The last game that I had worked on (Magnacarta 2) taught me some valuable lessons in development and management. Since then I’ve been thinking about what would be the next most important step in video game development. In my opinion it is better tools.

Better tools make people more efficient. That way they can concentrate on making a better quality game instead of fighting to meet the deadlines.  To make this work one needs to slowly chip away at the hurdles that slow the pace of development.

Programmers already have a wide array of tools at their disposal and the tools are getting better. Compilers are getting better so are machines and the processors. Profilers significantly improved over the generations for both consoles and for the PC. Multi threading however is an area that needs significant bump in the tools.  I also think that a different language that supports threading as a core paradigm is better fit than C++. Of course thread profilers and threading libraries (Boost, TBB from Intel) are of great help, especially when combined with some of the design patterns that play well with threading (ex: Producer consumer, command pattern).

Artists, who compose at least half the development team, definitely need better tools. We need tools that revolutionise the way art is generated. The areas where I see significant improvements in the tools are:

1)      Procedural content generation – Great if we want to reduce the time to generate the content, reduce the size of the game (think downloadable content). The 64K competition is definitely a trailblazer in this segment

2)      Gameplay logic – Wouldn’t it be better if the gameplay designer could just create his own gameplay in the game inside of trying to convince a programmer and the team? I am talking about Kismet (Unreal Engine 3)

3)      Lip sync – It is time that we don’t have lip flapping and see good lip syncing especially for non English languages

4)      Automation tools – Tools that will give the artists an early red flag when content they add to a level causes a drop in the frame rate or pushes the memory limits over the boundaries

It is important to understand that a majority of the tools, including the level editor and modeling software are useful for both programmers and artists. Improving these will definitely make things better for artists and for programmers.

I can dream of a day when character rigging happens procedurally but for the next five years, I hope to see and build a lot more of these tools. Tools for creating content have been improving ever since humans desired to create art. From the cave paintings and the crop circles all the way to today’s video games and movies, they show an improvement in the kind of content we create. It thus makes me believe that improving the tool chain opens up new avenues for creating art.

How about making “upgrade projects” as a part of your annual service model and bundle them into operating expenses budget as against capital expenditure spending? Companies who have invested in the right outsourcing models should challenge their vendors to reduce the intensity (or budget) of a typical R12 upgrade project. In other words the spending should be apportioned over 12 months or 24 months annual operating expenses instead of spending “huge project budget”. The ROI to spend significant amounts on functional features versus routine technical upgrades has lot of room for prioritization and spread the risk over several months at the same time get short term benefits. When you look at task level detailed project plans of many upgrade projects, there are at least 40% to 60% of the scope items that can spread over a calendar year or down load them to support & maintenance budget instead going for “project budget”. This will minimize risk for corporations and vendors will have better chances to succeed with flexible implementation schedules for non-prioritized items. Corporations burn huge amounts for expensive consulting hours in figuring out the scope of these projects but focus less on how to minimize the spending patterns to get better and real ROI.

In one of the recent surveys conducted in our webinar, one of the validation for the above concept is when people answered that they are not sure about the ROI as well as no bandwidth in house to start an R12 project. Companies spend millions of dollars upgrading their sytems and budget approvals for such initiatives are tough. People sharpen their pencils with ROI calculations and “how to convince the management” for a “CapEX” (Capital Expenditure Budget) approval. This is inspite of having large IT teams as well as vendors supporting their system in an “outsourcing model”. My earlier blog post mentioned “valuesourcing” as means of getting better ROI and “multishoring” is one of the tools to achieve the real value. Use these tools on your R12 upgrade.

It is always interesting to meet with members of the investment community and hear their perspective on what an effective acquisition strategy entails.   Very seldom do outsiders understand the significance of the subjective side of an acquisition in the services industry.  Our assets are, without a doubt, comprised of groups of highly intelligent people across the globe who most of the time have a number of options as to what they want to do for a living and for whom they want to work.  So, the big question is “what is the expected value of an acquisition”.  You certainly hope that the answer is that it is perpetual and will become an invaluable part of building an even better company that, as our CEO likes to say, “is built to last”.  That is what we have tried to achieve at Sierra Atlantic.  We believe that our most recent acquisition of Baytree Associates out of Charolette, N.C. will be one we look back on as a strategic step in building a great company.

