Windows 8 has been designed to work in conjunction with Cloudservices (Windows Azure). This achievement by Microsoft completely eliminates hardware from the equation. Any connection, anywhere, can put you in contact with your files. The integration of Microsoft Cloud allows software developers to connect to virtual servers worldwide and work on projects from any location with web access. Microsoft guarantees that your data won’t be lost and that you will always have access. Applications will vary, but this new Microsoft OS lays the groundwork to eliminate differences between the platforms and streamline connectivity and communications on projects from fixed locations to mobile locations.

2. Touch Screen and Video Control

Features that are unique to mobile devices will become part of the desktop experience with Windows 8. The Windows 8 operating system allows for programs with touch screen andvideo control capability, similar to the functions previously available only on tablet and smartphone interfaces. This mouse-free capability will be coupled with immersive and full-screen “Metro” graphics. This Windows 8 experience uses a new platform development based on HTML5 and JavaScript, which is what you will need to develop applications compatible for this new operating system.

3. Multiple Platforms

Windows 8 was developed for a mobile purpose and has functionality on any device or platform. This allows users to transition between multiple platforms (tablet, mobile phone, desktop) for easy file sharing. It also enables connectivity between devices, making all your devices act as one personal computer with access to your files, settings and applications. Because Microsoft 8 will work on multiple devices, graphics will have to be scalable to different screen sizes. This will require developers to create vector graphics that can scale from small mobile device screens to 55” television screens.

The Windows 8 developer preview can be found here and is complete with the Windows 8 SDK.

The consumer preview can be found on the Microsoft website.

The developer’s job is to build the software solutions our customers envision. The catch is that many of them don’t know what they want, or they’re uncertain about the direction of a project. Svitla Systems distinguishes itself by our ability to listen when a customer talks about what they want to achieve. Consider the blend of technical and artistic skills it takes to make ideas a reality. We work in the creative digital realm. Our programmers are particularly skilled at translating generalities into specific technicalities and project estimates. We begin with a solid proposal that outlines the technical aspects the software will need in order to perform the functions the client wants.

When you approach software design as an artistic platform in which ideas come to life, the design concepts that result are going to be unique and innovative. Most importantly, they’re going to work. It is common practice in North America for software developers to build on pre-existing lines of code, either from other projects or free source content. In contrast, Svitla starts from the ground up, creating new codes and programming for each project.

Software development is often described in relation to its technical aspects. This paints an incomplete picture and blurs the very qualities that distinguish one firm from the others around the world. There are still many companies that don’t realize the full potential of working with a highly creative offshore software development firm. It’s the little details in structure and how different elements work together that pull a product together and make it special. We feel that it’s essential to use a team with a wide range of skills and expertise rather than a single programmer. Svitla builds teams to create the code and style to deliver the best software we can create.

Businesses are slowly becoming aware of the advantages of working with Slavic programmers. Their knowledge is on par with American programmers, but the people are modest and humble. The Svitla teams strive to deliver on what they promise, and they never offer the bare minimum. Egos are checked at the door, and their systematic minds know when to problem solve and when to rely on creative intuition.

For users, Flash has also become the plug-in of choice. Adobe states that Flash is installed on as many as 98% of desktop and laptop computers worldwide. However, while Flash continues to be prominently used by desktop operating systems, gaming systems, and most web browsers, Apple has not enabled Flash to run on iOS, thereby limiting the functionality of Flash on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and AppleTV. The constraints of Flash also become more obvious with other mobile platforms. Flash is not being updated as often as HTML5, and there is currently no strategy to advance the use of Flash on mobile applications. Adobe has announced that it will not be issuing Flash support for Android 5.0, RIM or GoogleTV. Mobile browsers and platforms is the niche market where HTML5 will thrive.

HTML5 will be the language used on Windows 8, Adobe, iOS and most mobile platforms. Many updated browsers have begun to experiment with HTML5, along with some video sites like YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv. But HTML5 is still very much in its infancy, and there are few experts on this new programming language. HTML5 represents a new direction that requires new skills; there are not many developers who can confidently program using HTML5. The developers at Svitla are quickly gaining proficiency with HTML5 and are currently using it to create digital portfolios for students. They have opted for HTML5 over Flash because of its versatility to go mobile.

