Product Marketing - There Is A Pattern

1. Advertisement, Marketing & Promotion

Advertisement is good for two or three reasons:

1. Let people know your brand
2. Help people to make decision
3. Upgrade your brand value

After you have done advertisement, what must you do ?

2. Reference Site

You can create reference site most effectively using web site.

Why, because people would like to find out more about your product, who is the inventor and etc.

This is very very important.

For those companies which the web traffics are little, it is because your advertisement, marketing and promotion is not effectively carried out.

3. Leisure & More Activities

How to create more life to your product ?

I have a few suggestions:

• Create Videos for YouTube
• Make Some Noise in Facebook
• Create A Blog For the Product

Do u reckon that this is a best practise ?

Software Engineering Team Management #1

Image by kqedquest via Flickr

Inspired by The Way I Worked : Jason Fried (37Signals.com)

What I like best is the facts:

• One investor.
  
• A staff of 16
  
• More than three million customers...

Sounds like a good reference for benchmark of how many staffs you need.. ya ? I just want to share some of my philosophies for software engineering team.

The Basic:

• Must have a leader.
  
• Must make use of collaboration tool.
  
• Must share the codes and best practices.
  
• Do not waste time researching things which there are already best practices, just learn it. Instead, research other things which the team not yet know.

Follow The Practice of Medical Fields

A leader must be a practitioner and also a teacher. The idea is that we must keep learning.

Must Always Create Excitement in the Team; everyday.

Do not every demotivate the team.

The Boss Must Not Think that The Job is So Easy

It is very wrong to think that you can always get sample codes out in the web.

Must Anticipate Problems

A software company must anticipate problems, there will be problems, don't ever pull the panic button.

At Least Two Developers (for a project)

1. Backends
   
2. Features / Front-End

Backends will always be revised.

• New technology
  
• New platform / libraries
  
• New techniques
  
• To cater new features.

Therefore, whenever changes are made to the backend, features and front-end will nee to be changed as well. Challenges:

• You always need to make sure existing version is working while creating a new version.
  
• Support customers.

Juniper Networks Showcases Breakthrough Performance Capabilities for its Junos® Trio Chipset with Test from EANTC

Juniper’s new MX 3D routers can download 8.5 million iTunes in one tenth of a second, 50 Blu-Ray DVDs in less than five seconds, 10 years of Hubble Telescope data in one minute or more than 430,000 HDTV channels simultaneously. They can increase ROI over five years by up to 540 percent[i]; reduce operating expenses for aggregation services up to 47 percent[ii]; reduce operating expenses for business services up to 63 percent[iii]; reduce operating expenses for residential services up to 77 percent[iv]; and improve power efficiency by a factor of 10-to-1 versus other vendors[v].

The European Advanced Networking Test Center (EANTC) has completed a commissioned performance verification of the Juniper Networks® MX80 3D Universal Edge Router and new 16 port 10GbE aggregation line card, validating the ground-breaking performance of the company's 3D Scaling technology using the Junos Trio chipset. 3D Scaling technology helps networks scale dynamically to support more bandwidth, subscribers and services – all at the same time.

The EANTC tests confirmed the MX480 3D Universal Edge Router’s unidirectional throughput of up to 1.4Tbit/s, 240Gbits/s per slot – which is able to exceed one billion packets per second, in a compact sixth of a rack configuration: establishing new boundaries for high-performance networking. Services scale displayed 6,000 active Layer 3 VPNs and 6,000 active VPLS instances, as well as a leading 25.34 watts per 10GbE port in full configuration.

The new line cards and routers process two to four times more traffic than the competition – up to 2.6 terabits per second – while using half as much power per gigabit.[vi] For subscribers, this means the flagship MX960 system with 3D Scaling enables fast access to download 8.5 million iTunes in one tenth of a second, 50 Blu-Ray DVDs in less than five seconds, 10 years of Hubble Telescope data in one minute or more than 430,000 HDTV channels simultaneously[vii].

Junos Trio represents Juniper's fourth generation of purpose-built silicon, and is the industry's first "network instruction set" – a new silicon architecture unlike traditional application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and network processing units (NPUs). The new architecture leverages customized network instructions that are designed into silicon to maximize performance and functionality, while working closely with Junos software to ensure programmability of network resources.

EANTC conducts vendor-neutral performance testing for Carrier Ethernet, IP/MPLS, and Triple Play technologies and applications for network equipment manufacturers, service providers and enterprise customers.

