G. N. Shah, Author at Innovatix Technology Partners

G. N. Shah November 14, 2023 No Comments

The Role of a CTO in Navigating the AI Revolution: My Insights as a former CTO – G. N. Shah

The realms of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have emerged as pivotal catalysts for technological innovation in recent times. These technologies have disrupted traditional business models and presented tremendous opportunities for innovation. As a tech leader and the former CTO, my experience in navigating the AI revolution. In this personal blog, I’ll delve into the insights and experiences I share from my tenure as a CTO regarding the challenges and opportunities presented by AI and Machine Learning as they transform the technological and business landscape. The Evolving Role of the CTO Let’s begin by reflecting on the evolving role of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Traditionally, the CTO’s role was primarily focused on overseeing technology infrastructure and ensuring the smooth operation of IT systems within an organization. However, with the emergence of AI and ML, the CTO’s responsibilities have expanded to include a broader and more strategic focus. The CTO is no longer just the guardian of technology; they are now the visionary, the strategist, and the driver of innovation. AI and ML have redefined how businesses operate, and it is the CTO’s responsibility to harness these technologies to drive business growth. Challenges And Paradigm Shifts I vividly recall the challenges that accompanied this paradigm shift. AI and ML were not just tools but agents of transformation, introducing complexities and opportunities that demanded a new mindset. Talent Acquisition: The scarcity of AI and ML talent was one of the early challenges. I emphasize the importance of building a skilled team with data science, machine learning, and deep learning expertise. Attracting and retaining top talent should be a top priority for CTOs. If you are a small or medium-sized company, you may seek help from a good partner. Data-Driven Decision-Making: The shift towards data-driven decision-making was a substantial change. I learned that CTOs must focus on data collection, storage, and analysis to derive actionable insights. As AI thrives on data, the CTOs must ensure data is collected and transformed into valuable insights. Integrating AI into Business Processes: AI is not just an IT concern but a core component of the business strategy. CTOs must work closely with other business leaders to integrate AI and ML into various processes and create a seamless, intelligent ecosystem. Balancing Innovation with Legacy Systems: One of the toughest tasks I found was to balance innovation with legacy systems. Many organizations had extensive IT infrastructure, and the challenge was integrating AI technologies while ensuring compatibility and security. Strategic Insights from My Experience Education And Continuous Learning I emphasize the importance of education and continuous learning in navigating the AI revolution. As a CTO, I reflect I had to become a student again. I immersed myself in AI and ML courses, attended conferences, and engaged with experts in the field. It is a constant journey of learning and adaptation. CTOs must encourage their teams to do the same. Training and upskilling are crucial to keep up with the rapid advancements in AI and ML. I believe that investing in employees’ education is an investment in the company’s future growth. Strategic Partnerships One key lesson I learned was the value of strategic partnerships. No one can do it all. CTOs must seek collaborations with other organizations, startups, or technology providers to complement their expertise. Strategic partnerships can open doors to cutting-edge AI solutions and talent that may not be readily available in-house. Fostering A Culture of Innovation CTOs have a pivotal role in shaping the culture of their organizations. My experience taught me that fostering a culture of innovation is essential. Innovation must be woven into the DNA of the company. This begins with the executive and trickles down to every team member. I encourage CTOs to create an environment where experimentation is not just allowed but encouraged, where failures are seen as learning opportunities, and where ideas can be freely shared and explored. Ethical Considerations in AI I would especially emphasize the importance of ethical considerations in AI development and deployment. I believe that CTOs should lead the charge in ensuring AI is developed and used responsibly. Ethical AI is not just a buzzword but a moral obligation. CTOs must ensure that AI systems are designed to be fair, transparent, and secure. Focus On Outcomes My experiences have led me to recognize the significance of focusing on outcomes rather than technology for its own sake. CTOs should be result-driven. AI and ML are tools to achieve business objectives. It is not about adopting AI for its own sake but for what it can help the organization succeed. Adaptability And Resilience The tech landscape is ever-changing, and CTOs must be adaptable and resilient. I must say there were moments of uncertainty and challenges, but adaptability and resilience are the key ingredients for success. CTOs must be ready to pivot, to iterate, and to evolve. The ability to adapt to change is what sets apart successful leaders in the AI era. Leveraging AI: The Benefits Adopting AI yielded significant benefits for Innovatix Technology Partners, a Macrosoft, Inc. company. It enabled us to automate repetitive tasks, increasing efficiency and cost savings. It also allowed us to gain deeper insights into our business operations and make better, data-driven decisions. Innovatix’s customer service improved significantly with AI. We are now offering personalized services and 24/7 support through AI chatbots. This feature resulted in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. Lastly, AI gave Innovatix Technology Partners a competitive edge. It allowed us to innovate and offer new products and services that were impossible earlier. Final Thoughts The role of a CTO in navigating the AI revolution is both challenging and rewarding. My insights, drawn from my extensive experience as a CTO and now as the CEO of Innovatix Inc., shed light on the evolving nature of this role and the strategies needed to excel in the AI-driven landscape. It is a journey of continuous learning, strategic thinking, ethical responsibility, and a commitment to fostering a culture of innovation. As AI and ML

G. N. Shah August 21, 2023 No Comments

Innovatix’s Talent Acquisition Engine: Built for Accelerated Growth and Handling Future Disruptions

