Vishwak Portal Framework powers www.livemint.com

Posted on April 2, 2007 by administrator

Hindustan Times, in a content partnership with Wall Street Journal, launched Mint, a financial daily. The online edition, www.livemint.com, runs on technology developed by Vishwak, using the Vishwak Portal Framework. This implementation finds a place among 250 IT implementation projects chosen by PCQuest Magazine for listing in its June 2007 issue.

Behindthescenesoflivemint.pdf

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Vishwak’s Platform Architecture Powers Global 100 Bank’s Project Management Application

Posted on January 27, 2007 by administrator

A leading Global 100 bank in India had been using a robust Project Management application that it developed in house using Lotus Notes platform. However, the bank found it time consuming and complex to scale up and maintain the application on the Lotus platform in an ever growing enterprise environment.

The bank selected Vishwak, thanks to its strong technology expertise in .Net technologies, as its solution partner to bring in a development platform that is secure, scalable and fast.


Vishwak’s Solution Architecture

Vishwak helped the bank to migrate the existing project management application to a new, highly-scalable and secured platform, which can enable rapid application development.

Vishwak’s solution architecture comprised of:


Server environment of Windows Server 2003 R2; WinFX (Known as .NET 3.0); Microsoft SQL Server 2005; Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office Form Server 2007(Built on top of WSS 3.0).


Development environment of Visual Studio.NET 2005, Microsoft SharePoint Designer and Microsoft InfoPath to enable collaborative development and deployment practices.


Client environment using Web browser which support scripting

Vishwak designed forms using InfoPath, compatible with W3C standards. The powerful InfoPath forms are rendered in a Web browser using Microsoft Office Form Server 2007.
Illustration: The InfoPath user interface where forms are designed

casestudy window1

The rendered form in a Web browser.

casestudy window2

Illustration: The workflow wizard in SharePoint designer

casestudy window3

In addition, Vishwak deployed SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio.Net to create complex and multiple workflows that can be debugged by using Visual Studio.Net IDE.

Business Benefits

Vishwak’s IT blueprint won the appreciation of the bank’s developers and end users. Within the short span of 3 years after the deployment of the new platform, the bank could able to roll out 15 major updates to the project management software.

Vishwak Platform Architecture.pdf

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Vishwak Solutions develops End-to-End SMS based Content Delivery System for MSN India & Hutchinson Essar

Posted on November 16, 2006 by administrator
Hutchinson Essar, one of India’s leading mobile service providers has recently launched Funcard, a unique value added service for its mobile users in partnership with Microsoft. Hutch’s Funcards are sold through retail outlets for different bundle of monotones and caller tunes of popular film songs. The Funcards, which are just like pre-paid scratch cards, have a 16-digit PIN number that the mobile users send to Hutch via SMS. Hutch aimed at leveraging the strength of its strong subscribers base of young mobile users in order to increase the revenue from its value added services.
Situation
Microsoft & Hutch wanted to partner with a mobile technology company to generate PINs for each of its several (over 16) telecom circles across the country on demand. Hutch designed the content plan for monotone and caller tune bundles of popular films of each geographic and linguistic regions. The company planned to outsource generation, validation of PIN cards as well as content delivery based on SMS requests from users.
Microsoft selected Vishwak Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and one of India’s leading mobile technology solutions companies. The prime factor that tilted the scale in favour of Vishwak was the ongoing relationship it had with Hutch on various mobile and portal solutions.

Solution
For the initial launch, Vishwak generated over several million PINs for different product bundles for all of Hutch’s telecom circles. The PINs, which were generated randomly to ensure that key numbers are not repeated, were printed in Funcards and despatched to different markets. Vishwak configured product bundles and stored them in its secured database.
Using .Net Framework 2.0, Vishwak developed an SMS-based Content Delivery System (SCDS) that would interface with Hutch’s SMS gateway that handles mobile users’ requests. Vishwak automated the entire process that starts from generation of PINs to access of mobile users’ request to validation of both PINs and mobile numbers.
Vishwak used Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for data storage and MS-Message Queue (MSMQ) service, responsible for validating SMS requests. Upon successful validation, Vishwak’s SCDS would send a confirmation message and relevant products to the mobile users via Hutch’s SMS Gateway.
Vishwak set up the entire array of dedicated servers that are deployed at VSNL Data Centre, Chennai and formed a 24/7 support team for this project in record time of 2 weeks.
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VISHWAK BUILDS MOBILE CMS FOR www.sulekha.com

Posted on August 16, 2006 by administrator
Client: Sulekha.com

With the mobile user base growing at rapid pace in India, every media enterprise is very keen to tap the potential of the new genre of users by offering unique services. Even the service providers are engaging with such media companies to bolster the Average Revenue per User (ARPU).

