Sun, 20 May 2012 14:16:10 -0800WeeblyWed, 10 Nov 2010 04:39:57 -0800http://veejee.com/1/post/2010/11/managing-cisco-devices-with-tfs.htmlOne of the current roles I have is to oversee our network infrastructure. While working on some of the VPNs, I realized that our network engineers would actually configure the device directly. I immediately realized how dangerous this is to our environment. Surely there are tools out there that can help make this a safer process. The whole idea of working directly on any device (Trial and error) is just a faulty concept. Tools such as ASDM and CNA help to a certain level by making things easy, but they also add a lot of junk to the device configuration. After a lot of thought, I was wondering if we could use TFS to push configuration to our devices. What I planned was to download the configs from the various devices using ORION. I then checked them all into TFS. Going forward, any change can be made in TFS first, and then reviewed before being pushed to the device. Currently we still push those changes to the device by configuring it directly (configure terminal command), but there is no reason to not use something like TFTP to push the change you made to the device. It would be interesting to see how this works out in the long run. ]]>Wed, 12 May 2010 16:42:33 -0800http://veejee.com/1/post/2010/05/file-archiver-code-posted.htmlI have posted the code for the FileArchiver under the GNU public license. My hope is that we can make this utility good for any business. Some of the improvements that can be made are the ability to insert the logs into databases so that it can be queried against later. Also the ability to send notifications in case some content has been logged would be nice. I plan on making these updates soon unless someone beats me to it.
]]>Wed, 05 May 2010 12:08:53 -0800http://veejee.com/1/post/2010/05/new-utility-filearchiver.htmlUtility to archive log files that get generated by various applications everyday. The service will aggregate all the logs and place it in one central location for later analysis. Some features present are: Organize log files by Last Modified Date/Year/Month or Last Created Date/Year/Month. You zip up output. Every individual folder will be zipped up so that it is easy to store. Please click here to view more about the product.

]]>Sun, 02 May 2010 18:37:46 -0800http://veejee.com/1/post/2010/05/outsourcing-software-development-to-india-a-little-insight.htmlThere was a time when outsourcing was all the buzz. Lots of companies were looking into outsourcing as an option. But not all succeeded in making it work. Outsourcing is not for everyone. Companies that are small and require a very fast turnaround on their projects usually get frustrated with outsourcing. Communication is usually harder, and initial failures are common. Another thing I noticed was the whole hype in low cost development. This article is about such an experiment.

One of my prior jobs was to try and take some projects from an American based company to India and lead the outsourced development effort. I was really looking forward to successfully leading and completing a quality project on time. The project was an enterprise level application, and required good resources. Unfortunately, the budget was very small for the project. The budget I had per outsourced engineer was $15 K. The project required a quick turnaround, and in the time I was given, I really struggled to find decent engineers. Rather than delegating tasks, my primary function became that of a developer. It was tedious, and I wondered if we could have done things differently.

One of the things that I decided was that we had to evaluate the Indian resources the same way we evaluate the American engineers. You have to choose based on talent as well as price, and not necessarily based on price alone. A good American Software developer costs anywhere from $80 K to $100 K or more. Despite the high cost, a company would still consider this engineer because he or she brings in good quality work. You wouldn't want to depend on an entry level engineer to complete your enterprise level application on time and properly. You have to evaluate Indian talent along the same lines.

Here is how the salaries in India breaks down. An entry level engineer in India comes in at about $10 K and senior engineers come in between $40 K and $50 K. So, as an American company, the responsibility falls on your shoulders to determine what is best for you in that range. If the company wants good talent, they still have to make an investment.

Now, as I had mentioned earlier, outsourcing is not for everyone, and I think the market in America is becoming more realistic. American companies these days are able to better analyze the true profitability of outsourced development. They are not blindly jumping into it anymore. With careful understanding of how their own structure works, they can look at outsourcing as a positive option. ]]>