Productivity Software

Archive for the ‘measure productivity software’ Category

1.Moore’s law states that the

2.The phenomenon of improved productivity resulting from the act of studying a process rather than from making changes in the process is referred to as

3.In creating a professional action plan, it’s important to

4.Software, biotechnology, and information technology hardware industries are examples of the type of knowledge industry that

5.The right not to be disturbed emotionally by conduct designed to subject the victim to great tensions by baring his intimate life and affairs to public view or by humiliating and annoying invasions of his solitude is the right of

6.Physical items like buildings and machinery are considered _______ capital

7.A measure of technological evolution is the Web year, which is _______ months

8.Social need, social resources, and a sympathetic social context are the three points of

9.The phrase used to describe a society in which information is sought out, evaluated, and valued is

10.Banking, insurance, telecommunications, and education are examples of the type of knowledge industry that

Ans1.
processing power of microchips doubles every 12 months.

Moores law:The number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit is increasing exponentially, doubling approximately every years.

Ans2. the Hawthorne effect.

Ans 3. Strong goal statement

Ans 4. has knowledge as its products and services

Ans 5. Right of privacy /Free speech

Ans 6. tangible Capital
Ans 7. 3 months

Ans 8.social impact within the current system.

Ans9. informed democracy

Ans 10.has knowledge as its product.

Hope this will help
Cheers:)

A customer’s opinion about an organization is largely based on the people that he deals with. For the organization, this is the ultimate salesperson. It is the salesperson’s job to build and enhance a customer’s opinion of the company. Therefore, the success or the failure of any organization rests largely on the effectiveness of the salesperson.

Customer servicing, and adding a personal touch, is now a growing trend. As a result, there has been an increase in “face time” with clients, and the focus is largely on servicing the client. With an increasing number of metrics available to measure the outcome, sales management is definitely changing. Furthermore, globalization poses as a challenge, when it comes to understanding how cultural elements influence business behavior.

“Face Time”- the Key to Long-Lasting Success

Face time with the client is one of the biggest factors that contribute towards the lasting success of a sales force. Developing a more productive sales force can increase your revenue, if the sales person is talented and efficient.

The best way to increase productivity is to present your sales force with more freedom. Many sales people opt for hiring an assistant to help increase their face time with clients. This can be a tricky, but a valuable step for the sales expert. An assistant can help free them from the tedium of daily routine and time-consuming paperwork. This will provide the sales expert with more time to return client calls faster, build face time and eventually increase sales.

Metrics and Customer Relationship Management

By using the new CRM, or customer relationship management software that is available on the Internet, the sales professional can increase sales and productivity. CRM computerizes the customer contact, recording it in its database, and improves the production of goods and services by identifying present buying trends, and channeling access to customer information.

Business organizations are recognizing that to meet their business targets, increasing only efficiency is not sufficient. Any organization selling goods and services needs to maintain good customer relations. To measure how good their customer relations are, companies must assess the productivity of their sales force.

Metrics allow managers to assess the following:

-Develop sales efficiency
-Develop customer relations and services
-Increase communication
-Develop forecasts
-Provide the latest information
-Increase profits
-Increase sales time
-Develop sales management
-Develop marketing efficiency
-Reduce sales costs

CRM and metrics are a powerful combination, as managers have more ways to measure the productivity and effectiveness of the sales force.

Globalization and Comprehending Cultures

Companies that sell goods and services over the Internet feel the need to maintain customer relations even more. With competitors just a click away, every online business needs to develop customer services and loyalty, to survive in the market. With an increase in cross-boundary sales, organizations have realized the importance of understanding and comprehending cultural differences.

Foreign governments play an important role, and their rules and regulations should be carefully considered. Cultural consideration involves specific approaches related to the customs of each region, their selling techniques and corporate culture. Cultural considerations are also very important when carrying out management of the sales force. Decisions like whether or not to focus solely on the US corporate culture in foreign countries, rather than permitting them to build their own methods according to their traditions, are key elements to success in globalizing a company.

An organization’s viability depends on the success of the sales force. Improving face time between the sales person and the customer is what creates an effective sales force. Over the years, sales force management has increasingly been in favor of using Metrics and CRM software. As organizations sell to a large number of foreign countries, comprehending and understanding cultural differences is vital for success.

Tony Jacowski
http://www.articlesbase.com/careers-articles/how-to-become-an-effective-sales-manager-113039.html

Today’s workforce in the United States of America is estimated to be 65 million people. An issue that has become very large in the eyes of many employee. All across the nation, employees and their companies are figuring ways to invade others privacy. The laws are not clear as to the definition of employee privacy, which opens the doors to abuse by employers and general public.
Even though useful software exists, some employers still prefer the traditional methods of surveillance. Methods such as eavesdropping on phone calls, recording are still being used in all types of business.
Workplace surveillance can benefit the employer in many cases it can even have a benefit for the employee. Theft in the workplace is a common reason for workplace surveillance, which can often mean losses to the company, and thusly losses to the employer in terms of benefits such as security as well. Most of these negative aspects involve privacy, de-motivation, and stress.
“Internet surveillance” is the active surveillance of user’s Internet activities. When users operate a computer on the Internet activities, a record of sites that were visited and the operations that were performed by the user can be generated by Internet surveillance software. Also known as spyware, this software is able to track the user’s activities and report this to the employers with various techniques.
“Desktop surveillance” on the other hand, works by the employer’s computer intercepting a signal that given off by the employee’s computer. That is done through specific surveillance software that could be remotely or physically installed on the employee’s machine. *When people use a computer that belongs to their employers, the employer has a right to monitor what their employer do with the computer. The employer doesn’t want to risk being held responsible if an employee uses that come to mind are drug dealing, child porn, predator, stalker, So just to name a few.
Video surveillance cameras for the company, they can monitor and make sure nobody is wasting the company time this can also enable a company to see where they can lose people, thus reducing their expenses, and improving the bottom line. A business can benefits from video surveillance in many ways. [1]CCTV acts as a deterrent from theft by both staff and external people. [2]CCTV provides evidence of crime regardless if committed by staff or people visiting, this can defend staff also. [3]Managers can measure operational efficiency and even perform market analysis.[4]CCTV can discover health &safety issues. It is clear that video surveillance not only benefits the company, but can also help staff by protecting company profits which eventually pay the staff. In some circles this is called LOSS PREVENTION.
Most disadvantages of video surveillance in the work place relate to the issue of those who are worried about being under surveillance. This means staff & even management who may feel their civil liberties are under threat or do not want to be discovered doing something they shouldn’t. The uncomfortable feeling that someone is watching making you feel that you must be doing something is bad enough for some people. Even those at the top of the company are at risk of being recorded doing something they shouldn’t.

