Introduction                                                                                                          (top)

The BbyB Beacon is an electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements of important events like training programmes, Management Review Meetings, etc.

Contact Information
Any contributions to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to Vatsala@bbyb.com or padmabaliga@bbyb.com.

Editorial

What does independence mean to us? A holiday from work, (it’s on a Monday, so that means a long weekend), a movie with family or friends, and a meal in a restaurant perhaps, with tri-coloured starters and patriotically named cocktails. None of this is going to revive in us a love for our country, or send a rush of adrenalin into our blood when we think of what it means to be an Indian.
Do something different this year – get some friends together, dress in saffron, white and green apparel (the Supreme Court order allows you to do this) and organize a Freedom Festival; drive into rural Bangalore and watch the children of a village school hoist the national flag, sing soul-stirring patriotic songs and celebrate with laddoos. Or, think back to the past – of revolutionaries in dark dingy cells in the Andaman jail, the tremor of excitement as the tricolour was unfurled from the ramparts of the Red Fort on that historic day 58 years ago.
To know more about independence than you learnt in your history textbooks, visit a second-hand book-store (there are plenty on Brigade Road) and pick up Chaman Nahal’s Azadi or Manohar Malgonkar’s A Bend in the Ganges. Or watch Mangal Pandey, which will be released the previous weekend. Haan yehi rastaan hein!

Padma

From the Management                                                                                         (top)

This month saw a lot of ‘action’ at BbyB. To start with we had our annual ISO 9001:2000 surveillance audits. TUV (our auditors) cleared BbyB for another year with just one minor Non-conformance noted by them. The best thing about the audit this year was that most of us had nothing ‘special’ to do to get through the audit and still BbyB sailed through it. The point I am trying to make is that the requirements that ISO had placed on us have become second nature to all of us and we do it without even thinking about it. So, I guess it is time to move on – CMMI Level 3. This will be the next challenge that BbyB undertakes and I hope that it will receive the same support from you that you gave us when we undertook ISO.

This month also saw us go out on our summer ‘stress buster’. We are now hitting the limit (40 people) of most reasonably sized resorts. We may now be required to split into two groups as it is getting difficult to find resorts which can take in a larger group. We are also planning on fixing the dates for the ‘stress buster’ holidays. The summer ‘stress buster’ will be coinciding with the UK spring bank holiday (27th, 28th, 29th May 2006) and the winter one will coincide with the Christmas holidays (24th, 25th, 26th, 27th Dec 2005). This will avoid the problem of having to worry about support, as they are UK bank holidays.

We are looking for suggestions for a place to go to in winter. Please let me know if you have any ideas – some basic criteria that it should meet are
nn1. Not more than 8 hours driving distance away by bus.
nn2. Can accommodate 40+ people.
nn3. Budget of around 3000.00 per person for stay and food for the entire nnnnduration. As this winter we can do 3 nights and 4 days, this would work nnnnout to around Rs. 1000.00/person/night.
If you do know of a place, let me know along with contact details etc. so that I can take it forward. Also, I would like these details sent to me on/before 1st September so that we have sufficient time to do the bookings for December.

Hopefully by the time you have read this, BbyB would have kicked off the construction of the new offices. We have planned a nine-month build, which means that we should be ready to move in around April 2006. There are some new 3D views along with this newsletter showing the exact finish that we are hoping to achieve on the building.

 

Employees of the Year                                                                                         (top)

Rejeen Rules the Roost He’s always smiling, he’s always pleasant, he’s always there for you. He’s Rejeen V., Domain Leader, pFACT and the Employee of the Year. Rejeen joined BbyB in December 2003 as Domain Member, Span-ER. Working with Sreedhar on Span-ER helped him put an edge on his skills in ASP programming, which stood him in good stead when, three months later, he was asked to work along with Guruprasad on a new project, pFACT. “Those were very exciting days I was lucky to be in on a project from scratch and witness and assist at its birth. We worked all hours of the day and developed a demo version for our clients within an amazingly short period of 15 days,” recalls Rejeen. The clients were happy and pFACT became the first project at BbyB to be developed on ASP.NET. Being part of a two-member team meant getting involved with various facets of the project and acquiring multiple skill-sets. Today, the pFACT team has seven members and a client list of sixteen universities and institutions. “It is a very satisfying feeling to know that the project one is involved in is being used by prestigious clients like University of Cambridge,” smiles Rejeen. Rejeen was nominated Employee of the Year for his laudable work in getting pFACT off the ground. Most of the initial work for pFACT was done entirely by him with guidance from Jayaraj. pFACT is a web-based application used by universities and other institutions to estimates the costs of a project they wish to undertake. University Staff use this application to submit project proposals, based on pre-defined templates. By September 2005, all universities in UK have to compulsorily be able to define and explain their project costing. “We therefore expect our client list to grow considerably in the next couple of months. We are also planning a major release in the first week of August,” confirms Rejeen. Way to go, Rejeen!

