GemStone Systems is a software company that has pioneered the adoption of
several enterprise infrastructure technologies. We spoke with Meghdari Ghosh,
Director of Engineering, GemStone Systems (India). He has worked for over a
decade in designing & developing core software systems in domains such as,
custom embedded systems, shrink wrap desktop software, and diverse heterogeneous
network infrastructure environments. Ghosh tells us about Agile software
tecniques, SOA, etc.
Why Gemstone has decided to set up a development centre in Pune and what
are the latest happenings from developer's side at this centre?
This centre was started on 'build ,operator, transfer' agreement with a
company here. The business connection was made with a company and the people who
were trying to work on Gemstone tasks. They became Gemstone employees as the
transfer was completed. From developer's side, we just finished a major product
release version 5.5 of Gemfire
Enterprise and much of that work has been executed out of Pune. It's a
distributed data caching platform for enterprises.
Meghdari Ghosh Director of Engineering GemStone Systems (India) |
What are the current technologies that Gemstone is working on?
We work basically on multiplatform technologies. In terms of languages, we
use Java, C++ and C#. And the tools we use include Eclipse, and a bit of .Net,
etc.
How is Gemstones coping with dollar depreciation?
Dollar depreciation has not affected us as we are not a Services Company,
where difference between rupee and dollar is a major component of pricing.
SOA and agile technology being the next technology trend in the market,
how can a fresher start his base from there and develop?
Agile techniques have got nothing to do with SOA. SOA is a technique of
reusing existing production system in the enterprise. Agile techniques basically
are meant to improve quality of engineering or development output. These can be
applied to most software development platforms. We use agile techniques and
typically breakdown our work execution into stints that last ideally not more
than a month. The ability to breakdown a task into bits is also a reflection of
how well the developers understand what we are trying to do or what they have to
do. Possibly, the best option for someone interested in understanding and
working in agile techniques is to work in an organization where the techniques
are used.
What are the key trends in software development platform right now?
Part of it is SOA, as you have mentioned, because it offers benefits of
reusing even legacy systems and it integrates legacy systems with new
technologies and applications that are being developed. SOA offers solution for
integration; it does not directly address data needs. There is a need for
enterprise application to have access to good quality operational data. In such
a
scenario, where given hardware is limited to a certain amount of memory, but
data is much larger than that. Gemfire Enterprise spreads out data across
multiple machines.
How do you manage lifecycle of your project? How do developers collaborate
with each other while working on a project?
We use agile techniques to manage lifecycle of projects.
Developers collaborate with each other for the most part.