Despite the trending toward mobile devices, Flash will always retain its usefulness among developers for its familiarity, and it will remain the standard for traditional stand-alone desktop applications. But when it comes to creating tools for mobile platforms, Flash is limited and HTML5 is the language of choice. The winner? You decide!

Software like Microsoft Azure encourages collaboration between team members and customers, because it connects developers to virtual servers worldwide.  This allows teams of developers to work on projects from any location with web access.  It also enables team members to track tasks and the progress of a project.  Through Cloud integration, the team can view individual processes and communicate deadlines clearly and simply among team members.  With Microsoft Cloud specifically, Microsoft guarantees that your data won’t be lost and that you will always have access to your projects.

Cloud has also eliminated the need for traditional hardware among your team through the use of virtual platforms.  Automated platforms and tools (Microsoft or otherwise) allow developers to test mobile applications (and other programs) as they create them.  Platforms like Microsoft.net are based on virtual machine architecture and are designed to support programming language independent of a specific operating system or hardware.  Software developed on these platforms can run on any system that contains the implementation of the platform’s framework.  Likewise for web sites, ASP.net is a free web framework for building web sites and web applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  These platforms allow for simplified development, testing and deployment.

Mobile development will be further advanced through the release of Windows 8.

Specifically designed for a mobile purpose, Windows 8 will deliver connectivity among mobile platforms, enabling all devices to act as one personal computer.  Applications will vary, but this is the groundwork that will eliminate differences between the platforms, streamlining connectivity and communications on projects from fixed locations to mobile locations.  This means all the Microsoft tools, including Cloud, will be essential for companies looking to develop software for any Windows 8 device.

The Windows 8 developer preview can be found here: and is complete with the Windows 8 SDK.  All of these tools will make the term “offshoring” irrelevant, because it eliminates the need for hardware.  With hardware out of the picture, location is no longer a factor for developers.  Cloud technology and virtual platforms will act to unite all project members as a single team, regardless of where they are located.

The whole interview  by Donald Landwidth you can listen directly here. If you don’t have enough time, you can read only interesting info for you from the text below.

Nataliya, you have 2 Master Degrees. Not many people have that. How did you get them?

My first Master Degree was an entrance to US, I came to the Univesity of Kanzas and did my Masters in accounting and information systems and then worked for Ernst and Young for several years, but always had in mind that I would like to start a business and business school was always on my horizon. I got applied to Stanford and got accepted and got my MBA and it was near 80 percent of my stay here, in Bay Area.
It was a wonderful experience to be in the mix of people from all over the world, from different backgrounds and age categories, the wonderful professors and speakers who were invited to our classes. I was previlaged enough to have Uoren Buffett as a speaker.
The network of Stanford Alumni is wonderful, they are really helpful.

I studied in Moscow, the Wall just came down and I was one from several students who had a chance to come here. As I was growing in Soviet Union, it was easier to imagine that I’d became an austronaft and go to Mars then I go to United States. I still remember the day when I came to the emigrational officer and presented my papers he asked: “You’re going.. where? Kanzas? … to study… what? accounting?” That point I thought maybe I’m doing that wasn’t quite right. But in fact my experience in Kanzas was wonderful: relaxed lifestyle, people are very friendly.

If there would be outsourcing on Mars, you are going to be there

Nataliya, I’ve known you for almost 5 years, from Inflection company, thank you for the great service, great team work, it’s been really a pleasure to work with you and your team. How did you start doing your own business?

The concept of an outsourcing company was an easy idea because India by that time have been already on the market for about 10 years, it was already established indusry growing rapidly and keeping my connections in Ukraine and knowing that great technical talents and being here in Sillicon Valey where was a shortage of that talents (they are expensive and hard to find), sit became very easy for me to make the connection and to start a business.

Are you a programmer? Did you study programming and computer science?