Given this backdrop, www.sulekha.com – the leading b2c & b2b classifieds and yellow pages portal wishes to offer its content in the mobile space and harness avenues for revenue generation and acquire fresh set of customers who use only mobile as the exchange communication.

Vishwak has undertaken the assignment by developing
 1. The complete Mobile Web architecture for Yellow pages and Classifieds
2. The UI design
3. The Business Logic
4. Mobile Web pages development and
5. CDR integration with Telcos.

The challenges:
Vishwak designed the Mobile Web portal in complete synchronization with online portal so that the users get the same experience with regard to business transaction. One of the proprietary applications called Sulekha Search was ported to Mobile Web environment, using high performance middleware which has proved to be an added value to the solution.

Technologies used:
 • Microsoft Windows 2003
• ASP.Net 2.0
• SQL 2000
What Vishwak does for Sulekha.com on ongoing basis

• Development and Management of Mobile Web portal for new features
• Portal analysis, tracking and reporting
• Billing information & Statistics
• Portal maintenance & technical support

SulekhaMobilecms.pdf
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Vishwak’s Mobile Portal Solution for MSN Hutch GPRS

Posted on December 16, 2004 by administrator
MSN India, the Indian division of msn.com, is one of the leading information and entertainment portals in India with over one million regular visitors. MSN India has been constantly upgrading its content delivery channels. The strategy focus was to incorporate mobile devices in their content delivery channel mix. MSN India assigned the project to Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd. Vishwak developed a solution using the Microsoft .NET Framework that ensured content delivery across devices with different properties.

Situation
MSN India has been constantly upgrading its content delivery channels. The strategy focus was to incorporate mobile devices in their content delivery channel mix.
Different cellular devices have different configurations. The challenge before MSN India was to ensure high-quality and clear content presentation that provided a rich mobile experience to the consumers. So images, logos, special characters, audio and video had to be displayed effectively without sacrificing on quality, size, color, or download time across different cellular devices. They also wanted to have a provision for users to pay for premium content such as games, polyphonic ringtones etc with pre-payment and post-payment options.
Effective delivery of content could only be assured upon identification of the type of cellular device and the mark-up language used by the device.
The mobile site had to be built and web pages had to be coherently integrated. Frequent content updations, new content additions and publishing had to be done.

Solution
MSN India assigned the project to Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd., and entered into a mobile platform partnership with Hutchison Telecom, one of India’s leading cellular service operators.
Vishwak rendered mobile web content to the wide range of subscribers of Hutchison Telecom. Content was provided to Vishwak, who, had to convert the live content to mobile web pages and publish them.
The first step was to address the resolution of content across devices. After analyzing cellular phone models and the associated properties, Vishwak developed a solution using Microsoft .NET technologies that ensured standard content delivery across devices with different properties.
A secure payment gateway for premium content was implemented as well.

Benefits
MSN India provides users with an all-round content experience, thus expanding the MSN brand incidence. Through .NET, MSN India ensures support for special characters, images, audio, and video without any rendering delays, and with optimal quality.
“The avalanche of new models entering the Indian market made it almost impossible to deliver content appropriate to each user,” says T.N.C Venkata Rangan, CMD, Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd. “Thanks to Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit and its write-once application that generates device-specific content, a potentially explosive situation was made easy.”
“It was with the help of Microsoft .NET and Mobile Forms technology that we managed to render the contents in multiple mobile devices in a seamless fashion,” says Lakshmikant Natrajan, GM, Value added Services, Hutchison Telecom. “Only because of this we managed to be the first to market GPRS portals in India, which was a pioneering concept in the country.”
The project was completed on time and all functionalities that seemed ambitious are now out there in the virtual world.
“The avalanche of new models entering the Indian market made it almost impossible to deliver content appropriate to each user. Thanks to Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit and its write-once application that generates device-specific content, a potentially explosive situation was made easy.” T.N.C Venkata Rangan, CMD, Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd.

