P V S N Raju

Sonata’s Core Research Group (CRG) does cutting-edge work on technologies as diverse as IBM DB2 database migration and Microsoft’s .NET. Though it is an R&D group, the CRG has proved its business worth by helping Sonata win the Franklin Templeton project.

Sonata CRG is setting up a database migration centre with IBM’s help to aid organisations in migrating to DB2 or Informix. “The infrastructure is being set up and resources are being trained as of today. This centre will be operational by end January 2003. We will have different flavours of UNIX and Windows, tools for migration including design, application and data design tools and best practice documents for a smooth migration,” says P V S N Raju, associate vice president—CRG at Sonata Software.

CRG is Microsoft’s beta and solution partner; the group has delivered five .NET projects to date ranging from 50 person months to 200 person months. Raju said, “.NET is faster than its predecessor, but they can still fine-tune it. It is faster than Java though. TCO is lower in .NET. The cost at the project deployment stage is 28 percent lower.”

The first .NET project undertaken by CRG is for a premier airside HVAC contractor on the US East Coast.

The application takes care of the complete bidding process from the time a request for bid is received until the start of the project covering competitive analysis, estimation, pricing, win or loss analysis. If the bid is for HVAC ducting say for a 75-storeyed building in New York, there will be at least 10 people working on the bid sitting in different places. This application helps in collaboration, tighter controls and reviews. “For complex calculations we have implemented electronic spreadsheets in the Web application,” Raju added. This application will run on Windows 2000 server using a SQL server database, Project central and e-spreadsheets from Actuate. It was developed using ASP.NET, VB.NET and C#. Phase 1 of the project that has been deployed took more than 60 person months.

The second project involves setting up a B2C site for a US government agency. “We are working with one more US based Microsoft Gold partner to develop, deploy and maintain e-commerce application to sell merchandise over the Web. Apart from the typical B2C site, it also integrates with the back-end applications and the capability to take and place orders Vide EDI,” said Raju. This application is being deployed in the US and took 50 person months of effort. The tools used are Commerce server 2002, Biztalk server and SQL Server. This project is being built using ASP.NET and VB.NET. The major benefit is automating almost all key processes and integrating all applications and partners.

CRG’s other .NET projects include work being done for a telecom service provider, insurance product company and an auction site. The group also creates frameworks in areas such as user interface, infrastructure (security, messaging, collaborative, content management, integration with back-ends) and application frameworks that are 75 percent ready and need customisation to become full-blown projects.

There are four to eight sub-teams operating within CRG at any point of time. As a technology matures, the team focusing on it disbands and a fresh team takes its place focusing on a new technology. The .NET team, for instance, is at the closing stage of its lifecycle. Going forward, CRG is working on Web services for retail and consumer goods companies, SyncML for Wireless applications, eCRM (Integrating PC applications to cash registers or POS terminals), smart card and security (tie up with Cybersafe, leaders in Kerberos, to do technology work for them).