First of all I have to out myself: yes - I am in India for the first time. I was looking forward to this trip since weeks, because it is always excitig to explore new countries and meet new people. Luckily enough almost everybody speaks English - my Hindi does simply not exist - although I am hoping to learn a couple of useful words.

What has influenced my picture of India before? Jut some of the sources that influenced me:

• A very fascinating book Autobiography of a Yogi from Paramahansa Yogananda. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogananda) This book really opened my mind for a complete new way of thinking and also gave the impression to understand a bit more the roots of Indian philosophy and religion.
• The film about Ghandi’s life
• The news about Kasmir and the partially bloody fight between Hindi’s and Moslem’s
• The Djungle Book in the form of Disney’s famous film
• Herrmann Hesse’s famous book: Siddharta. Highly recommended. Although Hesse is a German autor he obviously knew a lot about India and really loved your culture.
• I have also read a part of Bagavad Gita - which opened once more my mind for the fact, that all the religions in the world share a lot in common. This book is a great source of wisdom and common sense.
• The news about the phenomenal economic growth, especially in the IT sector, which made India one of the leading nations regarding software developments. (Actually there are many Europeans, which are quite anxious about the Indian threat to their employment - I do not belong to this group)
• The feeling, that Indian food is delicious - but in India it is supposed to be far too spicey for us white skins
• I also thought that the weather is Southern India must be always incredible hot (although I defintely hate freezing)
• A Indian gentleman sitting next to me in the Lufthansa sardine can economy class, who turned out to be a very successful Indian entrepreneur.
• Watching the tigers in the zoo.

So you can imagine that I was quite curious to see the real thing. I arrived Saturday night very late. On the next morning I had the opportunity to make an excursion to Mysore together with Thilo Frotscher and Craig Russel. Of course I did not want to miss this opportunity - so I even sacrified my Sunday morning sleep for that.

Already the trip on the road was quite fascinating. While in Germany you almost never hear a horn this little part seems to be the most important feature of traffic participants in India. It is like a secret language, where cars exchange mysterious messages all the time. Indian traffic would probably break down without the horns. The quality of the infrastructure was definitely better than expected - your airport being a significant exception.

A thing I really liked from the beginning is the way Indian Ladies are dressed. The saree makes almost every single Lady look like a princess. I liked it so much - that I bought a saree for my wife immediately. It came with a little manual of how to put it on. After I have read the manual I am not so sure, if my idea was so bright. Probably we will have to fly in an Indian Lady to explain it step by step. Writing complex software seems easy compared to putting on a saree - being a man has some advantages They also look very graceful when sitting in the Lady seat on the back of a motorbyke. A German traffic police officer would die from an immediate heart attack when he would have to control Indian traffic. Of coure riding a motorbyke like this is strictly forbidden in Germany.

In Mysore we saw the obligatory palace. Obviously gold was not a rare material when it was built. I saw lots of very good artworks and craftmanship. But overall the palace suffers a bit from the mixture of too many styles: clasical Indian architecture, Muslim architecture, European and Gothic elements. I am sure that the orignal palace that burnt down must have been even more beautiful.

In the garden I took the obligatory ride on an elephant, which was also a first time for me. This was neccessary as a proof for my kids, that I am really in India. I an falsely influencing their picture from India by telling them, that I took the elephant taxi from the airport to the hotel. (So watch out for the blogs of my kids in about 20 years).

Guess which one is me

I could also convince myself, that are still many holy cows on the road and I even saw a monkey jumping arround close to a temple on a holy mountain close to Mysore - which btw was a very beautiful place.

I also learned that Indian food is not more spicey in India than in Europe. Actually it is just right - I gives a kick to your tongue without burning it. And the weather is also far more comfortable than expected. I expected humid heat of more than 30 degrees Celsius, but the heat is not that humid and actually very convenient. You don’t freeze, only in the early afternoon you have to make sure to find a shady place. So I have to dmit that I really like the climate up to now.

What I did not like so much is the fact, that you find so much pollution and garbage everywhere. But I guess that is a very common problem of all developing countries with a large population density. And I am sure that future generation will also solve this problem considering how much has already been achieved in India. What is also hard for a European is to cope with the amount of severe poverty you see. How to handle all those people asking for alms? As soon as you give something to one of them another three pop up and ask for more. I will still have to learn to find the right balance here. In Germany we also have poor people, but compared to the Indian poors they are rich people.

As a summary I can say that most of my experiences in your country have been very positive, especially the friendlyness and openess of all the people I met. Almost everybody gives you a sunny smile. So I hope, that I will be able to establish some good business partnerships and find some friends here, so that I will have the opportunity to come back in the future.

