Leveraging Free Software in an Entrepreneurial / Technology Career

Anoop JohnFounder & CTOwww.zyxware.com

Wikipedia defines an entrepreneur as

“A person who organizes and manages any enterprise,

especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and

risk rather than working as an employee, an entrepreneur

runs a small business and assumes all the risk and reward of

a given business venture, idea, or good or service offered for

sale. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as a business

leader and innovator of new ideas and business processes."

Who is an entrepreneur?

Wikipedia defines a businessman as

“Someone involved in business, where in particular

undertaking of activities, commercial or industrial, for the

purpose of generating cash flow, sales, and revenue utilizing

a combination of human, financial, intellectual and physical

capital that further fuels economic development and

growth."

Who is a businessman?

• Building the operation

• Finding the market

• Focusing on the industry

• Building the team

• Structuring the organization

• Financing the growth

Getting beyond the startup idea

• Attitude

• Skill

• Knowledge

If you have the attitude the rest can be built

The well known secret - ASK

• Risk taker

• Perceptive

• Curious

• Imaginative

• Persistent

• Goal-setting

• Hardworking

• Self-confident

• Flexible

• Independent

Ref: http://www.slideshare.net/khushimain/entrepreneurial-attitude-26405907

Good set of attitudes to build

• The dream - 25 years back

• The origins - 20 years back

• The operations - 10 years back

• The vision and persistence

• Current operations

• The future

History of Zyxware

• Our Vision

A global IT solutions company that continually delivers true

value to its people, clients and the society and is anchored on

the values of honesty and fairness.

• Our Mission

• Enabling people to leverage on Information Technology

• Promoting and popularising the philosophy of Free Software

• Our Motto

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" M. K. Gandhi

Zyxware Vision & Mission

• Freedom to use

• Freedom to modify

• Freedom to distribute

• Freedom to redistribute modified versions

What is Free Software?

• Do not have to re-invent the wheel

• Some of the best technology platforms available

• Large community of technology experts to support

• Lower barrier to entry

• Availability of a wide variety of tools

• Opens up its own set of opportunities

Advantages of Free Software

• Forces an entrepreneurial mindset

• Helps build the right attitude

• Helps in building the required knowledge

• Helps in building the required skills

Free Software & Entrepreneurship

• Drupal is a Content Management System

• Built on PHP, MySQL, HTML, JS, CSS

• Allows collection, presentation

& management of structured information

• Allows building websites

• Allows building dynamic web applications

• API to build and extend the application

• Extensible, Modular, Pluggable, Scalable

• Thousands of modules to extend the capabilities without

writing a line of code

• Drupal is more than a Content Management System. It is a

Rapid Application Development Framework

What is Drupal?

• Fully functional website out of the box

• Fully functional CMS out of the box

• More than 10000 modules to extend

• Ability to build applications with workflows, permissions, rules

without writing a line of code

• Out of the box CRUD system for complex data collection,

presentation and management

• Control over layout without coding

• Drupal distributions OOTB systems

• Strong API for future extension

• Stable and secure platform

Why Drupal is a good fit for startups

• Structure of layout

• Collection of structured information

• Presentation of information

• Roles and Permissions

• Workflow related to collected information

• Business Logic

Aspects of a web application

Rules Panels

ViewsNodequeue

Flag

FeedsContext

FieldsFivestar

Services

VBO

Webform

Taxonomy

Node

Admin Menu

Zyxware Technologies and Drupal

Zyxware is a leading contributor to Drupal from India and is one of very

few exclusive Service Providers from India listed on drupal.org

● Over 50,000 websites use our modules and themes

● More than 30 contributed modules and themes

● Maintainer of Search404, a top 200 Drupal module

● Over 1000 commits at drupal.org

● Contributes all patches back to Drupal

● Our profile on drupal.org - http://drupal.org/user/222163

● Knowledge partnerships with Acquia, New Relic and Volacci

● Freedom Walk, a 44 day walk by a team of

Free Software Evangelists across the length of

Kerala to promote Free Software

● Building RithuOS, an Operating System for Engineering

students with Free Software Engineering applications

● GNU/Linux Install Fests in Schools, Colleges and at Technopark.

● Local language (Malayalam) computing camps in colleges

● Building and Maintenance of Freedom Toaster, a Free Software

kiosk

● Conducting Free Software workshops and

lectures in colleges in Kerala

● Migration of Kerala Legislative Assembly

to GNU/Linux

Free Software and Zyxware Technologies

• Check us out at http://www.zyxware.com

• Mail us at drupal@zyxware.com

• Like us at http://www.facebook.com/zyxware

• Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/zyxware

• Connect with us at

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/zyxware-technologies

• Talk to us at +91-8113900079 between 9AM - 9PM IST

Contact Zyxware

Questions? Ask me at

www.linkedin.com/in/anoopjohn