UnManaged Services: Intersection of IT, Marketing and Cloud

In defense of Outsourcing

2010-05-20T14:46:00.001-07:00

Here's an email that is floating about that landed on my inbox today (I've copied an extract to retain the essence, but also suitably anonymize the suspect):

--------------- extract --------------------------
So to help executives get a better understanding of the challenges, I am working on a whitepaper, entitled "10 Ways to Fail at Outsourcing" and need feedback from people like you to questions like:
• Why are you (not) outsourcing?
• What are you biggest development related frustrations?
• In what region(s) are you developing your software?
• Would you ever consider nearshore development?
• What lessons have you learned from your outsourcing experience?
• Are you leveraging Agile or Lean in your development toolbox?
----------------end extract --------------------------

This led to to inevitable discussion on why local firms still continue to compete and spread FUD on the basis on location?

My perspective is that this is a tired position to take, one that clients can smell a mile away. Do not start to bash offshoring simply because you don’t have any, and do not glorify near-,on-,right- (or whatever else) shoring as cost advantages start to vanish.

The battle has moved on to innovation and niches – where you deliver services from is a spectrum that the client gets to pick based on cost and risk sensitivities. As it turned out, “low value” gets better value from offshore locations such as India, and high value better from onshore historically.

Now it is entirely possible to deliver high value from offshore/India but what rankles people is that the pricing is still a hangover from the low value days(think: cost plus pricing), making the pie smaller for everyone. This is why offshoring has been always been perceived as a race to the bottom.

Innovation in India is entirely possible (multitude of examples exist - you are all aware) however unless the price points are fixed - the perception status quo will remain.

Background

2010-05-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

Dhyāna in Sanskrit (Devanagari: ध्यान) or jhāna (झन) in Pāli can refer to either meditation or meditative states. Equivalent terms are "Chán" in modern Chinese, "Zen" in Japanese, "Seon" in Korean, "Thien" in Vietnamese, and "Samten" in Tibetan.

Marketing as we know it is changing. More channels, more ways of getting in touch with people, more ways of building the brand. New media, newer media, born-in-the-last nanosecond media.

What works and what doesn't? What's a fad and what's a seismic shift? Which tactics bridge my born home, India and my adopted home, the USA?

Hence the name - one country, the arguable foundation of peace and understanding and second the foundation of selling as we know it.

The main theme of the posts will be tracing some of these in the context of services in my chosen areas. It will lead me to self-discovery and hopefully, some insight at the end. Thank you for reading.

2009-01-11T11:37:00.000-08:00

Rory Stewart: Insprirational Leader of Tomorrow

2008-12-17T17:34:00.000-08:00

Satyam Decides to Diversify, Then Changes Mind

Now this is a crazy story and almost a bit unbelievable. Per the PC World story Satyam Computers proceeded to buy assets in a construction company in an attempt to diversify and sail through the current economic crisis.

Diversification - I get. But in Construction?! A core IT services company getting into construction is like NASA diversifying into knitting....did not make sense to me.

But then, the WSJ in an article called "The truth about Satyam"came up with a much better explanation - and more details:

The construction company that was the target was called Maytas - get it? Satyam spelt backwards
The owners were already shareholders in this firm
The diversification is power play by the owners who wanted to use company capital (of up to $1.6B USD) to but this up
Investors are unforgiving to family owned businesses that have eventually gone public albeit that the company carries the name of the founder

This is a wake up call for all firms that believe that different rules apply simply because they carry their last name - after being traded in global markets. You serve a new master now - the shareholders. They may be a minority, but ignore them at your own risk... and implement your world domination plans on your own dime.

SAY chart.

2008-12-04T09:38:00.000-08:00

Surviving the Taj Mumbai Horror - (personal account of national editor of Forbes - Bob Lenzner)

Courtesy: Vikram Bhardwaj, Redileon.com

Mine is a story so improbable that if it were made into a movie, no one would believe it. It begins innocuously enough with a dinner reservation with another couple (Shiv and Reshma) at a leading restaurant in a world class hotel, and ends 12 hours later in a brazen commando assault by the Indian army that allowed us to be freed. My point in relaying this story is not to tell a sensational true story, but express my eternal gratitude and to pay tribute to the staff of The Taj Mahal Hotel, who literally sacrificed their lives in disproportionate numbers so that we could ultimately survive. They, along with the bravery of the Indian army, are the true heroes and are deserving of due respect.

Let me also preface this by saying that my wife and I were married in the Taj at the Crystal Ballroom, her parents were married there and the couple we were with were married there as well. My wife and Reshma, both Bombay girls, grew up hanging out at the Taj and the Oberoi. Many of my wife’s fondest memories are at this place where she spent so many happy hours and often partied the night away at her favorite nightclub the legendary 1900’s.

