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VARCHAS Ramila SUBRAHMANYA


PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Ø Over 8 years of research and development experience in the field of VoIP
Ø Technical expertise in Call Control, Protocol Designs (VOIP)
Ø Led a team of 5-8 software engineers over a period of 4 years

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) in Electronics & Communication, BMSCE, Bangalore (Medium of instruction: English) 1999. 74% aggregate

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Currently working as VOIP Design Lead in ESQUBE Communication Solutions PVT LTD, Bangalore, from Nov, 2003 till date

PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

Ø Successful demonstration of VOIP technology on VQube platform
Ø Successfully licensed our VOIP technology to Rediff and implemented Talk & See 2 phases. Lead the VOIP team for this activity
Ø Single handedly and successfully demonstrated VOIP on windows mobile. Customer feedback had been excellent with VQube being the only product working on GPRS/EDGE in India on windows mobile.
Ø Successfully integrated SIP protocol engine into VQube engine and demonstrated the technology to many customers. 3 projects have been approved for development & customization on SIP
Ø Successfully lead the team handling 3 projects simultaneously
Ø Stood class first in the first two semesters of my B.E.
Ø Stood class first in my fourth semester of my B.E
Ø Secured the highest marks in Pulse, Digital circuits (84%) and Network theory (94%) in the college
Ø Secured highest marks in Maths in Fifth semester (100%)
Ø Secured highest marks in the department for Microprocessors lab(96%)

CAREER AMBITIONS

Ø To continuously research and develop products on technologies that can make Earth a better place to live. Eg. Creating an ad-hoc sensor network on pollution detection and warning, ad-hoc sensor network on traffic congestion detection. The basis for deployment of such devices is successful research, development and demonstration of ad-hoc sensor networking.
Ø Given an opportunity, form a start-up company with such new ideas, and provide service with these new ideas. To study business related subjects so as to make the start-up a successful company.

TECHINCAL SKILLS

Languages and Scripts : C, C++ , HTML, DHTML, XML, TCL/TK

Tools : Visual Studio, .NET, embedded VC++, VC 2007,
Smartphone, Pocket PC and WinCE dev kits Install Shield, Astrum Installer, CVS

Technical Skills : Design Large scale VOIP applications (Rediff)
Optimization Skills
Protocol Designs (SMEP for Rediff)
SIP, Jabber
Socket Programming
Multithreaded programming
Audio programming
Mobile VOIP (VOIP on Windows mobile)
Mobile Applications

PROFESSIONAL WORK

Company: Esqube Communications Pvt Ltd
Designation: VOIP Design Lead
Duration: 4 years (2003 – till date)
1) Current Project: VOIP Customization (Jan 2008 – to date)
My current project is to develop customized VOIP and IM solutions to a few portals. The scope of work is to integrate Jabber protocol into their IM messenger. Jabber protocol is a universal protocol for messaging and presence between two different systems (Interoperability). MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and many IM services have opened up the protocol using jabber to allow other IM services to connect to their network and retrieve buddy information and support minimal features like text chat, text conference and file transfer. A Jabber server supports this service and in Jabber terms it is called as “Service Gateway”. Jabber is an open source project. My responsibility is to understand the Jabber protocol stack and find out a solution and architecture as to how the Jabber protocol stack would be implemented on their IM. Other tasks taken by me during the project is to lead the team and design the software architecture and modules in the project.

2) Project: VQube Product Development and Deployment
This product was started in March 2004 and is now a complete VOIP Product. I lead the VQube product development team and my responsibilities are to architect, design, implement, test and release the product. VQube is the name of the product that we developed. Working on this project has given me a lot of experience and knowledge on customer requirements, customer relations and how to interact, usability of a product, customer/market view on why they like a product and last but not the least, how to approach the consumer market with a product that he/she needs. VQube has experienced both success and failure but as an architect and design lead, it has given me the opportunity to look at a product from a totally different perspective that is business.
The different roles that I have taken up in VQube product development activity are:
Architect:
Along with couple of other senior engineers, I have architected the VQube product. The tasks involved in finding out solutions for a feature or a service like Voice Mail Service, Conferencing feature using Voice Relay servers, Redirect Server, compatibility with different versions and different platforms, Buddy server and buddy management are some of the many tasks that I have taken. A detailed look at the product will reveal other features. The website is www.vqube.com
Product Lead:
I have been leading the VQube product development team with 5-6 engineers. Defining features that should be included in the product, assigning different feature development tasks to the engineers, preparing the high level documents and sequence diagrams to the engineers, guiding them to complete the feature and helping them with debugging skills were some of the tasks that I have taken.
Engineer:
I have been doing C++ coding apart from leading the team and being an architect. We have used Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 version to develop our applications. Complete server side coding, GUI designing for the client, 1-1 call and conference feature and complete Pocket PC version/Windows CE version of VQube. All these tasks were successfully completed. The Pocket PC version of VQube was a great achievement since no other available VOIP application could match the quality of VQube on a Pocket PC.
Test and Release Engineer:
I have also handled the testing, release and build strategies of VQube. This task involved me to fix deadlines for intermediate builds and final releases, setup feature lists for the next build/release, manage/maintain a record of the targets achieved, setting and following test procedures, tracking bugs using our own bug tracking software were some of the tasks that I have taken.
Business Development:
I have prepared many technical document and presentations on VQube. I have also accompanied Mr Rajasekharan N K, Executive Vice President (Business Development) and visited many companies for a technical discussion on VQube. As a design lead, I have visited and setup up VQube in enterprise premises like Air Deccan, Wipro, Jet Air, Cranes, ITI etc.

