Greetings from Kolkata, India!

Jhilam Nandi, Head of India Sales and Marketing, informs a curious visitor at the booth about the various tools offered.

Dear Kovair Friends,

I’m posting this blog from the Kovair Kolkata office where I am spending the week with our Product Development group. The content of this blog, however, focuses on my visit to Bangalore last week where Kovair participated in the SPM-ICON event from October 29-30, focusing on IT Project Management. Kovair participated as the Gold sponsor of the event along with Microsoft as the Platinum sponsor and IBM as the Event sponsor.  As you can see by the names, we were in very good company and received great reception and recognition! This was the 5th annual event and we participated for the first time. This was also our first major marketing event in India where we started focusing on since Spring 2009.

Kovair CEO and Chairman Bipin Shah (myself, right) gives one of three cash prizes to an ecstatic winner.

The first day of the event primarily comprised of tutorial sessions where we networked and conducted a quiz on ALM and ITSM and gave out cash prizes to three winners. On Day 2, we had some very interesting sessions with a keynote address by Bob Hoekstra, former CEO of Phillips and a well-known face in Bangalore based on his past there. The day’s sessions were managed by individuals from some major IT companies in Bangalore such as Program and Project Management from Wipro, Challenges of Managing Projects to Improve Efficiency by HCL, Managing Software Product Portfolio with Real Insights & Real Metrics by IBM Rational and Managing Changes by Infosys. Kovair was provided with a vendor speaking slot where we presented the “Kovair Value Proposition for IT Projects and Service Management.”

Colonel Ravindranath shares his experience at the conference.

For those who wanted to hear something about project management from a non-IT perspective, there was an excellent and somewhat emotionally charged presentation by Colonel Ravindranath from the Indian army where he described the Project Management aspects of recapturing the Tololing peak by his battalion during the Kargil war between India and Pakistan a few years ago at an elevation of over 16,000 feet! The project included many details of planning, communicating, training, rehearsing and logistical planning, including the manual lifting of ammunition at night by couple of hundred soldiers and support personnel for over a week without the enemy realizing what was happening in the darkness of the night! While it was interesting from a planning and execution perspective, it was very sad to hear about the casualties of such an undertaking and realizing the tragic part of any war and how it affects the people and their families who get sacrificed in any such conflict!

Our booth drew several people and it was interesting for this writer to see the Bangalore IT crowd in action with attendees from the “who is who” of IT companies in India such as IBM (yes, you can also call it an Indian IT company with an employee count of 50,000 in India), Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, HCL, Mindtree and many others!

For further details and to view presentations and/or download the Kovair presentation, please visit http://www.qsitglobal.com/spm-icon-2009/.

On another note, I would like to mention that Kovair is in the process of signing up two VARs in the Bangalore area — Vedasoft and GenXT so that we can better serve our customers in the India market – particularly in the Bangalore area with it’s large presence of both Indian and Global IT and Technology companies.

Thanks for reading this and I hope you will visit the Kovair website at www.kovair.com for other information and updates!

Sincerely,

Bipin Shah
CEO and Chairman

Kovair Integrates with Eclipse / Sign Up for Upcoming Webinar!

Dear Friends,

There are two items that I would like to communicate to all of you in this blog.

The first one is that Kovair has recently completed a complete integration with the Eclipse Development Platform for all of you developers who love to work in the Eclipse environment.  This bi-directional integration allows you to connect with other tools in your development environment such as Test tools or SCM tools through the Kovair integration without leaving your Eclipse environment.  The Eclipse Plug in adapter is available from Kovair by contacting our Sales@Kovair.com   We would love to answer your questions.  A brief article on the subject written by Kovair VP of Engineering was contained in the Kovair October Newsletter that may be accessed from our website home page at www.kovair.com.

The second is to request you to look into attending our upcoming  webinar on the topic “Why Implement ITIL based IT Service Management?”  The webinar presentation by Mr. Bob Aiello a well known IT Consultant and a member of the IEEE Committee on ITIL Standards and Sky Basu, CTO of Kovair may be of interest to many of you who may be considering the ITIL Standards for your IT Service Management approach or for tools considerations.  It is free and you can register by going to the Kovair website homepage at www.kovair.com.

Thanks for your time in reading this update and hope to communicate to you at a regular frequency!

Sincerely,
Bipin Shah
CEO & Chairman
Kovair Software
www.kovair.com

Value Propositions for Tool Integrations Whitepaper

Dear Friends of Kovair,

Here’s a whitepaper that I recently wrote in response to a potential customer query about the value of Omnibus Integration Solutions from Kovair.  It provides a brief summary of the reasons why customers should consider the value of integrations of best of breed tools from multiple vendors using the Kovair Omnibus Integration Bus and Platform. Your ALM and ITSM solutions will be greatly enhanced as a result of these integrations. 