No, I’m mostly a business person, finance, accounting, business development are my specialities. I’ve been in this industry for qiute a while, I communicate with great technical people.

What made you think IT? Maybe you should start a hedge fund or consulting…

I was at the “soup” of the Sillicon Valley and being exposed to different entrepreneurs and ideas, speakers who were coming to the school, friends and network of my friends, they all were in IT industry. To come up with idea to use great technical talents from Ukraine was an easy way to start a company.

Did you start your company after studying in University of Kanzas?

No, I worked for Ernst and Young, I was in a international tech consulting group, I’ve gone to New-York and then to London, doing quantitave calculations for multi-national companies. And from London I applied to several business schools and Stanford was my top choice. I was lucky after got accepted anf moved to California.

So, you went to Stanford and decided to start your own business and your first one was Lohika. What area of IT do you decided to go?

Yes, Lohika from Ukrainian means “logic”. It was a venture funded business which we started in 2001, it was a very tough year, but a concept was good, we had a good business plan and were fortune enought to raise funding. Again, the idea was to use the talents from Ukraine to deliver development and testing services to US companies. We had US strong technical people, a sort of front-end, they were dealing with customers and a back-end development work was done in Ukraine.
I remember those times when it was really hard to sell. Right now you don’t have to sell the concept of outsourcing. Entreprenuers who starting a business, say: “We’re going outsource”.
Now it’s much easier to bring developer to a customer, they stay here for a month-two-three. Skype is a great tool to be connected.

Is Lohika still in business?

I exit the company after 2 years being there, the company is still around and going strong.

Why did you leave and start Svitla?

Certain friction on the management team and secondly i wanted to see if I could try to start a product company. We’re trying to create a solution to protect CDs and DVDs from pirate copying. Unfortunately, that company didn’t go very far. And third company, Svitla, was already bootstrapped and I came back to service model. What’s different? No venture funding, only organic growth. People, who are interact with a customer, are highly qualified team leads and developers, they understand the requirements, go on daily meetings and lead the engagement with the customer.

Are there 2-3 key tips you can give to the entrepreuners what it takes to start a company?

I think the major tip is preserverence. It’s so difficult to start a company, things always go wrong, it always takes more time, more money that you predicted. Obviously, you have to listen to your customers, go back to your assumptions that you don’t bitting against the wall. It’s hard, but it gets easier.

What it is the main difference between venture funded and bootstrapped company? If you had to do another company, which way did you go?

For the services business I’d go bootstrapped way, like Svitla, because you don’t need much capital to start a company. As soon as you get a customer, you get a cash flow and can finance your operations and go to the next level. For a product company you have to go for venture funding because it allows to grow faster. It’s also a choice for entrepreneur how fast you want to grow, which model you want to choose, which one fits your personality, your lifestyle.

What should the company think of when it is going to outsource?

Obviously, what is your core business and what is not. Startups usually build their core business in-house. When they have a need to scale up, and do it fast, they start thinking about outsourcing. Our developers become the part of in-house team, they participate in daily meetings and this is the way of expanding startup’s core team.
Sometimes startups would like to have the whole development cycle: from graphic design to system administration.

What is the difference between hiring people in-house and remote outsourcing team in that case?

When you hire people in US, you hire employees. When you sign the contract with an outsourcing company, the outsourcing company itself is dealing with its employees and you don’t have to think about it.

There are so many countries that propose an outsourcing services for the clients: India, China, Argentina etc. What country should man think of when he make a decision to outsource?

What differentiate Ukraine in the map of all outsourcing companies is the great technical talents, I’m really proud when I’m talking about that. I heard many times from many customers that we have strong technical people who can think out of the box, come up with ideas and suggest things.
Time lap is not a problem: you have a 24 hours working day.

Absolutely. We wake up, doing daily meeting with offshore team, then the guys go to sleep, we check what was done during the day, think about strategy and plans for the next day, send them off and go to sleep. Offshore team wakes up and here is the cycle.

How do you work for Inflection?

