Material and Contribution.

- Goals give you a reason to get up early in the morning and go to bed late at night.

Goals will put drive and passion into your life.

As it is said that,” Not having goals is similar to sailing a ship across the Atlantic without a map. Goals, like maps, help you get to your destination much faster than sailing through life aimlessly."

You need to divide goals as 'Long Term', 'Intermediate' & amp; 'Short Term'.

The participants were asked to imagine Octaware as a person and define what characteristics come to their mind. Some of the characteristic which flew around from them were in people described it as a Male, Young, energetic, one who keeps his Commitment, A good Strategic Thinker, etc.

And it was then said that each one of the employee represents Octaware and as such needs to inculcate these characteristics as well.

Further, you may identify various areas of life wherein you need to set a goal for a more wholesome life.

F- Family;

I - Intellectual;

S - Social;

H - Health/ Fitness;

E - Economic;

S - Spiritual.

And this is what Re-coding your FISHES is all about :)