Innovatix Technology Partners, a Macrosoft, Inc. company is constantly engaged in talent acquisition – in a big way – it is a core activity of our company. As a technology services company, Innovatix depends critically on the talent of its members, and on being able to acquire new talent as needed, and equally important keeping talent that is already part of our company. This paper is about our talent acquisition engine. Another paper in this series will focus on our talent management practices intended to retain our best talent. Download as PDF Download the full version of this blog as PDF for Free Download Now Every week there are dozens of individual talent acquisition efforts going on in different parts of the company. This is especially so since our company is growing rapidly. And with the disruption to a remote work environment, competition for top talent is more intense and more broadly based than ever before. There is no way to hide from this intense competition. Talent acquisition at Innovatix Technology Partners is a very complex machine, and there are many subprocesses that need to work together smoothly to make it all happen well. An added complication is the fact that there are six separate lines of businesses within Innovatix, and the talent acquisition process is quite different across the different LOBs. There are two distinct factors that have influenced our thinking and strategic planning for our talent acquisition engine. The first is the strategic goal of our company to double size over the next 3 years. The second concerns being ready for disruptions or secular trends that may make talent acquisition much more difficult and risky at a future point. Given the strategic direction we are now embarking on to double company’s size and revenue over the next 3 years, obviously, we cannot even think to do that without having in place a robust capability for talent acquisition across all LOBs. The good news for us is – most of the required capabilities to meet this scale up are now in place and working well. We will need to enhance small things here and there, and certainly we will need to scale up these capabilities to meet the new corporate goals we have set, but for the most part the basic structure is already working well. We believe strongly we should be able to make all of this happen to meet the goal of doubling our company in the next 3 years. Regarding disruptions and trends, we enumerate a number below and have thought long and hard about how our recruitment engine will perform under each scenario. We describe those below. Of course, there is the unexpected disruption ‘out of left field’ that may come our way at any point. As noted, all we can do there is make our machine as resilient as possible and to be aware at all times of changes happen in the marketplace. So, the purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed description of all aspects of our digital talent acquisition process across Innovatix’s six lines of business. As noted, there will be a companion paper on our talent management processes, which also have become super critical given the intense competition for talent across the world because of the remote work environment we are now in. We are of course not immune to this talent competition race. Innovatix’s Acquisition Engine Profile As noted above, there are six main lines of business within Innovatix. All are growing this year and we are projecting significant growth across all LOBs to achieve the corporate goal of doubling in 3 years. The six lines of business are the following Development Teams Enterprise Technologies Legacy Migration CCM/Quadient NLP/Call Miner Process Automation Readers interested to learn about any one of these LOBs should look through our web site, where there are detailed descriptions of each LOB along with the types of services we provide for each. There are three regional centers that make up Innovatix Technology Partners. The HQ location is in NJ US, and there are two international development centers, one in Trivandrum India and the other in Lahore Pakistan. Of course, the entire company is now working remotely, so our office facilities are essentially empty. As detailed in other papers we are achieving excellent levels of productivity and quality outputs in this remote work environment. So 6 LOBs and 3 regional centers is the structure of Innovatix that our Talent Acquisition engines must respond to. The below table lays out essentials of the recruitment and related talent acquisition engines we currently have in the company. We believe building on these engines will allow us to reach our strategic goal of doubling the company by 2024. MAC US Large technical recruitment team in Mac India for servicing recruitment needs for US market Number of Recruiters: 20 in 2021 30 in 2022 40 in 2023 55 in 2024 Mac Campus program for Quadient Classes of 10 increasing to 20 in future years At least 200 to be trained over the next 3 years Mac Campus programs for Call Miner and Process Automation To start up late this year or early next Students for these program will need to have BS degrees in CS/STEM For Process Automation the training will be on Celonis and UiPath Mac India Recruitment team in India for recruitment of people in India Currently 2 people, increasing to 5 in the next year, and further increases after that as needed Mac Campus program for Quadient Classes of 10 increasing to 20 in future years At least 250 to be trained over the next 3 years Mac Pak Recruitment team in Pakistan for recruitment of people in Pakistan Currently 2 people, increasing to 5 in the next year, and further increases after that as needed Mac Campus programs for Call Miner and Process Automation To start up late this year or early next Students for these program will need to have