The benefits seem to outweigh the disadvantages. In any cases, the company would only spend money on a surveillance system to the advantage of the company in order to save money, protected the business and everybody’s pay checks. Just my opinion, but I think any company that would treat its employees like criminals rather than valued assets gets what it deserves: higher costs, lower loyalty.
The morale is likely to be lower since employees may now be worried about communication with other employees. They may worry that communication may look like chatting and will thus minimize useful communication. Adding to the problems, companies may hire somebody who appeared to be wasting time and was actually working. This could mean future lawsuits. Also, the company has to go through the expense of more equipment with no immediate payback, and hiring of more individuals or a company to monitor these screens. Lower morale of the monitoring has the potential to backfire by reducing productivity and increased turnover and retraining issue that this causes.
Id badges are used to track you via rfia chips they records your whereabouts in the building, whether you are late to work or if you leave early, they are securely used to gather data about how long your breaks are and how much times you spend in the café or smoke areas, problem people will get weeded out or fired based on this data however do to legal reasons they will never tell you this data is being used against you. You have a right to privacy and that right is not there. But it safer for the companies. Mostly companies use badges that are called “Active Tag” they are benefits to the companies in several ways. Some benefits include grater visibility within facility, increased security, added convenience with hand-free identification, and easily installed on existing network infester. Active tags are use at several places. Here are some places they use at: corporate facilities, government facilities, prisons, warehouse and disruption yards, airports, and hospitals. This ID badge can track or reads at a distance over 35 feet. The Axcess active tag communications system comprised of activators, antennas, receivers and a battery powered radio transponders or tags.*

uh… i decided i have better things to do within reading the first sentence… sorry. you need a more interesting way to grab the reader with the first sentence. in addition, at glance it appears that you randomly stopped the paper. you always need a proper introduction and conclusion along with the body of your work. sorry if i am insulting you, but many people do not understand how to write papers. in addition, are you citing your sources? i understand if you did not include them for this post, but i would suggest that you make sure you do that for the final paper to avoid plagiarism.

Outsourcing is fitting an increasingly prevalent tradition for both small and large businesses of today. In the United Kingdom, it is reported that over 50% of businesses are outsourcing. Most businesses in the United States are also currently outsourcing to different countries.

Outsourcing is definite as delegating of a given procedure in subject to an examine bringer which is not of the crowd. This outer ceremony giver would then be responsible for running and maintaining the delegated manage in a day-today origin. Outsourcing is considered by businesses to be both a concise-phrase and long-designate solutions to achieve efficiency in their venture operations. Any matter handled can be outsourced to outer repair providers. Processes such as marketing, web blueprint and maintenance, web hosting, IT maintenance, accounts management, recruitment, logistics, distribution, cutting and alter sojourn operations can be outsourced to outside rite providers.

There are many reasons why businesses have resulted to outsourcing. These are a few of the reasons; (1) the need of offered skills to extreme a course, (2) to switch pitiable interior sacrament, (3) unavailable inside assets to finish a dealing handle, (4) difficulty in running the handle due to selling advance, (5) manage can be performed better and cheaper by outer providers, and (6) doing the thing procedure internally may not contribute to competitive advantages.

Businesses, whether small or large, should question their outsourcing options first before venturing into outsourcing. Outsourcing has its pros and cons. Businesses should make solid that they are leaving to outsource the right sphere route to the right outdoor ceremony supplier.

Advantages of Outsourcing

Mainly, the gain of outsourcing deception in the actuality that it helps businesses cut outlay and expenditures and to stay ahead in the competition. Outsourcing also payback the citizens in progress countries as it gives high class harvest at a cheaper measure with better consumer ceremony. One limited gain of outsourcing is that it lowers the center expenditure of the group by leasing the exterior examine bringer be responsible for exchange the luxurious hardware and software desirable to extreme the question course. The exterior help provider will also be the one responsible for the maintenance of these hardware and software. These outer tune providers to lure more businesses would often upgrade their technology. This in shot would be a lead to businesses who outsource since they do not have to shoulder the outlay of upgrades.

Another certain advantage of outsourcing is that it lessens the management doubts. By leasing the outside ritual providers hire and manage personnel who will be responsible for completing the commerce processes, companies will sink their management fears. Outsourcing also gives businesses the ability to reach skilled and taught workforce and man weight at awfully reasonable prices which would hint to fuel productivity and spread savings next from less expenditure in provisos of salary and wages. Businesses preclude in the expenses of recruiting, schooling and other human property’ costs when they outsource man muscle to exterior providers.

Outsourcing will also chief to improved productivity because businesses would be able to grant large numbers of skilled man rule to enhance productivity. Also, businesses that outsource would be able to beat their competition since they can afford customers with high value crop and services at relatively cheaper prices. Outsourcing gives businesses with better advertise rank because businesses can insist lower duty with better mass. Outsourcing to countries with slighter taxes would also permit businesses to have bigger savings due to tax repayment.