My wife Anjali and I arrived at the Taj with Shiv & Reshma at around 9:30 for dinner at The Golden Dragon, one of the better Chinese Restaurants in Mumbai. We were running a little early for dinner, (our friends had just welcomed their 1 month old into the world). We walked through the lobby and made a left to go to the restaurant. Our wives decided that they would go to a book shop on the other side of the lobby and meet us at the restaurant.

Fortunately our table wasn’t ready. Though we were a little early and had reservations, the staff told us we would have to wait 10 minutes for another table to be freed. Hearing this we then walked next door to the Harbor Bar for a drink. A minute later our wives crossed back across the lobby and joined us at the bar. We had barely sat down and begun to enjoy our beers, when the host of The Golden Dragon came to our table at the Harbour Bar and told us our table was ready. For reasons unknown, we decided to stay and finish our drinks.

Literally 30 seconds later we heard what sounded like a heavy tray smashing to the ground. This was followed by 20 to 30 more similar sounds and absolute silence. We knew something was terribly off. Our initial reaction was to crouch behind a table in the bar feet away from what we now knew were gunshots. At this time terrorists had stormed the lobby and were firing indiscriminately. The Harbor Bar is situated right next to the lobby, and while they couldn’t see us the terrorists were within 30 feet of us.

My friend, Shiv, and I knew we had to act fast. We took a chair and tried repeatedly to break the glass window in front of us, but it wouldn’t budge. We then looked and saw a stairway that was inside the bar, but across open space that could be seen from the hotel lobby. Fearlessly, the Hostess of the Harbour Bar stood at her post as all this was going on and ushered for us to go up the stairs and escape this initial wave. She literally was looking straight out into the hallway and lobby and motioned to us that it was safe to make a run for the stairwell. She also mentioned that there was a dead body right outside in the corridor. We believe this courageous woman was later murdered.

We later learned that within minutes of our decision to climb up the stairwell the terrorists came into the Harbour Bar, shot everyone who was there dead, as well as also executing everyone who was still at the Golden Dragon next door. It has also come to light that the staff of the Golden Dragon, who were equally valiant, attempted to usher their patrons into a basement wine cellar which they thought would be protected. They locked the doors in an attempt to keep the terrorists out. The terrorists unfortunately managed to break through the doors and lobbed in grenades that wound up killing everyone in the basement.

Back to the previous - The stairwell connected the Harbour Bar on the bottom to a restaurant called Wasabi on the second floor. After fleeing up the stairwell and having the “fortune” of having the terrorist choose to hunt down people in the Golden Dragon first, we ran into the annals of the kitchen on the 2^nd Floor. Our friend Shiv was familiar with these back ways as he had used them at times when his wife was pregnant and could not walk up the stairs. There we took refuge in a small office. The chef and staff were very accommodating; they served the four of us food and drink, and believe it or not were apologizing for the inconvenience we were suffering.

At this point we were hoping against hope that this was an isolated incident and police/military would arrive soon. In the office was a TV, and we and the staff were able to watch the reporting by local media. We were also able to text and e-mail with others to try to get a sense of what was happening. It became apparent that this was a full fledged terrorist assault on Mumbai. We were hopeful that our obscure location would buy us enough time to make it out safely. For about an hour or so we sat as quietly as possible in the office trying to make sense of the situation unfolding around us.

At that point 10 different locations in Mumbai were under assault, including the police station. There were reports that terrorists had even stolen a police car and were impersonating police - killing people randomly on the street. We thought that while not safe, we were in the safest place possible at that moment. There were also no points of exit from our location and the terrorists seemed to have blocked off many of the entry/exit points so we decided to stay put and hope for the best.

Fortunately in the office was a massive wooden conference table. We had positioned the table 3 feet from the door so that if anything felt amiss we could move it quickly to barricade the door. Suddenly at around 11/11:30 the kitchen went silent, we knew something was wrong. We took the table and slammed it against the door, then turned off all the lights and hid where we thought we would be the most protected from gunshots. There were 5 of us in the room, all of the kitchen staff remained in the kitchen, not one staff member had run, not one.

Suddenly “Slam”, “Slam” the door was trying to be broken down, but the door and our table wouldn’t give. Again, “Slam” “Slam”. Then again, “Slam” “Slam”. We then heard the terrorists asked the chef in Hindi if anyone was inside the office and he responded very calmly “no one is in there it’s empty”. This is the second time the staff saved our lives.

