Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing Software Development

What motivates companies to consider outsourcing development as part of their business model? Additional capacity, executing on larger business goals, saving money, and accessing skills not available in-house. However, there are plenty of challenges and potential pitfalls if outsourcing partnerships are not effectively integrated, leading to low employee morale, poorly written code. 

Disadvantages of Outsourcing

Quality 

A lot of dev shops around the world hire low-level talent ill-equipped to work with clients, or pitch an “A team” ll the certified partners in our global network have a proven track record and scalable practices in place to maintain the high quality of their work and resources. 

Company morale

However, some staff may view outsourcing as a threat to their role within the organization, which can lead to a decrease in productivity and reluctance to integrate an outsourced partner into the team. The vast majority of the time, outsourcing is not designed to replace in-house employees but is used in parallel with ramping up headcount internally.

Communication

Time-zone differences where there is limited workday overlap can also lead to a breakdown in communication when expectations are not appropriately set and Outsourcing can run into problems if there is a cultural misalignment with the partner company and/or the development team has poor English skills.

Advantages of Outsourcing Software Development

Saving time

Finding and interviewing candidates, negotiating compensation and onboarding a new employee takes time – only for some to leave a year or two later for a new opportunity. Working with an outsourcing partner allows you to delegate a lot of the recruitment process 

Cost factors

The average rate for an engineer is far lower in Latin America, Eastern Europe or Asia than in the United States, the UK or Australia. We work with developers worldwide. Our certified partners must meet more than 200 criteria

Finding the right skill set

It also allows organizations to leverage fractional skill sets they may not have the ability or need to hire full time. Due to domestic talent shortages in the US, Western Europe, and Australia, outsourcing allows companies to fill gaps, and We work with more than 30,000 software engineers in 40 countries across the world, so you’ll always be able to find qualified developers for any project, large or small.

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Top 5 Reasons to use Drupal

Drupal is a digital experience management system to drive web content and multichannel, personalized experiences that help your organization connect with users, customers and visitors wherever they are.

Flexibility

Many people chose to work with WordPress because of their available plugins, for everything from SEO to social media and more. Drupal’s version of plugins are called modules. Modules are free and contain many of the same pieces of functionality that are available using WordPress plugins, especially in Drupal 8.

Functionality

Drupal’s functionality goes much Deeper than WordPress. Drupal has more features, but if you don’t know how to use them they are confusing and a hinderance. Besides, This creates a learning curve when it comes to using Drupal but ultimately provides more power to the Drupal platform and its users.

Ease of Use

If you have limited knowledge of website development, WordPress is easier to understand. There is a WYSIYWG editor and drag-and-drop functionality to help you start blogging or make easy website updates.

Security

Security is one of the biggest differentiators between Drupal and WordPress. While Drupal, and the entire open source community, has seen its share of security fears the platform has enterprise level security and provides in-depth security reports. The volunteers in the Drupal community have shifted their full attention to Drupal 8 development and Drupal 7 support, so there is a lack of resources necessary to release security fixes.

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Why HTTP status codes are important?

In fact, there are over 40 different HTTP status codes. Every time you’re clicking on a URL in your browser, a server will respond with one of these HTTP status response codes. And if you own a website, knowing these codes can help you improve your online presence.

Below, you’ll find out exactly why HTTP status codes are important, and how they can help you and your business. You’ve probably seen HTTP status codes before when a page you were trying to open wouldn’t load. Maybe you came across a 404 Not Found, or maybe a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.

What is HTTP?

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) allows for the communication between clients and servers on the World Wide Web.

This request is parsed to create all sorts of sub-requests. As such, one request asks for a specific image, another for a snippet of text, and so on. Hypertext Transfer Protocol communication follows a few steps:

• The server receives the request.
• The server processes the request.
• The client receives the response.
• The server returns an HTTP response.
• The client sends an HTTP request to the server.

The client is usually your web browser. However, it can also be something else, like a robot crawling pages for a search engine index, for example. So, say you want to open a web page. Your browser sends the HTTP request to the server, asking to fetch the HTML document that constitutes that web page.

What are HTTP status codes?