Another outsourcing pro is that it enables dealing to concentrate on their principal competencies and to streamline their topic operations. When businesses concentrate in their basis competencies, this will principal to a more competent management of the circle.

The market for outsourcing is estimated to redouble briskly in the approach years with more and more businesses planning to outsource jobs and dealing processes to offshore destinations. The number of exterior help providers has also amplified which resulted to a superior type of providers to want from. The competition among the exterior help providers is also an advantage to outsourcing since these providers are fetching more and more capable and competitive to get more outsourced jobs.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing

Although there are a lot of advantages in outsourcing, businesses should also look at the risks and disadvantages that outsourcing may provide.
One disadvantage of outsourcing is that the thing that outsourced the method would not have the managerial handling over that process. The outer ritual provider will have all the managerial monitor over the jobs or processes that are being outsourced to them.

Another disadvantage or hazard of outsourcing is when the external check provider becomes bankrupt or goes out of matter. This will begin the industry that outsourced to go to a new help provider or to earn the process back to home operations in order not to elude precious income or time and to cut back on the loses caused by the bankruptcy of the external check provider.

Another disadvantage to outsourcing is the loss of flexibility in reacting to the change in interest conditions and the lack of internal and external patron focus. Outsourcing may also put the sanctuary and the confidentiality of the topic at menace. When businesses outsource their accounting, payroll and medicinal transcriptions to offshore destinations, confidential information will be known to the external overhaul provider.

Long Term Impact of Outsourcing in Business

Outsourcing has twisted a wonder in the urbanized countries concerning long-word effect on business and in the reduction. Businesses will always look for the buck-sacrifice situations to become more competitive and efficient. It is inevitable for businesses not to findings to outsourcing. Less-skilled jobs are being outsourced to other countries with developing economies. This will help these countries’ economies since outsourcing will growth their standards of living by being provided with jobs from the U.S. and the U.K. for their own personnel. A long-phrase waves of outsourcing is the development of the economies of developing countries due to the flood of jobs for their skilled recruits.

Another long-period contact of outsourcing is the regulars from developed countries would be able to buy high feature food at a, much cheaper charge due to outsourcing. Outsourced production of crop makes it cheaper in the market than those that are made in their country.
However, outsourcing has been seen by a lot of Americans as an ‘evil’ that takes jobs away from Americans and bountiful it to people of strange countries. Outsourcing is said to contribute to the increasing unemployment degree of Americans since more and more jobs are being shifted to other countries due to cheap sweat costs there. One long-phrase brunt of outsourcing is that more and more jobs are being outsourced to different countries. Before, only the low-end jobs are being outsourced, now, even the mid-stage professional jobs are being outsourced and this is what qualms the American workers.

Linda Hayes
http://www.articlesbase.com/recruitment-articles/recruitment-outsourcing-what-you-should-know-685577.html

Overview
Instant messaging (IM) and chat are technologies that facilitate near real-time text based communication between two or more participants over a network. It is important to understand that what separates chat and instant messaging from technologies such as e-mail is the perceived synchronicity of the communication by the user – Chat happens in real-time before your eyes. For this reason, some people consider communication via instant messaging to be less intrusive than communication via phone. However, some systems allow the sending of messages to people not currently logged on (offline messages), thus removing much of the difference between Instant Messaging and e-mail.

Instant Messaging allows instantaneous communication between a number of parties simultaneously, by transmitting information quickly. Some IM systems allow users to use webcams and Microphone which made them more popular than others. Due to this feature users can have a real-time conversation. In addition IM has additional features such as: the immediate receipt of acknowledgment or reply, group chatting, conference services (including voice and video), conversation logging and file transfer.

IM allows effective and efficient communication, featuring immediate receipt of acknowledgment or reply. In certain cases Instant Messaging involves additional features, which make it even more popular, i.e. to see the other party, e.g. by using web-cams, or to talk directly for free over the Internet.

It is possible to save a conversation for later reference. Instant messages are typically logged in a local message history which closes the gap to the persistent nature of e-mails and facilitates quick exchange of information like URLs or document snippets (which can be unwieldy when communicated via telephone).

[edit] History

In early instant messaging programs each character appeared when it was typed. The UNIX "talk" command shown in these screenshots was popular in the 1980s and early 1990s.Instant messaging actually predates the Internet, first appearing on multi-user operating systems like CTSS and Multics[1] in the mid-1960s. Initially, many of these systems, such as CTSS’.SAVED, were used as notification systems for services like printing, but quickly were used to facilitate communication with other users logged in to the same machine. As networks developed, the protocols spread with the networks. Some of these used a peer-to-peer protocol (eg talk, ntalk and ytalk), while others required peers to connect to a server (see talker and IRC). During the Bulletin board system (BBS) phenomenon that peaked during the 1980s, some systems incorporated chat features which were similar to instant messaging; Freelancin’_Roundtable was one prime example.

In the last half of the 1980s and into the early 1990s, the Quantum Link online service for Commodore 64 computers offered user-to-user messages between currently connected customers which they called "On-Line Messages" (or OLM for short). Quantum Link’s better known later incarnation, America Online, offers a similar product under the name "AOL Instant Messages" (AIM). While the Quantum Link service ran on a Commodore 64, using only the Commodore’s PETSCII text-graphics, the screen was visually divided up into sections and OLMs would appear as a yellow bar saying "Message From:" and the name of the sender along with the message across the top of whatever the user was already doing, and presented a list of options for responding.[2] As such, it could be considered a sort of GUI, albeit much more primitive than the later Unix, Windows and Macintosh based GUI IM programs. OLMs were what Q-Link called "Plus Services" meaning they charged an extra per-minute fee on top of the monthly Q-Link access costs.