3) VQube Click to talk
Duration: Jan 2005 till date
One of the important IP’s created by me in Esqube was the development of “Click to Talk” component for portals. The idea was to create a button with an activeX engine of our client. The button can be embedded on any web page, email or application. The button activeX is a mini-client that does not require any username password authentication for the system but logs in as a guest to the system. It is typically configured to contact an agent of an enterprise, like a call centre agent. Hence, portals who wish to have voice calls between guests and call centre agents through internet can find the application very useful.
Different roles and responsibilities were Architect, Design Lead and development engineer.
4) Rediff Talk & See: Development of Rediff’s VOIP Engine
Duration: Jan 2006 till date
Our first major customer, Rediff.com has taken our VOIP technology and we have developed their Rediff Bol Talk & See module. We have released 2 versions of Talk and See and the project has been very successful. My role in this project was an Architect, Project Lead (Phase II) and a Development Engineer(Phase II).
Our task was to develop a module that would interact with the existing Rediff Bol Instant Messenger and enable VOIP with a Talk & See module. The solution is a completely scalable architecture with very fast reaction times of the server and minimum delay between two Rediff Bol users. The protocol for Talk & See was very similar to VQube but there were changes to accommodate the integration of Bol. The first phase was done in a blistering 3 months time. The second phase is in completion stage and would be live in a month.
Architect:
Rediff already had an Instant Messaging engine called as Bol. As an architect, I had to understand the system in Bol and design a world class solution comparable to Skype and other messengers, Rediff Talk & See. With the help of Rediff's strong datacentre and IP backbone support, we designed a solution that is far superior to other messengers in India. The first phase was a technology demonstration platform and with that success Rediff agreed for the second phase. The second phase architecture was quite a complex one involving calculated server deployment, automated server scalability, better peer-peer solutions, AEC algorithms and AGC. Best use of server bandwidth backbone had been done for the second phase by understanding the fact that latency between two machines that come under different ISP’s is much more than when the cumulative latency between the two machines with the help of Rediff backbone bandwidth.
Design Lead:
The success story of Rediff Talk & See is not only in the architecture level but also in the component design level. The components were designed in such a way that patch-up, recovery and deployments were made easier and much faster. The design of Talk & See involved in making modules with specific functions so that if any module has to be upgraded or patched up, only that module can be downloaded and replaced. A unique protocol, SMEP, Simple Message Transfer Protocol, was designed and every module uses this protocol to interact with another module, if it has to. The modularization has helped in quicker development times, easier debugging and testing methods.
Development Engineer:
Since I was working on server-side development of VQube, I continued to work on the server-side in Talk & See too. Very high importance was given for scalability, uptimes and recovery mechanism when developing the server components.
5) Toolbar: Toolbar development Manager
Duration: Jan 2006 till date
I have managed a toolbar development activity. This activity was done for Rediff.com. We have released 3 versions of Rediff toolbar. The development activity was jointly done by a 2 member team in Esqube and 2 member team in Softomate, Russia who are the SDK developers of the toolbar. My role in this project was to draw timelines for the project, give the technical requirements and specifications to the Russians, identify the modules that will be done by Esqube team and Russian team, integrate the modules, test it and deliver the toolbar to Rediff.com
Apart from developing toolbar to Rediff.com, we have also built a toolbar for our own technology called “Click to Video Talk”. We have applied for an Indian Patent with respect to this technology. We have called this Dynamic Toolbar and we have shown the working demo to many corporate companies and executives.


