GCI Winter Edition Newsletter

1. a good Tree Bears good frUIT
WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
Message from
Mr. Naoyuki baba Group President - GrapeCity Inc.
Dear friends and colleagues,
It is with sadness, gratitude and joy that Several hundred years before his arrival, sinned but in their stubbornness and pride,
we remember GrapeCity’s Honorary Chair- God’s prophets wrote that the Messiah, they choose not to accept Jesus’ sacrifice
man, Paul Harold Broman. Sadness- since the one who would deliver us from our sin, for their sins. As Jesus said, the enemy
we will miss Paul. Gratitude- for his life here would be born in Bethlehem from the fam- (Satan) came to steal and kill and destroy.
in this world. Joy- knowing he now lives in ily line of David and of a virgin. Jesus was Jesus came to give life and gave abundant-
heaven. that Messiah, fully God and fully man. Like ly.
no other person, Jesus lived a sinless life
On November 24th, Paul left this world. and was the perfect sacrifice for each of us God’s word tells us that the same Jesus who
Paul was an incredible blessing to his loving when he died on the cross, settling once visited the world 2,000 years ago is coming
wife Setsuko, to their 22 children, and to and for all our sin debt. That is why on the again. We do not know the day and hour
family and friends around the world includ- Cross he said, “It is finished.” of his return, but we must be ready. Jesus
ing all of us at GrapeCity. is coming to destroy Satan who is still on
You may ask, what is required of us then? the loose in this world and busy deceiving
Together we will strive to carry on his lega- The answer is simple. We only need to be- humankind.
cy in everything we do at GrapeCity. lieve.
This message is extremely urgent and this
The best I can do to honour Paul is to share One of Jesus’ own disciples, even though motivated Paul. He dedicated his life to
the message to which he dedicated his life. he had walked with Jesus and seen the mir- sharing the message of life, of hope, of
Paul lived a rich life and as we remember acles, doubted Jesus in the days after His salvation. It is Good News.
him, it is good to reflect on what motivat- death on the cross. This disciple, Thomas,
ed Paul. What motivated Paul was Jesus believed Him when He appeared alive, as As Paul himself would do, I urge
Christ, whose birth the world celebrates he did to more than 500 of his brethren be- you not to delay. Don’t believe
this month. fore he returned to heaven. If you doubt, I in Satan’s lies. Put your trust
ask you to pray to God and ask him to meet in God today! Trust Jesus, the
From an early age, Paul understood that we you in your doubt, ask Him in the name of one who saves us from our
are all sinners, we have all fallen short of Jesus to open your heart to His truth. Talk sin. This Christmas sea-
the glory of God. Because we are sinners, to any of us who, like Paul, have believed. son, celebrate, that yes,
there is an infinite distance between us and Jesus came for you.
God who is without sin and is perfectly holy, Death came into the world because of sin.
But for those of us who believe, we have
righteous and just. So great is the distance
an amazing promise, the promise of eternal Naoyuki
that God himself had to reach across it. So
great is our sin that so great a sacrifice had life. You see, Jesus conquered death. What
to be made to pay the debt and reconcile this means is that Paul and all those who
us to God. So great is God’s love for each believe will not suffer the second death.
of us that he himself, his own Son, became The eternal punishment awaits all who have
a person.

2. WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
TM
eySen
GrapeSEED update
The widespread success and growth of Grape- Progress has been made in adding more schools
SEED is attributable to the simplicity of the con- to our customer list, and streamlining of pro-
cept. This extremely well-researched and scien- cesses. The third edition of the Global Training
tific, simple yet deep and profound method to Seminar was held in our office on December 7
teach children English has produced extraordi- and 8, 2012. The next training session in our of-
nary results for communicating in English: Read- fice is scheduled tentatively for March 2013. The
ing, speaking, writing, spelling and vocabulary sales Training Workshop in Shanghai in August/
acquisition. We are finding from schools in India September 2012 was followed up with a second
that GrapeSEED is leading to – apart from Eng- meeting in Sendai to standardize market collat-
lish language skills - an overall personality de- eral across countries. Currently this collateral
velopment of the child. As his communications differs from one country to another. The process
abilities grow in English, his confidence increas- of Trademark and Patent filings for GrapeSEED
es, his shyness reduces and he becomes more in India has just started. It is a time-consuming
noticeable in school. Some of these children are process but a start has been made.
winning laurels in different competitions which
testify their verbal skills like English story-telling
and poetry recitation. It has also been observed By Ashoke Ghosh
that GrapeSEED videos have also helped them
with regard to grooming and etiquette.

3. WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
US Office Update
December is always an interesting month. The calendar of the annual SQL Pass Summit, we were there to meet GrapeCity PowerTools
year end is around the corner. It is a time typically used new prospects and share what ActiveReports Server can The VisualWebGUI (VWG) product by an Israel based
to look back and assess how far we came and how far help in with their ad hoc reporting needs. These confer- company Gizmox Ltd., is being localized by the team in
do we plan to go further in the coming year. It has been ences were a great success for bringing the ActiveRe- Japan under the guidance of Taka San. He is in Japan to
a very busy year for all of us with new projects and ports Server product in front of the people who work help the team as they near the release date and align
customers coupled with projects which we successfully with data in their daily lives and resulted in a lot of in- to the releases of the original product from Gizmox.
delivered. Over the past three months, here in Seattle, terest from people we talked to. Along with marketing, This product provides a unique framework to allow clas-
there has been a lot of action to close off the year on a we added another 5 customers including our first in- sic form-based .NET development for cross-platform,
high note. ternational customer from The Netherlands. As always, cross-browser and plugin-free HTML5 web application.
our product team spread across our office in Russia and The product empowers developers and organizations to
Services Accounts/Projects India has been instrumental in bringing new features consolidate their development efforts in one place rather
Nuance, one of the largest GGS customers, has one of than using platform specific development environments
our teams working on inception for a new project around and compilers.
their flagship product “eScription”. Together with this,
we are also nearing the completion of the beta test- The US Back-Office
ing phase for ‘BeyondTXT’ with applications rolled out to I can’t end this update without pointing out the consist-
production and 38 customers already migrated. Gem- ent efforts from both- Tim and Archana , who ensure
star also is close to its integration-testing phase. the smoothness of daily business. Above and beyond the
daily administrative tasks, we saw the team organize
Lifeway’s mobile eReader apps’ timely delivery for both our very first GrapeCity US Holiday Party. With a great
iOS and Android platforms earned the delivery team venue and a magical show from a local entertainer (Jeff
praise for the development work as well as their ded- Evans), we all (families included) had a fantastic time.
ication. In the words of the Lifeway Management team Oh… I shouldn’t forget the awesome food as well.
“Your efforts were essential for success”.
We also had our fair share of fun with birthday events
Microsoft has started using the Intelligent Systems Ref- and lunch outings as usual. The people who turned a
erence Architecture, which our team delivered in No- and functionality to the product and further enhance our new year over the last quarter included Scott Willeke
vember, in workshops across the world to educate and ability to address the needs of the BI market place. You and yours truly (Bhupesh).
provide guidance for their OEM partners on “Why” and can read more on the ActiveReports Server website at:
“How” to tailor their products to best leverage the power http://www.activereportsserver.com. The holiday season has begun and winter is settling in. I
of Windows Embedded, Microsoft Azure, and Hadoop as sign off the last update for the year with a quote: “Year’s
part of their “Internet of Things” initiative. GGS Website Refresh end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on,
We are going to completely redesign GGS Website. Plan- with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”
ActiveReports Server Customers ning will start from mid-September. Anyone interested (-Hal Borland) And my little addition to it “Stay with us
The last few months saw many conferences where Ac- in contributing towards this initiative can reach out to as we start a new chapter in our book of success in the
tiveReports Server was a sponsor. From the National Sanjeev Jagtap or Devinder Singh at GGSWebsite@ coming year.”
Association of Healthcare Data Organizations’ (NAHDO) GrapeCity.Com.
annual conference in New Orleans to the Seattle venue By Bhupesh Malhotra