G. N. Shah August 21, 2023 No Comments

9 Critical Process Automation Questions – Answered!

Process Automation, in all its current embodiments and buzzwords (RPA, BPA, Document Understanding, Process Engineering, Hyperautomation,…), is clearly a critical issue on the minds of most business leaders. The marketing hype remains intensely positive. It is also true that many larger companies have internal efforts underway to utilize the technology set and seem generally positive in their feedback. They are finding it very useful for all the obvious reasons: streamlined processes that lead to less labor, better output quality, and better operational data, among other benefits. But what about mid-sized companies? How do leaders at these companies start to partake of the benefits of process automation without betting the company reserves? Often there are just too many barriers that stand in the way of them getting started or, more importantly, getting the significant benefits that process automation can offer. This paper offers my perspective on how mid-sized companies can start the process automation track efficiently to quickly begin gaining the benefits it provides. Following is a list of nine critical questions on process automation with my corresponding answers. My solutions involve engaging Innovatix Technology Partners in your pursuit of process automation, but honestly, you can always substitute any other highly skilled process automation service provider. 1. How does my company get started with process automation? Short answer – call us! Longer answer – after we come into the picture, we work together on three initial steps and create three documents for leadership consideration: We will do most of this initial work with your team at a minimal investment. And remember, we have Microsoft resources behind us, so they may be able to support some of the research work to get things started for your company. 2. Why should we use MS Power Automate rather than some of the other high visible vendors in the marketplace: UI Path; Automation Anywhere; Blue Prism? In all the top rating services (Gartner, Forrester,…), MS Process Automate is not only highly-rated today it is also moving up. It can work well in most use cases for a mid-sized company, I suggest using MS Power Automate as things simple to implement and support. Among other considerations: other tools are much more expensive; they require specialized trained resources to run them, and these top vendors are focused on large-cap companies at the higher end of the market (top financial or insurance companies, for example). 3. What can I do as my company absolutely does not have any resources available to work with your team? If no one at all is available, that is a showstopper. But perhaps look at it this way – you currently have people working and managing the current processes. We can team up with them with minimal impact on their time. We will be saving a lot of company time and resources once the application automation is implemented. Our team’s job is to ask all the right questions uncovering the information needed from your existing personnel and business process documentation. We are willing and excited to make this work for your company. We expect the calendar time required to complete the items in Question #1 is less than a month. We will assign a tech lead to the project, and it would certainly be good to have a single point of contact in your firm. At the end of this diagnostic, your firm will have enough data and information to inform the leadership team of the benefits and costs of a showcase implementation of process automation in your company. 4. What can I do since my firm’s internal systems are homegrown, and much of the data needed for automation is unavailable? This is where my team comes into play. If you have a collection of Python, Bash, Shell, or Perl scripts that work together in a somewhat ad-hoc way and it requires your teams to monitor the process, input, and output data to keep things moving, that is, in fact, a perfect case for process automation. Process automation brings together all these separate process elements into a single framework. This provides your team the ability to orchestrate everything from a single dashboard, automate all the data inputs as much as possible, and provide a clear and well-structured framework for making and understanding further changes in process code. In the showcase application, we will build with you. We will identify one of the more chaotic parts of your business and convert it into a well-run, well-understood process flow. Imagine the benefits of that! 5. We don’t have the data stores and clean enough data to implement process automation? The data does not need to be perfect to get things started. Keep in mind, as process elements are moved under the orchestration framework of MS Power Automate, the data flows and stores will automatically begin to improve. One of our main objectives in implementing process automation is to ensure the process data flows and stores move to ever-better degrees of precision and accuracy. That gives process owners a clear view of how things are going and how best to automate other processes. One of the critical hallmarks of Innovatix Technology Partners, a Macrosoft, Inc. company is our data skills; from the very beginning, we have known how to work with spotty data and improve data quality. 6. How long will the implementation of the showcase application take? In most cases, this will take three months or less from the time the process is initiated. Before we start, we need to have the following documents signed with your company: NDA, MSA, and a Business Case, including a detailed description of the showcase application scope. It is critical that your firm’s leadership team has a clear idea of what we will do and what they can expect to happen once the process automation system is in place. While we firmly believe process automation to be highly beneficial to most mid-sized companies and is undoubtedly their path to the future, it is not magic, and we can’t put unrealistic

G. N. Shah January 6, 2023 No Comments

Top 8 Benefits of Implementing RPA

My company, Innovatix Technology Partners, previously known as Macrosoft, Inc., has a growing line of business supporting our mid-sized clients in building process automation applications, utilizing mainly the Microsoft Power Automate suite of tools. [1] When we start our work with a new client, the focus of the business case we work with the client to put together to justify the investment usually centers on the dollars that can be saved via the automation application. That is, the automation of processes will lead to significant dollar cost savings which is undoubtedly a prime factor to consider. But what I find most interesting and compelling is that once automation processes start to take hold in a company, there is a whole other dimension of benefits that accrue to the company besides the direct dollar benefits outlined in the business case. These are often hard to quantify but, in my opinion, often play a significant impact on a company and its employees and customers and can in themselves change and improve the future trajectory of a company. And that is my topic for this byline note. 1. Order from chaos Let’s face it, most companies have at least some parts of their business where certain processes and data flows are disconnected and disjointed, with lots of unnecessary manual inputs. For example, messy processes: going from laptop spreadsheets to python scripts on various servers, to the web to extract and update information, to different UIs for business users to manually update information during the flow, and to startup and monitor the various process steps. Yes, these complex processes can become bottlenecks that lead to lost time and revenue (which will be captured in the business case), perhaps more importantly, they will also inevitably lead to employee morale and customer satisfaction issues. In other words, a messy and unproductive set of processes and data flows probably grew up over an extended period and is now very difficult for business people in your company to navigate and fully understand. Generally, this also leads to suboptimal performance and regular falls in dealing with the company’s clients. That is the perfect arena for a showcase application of process automation. Surely, a good implementation of process automation in this area of a company’s business will lead to a concise dollar payback period. However, I believe, the positive impact of process automation will have on both employees and customers. Employees will no longer be chasing their tails through a set of segmented, disjointed processes and data flows, often having to manually input lots of data already in the system, and in that process, there are higher chances of making humane mistakes. This is not a positive and edifying environment for employees to work, spending much of their time fighting fires. The benefits include fewer falls and higher compliance to quality and on-time delivery of services and products on the customer side. Thus, there will be improvements in efficiency and control spread to every facet of this process area – from increased productivity and compliance to better customer experience and market performance. 2. Single point of process management Another less tangible, but highly important benefit of implementing MS Power Automate across various business processes within your company is that it provides a single point of process management, a single dashboard for managing all the scripts and data flows. This benefit is related to my discussion in point #1 above, but I highlight it separately here as it provides the gateway for a company to broaden and deepen automation activities across a much large set of processes within a company. Business teams and managers will be able to check on the status of all ongoing work easily and regularly within the processes covered by the automation platform. They will be able to track and compare current versus prior performance easily through the data charts available within the dashboard. I believe this to be a major benefit to employee morale, giving workers and managers alike much greater time to devote to higher value-added and more engaging tasks, including: Thus, there can be significant consolidation and synchronization of processes within MS Power Automate and it will be easy to maintain and update all these processes within the centralized location. Microsoft Power Automate will provide a single site to organize and manage these complete processes in a single orchestration for instance. 3. Standardization of business processes One of the inevitable positive outcomes of implementing MS Power Automate successfully within a set of company processes is the standardization of those business processes. Business teams will gain a much better firsthand of all the activities, the status of all operations, and an understanding of what needs to be done next. Here are some of the things I have in mind for this benefit, and again these things are generally not easy to quantify in a dollar sense for including the business case: 4. A company can combine multiple business processes with a Power Automate solution. This leads to higher productivity throughout the company, not just for a single isolated process. The goal of process automation is to ultimately envelop a broad array of a company’s business processes. And keep in mind – all these processes can be handled within a single instance of Microsoft Power Automate. Then, when 10-20 processes are encompassed within the automation platform, a company will see the true lasting benefits of automation, especially those intangible benefits that I am talking about in this paper. There will be no turning back at that point – the time and cost benefits will be compelling and so will the benefits I am talking about in this paper. Yes, implementing a single showcase application is an excellent way to start, to build positive momentum within a new company but that should be followed up quickly by a series of additional automation implementations within other business processes. In our work with clients, we review a broad subset of the client’s current business processes, and, working with

