In pursuit of IT Part - II

Due to practice of programing in basic, I could easily grasp Visual Basic 5 and then switched to VB6. Our Dnyandeep team included dedicated developers who constantly refined the design techniques, used Crystal Reports for report generation, created Cab and executable files for distribution of software. They developed many applications ranging from village information system, matrimony,dairy, inventory and billing systems.

In spite of success in software development, that could not yield enough returns as the development took long time, the clients changed the requirements and required customisation to match their traditional method and we did not focus on marketing and getting orders for developed products. The only advantage was our group became more coherent and expert in design. Many of our employees got good jobs in Pune and Mumbai. My nephew, Manish could use the experience he had in webdesign in Dnyandeep for getting job after his MS in USA. As I was not involved in actual development work, I could not master scientific methodology in programming and lacked comprehensive knowledge of VB6 and Crystal Reports. What I used to do was taking their developed projects from one application and changing the code to suit my requirements. I kept on using these techniques for developing software using MS Access as database. Through trial and error, I could succeed in developing some projects in environmental design and Sanskrit Grammer.

With the availability of internet connection from VSNL, we focussed our attention on web design work. We became partner to Net4India, a wellknown ISP in India and hosted our sites taking shared hosting package. Initially, there was no awareness about websites even in educational institutes like our engineering college, hence, we first developed the site for our college on our own. www.walchandsangli.org site was designed and run for three years by Dnyandeep without taking any charges from college. I had called a programmer student ( friend of our Dnyandeep member) from Bangalore for that purpose and paid Rs. 3000/- for his 15 days work. He dis the job well. Our people also learned techniques of HTML programming.

We conducted one month web design course for Walchand College students with equal sharing of receipts between College and Dnyandeep. I also could get sponsorship for developing www.envis.org from KIT college of engineering.

We opened our office in Pune at Mayuresh Infotech as we had good rapport developed due to Shri Lipi products we were using. Somehow our collaboration did not last long and we closed the branch. As we were getting good response for webdesign, we thought of keeping dedicated server at Net4India office in Pune. This gave us lot of information and training in managing servers. However, as the prices of hosting services reduced drastically, and there were security and data backup difficulties, we decided to opt for secure hosting services from reliable internet service providers. We also initiated partnership with Macromedia and CCAvenue. Our idea was to sell their products. But due to weakness in Marketing, we could not do much in that field.

The technolgy in web design was changing rapidly and our people had to remain abreast with latest developments. Our simple HTML based static websites were changed to dynamic with asp pages and database support services of MSAccess and MSSQL. Our Marathi website www.mykolhapur.net based on this technology one Maharashtra State award. More than the award, we were invited by Commissioner of Kolhapur corporation for designing website of Kolhapur Corporation. The site was in Marathi and English with well over 500 pages with database linked web application modules. Unfortunately, HCL Infotech took contract of corporation e-governance and our site was closed.

Use of asp and MSAccess required windows server and that amounted to licensing and more cost of hosting. We decided to use PHP and MySQL for developing dynamic websites and the team learned those techniques in short time. Now we could host our websites on Linux based servers. However, many of our sites were having asp and we had to take services of two servers.

I forgot the development in other important branch, where our people excelled. That was Flash programming. We started with Flash 5 moved on to Flash 8, From actionscipt 1.0 to 2.0. We enrolled ourself as elance service provider and could successfully carry out many foreign assignments in Flash. This had a effect of more exodus from our company due to better pay packages offered by companies in Pune and Mumabi. Still our company survived due to small dedicated core group who stayed with Dnyandeep.

We developed website for Marathi Sahitya Sammelan, Sangli as our contribution to the event. The site was appreciated by all. We could succeed in developing website for Maharashtra Mandal in Bangalore (the centre of IT business) and feel proud about it.

We had a chance of visiting US for 3/4 times to my daughter and son and our visit was for 2/3 months each time. Still, our company continued to function without any supervision and I must express my thanks to our team for that.