4. Learning Wave WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
To promote the dissemination of ideas, experiences, and knowledge
To encourage continual education
Training is one of the most important parts Training is also a key requirement for new recruits; prop- available on which Cloud computing can be achieved and
er training helps them to understand the job, its require- one of them is Microsoft Azure.
of an organization’s overall
ments and responsibilities. It also increases understand-
Strategy. ing of the organizational culture. Microsoft Azure Service Platform is a big part of Micro-
soft’s cloud computing initiatives. It is designed specif-
Before starting a particular venture or considering a po-
Training programs increase communication between dif- ically for the cloud. Microsoft Azure includes Windows
tential acquisition, the first question that arises is, that
ferent levels of an organization. In GGS we have started Azure, which is a cloud specific OS designed to provide
whether or not the organisation possesses the required
the training programs in all the three verticals i.e. Engi- scalable compute and storage services. It is supported
skills.
neering, QA and Project Management, on topics related by Azure App Fabric, which is a collection of different
to new features, technology and practices followed in the tools for supporting applications in the cloud. SQL Azure
current software industry with a motto of “employee em- enables storage, as well as management of data, simi-
powerment” which is the latest trend in management. lar to the conventional relational database services of an
SQL server.
In the engineering vertical the trainings for An-
droid are happening under the code name ‘GInnova- Trainings covering each of these aspects have been
tion’ and Azure under the code name ‘Cloud Computing’. scheduled and conducted in GGS during the month of
Cloud Computing is an execution of computing jobs in December 2012. In this program there are 5 sessions
multi-tenant elastic environment, where jobs may dy- which cover the fundamentals of Azure , Azure Fabric i.e.
namically scale up or down requesting/releasing resourc- Service bus –Design and implementation , Azure Storage
es on a fly. – SQL Azure and Azure tables , Azure services like HDIn-
sight (Hadoop) for working on Big Data. These trainings
are conducted in the form of class room programs where
the trainer (member of the existing azure project team)
explains the fundamentals through presentations and
working code samples. Post session, a complete demon-
Benefits of training are intangible and investing in train-
stration of the aspect covered in the session is given to
ing benefits both, the organization and the employees,
the attendees, using which one can create his/her own
for a long period. Training enhances a worker’s level of
test project for learning the actual implementation.
skills. It provides sense of satisfaction, which is an in-
trinsic motivator. Training also provides the organization
Under the second programme i.e. ‘GInnovation’,
with multi -skilled employees. It increases an employer’s
trainings on Android development have been conducted.
commitment towards their job and the organization.
This programme imparts knowledge through video se-
ries where videos of 10 -15 min duration cover the fun-
In service industries, the main source of an organiza-
damentals and implementation of android development.
tion’s income is its staff expertise and skills, hiring pro-
The benefit of giving trainings through video series are:
fessionals with high skills is comparatively expensive
than training current employees to acquire the required
The owner of the process is billed only for the capaci-
skills.
ty used. Currently there are different technology stacks