G. N. Shah August 16, 2022 No Comments

Is Your Company Ready For Process Automation?

What are the factors that suggest your company (or at least a specific subset of processes within your company) are prime candidates for process automation? I’ve been asked that question about process automation more often than any other by company executives. That is especially the case for companies in the midcap market arena, where process automation has not yet penetrated significantly. These executives hear the hype about process automation but don’t really know if they are a good candidate for implementation. They do not want to devote their time, resources, or management focus to pursuing this innovation if it is not a good fit. Some proponents of process automation say all companies should be pursuing this innovation, and all other things being equal, I agree that is the case. But the reality is – again, especially in the midcap market arena – that is not always the case. Companies may need to pursue many other even higher priority initiatives to improve their company and advance growth. So, how can a company decide if they are well suited for process automation, and now is the time to pursue it? In this short note, I lay out 7 factors that I feel are strong indicators that implementing process automation will have significant positive impacts on your company, including the economic benefits but going well beyond that. [1] Are these the only 7 factors? No, there are many other factors and predictors of success, many of which are outside the technical scope of the process automation project. For example, having and keeping strong executive support on the project throughout the project implementation stage and continued support during the ongoing operations and expansion stages. These types of factors are not the ones I concentrate on in this note. The factors I point out here are ones specifically related to the process areas of your company to be automated and linked to why automation of those processes is likely to lead to big benefits for your company. Microsoft Power Platform A quick side note before we begin. My company, Innovatix Technology Partner, is a Microsoft Gold partner and our practice in process automation revolves almost entirely around the Microsoft Power Platform suite of tools.[2] We have large teams trained and ready to go to implement your process automation needs using this suite of tools. Depending on the work at hand, we use all 4 of the major tools in the suite as well as the 2 new emerging tools. The 4 main tools include Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents. The two new emerging tools are Process Advisor and Power Pages. And of course, Microsoft is devoting major resources to further advancing their power platform tools set, so more and even better capabilities can be expected going forward.[3] Innovatix’s company website gives detailed information on all these tools and some guidance on the conditions when one is best to use, depending on a company’s needs and goals. Some factors include the desire to pursue low or no-code implementations, the need for process mining to uncover outlier processes, the need to publish output information to web pages, etc. regularly. So, in my discussion below of the 7 factors that favor process automation, I am thinking of these factors in the context of building and implementing the automation applications using the Power Platform suite of tools. The six tools in the suite are highly integrated and thus allow us to weave them together as needed and appropriate in the automation applications we build. While I am sure other process automation tools in the marketplace must have similar capacities, I believe the highly integrated nature of these 6 Microsoft tools is indeed a huge and perhaps unique value addition. For example, imagine the benefits of being able to output process automation monitoring statistics via Power BI. Now, on to the 7 factors…. Factor 1: Lots of manual operations This is considered the perfect case for process automation. The classic case is cited in the literature repeatedly for implementing process automation. I am not talking here of sales or call center operations, for example, which certainly have and need many employees to perform the necessary functions.[4] Instead, I am stating here the areas of your business where you have a lot and growing number of employees doing significant manual work, including the following use cases: If a lot of people in the company are spending a good amount of their time doing these manual operations, then that provides the basis for taking a good look at process automation. Especially in the case where you consider these manual operations as a growing part of your operations. There is a lot to dissect in each of the 4 use cases listed above. Each of these four cases I cite above[5] has specific signatures for how best to automate. I will not discuss each of these signatures in detail in this note but will return and do that in one of my next notes. Let me just give a flavor of what that discussion will look like. The first use case above can be handled in a bunch of ways. But one clear simple way is to just do the automation by building new APIs or adapting existing APIs in the two systems that make it possible for the required information to be transferred automatically from one system to the other.[6] This is a straightforward case of process automation. Microsoft Power Automate will provide the cloud administration platform for managing and monitoring these new automated process steps. Factor 2: Outlier processes I call this factor the ‘hidden outlier process’ factor. Namely, you have business processes that should be well-defined based on your business process mapping blueprints, but unfortunately, on many days, some bottlenecks and fall downs cause manual intervention to take hold of various processes, activities, and customer orders. These ‘outlier processes’ are unexpected (at least in their intensity and frequency) and seem to be causing much

