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Sunlighthealth.com, an eCommerce medical portal designed and developed by Stigasoft, is a healthcare portal dedicated to removing information barriers between patients, doctors and hospitals. It has one of the most exhaustive database of doctors and medical facilities from India. Sunlighthealth.com not only lets it users search for a doctor on the basis of symptoms or specialties but also allows them to request online quotes for treatments and buy online packages for various medical services.

Process Improvement Program, is a staged approach to optimize organization's underlying processes to achieve more efficient results. Stigasoft is using IDEAL approach to infuse best practices of Agile and CMMI for the improvements. Aimed for CMMI v1.3 Dev L3 assessment, the organization is steaming ahead in improvements and optimization in all domains of work

Cup Fight, created in 2014 with FIFA 2014 as its first game, is a sports oriented platform that provides sports fans the ability to interact with other fans and friends while competing to predict the correct game results. This is a perfect opportunity for sports fans to test prediction skills by taking part in simple, but entertaining games (known as Fights) and win prizes.

Sunlighthealth.com, an eCommerce medical portal designed and developed by Stigasoft, is a healthcare portal dedicated to removing information barriers between patients, doctors and hospitals. It has one of the most exhaustive database of doctors and medical facilities from India. Sunlighthealth.com not only lets it users search for a doctor on the basis of symptoms or specialties but also allows them to request online quotes for treatments and buy online packages for various medical services.

One of Stigasoft's Business Intelligence Consultants recently got certified as QlikView Developer. This certification, given the real world scenario based questions, certifies that resource is competent enough to design adequate solutions around client's business KPI, through QlikView.

Kuoni Destination Management, a leading global travel and destination management services company, has engaged Stigasoft to implement QlikView across its global entities. This implementation will help them get a single window view of complete operations happening at each geographic location on real time basis.

GOODEARTH's e-commerce platform has been developed using Microsoft technology based platform - AspDotNetStorefront. Besides being technology partners, the project was inclusive of strategy, content and online media management too. The successful launch in India was soon followed by 40 countries worldwide.

Stigasoft has successfully designed and developed a new feed exchange architecture for dynamic data sharing between different markets of Metro, a globally #1 online newspaper. This provides the flexibility for markets (different geographic locations where Metro is currently published) to seamlessly and efficiently share their content with other Metro markets. The architecture is scalable and adaptable to future changes in the content.

Stigasoft BA's attended a workshop on Agile Estimation & Planning organized by KnowledgeHut, a PMI certified institute. By doing several practical exercises, BAs learned how to create practical, useful and reliable plans for software development projects. Create accurate project plans useful for programming testing—and projecting forward from 6-9 months.

Through this training Stigasoft BA's got solid understanding and experience of agile release and iteration planning. The course also provided a hands-on at various approaches to estimating including unit-less points and ideal time. The workshop presented four specific techniques for deriving reliable estimates, including how to use the popular Planning Poker^® technique and other techniques that dramatically improve a project's chances of on-time completion.

One of Stigasoft's Business Intelligence Consultants recently achieved Gold Accreditation in QlikTech's Pre-sales, which is one of the highest badges among different ranks in QlikTech.

Stigasoft has now become an Authorized Partner to sell, use and demonstrate QlikView Expressor. We are glad to announce that our QlikView Team has successfully completed both Sales and Technical track as per Expressor Enablement Pathway.

Stigasoft has attained a Gold Application Development Competency in the Microsoft Partner Network, demonstrating a “best-in-class” ability and commitment to meet Microsoft customers’ evolving needs in today’s dynamic business environment.

To earn a Microsoft gold competency, partners must successfully complete exams (resulting in Microsoft Certified Professionals) to prove their level of technology expertise, and then designate these certified professionals uniquely to one Microsoft competency, ensuring a certain level of staffing capacity. They also must submit customer references that demonstrate successful projects (along with implementing a yearly customer satisfaction study) and pass technology and/or sales assessments.

