The 10 Best Corporate Wellness Service Providers 2018

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www.insightssuccess.com December 2018

Consulting and Staffing Solution Providers 2018

Editor’s Choice The Universality of IoT Technology

Energy Efficient Technology Green Cloud Computing Saving Through Technology

Lavinia Noble Surjove Founder & CEO

Offering Exemplary IT Solutions Globally

Enabling Enterprises to Explore New Opportunities

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ith the kind of influence modern computing has on businesses, it is highly unlikely to find an enterprise without an IT infrastructure. Information Technology has grown to become an important aspect in the formula of a successful business. Weather it is a small business or a huge enterprise, they all seek IT consulting. However, there might be different reasons to look for the same.

One of the primary motives behind opting for IT consulting services is enterprises’ focus on their core functions. Setting up computing infrastructure is complicated and can consume a lot of time and resources.

With the severity of competition in the market, businesses cannot afford to lose focus from their primary job. Moreover, outsourcing these services would not only save resources but also enhance the overall productivity of companies.

Incidentally, it is not news for businesses that technology keeps changing towards better. With every ground breaking innovation, comes an inevitable update. And as a service provider of IT consulting, it is one’s job to keep clients up to date with the cutting edge technology. Additionally, these providers also have the knowledge of what is best in the business and how to access that in a feasible manner.

Speaking of feasibility, having computing services outsourced, can also be quite feasible for companies.

The loss of business in a system breakdown only can be a bad news for an enterprise, let alone the cost of fixing the same. IT consulting assures minimizing the risk of downtime and reacts quickly in case of one.

If we look at the current trend in the industries, on-demand services are gaining popularity among various business platforms. However, enterprises which are following this trend or are adapting this service model,

realize how organized and efficient they should be in order to attain the purpose. Having industry best IT support from a consulting firm can ease the process and help the companies to match the speed.

It is needless to say that the boom in IT consulting has enabled numerous industries to grow and despite a few drawbacks of outsourcing, it is evident that the industry will keep evolving, offering world class services to its significant clients. And this wouldn’t have been possible without the companies that have contributed in the evolution of the industry.

Hence, in order to acknowledge the constant efforts of these companies, Insights Success has shortlisted “Major League of IT Consulting and Staffing Solution Providers 2018”.

Featuring as our Cover Story is Swift Pace Solutions, a Dallas-based IT services company that believe good business practices to get great clients and consultants, and lead businesses with honesty, integrity, and quickness.

Alongside this, the magazine also features 8allocate, a company which helps startups, mid-market and enterprise companies to build dedicated software and develop most innovative domains such as AI and Data Analytics, VR/AR, DevOps/Cloud, FinTech/Blockchain; Aurity, a cutting-edge team that redefines the way people work and form meaningful and personal relationships with its clients; Intelligenza S4B, a leading company with increased service portfolio from Technical Support to Telecommunications, specialized in Technology that crosses borders and satisfies business and private needs; Mind IT Systems, a leading global organization focusing on solution via Custom Application Development, Product Engineering, Enterprise Solutions, Business Intelligence and Analytics along with Quality and Testing Services and Streamliner Consulting, a company dedicated to maximizing its clients business potential, while balancing the cost of improvements.

Also, make sure to flip through the articles written by our in-house editorial team as well as CXO standpoints from notable industry personalities, to have a brief taste of the sector.

Let’s start reading!

Shubham Khampariya

Cover Story

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Swift Pace Solutions Inc. Offering Exemplary IT Solutions Globally

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Cloud Insights

Tech Outlook

Maestro’s Insights

Using AI to Automatically Optimize Cloud Costs

The Evolution of Testing: Unmatched Acceleration with Fifth Generation Automation

Looking for or Using an EDI Tool? A Few Things you ought to Know

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22 Editor’s Choice The Universality of IoT Technology

Articles

Energy Efcient Technology Green Cloud Computing Saving Through Technology

8allocate:

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Delivering Value-based Scalable Custom Software Solutions

Aurity:

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Redeď€ ning IT Development Space

Intelligenza S4B: A Comprehensive Technical Solution Provider

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Mind IT Systems: Offering the Right Mix of Business and Technology

Streamliner Consulting: Optimizing IT Infrastructure for Small Businesses

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Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Executive Editor Assistant Editors Contributing Editors Visualiser Art & Design Director Associate Designer Co-designer

Pooja M. Bansal Anish Miller Shubham Khampariya Jenny Fernandes Kedar Kulkarni Ishan Mittal Hitesh Dhamani David King Amol Kamble Sanket Zirpe Shweta Ambilwade

Art & Picture Editors Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Logan, Nilesh Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Vishal Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialists Amar, Aditya Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategists Alina Sege, Shubham SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge Research Analyst Patrick James Circulation Managers Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

December, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Oering Exemplary IT Solutions Globally

We believe that good business practices get us great clients and consultants, and we insist on doing business that way—with honesty, integrity, and quickness.

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Consulting and StafďŹ ng Solution Providers 2018

Lavinia Noble Surjove Founder & CEO

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echnology has a profound existence all around us. From our day to day tasks at home to heavy manufacturing of mega structures, we rely on technology, and the IT industry is no exception.

Companies rely on outsourcing to setup their infrastructure, in order to enhance the performance of their workforce. However, at one point it becomes difficult to segment the size of companies. While the big players have limited service providers, small companies are on their own, and the mid-range is left with no option. To cater to this dire necessity, enters, Swift Pace Solutions Inc. Swift Pace Solutions is an IT consulting and staffing firm which made up of a passionate group of individuals that are dedicated in targeting the areas of the organizations that need optimization. Its customers can choose from a wide range of services, which include, IT consulting for upgrading and enhancing business processes, staffing that meets an organization’s ongoing project requirements and industrial expertise i.e. ERP, Mobility, CRM and other IT technologies. Swift Pace’s solutions are focused to meet any businesses security and IT requirements.

Founded in 2013, Swift Pace Solutions realized the severe shortage of IT Services for the Mid -Market. Most of the enterprises were caught with nowhere to turn as they were either dealing with multi-billion dollar IT Services entities or small mom-pop services companies that could not keep pace with the fast and ever-changing IT Landscape. Swift Pace is equipped with latest technologies, be it mobile computing, Digital transformation, cloud-based solutions and Automation (manual or Robotic Process). Its vision is to enable customers perform at their highest level by seamlessly utilizing cutting edge technologies with minimum disruption.

A Comprehensive Product line Swift Pace Solutions has been one of the leaders of disruptive technology evolution. Automation has grown as one of the biggest technological advancements that are happening currently, and Swift Pace specializes in both Robotic Process Automation (Blue Prism, UI Path, Automation Anywhere) and manual automation

(Python). It specializes in Information security, Business Intelligence and storage solutions with Cloud and Devops. Businesses need a lot of support in areas like Data management – security, storage and AI. These specializations help Swift Pace stand head and shoulders above competition as they are still trying to grasp at the ropes.

The Unorthodox leader Most of the IT Services organizations have been formed by people who are in Sales or business development.

