Management Decision!

A Really Nice One. Don't Miss the Moral

Once PVNR (PV Narasimha Rao), L.K.Advani and Laloo Prasad Yadav were travelling in an autorickshaw. They met with an accident and all three of them died.

Yama Raja was waiting for this moment at the doorstep of death. He asks PVNR and Advani to go to HEAVEN. But, for Laloo, Yama had already decided that he should be sent to HELL.

Laloo is not at all happy with this decision. He asks Yama as to why this discrimination is being made. All the three of them had served the public. Similarly, all took bribes, all misused public positions, etc. Then why the differential treatment? He felt that there should be a formal test or an objective evaluation before a decision is made; and should not be just based on opinion or pre conceived notions.

Yama agrees to this and asks all the three of them to appear for an English test.

PVNR is asked to spell "INDIA" and he does it correctly.

Advani is asked to spell "ENGLAND" and he too passes.

It is Laloo's turn and he is asked to spell "CZECHOSLOVAKIA".

Laloo protests that he doesn't know English. He says this is not fair and that he was given a tough question and thus forced to fail with false intent.

Yama then agrees to conduct a written test in Hindi (to give another chance assuming that Laloo should at least feel that Hindi would provide an equal platform for all three). PVNR is asked to write "KUTTA BOLA BHOW BHOW". He writes it easily and passes. Advani is asked to write "! BILLY BOLI MYAUN MYAUN". He too passes.

Laloo is asked to write "BANDAR BOLA GURRRRRR....." Tough one. He fails again.

Laloo is extremely unhappy. Having been a student of history (which the other two weren't), he now requested for all the 3 to be subjected to a  test in history Yama says OK but this would be the last chance and that he would not take any more tests. PVNR is asked: "When did India get Independence?". He replied "1947" and passed. Advani is asked "How many people died during the independence struggle? ". He gets nervous. Yama asked him to choose from 3 options: 100,000 or 200,000 or 300,000. Advani catches it and says 200,000 and passes.

It's Laloo's turn now. Yama asks him to give the Name and Address of each of the 200,000 who died in the struggle. Laloo accepts defeat and agrees to go to HELL.

Moral of the story : IF YOUR MANAGEMENT HAS DECIDED TO SCREW YOU, THERE IS NO ESCAPE.

LETTER OF THE EDITOR OF "THE TIMES OF INDIA " TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA

I am born and brought up in Mumbai for last fifty eight years. Believe
me, corruption in Maharashtra is worse than that in Bihar . Look at
all the politicians, Sharad Pawar, Chagan Bhujbal, Narayan Rane, Bal
Thackray , Gopinath Munde, Raj Thackray, Vilasrao Deshmukh all are
rolling in money. Vilasrao Deshmukh is one of the worst Chief
ministers I have seen. His only business is to increase the FSI every
other day, make money and send it to Delhi , so Congress can fight
next election. Now the clown has found new way and will increase FSI
for fishermen, so they can build concrete houses right on sea shore.
Next time terrorists can comfortably live in those houses, enjoy the
beauty of the sea and then attack our Mumbai at their will.

Recently, I had to purchase a house in Mumbai. I met about two dozen
builders. Everybody wanted about 30% in black. A common person like me
knows this and with all your intelligence agency & CBI, you and your
finance ministers are not aware of it. Where all the black money goes?
To the underworld, isn't it? Our politicians take help of these
goondas to vacate people by force. I myself was victim of it. If you
have time please come to me, I will tell you everything.

If this has been a land of fools, idiots, then I would not have ever
cared to write to you this letter. Just see the tragedy. On one side
we are reaching moon, people are so intelligent; and on the other
side, you politicians have converted nectar into deadly poison.I am
everything - Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Scheduled Caste, OBC, Muslim
OBC, Christian Scheduled Caste, and Creamy Scheduled Caste; only what
I am not is INDIAN. You politicians have raped every part of Mother
India by your policy of divide and rule.