“As a global Information Technology solutions provider, Stigasoft is delighted at this achievement. With this achievement, Stigasoft continues to be recognized by Microsoft as offering the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft Technologies, with a particular competency on Application Development”, said Jesper Lindorff, CEO - Stigasoft. “We are committed and dedicated to enabling people and businesses to realize their potential with Microsoft software solutions by providing a high level of technological proficiency and skilled delivery of valued services”, said Neeraj Sehgal, CTO – Stigasoft.

“By achieving a gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top 1 percent of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions on the latest Microsoft technology.”

“By achieving a gold competency, partners have demonstrated the highest, most consistent capability and commitment to the latest Microsoft technology,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp. “These partners have a deep expertise that puts them in the top 1 percent of our partner ecosystem, and their proficiency will help customers drive innovative solutions on the latest Microsoft technology.”

Good Earth, that has set standards for stylish, luxury retail stores across India, will soon launch its first online store. Stigasoft has been engaged to develop the eCommerce store integrated with aspdotnetstorefront.

Four project managers recently qualified as Certified ScrumMasters, taking on Agile methods for complex projects. They gained the certification through The Scrum Alliance, a not-for-profit professional membership organization created to share the Scrum Framework and transform the world of work.

Stigasoft achieved a coveted milestone by becoming a registered supplier to the United Nations (UN). Stigasoft is now eligible to participate in all tenders of UN organizations representing a global market of over USD 14 billion annually.

The current economic recession is many times more epidemic than the ones seen in the past – thanks to the widespread brouhaha created by 21st century fourth estate which takes no time to overplay whatever comes its way. In this dim and clamor it is but easy to miss the opportunities that the predicament has brought along. Paradoxical it may sound, but outsourcing IT jobs makes more sense during recession than it does during normal economic state. In case you choose to disagree, consider the following:

• Better bargain: Outsourcing can be effectively used by onshore IT companies as strategic measure to contain the cost of IT services due to the fact that offshore facility and development cost can be heavily negotiated to strike better bargains.
• Better competitive advantage: Offshore companies compete fiercely against each other to bag outsourced projects offering great cost benefits to the onshore IT companies. Moreover, project execution and delivery schedules can be easily negotiated in the clients' favor.
• Reverse migration of skilled workers: Recession has compelled many onshore IT companies to lay off many of their skilled workers most of whom have opted to turn back to their respective countries of origin. Native offshore companies have greatly benefited from this attrition by absorbing the skilled workforce into their folds augmenting their business capacity.

Several onshore IT and ITeS companies have shown the courage and vision to look at the positive side of the economic turndown in formulating strategies favoring increased outsourcing to select destinations, as has been indicated in a recent Forrester Research survey according to which barely 21% of global enterprises have cut down their IT outsourcing budget whereas more than double (46%) have reduced their overall IT budgets.

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and since 1994 the W3C has provided the rules by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the best practices and while websites don't have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to ensure that you or your designer ensure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.

Bringing websites In Compliance With W3C Standards?

The ideal solution is to have your site designed in compliance to begin with. If you already have a website you have one of two options:

1. Appoint a designer familiar with W3C standards and have your site redone, or
2. Prepare yourself for a big learning curve and a bit of aggravation.

Resources

Assuming that you've decided to do the work yourself there are a number of great resources out there. By far the best that I've found in my travels is the Web Developer extension for Firefox. You'll have to install the Firefox browser first and then install the extension. Among other great tools for SEO this extension provides a one-click check for compliance and provides a list of where your errors are, what's causing them and links to solutions right from the W3C. The extension provides testing for HTML, XHTML, CSS and Accessibility compliance.

Other resources you'll definitely want to check into are:

• CSS Zen Garden
• A List Apart
• Holy CSS ZeldMan!

How to Get Started?

• The first place to start would be to download Firefox and install the Web Developer extension. This will give you easy access to testing tools.
• The next step is to bookmark the resources above.
• Once you've done these you'd do well to run the tests on your own site while at the same time keeping up an example site that already complies so you can look at their code if need be.
• To give you a less annoying starts beginning with your CSS validation. Usually CSS validation is easier and faster than the other forms.
• Once finished with CSS move on to HTML or XHTML validation. Once CSS and HTML/XHTML are validated it's time to comply with Accessibility standards. In this clean up a ton of your code and moving a lot into CSS, which means you'll be further adding to your style sheet. If you're not comfortable with CSS you'll want to revisit the resources above. CSS is not a big mystery though it can be taxing in the beginning. As a pleasing by-product you are sure to find a number of interesting effects and formats that are possible with CSS that you didn't even know were so easily added to your site.