G. N. Shah January 18, 2022 No Comments

Improving Quality and Security of Coding Process

Innovatix seek to achieve high levels of automation in finding and fixing coding errors during the entire life cycle of a development project. We seek to achieve 3 objectives over a diverse range of system applications and languages and for new and emerging application architectures, by implementing internal coding and unit test standards and toolsets. Innovatix is committed to providing our clients with Coding and Systems that are: We seek to utilize a powerful toolset of purpose-built analysis engines to detect bugs, security vulnerabilities and code smells. We seek tools that find as many errors as possible and provide our developers with ways to fix the errors quickly and efficiently. We are now using a number of tools in parallel to accomplish the best possible result. We have trained experts in every tool we use to assist our individual developers. We are constantly evaluating new standards and enhanced tools that provide new or better error coverage capabilities and/or better assist in providing re-mediation guidance. Our goals are to continually improve our coding processes, reducing coding errors and using ever more automated tools to speed up our coding processes and achieve best-in-class coding standards, as new programing languages, frameworks and tools are emerging. This paper describes the automation tools and processes that we use to accomplish these 3 objectives. The paper is not intended as a technical compendium of all our coding standards or of all the ways we use our coding analysis tools to improve the quality of our coding. Delivering buggy software erodes our company’s reputation and our clients’ confidence, so this work is of paramount value and importance to our company. Introduction Achieving the above 3 objectives is always a moving target for any large development organization. We are constantly evaluating new and enhanced tools in the marketplace to see if they provide a sufficiently compelling benefit/cost ratio to add them to our toolset. In addition to new tools, there are always new coding methods and standards, and application architectures, and we need to ensure the tools we use will work well in these emerging cases as well. With over 350 developers in the company, and over 30 distinct development projects underway at any given time, this challenge is a super big deal for us. While there are many ways to code something and different people often prefer one way over another, the fact of our business is that we need to have all our programmers adopting the same tools and processes so that at the end of the day we come out with basically the same coding standards and best practices across all our new systems and products. The benefits of us spending a lot of time and effort on continually improving coding standards and error checking are twofold. Automating our coding processes by a further 5% in a year will lead to a ~2.5% improvement in our margins which is of course a big deal to Innovatix’s performance. That 5%/yr. is our going target for annual automation improvements in our coding processes. On the other side, improving quality of the coding we deliver to our clients by 5% (as measured by UAT and post- implementation defects found) is outstanding to our clients as well, for several reasons including benefits in system performance, standardization and maintainability as well as audit and compliance and extensibility of the systems we deliver to them. And most importantly is the fact that the system has been checked intensively for any security breaches or vulnerabilities. So, both metrics – automation and quality – are critical to our best practices in coding, both for us and our clients. We work hard to continue to improve on them continuously. There is almost nothing more important to our company! In about half of our projects we are subject to the tools and standards set by our clients and of course in those cases we follow exactly what the client desires. For the other half we are either building out a new product or the client lets us set the development processes and standards. In the latter case of course, we follow all the best practices we will discuss in this paper. Even in the former case, upfront in such client-driven projects, we discuss all processes and standards we would like to use with the client and try to mold our work to achieve the best possible outcome from our development team’s work. In almost all projects we end up using the same set of tools and processes for the most part. As noted earlier new and improved versions of commercial and open-source products and frameworks with better coding standardization and error checking methods are coming out all the time. And in line with these enhanced tools and frameworks there are new methods and procedures for injecting the outputs of these tools into our development processes. So last year’s best tools will not suffice for this year and certainly not next year. As a result, we have our best developer teams constantly assessing and evaluating the newest versions and the newest tools available in the marketplace. Finding errors earlier and adhering to standard best practice coding standards is critical to the success of our company. [1] We are convinced that no one tool will do the entire job for us, across our diverse set of applications and application architectures. So, we have a growing set of tools that handle different scenarios and different types of coding and provide different warnings and outputs for our developers to work with. What is the ideal combination to run in any particular circumstance? The answer is of course changing rapidly with time as new and better tools are being released and new and better development methods are coming into being. However, the short answer is we don’t know the optimal set of tools to run and in what order. But we do know that it will be more than a single tool for sure. Yes, running more than one