In our example of the web page request, the server would have responded with an HTTP 200 OK status code, with the requested HTML document included in the response.

Status codes are divided into five different classes or categories. Each HTTP response status code is made up of three digits. One digit for the category, two digits for further identification of the unique status code. Of course, HTTP requests don’t always receive the same successful response. And that’s why there are many different HTTP status codes.

Another common example is a 504 Gateway Timeout, signifying the server couldn’t respond to the request in time. You might have seen this one when trying to get festival tickets the moment they’re released. A well-known example is the 404 Not Found error, which means the server can’t find the requested resource. This can happen, for instance, when you’re trying to go to a URL that’s been deleted.

As such, each status code gives the client information about the request they made to the server. Too many clients (people who want to buy tickets) are trying to access the server (the festival’s website) at the same time, overwhelming the site with more traffic than it can handle.

Other usages of HTTP status codes

Or maybe you wonder how it’s possible that with so much great content on your company’s site so little is actually ranking in the search results… Imagine an API on your site is down without you realizing it. Before you know it, your customers start calling customer support complaining about their bad experience with your site.

HTTP status codes and APIs

From processing payments to capturing leads, such functionalities work through APIs, and APIs work with HTTP status codes as well. Your site runs on both internal and external APIs that help provide your end-user with useful features and key functions.

Knowing what the different HTTP status codes mean means you can either fix the API through coding yourself or notify the external API about the issue. What this means is that you can monitor your APIs and the status codes they return to clients to stay on top of potential crashes.

HTTP status codes and SEO

The specific HTTP status codes returned by pages impact your website’s health in the eyes of the robot. Search engines have robots that crawl your site’s web pages so the search engine can index them. Such bots do this by following hyperlinks to different pages, requesting the server to view the page.

Alternatively, when deleting the page you were smart enough to place a 301 Moved Permanently redirect and you redirected the URL to a new, live web page instead. You’ve made the bot happy, and it’ll continue its crawl. To a bot, such a response may signify the poor health of a site. Say a bot is on your site, follows a URL you link to in an article, but the page has been deleted a while back.

The bot receives a 404 Not Found error response. So if your site contains a lot of 404 errors, your site’s rankings might drop in the search engine as a result.

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Smart Home to influence the future of Remote Work

Even before a few years back, remote work culture was limited only to a certain part of the software developers in the country. Almost every small-large scale commercial sector has mandated the remote work culture, be it a business owner or the employees.

Mainly, the remote workplace policy was first introduced in 2007. But, almost after thirteen years, it is gaining huge recognition across the globe. They now don’t have to worry about saving their money associated with the office infrastructure. Additionally, the business owners are getting additional benefits while enabling the remote work culture.

Potential Challenges Behind Remote Working

Remote working is absolutely essential in some aspects, especially during this Coronavirus outbreak. And, without online communication and data management infrastructure, several issues might arise while working from home.

Mainly, in this perspective, two possible problems are addressed by the employees- One is an ineffective online management service and the other is inadequate communication with the authorities. However, certain limitations are associated with productive remote working. Not everyone has efficiently adapted to this advanced remote work culture. Some of the employees are still struggling to adjust to this working pattern.

Is There Any Solution To These Challenges?

You can easily contact a reputable communication and online management service for a smooth workflow. Obviously, every problem has a possible solution. Moreover, starting from various Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions to collaboration platforms and video conferencing tools, the list goes on.

Even there are plenty of project management tools that will be highly essential to overcome these remote working challenges. Likewise, there are plenty of solutions that the employees can opt for to solve these online problems. However, to proficiently use these tools, you must have a fast and secure network connection and an ideal remote work environment.

VPN Solutions Available for the Remote Workers

These solutions will permit enterprises to provide safe access to their employees while operating the remote work culture. Here are some of the potential VPN solutions that you must try:

• For safe browsing, implement VPN browser add-ons.
• Buy a VPN router to get a protected and secured wireless internet connection.
• Install the major VPN applications on Computers, laptops, or Smartphones.

