Nerds and Geeks 2nd Edition cover page

Nerds N’ Geeks is an IT Magazine that gives you the latest technological trends and knowledge on the IT field. Its FREE Online second edition is out now!!! You can download it from http://issuu.com/nerdsngeeks/docs/issue2.

You can read one of my articles on ” how to build your web apps on the cloud” on page 11.

These are three example use cases of Concurrent and Parallel Programming scenarios:

1) Use Case: Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

2) Use Case: Download a file from BitTorrent

3) Use Case: Facial recognition using 3D images/videos at an Airport

I went to watch this on 24^th of December shown at Liberty cinema. The film is more than 2 ½ hours long and its certainly worth the money you pay for. Now you can do online booking at Liberty from this new web site launched by EAP.

Story

The story takes place in a planet several light years from Earth called Pandora. The planet is inhabited by human sort of race called the Na’vi. They are physically stronger, taller and blue-skinned. They’ve also got long tails. They live in harmony with Nature and worship a mother goddess called Eywa. The planet inhabited by other alien wild life which resembles to giant hawks, wolves, panthers, and rhinos.

A multinational corporation from Earth has established a mining colony in Pandora in search of a valuable mineral which sells USD 20 million a kilo. Humans cannot breathe Pandora’s atmosphere. In order to move in Pandora human scientists have genetically engineered human-na’vi bodies called Avatars, which are controlled by genetically matched human operators.

The hero of the film: Jake Sully, a disabled former US Marine who takes his late twin brother’s place in the Avatar program without any training, He learns how to link his consciousness to an avatar and go into the wilderness of Pandora where the Navi tribe inhabits.

While in a research operation, Jake gets lost in the wilderness and get attacked by a pack wolves. Jake was rescued by Neytiri, daughter of one Pandora tribe leader who takes him under her wing to teach him how to live in the forest, speak the language and honor the traditions of nature. Ultimately they both fall in love.

As time pass by humans become impatient and they make aggressive attacks the tribe and the the forest in search of mineral deposits that lies underneath a giant tree. This tree is considered as a holy tree where tribal memories and the wisdom of their ancestors can be asked for. This sparks the war between the humans and Na’vis. Jake along with his fellow scientist friends decides to support the Navi’s againts the human attack. But will they be able to save this giant tree? Please watch the film for the answers

Cast and Characters

Humans

• Sam Worthington as Corporal Jake Sully.
• Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine, a botanist and head of the Avatar Program.
• Michelle Rodriguez as Trudy Chacon, a Marine fighter pilot assigned to support the Avatar Program.
• Giovanni Ribisi as Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator for the mining operation
• Stephen Lang as Colonel Miles Quaritch, the ruthless head of Security and plays the main Villon role.

Na’vi

• Zoë Saldaña as Neytiri, princess of the Navi trbe
• C. C. H. Pounder as Mo’at, the spiritual leader and Neytiri’s mother

Production team

• James Cameron - Director
• James Horner - Music Composer
• Mauro Fiore - Cinematographer
• James Cameron - Producer
• Jon Landau- Producer
• James Cameron - Screenwriter
• Weta Digital - Visual Effects

References

• http://www.answers.com/topic/avatar-2009-film
• http://www.avatarmovie.com/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)

• Software testing is costly
• Add wasteful time for the project schedule
• Brings conflicts between the development team
• Brings no improvement to the ultimate product

These are very people who would spend the least amount of time on testing and end up with project deliveries with significant quality issues.

Software testing is an investment in quality that will produce positive results. Project Managers need to fit in QA testing tasks that fits within the overall project schedule for testers to report their findings (bugs or issues). So the developers can fix them before the customer release.

These some of the test approaches used within industry improve Software quality.

Acceptance testing

Testing with respect to user’s functional requirements and business processes to determine whether a system satisfies or does not satisfy the acceptance criteria of end users, customers or any other authorized entity.