Swift Pace broke the norm when it was founded by Lavinia Noble Surjove, the CEO, who takes pride in solving IT problems or potential roadblocks for clients who want to move forward or are trying to make a difference. Her IT background and hands on approach propels the company’s technology team to be always abreast of what’s happening in the technology world and puts it in the forefront as a technology disrupter. She empowers her team to always challenge themselves and not to settle for anything less than potential. Her

Our goal is to be on the front line of technology and constantly enable our clients to achieve the goals that they have set for themselves.

Cover Story experience across various technologies and industry verticals over 20 years is a great asset for Swift Pace Solutions.

Competition Within A healthy competition is appropriate for the industry as it keeps the players motivated to keep on innovating and pushing beyond the opportunities. However, Swift Pace as a company does not worry too much about competition. Its primary concern is about empowering its employees and providing the best services to its clients.

Its focus is on how to better serve the industry and being thought leaders in its space. The recent years went great for the company with several partnerships and accolades that have come its way. This puts Swift Pace in an elite list of companies, at the upper echelons of IT Services Industry.

Breaking the Stereotypes First challenge is to remove the fear from the minds of clients, that IT Services providers take money and don’t complete projects, which lands the customers in a mess.

Removing the fear and allowing them to open about their pain points is an arduous task. Swift Pace has had many a project stumble because it was not given the information that was critical. The company has overcome that by asking customers the right questions and probe for more information than what is just presented. Also, it does a lot of research on the client prior to speaking with them so they have some knowledge beforehand. Just because IT is constantly evolving, clients do not need to upgrade or change their technology, Swift Pace runs into this a lot with a push to change because they want to change but there is no requirement to upgrade as far as the business is good.

This is another area of challenge as well.

Excellence through Adversities Some of the achievements that Swift Pace has earned during the last few years were getting recognized by several media outlets for its work with the customers. Working for the Public Sector has been a lesson

as there are several bureaucracy hurdles that it had to overcome. The company’s sales cycles were long relative to the work needed by the agencies. Getting certified by certain agencies was a challenge as the company needed those certifications to help clients.

Satisfaction and surprise on clients face after successfully completing a project that was thought impossible and within time and budget estimated was an achievement.

Aspiring a Comprehensive Industry Dominance Like every growing IT company, Swift Pace aims to be a leader in every IT field that it works in. It has an

established process and hires according to the same. It provides training to employees and encourages them to make decisions, always keeping the best interest of the client in mind. The company’s tenacity to handle complex IT problems and ability to meet and exceed client goals has been its laser focus. It aims to sustain and keep improving itself to maintain the high bar that it has set. Challenges are that, there is standardizing across the globe. Swift Pace’s offices in India and Middle East are fast catching up to the USA Offices (Dallas and New Jersey). It is set to open offices soon in Australia and Europe to the growing list of offices to help serve its clients locally in the global marketplace.

Data, security, Automation, Mobile computing, BI and AI, these are the future and companies need to embrace

Move IT forward.

them. Desktops and Laptops are being replaced by Tablets and mobiles at an astonishing pace. There is so much of information out there; going through that information is hard, ability to discern what data is important to whom using BI has become of utmost importance. This is where Swift Pace Solutions sustains itself, collecting, cleaning, storing, securing and finally making sense of data.

Reflections of Efficiency “Swift Pace Solutions Inc. came at a very critical time when we were moving our applications to the cloud and we were not prepared to handle this change. They helped us move our applications, data and helped our internal IT team on how to handle post implementation. We moved 118 applications around the globe” – VP of Applications, Major Telecom Provider.

“Some of the Applications that we were working on, was very repetitive and tedious, when other providers told us that we could not automate the process, Swift Pace came in and automated the process and helped us to quicken the application tremendously. We are able to now handle large volumes of data with minimal errors thanks to Swift Pace Solutions” – Director of IT – Auto Loans, Fortune 500 Bank

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Company Name

Management

Brief

8allocate 8allocate.com

Dan Harrison Regional Director for Europe and Israel

8allocate helps startups, mid-market and enterprise companies to build dedicated software and develop most innovative domains such as AI and Data Analytics, VR/AR, DevOps/Cloud, FinTech/Blockchain etc.

Amaris amaris.com

Brourhant Olivier CEO

Amaris is an international Technologies and Management Consulting Group with a rapid pace development and innovative solutions for demanding projects.

Ascendix Technologies ascendix.com

Wesley Snow President & CEO

AscendixRE is a leading company that offers robust contact, pipeline, property, and deal management, stacking plans, commission splits, extensive mapping tools and much more.

Aurity aurity.co

Peter Kowalczyk Founder & CTO

Aurity is leading company with cutting-edge team that redefines the way people work and form meaningful and personal relationships with its clients.

Intelligenza S4B intelligenza.com.mx

Alvaro Santillana CEO

Intelligenza S4B is a leading company with increased service portfolio from Technical Support to Telecommunications, specialized in Technology that crosses borders and satisfies business and private needs.

Mind IT Systems minditsystems.com

Vikas Garg Co-founder & CTO

Mind IT Systems is a leading global organization focusing on solution via Custom Application Development, Product Engineering, Enterprise Solutions, Business Intelligence and Analytics along with Quality and Testing Services.

Monstar Lab monstar-lab.com

Hiroki Inagawa President & CEO

Monstar Lab is to be a vital strategic IT partner to businesses around the world, helping to leverage information technology to create leading products using a network of professional.

Soft Tech Group softtechgroup.us

Zak Niazi Founder & CEO

Soft Tech Group Inc. is a unique blend of service delivery and product innovation providing its clients with next generation business solutions through integrated information technology products and services.

Streamliner Consulting streamliner consulting.expert

John Barber Founder

Streamliner Consulting is dedicated to maximizing its clients business potential, while balancing the cost of improvements.

Swift Pace Solutions spsolinc.com

Lavinia Noble Surjove Founder & CEO

Swift Pace Solutions is a Dallas-based IT services company that believe good business practices to get great clients and consultants, and lead businesses with honesty, integrity, and quickness.

Using

AI to

Automatically Optimize

Cloud Costs T

he Birth of Cloud Computing

Back in the early days of cloud computing, if we would tell you that every business and consumer would eventually be running their entire compute and storage infrastructure digitally, we would sound crazy. But just 17 years later, it seems inevitable that the old world of data centers and on-premise servers will go the way of the physical newspaper and radio.

Indeed, even Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, didn’t envision this future back in 2000. At the time, Amazon was simply struggling to scale despite hiring a lot of new developers. Jassy, who was Amazon’s Chief of Staff at the time, dove into the problem to discover that the hardware and infrastructural needs simply were not being met fast enough. Jassy set out to speed up this process internally, allowing the internal R&D team to access a pool of common compute and storage resources, making it easier for each to launch their own projects without needing to deal with the underlying infrastructure. Eventually, at a team summit in 2003, they realized this was a need for every other company on the planet, and so AWS was born.