When you are working from home, several data prevention issues can arise. However, several VPN solutions can help you to overcome the hurdles. However, in certain circumstances, VPN services’ initial setup might be problematic in the COVID-19 pandemic scenario.

Future of Remote Working

When we talk about a smart home environment, it simply implies a home working environment where you can seamlessly transfer data without worrying about a single thing. Undoubtedly, the remote work environment is only going to be perfect, when it is smart.

It brings a lot of changes in our work life and it’s now hard to imagine a future without the existence of remote working. Moreover, it is now evident that this latest “work from home” trend is not going to end, at least for now.

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Top 5 Best Web Hosting Services in 2020

Picking the best web hosting service can be the difference between a good and great website. But it's not the easiest of subjects to understand if you're not au fait with the ways of the web. The best web hosting space is a competitive one, where each company puts out a lot of spin, confusing jargon and sometimes outright fibs, making it tricky to see the wood for the trees. So in this article, we’ve done the work for you. Below, you'll see our selection of best web hosting services available today.

1. Bluehost

If you’re new to hosting, we recommend Bluehost, because it provides an easy to use interface, as well as superior customer support via phone, email or live chat. Depending on your plan, your WordPress software is either installed automatically or in one click.

We'd add that Bluehost also offers the best website hosting for WordPress sites. There are also some good analytics and SEO tools to help you improve your website’s performance. And overall you get a great all-round service, making Bluehost an excellent choice for anyone, novice or experienced.

2. Siteground

Siteground provides friendly, helpful and enthusiastic 24/7 support through a wide variety of channels, including chatbots, phone, email, live chat and tickets. Calls are answered quickly, and tickets receive a first reply within 15 minutes on average.

Are you expecting to lean on technical support a lot, when setting up and managing your website hosting? Then choosing between services on the basis of price alone may turn out to be a false economy. Time is money, after all, so for the best customer service in the hosting sphere, we’d recommend Siteground.

3. HostGator

Looking for shared hosting? We recommend Hostgator. Basically, if you want to sell things on your site, you need Business; otherwise go for Hatchling if you want to host a single domain, or Baby for more than one domain.

It’s a great hosting provider in general, offering first-class uptime, performance and customer support, whatever your plan. But specifically on the shared plans, you get more for your money than with most, including a free domain, free SSL certificate, $100 of AdWords and Bing credits, unlimited free email addresses, and a website builder that includes 100+ mobile-friendly templates and an image library.

4. InMotion

Want VPS hosting? Then our pick of the providers is InMotion. While its cheaper shared hosting plans have their limits, InMotion really shines when it comes to the more advanced stuff. Inmotion also offers dedicated Sysadmin support to expedite your data migration and server setup, and a choice of optimisations depending on whether your sites are based on PHP or WordPress.

And even though their VPS plans are not the cheapest, we’d argue that they’re the best value overall, because the specs are so high. For example, on the cheapest plan you get 4GB RAM, 75GB SSD storage, 4TB bandwidth, three dedicated IPs, free SSLs and a cPanel for just $29.99 a month.

5. Hostwinds

If you or your company has the resources to pay for dedicated hosting, you don’t want to mess around. You need a hosting provider that provides a high-spec service and a range of tools to make configuration and customisation easier.

And there’s a fabulous amount of flexibility in the system. And for that, we recommend Hostwinds. With Hostwinds’ dedicated hosting, which starts at $79.50 a month, every server is fully managed, so you don’t have to waste your time worrying about mundane tasks such as sys admin duties, server monitoring and nightly backups.

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7 Benefits of Mobile App Development for Businesses

According to some estimates, the mobile app industry has the capacity of growing by as much as $100 billion by 2020. Mobile apps have become a necessity for every business, be it a startup or an established business. The importance of mobile app development in business is very palpable. Mobile applications have changed the way we do business.

These apps have made it easier for customers to get business information with the speed of light and at the same time remain connected and up to date with their favorite brand. As a business owner, you can't afford to ignore its benefits. Below are some of the ways mobile app development by app developers is beneficial for businesses.

1. Strengthen customer engagement

With your mobile app, you can install and send push and in-app notifications to as many customers as possible. This is one of the most important benefits of mobile apps to businesses. It helps in creating a direct marketing channel between businesses and their customers.