Modern, Internet-wide, GUI-based messaging clients, as they are known today, began to take off in the mid 1990s with ICQ (1996) being the first, followed by AOL Instant Messenger (AOL Instant Messenger, 1997). AOL later acquired Mirabilis, the creators of ICQ. A few years later ICQ (by now owned by AOL) was awarded two patents for instant messaging by the U.S. patent office. Meanwhile, other companies developed their own applications (Excite, MSN, Ubique, and Yahoo), each with its own proprietary protocol and client; users therefore had to run multiple client applications if they wished to use more than one of these networks. In 1998 IBM released IBM Lotus Sametime, a product based on technology acquired when IBM bought Haifa-based Ubique and Lexington-based Databeam.

In 2000, an open source application and open standards-based protocol called Jabber was launched. Jabber servers could act as gateways to other IM protocols, reducing the need to run multiple clients. Multi-protocol clients such as Digsby,Pidgin, Trillian, Adium and Miranda can use any of the popular IM protocols by using additional local libraries for each protocol. IBM Lotus Sametime’s November 2007 release added IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway support for XMPP.

Recently, many instant messaging services have begun to offer video conferencing features, Voice Over IP (VoIP) and web conferencing services. Web conferencing services integrate both video conferencing and instant messaging capabilities. Some newer instant messaging companies are offering desktop sharing, IP radio, and IPTV to the voice and video features.

The term "instant messenger" is a service mark of Time Warner[3] and may not be used in software not affiliated with AOL in the United States. For this reason, the instant messaging client formerly known as Gaim or gaim announced in April 2007 that they would be renamed "Pidgin"[4].

[edit] Cooperation
Standard free instant messaging applications offer functions like file transfer, contact lists, the ability to have similtaneous converstations etc. These may be all the functions that a small business needs but larger organisations will require more sophisticated applications that can work together. The solution to finding applications capable of this is to use enterprise versions of instant messaging applications. These include titles like Jabber, Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communicator, etc., which are often integrated with other enterprise applications such as workflow systems. These enterprise applications, or Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), are built to certain constraints, namely storing data in a common format.

There have been several attempts to create a unified standard for instant messaging: IETF’s SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), APEX (Application Exchange), Prim (Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol), the open XML-based XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), more commonly known as Jabber and OMA’s (Open Mobile Alliance) IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Service) created specifically for mobile devices.

Most attempts at creating a unified standard for the major IM providers (AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft) have failed and each continues to use its own proprietary protocol.

However, while discussions at IETF were stalled, Reuters head of collaboration services, David Gurle (the founder of Microsoft’s Real Time Communication and Collaboration business), signed the first inter-service provider connectivity agreement on September 2003. This agreement enabled AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger users to talk with Reuters Messaging counterparts and vice-versa against an access fee. Following this, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL came to a deal where Microsoft’s Live Communication Server 2005 users would also have the possibility to talk to public instant messaging users. This deal established SIP/SIMPLE as a standard for protocol interoperability and established a connectivity fee for accessing public instant messaging clouds. Separately, on October 13, 2005 Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that by (the Northern Hemisphere) summer of 2006 they would interoperate using SIP/SIMPLE which is followed on December 2005 by the AOL and Google strategic partnership deal where Google Talk users would be able to talk with AIM and ICQ users provided they have an identity at AOL.

There are two ways to combine the many disparate protocols:

One way is to combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM client application.
The other way is to combine the many disparate protocols inside the IM server application. This approach moves the task of communicating to the other services to the server. Clients need not know or care about other IM protocols. For example, LCS 2005 Public IM Connectivity. This approach is popular in Jabber/XMPP servers however the so-called transport projects suffer the same reverse engineering difficulties as any other project involved with closed protocols or formats.
Some approaches, such as that adopted by the Sonork enterprise IM software or the Jabber/XMPP network or Winpopup LAN Messenger, allow organizations to create their own private instant messaging network by enabling them to limit access to the server (often with the IM network entirely behind their firewall) and administer user permissions. Other corporate messaging systems allow registered users to also connect from outside the corporation LAN, by using a secure firewall-friendly HTTPS based protocol. Typically, a dedicated corporate IM server has several advantages such as pre-populated contact lists, integrated authentication, and better security and privacy.

Some networks have made changes to prevent them from being utilized by such multi-network IM clients. For example, Trillian had to release several revisions and patches to allow its users to access the MSN, AOL, and Yahoo! networks, after changes were made to these networks. The major IM providers typically cite the need for formal agreements as well as security concerns as reasons for making these changes.

[edit] Mobile Instant Messaging
Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) is a presence enabled messaging service that aims to transpose the desktop messaging experience to the usage scenario of being on the move. While several of the core ideas of the desktop experience on one hand apply to a connected mobile device, others do not: Users usually only look at their phone’s screen — presence status changes might occur under different circumstances as happens at the desktop, and several functional limits exist based on the fact that the vast majority of mobile communication devices are chosen by their users to fit into the palm of their hand. Some of the form factor and mobility related differences need to be taken into account in order to create a really adequate, powerful and yet convenient mobile experience: radio bandwidth, memory size, availability of media formats, keypad based input, screen output, CPU performance and battery power are core issues that desktop device users and even nomadic users with connected network.

[edit] Friend-to-friend networks
Instant Messaging may be done in a Friend-to-friend network, in which each node connects to the friends on the friendslist. This allows for communication with friends of friends and for the building of chatrooms for instant messages with all friends on that network.

Emotions are often expressed in shorthand. For example; lol. But a movement is currently underway to be more accurate with the emotional expression. Real time reactions such as (chortle) (snort) (guffaw) or (eye-roll) are rapidly taking the place of acronyms.[citation needed]

[edit] Business application
Instant messaging has proven to be similar to personal computers, e-mail, and the WWW, in that its adoption for use as a business communications medium was driven primarily by individual employees using consumer software at work, rather than by formal mandate or provisioning by corporate information technology departments. Tens of millions of the consumer IM accounts in use are being used for business purposes by employees of companies and other organizations.

