Cygnet Announces Participation in CeBIT 2012

CeBIT is considered the ICT industry’s biggest and most international event. Cygnet was one of the 4200 exhibitors in CeBIT 2011 and now it has announced its participation in CeBIT 2012 which will be held during 6th to 10th March in Hanover, Germany.

At CeBIT 2012, Cygnet will be showcasing its strengths in implementation and customization of Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Being a Microsoft Partner with several Gold and Silver competencies, Cygnet has been providing professional services to clients in over 20 countries in 5 continents.

Cygnet will also present its services in developing mobility solutions including development of mobile apps on iPhone, Android and mobile websites.

Cygnet Infotech is an ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and CMMi Level 3 certified company which has always delivered high quality development and testing services via a mature and proven global delivery model.

Cygnet invites professionals from IT Companies and ISVs from Germany and other European countries who are visiting CeBIT 2012 to visit our stall at D 44, Hall 6, India Pavilion and meet our senior representatives to know more about our services and how we can assist you.

Please write to us at cebit@cygnet-infotech.com to schedule an appointment during 6th and 10th March at CeBIT, Hanover, Germany.

Cygnet Achieves Gold Competency in Portals and Collaboration

Cygnet Infotech is proud to announce that it has achieved the Microsoft Partner GOLD competency for Portals and Collaboration.

A gold competency demonstrates Cygnet’s best-in-class expertise within Microsoft's marketplace. Earning a gold competency is evidence of the deepest, most consistent commitment to a specific, in-demand, business solution area, along with the distinction of being among only 1 per cent of Microsoft partners worldwide that have attained this outstanding degree of proficiency.

To achieve the gold competency in Portals and Collaboration, Cygnet completed the rigorous requirements including number of Microsoft Certified Professionals, passing the relevant sales and marketing exams, and customer references.

Earning this competency proves that Cygnet has the technical capability and resources to design and develop portals on internet, intranet and extranet along with the ability to deploy collaboration solutions using SharePoint.

Cygnet now has earned 2 Gold competencies and 6 Silver competencies which continue to show its commitment to Microsoft technologies.

Software Developed by Cygnet Promises to Reduce Food Wastage at NFL Games

Did you know that approximately 15-20% of food items are wasted during NFL games at the stadium food counters? Assuming 50,000 consumers with an average spending of $8, that amounts to $60,000 to $80,000 worth of sandwiches, nachos and bratwurst getting wasted. That’s a lot of money!

In order to reduce this wastage and at the same time not have a shortfall of food items, Cygnet was assigned the task of developing a predictive model of food orders placed during the games. The model is supposed to analyze the past history of food orders during NFL games and then develop an algorithm to predict orders in the next game.

Cygnet’s client is a provider of analytical services to point of sale solutions in the sports and entertainment industry. These services aim to provide real time insight and automated decision making to game and event organizers in order to strengthen their logistics and operations planning.

Essentially, the task is to predict the inventory based on historical sales figures. In the POC stage, Cygnet is working with limited number of outlet locations and limited number of food items. However, once the algorithm is tested, the full-fledged analytics solution will be developed. The technology used is AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms such as ID3 (Iterative Dichotomizer 3) along with CAIM and feedback based statistical forecasting built on Microsoft .NET and SQL server.

Cygnet’s team has been up to the challenge so far with client showing appreciation in the following words - “You, and your team, are definitely headed in the right direction as far as development is concerned, and I am very pleased with the progress up to this point”

Cygnet has always assisted its clients with innovative solutions to business challenges and is always ready to accept the next challenge. Read some of our case studies on the Microsoft .NET technology.

SharePoint Trends and Predictions for 2012

Microsoft SharePoint has seen tremendous changes in its appearance, functionalities and ease of accessibility over the last year. Following this, we have listed out some expert predictions and general trends that SharePoint users can expect over the year 2012.

Social Networking with SharePoint may not take off

When it comes to social networking, the universal adoption of this feature embedded within SharePoint does not seem to be in the cards, according to the industry watchdogs. The reason is, as many experts express, the lack of maturity in the SharePoint application, which otherwise exists in Twitter and Facebook. Also, the more advanced social tools within the market possess features such as hash tagging and targeting which give them a clear upper hand.