We started from 1 developer, who came to US and had iteraction with the team in US, understood the requirements and got back to Ukraine to establish the team there. In a year we had 20 developers and we’ve been working for 6 years with Inflection, in fact, it’s my favourite customer. They treat our team as an internal part of their team.

How Svitla compares to Odesk, Elance or other similar companies?

Such websites are usually for renting a developer when you need 1 developer to get job done. In Svitla case you deal with a company, with whole number of services from UI, graphic design till deploying a ready project.

I know that technical resumes are almost always a crap. They are full of achronisms and never tell the level of developer. How do you deal with that?

We’ve found a really convenient format of resumes. Our HR department fills out a table where you can find not only the list of technologies, but the level from beginner to expert. Such a format helps our customers to understand the skills clearly.

What are trends of software development?

Ruby on Rails allows our startup customers to develop prototypes quickly, also PHP with Zend Framework is a scallable tool.
We ask the right questions at the beginning of the project to know which technology will fit the best.

Why do you think your developers are so tremendous talented?

Such a heavy emphasise on math, physics from soviet school, we learned a lot from such disciplines.
I don’t think that there is some secret in the water or in the air, it’s just a hard work.

Thank you for being here and sharing your experience.

Everything has begun at the moment when I’ve got my  first own computer. It was Mac LC III with MaC OS 7. I had been studying in the College of Radio-Electronic Instrument and started to deal with hardware from my beginning. Later I installed Doom II on it. Computer upgrade at the end of 90s had finished with changing platform to PC with Windows and then Linux environment.
After college I passed exams to National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Politehnical Institute” and I chose the speciality Computer Engineering. There I was involved in hardware architecture design during the first 4 years.

What was the educational process in NTUU “KPI”?

We started from Pascal as a first programming language, low-level Assembler, VHDL.
There were professors who taught with passion and inspired us to study. I got to a higher level of programming like Java, C++. Actually, one of my teachers there, who also worked for Svitla, told me about Ruby. He said that I should pay much more attention to it if I would have liked to go further.
The language itself appeared really cool for me. I enjoyed its flexibility which I’ve never met before.

Which essential tips can you mention when moving from Java to Ruby?

You know, such a switch wasn’t difficult because both languages are object oriented. Ruby has such a spesifics as a dynamic – metaprogramming, I mean there are a lot more variants for metaprogramming. Java also allows to do it, but you should set additional script.
Till nowadays I feel couldn’t think as a real Ruby Developer, I should understand the language features and then I will think on Ruby language

Did you like the conference we organized last year, did it help you?

Sure, it helped in 2 ways. First, I’ve known a lot if interesting info about all things Ruby and, second, the atmosphere inspires you to write a better code.

Could you please explain programming patterns which are used in Ruby?

By the way, such patterns don’t depend on the language, they are for every object oriented language. The main are Composit, Factory, Proxy. Actually, in Ruby you shouldn’t use Composit because dynamic typisation allows to not think about data type. It allows to free your mind and think about bugs free and sustainable code.

What was your first project in Svitla?

It was a SaaS for making video interviews for job-seekers and HR-department as well. My main duties included creating an API allowed to recieve data from the server, an admin panel for API between server side and mobile. I’ve learned how to choose and use the right gems for development.

How do you plan to continue your study?

I’m going to take Post-graduate exams this year because I’d like to improve my knowledge in a fascinating field of human-maschine interface.

We wish you good luck and thanks for the interview.

Is there a concept of architecture in programming for Android and how to choose it?

Google uses the Dalvik virtual machine to run their applications. This imposes certain limitations on the application architecture. Google’s SDK allows you to write well-structured program in terms of architecture and provides a rich set of classes for various architectural models.

Differrences between the development of native applications and with special frameworks.