After about 20 minutes passed we heard a slight knock on the door, and a staff member whom, we had been with earlier identified himself in English. Many of the staff then stood in a line and provided safe escort down a corridor to an area called “The Chambers”. The Chambers is an exclusive members only area of the hotel. We were told that The Chambers was the safest place we could be, had been secured off that there as the only two entrances were now guarded by the army.

The mood in The Chambers was relatively calm. There were perhaps 200-300 people in the 6 rooms that comprised The Chambers. Inside, staff was serving sandwiches, alcohol and drinks. People were nervous, but cautiously optimistic. We were told that this was one of the safest places to be in all of South Mumbai. The streets were still unsecure, there had been firing at CST- a major railway station, The Oberoi Hotel and even the Cama Hospital for women and children. The army was at the time was being mobilized more fully.

Then at around 1/1:30 the mood began to get more tense. Some member of parliament had phoned into a live newscast and let the world know that 200+ people were “secure and safe in The Chambers together”. What’s better, he made sure to let it out that there were several CEOs, foreigners, and Members of Parliament in the group. The news station of course made sure to broadcast this fact as well.

Adding to the tension and chaos was the fact that via SMS and cell phones we knew that in the heritage wing of the Taj the dome was on fire and potentially moving downwards.

The staff was becoming increasingly concerned for our safety. At around 2am they decided to attempt an evacuation. We all lined up to head down a dark fire escape exit. Things were going smoothly for about 5 minutes, then grenade blasts and automatic weapon fire pierced the air. A mad stampede ensued to get out of the stairwell and take cover back inside The Chambers.

Having barely survived two chances with death already, my wife and I had discussed and decided that in the event The Chambers got broken into and became a real hostage situation we would hide in different rooms. Whilst wanting to be together if this was to be our end, our primary obligations lay with giving our children the best possible chance of having one parent alive. Given that I am American and my wife Indian, and with news reports stating that the terrorists were targeting US/UK nationals, I believed I was further endangering her life by being with her if we were to get into a hostage situation.

Thus, when we ran back to The Chambers amidst gun volley I fled for a toilet stall and my wife stayed with our friends who fled to a large room across from the toilet stalls. For the next 7 hours I lay in the fetal position on the floor of the stall while my wife huddled silently with close to 100 others, including our friends. We were able to stay in contact via email on our Blackberries. I had one and Anjali was with another friend, Vishal, who was holed up with her who had one as well and he kept in contact with me. We were all dead silent and had all silenced our phones.

Outside The Chambers the slaughter continued. Most of the people in the stairwell got shot and killed and many staff valiantly stayed outside the doors in another attempt to protect the guests. I believe many of the staff that stayed outside the door to lock it perished. At this point there were multiple grenades and volleys of gunfire. It sounded as though the terrorists were engaged in a firefight after having murdered the first evacuees and staff.

The layout of The Chambers has six rooms along two corridors which forms an “L” shape. The corridor that runs east/west had five rooms attached to it and was accessible by the obscure door connected to the escape path referenced earlier. The north/south corridor had one big room on one side and the men’s restroom on the other. I fled to the toilets, Anjali and our friends to the large room connected to the north/south corridor.

Back in The Chambers, the staff had again acted quickly and turned off all the lights as soon as we ran back in. The place was pitch black. Unfortunately, the terrorists once again managed to break into The Chambers via the exit where we were previously trying to evacuate. The next 10 minutes, around 2:30, were extremely frightening. Rather than hearing the volley of fire/counter fire, we could just hear single shots. We would later learn that the terrorists went room by room on the east/west corridor and systematically executed everyone they could: women, elderly, Muslims, Hindus, foreigners, anyone. How they did not manage to enter the other corridor is a miracle – it was the commandos at the other side that kept firing back and saved our lives.

The Indian commandos were on the Southern end of the corridor, Terrorists on the North (remember the east/west corridor connected to the north/south, so after they had butchered all the rooms in the east/west corridor, all they had to do was make a turn around the corner to come after our two rooms). The next 5 hours was comprised of an intense grenade/gun battle between the Indian commandos and the terrorists that was fought in pitch black darkness in which each side was trying to outflank the other. Our lives hung in the balance. Anjali could literally see commandos advancing and retreating feet from her, gunshots and grenade blasts were within feet from her and the others in the big room.

We heard a grenade explosion that seriously injured one commando, but amazingly for the hours that hundreds upon hundreds of rounds were expended no one was seriously injured in this battle.

During this time I was huddled in the fetal position on the floor of one of two toilet stalls in the bathroom. I had picked the toilet stall as the preferred hiding location because if we were in an overt hostage situation the floor to ceiling door could conceal my identity. I was joined in the stall by Joe, a Nigerian national with a US Greencard whose wife had recently divorced him. He had moved to Lagos and was in Mumbai on business. For the next seven hours he sat on the pot (full seat down), me on the floor, and we tried to make sense of the situation.