G. N. Shah October 20, 2021 No Comments

Innovatix’s Enterprise Technology : An Overview

This paper provides an overview of Innovatix Technology Partner’s Enterprise Technology line of business profiling the main elements of success for a productive working relationship between Innovatix and the clients we serve. We currently have about 25 companies in this LOB, ranging from startups to companies with annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Client engagements are almost always very long-term, involving many successive projects, some being well over a decade and still going strong. This is an important and growing part of Innovatix (formerly Macrosoft, Inc.), and we are well positioned to provide the same services to other new companies. To date, we have not ‘marketed’ our work in this area; the clients have come in mainly thru ‘network connections’ and ‘word of mouth’. So, with this paper (and other similar ones we are now posting under this LOB), we are beginning to get the word out. This is the first in a series of three papers on the Enterprise Technology LOB. The focus of this first overview paper is on profiling the LOB in terms of the types of customers we can serve best, the types of work we do for them, and the general parameters of how we staff and manage our dedicated teams in support of each client. There are four technology and tool stacks that are used most often for our clients: Microsoft .Net Java Open Source including Python; and Web Content Management technologies. The 2nd paper goes into all 4 of these tech stacks in detail. Each tech. stack contains many variants of actual tools that we use for any specific client. Clearly, the tech. stack we use for any client must be consistent with the toolsets that the client prefers to use. The third paper in this series dives into the operations and processes, communications, infrastructure, development and testing methodology and tools, security measures and disaster recovery we have in place at each of our international facilities. As this 3rd paper clearly shows, these facilities are fully state-of-the-art. Following this series of three papers, we will also provide a series of short case studies describing the work we do for our many customers; these case studies include discussions of how we got the projects started, the types of IT work provided for clients, and how and why the clients chose to work and remain with Innovatix. To begin, our work in this LOB is analogous to a ‘development team’ version of business process outsourcing (BPO). In essentially all cases the development teams remain part of Innovatix, and we continue to manage them in support of the client. The teams, established mainly out of our international facilities, become fully integrated with the client’s IT resource teams, in effect they become extensions of the client’s teams. In some projects the client chooses to have a US technical PM, or some cases use overseas technical team to work on behalf of the client. That depends on the level of support the client wants. The development capacity we provide enables a client to take on new and different applications and get them done in an expedited timeframe to meet critical business needs. The teams we now have in place range from 2-5 team members up to 30 or more team members. The key point to keep in mind, the team sizes and compositions are always dynamic and changing as the client’s needs evolve. That is one of the major value-adds we offer to our clients, namely, to be able to staff the right people with the right skills sets at the right time. Innovatix maintains a pool of resources that are best suited for each client’s tech stack. These resource pools are graduated from our Innovatix University or Talent acquisition program. This method of resource pooling cuts down almost 90% of the onboard time since resources are already trained on the client’s tech stack. Innovatix’s Enterprise Technology LOB The Enterprise Technology LOB supports your business operations by optimizing workflows, improving communication, and providing access to decision making data. Enterprise Technology makes it possible for your entire organization to work effectively to achieve goals. Increased responsiveness, scalability and security are some of the aims of enterprise technology LOB. Under Enterprise LOB, we have 5 dedicated parts: Enterprise Developments/Outsourcing We develop custom software solutions catering to solve the problems relating to core business functions, marketing activities, human resources, payroll, inventory management, supply chain distribution management, production, and accounting. Other than catering to solve specific needs within a process, our enterprise application development service can overhaul and streamline the entire department of a company such as sales, planning, customer service, human resources, logistics, CRM, and more. Internet of Things Innovatix’s IoT Analytics services enables companies to leverage your existing IoT device data to create immersive, dynamic, and personalized reports. The reports can be combined with existing contextual data, which will in turn minimize data sorting and consumption. IoT analytics differs from other ‘other’ analytics is that it deals with a continue ongoing stream of events and data generated by 100s or 1000s of IoT devices, gateways, and equipment as well as associated data sources. Much of this data can be stored in data lakes or organized in databases where it can be analyzed using existing tools and methods. Web Design And Development Every business needs a website to propel its growth. People have changed how they search and choose services and products. Businesses often overlook the importance of a website, but with Innovatix a website becomes the digital identity of a business. Innovatix provides affordable content management solutions with a greater level of functionality than traditional websites. As a CMS developer using Drupal, WordPress, and Magento we meet the web content management needs of any organization, and our CMS solutions integrate quickly without hefty integration fees. Enterprise services – AWS One of the best reasons to move to the cloud is the flexibility and speed that it provides. With AWS, access to thousands of servers can be

G. N. Shah October 12, 2021 No Comments

Innovatix Modern Network Security and Management

This technical note provides an overview of Innovatix Technology Partner’s recent implementations of two new leading-edge security and network management platforms for enhancing our security profile and controlling our endpoint network protection. These are critical upgrades given everyone in the company is now working remotely and will likely continue for the foreseeable future. In effect, we are now a distributed enterprise. These technologies help us to protect/mitigate malware, viruses, exploits, and ransomware. The first technology implementation is the Microsoft Endpoint Manager Platform. We describe the major features this cloud technology platform provides and how and where we are currently using it. Innovatix has been a Microsoft Gold Partner for over a decade. As a Gold Partner, our technology team continually tests most Microsoft technologies for us to be ready if and when our clients need them. For some time now we have been evaluating the latest version of Microsoft Endpoint Manager. It became clear to us that this is a key technology for us to implement for our own internal network and security needs since our company is now a distributed enterprise. Endpoint Detection and Responses (EDR) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) are essential to implement on each device to protect our network and our client services. The second technology we have recently implemented is SonicWall which is a next-generation firewall for mitigating intrusion risk and protecting everyone in our remote workforce. We provide a brief overview of the security features this platform provides us and how and where we have implemented it. Innovatix developers use laptops from their homes to do their work, and so covering these laptops is our focus for SonicWall. [1] Innovatix Profile Innovatix has 2 large diverse international development centers in Lahore Pakistan and Trivandrum India. Both contain well over 100 technical staff. We also have over 150 technical staff in the US, but nearly all these staff members work directly for our US client base, and so are subject to the security and network standards of the clients they work for. There is also a group of about 30 technical and business staff in the US that oversee all development work done out of our two international development centers and staff overall corporate business functions including Sales, Marketing, HR, Finance, etc. The implementation of these two tech platforms is intended for everyone in the two international development centers as well as for the 30 or so members of the technical and business organizations in the US. As noted, it is not intended for the ~125 US technical consulting members that work for our US client base. While nearly all these technology consultants also work remotely at the present time, they are subject to the security and network processes of the clients they are working for and usually use laptops provided by the clients.[2] Microsoft Endpoint Manager Microsoft Endpoint Manager is a cloud-enabled platform for unified and secure endpoint management. It can secure, deploy, and manage all users, apps, and devices. A key reason we were attracted to Endpoint Manager in the first place is that it is fully cloud-enabled with a diverse and growing set of cloud-based features. Our company is predominantly cloud-based at this point. Over the last few months, we have been moving more and more endpoints and workloads to the cloud and expect to have most of this done by 3rd Q 2021. We are using this platform as our path to modernize the management of our network and devices. By modern management we mean, among other things, the ability to quickly and easily automate tasks, set priorities on tasks, and most importantly, closely connect our IT and Security teams and priorities. To us, it also means continually improving the user experience. All these points are now more important than ever given the remote and dispersed nature of our work environment. 1 Endpoint Manager Capabilities The main capabilities of Endpoint Manager that we have found to be major advantages to our company are the following: Capability Short Description of Capability and How we are benefiting from it Cloud security Across Endpoints Protects devices against threats using Microsoft Zero Trust technology and Microsoft Defender ATP. Secure and intelligent and has native integration with cloud-powered security controls and risk-based conditional access and controls for apps and data. Comprehensive Windows 10 Mgt. Simplifies automated provisioning, configuration management, and software updates for all our endpoints. Provides unified management of all endpoints. Streamlined and Flexible Flexible support for diverse and BYOD scenarios. (We have a workforce of over 300 developers working remotely with individual laptops so this is a critical capability.) Fast Rollout of Services The fast rollout of new services and devices with end-to-end integration across Microsoft stack (our standard tech stack). Advanced Analytics Rich UI includes advanced analytics. Has productivity scores, including technology experience. Zero Touch Provisioning Rich UI to set up automated provisioning for new endpoint devices, apps, and processes. Deep Microsoft 365 Integration Modernize developers’ and business users’ environments within Microsoft 365. 2 Microsoft Endpoint Manager Cloud Management Journey The architecture diagram below shows the three main stages of the cloud management journey using Configuration Manager and Intune in a single unified endpoint management solution. The first stage uses tenant-attach capabilities that provide the most flexible path for Configuration Manager to allow us to start gaining cloud benefits without necessarily enrolling all our Windows clients with Intune. We simply need to connect the Configuration Manager site to the cloud and immediately gain access to a host of remote actions and analytics. This is the path we used in implementing Endpoint Manager. In the second stage, we can use co-management to manage Windows using both Configuration Manager and Intune. The Windows 10 device is managed by both Configuration Manager and mobile device management (MDM) systems in this second stage. This is not a relevant stage for us since, as noted, we are not integrating mobile smartphone devices into the platform at this point. The third stage is for new endpoints to