But What Do I Get From All This?

Once you're done you'll be left with a compliant site that not only will be available on a much larger number of browsers (increasingly important as browsers such as Firefox gain more and users) but you'll have a site with far less code that will rank higher on the search engines because of it.

To be sure, W3C validation is not the "magic bullet" to top rankings. In the current SEO world there is no one thing that is. However as more and more website are born and the competition for top positioning gets more fierce it's important to take every advantage you can to not only get to the first page but to hold your position against those who want to take it from you as you took it from someone else.

Stigasoft has taken yet another leap by entering the Red Hat ecosystem as a Ready ISV partner. Red Hat is the leader in open source technology and as a partner we are expected to work together to provide customers with complete-solutions optimized for best performance on several architectures.

Recently, open source development has been steadily on the rise. Stigasoft’s offerings in open source development services have expanded to include Red Hat platforms and technologies instead being restricted to proprietary architectures and platforms. In becoming a Red Hat Ready ISV Partner Stigasoft has acquired the added capabilities of producing software products to work with Red Hat infrastructure and JBoss middleware products. As a Red Hat Ready ISV Partner, Stigasoft will receive free access to Red Hat Developer Subscription, early release software, Partner Helpdesk and Global Learning Services. Stigasoft will also be able to use Partner Program logo on the relevant products and services to reflect the brand strength and quality assurance. The plethora of benefits thrown open to Stigasoft and eventually to our clients in partnering with Red Hat is summarized below.

1. Developer Subscription: Stigasoft will enjoy free access to demonstration subscriptions to Red Hat and JBoss products. However, these subscriptions will not be available for reselling; instead they can be used for development, training, and testing purposes only.
2. Partner Helpdesk: Stigasoft will be able to contact the Red Hat Partner Helpdesk for various types of assistance and support.
3. Access to early release software: Stigasoft will have access to community projects published on certain websites for early preview releases of upcoming versions and tools.
4. Attendance at Red Hat conferences: Stigasoft can attend selected developer or user conferences hosted by Red Hat at discounted rates.
5. Access to Global Learning Services: Stigasoft technical team members are eligible for enrollment to training classes at discounted rates.
6. Access to the ISV Resource Center: Stigasoft will be eligible to access the Red Hat’s online content repository and partnership management tool, aka Partner Center.
7. Partner profile in ISV Solutions Catalog: Stigasoft will be able to enhance its visibility through Solutions Catalogue, which is an online directory of all Red Hat and JBoss ISV Partner solutions, applications and products.
8. Red Hat Ready Application Logo Usage: Stigasoft will be entitled to use the logo to position the Red Hat Ready Application in the market in compliance with Red Hat policy available at Partner Center.

Stigasoft has reached another milestone in trust and capacity building by joining IBM PartnerWorld as a qualified Member. IBM confers this status to companies and ISVs that pass several ‘capacity and quality’ criteria specified in their membership charters. Qualifying criteria include factors such as level of skills, revenue, infrastructure, achieved level of customer satisfaction, etc. It is a matter of great pride for all of us at Stigasoft to have earned it.

Strategic advantages

Our association with IBM shall enable us to utilize IBM PartnerWorld’s tools and resources to make quicker market-entry, faster products and solutions launch, and to realize increased business profit through reduced sales-cycle.

Teaming up with the industry giant like IBM is expected to help us enormously in honing our skills through in-depth training directly by IBM experts enabling us not only to match but to surpass the service-expectations of our clients. The increased serving capacity would eventually help us expand into new markets hitherto unexplored.

Since, IBM experts are going to be backing us up throughout a project life-cycle - “from the first encounter with the customer to post-sales support” - we are extremely confidant to serve our clients with the best the industry has there to offer as far as IBM technology and solutions are concerned.