Juniper's MX Series 3D products are available starting December 2009. The MX Series 3D 16-port 10GbE aggregation line card will be generally available to customers in December 2009, with additional MX Series 3D products coming throughout 2010.

[1] Network Strategy Partners case study findings, to be published November 2009.

[1] Network Strategy Partners case study findings, to be published November 2009.

[1] Network Strategy Partners case study findings, to be published November 2009.

[1] Network Strategy Partners case study findings, to be published November 2009.

[1] Network Strategy Partners case study findings, to be published November 2009.

[1] Juniper comparison against competitive products, conducted October 2009. Reflects 2.64 Tbit/s throughput for Juniper’s MX960 3D versus 1 Tbit/s and 1.28 Tbit/s for competitors. For power efficiency, reflects 37 Watts per 10GE for Juniper’s MX960 3D versus 75 Watts per 10GE and 90 Watts per 10GE for competitors.

[1] Juniper engineering estimates based on publicly available file size data.

Check out details.

MYSQL™ PROVIDES SCALABILITY, RELIABILITY, & ENTERPRISE SUPPORT AT A LOWER COST

Image via Wikipedia

Download this article about 'MYSQL™ PROVIDES SCALABILITY,
RELIABILITY, ENTERPRISE SUPPORT AT A LOWER COST', which in my opinion, it doesn't sell much ideas.

If you are talking about cost, it is really about Oracle.

MS SQL is not that expensive. And for people who have high requirements, they will go for Oracle.In another words, if you have money, you can afford SAP already.

The article should focus on technical aspect and usability for database administrators, developers and architects.

Most of the techies are familiar with one database platform, and MySQL should focus on helping these people to migrate over the the newer platform. The availability of brand new GUI and tools since acquisition by SUN microsystem is a good step. But actually, many people don't have time to explore new things anyway. This is why Microsoft can keep up with the sales.This is another aspect of zero downtime, which is there is not time to explore new things.

Ok, the point quoted by the following paragraph is good.

MySQL is proven in the field as a database server that can run anything from deeply
embedded applications with a footprint of just +3-4MB to massive data warehouses
holding terabytes of information. It also can be configured with a variety of
high-availability capabilities such as high-speed master/slave replication and
specialized cluster servers with instant failover. This level of flexibility to attain optimum scalability and availability for a particular set of needs is a hallmark of the open approach to database technology that underlies MySQL.

It tells that MySQL is scalable and reliable.

It should try to provide an apple to apple comparison with other databases which MySQL can do better.

And also need to have a channel for knowledge sharing.

MySQL should focus on making techies fall in love with it.

Tech Blog Malaysia Statistics (Oct 09)

As usual, check out the analysis for 2008.

For month of Jan 2009.
For month of Feb 2009.
For month of Mar 2009.
For month of April 2009.
For month of May 2009.
For month of Jun 2009
For month of July 2009
For month of Aug 2009
For month of Sep 2009

For the month of Oct 2009, we have the followings.

• The brand of This Blog
• Malaysia Internet Services
• World Largest EPR Software Brand
• Support Number for Malaysia's Largest Broadband Provider
• Malaysia's Portal for World No.1 Music Store
• Phishing

Overview:

• Total monthly traffic decreased by as much as 3.21%
  
• Traffic from referring sites decreased by 0.32%
  
• Google still top contributor (61.40%). Up from last month.
  
• Top 5 countries (Malaysia, US, UK, India, Singapore). Check out here.
  
• New visitors 87.48% (up from last month).
  

Sales Order System In Malaysia ?

If you need a sales order system to automate your sales department or sales process, what do you really need to do ?

I have to admit that about 10 years ago, everybody will resort to customized software. Means you will hire software vendors, spell out your requirements and get the ball rolling.. Then you have to go through testing stage, user acceptance test and etc.

But for now, I would say that you can probably get an accounting system suite, that will do the job for you. This is because, a typical accounting suite will have the following modules.

• Sales Module
  
• Stock Module
  
• Payment Module

A typical sales module will have things like...

• Quotation
  
• Sales Order
  
• Delivery Order
  
• Invoice
  
• Cash Sale
  
• Debit Note
  
• Credit Note
  
• Cancel Sales Order
  
• Delivery Return
  

I guess that is all that you need.

If you need customization, get those software suites which can cater for customization. One software suite which I know of is AutoCount Accounting.