Smoke testing

Testing with respect to the most important functional requirements to check if critical bugs exist within the system.

Regression testing

Testing of a previously tested system to ensure that new modifications have not introduced any defects on uncovered in unchanged areas of the software as a result of the changes made.

Integration testing

Test the interoperability between different software products. Normally this kind of testing is done by a Software Engineer or a technically savy Tester.

Load testing

A type of performance testing conducted to evaluate the behavior of a system with increasing load.

Eg: numbers of parallel users and/or numbers of transactions, to determine what load can be handled by the component or system.

Volume testing

This type of testing is done to see how the system handles high volumes of data. Normally reporting modules of systems need to be tested with volume tests in mind.

Performance testing

The process of testing to determine the performance of a software product.

Reliability testing

The process of testing to determine the reliability of a software product.

Structural testing (white-box testing)

Testing based on an analysis of the internal structure of the component or system.

Exception testing

Testing the behavior of a system in response to erroneous input from either a human user, another component/system or due to an internal failure.

Negative testing

Tests aimed at showing that a component or system does not work.

Installation and setup testing

Testing that focuses on what customers will need to do to install and set up the new software successfully.

Configuration testing

The process of testing the configuration steps of a software product.

Compatibility testing

Testing performed to evaluate the application compatibility with the underline computing environment (Hardware, Operating System, Network connectivity).

Documentation testing

Testing the quality of the documentation,

Eg: user guide or installation guide.

Error handling testing

Testing performed to determine the ability of the system to properly process the incorrect transactions.

Recovery testing

Testing how well the software is able to recover from crashes, hardware failures, and other similar problems.

Localization testing

Testing that focuses on internationalization and localization aspects of software in adapting a globalized application to a particular locale.

Usability testing

Testing to determine the extent to which the software product is understood, easy to learn, easy to operate, and attractive to the users under specified conditions.

Some of these tests need to be done manually and some can be automated using tools. Apache JMeter is one tool where you can automate some of the tedious testing tasks. In the coming weeks I will explain how to make use of this tool to perform some of the above testing tasks to improve quality of your software work products without customer complains.

The great thing about migrations is that most of the work is already done by the ISV.

1. Software applications are already deployed, secured, up and running and ready to be used.
2. Customers do not have to purchase additional hardware or new servers.
3. They do not need to install operating systems onto these servers and they do not have to waste time configuring these servers.

However this does not mean that SaaS migration requires no work. Businesses will have to clearly define what their business processes are and get their resources behind the new software environment. Here is a 10 step guide describing SaaS Methodology followed by Sabre Technologies.

SaaS Methodology: ten step guide to SaaS migration

1. Fesiblity Study for SaaS

A business should be clear about why they are implementing SaaS. So the company should carry out a research assessment (feasibility study) comparing the traditional software Vs SaaS software. The following criteria need to be addressed here cost benefit analysis, flexibility on configuration, potential risk that may pose and licensing related issues of both delivery models.

2. Aims and objectives through SaaS delivery

Businesses should have a number of aims and objectives they wish to accomplish through the use of their new software services. A business may want their SaaS software applications to reduce their software management costs or to improve data collaboration between various different business sites of the ISV have.

3. Calculate the initial cost involved in SaaS implementation

When SaaS is implemented, businesses have more costs than just their upfront subscription costs. The following would be some of the examples

• Consider licensing issues (how many instances of a particular software service required and depending on how many users that a SaaS service provider allows to access a single instance of that software service).
• Labor costs of implementing SaaS
• Costs due to a change in their infrastructure (New servers higher/lower processing power, memory or better network bandwidth)
• Training costs
• Storage related costs

4. Prepare a solid Service Level Agreement (SLA) for customers

Without a solid SLA in place, SaaS software service providers are not bound to provide customers with the service that they paid for. Prospective customers will choose SaaS service provider that has a solid Service Level Agreement in place which defines the exact quality and availability of the software services that they will deliver to their clients.