Besides, allowing for direct and effective communication. If your notifications carry important and relevant information, then customers will get attached and become loyal to your brand and will opt for your offerings whenever they are in need of it.

2. Increase accessibility

It allows businesses to be able to send notification about what's new or what has changed in their services or their products. Businesses may also establish strong relationships by offering special discounts for old customers all within the mobile app.

Another important benefit of mobile apps is that it improves business accessibility. It equally allows businesses to be able to build a strong relationship with customers which would allow the development of a genuine customer base and strong loyalty.

3. Provide value for customers

Mobile apps make it possible for you to digitalize any loyalty program that you may be offering your customers. The result of this will be greater downloads and more return customers. Rather than employing the old-collection card, you can make it possible for your customers to receive their rewards via the mobile app.

4. Transforming the retail experience

Mobile application helps in transforming the retail experience, enabling retailers to remain ahead of customer expectation through the delivery of unique customer experience. This helps to reduce the overhead cost associated with the typical brick and mortar establishment. Moreover, mobile app help to drive a digital process and model which would invariably cut down on store cost and increase profitability. There are several businesses that are built and based mainly on mobile apps. 

5. Build brand awareness and recognition

It is important as a business to acclimatize your customers with your product and/or services. A mobile app is an effective tool for building brand awareness and recognition. The more you get your customers involved with your product/services via your mobile app, the more likely or inclined they will be to patronize it. This is called effective frequency in advertising.

For the purpose of description, mobile apps can likened to a blank billboard sign, it is available for you to do whatever you wish to it. But what you should aim at doing is creating an app that your customers will love but which comes with beautiful design and is well branded. As a rule of thumb hearing and/or seeing your brand at least 20 times is what will get your noticed.

6. Stand out from the competition

By offering mobile app development service in your business you are certain to stand out from the fray. This will delightfully surprise your customers, who will be blown away by your forward-thinking approach. Currently, mobile apps for small businesses is still rare and this is where you can make a difference and take a big leap. 

7. Cultivate customer loyalty

Mobile apps have the capacity of creating strong customer loyalty. The solution to this is to employ a marketing technique that can create a true and sincere connection with customers.

With the amount of noise out there; Facebook ads, coupons, flyers. email marketing etc, it is easy for businesses to lose hold on their customers. The immense amount of advertising out there can serve as a distraction for customers who can easily lose focus.

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The future of Learning with EdTech

As many countries around the world had to impose nationwide lockdowns in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, educational institutions had to seek alternative ways to continue teaching and learning.

Technology in education is not a new trend, but in the wake of the global pandemic, it has truly gained its momentum. It was all those e-learning platforms, online courses, chatbots, and virtual assistants, electronic textbooks, and myriads and myriads of personal gadgets that helped the education system to keep going.

What Is Educational Technology?

Though EdTech places a strong emphasis on technology, the tools it utilizes are not restricted solely to high-tech appliances. It does include state-of-the-art devices like laptops, interactive whiteboards, overhead projectors, iPads, and cell phones. It also encompasses an array of software developments, such as mobile apps, computer programs, cloud-based services, and games.

EdTech is a practice aimed to improve the educational process through the development, application, and management of various tech tools and media resources. However, it should not be thought of as being synonymous with them.

What Is the Role of Edtech?

As EdTech is concerned with the ongoing search for new and effective ways of organizing the teaching-learning process, it can be used as a springboard to propel industry transformation. Educational technology already offers a wide range of products and solutions that can help universities, schools, and training centers to improve productivity both on the instructor and learner’s side.

Modern forms of knowledge acquisition go far beyond conventional classroom experience, so the education system has to adapt to the demanding needs of society. This crisis has highlighted how important it is to ensure the continuity of the educational process under any circumstances.

In addition to facilitating non-stop training and improving performance, EdTech may have other potential implications both in the fields of teaching and knowledge acquisition. And technology can help to create a connected environment that will link students to their teachers and educational content wherever they are and any time they need them.