5. Learning Wave WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
Portability as Video is a portable medium, requiring only a support, often raise the question around testing them Second session under the project management verti-
playback device and a viewing screen.
effectively. Testers are craving to find effective ways to cal on ‘how to write short user stories?’ was conducted
Consistency of content is another major benefit of video Test Web Services. In this agile development era, we are for PM and APM members. In this session, the following
training. Especially when no trainer is present, all viewers
receive the same content. moving to a model where UI is ever changing and con- were covered:
summation of web services is taking the centre stage and
aspect and tips on how to create user stories,
hence this layer gets the attention it truly deserves by
These videos are shot in-house by members of GGS An- shifting the onus from UI testing to Web Services based explaining the functionalities in a few sentences,
droid team in which folks have shared the knowledge validation. Thus, training on how to achieve this using techniques one should follow to break the feature into small
about the aspects of framework, sdk and implementation SOAP UI was given to the team by engineers having past sub features,
techniques. experience of its usage and helped team in understand- drafting the stories explaining its working.
ing the setup and ‘how to’ of the tool.
Also, these videos cover the experiences of these folks This approach requires a lot of collaboration with client
helping the listener to understand the magic one can and team but helps in drafting correct and achievable
generate through apps made on android. In Project management vertical trainings on en- scope.
hancing soft skills and ‘how to write short user stories?’
were conducted. The trainings programme conducted helped a lot of peo-
In the QA vertical trainings on a new Automation ple in polishing their skills and take a step forward, be
it in technical or non-technical direction. Such programs
always prove their worth in the long run, so kudos to the
group for organising this so effectively.
By Prateek Katyal
For effective performance in the workplace, companies
need their employees to have not only domain knowl-
edge, technical and analytical skills, but also the skills
to deal with the external world of clients, customers and
vendors; and to work in a collaborative manner with
their colleagues. A session was conducted by member of
PMO group for all the members of GGS on behavioural
competencies (also known as interpersonal skills) which
include proficiencies such as communication skills, per-
flavour i.e. Services automation were conducted in De- sonal effectiveness and creative problem solving.
cember. Web Services (WCF/ASMX) due to their world-
wide implementation and popularity but limited test tool

6. WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER
CRM Updates
Year 2012, was an eventful year for the GGS- To sum it all, inspite of challenging business
CRM projects team with a lot of ‘firsts’ hap- conditions, we managed to bring in some new
pening during the year. business on the table, kept existing custom-
ers happy and hope that 2013 turns out to be
It started with the launch of Telesales Soft- a good year for GrapeCity and everyone else
ware for Salesforce CRM, our first App devel- in the IT industry.
oped on Force.com and certified by Salesforce
Inc. for Appexchange. Since the launch we Wish you all a very Happy New Year 2013!
have had customers from US, Finland,
Netherlands and UK purchasing licenses of By Rahul Singh
the App and hundreds showing interest in Tri-
als, Demos, Test drives.
Along with our first Salesforce Product launch,
we also got our first (and second) Salesforce Sanjay Gupta’s Son
CRM customization projects from two of our Name: Aarav Gupta | DOB: 20th Nov, 2012
QUIZ
existing customers in Netherlands - Peak-
IT and MVP. These projects involved a lot of
complex customizations, coding and data mi-
gration activities. It has provided a very rich
experience to the team and will immensely
benefit us in all the future projects on this
Q1. Agents Yellow, Red and Green each have a green badge, a yellow badge and a red badge, but none of them
has a badge color that matches their name. They met when called to a conference at headquarters.
cloud-based technology.
The Agent with Green badge said “I have license to kill!, to which Agent Red replied sarcastically: ‘what time?’
What color is each Agent’s badge?
On Pivotal CRM front, we signed our first ever
CRM deal in India with a new client -Monsan-
to. This is a year-long deal for Sustained En-
gineering project with great certainty of the Q2. Including the 16 unit squares shown, how many squares are there? How many matches
deal extending further in future. Monsanto do you have to remove to leave not one square of any size?
has some other areas where we would be
pitching in for more business and we can right
away see a realistic chance of getting another
new project from them in the next 6 months. Q3. Express 100 with five 1s. Express 100 three ways with five 5s. You can use brackets, patentheses, and these
We also had regular business coming from our signs: +, -, * (into), / (divided)
existing US clients- and we expect it to be the
same in the coming year as well. The first one to answer all the puzzles will win a surprise gift.
Please send your answer to hr.india@grapecity.co.in

7. WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER

8. WINTER Edition 09 | GRAPECITY INDIA NEWSLETTER