Take example of our Former President Abdul Kalam. Such an intelligent
person; such a fine human being. But you politician didn't even spare
him and instead choose a worthless lady who had corruption charges and
insignificant local polititian of Jalgaon WHO'S NAME ENTIRE COUNTRY
HAD NOT HEARD BEFORE. Its simple logic your party just wanted a rubber
stamp in the name of president. Imagine SHE IS SUPREME COMMANDER OF
INDIA 'S THREE DEFENCE FORCES. What morale you will expect from our
defence forces? Your party along with opposition joined hands, because
politicians feel they are supreme and there is no place for a good
person.

Dear Mr Prime minister, you are one of the most intelligent person, a
most learned person. Just wake up, be a real SARDAR. First and
foremost, expose all selfish politicians. Ask Swiss banks to give
names of all Indian account holders. Give reins of CBI to independent
agency. Let them find wolves among us. There will be political
upheaval, but that will be better than dance of death which we are
witnessing every day. Just give us ambience where we can work honestly
and without fear. Let there be rule of law. Everything else will be
taken care of.

Choice is yours Mr. Prime Minister. Do you want to be lead by one
person, or you want to lead the nation of 100 Crore people?


Prakash B. Bajaj
Editor Mumbai-Times of India

The 99'club

Once upon a time......there lived a King who.....despite his luxurious lifestyle.....was neither happy nor content. One day, the King came upon a servant who was singing happily while he worked. This fascinated the King; why was he......the Supreme Ruler of the Land..........unhappy and gloomy, while a lowly servant had so much joy.

The King asked the servant, How come you are so happy?"

The man replied, Your Majesty, I am nothing but a servant, but my family and I don't need too much........ ....just a roof over our heads and warm food to fill our tummies."

The king was not satisfied with that reply. Later in the day, he sought the advice of his most trusted advisor. After hearing the King's woes and the servant's story, the advisor said, Your Majesty, I believe that the servant has not been made part of the 99 Club."

The 99 Club? And what exactly is that?" the King inquired.

The advisor replied, "Your Majesty, to truly know what The 99 Club is...........place 99 Gold coins in a bag and leave it at this servant's doorstep."

When the servant saw the bag.......he took it into his house. When he opened the bag, he let out a great shout of joy....... Wow....so many gold coins!

He began to count them. After several counts.....he was at last convinced that there were 99 coins. He wondered, "What could've happened to that last gold coin? Surely, no one would leave 99 coins! "

He looked everywhere he could..... But that last coin was elusive. Finally, exhausted, he decided that he was going to have to work harder than ever to earn that gold coin and complete his collection.

From that day....the servant's life changed. He was overworked, horribly grumpy, and castigated his family for not helping him make that 100th gold coin. He felt so unhappy all the time.... He Stopped singing while he worked.

Witnessing this drastic transformation. ...the King was puzzled. When he sought his adviser's help, The advisor said, Your Majesty, the servant has now officially joined The 99 Club."

He continued, " The 99 Club is a name given to those people who have enough to be happy but are never contented... ....because they're always yearning and striving for that extra 1.......telling themselves: "Let me get that one final thing and then I will be happy for life ."

We too can be happy with very little in our lives....... But the minute we're given something bigger and better...... We need to watch out for our monkey minds ........which may want even more!

We lose our sleep........our happiness... ...we hurt the people around us.......all these as a price for our growing needs and desires.

Enjoy your club membership if you are already a member ! I just resigned from this club ….

An interesting read this morning!!!

Warren BUFFET, please pass on to Youngsters. "I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute" Warren Buffett

Your Browser in five years

Just happened to read this post recently

http://www.pcworld.com/article/199071/your_web_browser_in_five_years.html?tk=rss_news

I believe the browser applications would go a long way than just as mentioned here in the next five years.

Here are some more that could be possible in the coming years

1. Browser Watch: We already have a watch phone (from LG i guess). But a simple electronic strap with connectivity solutions with customized browser can do wonders than just being a watch on your wrist. Of course it would have its limitations, but certainly it would have its space to score as well.

2. Web Assist: With more of Could Computing, SOA, Web Services, Social Media inputting the internet with loads of information, browser assisting to grab the rite information. Know that we have lots of toolbars, sidewiki's etc plugged into the browser, but a real all in all assistant would be real welcome in this space. Rather than doing a mere search or reading a news or tweeting the status, this assistant would be a good companion to be online, stay online and make use of being online.