For Educators

Educational tech is also a massive driver of redefining the role of the teacher altogether. And EdTech has the capacity to reduce teachers’ workload. It offers solutions that can abridge some of the most time-consuming processes, like lesson planning, grading, and record-keeping.

With the aid of digital content and tools, educators are moving away from being the dispensers of ageless wisdom who attempt to hammer the concepts into their students’ heads. There are also special apps and platforms that monitor students’ progress and identify the areas of improvement. The data is then relayed to educators who craft a proactive and personalized plan to help that is meticulously tailored to different learning styles and proficiency levels. Just like their students, educators also have to deal with the chores that divert them from their main mission.

For Students

Students can work together on home assignments, complete group projects, create and co-edit blog posts, podcasts, or videos. To succeed in the ever-changing global environment, students should also develop their resilience and adaptability skills. EdTech equips people with life skills they are going to need for their future. Technology saves students demanding and tedious tasks that often impede their progress.

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, mobile software developments, VR and AR-aided solutions, and robotics are already shaping the way we’ll live and work over the next decades. It means that today’s learners must already acquire the know-how to utilize all those new tech appliances to thrive in the upcoming labor market. Experts at DoMyEssay can make any writing assignment an absolute breeze.

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How tech can improve Teaching & Learning?

The education industry has not been exempt from the effects of technological development. Technological innovations are affecting virtually every industry on the planet. For most of these industries, technology has a positive impact. It has also improved communication, transportation, and nearly all manufacturing processes. However, it has not favored all industries, and it has made some industries obsolete.

1. It Helps Students to Be More Organized

Similarly, online flashcards and mind mapping apps and software can help them learn better, organize their notes, and, consequently, perform better in tests. This is not an attempt to blatantly ignore the harmful effects of technology on learning. With these resources and services where they can buy custom essay or research paper, students have little excuse to fall behind on their studies.

Some student-centered organizational apps help students remember when and where their assignments, tests, and examinations are. Students can take advantage of technological innovations to organize everything from their schedules to their notes.

2. It Helps Teachers Analyze Students Better

Artificial Intelligence can analyze test results and inform the teacher which topics students haven’t understood. It can analyze any recorded information from results to behavioral patterns to understand and help the students better.

Thanks to technology, teachers have an easier time doing this analysis. As a teacher, your role is to impart knowledge and ensure that your students understand the concepts at a particular level before advancing to the next level.

3. It Allows Distance Learning

Distance learning places the same opportunities in their hands as atypical students who attend physical classes. Some people have social anxiety issues or are unable to be around people for one reason or another.

It’s not just people who live far away from the school who benefit from distance learning. As was mentioned, technology has had a significant impact on communication. Through video-conferencing technology, for example, students from all around the globe can meet in one virtual classroom and learn and share just as students in a physical class would do.

4. It Facilitates Collaboration

Student collaboration has also become easier. For starters, students can have group discussions from the comfort of their own homes. Through collaborative learning environments, students and teachers can make the classroom a place of exchanging information.

Technology is facilitating collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. Parents can work with the teachers efficiently. Technology will keep the students track record, and the parents and teachers can easily communicate about their concerns and successes more effectively.

5. It Allows Modeling and Simulation

A teacher can run a simulation to show students how a particular experiment would progress. Civil engineering students can also use modeling to create homes.

Modeling and simulation help students to see what they are learning, which is excellent for enhancing recall. Not all experiments can be carried out in school. Some schools don’t have the resources, and some experiments may be dangerous to do. Here is where simulation and modeling come in.

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Best 5 Features for Sales Coaching Software

Sales training software is used when onboarding new sales and offering continuous training to other reps to help them ramp and reach quota consistently. This software aids the training process in that they incorporate different features that allow you to create coaching activities, assign to team members, evaluate the response, and provide feedback.

Investing in sales coaching software is rewarding because of the features and functionality that help you achieve your goals and more. Sales training software is gaining popularity because it offers a formal approach to training.

1. Practice Skills

Most importantly, it helps to sharpen areas of weaknesses before they can confidently share with their peers. Investing in sales coaching software with practice capabilities offers a comfortable and safe environment for reps to create an easy process that they can repeat.