Solution Overview
http://www.msn.co.in/
Customer Size : 250 employees

Organization Profile
MSN India, the Indian division of msn.com, is one of the leading information and entertainment portals in India, with over one million regular visitors and subscribers to services like Hotmail and MSN Messenger. MSN India is a pioneer in delivery of Internet content for an ultimate online experience for both consumers and advertisers. The portal uses Microsoft technologies and strong content partnerships with other portals with an aim to bring people from around the globe together.

Business Situation
MSN India has been constantly upgrading its content delivery channels. The strategy focus was to incorporate mobile devices in the content delivery channel mix. MSN India assigned the project to Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd.

Solution
Vishwak developed a solution using the Microsoft .NET Framework that ensured content delivery across devices with different properties.

Partner(s)
Hutchison Telecom East (Hutch)
Vishwak Solutions Pvt.Ltd.

Software and Services
Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft Application Center 2000
Microsoft ASP.NET
Microsoft SQL Server 2000
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server

Vertical Industries
Telecommunications
Wireless Service Providers

Country/Region
India

MSN Hutch GPRS Portal Case Study (As it was featured in Microsoft.com global Case Study site)

MSN Hutch GPRS Portal (as featured in .NET Momentum Publication in 2004)

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Vishwak Manages Bhasha, Microsoft’s Portal

Posted on July 16, 2004 by administrator
Introduction

Microsoft has been pioneering the Indian language computing to promote IT usage among the majority of the non-English speaking Indian population. As lack of local content can be attributed to the poor computer usage in rural India, the company determined to address the ‘language divide’.

It felt the need to encourage the active involvement of developers, linguists, academicians, the end user of IT products and students, who will contribute towards the development and use of Indian languages for PC usage.

Microsoft conceived http://bhashaindia.com as a common platform for people from these sections to interact and contribute to the Indian language computing movement. The portal was launched in October, 2003.

Vishwak’s Solutions
However, Microsoft realised that it had to outsource the management of the community to a reliable technology company, which also had the ability to sustain a long standing relationship with content developers in regional languages.
Microsoft chose to partner with the Chennai-based Vishwak Solutions, as the latter has the proven technology leadership in .Net platform and Microsoft Content Management System, besides expertise in content development, aggregation and localization.
Vishwak’s Solutions
Vishwak Solutions’ solution architecture encompassed services that span across three different domains of web/portal technology, content and community development.

Technology Development:
Vishwak developed the portal template, content management system (CMS) exclusively for the Bhasha portal. The CMS was developed using Microsoft Content Management System using .Net and SQL Server.
The company had also built web features such as events, calendar, solution directory, expert chat online, contests, quiz, etc that are built using custom codes. Vishwak also created administration tools to manage the contests, forums and generate metrics on the usage, downloads, etc.
Vishwak customised the portal for several Indian languages. It published content in Unicode standards so that the visitors who want to read the regional content do not have to download and install any fonts or software. The Unicode content also meant that the site is searchable. The users can type the words in local languages and get the suitable search result.
To enable faster access by concurrent users, Vishwak built a secure server farm.
Content Development
Vishwak evolved the content strategy for the entire portal to effectively address the two different categories of users namely the developer community and the non-developer linguists and end users. It partnered with 6 content developers to develop content in local languages to suit the audience of the technical and non-technical community.
As the ongoing portal management partner, Vishwak publishes contemporary articles, tools, tutorials, resources, downloads, community glossary, solutions directory, news, success stories, case studies in Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Konkani, Oriya, Sanskrit and Nepali languages.

Community Development
To promote the community, Vishwak is organising panel of experts who are actively involved in conducting workshops, quiz contests, student outreach programs. It moderates the highly successful Basha India forums on various technical topics.
Vishwak also partners with third party solution providers to introduce various community features.
The company is also organising offline promotional events such as developer meets. It offers free downloads of tools such as font tools, Tamil IME, TBIL data converter, MS Office language interface packs and LIP packs for the users to install Operating Systems in local languages.
Further, through the Solutions Directory, it allows small businesses and individuals to freely market their Indian language applications and fonts to their target audience.

Benefits to the Client
With over several thousand registered users, BhashaIndia has emerged as a true community portal, acting as a perfect platform to post queries discuss and debate issues.
The portal continues to grow by the day and has become a one stop center for all resources related to Indian language computing such as articles, latest news, snippets of interesting information and resources like applications related to Indic computing.
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