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The birth of Spotinst: Rising cloud costs Today, there is a similar revolution beginning in the world of cloud computing. One still in its early stages, but seemingly destined to grow just as quickly as AWS. “Spotinst aims to be the largest provider of cloud infrastructure without running any servers,” says Amiram Shachar, CEO & Founder of Spotinst. The statement is bold on its own, but when you dive a bit deeper, not much bolder a claim than had you asked Andy Jassy the same back in 2003.

Just as Jassy found an internal struggle today, Spotinst began with Shachar’s identification of a problem at his company, then Lycos Global Group. As Director of DevOps, Shachar was pressed with the task of migrating all Lycos’ servers to the cloud, but costs quickly jumped.

“Within a couple of months of moving to the cloud, our costs had actually risen dramatically, way beyond any calculator that we used to predict it” continued Shachar.

“To the point where we were actually planning to move everything back to on-premise.”

Just around that time, Shachar encountered the relatively unused offering at AWS, called Spot Instances. Spot December 2018 |

Cloud Insights

Amiram Shachar Chief Executive OfďŹ cer

About the CEO Amiram Shachar is CEO & Founder of Spotinst, which leverages excess cloud capacity to help customers save ~80% on cloud costs.

Before Spotinst, he was Director of DevOps at Ybrant Media and led the Israeli Defense Forces migration to the cloud.

December 2018 |

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Instances were spare server capacity at AWS, cleverly packaged to enable monetization of these servers. AWS offered these idle servers for massive 90% discounts with one major caveat - they’ll kick you off once a customer wants to pay full price for those servers.

Shachar smelled opportunity. “By building algorithms that could predict the spare capacity terminations in advance, we could then migrate to another spare server beforehand, saving us 80% on our cloud costs.” After a few months, Shachar and his team were running nearly 75% of their compute power on AWS spare capacity. Just like Jassy back in 2003, the lightbulb eventually went off - there was a far larger opportunity at hand here.

The virtual cloud: run code without dealing with cloud providers “All companies running on cloud struggle to keep costs down,” Shachar says. “But with a long list of priorities including security and maintaining site reliability, DevOps teams often don’t have the time to do all of the work required to optimize cost.” But while Spotinst’s first product was aimed at helping companies reliably leverage spare capacity to reduce costs, Shachar and his co-founders, Liran Polak and Aharon Twizer, had a bigger vision.

Today, managing cloud infrastructure has become just as complex as running on-premises. With a plethora of new AWS, Google, and Azure offerings launching every month, along with an increasingly vast list of companies that build off these offerings, figuring out the balance between cost and performance is a major challenge. But, Shachar envisions a world where you don’t have to.

ensure that your applications are always running on the most cost-effective servers, given your performance requirements. Instead of exploring the long list of alternatives within and across the different cloud providers, Spotinst will take care of it all under the hood.

Today, their platform recognizes any workload that could be run on a cheaper server. Just put those workloads under Spotinst’s control and their algorithms will take care of the rest - those workloads will forever run on the cheapest servers available. All without compromising performance or availability.

Using a new Serverless offering, where developers can simply write code without dealing with any of the underlying infrastructure, Spotinst aims to deliver on this promise in a major way. “All you should ever have to do is write code,” says Shachar. “Our algorithms will make sure it is always running on the most cost-effective infrastructure, across all cloud providers, for your performance and availability needs.” In other words, just write the code, and Spotinst will make sure it always runs at the lowest cost possible for your performance needs.

As Shachar says, “in 10 years, just as everyone is making the shift to cloud today, they will be making the shift to Serverless computing. Only with Spotinst, they’ll be able to also ensure they are paying the best possible price, all without doing anything.” The promise of companies all running a perfectly optimized cloud without ever dealing with the infrastructure seems bold.

But as we learned from Jassy and AWS, in another 10-15 years, it may just be an inevitability.

The promise of the virtual cloud The promise of Shachar’s vision is simple at heart - a virtual cloud. Spotinst will leverage machine learning to

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December 2018 |

8allocate Delivering Value-based Scalable Custom Software Solutions

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he traditional outsourcing was mostly based on cost arbitrage.

The second critical factor was the lack of onshore resources. Scarce talent pools drove companies to look for specialists beyond the national borders, and sourcing talent from offshore proved to be a lifesaver for many startups and companies with tight budgets.

Today, outsourcing is completely multi-faceted and has a great potential to add significant value to any company beyond cost saving and provide access to remote pools rich in good specialists. The access to tribal knowledge and narrow-focus niche expertise is the key driver of outsourcing nowadays. Modern businesses are looking at outsourcing as a strategic venture that allows them to extend in-house IT departments and achieve a successful digital transformation via partnerships with external consultants and powerful R&D centers.

Slowly, traditional cost-based outsourcing models are becoming obsolete and less effective. Today what’s really required by many businesses is a value-based approach to outsourcing. That’s what 8allocate is trying to cultivate as a business.

8allocate is a technology-agnostic B2B ecosystem that delivers value-based scalable custom software solutions by

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leveraging a unique consultative approach, account-based recruitment, and a trusted resource network. It helps its clients build highly efficient dedicated/distributed software development teams either in its Ukraine-based R&D center or remotely.

Unique Consultative Approach 8allocate delivers “Best code possible”. Some of the company’s board members are also active members of such organizations as the YPO, INSEAD and Chicago Booth.

This helps 8allocate to provide the best-in-class consultative approach for servicing clients and bringing mature tech closer to their doorstep. It boasts an unparalleled Team Performance monitoring methodology which results in attrition rate being lower than 10%.

Account-based Recruitment 8allocate assigns a dedicated recruitment consultant to each client’s team. This dedicated recruitment consultant acts as their account manager and helps them manage their software engineers on a regular basis.

Due to this approach its clients have 80% hiring success rate.

Trusted Resource Network The company operates one of Ukraine’s leading Coding Academies GoIT that has graduated over 6,000 IT specialists over the past 4 years. It allows 8allocate to keep Ukraine’s national talent pool sustainable by filling it up with fresh resources skilled in mainstream and mature technologies. 8allocate has a broad network of local and international recruitment partners which allows it to

bring the most sophisticated and hardto-find talent to client’s project team faster than local competitors that wok in silos.

Leveraging Mature Technologies 8allocate specialize in delivering custom solutions that leverage mature (aka Web 3.0) technologies such as AI, ML, VR/AR, 3D, and blockchain.

From XDR wallet for a crypto company to AI-based traffic arbitrage systems – the organization’s project portfolio is full of cutting-edge solutions for both startups/SMBs and established enterprises.

Strong Leadership Team It’s needless to say that a strong brand starts with a strong leadership team. As the CEO of 8allocate, Vladimir Potapenko has built a strong and diverse top management team that’s ultimately accountable for the company’s success and reputation.

8allocate’s senior leadership uses their experience, knowledge and outsidethe-box thinking to ensure the delivery of ROI-driven, value-based and clean code solutions for each business partner as well as the company’s topline growth and bottom-line savings.

The management team has a shared vision that the key to 8allocate’s success is collaboration. The company’s work ethic is based on the 8 principles drawn from a “Philanthropist’s Guide to the Future” created by Michael and Susan Dell Foundation: ・if it looks easy, we look deeper, ・we take the risk our challenge deserves, December 2018 |

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We always go the extra mile to delight our clients and bring innovation closer to their doorstep.