5. Building a suitable team

Business will require a number of IT professionals to develop, manage and maintain their new software services. A business should define roles within their organization and a business should also create a team (or group of teams) that will look after their new SaaS offerings, before their SaaS software services have actually been implemented.

Businesses can easily forget to train their workforce. To avoid problems once SaaS software services have been implemented, a business should train its staff on how to manage and support software services, during their initial setup stage. Once SaaS has been implemented, additional training should be available.

6. Defining a clear timeline

A business should clearly define milestone dates as well as dates for when important

tasks should be completed, so that they can avoid being sidetracked when implementing SaaS and making the required changes to their existing infrastructure.

7. Design and Development SaaS product

Taking the SaaS aims and objectives into consideration, the traditional product will be designed to be web application supporting the following areas into consideration

• Tenancy Model – based on the Tenant change the look and feel, workflow and business rules.
• Provisioning and Billing – User subscription contact and billing rules applied
• User authentication and authorization – Every user will have user id and password and set of user rights associated based on the contract.
• Scalability and resource management – Maximum number of concurrent users sessions supported.
• Reliablity and supportablity – based on SLA build fault tolerent mechanisms to provide high reliablity to the software.
• Metering – Calculate on usage of the application on the defined billing rules daily/monthly to generate the monthly bill based on Tenant organization.

8. Configuring the SaaS solution to meet specific needs

Once a business has implemented their SaaS software services, they will want to configure these software services to meet their own specific needs (just as they would configure any other new software application or technology). A business may also need to carry out configurations to their existing infrastructure before implementing the new

SaaS software services.

Some of these configurations and changes might consist of

• hardware-based changes
• network-based changes
• software-based changes

No matter what changes and configurations a business has to make to their infrastructure, both before and after the implementation of SaaS, they should always plan for these changes beforehand by carrying out research in order to avoid any unforeseen problems.

9. Adopting solid data security practices

Business must ensure that their software services and data is secure, include ensuring that their SaaS service provider (Eg: Amazon EC2)  provides them with a data protection guarantee and also ensuring the provider complies with industry standards.

Businesses should look into their SaaS service provider’s background and find out what levels of security they have in place to protect their data centers, what backup and disaster recovery procedures they have in place, if any, and how they go about securing each one of their client‟s data.

Finally a business should clearly define roles and access rights within their own organization. No users without the correct credentials should be able to access more than what they are allowed access. Workstation users may only have access to restricted versions of a software service, while administrators would have access to the full versions of these software services.

10. Adopting a solid support structure

Business must adopt a solid support structure for their SaaS services. Organization need to be clear which employees will support these SaaS software services (i.e. existing employees or additional IT professionals) and how these SaaS services will integrate with software from third-party software vendors.

SaaS service providers will carry out software upgrade procedures, data management procedures and support-related tasks, it is still down to the end-user of these software services, to ensure that they provide any additional support for these software services, in order to make sure that these software services meet their exact needs.

Finally, businesses that are implementing SaaS should always have a second or third choice SaaS service provider in their mind. By having a second or third SaaS service provider in the wings, businesses are ready to shift service providers if any changes do occur or if their existing SaaS service provider can no longer deliver the software services.

Top 10 SaaS pitfalls

1. Not knowing what the SaaS vendor is agreeing to the customer or SaaS provider
2. Paying more than for the software services
3. Not having a Service Level Agreement
4. Not knowing how about SaaS service provider performs advantages/limitations
5. Not taking into account hidden costs
6. Not taking into account integration costs
7. Not knowing data rights
8. The lack of control that businesses have over SaaS software services
9. Having to rely on unstable Internet connections for end users.
10. Not taking into account exit costs

What these projects lacked was the longer vision/road map where they would go with the development of the software.  Agile Release planning has being the practice of modern era PMs. The main goal of agile release planning is nothing but to “add or improve software delivery”. With stakeholders changing priorities of required features, leveraging agile mature practices will give your software the desired quality and competitive edge.