3. Browser Tagging: An interesting piece to watch for. Your browser need not just stop at showing you pages, it can go further and send you info to the place you are in the format you want. If for some reason your mobile browser cranks, you can start the browser in your machine through a call/sms/tweet and have it scan the web for the info you want and send it to you by sms/IVRS call. You might wonder if this is something a browser should do. But if you have all the tools / assisting entities tagged to your browser wouldn't this be the next logical step for your browser???

cheerz,

Sadagopan.

Three IT Musketeers of this decade

Cloud Computing, Mobile Applications & Tablets

Mobility of computing with professionals more than ever before, availability of innovative products for supporting that cause shall be the IT order in this decade. Most of the innovations, products and applications shall be centered around this for this decade and if possible more than that (but I believe something more shall take center stage in the later half of the decade, would be too early to predict that given that consumers haven't got hold of the latest technovations that predicted for them yet). Its not troo hard to understand that technovations mean technological innovations.

Through cloud computing the industry shall deliver over the air service that requisite individuals or corporates or SMEs can grab and take advantage of. Mobile applications that are standalone or that which make use of the cloud or a combination of both shall be available more in number as we progress through this decade. Tablets which can act as mini computers strong enough to wield cloud & mobile applications that are for office/individual use shall be available in different forms based on different needs. Thus the availability of a public/private infrastructure thats more or less tailor made and to an extent customizable shall provide more decisive power to the consumer in what he wants to suffice his needs of business.

Locally maintained data centers shall be out of fashion while on demand or hosted data centers shall regain market space. Unlike in the past wherein few providers got together in providing data centers and applications, the order of the future would be lot many providers shall come together on a need basis and accordingly serve the needy. There shall be lot many umbrella providers as well who take pre customized sets from existing set of providers and market them to needy business houses or individuals. Thus the layer of implementation and consultancy shall grow. Though this might look like the customer is distanced from the product company, in reality it won't be. Because customers shall be getting to be more aware of which production house provides what product that could be an advantage to the company's business /individuals requirements. Product companies can still maintain their relationship with the customer.

Product companies can now have more inputs from more sectors unlike customer and customer groups, customer implementation groups would also play a major role in cloud implementation. The range of solutions shall vary based on these inputs. Incidentally there will be limited products that are of one size fits all thing. Instead there would be a variety of size offerings from product company's that could be altered or used as it is by implementation partners.

Another significant thing to note would be whoever gets to know the business info earlier shall be in a position to build a product on that. The earlier design cycles for product development maintained by huge corporate houses shall be altered by this. Companies have to get the product as early as possible when the requirements are found out. Digging out for requirements shall be passe and that customers shall be more knowledgeable in asking for requirements and if companies don't oblige then there would be others to do that. Hence sooner the better.

The cloud shall remain heterogeneous with different applications talking to several different platforms owned by different vendors. Stability and reliability of open source communities shall be tested to the fullest and that there would lot more freelancers in that category whose services corporates, SMEs and individuals shall take advantage of. There is a necessity for Implementation communities to share their knowledge more in this decade which shall eventually happen even if they didn't want to through lot many freelancers. In this decade lot many IT SMEs shall see their light through personal or VC fundings. VC fudnings shall become more diverse and precise in nature during this decade with respect to IT investments.

signing off for now...

cheerz,

Sadagopan.

Cloud Computing (lateral thinking) contd...

Cloud computing will do to businesses what java & linux had done for open source. It will open the gates of a new world that not many had ventured into. And those who had ventured into it haven't seen the best or most of it. Its an untrodden forest if I may call it. Cloud computing shall redefine several business models and there could also be several new business models that could computing can throw open to. Nobody imagined a java based mobile application the day when when java was unleashed to the world. As and when more and more people got to know java, they looked at it in different different perspectives and took it to places it hasn't been dreamed of. And today we have a linux based mobile OS on top which there could java based applications all of which are from open source.  In similar way, Cloud computing shall go places and I wouldn't say "before settling down" because I don't see any place where things like java and cloud computing can settle. Its a constant endeavor in redefining itself.