・we stay the course, ・money alone doesn’t solve problems, ・people are our main asset, ・we measure mindfully, ・if it doesn’t work, tell everyone, ・when we see real-world impact our partners make with our help, we know the effort was worth it!

Dan Harrison, as a Regional Director for Europe and Israel brings in almost 20 years of experience working in IT sales, new business development and client engagement. At 8allocate, he built a highly efficient outbound lead generation team, selected and hired sales development representatives and researchers, and initiated new processes in order to streamline sales and client engagement. He also acts as an account manager for clients he has brought in, making sure they’re completely satisfied with 8allocate’s approach, attitude and the final delivery. Dan’s experience and dedication is the key reason behind very low attrition rate of the clients of 8allocate.

Huge Tribal Knowledge 8allocate is based on a huge tribal knowledge accumulated over years of December 2018 |

working with different clients and using different methodologies, and many lessons learned from previous failures and successes. It has faced many challenges, including a highly competitive environment, the lack of qualified resources (that’s when its Coding Academy comes in handy, as it allows it to train, re-skill, grow and nurture talents, and align them with the real-world business needs), geopolitical issues, etc. But overcoming each new challenge makes the company stronger!

Sustaining Competency 8allocate is sustaining its competency in IT consulting and staffing solutions by shifting from cost-based to valuebased outsourcing. To the organization, value-based outsourcing is an integral part of both globalization and the sharing economy. As a new-school outsourcing provider, 8allocate is becoming an active driver of their clients’ business success.

Additionally, the company is focused primarily on building strong bonds with its clients and helping them achieve all of their goals and KPIs through a consultative approach and custom-tailored strategies.

Dan Harrison, Regional Director for Europe and Israel

Insights into Future 8allocate sees itself as one of Eastern Europe’s leading technology powerhouses with R&D centers spread all over the world. It is building an influencer brand and it strives to become a thought leader in mature tech.

Appreciating Reviews "Their project managers are exceptional at finding talented developers to fill our positions.” Roger Sarazin, VP of Products and Services, On-Board Data Systems “The team was excellent throughout the project, finding professional, dedicated resources and managing the entire hiring process. They were focused and found ideal candidates quickly, resulting in an 80% hiring rate, while thinking of long-term aspects of the project.”- Tal D., external consultant at SkyCoin.

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The Universality of IoT Technology T

“

he gratifying tool for companies to lead ahead IoT Technology” The Internet of things (IoT) is a revolutionary change for many sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, retail, electronic, energy and healthcare which are progressing towards the IoT phenomenon to connect digitally. It has placed an opportunity to build unusual results which increases a company’s compatibility. Enterprises seeking development are focusing on the use of real-time data management and IoT analysis. Many of the companies are adopting this technology to heighten their power of consumption. Companies are mainly concentrating on IoT application from “sensing” instead of “doing” to grow its competitive advantages. This element empowers organizations by allowing them to take the IoT advantage and adopt a more ‘innovative connected approach’.

Infrastructure Management – Optimization of Technology New applications are now enhancing their level of consumption. Likewise, manufacturing sector is also

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December 2018 |

Editor’s Choice getting engrossed and achieving excellence through IoT Techniques. Applications are liable for monitoring and controlling operations for urban and rural manufactures like bridges, farms, and railway tracks. It is the key features of the applications were IoT infrastructure is also used for monitoring the construction safety and risk management system and operations. This major feature represents the mechanism of IoT application which works under infrastructure management. Benefits of IoT Technology are cost reducing, time reducing, better in quality, and increase productivity. It helps to make fast decisions and save money with real-time analysis. IoT devices help to give prominent results by monitoring and controlling operations used in all infrastructure related area.

Manufacturing Techniques are Growing with IoT Technology In the manufacturing sector, networking and controlling have been used with IoT devices. It provides information about data and operation stability. Network status and the information is collected in the system by tracking IoT device. Manufacturing control process deliver information about industry application and smart manufacturing details receiving form IoT device. IoT intelligent system enables sharing information about product demands, service management, supply chain networks, sensors and control systems together. Small industries can also be integrated with IoT technology that enables real-time optimization, measurements, production compatibility and safety management.

However, intelligent systems are determined as the significant technique that implies user experience and system security which ultimately saves costs.

which land is fertile or which one is dry and predict future fields.

IoT Technology Helps to Optimize Energy Consumption Integrated Sensing and Control system helps to optimize energy consumption. IoT devices are integrated with energy consumption systems in order to maintain balance between power generation and energy usage. IoT devices offer the opportunity to remotely gather information. It enables advance functions like remote controlling and changing light conditions. IoT Technology work for home-based energy system which provide power related information, energy consumption and energy usage at homes. IoT devices set goals to improve efficiency, reliability and sustainability of the energy system.

Monitoring Environment through IoT Technology Environment monitoring application has been involved with sensors to assist information about environment changes by identifying water quantity, atmosphere, air pressure etc. It also has focus on monitoring movements of wildlife and their habitats. Devices connected to the internet also provide statistics about earthquake or tsunami - early warning systems, and also used as an emergency system. IoT device application is used to collect geographic information and majorly instructive information. This device also uses standardized approach to bring wireless sensing technique and gather finest information.

IoT Technology Helps to Sustain Building and Home Automation

IoT Technology brings Innovative Farming Methods The Agriculture sector is one of the industry to implement IoT technology for stability and better performance. IoT technology has become a significant method of farming. It also offers durability and functionality to the whole process. The combination of wireless sensors with agricultural apps and cloud platforms benefits in gathering definite information relating to environmental conditions like, rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind speed etc. Farmers are getting competent results out of it, and are able to find real-time information easily. Linked with farmland, it improves and automates farming techniques like weather information, taking decision on quality and quantity, and minimizes risk and waste. With IoT Tech farmers can find out detailed information of farm and similarly know December 2018 |

With certainty, IoT devices are used to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical and electronic systems.

IoT devices are used in various types of home automation and building automation systems. Control and sensory applications offer unified information. The integration of the internet with building creates an energy management system which will allow prominent energy efficiency.

There have been many ways for IoT technology to expand compatibility in the digital world, and it will be implemented in each sector to work as an important tool, to enhance its affinity. After all, the IoT network makes technology more unified and satisfying, with its tools and applications and IoT will be a step ahead towards numerous opportunities.

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Aurity Redefining IT Development Space

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nformation technology has grown to become a support system for many businesses. Enterprises of today’s generation rely on the same and hence require topnotch IT solutions for smooth running of business. Aurity is a cutting-edge team that redefines the way people work. It has taken the responsibility to fulfill such requirements of the industry.

Aurity’s vision is to redefine the way people work and build products.

Inspire them to push the boundaries of innovation every day. Rooted in its unparalleled passion for technology and its drive to build extraordinary teams, the company strives to challenge, provoke and empower those around it through its creations.