I hope you enjoy reading it and look into it further if you think it will be of interest to your company or organization. As always, your comments are keenly sought and appreciated!

Click to get your free whitepaper now! Value Propositions for Tool Integrations Whitepaper

Best,

Bipin Shah
CEO & Chairman
Kovair Software
www.Kovair.com

Kovair’s September Update

The Santa Barbara Mission, founded in 1786.

Greetings Friends!

Over the Labor Day weekend, I drove to Santa Barbara, California, a four and a half hour drive from the heart of Silicon Valley, for R&R. This was my first vacation this year – a great break with my wife to a place that I love so much. I’m sure that anyone who has been there loves it as well, and for those of you who have not made it to Santa Barbara, I highly recommend it.  Of all the places that I have visited in California, the Santa Barbara City Fathers (do I say “Mothers” also for equal rights to make this politically correct?) have done an excellent job of preserving the Spanish architectural beauty along State Street (Santa Barbara’s Downtown area) all the way to  the ocean front, as well as a few other streets running parallel and perpendicular to State Street. Spanish baked clay roofs, white stucco walls, arched entries and windows with wrought iron gates and beautiful balcony railings line State Street.  Throngs of tourists walking along the street with myriads of shops, restaurants with variety of cuisines and side walk cafes that you can enjoy in the beautiful California weather close to the ocean.  A weekend art show along the ocean front is something to behold. In fact, we ended up purchasing two paintings and some black and white photographs of Tibet to add to our collection at home.  With that plug for Santa Barbara at no cost to the City, let me go back to my job of putting a plug for Kovair!

After briefly describing our ITSM solution in the Kovair Newsletter in July, I am pleased to share that we added a customer in the IT Service Management and Help Desk Management area during the last month from a mid-size IT Services Company which does business globally. This was a huge win after two weeks of hands-on evaluations against two major brand name companies in the business –  we are particularly happy with the outcome! We would like to mention the fact that besides ALM, Kovair can legitimately claim to have a very competitive IT Service Management Solution that can compete well with the top two or three players in the business.

Our Omnibus Integration continues to gain momentum with a published list on our website www.kovair.com/omnibus.aspx  (scroll down to Kovair Omnibus Integration Adapters Chart) of all the third party tools adapters that we are going to offer off the shelf after this month and Dec 09 in addition to what is currently available.  Please review this list and you will notice that Kovair will be able to offer collaborative and integrated development environment both for Java and .Net developers in the market.  Our simple technology and ease of creating integration adapters, makes this a compelling story for any company wishing to pursue multi tools integrations in their ALM/SDLC as well as IT Service Management areas. 

I’d like to encourage you to register and attend our webinar “Achieving Collaborative Development with Tools Integrations” on Sept 16 at 10:00am Pacific where we will show the Integration of four different tools – Requisite Pro for Requirements Management, HP QC for Testing, Perforce Source Code Management System and Sharepoint for Document Management. Please visit www.kovair.com to register for the webinar as well as review past webinars that are recorded.  As a tool vendor we have no axe to grind about which point tools a group should use but the Kovair Enterprise Service Bus- the Omnibus with the capability to code bidirectional adapters to connect all tools to create a “Symphony” from disparate tools is not easily found from other vendors in the ALM and ITSM business! We will be glad to talk to you about making the API available to any of you for developing your own integration adapters!

With best wishes and until next time!

Sincerely,

Bipin Shah
CEO, Kovair Software
www.kovair.com
http://kovairblog.wordpress.com

Kovair’s August Update

Dear Friends,

I just returned from India where I visited four cities – Ahmedabad, Pune, Bangalore and Kolkata over a two week period. The sentiment in the IT Sector in India is not as gloomy as in some of the other markets and the industry is expected to grow over 12% this year. I visited customers and potential customers in Pune and Bangalore and discovered that there is a definite interest among the IT Services Companies in acquiring some of the tools that would improve their productivity as well as the schedule and quality of their deliveries to their customers. Recently, the Central budget that was announced looks favorable in terms of growth expectations. India’s GDP growth projection is estimated at 6.7% for the 2009-10 fiscal year and we will continue to extend our focus on that market for Kovair products.

Our development center in Kolkata continues to do well and their focus is creating multiple adapters that will place us in the forefront of tools integrations to the Kovair Omnibus Integrations Bus both in the .Net and Java development domains. We will post a new list of adapters that are scheduled for release on our Web site in the next few days. Please visit www.kovair.com to review this list if you are looking for any integrations with third-party development tools that you may be currently using. Our most recent adapter release was for the Microsoft Sharepoint that we announced in July ‘09.

Continuing on the subject of the integrations, we are very excited about the webinar that we have scheduled for September 2, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific on the topic “Integrations of Multi Vendor Tools, the Holy Grail of Development Management.” CTO Sky Basu will show a live demo of Kovair integrations with Requirements Management, Test Management with Quality Center, Configuration Management with Perforce and Document Managemnt with Sharepoint. Please sign up to register for the webinar now!