G. N. Shah January 21, 2021 No Comments

PDF Morph: Macrosoft’s Latest Automation Tool

Automates Creation of WFD files for Input to Quadient Inspire from PDF’s PDF Morph is a new Macrosoft-built cloud-based automation tool built for our Quadient Inspire Technology line of business. Released January 2021, it is initially being used internally – solely by Macrosoft’s Quadient Professional Services Teams. This provides our teams with a major productivity boost. Productivity is the major reason why we built this tool and why we are continuing to invest in new features and functionality. It gives our teams a big leg up in productivity in executing our Quadient projects. The tool automates the creation of WFD files for input to Quadient Inspire from the original PDF. It generates the WFD file based on template information available in the PDF template itself, as well as information the user inputs to the tool directly via an easy-to-use UI. It is being used by our teams for two major use cases: Ongoing WFD Creation: for use by our development teams that support Quadient clients in the day-to-day creation of the new WFD templates required by clients. Migration Projects: assisting companies that are engaged in major migration projects – that is, they are migrating their current CCM platform (using a variety of other CCM-based tools and templates) to the Quadient Inspire platform. We are now beginning to use this automation tool in our own internal Quadient practices. On average it is saving us a good half (~50-60%) of the manual developer effort normally involved in redesigning a PDF template into Quadient. The more complicated the template, the greater the savings as we show in our standardized test results (in another paper in this series). Further automation enhancements are currently in agile development with the release of v 2.0 slated for 2nd Q 2021. We intend to continue to expand and enhance the capabilities of the product, to further our productivity edge. The current version (v 1.0) is already available on the cloud, and our professionals are beginning to use the service right now. We have set up a sandbox demonstration environment where we will be happy to take you through the process, and even use one of your own PDF’s and do the conversion to WFD during the demo so you can see the productivity gains the tool provides. This announcement paper is the first in a series of papers that will be posted to our website in the coming month describing this new Macrosoft capability. This paper provides a brief overview of the technology and describes how we integrate this automation tool into our work processes. Our tool includes full logging capability, so we track all users and all projects enabling us to see clearly how well and how extensively it is being used. As a new product, we expect our users to lodge many requests for additional functionality. We intend to be very proactive in understanding and prioritizing these requests. We will maintain a complete Product enhancement wish list of all these requests. At some point down the road, likely before the end of this year, we may make the product available directly to users at scale, so they can use this process in their own migration and automation projects. We will keep you posted on this development. Another paper in this series will discuss the technology stack we use, so you will be able to understand the robustness, throughput capacity, scalability, multi-user capability, and security the product provides for our corporate clients, whether it is used by our internal teams or eventually directly by large corporate clients. A third paper will review the test results we are getting in our own Quadient professional work. A fourth will review in detail the features and functionality available in the tool; and finally, we will be providing a roadmap of the new capabilities we are planning to add into the product for the second release of the service (v 2.0) in 2nd Q 2021. Please contact us at any time to discuss the product and how it can come into play to save significant resources and time for your project. This is particularly important and relevant if you are currently engaged (or are expecting to be engaged) in a migration from multiple CCM tools and templates to the Quadient Inspire platform. This tool will save a tremendous amount of developer time and ensures a much more rapid completion of your project. The Basics of PDF Morph PDF Morph is a cloud-based tool that assists our professionals to mark and extract data from the PDF files and generates WFDs for input to Inspire Designer. The data from the PDF are extracted based on X, Y coordinates. PDF Morph helps the users to extract texts, font type and size, line spacing and paragraph width, barcodes, x,y coordinates, image coordinates, etc. from the PDF and generates the corresponding WFD file for input to Inspire Designer. The tool can extract data from a single page PDF, multiple page PDF, and supports multi-layout PDFs too. The automation comes in at this point. Once the output file from PDF Morph is generated the Automation tool will run and read the file, reading row by row and rendering the equivalent flow area in Inspire Designer. At the same time, it applies the font information extracted from the PDF to the proper controls in Inspire designer. For image coordinates in Excel, the automation tool creates a container in Inspire Designer at these specific coordinates for the user to input the image into Designer. The automation tool can be run on any number of PDF files, creating the same number of files and rendering the same number of equivalents in Inspire Designer WFD’s. The system is thus fully scalable, allowing a user to quickly convert a whole set of PDF’s into Inspire Designer all during the same session. This is a type of situation where very significant total savings in manual developer resources and time can be achieved. How it Works First off, the user must load the