Cloud computing as I see it shall be embraced by SME's more in the initial stage and by their ability to pace up and adapt more quicker than corporations shall be the guiding force for future evolutions. Interoperability shall be the key for could computing. More and more office, social and communication tools shall emerge (though they could be called by the existing familiar names for relevance sake) which shall inter operate in the cloud thereby reducing the IT infrastructure for individuals and companies altogether. In early days when transport system evolved people used more of their own personal transport facilities. But as and when need arose, public transport system had evolved and had been there to serve the needy. Likewise, when IT had emerged as desktops, it was consumed on need based by individuals and corporates, SMEs. Now it had reached a point wherein most of this IT infrastructure can be made public thereby reducing the burden on individuals & corporates. Business would now have the flexibility of not carrying the data center load for running their businesses. Instead they could source it from an vendor and have their or vendor(s) cloud for managing the software part of their business. This would enable them to focus on their core competency without the loss of technology. And technologies could flourish without the aberration of affecting businesses in real time.

Corporates are looking to have the early mover advantage by moving or up taking could services or providing them. But instead as always it had been, consumer interest will be the driving force of what a business would approach to and shall remain that way. Since many couldn't predict consumer behavior in this spot, people having better knowledge of it shall thrive in it, rest shall thrive based on trial-error funda. Consumers exposure to cloud computing had been limited in one context and considerable in one context. If you look at web based social networking & communication consumer awareness to what they want is remarkable in the cloud computing space. But when it comes to B2B/B2C, their exposure had been limited to few like banking, auctioning, education, etc its limited. But this limitation is shrinking fast as the consumer will be experiencing more and more exposure to these in coming days. Given that exposure, whoever gets to understand it shall be leading the change in cloud computing.

cheerz,

Sadagopan.

Cloud Computing (lateral thinking)

Cloud computing, SOA, SaaS, et al, ok we know about it.

An interesting and most important question for businesses would be

Is your business ready for Cloud Computing, SOA, SaaS?

Does Web services or over the air service (shall detail this term more further in this post) mean anything to your business?

Is your business mature enough to tread a different path?

More questions like this come up to mind as I think more on this.

Before I analyse the back ground to these questions, let me explain over-the-air service

By Over-the-air-Service could be any service that a customer wants can be Requested or Serviced just over the air. Services like Customer Care Call center, SMS based services, Web services all can be considered into this one term. Basically any service that a customer of your business needs should be addressable through Over-the-air-Service.

Over-the-air-Service, whats about it?

With todays technological advancements, there are several ways that a person likes to communicate. With wi-fi and 3G networks gaining ground, there are new avenues for communication. Rather addressing it one by one, businesses need to rethink on the service delivery model considering the various communication modes that the customer prefers to use than the conventional telephonic/email/web request pattern. You should be ready to accept a tweet, wall posting, scrap, cloud requests, automated voice requests.

The essence of SOA or SaaS or Cloud Computing is evolution of the business and its processes, with potential widespread impact across the organization -- even to the point of potential reorganization of personnel resources to receive and deliver the service to customers.Businesses need to rethink on their delivery competencies based on this and have to make changes accordingly. If only your business is ready for this change then can you assume that you can take full advantage of cloud computing. There is lot more to add to this over-the-air-service and lot more to be fine tuned for this approach. But essence of this would be to reach out to the customer in whatever fashion he prefers rather than whatever fashion you can afford. thisis a pragmatic shift in running the business and hence the need for analyzing whether you are ready for it. Of course maintaining a website through or putting a shopping cart can be done through Clouds/SOA, but you won't reap the full potential of this technological advancement.

With little back ground on over the air service, if you look at what and all could be possible by this over-the-air-service, then it is really limitless. You could/would be able to do whatever you wanted to do for your business through IT. Thats the essence of it. If you ask, is Cloud Computing the ultimate solution, then its not. Could computing helps the heterogeneous IT environment much more than any other form of implementation. By this you could cut costs, experiment with your infrastructure more often, thereby expanding your business's IT limits. you can have multiple clouds co-existing with your existing infrastructure much more seamlessly than any other implementation you could have carried out in early days till now.

Further to this there is this new emerging aspect of cloud computing called cloud sourcing. Ypu could read more about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudsourcing

Signing off for now...

cheerz,

Sadagopan.

