Part 2 & 3 - Shipping continued...
We got the server bits shipped. This is good news for those customers out there that want to run a licensing service using our unique technologies. Think about it... you can make a business providing the licensing services that software developers can use to recover lost profits. Or you can run a licensing service that you have full control over. There's a number of business models that make sense and each one of them has the potential to impact the bottom line. It's interesting to see the polarization in some customer segments when they begin to consider 'becoming' a service or becoming a customer of a service. The decisions are not always clear. What is clear is the fact that we offer choice. Choice is a positive thing for customers.
The SLPS team chose to break up our shipping milestones to make the release more manageable and perhaps more sane. Ship often will always mean ship smaller. But the 'first' time a product goes out the door the effort is measured in tons. A version 1.0 product will always be a big ship effort. In order to get enough useful functionality into a modern enterprise class software product you have to expect that it will take a monumental effort that is some part blood, sweat and tears. It's not just the code -- it's working with light specs (or none at all in some cases), balancing the demands of product managers, getting the support channel primed and ready, business reviews, legal reviews, user education reviews, design change request reviews .... to name a number of the not-so-obvious ones.
However, nothing comes close to the test effort. Starting with a build and a build notification process. Then there's the BVTs -- the validation tests that tell us if the build's even worth picking up and installing. If you're shipping version 1.0 the details of test will become ankle and waist deep at times. Test harnesses, smoke tests, unit tests, stress tests, test suites, ... so many moving parts and each one of them vital. Testing ideals always proclaim that testing should begin before the first line of code is cut. Yeah...right! (Just like coding shouldn't start without a complete spec or at the very least fully vetted use cases.) In real life you're adding testers long after the code has started. They begin their assigments weeks behind schedule. We have a great test team here in SLPS and one of the best test managers I've worked with. These last few weeks of ship mode have demonstrated the ability for the team to get behind their testers. We're getting caught up and we can see our ankles now!
We're bringing this one in on schedule. Beginning October 1 there will be a Microsoft hosted SLP Service available. In addition, you will have the option of downloading code protector as well.
We'll be keeping you up to date on the latest team progress as we start hitting our upcoming milestones.
[Terrence for the] SLP Services team