6) Paladion
Duration: Jan 2007 till date. 3 Phases done
The Paladion project is a relatively smaller project involving only 2 engineers. The project is to develop an application that can decode compressed RTP voice packets store the voice packets in a wav file and play the file. Different encoder/decoder with the capability to handle variable rate compressed voice was the challenge in this project. We have successfully delivered 3 phases of the project.
Role in Paladion Project: Design Team, Engineer, Test Engineer.
7) Rediff Zapper:
Duration: June 2007 to September 2007
This project involved in detecting a USB Mass storage devices and Nokia phones connected to the USB drive, copying multimedia files from them and storing them onto a temporary location in the computer hard disk. Using MFC API’s USB mass storage devices were supported. For Nokia phones, we used Nokia SDK that was freely available for download.
Roles: Design Team Lead
2) Company: CEDT, IISc
Designation: Project Consultant
Duration: 4 years. Started 4th October 1999 - Nov 2003
Project: Designing and Implementing Audio Conferencing Solutions using Voice Over IP (VOIP).
I joined Centre for Electronics Design and technology soon after my B.E. as a Project Assistant. My task was to code components of VOIP system. This project was aimed to provide a complete corporate telecom solution with the facilities of Audio Conferencing, Voice Mail, PBX facilities and Gateway connectivity to the PSTN.
The system had client server architecture and I was handling the GUI of the client. After one year of experience, I was designated as a Consultant and I was involved in all design activities of the project. The system architecture had these components: Call Processor, Voice Server, Voice Mail Server and Soft Clients. My tasks as a consultant were to develop the Call Processor and the client modules. Two other research students and an Assistant professor were involved in all design decisions after which I realized them in code. Our aim was to design world class solutions with unique ideas that did not exist with other VOIP products (ex Mediaring, dialpad etc) that time. With our innovative ideas, we designed the Call Processor so that it could handle 10 times more traffic than any other VOIP server.
We had designed a Voice server that handles multi-party audio conferencing. This server was also unique since it could listen on both unicast and multicast addresses and could switch packets from unicast to multicasts.
The Voice Mail implementation also had unique ideas. A Voice mail could be recorded, edited (cut, copy paste, append, insert etc), save as draft, and many other features just like an email. The implementation of voice mail retrieval was also unique and had both download and real time streaming options. An IEEE paper was also published with this idea.
In 2001, we had a PSTN gateway that used a Dialogic PCI card and one could dial out local numbers sitting right from the PC. As this was a violation of Indian Law, we have not taken this forward as a product but only as a technology showcase.
Since our product was an ideal Enterprise VOIP tool, our system had all PBX features like Call Forward, Call Forward on No answer, Call Forward on Reject, Call Forward Follow Me, Auto call back, Call Pickup and Call Park.
With the help of proprietary protocol, the client could support 32 simultaneous calls, Active on one call and out on hold on all other. The calls could be 1-1 calls or N Party conferences. There were two methods of creating a conference. One by inviting another user/upgrading a 1-1 call to a N party conference and the other by the mode of booking a conference.
Since, our protocol was proprietary, by 2003 SIP had also gained popularity and I wrote a small piece of code that could interact with a sip library and make sip calls. The module was only for demonstration but not a full fledged application.
By 2003, the whole system was completed, with testing and debugging. Writing test cases, following bugs with bug track systems and updating the documents were some of the tasks that I had done.
Research Activities in CEDT:
I had taken active participation in the Research Student Group of CEDT under the guidance of Prof H S Jamadagni and Dr. Joy Kuri, who was also our project lead in the project that I worked. Our research group had a weekly meeting, discussing research help, further research directions, technical suggestions and implementation methods.
• Together with Mr. Haresh Dagale, MSc student at CEDT, I collected information on real-time UDP packet characteristic for his Master thesis. This task involved to find out the % of UDP packet drop during peak periods and off-peak periods. The aim of the task was to find out a better method of VOIP packet transmission across the internet, which was Packet-Interleaving.
• Improvisations to the above MSc thesis were taken by another MSc student Mr Samar. The aim was to find out a way to conceal the packet drop in an effective way such that the user does not notice the repeated packet that was played. A technique was used which was called the Time-Scale modification. .
• The third student with whom I interacted and discussed was Abid Aaquil. A new technique used for packet loss concealment was used called as Multiple Description coding.
Patents and Papers
Patents.
As a company policy, description of the patent cannot be revealed
Click to Talk using Dynamic Toolbar technology. Indian Patent and PCT applied. Received provisional grant from Indian Patent Office and published by the PCT.
Integrated Media Communication. Patent applied.
sCommerce. Patent applied



PERSONAL DETAILS

Date of Birth: 24th July 1978
Nationality: Indian Passport: Yes, Valid up to 2010
Other Interests/passions:
I learn the instrument Violin and I have been learning for the past 14 years. I do not perform professional concerts but only within known group of people.
I also play Badminton (indoor) and I have represented IISc Badminton team. I have won many prizes and have played against many top players of my state. I have also won the 3rd place in doubles category for corporates.

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