Finally, Kovair was named one of the Top 100 Software Companies by SD Times for their selections for 2008 and one of the top 10 for the ALM domain. We are obviously elated with this recognition and want to thank them for this selection. We will strive to do our best to serve all our existing and potential customers and continue on our path of product innovations!

Until next time,

Sincerely,

Bipin Shah
CEO & Chairman
Kovair Software
www.kovair.com

Kovair Partners With La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia

(L-R): La Trobe University Professor Jack Singh and Kovair CEO Bipin Shah

Dear Friends,

Today we are going to talk about an interesting and non-profit event that is occurring in Kovair’s corporate life for the first time. During my visit to Australia in late April to establish corporate existence for Kovair for the Australasian markets, I had a meeting facilitated by the Victoria Government’s Department of Industry, Innovation, Research and Development –DIIRD with Prof Jack Singh in Melbourne. Dr. Singh is a Professor of Microtechnology/Nanoelectronics at La Trobe University near Melbourne and the Director of the Center for Technology Infusion attached to the University. At our meeting at the DIIRD office in Melbourne, when we were introduced we made instant connection and he gave us a presentation on the Technology center and the progress it has made in the two and a half years that he has been involved with it with industry partnerships. We agreed to meet again when he would visit the San Francisco Bay area in another month to visit U.C. Berkeley.

Prof Singh is a very unique individual who is a native of Fiji, educated in Fiji, the UK, Canada and did some post doctoral work in the US and now is settled in Australia at La Trobe with his own primary research focus on nanotechnology.

I presented to him during his Bay area visit all the capabilities that Kovair Global Lifecycle could deliver and proposed that he consider using Kovair Software for three possible areas. One is to use it as a software development management tool for classes in software development at La Trobe. Second, is to use it as an Applications Development Platform for undergraduate or graduate students doing special or research projects for their applications development needs. Third, is to offer it to the startup companies in his Technology Center where they are incubated at no cost for their development and IT tools needs.

I am happy to report that Prof Singh and the University have agreed in principle to take up Kovair’s offer and are working on the details of the formal MOU to execute on this offer from Kovair. Kovair is pleased to do this for the first time in its corporate history and oddly enough start it in Australia – more than 10,000 miles away from its home in California!

Now that we have done this in Melbourne Australia, we are glad to consider other universities and particularly some of the great ones in California close to our home at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University, San Jose State University, University of Santa Clara and U.C. Santa Cruz. Sometimes good ideas come to you when you are far away from home is how I look at this development for Kovair!

Thank you for taking the time to read this and wish us success at La Trobe and other University programs to follow!

Warm regards,
Bipin Shah

CEO & Chairman
Kovair Software
www.kovair.com

Welcome to Kovair’s New Blog!

Dear Readers,

I’m glad you found your way to my blog. I can now keep in touch with you on an ongoing basis sharing matters that are important to me and hopefully to you as well.

2009 has been a promising year of accomplishments for Kovair. We worked feverishly for several months and had a successful release with our comprehensive SaaS offering for the ALM suite of applications. Soon afterwards, we released Kovair Global Lifecycle Release 6.0 for Applications Lifecycle Management and IT Service Management markets.

Next, we will release the Applications Development Platform for enterprises of any size to develop their own specific applications with Kovair codeless drag and drop configurations. Basically, any business user can use this platform to create any desired applications without needing a programmer or software developer to do it for them! We’ve made this possible by the drag and drop configurability of Kovair for all aspects of applications entities creation (fields, forms, relations and reports), business rules engine, workflows and integrations.

All of this capability is being offered as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) on the cloud on a subscription basis. Let’s face it. There’s nothing more frustrating than the business user that is constantly constrained in his or her ability to do their jobs efficiently due to a lack of IT resources. Empower them today: they now have Kovair as a possible choice to create their desired applications. Today’s IT savvy employee is in a perfect position to take advantage of such a capability. Please visit www.Kovair.com and go to the “Enterprise Solutions section” on the home page for more details.

Look for a press release to be published soon detailing the highlights of the advanced features and many enhancements in Kovair’s Global Lifecycle Release 6.0. We have the most comprehensive ALM and IT Service Management solutions in the industry today with multi-browser compatibility, dash board reporting, advanced task based process with versioning capability and an excellent cross entity traceability. The traceability can be graphically represented for all entities in any application as a very simple network diagram.

That should tell you why we’re all excited and Kovair is ready to “Kick Butt” in the market place. If you are looking for a state of the art solution to relieve your pain points in the Applications Lifecycle Management tools space, contact Kovair by email at sales@Kovair.com or visit www.Kovair.com

Cheers and Best Wishes,

Bipin Shah
CEO & Chairman
Kovair Software