Sierra Atlantic considers a number of potential acquisition opportunities each year, many of which are in areas that are complementary our strengths and capabilities.  Evaluating technical skills is actually one of the easier steps in the process.  The real work comes when you dig into the culture of the company, its people and its customer satisfaction.  That is what we looked for with Baytree.  We discovered a group of highly motivated, competent consultants who had year-after-year demonstrated the ability to grow their business, achieve consistent profitability, and win customers long-term loyalty with the high quality and reliability of their work.  That was the key as far as we were concerned.  If you achieve these three attributes, you will be successful in this business.

It has been just over a month and things are going quite well.  There have been no surprises and while we are successfully integrating the two companies, we both agreed that anything we did subsequent to the merger needed to be secondary to continuing to offer the best possible service to our respective customers.  I am confident that this is being accomplished and that everything else will fall into place.  We are seeing a strong recovery in IT services and while there are still a number of challenges brought about by the economic landscape over the  past two years, we are very optimistic about our future growth opportunities and are happy to be exploring these possibilities with our newest partners at Baytree Associates.

Hello everyone.  In only my second month with Sierra Atlantic, thanks to the blog page I am already being published!  We are 34 days into the merger of Baytree Associates with Sierra Atlantic.  When I first spoke with Raju and Bob back in January, we talked about how our two companies could fit together and complement each other.  Sierra Atlantic’s broad Oracle footprint and international delivery capabilities would be a welcome addition for Baytree.  At the same time, Baytree’s Southeast presence and functional consultants were a good compliment to Sierra Atlantic’s business.

During the first month together, those strengths are being proven out, and are already being leveraged.  What I am also discovering is that the two cultures and approaches toward our people are very similar.  I was given the privilege of presenting some kudos at the all-employees call on April 19, and it was a pleasure to read through the write-ups on the winners.  Sierra Atlantic clearly has a high caliber of people who value the quality of their work.  That is a formula for success in any business, and has been a basic tenet of Baytree’s success for 16 years.  This common strength, I think is every bit as important as the strategic alignment we saw back in January.

So I look forward to working with all of you; and meeting as many of you as possible in person; and using our common work ethic as  a strength on which to further build on our successes.

We recently conducted a very successful webinar “Peer Advice: The Inside Story on Upgrading to Oracle E-Business Suite R12” in collaboration with CIO.com. One of our customers Clopay Corporation, the nation’s largest manufacturer of residential garage doors along with Oracle Corporation participated sharing their insight and experience. This webinar was very well attended with large number of CIO’s and VP’s of IT throughout North America. You can view more details at our website. A large part of the webinar was devoted to Clopay Corporation discussing their R12 upgrade journey with details on strategy, business case, execution, successes measurement and finally advises to CIOs. Oracle also updated the participants on the business benefits they will realize upgrading to R12. One of the benefits to live interactive webinars is that you can get real world feedback on the fly.

When we asked the participants “Are you planning to upgrade to Oracle EBS R12? More than 50% of the participants mentioned that they are not looking for upgrading to R12 in 2010. I was really surprised that more participants hadn’t started the upgrade planning process. There are many benefits that can be realized by upgrading. Part of the reason could be waiting for Fusion. I expect Oracle will be clearer on this path over the next few months. Companies that are starting to research their service provider will be on top of their game. An interesting next question was – What is your reason for not upgrading until now? 32% of the participants cited no in-house bandwidth as the reason with 30% not sure about ROI. This partially answered above response. Choosing a right service provider to help with your upgrade is critical – given the R12 upgrade momentum, one might want to consider moving fast to get the right attention from a provider whose capabilities fit the best. Creating an ROI can be daunting; this is where methodical approach such as Clopay’s can help in overcoming the issue. Every organization is unique – with Oracle and service provider’s help, IT leadership team can make an appropriate case with ease. I would love to hear your thoughts. Have you started your upgrade yet? If you haven’t started the upgrade what is the reason? I look forward to your feedback and thoughts on this interactive blog.