Personalization will drive SharePoint adoption

The ability to personalize the content through SharePoint will be welcomed so that the users can add personal content to wide range of channels and sites, the SharePoint experts say. More number of users will adopt Personal Content Management (PCM) in order to classify and aggregate their personal information.

Awareness about Cloud solutions will increase

According to the SharePoint watchdogs, Microsoft has discussed a lot about the SharePoint solution over the last year thus increasing the awareness about the cloud services. This may not lead to complete replacement of customized on-premise SharePoint solutions with cloud solutions. But companies may try to adopt the cloud services through Microsoft 365 or other third party tools, experts predict.

Authentication will be a challenge for SharePoint administrators

Administrators will need to be more proficient when it comes to security and authentication skills in SharePoint, as per the specialists. No longer will the traditional Active Directory with LDAP for outside users suffice since extranets and client hybrids have increased in number.

SharePoint Governance will remain a key focus area

The how and why of SharePoint management is what governance is all about. In order to sustain and grow, governance of SharePoint needs to be adopted widely, as per the industry experts. The number of users of SharePoint is growing and so they need to be guided and channeled.

Custom Solutions around SharePoint will increase

Application developers will need to work on developing applications that integrate solutions to improve manageability, portability and governance that are the most common challenges in custom solutions.

Data handling capability of SharePoint will be tested

The SharePoint experts say that as SharePoint 2010 has proven that it can handle extremely large content pools and terabytes of data, users can be expected to move away from ECM platforms and open platforms towards SharePoint, which is scalable and provides better cost of ownership. Further, users will test SharePoint capabilities on the mobile and tablet platform.

To summarize, SharePoint analysts are predicting more adoption of SharePoint and are quite positive about its prospects in 2012.

Cygnet Infotech is geared to address any challenges that come up during implementation and customization of SharePoint. Cygnet has expertise in developing portals, custom webparts and also migration from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010. Read more about our SharePoint services and SharePoint Case Studies.

JOSH 2012 – Sports Day @ Cygnet Infotech

Cygnet celebrated the spirit of sportsmanship, competitiveness and team work through its full day sports festival – JOSH 2012.

JOSH was conceptualized and implemented by Cygnet’s HRD team. The tag line “No Games, Just Sports“ was realized by all the participants who made an enthusiastic contribution of energy, competition, fun, and battle.

The event was organized on Saturday 7th January 2012 at Veer Savarkar Sports Complex where Cygnetians participated in multiple sporting events during the entire day. There were different competitions running across the venue starting from 10 am. The energy levels were running high right till evening 7 pm.

The event which had the maximum participation and fun was Cricket. 6 teams played against each other creating euphoria - Cygnet Warriors, Cygnet Royals, Cygnet Trumps, Cygnet Chargers, Cygnet Starz and Cygnet Musketeers. In the end, beating all teams Cygnet Musketeers won the cricket championship.

Another game which held the audience’s attention was Badminton both male and females participants.

The other matches were equally interesting with a tough fight seen in Volleyball, best brain winning in Chess, strategic moves in Carrom, and balancing act in table tennis.

The day was perfect with morning tea / coffee, lunch and evening snacks. The icing on the cake was the medals, trophies and the certification which was given to the winners & runner’s up in all the events.

Some comments from Cygnetians

“Thank you so much for organizing “Sports Day”. We really enjoy lot and had a great time. We got a chance to play the sports which we are almost forgotten. We wish we can have such event every quarter or a month. Cheers!”

“Josh 2012 was an awesome experience for all of us. Everything from the facilities to management to food was top notch. Personally, I hardly knew two or three people from my cricket team. But at the end of the day, I made some really good friends and that was the biggest trophy. Thank you so much again for hosting such a event. Looking forward to many more”

“Thanks for such a great sports event. We all had a wonderful day and enjoyed all sports events. I hardly know 2 or 3 persons from my team but at the end of the day I found new friends. This kind of event increases team work and I’m so happy because I’m part of Cygnet family.”