Deployment model</h1> <article> <h1>Deployment model</h1> <p>Wed, 20 May 2015 18:58:08 +0000</p> <p>The plan was to sell TTSync as a hosted service, but no one is going to trust their private data to an unknown company, and it will stay unknown until I get a bunch of customers. Problemo. So.. plan B - package it up and get people to install it themselves. There are several issues here straight off...</p><p> </p><p> - its in Java. Its dead easy for someone to to reverse engineer and run off with the fruits of my labours.</p><p> - How do I license it?</p><p> - Its a bit complicated to configure.</p><p> </p><p> I've looked as obfusticating the code, but I'm not sure it helps - anyone determined to reverse engineer it could still do so. For a small fortune you can buy an ahead-of-time java compiler to make it into a native .exe application.</p><p> Licensing - plan A - rely on honesty. Plan B - ???. I like plan A.</p><p> Configuration - I've started writing a guide. Its already getting really ugly. configuring Google APIs is hideous, and then configuration for the software itself is a mass of regular expressions. Maybe I could sell my services setting it up + give away the software for free? This is looking increasingly like a good plan.</p><p> </p><p> I've also made enquiries about various partner programs - they cost. No surprises there.</p> </article> <article> <h1>Marketing a new enterprise</h1> <p>Fri, 15 May 2015 12:37:31 +0000</p> <p>Over the years I've met or heard of edu IT staff who have written some software and started up in business selling it. Sounds easy. I've decided to give it a try, and (possibly by way of free advertising) keep a journal of what happens.</p><p> </p><p> Me: about 10 years ago I did an OU degree in software development, then landed another network manager job, and my new found skills were left on the shelf. However, over the years I've noticed a gap in the market - electronic student timetables. Wouldn't it be nice if they could be injected into Google/Exchange/o365/WHY?</p><p> </p><p> So I set to work just last summer, and last september all students in the school had their calendars in Google.... </p><p> </p><p> ...nobody really noticed. Maybe I should have advertised it more. So I thought - this needs to work for staff too, and they need to be able to communicate through it. The problem was, what I had written was a proof of concept, but not really configurable, so I went back to the drawing board armed with bunch of chunks of Google code and a knowledge of what was and was not possible with Google APIs.</p><p> </p><p> I finally got a working piece of software about a month ago. I emailed all the local network managers and got an underwhelming response. This is going to be the story of what happens next.</p><p> </p><p> See the details of the software at <a href="http://www.ttsync.co.uk" rel="external nofollow">public_web</a></p><p> </p><p> Jim Potter</p> </article> </main></body></html>