Our clients can rely on us for providing best of the IBM products and services.

Our competence, strict adherence to high standards for service-delivery as well as customer- satisfaction, and ability to serve our clients in Microsoft technologies have reached yet another important milestone. Microsoft confers upon us the elite status of 'Gold Certified Partner' in recognition of our sincere and dedicated endeavor in implementing Microsoft technologies to create business solutions.

As a 'Gold Certified Partner' we are now entitled to various valuable supports direct from Microsoft which will surely go a long way to provide even better services to our clients. We now have first-hand access to emerging technologies, tools and beta versions of products being developed at Microsoft. We shall be working conjointly with Microsoft labs in development and validation of newer and powerful technologies, in turn, bringing immense benefits to our clients.

Microsoft expresses trust in partner's technical capabilities through the concept of modular competency. Microsoft Competencies have been designed to foster high level of professional trust in customers towards the certified partners with respect to specific Microsoft technology. As of now, Microsoft defines 16 core competencies each having a unique set of requirements and benefits. Attaining at least one of the core competencies is a prerequisite to attaining Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status.

Stigasoft has been able to pitch its claim to "Microsoft Gold Certified" partnership through earning the following competencies:

• Service-Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management

  This certification is awarded to partners who possess proven expertise in application of SOA and BPM approaches to complex business solutions.

  As more and more business processes are shifting to server platforms like Microsoft BizTalk, Microsoft Host Integration Server on Windows Server 2003, a great deal of technological competency is required to plan, develop and deploy effective and reliable solutions.

  Stigasoft, has earned well-deserved competency in implementing Microsoft SOA and Business Process to help clients integrate information, people and processes through interoperable, modularized, extensible and secure e-business solutions.

  Stigasoft is now in a much better position to help its clients with Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), B2B application integration, Business Process Management (BPM) Solutions, and Adapter Development.

• Data Management Solutions

  Partners having proven competency in implementing SQL Server solutions including data warehousing, OLAP, data mining and DSS, alone are qualified to obtain this certification.

• Custom Development Solutions

  Partners with proficiency in providing custom-developed solutions to customers on Microsoft development platforms like Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Windows XP, Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system in the areas of Application Infrastructure Development, Smart Client Development and Web Development, are entitled to this certification.

Stigasoft has joined Drupal Association and is proud to put on the Drupal membership badge. Drupal is an open-source license-free software package having powerful features to facilitate publishing, managing and organizing contents of many types over websites. Drupal scores one over other competing content management technologies due to its flexibility and extensibility. It can be configured in variety of ways to administer a website and publish contents such as blogs and forums without having much knowledge of programming.

Now with a two hundred thousand strong community backing and supporting the development project, Drupal is fast transforming into the preferred technology for community website development.

Drupal can be effectively employed to build following types of websites:

1. Community Sites
2. Polling Websites
3. News Publishing Websites
4. Corporate Websites
5. Resource Directories
6. Educational Websites
7. Multimedia Websites

Drupal offers a number of compelling benefits to web development projects including the following:

1. Standards Adherence: Drupal complies with industry standards such as XHTML and CSS.
2. Better Load-Balancing: Drupal is equipped with in-built mechanisms like throttling and caching for better load-balancing achieving better performance.
3. Open Source: Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 which can be extended and customized to suit individual needs.

Drupal Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to the sole cause of supporting and enriching the Drupal platform and infrastructure. Stigasoft would like to appeal to everyone to contribute generously and to strengthen Drupal Association by subscribing membership to the Association.

It gives us immense satisfaction to get recognition from Microsoft as "certified official partner", which we interpret as a sign of maturity, competency and trustworthiness. We have been bestowed upon this status because we,

• offer our services in several areas of technical expertise such as e-commerce, collaboration, business intelligence, consulting, maintenance/support and hosting services.
• employ sufficient number of Microsoft certified Professionals (MCPs) having demonstrable level of expertise on Microsoft technologies.
• have a number of satisfied customers with us.

We are fully aware and excited about the responsibilities that come along with this recognition – producing best results with least margins of error.