Topnotch Technology

Founded in 2015, Aurity builds and trains software development teams that develop 7 times faster. its remote and onsite teams are specialized in developing web and mobile apps with backends, creating tailored solutions and helping companies kick-start their projects quicker and more effectively.

Aurity uses a specific combination of the latest technology, agile methodology, and people to boost development. The primary technology it uses is React Native, React and GraphQL. With the bland of these three technologies, it develops crossplatform applications (Web, iOS, Android), allowing companies to release one app for multiple platforms at once. Its well-tested architecture enables itself to create code that can easily be adjusted to the requirements needed to support agile development.

The “Best in the Business” CTO Peter Kowalczyk is the Founder and CTO of Aurity. According to him, the first time he faced React Native technology he knew it could be a new revolution in app making. He saw its potential to supercharge development

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speed and efficiency. To prove the theory he started an R&D project in Aurity. After 3 years of research and £300k of investment, he along with his team finally made a framework that helped them to create cross-platform applications with the same code base with up to 95% of code reuse.

In the past Peter has also worked on large scale systems like Vehicle Management System for Nissan Automotive Dealers in Brazil integrated with a new factory, mostly on site across Japan, Europe and Brazil. Peter is a graduate of Master of Science in Computer Technology from Wroclaw University of Technology.

Assembling a Motivated Team Aurity believes that with time, it learned how important is to have a good combination of a technology, project management, training and great people that will take over the responsibility to get a development process that works. Also, it is really important to assemble a motivated team as it’s a key aspect that can affect business, if not balanced. That is why many investors and founders spend their time and money in building teams that are really passionate about work.

The company asserts that it invests a December 2018 |

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‘‘

We build and train software development teams that develop 7 times faster.

lot of time in the hiring process to get the best developers, and trains them on its R&D projects and as the result, it has happy clients who are loyal and refer the company to their friends.

Aurity has screened more than 1500 developers, and so it came up with a specific hiring process that helps the company evaluate candidates pretty accurate and find the one who is serious about joining the company.

Talent Acquiring Adversities Supporting Startups According to Aurity, The most challenging parts are at the same time the most important for the company, and those are developers’ coding and communication skills and cultural fit.

The company has gathered lots of data on what works well when it comes to hiring engineers. Peter states “I’ve personally focused a lot on spending time with clients, helping them to find their bottlenecks, reshape their architecture, finding engineers and of course get the most out of Aurity.”

The other part of the core team is focused on finding out methods of how to evaluate developers. Over time, December 2018 |

Aurity’s goal is to become an accelerator that will support Startups from the 0 points throughout the investment process. That would be the best step for the company, as it has a wide range of experience working with new projects. The company asserts that it is a startup itself. But it is growing steadily with a rate of around 300%.

Peter Kowalczyk Founder & CTO

and the cost was completely transparent all the way through" – Danny Hawkins - CO-FOUNDER & CTO OF QUIQUP "Working with Aurity has allowed us to augment our UK product team and accelerate our development capacity.

Their engineers stack and delivery principles align perfectly with ours working with them has been an absolute pleasure every step of the way." – Dan Greane - CTO OF NEZ

Clientele Assessments "Working with Aurity has saved us significant time in finding the right talent to create our first React Native app. We’re delighted with the result,

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The

Evolution of

Testing: Unmatched Acceleration with Fifth Generation Automation Shoeb Javed CTO Worksoft

T

he Early Years of Packaged Applications

From the inception of packaged applications, companies of all sizes have taken advantage of the economies of building, maintaining, changing and deploying functionality through third party software providers. Why build a general ledger or payroll/human resources system when you can license it instead? Why not leverage out of the box functionality offered by third party software and rely on the vendor to

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offer support and maintenance and stay current on regulatory, industry and process best practices.

The first generation of mainframe software transformed quickly as the technology evolved, introducing client-server as the better, more cost-effective deployment platform. The applications themselves were still being developed and deployed in functional silos – their interaction with other critical functions of the business an after-thought. Although less than ideal, interfaces were developed to transport data December 2018 |

Tech Outlook from one system to the next – leading to the introduction of middle-ware as an economical means of “connecting” the silos.

At that time, SAP emerged as the leader in delivering comprehensive, end-to-end business solutions on the most advanced platforms. They quickly captured the market and cross-industry adoption continued to deliver best in class results to their customers. PeopleSoft was also introduced to the market during this era, initially focusing on the payroll/human resources market. They ultimately started developing and delivering ERP and CRM systems as well.

Change continued to accelerate as web-based systems were introduced which impacted the economic and technological dynamics of “user requirements,” development, deployment, and costs.

Throughout this evolution, industries, companies and individuals not only developed an incredible reliance on the performance of their “systems,” but forward thinking organizations saw this as a quick path to competitive advantage.

The Need for Speed The problem then as now – how do you accelerate the value of the technology investment to the business? The technology was purchased, licensed, and implemented to achieve a specific set of business benefits. When it comes to these large enterprise application investments, companies conduct in-depth evaluations and build business cases to map out exactly what results they expect to realize. This typically involves a look at what financial and human capital investments – time and money – will be needed to achieve success with a product as well as the financial, efficiency, and competitive gains that come with the ongoing use of the software.

On one side of the equation, development methods have evolved to meet this need for speed. Waterfall methodologies are being replaced with Agile. DevOps has become the new buzz-word. But there’s something else to consider – the business side of things. There is an everincreasing reliance on packaged applications to execute and deliver critical business outcomes. It’s important that applications are developed and deployed quickly and changes can be made regularly, but how do you ensure that business processes are running flawlessly?

Surprisingly, many companies are managing their enterprise application processes manually. This means hours of whiteDecember 2018 |

board meetings spent trying to understand existing business processes. Weeks during every project spent writing test scripts that break when something changes. Delays in delivery because manual testing can’t keep pace with business change. The implementation and ongoing management of enterprise applications is complex, and a crucial component is making sure that end-to-end processes work—every time, every day. Manual or first generation testing means system downtime, errors in production, wasted time and energy and companies left open to technology risk.

The bigger picture is that those approaches are fundamentally standing in the way of achieving the results companies set out to achieve with packaged apps. How can you make the financial, productivity, and competitive gains

About the Author Shoeb Javed, chief technology ofcer, Worksoft, is responsible for the technology strategy, software development, quality assurance and customer support for all Worksoft solutions. As CTO, Shoeb also works with quality assurance and business leaders of some of the largest global Fortune 1000 corporations to help automate testing of complex packaged enterprise applications to speed up project timelines and improve operational efciencies.

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that you were counting on if your processes aren’t performing flawlessly?

The Evolution of Testing Thankfully, the answer is today’s fifth generation test automation that is enabling business users and organizations to adopt, accept, and utilize new applications faster. When processes across enterprise applications are executed seamlessly and as designed, companies can harness the potential of their enterprise applications to achieve strategic goals like entering new markets, increasing revenue, and maintaining a competitive advantage.