G. N. Shah January 21, 2021 No Comments

PDF Morph: Innovatix’s Latest Automation Tool

Automates Creation of WFD files for Input to Quadient Inspire from PDF’s PDF Morph is a new Innovatix Technology Partners (previously Macrosoft, Inc.) -built cloud-based automation tool built for our Quadient Inspire Technology line of business. Released January 2021, it is initially being used internally – solely by Innovatix’s Quadient Professional Services Teams. This provides our teams with a major productivity boost. Productivity is the major reason why we built this tool and why we are continuing to invest in new features and functionality. It gives our teams a big leg up in productivity in executing our Quadient projects. The tool automates the creation of WFD files for input to Quadient Inspire from the original PDF. It generates the WFD file based on template information available in the PDF template itself, as well as information the user inputs to the tool directly via an easy-to-use UI. It is being used by our teams for two major use cases: Ongoing WFD Creation: for use by our development teams that support Quadient clients in the day-to-day creation of the new WFD templates required by clients. Migration Projects: assisting companies that are engaged in major migration projects – that is, they are migrating their current CCM platform (using a variety of other CCM-based tools and templates) to the Quadient Inspire platform. We are now beginning to use this automation tool in our own internal Quadient practices. On average it is saving us a good half (~50-60%) of the manual developer effort normally involved in redesigning a PDF template into Quadient. The more complicated the template, the greater the savings as we show in our standardized test results (in another paper in this series). Further automation enhancements are currently in agile development with the release of v 2.0 slated for 2nd Q 2021. We intend to continue to expand and enhance the capabilities of the product, to further our productivity edge. The current version (v 1.0) is already available on the cloud, and our professionals are beginning to use the service right now. We have set up a sandbox demonstration environment where we will be happy to take you through the process, and even use one of your own PDF’s and do the conversion to WFD during the demo so you can see the productivity gains the tool provides. This announcement paper is the first in a series of papers that will be posted to our website in the coming month describing this new Innovatix capability. This paper provides a brief overview of the technology and describes how we integrate this automation tool into our work processes. Our tool includes full logging capability, so we track all users and all projects enabling us to see clearly how well and how extensively it is being used. As a new product, we expect our users to lodge many requests for additional functionality. We intend to be very proactive in understanding and prioritizing these requests. We will maintain a complete Product enhancement wish list of all these requests. At some point down the road, likely before the end of this year, we may make the product available directly to users at scale, so they can use this process in their own migration and automation projects. We will keep you posted on this development. Another paper in this series will discuss the technology stack we use, so you will be able to understand the robustness, throughput capacity, scalability, multi-user capability, and security the product provides for our corporate clients, whether it is used by our internal teams or eventually directly by large corporate clients. A third paper will review the test results we are getting in our own Quadient professional work. A fourth will review in detail the features and functionality available in the tool; and finally, we will be providing a roadmap of the new capabilities we are planning to add into the product for the second release of the service (v 2.0) in 2nd Q 2021. Please contact us at any time to discuss the product and how it can come into play to save significant resources and time for your project. This is particularly important and relevant if you are currently engaged (or are expecting to be engaged) in a migration from multiple CCM tools and templates to the Quadient Inspire platform. This tool will save a tremendous amount of developer time and ensures a much more rapid completion of your project. The Basics of PDF Morph PDF Morph is a cloud-based tool that assists our professionals to mark and extract data from the PDF files and generates WFDs for input to Inspire Designer. The data from the PDF are extracted based on X, Y coordinates. PDF Morph helps the users to extract texts, font type and size, line spacing and paragraph width, barcodes, x,y coordinates, image coordinates, etc. from the PDF and generates the corresponding WFD file for input to Inspire Designer. The tool can extract data from a single page PDF, multiple page PDF, and supports multi-layout PDFs too. The automation comes in at this point. Once the output file from PDF Morph is generated the Automation tool will run and read the file, reading row by row and rendering the equivalent flow area in Inspire Designer. At the same time, it applies the font information extracted from the PDF to the proper controls in Inspire designer. For image coordinates in Excel, the automation tool creates a container in Inspire Designer at these specific coordinates for the user to input the image into Designer. The automation tool can be run on any number of PDF files, creating the same number of files and rendering the same number of equivalents in Inspire Designer WFD’s. The system is thus fully scalable, allowing a user to quickly convert a whole set of PDF’s into Inspire Designer all during the same session. This is a type of situation where very significant total savings in manual developer resources and time can be achieved. How it Works First

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