Thanks you - India - for your warm and friendly welcome

Alexander von Zitzewitz

Compuware recently released a testing solution for outsourced service providers. Test Factory supports all aspects of managing and delivering quality assurance services by offering a comprehensive testing operations platform. This solution offers complete demand and resource management automation, enabling testing organizations to efficiently manage their projects and people while increasing visibility into project performance and improving software quality.

The solution is largely aimed at offshore outsourced testing services whose business is booming as firms are sending testing offshore in the hopes of saving money, reducing time-to- market, improving their testing processes, and ultimately improving quality

SDA India spoke to Jamie McGuffie, Senior Vice President, Compuware Partner Business Development, to know more about Test Factory and Compuware’s plans for the road ahead.

1. The demand for offshore outsourced testing services is booming. What are the benefits of off shoring that is driving this need?

Companies can benefit from offshore testing when they practise selective outsourcing of testing processes. Also, it is important that they observe a careful vendor selection process at the same time. By taking into account these two points, companies will be able to gain on service quality and make relatively significant savings on cost concurrently. The move will further enable a faster and seamless transfer of activities to offshore locations as well. (more…)

Non-proprietary software development received a thumbs up from investors with Spring framework creator, Interface 21, securing a USD 10 million funding from Benchmark Capital. Benchmark has previously invested in RedHat, MySQL and JBoss [which was eventually bought by RedHat for USD 420 million in 2006].

Spring is an open source web application framework for the Java platform. It was developed as a light-weight solution to make Java coding more flexible, easier, and competitive with other languages like RoR (Ruby on Rails). Unlike other heavy-weight APIs Spring is modular, meaning you can use parts of it; for example, like a bean container with Struts on top of it, or use only the Hibernate integration or the JDBC abstraction layer. Dependencies on the framework can be minimal, depending on the area of use.

Rod Johnson, CEO of Interface21 wrote the Spring framework as an accompaniment to his book Expert One-on-One Java EE Design and Development by Wrox Press in 2002. It has been downloaded more than three million times to date. Interface 21 offers training, consulting, and support services for Spring customers. Now the company intends to to continue development of the Spring Framework, expand the Spring portfolio of products, and forge key relationships with companies such as IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems. (more…)

Didn’t make the cut for the early bird before 8 May? No sweat!

As part of the promo campaign for JAX India 2007, SDA India Magazine has now rolled out the JAX Shuffle!

Play the game and stand a chance to win FREE tickets (Yes, the cost is ZERO, NADA, ZILCH, nothing at all) to the three main conference days and power workshops. Start playing and winning.

The global developer population is expected to grow 46% by 2009, creating a market of over seventeen million developers globally, according to a recent Evans Data report. The emergence of web services and new development capabilities from Ruby to Python to Ajax provide an opportunity for even more substantial innovation. To tap this rich opportunity, Borland is positioning its Developer Tools Group into a wholly owned subsidiary called CodeGear. This new unit will be responsible for advancing the four primary product lines formerly associated with Borland’s Integrated Development Environment (IDE) business. These include Developer Studio (Delphi, C++Builder and C#Builder), JBuilder (including the upcoming Eclipse-based “Peloton” offering), Turbo and Interbase.

“We will continue to partner and share a mutual view of customer success. However, going forward Borland will be completely focused on leading the Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) market, while CodeGear will be focused on the software developer” — Nick Jackson, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, CodeGear (more…)

The objective behind JAX India 2007 is to inform the Indian Enterprise IT community of the latest cutting-edge technologies that their peers in Europe, North America, and APAC, are harnessing for increased productivity at their work place.

With over 75 sessions, including Power Workshops, delivered (a good part of the conference program covers the same topic areas that were discussed at the European edition of JAX) by speakers fresh from their speaking assignments at JAX Munich and Java One, the highlight of the JAX India print creative was on the speaker stack (see the creative below).For those of you yet to spot these ads in your daily newspaper, flip through the Times of India and Hindu, in the run up to the event.

Catch the JAX India 2007 hoardings at all major intersections in the city - Electronics city, Hosur Road, Koramangala, Airport Road. You can also spot the moving Orange, with Mik Kersten, Ralph Mueller, and Craig Russell, as they reach out to JAX, Eclipse, and Enterprise Architecture enthusiasts in Bangalore.

Promos for JAX India 2007 are now on air. Tune into Radio City 91.1 FM 0800-1000 Hrs and 1800-2000 Hrs every day (Mon-Fri) to check out the JAX jingle. In the run up to the conference, set your clocks with JAX TimeCheck every hour.

You can also download the audio files [25 secs | 20 secs] and listen to your favorite JAX Promos on your iPod.