Coaching alone is not enough. While the practice may seem so simple, it helps both managers and teams to identify areas of improvement, work on specific skills, and hone their performance. It must be accompanied by practice. During coaching, teams get better with constant practice. This helps to sharpen certain areas like delivery, messaging accuracy, communication skills, and more.

2. AI Scoring

This feature helps to save time while also providing a benchmark that will help in prioritizing feedback while distinguishing the reps that need the most help. Machine scoring and AI can automatically score, transcribe, and analyze key areas of conversation highlighting the emotions exhibited, topics covered, and speaking rate among others. When you talk about sales coaching software, AI-powered machine scoring is valuable in providing deeper insight.

3. Screen Recording

To make the most of this function you can begin by letting the sales reps practice with the video recording feature before evaluating their presentation skills on the screen recording.

Screen recording helps to go back and see if there are topics that they may have left uncovered while evaluating the presentation. Sometimes sales reps can feel like they did a superb job with a presentation when they left out important information.

4. Video Coaching

Video coaching presents an opportunity for you to see and hear your teams no matter their location. The good thing about this feature is that it is flexible allowing you to pause or restart whenever necessary.

As a trainer, you’ll need to offer feedback via video. This feature allows you to coach your team virtually through video assessments. This means that you can get a chance to ‘see’ them executing some tasks like an elevator pitch for assessment.

5. Text-Based Coaching

During coaching, your teams can practice creating responses to prospects and have managers evaluate them for key pointers like proper tone, consistency, and even accurate messaging.

Text-based coaching helps to prepare your reps for touchpoints outside meetings like responses, follow-ups, and written emails. This feature is important because it helps you to assess your sales reps’ writing skills for their communication with customers and prospects.

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What Is Outsourcing Company And How Does It Work?

 

Software Development Outsourcing is a business activity in which a company hires a third party to perform the task, process the activity, or provide services to the company.

An outside company, which is known as a service provider or third party provider, makes arrangements for workers or their own computer systems to perform tasks or services on-site at the hiring company’s own facilities or external locations.

Today's companies can outsource a number of duties or services. They often outsource IT services, including programming and application development, as well as technical support. They often outsource customer service and call functions. They can also outsource other types of work, including manufacturing processes, human resources duties and financial functions such as bookkeeping and payroll processing. Companies can outsource entire departments, such as an entire IT department or just parts of a particular department. See more some best outsourcing companies.

How outsourcing works

For a company to be able to effectively outsource responsibilities, it is important to focus on logistics as well as business partnerships. Outsourcing is a relationship management rather than service level agreements and a partnership, not a purchasing project. Maintaining and ensuring trustworthy relationships is essential in outsourcing efforts and further complicating the establishment of service levels and relationships.

Some experts recommend insisting on the existing service contract clause. It is important for companies to know when a contractual agreement will inevitably expire and ensure that stakeholders fulfill their obligations and stay on track until the contract is signed.

Reasons for outsourcing

Companies often outsource as a way to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and gain up. Companies that decide to outsource relying on the expertise of the third-party provider in performing outsourcing duties to achieve those benefits. The basic principle is that because third-party vendors focus on that particular task, they can do the job better, faster, and cheaper than the hiring company.

With such benefits, companies often decide to outsource support functions within their business so that they can focus more specific resources on their core competencies, thereby helping them achieve competitive advantage in the market.

See more:  

• Top 7 Vietnam Web Design Companies 
• Top 7 Vietnam Software Development Companies in 2020

Types of outsourcing

There are a number of ways to outsource the business process, and depending on the process one may be preferable than the other. In general, there are several types of differences based on the distance between the two members of the relationship. These categories are:

• Onshoring. Relocating work or services to a lower-cost location in the company's country.
• Offshoring. Relocating  jobs or services to overseas third-party providers.
• Nearshoring. Relocating r jobs or services to people nearby, usually bordering other regions and countries.

Outsourcing agreements can also vary widely in scope. For certain processes, such as programming or content creation, hiring freelancers for each job may be appropriate. A company outsourcing its entire IT department will require a long-term partnership with clearly stated requirements.

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