In response to the demand for business-grade IM and the need to ensure security and legal compliance, a new type of instant messaging, called "Enterprise Instant Messaging" ("EIM") was created when Lotus Software launched IBM Lotus Sametime in 1998. Microsoft followed suit shortly thereafter with Microsoft Exchange Instant Messaging, later created a new platform called Microsoft Office Live Communications Server, and released Office Communications Server 2007 in October 2007. Both IBM Lotus and Microsoft have introduced federation between their EIM systems and some of the public IM networks so that employees may use a single interface to both their internal EIM system and their contacts on AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!. Current leading EIM platforms include IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Jabber XCP. In addition, industry-focused EIM platforms such as IMtrader from Pivot Incorporated, Reuters Messaging, and Bloomberg Messaging provide enhanced IM capabilities to financial services companies.

The adoption of IM across corporate networks outside of the control of IT organizations creates risks and liabilities for companies who do not effectively manage and support IM use. Companies implement specialized IM archiving and security products and services like those from Secure Computing, Akonix, SurfControl, and ScanSafe to mitigate these risks and provide safe, secure, productive instant messaging capabilities to their employees.

[edit] Practical Use in Enterprise
The popular embrace of IM technology for sharing information has quickly led to organizations adopting IM solutions for the perceived advantages that can be brought by it. As organizations are becoming more information based (McNurlin & Sprague, 2006, p.499) the need for effective knowledge sharing, team working and collaborative environments amongst employees has become vital, especially within more geographically dispersed teams.

Typically IM conversations tend to have a certain "character", they are often short and only cover one topic. Media-switching and multitasking are common throughout, however IM might also be used between established coworkers and friends for longer, more intermittent conversation. In their report of IM use at the workplace Nardi et al. (2000) identifies the four primary functions of IM which are often cited in other reports, These primary functions are:

Quick Questions and Clarifications
Coordinating and scheduling tasks
Coordinating impromptu social meetings
Keeping in touch with friends and family
IM is perhaps best suited to "Quick Questions and Clarifications" as this is the most often mentioned attribute in other reports. A user can "respond rapidly without the overhead of telephone or FTF interaction. For example, IDC reports, "Users see IM as a medium for quick, semi-permanent ‘flashes’ that beg a near-immediate response" (Isaacs et al., 2002). Nardi’s second and third observations are enabled in part due to the "Presence Awareness" feature of IM clients in which the user knows who is "available". This is the most relevant for colleagues who share the same physical space as each other and even paves the way for other mediums to take up the task of communication e.g. F2F or Phone. The implication is that viable communication of any sort can in someway be encouraged through IM’s "Presence Awareness" feature. (Issacs et al, 2002) supports this view, "IM in business might not be the main tool for of communication, it could just be the meeting point for another type of media e.g. conference calls.

Nardi’s third and fourth observations focus on the social use of IM, which have also been widely publicized in other report. That IM is used for keeping in touch with friends and arranging social events has led some employers to believe that it is used primarily for this purpose. According to (Issacs et al, 2002) a market study found that "’Fear of losing employee productivity’ was the greatest concern of businesses in regards to instant messaging".

The study by (Issacs et al, 2002) goes on to suggest this fear is unfounded as it was found that on average "only 13% of conversations contained personal topics", and "only 6.4% were exclusively personal".

[edit] Review of Products
"IM solutions can typically be catagorised into two types: Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) and Consumer Instant Mesaging (CIM). Enterprise solutions use an internal IM server, however this isn’t always feasible, particularly for smaller businesses with limited budgets. The second option, using a (CIM) provides the advantage of being inexpensive to implement and has little need for investing in new hardware or server software. However, in recent years open source IM clients such as Jabber have emerged that provide free EIM grade solutions. (Wikipedia,. 2008)

For corporate use encryption and conversation archiving are usually regarded as important features due to security concerns. Sometimes the use of different operating systems in organizations calls for the use of software that supports more than one platform. For example many software companies use Windows XP in administration departments but have software developers who use Linux.

Most people have had experience of using online chat and messaging over the internet whether it is with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, Skype or e-mail. One form of chat and messaging currently popular is Bebo. It is a non-corporate form of messaging which allows its user to create and maintain a social network. Libraries use chat applications and Morris Messenger is an application commonly used by them. This is a power based instant messenger, which uses Perl, SQL, and small Java. It accepts input from both staff and regular customers and saves important information in an SQL database built for the system.

[edit] Risks and liabilities
Although instant messaging delivers many benefits, it also carries with it certain risks and liabilities, particularly when used in workplaces. Among these risks and liabilities are:

Security risks (e.g. IM used to infect computers with spyware, viruses, trojans, worms)
Compliance risks
Inappropriate use
Intellectual property leakage
Crackers (malicious "hacker" or black hat hacker) have consistently used IM networks as vectors for delivering phishing attempts, "poison URL’s", and virus-laden file attachments from 2004 to the present, with over 1100 discrete attacks listed by the IM Security Center[5] in 2004-2007. Hackers use two methods of delivering malicious code through IM: delivery of virus, trojan, or spyware within an infected file, and the use of "socially engineered" text with a web address that entices the recipient to click on a URL that connects him or her to a website that then downloads malicious code. Viruses, worms, and trojans typically propagate by sending themselves rapidly through the infected user’s buddy list. An effective attack using a poison URL may reach tens of thousands of people in minutes when each person’s buddy list receives messages appearing to be from a trusted friend. The recipients click on the web address, and the entire cycle starts again. Infections may range from nuisance to criminal, and are becoming more sophisticated each year.