A thought on Enterprise Application Development Environments

Gone are the days when developers used IDEs.

IDEs are passe, ADEs are in now, but they too aren't complete. There is lot many integration that had happened while moving from IDEs to ADEs, but still there is a sense of incompleteness when it comes to building an application from scratch till delivery and maintenance. If we could split up the s/w application cycle, it essentially revolves around requirements, prototypes, architectural tools, version control system, coding environment, bugzilla/db, patch & release tools, standards checkers, delivery tools. This list isn't exhaustive, but in s/w development life cycle these are essential.

In any s/w application be it based on python, perl, java, flash, C, C++, etc. the above cycle holds good. And in larger ERP or SCM or cloud applications we would have multiple development methodologies and tools co-existing to develop that entire application. In view of that the ADE should be single/multi level collaborative environment integrating all these pieces. As of now we have them as individual IDEs like requirements and prototyping could fall into one category and the product management who would be the prime owners of this space shall have their own methods/processes in documenting the requirements feeding them to development, tracking changes, prototyping the UI, etc. And this input is fed to the development by a selective set of mechanisms and from there development team takes over, creates there own set of documents, queries, technical feasibility studies, architectural guidelines, coding principles, etc in their own set of tools. Once this formalized, a summary of this representation is forwarded to the testing / QA team who then make their own set of documents, use a set of tools, log bugs for identified issues, etc., Further from here the validated QA certified code sect needs to be packaged together and a suitable patch & release testing are done. again there would be a set of different tools that would be used for this purpose. Any issues here, bugs are logged and tracked by development passing through again the QA clutches successfully and again reaches the release stage.

In all these we could see that through out the cycle at each stage a set of tool, documentation and processes/procedures are followed. Presently these stages are so disconnected that the the cycle undergoes a larger time delay in several thousand man hours while building enterprise scale s/w products. If all this are integrated there could be huge benefits that can be leveraged. Following are a few that I could think of at the moment.

• Reduction in Time Delay
• Reduction in Duplicate issues
• Better Communication between stages of development
• Better Traction from any stage to any stage within the cycle.
• Standardized procedures/processes while allowing scope for newbies
• Better visibility in terms of product completion
• Better understanding of impacts due to internal/external changes
• Lower costs of implementation
• Scalability has to be taken care
• Better in terms of replicating the model for multiple product based enterprise class development

A quick thinking on how the integration should be driven. If you could look through the cycle form requirements stage, identify the tools/ processes required for this stage along with the nature of integration it needs to do with the typical next stage in the cycle as well as any possible integrations it may require with other stages of the cycle. Integration should be loosely coupled from the push side, but rather be tightly coupled from the pull side. Alternatively a stage when passes on information / tasks/actions tom another stage should pass on as minimalistic info as possible it is for the target stage's tools and processes to ensure that they pull enough information based on the information passed onto it. This way an initiation from one stage to another can be done easily and the post initiation the next stage can pull in relevant info that it may require. This is applicable for the tools, processes and procedures that may be required for the next stage. This would avoid the infrequent round trips made in conventional methodologies.

Rather than merely packaging whole lot of tools and utilities if we could make the Application Development Environment better in terms of tagging and integrating it by purpose or ability, s/w product development can be lot more measurable & scalable with good quality.

cheerz,

Sadagopan.

Cloud Computing (contd...1)

So everyone in IT takes about cloud these days. Few say its the future, few under write it as having multiple standards playing spoil sport, few had already jumped on it, few waiting to get into it. so what's this cloud computing all about?

Cloud Computing is touted to be the next big thing for IT in  2010 (and for few years ahead as well). Its the most attractive technology change thats expected to lure customers towards IT spending. As customers are wary with the decade old dot com bust, but are still willing to spend for legitimate IT spending. But is Cloud Computing one of those is the question lingering in their minds. With recent GMail, twitter and facebook outages, 24*7 availability of Clouds is an impending question. Many IT big wigs believe that Cloud Computing could be a threat as well as opportunity.

So whats cloud computing for those who dunno about it.