The more famous brand is UBS-Software by SAGE. But UBS is not known to be able to be customized heavily.

The other one I can think of is SQL Account.

Still thinking of customizing another software ? I don't really recommend that if you are SME.

Google Wave

Image by curiouslee via Flickr

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

It is part of the Google's I/O (Input Output) development project.

It comes with development APIs which cater for:

• Extensions: Build robot extensions to automate common tasks or build gadget extensions to provide a new way for users to interact
• Embed: Make your site more collaborative by dropping in a Wave

Extensions are like templates, which means that you can do customization on top of Google Wave.

Embed is where you can embed a 'Wave' into your web application, similar to Google Map.

So pretty cool stuff.

Image by marketingfacts via Flickr

Evangelists preach that Google Wave is most likely helpful in terms of:

• Organizing events
  
• Group projects
  
• Photo sharing
  
• Meeting notes
  
• Brainstorming
  
• Interactive games
  

Very nice. This will more likely phase out smaller software vendors providing solutions for calendar and scheduling, collaborations tools, interactive classroom and etc. But we are not sure yet.

However, the good thing is that finally someone big and bold enough is able to integrate these isolated applications together.

If you are developer or product entrepreneur, you may want to look at the Google Wave Federation Protocol.

What this is telling us is that Google has (over and over again), invented an entirely new architecture and this time it is targeting communication and collaboration.

The protocol which is open-source is similar to things like TCP/IP, FTP, ModBus and etc. This is self explanatory.

But more importantly, I am more interested to know how the Federation protocol can be used as part of firmware for peer-to-peer (fully mesh) communicating hardware devices.

This is what Intel's RCP is trying to achieve. The road may seem longer that expected.

Juniper Reinvents the Experience and Economics of Networking: Unveils New Software, Silicon, Systems and Partnerships

Juniper Networks® (NYSE: JNPR) unveiled groundbreaking new software, silicon, systems and partnerships designed to propel the “new network” for enterprise and service provider customers. The new capabilities combine breakthrough technology with smart partnerships to help customers immediately reinvent the experience and economics of networking, while fostering a broad ecosystem of innovation across the network.

A launch event at the New York Stock Exchange coincided with the Internet’s 40th anniversary , and reflects Juniper’s vision for the next decade – a future of networking that is open, scalable, simple, secure and automated to address the exploding scale of Internet services for personal and business productivity. As part of the launch, Juniper today introduced several products and partnerships that expand the company’s reach and value for customers:

• New Junos® software: An open cross-network software platform that allows customers to directly program multiple layers of their networks for rich user experiences, smart economics and fast time to market. The new Junos software platform includes the popular Junos network operating system, the new Junos Space network application platform and new Junos Pulse integrated network client – all built with the same core design principles, integration approach and development discipline.
  
• New Junos-based silicon and systems: A new Junos One family of processors, including the Junos Trio chipset with revolutionary 3D Scaling technology. 3D Scaling enables networks to dynamically support more subscribers, services and bandwidth – all at the same time. Junos Trio will be delivered in new modular line cards and new 3.5-inch routers for Juniper MX Series, providing two to four times faster throughput than the competition – up to 2.6 terabits per second – while using half as much power per gigabit. The MX 3D products will offer the industry’s first “universal edge” with 3D Scaling for delivery of business, residential and mobile services at massive scale on a single network.
  
• New Junos-based solutions: Juniper unveiled new cloud networking and security solutions based on the Junos software platform and Juniper systems. The solutions are built upon Juniper’s simplified data center network architecture to help customers share and secure their infrastructures while delivering and accessing cloud-based services.
  
• New Junos-based partnerships: Juniper announced new go-to-market partnerships with Dell and IBM to deliver Juniper systems as part of their cloud-ready data center solutions. Juniper also announced its first-ever Junos software licensing partnership with Blade Network Technologies, which will develop future blade switches based on the Junos operating system. Juniper also announced several partners who have built or are building applications based on Junos software, including Active Broadband Networks, Ankeena Networks, Harris Stratex, Packet Design, Q1 Labs, Telchemy, Telecom Italia and Triveni Digital.
  

Launch Details and Links
For more information and materials about the launch, please see the following web sites:

• Launch Site – www.thenewnetworkishere.com
  
• Launch Simulcast – www.thenewnetworkishere.com/simulcast
  
• Online Newsroom – www.juniper.net/press
  

Check out details.