In addition to the malicious code threat, the use of instant messaging at work also creates a risk of non-compliance to laws and regulations governing the use of electronic communications in businesses. In the United States alone there are over 10,000 laws and regulations related to electronic messaging and records retention.[6] The more well-known of these include the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA, and SEC 17a-3. Clarification from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority ("FINRA") was issued to member firms in the financial services industry in December, 2007, noting that "electronic communications", "email", and "electronic correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging.[7] Changes to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, effective December 1, 2006, created a new category for electronic records which may be requested during discovery (law) in legal proceedings. Most countries around the world also regulate the use of electronic messaging and electronic records retention in similar fashion to the United States. The most common regulations related to IM at work involve the need to produce archived business communications to satisfy government or judicial requests under law. Many instant messaging communications fall into the category of business communications that must be archived and retrievable.

Organizations of all types must protect themselves from the liability of their employees’ inappropriate use of IM. The informal, immediate, and ostensibly anonymous nature of instant messaging makes it a candidate for abuse in the workplace. The topic of inappropriate IM use became front page news in October 2006 when Congressman Mark Foley resigned his seat after admitting sending offensive instant messages of a sexual nature to underage former House pages from his Congressional office PC. The Mark Foley Scandal led to media coverage and mainstream newspaper articles warning of the risks of inappropriate IM use in workplaces. In most countries, corporations have a legal responsibility to ensure harassment-free work environment for employees. The use of corporate-owned computers, networks, and software to harass an individual or spread inappropriate jokes or language creates a liability for not only the offender but also the employer. A survey by IM archiving and security provider Akonix Systems, Inc. in March 2007 showed that 31% of respondents had been harassed over IM at work.[8] Companies now include instant messaging as an integral component of their policies on appropriate use of the World Wide Web, e-mail, and other corporate assets.

Within the company there is also the risk of employees using instant messaging to release confidential information and project details to an outside source. This issue is best controlled by a combination of written policy and technology. An organization’s policies on use of IM in the workplace should be an integral part of the overall computing and network use policies, and should be published and communicated at least annually. In addition to written policy, organizations should implement "gateways" or IM security products to monitor content of inbound and outbound messages. Products from IM security providers (See section on IM security) typically allow administrators to set alerts and enforce policy (i.e. allow or block messages) based on keywords and regular expressions within instant messages.

Employees may also misuse IM to communicate on a personal level with friends and family. This is poor use of a business’s time and resources, as the employee’s effectiveness will most certainly decrease due to the added distractions. (Licari, J., May 2005). Businesses often use IM security products to monitor and archive IM conversations for the purpose of minimizing this type of productivity drain.

[edit] Security and archiving
In the early 2000s, a new class of IT security provider emerged to provide remedies for the risks and liabilities faced by corporations who chose to use IM for business communications. The IM security providers created new products to be installed in corporate networks for the purpose of archiving, content-scanning, and security-scanning IM traffic moving in and out of the corporation. Similar to the e-mail filtering vendors, the IM security providers focus on the risks and liabilities described above.

With rapid adoption of IM in the workplace, demand for IM security products began to grow in the mid-2000s. By 2007, the preferred platform for the purchase of security software had become the "appliance", according to IDC, who estimate that by 2008, 80% of network security products will be delivered via an appliance.[9]

[edit] User base
Note that many of the numbers listed in this section are not directly comparable, and some are speculative. Some instant messaging systems are distributed among many different instances and thus difficult to measure in total (e.g. Jabber). While some numbers are given by the owners of a complete instant messaging system, others are provided by commercial vendors of a part of a distributed system. Some companies may be motivated to inflate their numbers in order to increase advertisement earnings or to attract partners, clients, or customers. Importantly, some numbers are reported as the number of "active" users (without a shared standard of that activity), others indicate total user accounts, while others indicate only the users logged in during an instance of peak usage.

Service User count Date/source
AIM 53 million active September 2006
>100 million total January 2006
Jabber 40-50 million total January 2007, based on calculations of Jabber Inc
90 million total Based on calculations of Process-One: Process-One uses ejabberd as Jabber server software. If it is assumed that ejabberd has a 40% market share amongst public and private open source server deployments, there are 50 million users using open source servers. With Jabber Inc’s numbers, this adds up to the 90 million number stated here.
eBuddy 35 million total October 2006, including 4 million mobile users
Windows Live Messenger 294 million active worldwide November 2007
Yahoo! Messenger 22 million total September 2006
QQ 20 million peak online (majority in China) 3 June 2006
221 million "active" (majority in China) 3 June 2006
IBM Lotus Sametime 17 million total (private, in enterprises) November 2007
ICQ 15 million active July 2006
Skype 12 million peak online February 2008
309 million total April 2008
Xfire 10 million total May 2008
MXit 7 million total (>560,000 outside of South Africa) 10 August 2007. Note that these users are part of the Jabber user base as MXit federates with the Jabber network.
Gadu-Gadu 5.6 million total June 2006
Paltalk 3.3 million unique visitors per month August 2006
IMVU 1 million total June 2007
Mail.ru Agent 1 million active (daily) September 2006
Meebo 1 million total October 2006
PSYC 1 million active (daily) (majority in Brazil) February 2007. Total count cannot be accurately estimated due to the decentralized nature of the protocol.
VZOchat >200,000 October 2007

[edit] IM Language
Users sometimes make use of internet slang or text speak to abbreviate common words or expressions in order to quicken conversations or to reduce keystrokes.

[edit] See also
Comparison of instant messaging clients
Comparison of instant messaging protocols
Instant messaging manager
LAN messenger
Text messaging
it is a question

… Question! What question … ??? Anybody spotted the question, is it me who can’t see it?

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided advanced ERP solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula or recipe-based business, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical industries. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster has more than a hundred technical staff numbers of highly-qualified software professionals.

BatchMaster assists with compliance regulations applied to the process manufacturing industry, including the Bio Terrorism Act, HACCP, 21 CFR Part 11, and MSDS. Using BatchMaster for new and current product development includes the use of formula management, laboratory, and samples management to bring dependability to the process manufacturing warehouse. To provide flawless process manufacturing benefits, BatchMaster also offers material and capacity planning. If a product is formula- or recipe-based, it is likely BatchMaster Process Manufacturing ERP will improve operating effectiveness and efficiencies.