Worksoft, the pre-eminent fifth generation automation platform, delivers unmatched speed in automating the identification of current business processes and automatically creating tests to ensure that each business-critical process works as required. An independent study of Worksoft customers by industry analyst IDC identified many unique benefits of Worksoft’s automation platform, but chief among them was accelerating delivery of these applications by an average of nearly

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two months. Consider how much more you could accomplish if you could cut weeks and months from every project.

Leaders across the globe have adopted Worksoft as their weapon of choice to improve their financial and operational positions in their respective industries.

Lead the Way First to market with autonomous cars?

Moving your business model from DVDs to online subscription services?

Evolving from an online bookstore to the world’s largest internet retailer?

These companies didn’t simply try to keep up. They were determined to lead.

Today’s digital economy brings massive opportunity to companies looking to disrupt the market. There has been a fundamental change to the business landscape and companies who are competitive innovators will win.

About the Company: Worksoft provides the world's leading automation platform for enterprise applications. Companies worldwide rely on Worksoft's automated business process discovery, documentation, compliance, testing, risk analysis, and RPA to support critical packaged applications, including SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, Workday, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow and more.

Our fifth-generation automation platform helps enterprises accelerate innovation and change, lower technology risk, and increase efficiency. Our ecosystem includes partnerships with Accenture, IBM, Cognizant, SAP and our Global 5000 customers include 3M, Intel, Microsoft, Siemens and more.

December 2018 |

Intelligenza S4B A Comprehensive Technical Solution Provider

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etrieving support from IT solution providers has become an industry norm for companies. However, it is a difficult task to find one that offers tailor-made services to fit best in the organization in order to enhance efficiency. In order to resolve these issues, Intelligenza provides one the best computer technical support to end users not only for software, but hardware and mobile devices too.

Founded in Mexico City, Intelligenza started by offering basic technical support and gradually grew to have web development and communications. It believes that Customer Care and a very good

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knowledge about the functions of the company is what keep the company as one of the best companies in these matters. It is rare to have a fluent knowledge of hardware and software at the same time. However, Intelligenza asserts to understand the responsibilities hardware and the software and knows when to execute them. According to Intelligenza, one of the best services it offers is staffing.

The company is able to deliver the right personnel for companies where all the know-how on diverse areas of IT is present.

Relying On Word Of Mouth Intelligenza understands that one of the best rewards it has is the word-ofmouth recommendation. It believes that are so many companies that spend hugely on marketing campaigns to get better sales. However, Intelligenza has new customers all the time due to the word-of-mouth recommendation. To hear that the company was recommended for someone else by a customer who is satisfied with the services is rewarding. Intelligenza’s important customers are huge players in the market including Mazda, Toyo Tires, Marian, Buró de Crédito, Excis and many others that have been result of the good effort.

The Computer Genius Alvaro Santillana is the CEO of Intelligenza. He is a Computer Engineer who started his career in technical support. He worked for companies as Compuserve and AOL as beta tester and then as web programmer. As Computer Engineer he has the ability to move between the physical and the logical world of IT. Alvaro was IT manager in different sectors such as automotive, travel agencies, internet, human resources among others. He has gained experience using important systems including SAP, Salesforce, SQL, Linux, ASPEL, CVent, Sabre, Amadeus, etc. He found the opportunity to start his own company at 33 when he counted with 10 small customers who trusted in his skills.

Even though Alvaro still prefers the technical support, he is focused on developing useful web applications for companies related to productivity and collaboration. Invoicing, Intranets and webservices (APIs) are some of the recent apps he has started.

Alvaro has comprehensive business/technical skillset and expertise in business process automation/management (BPM), enterprise application integration December 2018 |

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‘‘

Technology is not good or evil in and of itself. It’s all about who you choose to lead you using it.

(EAI), process improvement, systems integration, requirements analysis, workflow design, project management, leadership, process modeling, testing/quality assurance, software development, customer service, project management, estimating, public (government, education, healthcare, and energy) and private sectors, and vendor relationships.

That includes being fluent in English and have proved expertise. The company believes that Mexico is not prepared to pay the right price for this kind of people however it has been lucky since it has taken young professionals who are encouraged to learn and have commitment.

Dynamic Upgrades

Web development has become a spearhead for Intelligenza’s professional growing. The company sees a worldwide market to deliver remote development or even staffing to settle new business for companies that are looking to sell their products or services in Mexico. It also finds similarities in countries like Brazil, Peru, Colombia or Chile where it can participate in developing eLearning or financial services. The company is an attractive market for countries like United States, UK, Canada, and Germany.

One important thing in IT is to be updated all the time. Companies have no choice but to have learned new things as fast as they can. With the concepts like Big Data, bitcoins, petabytes, etc, the industry cannot depend on books as other specialties do. They have to take instant information directly from the Internet.

The other big challenge, especially in Mexico is staffing and salary.

Intelligenza has to find the most qualified personnel for the best price.

December 2018 |

Potential Markets to Tap

Alvaro Santillana CEO

Riping Hardwork “Intelligenza is a very talented IT group and never leave a problem unresolved. It is very easy to work with them and they render fast and high quality results. They constantly update their knowledge and I know that I can trust them on state of the art hardware and software challenges” - Mazda “Intelligenza is very knowledgeable in all areas concerning information technology. When we worked together, they were in charge of supervising a robust network and their skills proved to be extremely effective. I still consult with Intelligenza whenever I have any need relating to hardware, software, networking or technology issues. It is a pleasure to work with them as they truly enjoy what they do, and relate to people in a pleasant, efficient and professional manner” – Travel Agency

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Green

Energy Efcient Technology

Cloud Computing Saving Energy through Technology

T

he rapid expansion in data centers, due to the exponential growth of the cloud computing has caused the dramatic increase in energy consumption and its effect on the environment in terms of the carbon footprints. To reduce the power consumption, it is required to develop some energy efficient solutions. The Green Computing is the practice of executing policies and the procedures to improve efficiency of the computing resources in such a way as to reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of their utilization. Green Cloud Architecture is rising from these trends leading, not only to energy efficiency, but also a carbon emission aware concept. In order to reduce energy consumption, a greener environment needs to be built.

Among all industries, the information communication technology (ICT) industry is arguably responsible for a larger portion of the worldwide growth in energy consumption. The goal of green cloud computing is to promote the recyclability or biodegradability of defunct products and factory waste by reducing the use of hazardous materials and maximizing the energy efficiency during the product's lifetime.

Energy to be saved The objective is to reduce power consumption of the data center. It offers the features like online monitoring, live virtual machine migration, and optimization of Virtual Machine Placement. Through this proposed Green Cloud Architecture, energy up to 27% can be saved. The need to manage multiple applications in a data center creates the challenge of on-demand resource provisioning and allocation in response to time-varying workloads. Data center resources are statically possessed to applications, based on the peak load characteristics, in order to provide performance guarantees and to maintain the isolation.

Energy-efficient resource management has been first introduced in the context of battery fed mobile devices, where energy consumption has to be reduced in order to improve the battery lifetime. Techniques which are developed for mobile devices also can be applied or adapted for servers and data centers; this kind of systems requires specific methods.