The following link contains the webcast  “Keys to Successful Release Planning: A Guide for Agile Teams” done by Ronica Roth (Agile Coach at Rally Software). She has over 15 years of Software Development experience and 6 years on Agile movement.  This link contains the PDF document of the presentation. This post is based on summary of this web cast and  I’ve summarized the important topic to share with you all.So this is how you do Agile release planning according to Ronica.

In Agile Release Planning there are five important steps

1. Setup the vision – The Product owner of the software needs to communicate to Product vision to the team.
2. Come up with product road map – comes with the vision of IT steering committee and domain experts to come up with Product back log. It contains all the features and bugs that need to be fixed to make the software ready to be shipped to the market. That will bring value to the customer.
3. Release Plan – Breaking down Product back log features to N number of iterations. In Agile Scrum we call them sprints.
4. Iteration – Within each iteration, the development team will gather requirements; do analysis, design, development and testing. Aim is to develop quality software that doesn’t break and add value to the customer.
5. Daily reviews – Daily review meetings will be done to see how the iteration is going. With this we will know whether we are falling short of the iteration release beforehand.

For the Release planning steps

Fix a Meeting date to do the Release plan with the product owner and development teams.

The Product owner needs to give product pitch addressing on the desired schedule a date and scope. Scope of the product will come as the Product back log with priorities. Product Back Log will contain user stories with priorities and bugs to be fixed. The aim is to make sure the development team understand the scope of the product and see if the schedule is reasonable. Even through Agile, you cannot fix scope and schedule unless you are willing to add resources or throw out quality (simple rules in project management).

Each user story in product back log needs to be given a story point. Story points are derived from 3 parameters

• Complexity – Complexity deals with moving parts. What interfaces are used. In simple terms, how difficult to find/recreate the scenario.
• Effort – Effort is nothing but number lines of code & unit test cases might be required
• Doubt – Doubt is based on uncertainties of technologies/domain knowledge that the team doesn’t have.

Base on these parameters each member in the team needs give story point for a user story. The webcast coach says her numbering is based on the Fibonacci numbering sequence. So the a story point will be one of the following: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

She says 13 is the maximum she would give for a user story in iteration. If it goes beyond that she would break the story into pieces.  To decide on this numbering two sizing approaches are used

• Bucketed relative sizing
• Planning Poker

Important thing to remember is that size is not equal to effort.

Based on previous Agile project deliveries team need to derive Velocity.

Velocity is derived in this manner: Velocity = Story Points/Iteration

If the team doesn’t know their Velocity, an assumption based range will be taken . For an example if the team does a maximum 20 story points within an iteration, velocity will be 20 and if the team does minimum of 15 story points per iteration, 15 will be velocity.  Over time the velocity will be stable for agile development team.

Iteration = Story Points/Velocity

With this we will know how many iteration it will take to deliver the software. Each iteration will be between 2/4 weeks.  With this you will be able come up with possible release date.

Delivery of the Plan should also address things such as risk, action items, issues and decisions made. The team needs to discuss these matters and have them addressed in the release plan.

Another important thing is to establish a good communication plan between stake holders and development teams. Ideally they all need to be in the same room. When teams are distributed over geographical locations, software like- Rally would help teams understand user stories, their goal, objectives and priorities. Rich conversation needs to be captured so that creative ideas of the development teams can be taken into consideration during the iteration.

There was a good story on how two development teams working in US and India with a 13 hour time zone difference and managed to do release planning within two days. It went like this

1. On the first day morning in California, US, stake holders presented the product backlog with priorities. The Indian team stayed late to listen to the discussion and went back to sleep.
2. US development team completed their story points and iteration discussion end of the day.
3. Two member from the Indian development team woke up early in the next day and listened to the US development teams findings.
4. Based on this, Indian team completed the release plan along with their concerns and shared it with US development team staying a little bit late (Indian time). Through discussion and collaboration both teams agreed on the release plan and went on with the execution.