Dr. Sahib Dudani is the President & CEO of BatchMaster Software. With over 25 years experience in the technology industry, he is a successful entrepreneur and innovator of many software products. His focus since 2000 has been on the BATCHMASTER Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, a system developed specifically for the process oriented manufacturing sector.

Dr. Dudani noted that, “All of us at BatchMaster Software take our mission of global leadership very seriously. Accordingly, we continue to invest in personnel, facilities and distribution channels to accelerate product development, increase our technical support and consulting capacity, and offer local presence through our Partner reseller network. Over the past few years, we established two new offices — BatchMaster India and BatchMaster Asia-Pacific. BatchMaster Software’s technical team expanded on both sides of the globe to accelerate product development and provide 24-hour support, worldwide.”

Dr. Dudani started his career in 1973 as a Research Scientist with Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. He has written numerous papers in the area of Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. For a period of five years, Dr. Dudani served as a high-level consultant to numerous corporations in the Aerospace industry to help formulate their R&D programs in the image-processing field.

In 1979, Dr. Dudani founded Advanced Technology Center (ATC) with the goal of developing commercial software products for the graphics industry. He is the original architect for ATC’s flagship product GRAFPAK-GKS. . Under his leadership, ATC developed numerous product lines, established key partnerships through mergers, OEM arrangements, and product acquisitions and spun-off companies, including eWorkplace Solutions. He also joined marchFIRST, formerly USWeb/CKS as an Executive Partner in the late 1990’s.

Dr Dudani’s Education includes a Bachelor of Technology – Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India as well as a Master of Science – Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Dudani’s Ph.D. is in Electrical Engineering also from Ohio State University.

Dr. Dudani added, “We measure success by the number of organizations we help to improve in both their manufacturing and distribution operations. Our customers can rely upon the BatchMaster team to be a “partner in productivity.” BatchMaster Software has already developed considerable momentum moving into 2006. You can expect that we will continue to drive ahead to achieve dramatic growth throughout the New Year. And we hope that you will have a terrific year, too.”

Thomas Cutler
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/batchmaster-erp-finds-leadership-critical-to-growth-98723.html

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” – Peter Drucker

Many people fear that outsourced software development means
having little or no control over the development process. They
think there is no need to measure while the programmers are
there in the same room. Or is there?

When I worked as a programmer in the 1980s, my boss used to joke
that he was going to hire a guy with a kettle drum and put him
in the corner of the room. Every time the kettle drum was hit,
we had to have written a line of code!

Today, outsourcing promises huge cost savings and executives are
less concerned with lines per minute than with dollars per hour.
But in the end, it is important to know the money you spend is
fueling real progress in the development of your software. How
can this be done?

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provides an example of
outsourcing that can be successfully measured. Business
processes such as accounts receivable and outbound sales calls
can be so well defined that you can accurately measure how
efficiently and effectively they are implemented. New software
tools not only help you detect problems and inefficiencies, but
can predict and fix the problems before they even arise.

To measure new software development you track how many new
features are added over time. Some metrics split the programming
required into work units and then track how many units are
completed over time. It is best to measure results daily and at
least weekly.

Engineers are notoriously optimistic about their ability to
create working software. So another metric measures how accurate
their estimates are for the time required to finish the software
development. Initially, their ability to estimate will likely be
poor. You can set a goal for the engineers to improve this skill
as your development continues so you improve the predictability
of your process.

For maintenance programming you need to track the work units or
bugs fixed over time. In addition, you should measure the amount
of re-work required for bugs that fail the QA step after bug fix
attempts.

Your outsourced team should commit to a schedule for completing
the programming work. As part of this their commitment, they
must also agree to the definition of work units and the
productivity level they believe they can achieve. Their
commitment makes them independent and liberated from requiring
specific instructions for all their daily work activities.

You typically measure the throughput of your outsourced team as
a whole. A team is typically a combination of junior and senior
members. Junior engineers will need guidance and mentoring from
the senior engineers. This is normal and should be expected and
encouraged. But it should also be measured over time. A senior
engineer can be expected to spend from 5% to 25% of his/her time
with junior engineers depending on the complexity of the project
and prior experience of the junior engineer.

Today most people use simple software tools like spreadsheets
and Microsoft Project to track the metrics of their outsourcing.
More sophisticated tools are also available but are expensive
and best applied when you have a large portfolio of software
development projects. New tools are being developed to
automatically compute your metrics as your software is
developed.

For example the amount of time source files are checked out of
your source code control system can be used to help measure the
productivity of your engineers. Other on-line techniques to
track progress and measure results will be coming soon.

You can use metrics as the basis for a Service Level Agreement
(SLA) you¡¯re your outsourcing vendor. But remember: the purpose
of an SLA is to help guide your software development to success
and to detect and correct problems as they arise. It is not to
support micro management, a blame game or to create an
adversarial relationship with your outsourced team.

Will software development become as predictable as BPO and
enable you to fix problems before they occur? I doubt we will
ever have this much control over the creative software
development process… but who knows? That guy with the kettle
drum may not be far off!

Steve Mezak
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/measuring-the-success-of-your-outsourcing-533.html

To begin with, we shall discuss the importance of Performance Monitoring, which will automatically give way to Network trouble shooting.

Communication across a network is becoming increasingly important in all spheres – work and non-work, i.e. leisure, alike. The behavior of the network has an impact on the operation of your computer. With the help of Performance Monitoring it is possible to optimize your system’s performance. This can be achieved with the help of things like monitoring network traffic and resource utilization that affects both hardware and software.

Installing performance monitoring software can help the network in several ways. For instance, Performance Monitoring Software can help to measure end-user to-end application response times, it can provide consistent application service delivery, can understand the impact and extent of infrastructure changes on network and application performance, and it can also help isolate performance problems to the server, or network

Installing performance monitoring software helps to report on network traffic using NetFlow data and cut down the unnecessary WAN costs, besides enabling the convergence of voice, video, and data and identifying virus or denial of service attacks and unauthorized application usage.