Projects News

StaffBank                                                                                                            (top)

Hi All,

First of all let me congratulate Arun Kumar for the successful demonstration of the CTI Telephone Interface to StaffBank, at London. (Arun Kumar was there in London for the demo on the day of the bomb blasts. Bravo, Arun!)

We had an ISO Certification renewal audit on the 4th of July and as a surprise StaffBank was not part of the audit. (The auditors decided to take a look at pFACT and Sepia for a change.).

Chaitanya has been busy with some of the changes required for SCOT version of StaffBank. A general release of 20800 desktop version and also the web version was done for Whittington with some of the changes that were asked for in the month of July. (Matron level web access for StaffBank). The same version has also been released for Guys and St Thomas and Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trusts.

It has been relatively a quiet period as far as the external changes and bugs reported are concerned. Taking advantage of this quiet period I have been able to take off some time and learn a bit of ASP.Net. Along with Uma and the new recruit, Sajayan, I have started developing the Helpdesk project (which was originally developed by BHP using Microsoft Access) in ASP. Net.

Shenoy and Usha have been busy developing Agency invoicing functionality in VB.Net. Prathibha has been busy with the data prep work for Mesals for quite a long time now, while Sreedhar has been busy with the development of CCS and 1View systems. Jayashree and Raghul, testers for StaffBank would have had a quiet period as well and would have got an opportunity to have a look at StaffRoster.

NHS Professionals, one of the largest clients for StaffBank, have come up with an OBS for a national tender for providing temporary staffing solutions. We have come to know that there are about 60 companies bidding for the contract to provide the software. (Of course BHP is one of them!) Shenoy was in UK in the second week of July to discuss some of the issues concerned with OBS. All of us here are hoping that we (BHP) win the contract and continue to be the service providers for NHS Professionals.
Every one of us in the StaffBank team along with the others in the office enjoyed the much wanted break far away from the maddening crowd (at Jungle Lodges at K.Gudi) in the second week of July and are back at work with a fresh frame of mind.

And finally, London/South have finished testing the 2.07.02.51.23 Beta version and are waiting for a general release. A general release with fixes for some of the bugs reported will be made in the last week of July or the first week of August.

Arun for StaffBank

MESaLS in July                                                                                                (top)

Gateshead Social Services have gone Live with MESaLS V4 in the week starting on 11th July. Wigan went Live starting on 27th July. Having these two new clients will no doubt help us in strengthening the product further.

We have a busy August ahead as Gateshead have given us a considerably large Change Control list. As the functionalities increase, we anticipate that more clients will join the MESaLS band wagon (both existing V3 Clients as well as new clients like BRC, Hereford, Sunderland, Cambridge, etc.) in the coming months.

As a small 'Thank you' to the MESaLS team, the entire team went on a 'Dinner and a Movie' outing (dinner at Pizza Hut and the movie being Sarkar).

This month, we also welcome to the MESaLS team, Aruj George, an MCA graduate from Visveswariah Technological University, Coimbatore. He specializes in VB and VB.Net and joined us on the 1st of July.

Look out for more in August….

Shashi

pFACT in August                                                                                                     (top)

We had two patch releases in this month. The second half of the month was hectic for us as We are gearing up for a general release in the first week of August. All our clients are expected to go live from 1st September following this release. We are pleased to say that Birkbeck College are a new client installing pFACT Oracle version for the first time.
We welcome a new addition to the pFACT team, Sumathy.