Steps Preparation of the release plan –

• Be prepared at least 2 hours before Release Plan meeting.
• Review the Agenda goals
• Gather data of previous releases, velocity chart, Calendar with company holidays, road map, risk and issues.
• Preparation of the room – projector, beverages and sticky notes
• For each topic have a time boxed approach to stop the team going to unnecessary implementation level details

Important things to remember

• Stick to the plan but don’t marry the plan.
• Plan but ready to re-plan when necessary (Part of being Agile)
• There will be bumps on your way. So plan for unexpected bumps and be vigilant during the Iteration phase.
• During the iterations, analyze your progress through burn down and burn up charts
• End of an iteration – show the demo to stake holders. So you could re-plan the next iterations with stake holders desired product features.

Here is the brief summary of this film

An army officer’s assignment was to pick up a woman informant near Elephant pass and take her to Jaffna. On the day of her capture, Tigers launch a massive attack in the peninsula targeting the camp at Elephant Pass. While they escape from this attack, the woman informant reveals secret about the Tiger leader’s where about on a particular date which she wants to disclose to a high ranking officer in the army Intelligence unit in Colombo. This results in the two individuals to escape together through rebel held Wanni and later, cross the abandoned Wilpattu National Park on foot and over to Army Head Quarters in Colombo .

Captain Wasantha and the activist Kamala face dangers from wild animals and threats by a gang of deserters who make determined and violent efforts to capture the woman. But when he finally reaches Colombo, a shocking revelation confronts Wasantha . He is now compelled to choose between his new friend and his country.

Film Alimankada Trailor

Film Alimankada Song

Film Alimankada Cast

• Main Actress : Suranga Ranawaka
• Main Actor : Ashan Dias
• Actor : Sanath Gunathilaka
• Actor : Joe Abeywickrama
• Actress : Veena Jayakodi
• Actor : Athula Pathirana
• Actress : Iranganie Serasinghe
• Actor : Kumar Merchandani

Film Alimankada Crew

• Story : Chandran Rutnam
• Production Designer : Sunil Wijerathna
• Music Director : Ajith Kumarasiri
• Camera : Suminda Weerasinghe
• Producer : John Shiran Dissanayake
• Director : Chandran Rutnam

Whenever people ask me on NFC examples, this is the main video that I show them. It’s called the ‘Parallel lives’. This is about the life of a woman with NFC technology and without. It gives a clear outline how this contactless wireless technology will simply lives of individual in the near future.

Sabre mobility NFC mission

Chandima Cooray, COO of Sabre has being the visionary/strategist for Sabre’s NFC mission. Our aim is to become a leading solutions provider on NFC/RFID technologies. Since 2008 Mobility Team of Sabre Technology’s has been working on NFC based product development. Currently we have built two enterprise/mobile products based on NFC and third one is on its way.

One of the products that received quite a lot of attention was NFC powered loyalty system developed for Triumph International. Currently through the Triumph Goddess Circle  programme over 1000 NFC cards have being issued  to Sri Lankan ladies. This card is used to identify customers at boutiques of Triumph and generate loyalty points for their purchases. Through loyalty system customers receive special discounts/promotions/voucher over various channels such as SMS/email/mobile updates. Currently Triumph boutiques are located in the following areas in Colombo and suburbs.