Coming to Network Troubleshooting, it means recognizing and diagnosing networking related problems so that your network is running at its optimum best. Network administrator’s primary job and concern is to maintaining connectivity of all devices. He /she is also evaluating and improving the network’s performance on an ongoing basis to avoid networking problems that in majority of cases begin as performance problems, if not tackled at this stage can take shape of serious problem. Paying attention helps the administrator to address issues before they become serious.

Network Troubleshooting could be about connectivity Problems, such as loss of connectivity, intermittent connectivity, and Timeout problems or about performance problems.

If the network administrator regularly undertakes Performance Monitoring and Network Trouble Shooting to achieve optimum performance he/she can extend the usefulness of the existing network configuration and can plan network enhancements, instead of being stuck with performance problem which impacts productivity of the user.

For more resources about Performance Monitoring or even about Network Troubleshooting please review this site http://www.networkstrategy.com

Groshan Fabiola
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/about-performance-monitoring-software-and-network-trouble-shooting-679789.html

I’m sure I read some time ago that the actual productivity for producing software is between 3 and 5 SLOC (Source Lines of Code) per day per programmer for new lines of code, fully tested, reviewed and documented. Is anyone aware of such a number and who might have asserted this. My experience is that this number is probably true (averaged over large programs of course) but can’t find any evidence to back this up. (I know that SLOC is a course measure but it’s good enough for such rough rules of thumb)
Just to clarify my question: this measure is NEW lines of code that are delivered, i.e. are put into use. If you took a completed software project, added up the number of lines and divided by the number of programmer days expended on the project (doing ALL the programmer activities required to produce quality code) you may well end up with what looks like a very low SLOC/day measure. What I’m looking for is some hard evidence one way or the other regarding this metric.

It really depends on what you’re doing… people who don’t actually work in the field tend to not understand and assume us code monkeys just knock ‘em out as fast as we can type them. Those who actually tend to do this are normally producing terrible code.

I wouldn’t say it’s 3-5 lines per day… first of all "lines" is a terrible measure for code. You are significantly better off measuring "statements" because that is more specific and overall more comparable between languages. I would say a programmer tends to output somewhere around 50-100 quality statements per work day (8 hours). That is to say, statements that actually mean something… this would ignore simple control statements such as conditionals, loops, etc…

To write real code, it requires real planning, and real thinking… some days, I might write 1000 lines of code and other days I might write 0… it all depends on what I’m doing and what I’m trying to accomplish. Overall, no matter what you’re doing, it should all be equally productive if you plan to keep your job.

Dr. Sahib Dudani is the President & CEO of BatchMaster Software. With over 25 years experience in the technology industry, he is a successful entrepreneur and innovator of many software products. His focus since 2000 has been on the BATCHMASTER Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, a system developed specifically for the process oriented manufacturing sector.

Dr. Dudani noted that, “All of us at BatchMaster Software take our mission of global leadership very seriously. Accordingly, we continue to invest in personnel, facilities and distribution channels to accelerate product development, increase our technical support and consulting capacity, and offer local presence through our Partner reseller network. Over the past few years, we established two new offices — BatchMaster India and BatchMaster Asia-Pacific. BatchMaster Software’s technical team expanded on both sides of the globe to accelerate product development and provide 24-hour support, worldwide.”

Dr. Dudani started his career in 1973 as a Research Scientist with Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. He has written numerous papers in the area of Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis. For a period of five years, Dr. Dudani served as a high-level consultant to numerous corporations in the Aerospace industry to help formulate their R&D programs in the image-processing field.

In 1979, Dr. Dudani founded Advanced Technology Center (ATC) with the goal of developing commercial software products for the graphics industry. He is the original architect for ATC’s flagship product GRAFPAK-GKS. . Under his leadership, ATC developed numerous product lines, established key partnerships through mergers, OEM arrangements, and product acquisitions and spun-off companies, including eWorkplace Solutions. He also joined marchFIRST, formerly USWeb/CKS as an Executive Partner in the late 1990’s.

Dr Dudani’s Education includes a Bachelor of Technology – Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India as well as a Master of Science – Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Dudani’s Ph.D. is in Electrical Engineering also from Ohio State University.

BatchMaster assists with compliance regulations applied to the process manufacturing industry, including the Bio Terrorism Act, HACCP, 21 CFR Part 11, and MSDS. Using BatchMaster for new and current product development includes the use of formula management, laboratory, and samples management to bring dependability to the process manufacturing warehouse. To provide flawless process manufacturing benefits, BatchMaster also offers material and capacity planning. If a product is formula- or recipe-based, it is likely BatchMaster Process Manufacturing ERP will improve operating effectiveness and efficiencies.

Dr. Dudani added, “We measure success by the number of organizations we help to improve in both their manufacturing and distribution operations. Our customers can rely upon the BatchMaster team to be a “partner in productivity.” BatchMaster Software has already developed considerable momentum moving into 2006. You can expect that we will continue to drive ahead to achieve dramatic growth throughout the New Year. And we hope that you will have a terrific year, too.”

About BatchMaster

BatchMaster Software, Inc. has provided advanced ERP solutions for over two decades with more than one thousand five hundred installations worldwide. BatchMaster’s customers can be found in every formula or recipe-based business, including food, beverage, cosmetic, personal care, paint, coating, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and specialty chemical industries. Flexible, easy to learn and use, and scalable to grow with a process manufacturing business, BatchMaster is the definitive solution for the challenges facing small to midsize process manufacturers. BatchMaster has more than a hundred technical staff numbers of highly-qualified software professionals.

Thomas Cutler
http://www.articlesbase.com/technology-articles/batchmaster-erp-softwares-leader-dr-dudani-drives-software-growth-88000.html