Krishnaprasad for pFACT

Sepia                                                                                                                   (top)

This month Sepia released two different patches 3.04.00.g.6 for Dudley, 3.06.00 for ELCMHT and Beta version 3.07.00.1 to BHP.
In 3.04.00.g.6 and 3.06.00.b all the reports were updated and a new functionality was added.
Version 3.06.00.c with ELCMHT report changes will be sent this month. In 3.07.00.1, we made new enhancements to NELMHT along with updating of all the reports. Currently we are working on security and reports for the newly added functionality.

Hema for Sepia

New Office                                                                                                           (top)

	Our architect has given a wonderful look to our new office building with its warm earth colours to be achieved using a combination of three different types of bricks. Lots of open spaces let in natural light and air. A large pool in the centre reflecting the blue sky above is an open invitation to cool off. The pictures below say it all.

Other News                                                                                                            (top)

Wedding Pictures Here’s a quick glimpse of Shashi’s wedding and reception, which took place on June 26th. Shashi’s wife, Kavitha, we discovered during our stress-buster at KGudi, has a divine voice and was quite the nightingale of our group. Cooling Off at K Gudi BbyBers enjoyed every minute of their holiday at K Gudi. Comfy log-huts and tents, luxuriant greenery, cascading waterfalls (there was so much water flowing down, we wondered why everyone was worrying about the water table), a forest that was teeming with wildlife, and long exhausting treks during which we sighted various types of birds and soaked our tired feet in the cool waters of rippling brooks. Need we say more? The pictures say it all. It’s Reigning Blue! The new look that our website sports is the brainchild of our graphic designer, Nisha. She has spent the last month dreaming up designs, lugging a camera around, coaxing people to pose for her and had also had to listen to a lot of moaning and unflattering comments when people viewed their pictures later. But, Nisha, it’s a great new look and worth the long hours and the effort. More power to your creativity!

Currently NHSP runs the StaffBank system from 4 national call centres and is planning to merge all the databases into one single database and then run from 2 call centres. As this is a huge contract, by law, NHSP is required to invite bids from all over the European Union. This means that StaffBank is now in open competition with companies like BT, KPMG, Deloitte etc.Our response to the OBS is due by the end of this month and NHSP will then publish its shortlist soon. We are quite confident that we will remain extremely competitive in this process but only time will tell the final result.

Raghu

Arun Kumar left for England on June 3 for the demonstration of the CTI Telephone Interface and monitoring of the Auto Email module. Within days, he was right in the middle of all the bomb explosions. The Edgware Road Station where one of the blasts took place is just a few hundred yards from where he had to go into work. The clients were very appreciative of this, for, like it is said, “the show must go on”
This is what Terry Baroudi of NHS Professionals had to say to all those on the spot on that day:

G. Sumathy is an MCA from Bharathidasan University and has specialised in ASP.Net. She has joined as a Domain Member of pFACT. A self-confessed TV fan, Sumathy also dabbles in interior decoration.

Aruj George is from the verdant state of Kerala. An MCA from Visveswariah Technical University, his specialisation is VB and VB.NET. Aruj loves to travel and takes his Walkman with him wherever he goes. He is a Domain Member of MESaLS.

Sajayan Kondoth, also from Kerala, has done his ACCP from Aptech and is currently pursuing an MCA through IGNOU. He has specialised in .NET technologies, VB and ASP and reads technical books in his spare time. He’s a football fan and his favourite footballer is Michael Oven. He has joined as Domain Member, StaffBank.

Training and Education                                                                                         (top)

Holidays                                                                                                                 (top)
August 15, Monday will be a holiday on account of Independence Day.

Birthdays                                                                                                               (top)


July was a sweet month with four birthdays (five when you remember that Jayaraj’s daughter, Sonu celebrated her birthday at K Gudi), but August promises to be sweeter. Six of us are all set to celebrate birthdays in August and they are:

Sairamesh n1bnnon August 1
Jairaj C.N nni1binon the 11th
Muthukumar 1.n1on the 15th
Dattathreya 1b.n on the 24th
Sreedhar nnb.1bnon the 28th and
Usha V.K. nn.bbn on the 31st

Bbyb Beacon wishes them all a very happy birthday!

Here’s a glimpse of last month’s celebrations.

Chaithanya's Birthday Snaps
Vidya's and Rajkumar's Birthday Snaps