The most common special frameworks and even more correct multi-platform frameworks are used to develop applications for multiple mobile platforms at the same time, for example Android, iPhone, Windows etc. For creation a demo version of a product we can gain in speed of development with a good knowledge of the framework itself. However, if you develop severe multi-service applications, the described above advantage is lost, as you have to take into account and know the specifics of each platform and sometimes the SDK and the language is written in order to add the native functionality to the product. Frameworks are good for a small sized functional applications for various platforms and prototypes for demonstration. The rest of the frameworks for complex applications increase the speed of application development by 90%, but the remaining 10% of the customization are solved so hard, that negate the benefits of cross-platform development. So, use the frameworks only where it is appropriate.

API: the pitfalls of use. What should man look for when the API is given? And is it necessary to write it himself?

For the client side it is common to use the Android SDK. As for the server side, usually there is a URL where POST or GET parameters used; in response we get Json or Xml. The big plus is to know only one language, usually JavaScript.
In the process of working on various projects, API’s server-side has changed seriously enough when writing a client-side. The main problem here is to convince the developers of the server side that exchange of information should go in the format of a request-response to one functionality and to avoid multiple requests for a chapter’s information.

What techniques are used while programming for Android?

We use Test Driven Development and GUI automation testing. This allows to react instantly to server changes and to carry out continuous testing of all functionality in each application release.

Are there any solutions to optimize the development for multiple platforms simultaneously?

Yes, there are such solutions. We develop application architecture that is being implemented on the various programming languages​​, and only after this we build GUI applications around the core part. This allows to unify the design for multiple platforms simultaneously, although it requires well-coordinated work of all project participants.

Specificity of the development for tablets and mobile devices.

For iPad – a separate specificity, mainly related to the screen resolution. For Android – it is not only the screen resolution, but also the ability to support more recent versions of Android 3.0 and 4.0, taking into account the specifics of building applications.

What will happen with the scope of development for Android in the future?

Android Development Sphere will experience a certain boom in the next 3-5 years, when the number of low-cost tablet PCs will replace netbooks and laptops in the user environment, it will create a totally new market and expand the number of users: working with the Tablet PC is easier than with any laptop or desktop computer. In addition, the Android system will be implemented in the systems of television, household appliances, the automotive industry.

Svitla’s Android portfolio you can see below.

Iphone apps for Small and Medium Business.

Android apps to make your business mobile.

The first and the main reason why companies go for outsourcing is the ability to cut back on the amount of money they pay for accomplishing particular services. It’s far more expensive for companies to avail the services of professionals within their country compared to the equally skilled ones in offshore countries. Aside from being able to cut down on the expenses that the company spends is the fact that some competitors of particular companies are probably using services of the outsourcing provider by now. And, the only way to remain competitive is to outsource as well; not to mention, this will also expand the market of a particular company.

The next reason for outsourcing includes the fact that the communication and technology have become more advanced than ever. Because of this, companies won’t have a hard time communicating with their employers even if they are located in different parts of the world. And it’s important that the speed of communication will not suffer at all.

Aside from the already mentioned reasons for outsourcing, companies choose outsourcing because by getting the services of people from offshore country, they can accomplish their project much faster as they can have 2-3 times more employees for the same sum of money.

One of the reasons for outsourcing that a lot of companies are targeting is the possibility to make use of the different skills that are available in the different parts of the world. This reason is also used by a lot of companies simply because they simply can’t find local experts of the desired professional level; furthermore, it’s getting harder and harder to look for capable skilled employees within the country to do a particular work.

The next reason for outsourcing helps companies become more and more efficient; this is because when the working hours in a company is already over, they can still expect their skilled employees from another part of the world to work and accomplish tasks that have been given to them. If the working hours are ended, it does not mean that the company ends to provide its services as well.

As you can see from these reasons for outsourcing, it’s quite obvious that a lot of companies outsource their projects.

• the possibility of developing a front- and back-end web applications using one language with the resulting architectural solutions,
• use of the continuation opportunities, by which the proper use of web-based applications becomes possible to store the state almost as in applications written for desktops.

The demonstration examples and source code report lasted one hour. Thanks to modern high-tech technologies: we broadcasted the meetup to remote offices – Lviv and Kharkiv.
After the report the participants with the cries of joy “Wee! Wee!” ran to code on RoR.

Photos by Andrey Kapshuk.