Our team completed work on Light Speed Framework 6.0, incorporating .NET 6, EF Core 6, and the latest version of Kendo UI; and for the first time we are ahead of the curve. Visual Studio 2022 introduced some unique challenges by requiring all extensions to be 64-bit. Jason upgraded and began maintaining two essential Visual Studio extensions (Web Compiler and Bundler & Minifier) that will continue to make them available for free on the Visual Studio Marketplace. Along with the significant performance improvements, the latest version brought some nice features, like freezing columns in a grid as users scroll through records, all of which made our customers quite pleased with the results.
Light Speed Framework 5.0 made it live with .NET 5 and EF Core 5 and saw performance gains from EF Core enhancements. The Kendo UI library was updated with their latest components and the enterprise-ready framework proved itself, as four of our older customers migrated their software to this release and saw immediate performance advantages.
While managing to stay up-to-date with .NET Core as Microsoft had been going through their revisions, Light Speed Framework 4.0 was built from the ground up with the sole focus to keep it light. Rather than including all options, the new architecture was to build a lighter framework but provide the ability to swap components easily. This was our first product that used .NET Core 3.1 with EF Core 3 with as little overhead as possible. Dependency Injection (DI) became the standard way of development.
As much as we were ready to launch the next version of our framework, Microsoft updated their roadmap and .NET Core became the new standard. Microsoft's primary focus was to allow .NET solutions to be compatible with non-intel architectures. Our team re-engaged and started developing the next version of our framework to keep up with the new roadmap.
Our team re-engineered the framework from the ground up and delivered Light Speed Framework 3.0 that was purely based on Visual Studio and Entity Framework ORM utilizing Microsoft MVC Paradigm. The performance was unparalleled to the older frameworks which made it a no-brainer for many of our customers to upgrade to this version. In addition, we introduced HTML5 components and Dashboards that made our framework an instant hit for new prospects as well.
While Microsoft was teasing with their roadmap of .NET MVC platform, Light Speed Solutions started focusing on using industry standard tools (Visual Studio) and technologies (ORM – Object Relationship Model) to build future versions of their framework.
Light Speed Framework 2.0 was introduced and expanded on grid functionality so that each user can have a customized view of data. This one feature alone allowed users to slice and dice their data and save customized data views for future use. Another feature of the framework was the introduction of a multi-tenant model as the demand for SaaS started to mature. Most of the metadata we are using in our latest version was introduced in Light Speed Framework 2.0.
As client demand increased, the official version of Light Speed Framework 1.0 was completed that introduced a single grid model and additional features to improve coding efficiency. The average development effort was reduced by 20%. The team realized that the focus must be more on run-time updates, as some small design-time updates can take weeks to be deployed in an enterprise environment.
As Iron Speed Designer helped grow the company, the need for shifting design time changes to run-time became quite obvious. Jason Moore and Akesh Gupta explored their synergies and later that year, the beta version of Light Speed Framework was built to introduce run-time design capabilities and replaced native .NET controls with Telerik components into Iron Speed Designer, providing more scalability with limited resources.
As the demand for custom software solutions increased and it was hard for customers to understand that a networking company can also write software, Akesh Gupta started Light Speed Solutions, LLC. focusing on the mid-size custom software market.
Akesh Gupta discovered an upcoming startup Iron Speed Designer which catapulted their business to the next level, as the product helped Light Speed win enterprise-level development contracts. While for many, Iron Speed Designer was a code generator, Akesh Gupta realized that the true strength of Iron Speed Designer was a framework that brought consistency to development projects.
As the business grew, Akesh Gupta joined Mary Ann Skrezec and they launched Light Speed Networks, LLC., an infrastructure and custom software company, to help a broader range of customers. The company hired three employees that year to keep up with the demand.
At the turn of the century, and the start of the internet boom, Akesh Gupta assisted many organizations with their custom software. His first software in the real estate industry allowed for faster sharing of critical data, as that led to faster closings of home loans. As he worked in various industries, he saw the need for custom solutions in almost every industry to fill their gaps for process improvement.
Right after the birth of his daughter, Akesh Gupta decided to go solo and started offering infrastructure, software and training solutions to the SMB market in the metro New York area. His passion about sharing his knowledge worked for him, as most of the customers were his prior students.
After five years of building products for the utilities industry, Akesh Gupta ventured into the infrastructure industry, starting with Novell and Microsoft, and within two years achieved all certifications Microsoft had to offer at that time. His passion for sharing knowledge made him one of the most popular Microsoft Certified Trainer in the community.
At Northwestern University, Akesh Gupta's interest shifted from mechanical engineering toward software development. His first project was to integrate AutoCAD & C++ that allowed users to review the cost of manufacturing right at the time of designing their specifications. After graduation, he continued his interest as a junior software developer using ADABAS/NATURAL for a consulting organization.