Diadem Tech Weblogs

As 2010 finally comes to a close, here is a good time for all of us to take a stock of our hits and misses and plan ahead for the next year. I am pretty sure all of us have had some unique experiences to share and from an organisation perspective, I am summing up some of the milestones which we were able to reach this year:

• Diadem website revamp: We were able to redo our very own website, www.diadem.co.in and launch it online.
• New shared hosting plans: We overhauled our shared hosting plans for windows and linux and upgraded our clients to take benefit of the enhanced features available.
• Launch of our VPS Hosting Plans: We achieved a significant milestone this year by launching our VPS hosting plans and subsequently upgrading the server hardware, automating backup and being able to provide custom solutions for a growing group of clients, who are able to run their mission critical apps within their own dedicated server environment at costs, which are a fraction of  a dedicated server.
• Newsletters: As part of my client interaction initiatives, I am now sending out regular e-newsletters to our clients to keep them abreast on our current happenings and upcoming trends in the industry. This effort has been well received and the efforts appreciated by our clients.
• Dedicated Server Management Module: Our very own server management module is on the verge of being released and would allow our dedicated and VPS clients to being able to manage and communicate more effectively through this web based application. Stay tuned for more details on this soon.

Apart from the above, we were able to enhance our server hardware, software and generally streamline our operations to deliver over 99.5% service uptime to our clients. Though we also have had our fair share of misses and non starters to contend with this year, we have quite a few  services planned for the future and I feel pretty good to conclude this year on a high note. On behalf of our entire crew @ Diadem, we wish you continued success for the  year ahead and hope you make the most of it as well!

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Our new website is finally online. After about 3 months of planning and implementation, we have finally been able to put up our revamped site online. Though I might sound superstitious, I consider ourselves fortunate that the site has been launched on the same day when India celebrates  Rakhi or Raksha Bandhan which is an auspicious event for most Indians.

The updated site has had a major overhaul and following are the key changes implemented:

• The backend CMS has been upgraded from Joomla1.x  to Joomla 1.5 which is considered to be the most popular CMS on the planet.
• The site template is built from scratch and cannot be found anywhere else on the web. This gives our site a unique sense of distinction, unlike most other Joomla based websites which use free or commercial templates.
• The site has a clean and uncluttered feel to it and we have placed special emphasis on the typography, navigation system and most importantly, meaningful and relevant content. We have dumped fancy javascripts, over the top graphics and animation which cry out for your attention in favour of a clean, simple and fast loading website.
• New hosting plans (Windows and Linux) and upgraded VPS hosting plans have been launched with this site (more on this in our next post).
• Pages are made SEO friendly to enable deeper indexing by search engines and more visibility for relevant organic searches on the search engines.

This is the fifth major revamp of our website over the past decade and it will be updated on a consistent basis with new services and offerings, so stay tuned with us!

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After much procrastination, we have decided to take the leap and go ahead with revamping our primary website (www.diadem.co.in) with the following objectives in mind:

• Revamp our key service sections and make it relevant to our current offerings (VPS, Value Added Hosting and Dedicated Servers).
• Upgrade the CMS platform which is being used for the site backend to its current version.
• Keep the UI of the site simpler with less graphics and color and a greater focus on providing relevant content to our users.
• Enhanced navigation menu and other small tweaks across the site

Here is a preview of the last approved wireframe and we are aiming for a soft launch of our site by the end of July 2010.

Wireframe of the new Diadem Tech Homepage

This is going to be the fifth major revision of our site over the past decade and improving a large website like ours with just a couple of developers requires considerable planning, persistence and numerous obstacles to overcome before you can reap in its benefits. I am hopeful that the upcoming version would last us for atleast a couple of years before we rework it again and I will keep posting more updates as we make progress.

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This year, I am expecting a power crisis in Kolkata for the following reasons:

• Summer has crept in earlier this year and therefore ACs will start gobbling up energy sooner than expected.
• Salt Lake, which was supposed to be a VIP area is not going to get preferential status with regards to power outages and would have to face the heat like the rest of the city.
• Overall energy consumption has grown considerably over the past couple of years and would continue to soar. In comparison the supply of additional energy has crept at a slow pace and the deficit only seems to be widening.

Keeping the above factors in mind, we have invested in our own power backup solution, a Honda 2.8 KVA diesel powered generator which should keep our office humming with activity in the event of a power outage or “loadshedding” as its more commonly known in the city.

We were earlier planning to install a large rack of batteries with an online UPS but it was a relatively expensive solution with limited power backup availability. It would have also taken up additional storage space in our office along with periodic replacement of batteries, i.e. higher maintenance costs.

We arranged for a demo of the Honda generators and the Honda salesmen were very efficient and prompt in handling our request and provided us with a live demo which ensured that it would run our PCs and office equipment and scale up as our load increases. This little baby is also environment friendly with restricted CO2 emissions and low running noise, so it should keep our neighbors happy as well!

This is a small step in our continued efforts to ensure that our support services are available round the clock for your business .

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Its been a while since we last updated our blog as we had been busy with some extensive repair and renovation work which we undertook within our office over the past month. Its been nearly a decade since we started our operations at the current premise and though we had undertaken some routine maintenance work every couple of hours, we felt the time was right to go in for a serious overhaul and roll up our sleeves.

Starting with a fresh coat of paint, new flooring, window blinds, carpentry and masonry work, we went on an overdrive to get everything completed before the New Year. Fortunately, the work progressed as planned and on Jan 01, 2010 we shifted back to our ‘Office 2.0′.

We are all extremely pleased with the results of our efforts and here are some pics of our revamped office for our clients and associates whom we may not have the good fortune to meet on a one to one basis.

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Here are some takeaways which I gathered from this assignment:

• Meet all the people who would work on this project (multiple times in advance) to ensure that they provide you with fixed quotes for the work and the scope of work has been agreed upon.
• Keep a buffer of atleast 25% for time and cost overruns as some amount of scope creep is inevitable.
• Ensure that all materials are bought in your presence (or someone you trust) to ensure that you get the right quality at a reasonable price.
• Avoid contracting work to promoters as they tend to over inflate the cost by about 50% in comparison to working with individual specialists (carpenters, painters, etc.).
• Create a project schedule (who will work on what and when) a week in advance and try to build in some amount of buffer between them. Create sub-tasks within a major task to break down all activities into small, unique tasks.
• Pay on completion of agreed milestones.

My best wishes to you for a successful 2010 and at Diadem Tech we are excited with the opportunities and challenges which the New Year brings to us!
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