The primary method is to consolidate the Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling technique in an efficient way to maximize the resource utilization and to minimize energy consumption of the datacenters which will result in the reduced

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December 2018 |

Energy EfďŹ cient Technology

December 2018 |

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carbon footprints and thus will help more in achieving the Green Computing.

The Green Benefits Cloud computing is the way to save money and energy for the business. Users emphasize Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and can improve their manageability and facilitate the maintenance of the resources. It means that benefit of business enterprises implicates to avoid spending on software and infrastructure resources, and allow business clients to focus on earning money rather than being weighted down with infrastructure concerns. Therefore, operating this model allows reducing the consummation of the power energy without spending money on running the servers.

Moreover, with no servers to repair, the absence of hardware to upgrade and no software to install, labor costs are also reduced.

With SaaS software accesses usually through a browserbased client, i.e., it can run on virtually any authorized computer, making desktop and laptop resources easily replaceable. Thus, when the user also saves on the support, it doubles the impact and in fact increases green role in business. The employees can work remotely, traveling and moving from one place to another because they have fast access to the internet and the ability to use all the services at hand, on the other hand, it reduces the consumption of fossil fuels and the harmful pollution that results from vehicle emissions as well.

The reduction of energy and power consumption has become a first-order objective in the design of modern computing systems. The roots of energy-efficient computing, practices can be traced back to 1992, when the U.S. environmental protection agency had launched Energy Star, a voluntary labeling program which was designed to identify and promote the energy-efficient products in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions. Computers and monitors were the first labeled products. This has led to the widespread adoption of the sleep mode in electronic devices. The term “green computing” was introduced to refer to the energy-efficient personal computers.

Interesting Research Findings While deploying data center, the sole concern is high-performance, and this demand has been fulfilled without paying much attention to the energy consumption. An average data center guzzles energy as much as 25,000 households. There is a necessity to move the focus to optimizing for energy efficiency while maintaining high service level performance than optimizing data center resource management for pure performance, as the energy cost is increasing while the availability dwindles. According to certain reports, the total estimated energy bill for data centers in the year 2010 was $11.5 billion and energy costs in a typical data center doubles every five years.

For the development of cloud computing and it to sustain green technologies is exceedingly essential. Of the numerous green methodologies enquired, the DVFS technology is a highly hardware oriented approach and hence it is less flexible.

Cloud computing is a highly scalable and cost-effective infrastructure for running an enterprise and the web applications. But the critical issue is the drastic surge in the energy consumption of data centers which is triggering by the growing demand for cloud infrastructure. Hence, the energy-efficient solutions are required which results in less number of carbon footprints and thus help in achieving greener computing.

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December 2018 |

Mind IT Systems Offering the Right Mix of Business and Technology

T

echnology has revolutionized the corporate world as well as an individual’s life by creating various tools and resources, putting the world at fingertips. Often there are businesses that prefer to use the latest buzzwords without realizing its actual purpose. Herein Mind IT Systems come in as experts to help understand what will be suitable in the given situation rather than being just fashionable. Mind IT exists to empower humanity, and IT Solutions are its medium of expression for making difference to people’s life via technology.

Mind IT Systems is a leading global organization focused on bringing people’s possibilities to reality by engineering awesomeness. It builds custom software solutions via its services of application development, product engineering, enterprise solutions, business intelligence and analytics with a specialization in Healthcare, Supply Chain, Publishing and Education. It is focused on developing mobile & web applications , Artificial Intelligence, RPA, Business Intelligence and blockchain. It

develops intellectual property for its global clients, ensuring quick turnaround time during development of scalable and robust solutions.

Currently, it provides services to its clients in US, UK, Jordan, India and Vietnam.

Creating Digital Transformation Mind IT Systems specializes in digitally transforming organizations to modernize their business, processes, customer experience. They work with companies having little or no technology to identify technology advancements not just to plug holes but as a canvas to paint a brighter tomorrow. Their custom implementations work towards enhancing customer experience and increasing organizational efficiency by automating areas that may not necessarily require human intelligence.

Mind IT has worked in various industries to develop custom solutions simplifying processes, increasing effectiveness and reducing redundancy with implementations like custom AI powered Chabot for HRMS and supply chain, Blockchain for Author-Publisher agreement, improving Trace and Track of sterilizable equipment via beacons to name a few.

The team at Mind IT strives to change people’s perception of Indian IT being a source of cheap and barely acceptable IT labor to quality software service destination.

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A Technology Enthusiast The founding team of Mind IT Systems has a strong background of delivery and firmly advocates processes across the organization to ensure quality and timeliness in everything it does. One of the key members of the company and prime mentor for its engineering teams is its CTO, Vikas Garg. Vikas is a web and mobile technologies evangelist and is responsible for technical culture of the company. He has accumulated a rich experience of Fifteen years in architecting and tackling complex problems. His experience spans across multiple geographic locations focusing on delivery through multiple distributed teams.

Besides, Vikas is an expert for Education, Travel and IP domains and has worked extensively in Supply Chain Domain. With a distinguished career spanning across Infosys, CPA Global, MakeMyTrip, and Educomp, he is an also an advocate of heterogeneous solutions to get best out of multiple technologies. He has gathered an excellent record of using path breaking techniques to create value for his clients and people connected with him.

Working Closely with Customers Over the past few years, Mind IT Systems has realized that customers seek solution to their problem which requires correct consultation, guidance and education rather than simply December 2018 |

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‘‘

Everything at Mind IT Systems is aligned towards mindfully bringing People's Possibilities to Reality by Engineering Awesomeness.

coding software. Hence, it works closely with its customers to understand the problem at hand so as to offer the right mix of business and technical consulting. The company has learnt to use different technologies, picking what’s best out there to suit the solution. As per its experience, heterogeneous technologies work better than sticking to one particular tech stack.

Bringing Mindfulness to IT Mind IT believes that nowadays, customers are looking ahead and focusing on creating Intellectual Property rather than plain software.

The company has realized this need and transformed its thinking to look at business as a whole rather than just focusing on the problem at hand. All its solutions are developed on the premise of Scalability, Security and Usefulness with an underlying intention of Evolving and being Relevant over time.

Mind IT Systems will continue to work December 2018 |

on cutting edge technologies and bringing mindfulness to IT. It is striving to consolidate current lines of business, expand its footprint, and become an instantly recognizable brand in IT industry.

Exemplifying Customer Satisfaction “We chose Mind IT Systems for developing a software tool as part of supply chain optimization solution.

Their competent team of technical architect and Developers with ability to understand functional requirements helped us in quick deployment with minimum rework. The software is already saving money for the customer, and we would like to thank Mind IT Systems for contributing in our achievement.”- CEO, Supply Chain Experts, US “Mind IT is collaborating with us in development of our new hospital management system with EHR, PACS Integration and Clinical Decision Support. We have been running our

Vikas Garg CTO & Co-founder

hospitals for 32+ years and are working towards being the best in our country. Their expertise of Healthcare and IT is enabling us to build world class systems to better serve our patients.”- Managing Director, Private Hospital Chain in East Asia “Mind IT Systems has been instrumental in making us competitive as per the 21st century as now we are able to present cutting edge solutions to our end customers and distributors.