Cloud computing essentially is a Software As A (web) Service (SaaS) method wherein companies are coming up with web services for their products or products that they want to position in the cloud. Alternatively cloud computing is a set of web services that are exposed over the web that customers could utilize to build their own set of business features and there by letting their business spread over the web, minimize paper costs, limit IT admin, uptake newer technology seamlessly, etc etc... There are several advantages for cloud computing and also notably several bottlenecks hindrances to get through. Now there is a lot of debate going around on the software as a service (as to what all it should contain and odd...) that I prefer to leave for another blog. This blog is to provide an overview of cloud computing that should be easily understood by web-savvy companies/public than techie's.

Now this SaaS is coined a new term SOA that is Service Oriented Architecture. As the essence of SaaS itself is being debated its no wonder that there are discussions as to whether SaaS and SOA are same or not and how to term it for their products et al. To me its the same whether you call it a web service or SaaS or SOA it all renders to deliver services over the web through one or more software products. Lot many technology companies had come up with several SaaS/ SOA products or platforms. These platforms are either standalone products or have products within themselves that enable the developer to produce a cloud/ web service based product. As more more and features or standards are engrossed by SOA/SaaS, its imperative that the latest release of an SOA product / platform gets superseded by another product release or by its own updated release. Most of these products are open source or rather free software thus it is a more lucrative option for SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) that look to provide their services over the web with limited investment (that covers time, cost, development, etc)

So what is this Web Service?

For this you can refer to this wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_service

I suggest if you are new to web services or cloud computing better take a quick look at the above URL for an initial understanding.

Now moving on that you have an understanding of web service, a cloud in cloud computing terms is defined as a collection of web services.

Essentially say if an online publishing company wants to benefit from cloud computing, then it would utilize the existing clouds floated around by multiple vendors in launching its website, managing it and making business transactions through it as well. It sounds so easy but then its a constantly changing environment as of today and thus the way you want to launch, manage, sell and service your product might be different from today and tomorrow.

Explaining it further, cloud computing could be utilized for various software aspects right from building my own website, VPN, enterprise applications, document collaboration, etc etc. all that IT that you are involved with or planned to get involved with can be done with cloud computing.

With this understanding, cloud computing can be bifurcated further like private cloud (one thats available for VPN), protected cloud (available for partners, associates, integrators et al) and public cloud (available for the entire public). The essence of this bifurcation is to segregate data, products and clouds in a secure way. the secure way am referring here is to do with business confidentiality. Of course there is another security point of view that is the data/functional security associated with these clouds. But I believe this aspect is associated with all of cloud computing not just a particular format or sector. For example a banking transaction made through a public cloud has to be secured enough from hackers and infringements.

There are several people and/or organizations presently working on setting standards /protocols for coming up with an unified cloud computing service that can interact with several clouds over the web and can respond in a unified manner.

Signing off at the moment, shall get back with more on cloud computing later.

thanks,

Sadagopan.

Cloud Computing

Recent buzz (more than a buzz) is that to reduce IT costs and still leverage latest technology product features, customers are increasingly considering the Web Services, SOA & Cloud Computing.

I have been used to a saying from my childhood days, rather had been taught by my parents that "What you sow today is what will you reap tomorrow". This phrase can be considered for so many situations.

Its very much applicable for Cloud Computing scenario as well. I believe Cloud Computing is starting to grow from its nascent stage to become a fuller trust worthy implementation. Cloud Computing promises several features like interoperability, shared services, packaged tools/features and so on so forth, as it grows there are several fact that the cloud providers and consumers has to consider right from feasibility, scalability, security, availability, et al. What does it mean for ERP vendors, integrators and its consumers. Does it offer the same functionality over the cloud while minimizing the infrastructure costs?

All these are yet to be explored. Early movers have an advantage of garnering the requisite visibility amongst the consumers, but do run the risk of learning through mistakes. As and when the cloud grows there is lot more potential for it to flow into mobile devices. Essence of cloud computing is that I don't need an infrastructure but a device that supports browser that can let the cloud pass through it. In that case mobile device computing would grow resulting in influx of lot more netbooks and smart phones. Desktops is bound to nosedive during this era of mobile computing (a thing to watch as it could reduce infrastructure costs for IT technology companies as well).

cheerz,

Sadagopan.