• Triumph Head office near British Council at Kolipity
• Triumph – Majestic City shop at Bambalapitiya
• Triumph – Liberty Plaza shop at Kolpity
• Triumph – Crescat shop at Kolpity
• Triumph – Singer Mega shop at Nugegoda

For ladies who are interested in sexy and comfortable lingerie; and receive loyalty points, please go to one of these boutiques and get your card. Here is link for for further details:

Sabre selected as a top 10 finalist for WIMA/NFC Forum Global Competition 2009

In Feb, 2009 we submitted the Triumph loyalty product to the NFC Global Competition 2009.  Out of 50 competitors we were selected as one of the  top 10 finalist of the NFC Forum Global Competition 2009. The final competition to select the winner was held in Monaco, 23th of April 2009. Both Chandima and I participated for this event. Lot’s of NFC promoters were there at this Global NFC summit. Unfortunately we didn’t win the competition. But this gave us ground to further expand our knowledge and competencies on this exciting Technology. With the Trackr product gaining momentum we keep our eyes open and fingers crossed for next year’s competition.

attune for e-commerce (a4eco) product
attune for e-commerce (a4eco) is a customized version of SAP B2B e-commerce solution that falls under the SAP CRM 5.0 product suite. It is built using SAP Netweaver 2004s Java technology and designed and developed specifically for companies in the apparel and footwear industry. This product was developed by attune consulting a subsidiary of MAS Holdings and SAP partner company specialized solution provider for world class fashion companies that run on SAP.

a4eco product overview
The tight SAP integration of attune for e-commerce provides sales, ordering, and production transparency as well as real-time data needed by sales staff to maximize production and service quality. The self-service online 24/7, web-empowered functionality offers sales channel the following benefits:
• Web-based order, invoice, logistics and delivery management
• Online product catalogs, equipped with intelligent search capabilities
• Virtual shopping carts with built-in sales-grid determination, size conversions, SKU net-price calculators, online ATP and early allocation options
With direct and easy access to a4eco accurate customer information, sales representatives are able to spend more time anticipating needs. With this product companies gain greater visibility of immediate and aggregate demand. This enables companies to plan production lines to ensure high-capacity utilization and product availability. If you want to read more information on a4eco, please click here.

History recap on a4eco

I have been part of the a4eco product development team as a contractor from Sabre right from its inception. It all started back in January 2007 at attune office in Munich. The main visionary/architect of the product was Andreas Moser. At that time he was the CRM and E-Commerce product manager of attune. Since he himself was a former Java developer of SAP B2B products team, he helped attune to reshape the SAP B2B solution to a4eco and gain its current status. He drafted the a4eco solution with new features and cutting down performance limitations that the existing  standard SAP B2B e-commerce product had. The main Java development part was done by me. The Netweaver basis part was handled by one of finest Netweaver basis consultant named Lutz Groeschner. He
was at Adidas at that time. (Later joined attune as a Solutions Architect and currently over looks at a4eco from a basis perspective).  The ABAP customization was done by a senior AFS developer named Klause Meilhammer but it was further enhanced and managed by Asheek Uthuma of attune. The AFS functional side was handled by Alessandra Vuoto. Along with Andreas she took Scott specific requirements to build up features for the overall a4eco product. Many Java developers also joined along the way. Namely they would be Florian Baitinger of innovate Software GmbH, Iroshan Sanjeewa and Udith Dharmasiri of Sabre. The initial Product development went for 7-8 months

Current a4eco products team

Currently the product is managed by Bandula Kapukotuwa of attune who is doing a good job by keeping the a4eco up to date with the SAP B2B ECO upgrades. The current team includes Christopher Jansz for basis and Chandana Napagoda of Sabre for Java support. These days I only give consultation advise to this team. But incase if wheels fall apart only, I get down to the code/tools to get things in order

a4eco customer implementations
The current a4eco solution is implemented in the following customer sites:

Scott Sports, SA -First customer of a4eco. This is a Swiss company that sells sports bicycles and winter clothing. They originally took the SAP B2B product and faced with many performance issues. With a4eco they went live in May, 2007 and they have been happy with the product ever since then. Please click here for Scott testimonial on SAP B2B product. They currently operate in US and Europe using the a4eco product.