We have become far more technologically superior now.”- CEO, Largest Hindi Books Publisher “They’re a one-stop-shop that not only does the work, but also proactively engages with customers.”- CoFounder, Software Company

www.minditsystems.com

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Looking for or Using an EDI Tool?

A Few Things you ought to Know

Tom Kieley CEO & Co-founder

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December 2018 |

Maestro’s Insights

W

e run into many companies who are interested in implementing an EDI tool or are already using EDI and “don’t have supplier pain”. Although there are valid reasons to adopt an EDI solution, before you take the plunge there are a few things you ought to know.

EDI, at its core, is data transformation between trading partners.

When you start digging deeper into the capabilities there are no built-in analytics, collaboration, or scoring of buyers or suppliers and ultimately no strategic value to drive supplier performance to meet your business requirements.

One of the number one issues with EDI is the total cost of ownership. EDI is expensive to implement for both the customer and supplier. The tool itself is normally expensive but maintaining it can be costly to customize and use countless man hours for upkeep. If there is a change in the ERP system, typically a change is needed in the EDI tool as well. Changes in documents, i.e. invoices (EDI 810) and purchase orders (EDI 850) or purchase order Acknowledgements (EDI 855) can break EDI transmissions causing downtime and expense to all parties.

Another challenge can be supplier adoption. The main reason you invest in a tool like EDI is closer buyer and supplier relationships and visibility. When you ask a supplier to adopt a heavy tool like EDI and possibly make them pay for the opportunity to do so, you can create friction as opposed to bringing them closer together. Also, few organizations have successfully implemented EDI with 100% of their supplier chain. Which means your organization will have to manage two procurement processes. A special one for your EDI suppliers, and a separate one for your non-EDI suppliers, i.e. ‘supplier collaboration’ via manual email communication.

Regarding communication, EDI system transmissions are limited to an authorized set of documents, rules and transactions. Other communications have to be handled by traditional siloes systems like emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls. If you need to pull in, push out, or expedite a purchase order, then you’ll need email, not EDI. Plus, when EDI processes break, all order processing completely STOPS and requires IT involvement to resolve, which can be costly and time consuming. The last thing to keep in mind when considering an EDI tool is even a 1-cent part by a nonEDI supplier can completely stop production.

Your supply chain is only as strong as your weakest link (or weakest vendor), so suppliers not using EDI can cripple production. Even though you may be using or considering EDI, your supply chain deserves 100% coverage with a process that is driving your suppliers to operate at the highest level as it relates to your changing demand.

December 2018 |

About the Author Tom Kieley, is a CEO and Co-founder of SourceDay. As a veteran business owner, Tom knows how to recruit top talent and build a lean team to manage growth. He is also good at conveying company vision and goals to employees, partners and anyone else interested in PO management. But it’s the execution of that vision that makes him such an asset for SourceDay. Tom wears many hats, but his priority is maintaining key relationships and providing oversight across SourceDay. His decade plus of experience in product management and operations, hardware and software sales, and supply chain management fosters his creative ideas around how best to achieve the goals that lead to company success.

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Streamliner Consulting Optimizing IT Infrastructure for Small Businesses

I

n an interview with Insights Success, John Barber, Founder of Streamliner Consulting, shares insights on various services offered by his company including IT service Management and Customer Services operations. Also, he broadly discusses the company’s core competencies and its establishment in the market.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between John and Insights Success: What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Streamliner Consulting?

We are primarily focused on evaluating business processes, finding the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in those processes, and then recommending solutions to remove the gaps. Additionally we help to roadmap process/operations maturity plans and develop the marketing, training and reporting necessary to enable process and culture change.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that

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have shaped the journey of the company.

It all started when my mother in law asked me to review the dispatching processes and develop some material to cross train staff at her plumbing and remodeling company, during that evaluation I identified several inefficiencies and help them to remove them with some additional software automation, with the result of an productivity increase of the staff. Then I realized that many small and medium companies must be living with expensive, risky, manual processes and could use the knowledge attained from working at much larger companies for so many year.

What are the challenges faced while providing IT consulting and Staffing Solutions and how is Streamliner Consulting serving to tackle them?

The biggest challenge is always adoption of new processes and tools by the staff. People get comfortable with how they do things and change is difficult. Streamliner Consulting gets to know the front line staff and individualizes the communications and training of new processes and tools to achieve quicker adoption and help the company realize business value rapidly.

What according to you could be the potential future of IT consulting and Staffing Solutions and how does Streamliner Consulting envision sustaining its competency?

IT consulting should look to expand outside of IT, I find that many of the concepts in ITIL are relevant to most any other business process or service offering. HR for example handles Incidents all the time, but often they suffer from poor case management solutions and processes, and miss trends that show larger problems.

Where does Streamliner Consulting see itself in the long run and what are its future goals?

Streamliner Consulting will continue to be there when companies need them, as we encounter like-minded individuals looking to move away from enterprise companies to help make a difference in small and medium sized business world we will help bring them along the way.

Give us a few testimonials of your clients that accurately highlight Streamliner Consulting’s position in the market.

“Streamliner Consulting went above and beyond the scope by providing excellent work.”

December 2018 |

‘‘‘‘

There is always a better, faster and less risky way to achieve business outcomes; don’t be afraid to shake the operations tree and remove the bad apples.

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“They understood our business challenge and responded appropriately.”

“They’ve been a valuable resource and I still reach out with any questions or concerns.”

About the Company While Streamliner supports clients at all levels of business, it focuses on small and medium sized businesses, because these businesses have the same process waste and carry the same types of risk as enterprise companies, but often don’t have the means to have a full-time business analysts and process improvement engineers.

Streamliner is committed to make its clients business more efficient and effective by improving processes and procedures. By using an agile development approach, it helps businesses with all the support tools they need to be successful.

December 2018 |

John Barber Founder

Streamliner has extensive experience designing processes and then building the requirements to support those processes using tools like ServiceNow. The company also includes Customer Service operations in its services. It believes that Customers want to be able to reach its services easily and to receive results in a timely manner for whatever they are contacting the company regarding

they sometimes don’t even realize. By adapting and expanding the IT Service Management best practices, known to help enterprise level corporations be more efficient, effective and profitable at delivering their services, to the small to medium sized businesses, Streamliner Consulting is dedicated to maximizing our clients business potential, while balancing the cost of improvements.

About the leader

John has worked in the Service Management field for over 10 years for several Fortune 500 companies.

Currently Streamliner is working with Tradeweb, after finishing a contract with BECU. Prior to founding Streamliner, he worked at ServiceNow as a Senior Program Manager in Enterprise Problem Management.

He has also worked with various other enterprises including Expedia, T-Mobile.

After working 12 years in large corporations such as Expedia and ServiceNow, John decided to use his skills and knowledge to help small to medium sized businesses. John recognized in 2016 that many small and medium sized businesses don’t have the regular business analysis resources to regularly evaluate and improve their processes, procedures and supporting tools and because of this they often suffer from lost productivity and profit potential that

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