I learned the basics of SAP Netweaver technology tools and SAP ISA framework during this project.Initially we faced with quite few infrastructure issues from the NWDI server located in Colombo. But overtime we mastered art of troubleshooting this and get things done. Andreas and Lutz taught me quite a few tips and tricks that helped me to venture in this domain up till now.

Hugo Boss, Germany – A German company that focuses on Mens’ perfume, gents’ suites, and accessories. Before a4eco, they had SAP B2B commerce from the start. Only the attune specific a4ec performance improvement logic was implemented on top of the existing product. They went live attune customized solution in May, 2008. Andreas was the only person who got involved here.

Cole Haan, europe – A company that works on footwear industry. They went live with a4eco in February 2009. Andreas did the implementation work on his own for this project.

Levis, USA- A company with a brand name for Jeans and denims. They went live with a4eco November 2009. With Andreas’s absence, Davide Mameli took over the role of a4eco architect. Paulo Cendron played the role of Project Manager and Functional Consultant. Along with Chandana Napagoda (Java developer at Sabre), we managed to give offshore support for the project. I only went Treviso, Italy to meet the project team and plan project implementation tasks and responsibilities. This was a well planned and executed project. We met with a few hiccups by doing some integration work with a third party company associated to Levi, USA. But through careful analysis and planning managed to circumvent and end project in a high note.

Tommy Hilfiger, Netherlands- Another company with a brand name for Jeans and denims. a4eco was implemented for the Tommy Hilfiger, European region. At start of the project things moved really well. I was also in Amsterdam with the project team for one and a half months. But when key resources (Andreas and Ronald (PM))  moving out of the project, Tomm B2B go live due dates were further moved back. With major set backs dawn upone Matthias Schaar of attune took over the role of Project Manager. The complete ABAP development was done by Pio Fernando arguably one of the finest ABAP developers attune has produced. I felt having him on the project made a big difference. At last, Tommy went live with a4eco last week without much of a formal notice.

Pre-sales work for Levi Strause-Europe
For the Levi Straus European region a4eco was further enhanced to support b2b pre order process for Sales Agents traveling to remote areas with limited Internet connection to work offline/online. This approach was proposed back in January 2008. But project never kicked off because Levi decided not to migrate from BARN ERP to SAP AFS solution. But the short success achieved over Levis, Europe led to the implementation of Levi, USA.

Training and coaching on SAP ECO
I was given good opportunities by attune to lose my fear of public speaking and release the technical speaker within me to educate and train individuals for different countries/regions. I have met good friends/colleagues during this process and the level of satisfaction you receive is immense. I have done the following training workshops/coaching tasks with the given organization/individuals.
• Onsite training workshop for Addidas and Scott Sport IT – Munich, Germany – Andreas was main speaker during this 3 day workshop. I only presented some articles on Java and Struts framework.
• Onsite a4eco technical product training – Vera Bradley, Indiana, USA – To a in-house Java developer I trained the complete SAP ECO architecture to tools. Vera Bradley was a prospective customer but due recession in US they never got back to attune.
• SAP ECO training for attune and Sabre – All Sri Lankan Java developers who have worked on this product are trained by me.
• Web-ex training for Levis, USA team – this was one the very difficult trainings I’ve done. Over a telco I had to give the training to people in USA and India. With no face to face communication and with multiple individuals raising different questions, I had to concentrate immensely to do this training through out a week.

a4eco work has become more of a habit rather part of the job now. Since I started playing the role of Team Lead of Sabre Mobility Team, overlooking at Sabre projects as well as attune a4eco became very challenging. But the experience and the knowledge that I got from the past 3 years on how to build products and implement them was  invaluable. Currently Sabre Mobility team works on two products namely: Trackr (SaaS based Vehicle Tracking and Service Tracking) and Insito (Loyalty solution for Retail companies) are built using same philosophies of a4eco. As for the future I have a dream of building a light weight Spring and SOA based a4eco solution. I dearly want to focus on this and draft a solution. But will Sabre or attune really understand its true potential is a question that lingers wthin me.