I had, through a friend, gotten in touch with the FBI via Blackberry, where several agents were helpful in giving me a status update throughout the night. I cannot even begin to explain the level of adrenaline running through my system at this point. It was this hyper aware state where every sound, every smell, every piece of information was ultra acute, analyzed, and processed so we could make the best decision to try to maximize the odds of survival.

Was the fire above us life threatening? What floor was it on? Were the commandos near us, or were they terrorists? Why is it so quiet? Did the commandos survive? If the terrorists come into the bathroom and to the door, when they fire in, how can I make my body as small as possible? If Joe gets killed before me in this situation, how can I throw his body on mine to barricade the door? If the Indian commandos liberate the rest in the other room, how will they know where I am? Do the terrorists have suicide vests? Will the roof stand? How can I make sure the FBI knows where Anjali and I are? When is it safe to stand up and attempt to urinate?

At one point we received an incorrect text saying that the terrorists were killed, Joe went out to check on the situation- he lives in Lagos and is much more fearless than me. He saw 5 commandos in the hallway, then another volley of fire broke out and he dove for cover, eventually retreating back to the bathroom stall with me. 10 minutes later we heard a pin drop and what sounded like an object tossed. We said to each other “grenade” and braced for impact. Fortunately we were wrong; no grenade had been tossed.

Meanwhile Anjali was on the other side of the corridor in the large room with our friends and about 100 others. She and others were in what basically was one continuous mass of people clinging to each other lying on the floor. People barely moved for 7 hours, the last 3 hours they felt it was too unsafe to even text. From her vantage point Anjali could clearly see the commandos advancing/retreating, advancing retreating. Whilst I was tucked behind a couple walls of marble and granite in a bathroom and toilet stall, she was feet from bullets flying back and forth. She was also in the middle of the corridor on one side and the terrace on the other. Gunfire and grenades going off on both ends at some points. Shiv and Reshma were up against the glass terrace doors that was all between us and the terrorists. Ironically, the group right next to Anjali were devout Bori Muslims whom would have been slaughtered just like everyone else. Everyone was in deep prayer and most, Anjali included, had accepted that their lives were likely over.

After several attacks and counter attacks, dawn broke and the commandos were able to successfully secure our corridor. In Anjali’s words “a young gorgeous looking commando” came in just like in a movie and told Anjali and the others in the room to put their hands up. He asked whether anyone had a weapon and was told that no one did and this was a peaceful crowd. He asked them to follow single file to safety. When one woman asked whether it was safe to leave, the commando replied: “Don’t worry, you have nothing to fear, the first bullets have to go through me”.

The scene was one literally out of a movie, like Die Hard. The corridor was laced with broken glass, bullet casings, and debris. Every table was turned over or destroyed. The ceilings and walls were littered with hundreds of bullet holes, blood stains were clear, though fortunately there were no dead bodies to be seen.

A few minutes after Anjali had left, I peeked out of my toilet stall with Joe to see multiple commandos and smiled widely. I had lost my right shoe while sprinting to the toilet so I grabbed a sheet from the floor wrapped it around my foot and proceeded to walk over the glass and debris to the hotel lobby.

On my way out next to me was an older Hindu man who had suffered an abdominal wound. The staff had placed him on a sheet and was holding the sheet to carry him out to safety. He said nothing, though I’m sure he was in agony. However, he was still, his hands were clenched tight in prayer, eyes focused above, and his expression was peaceful. It was as if he had accepted that there was a higher power that would determine his fate. I will never forget the look on his face. For myself, I was scared beyond belief of death. I had no peace, everything I attempted was to try and increase my likelihood of survival. Towards the end when it sounded like perhaps the Indian commandos had been flushed and we were in trouble, my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it could explode. As an aside, even though I hadn’t slept a wink that night, I couldn’t go to sleep until 1am that night- the adrenaline was just that strong.

Anjali and I were reunited in the entrance to the Taj on the ground floor. From there we embraced for the first time in 7 hours. At that point I didn’t know whether she was dead or injured because we hadn’t been able to text for the last 3 hours. By a sheer miracle she was untouched, Vishal was untouched and Shiv and Reshma were untouched. We also knew Amrita and Priya Jhaveri who were in there with us who came out along with us. Amrita’s husband Chris a foreigner as well.

I wanted to take a picture of us on my blackberry – Anjali did not want me to as she wanted us to get out of there before doing anything. She was right - our ordeal wasn’t completely over. A large bus pulled up in front of the Taj and, just about as it was fully loaded gunfire erupted again. The terrorists were still alive and firing automatic weapons at the bus. Anjali was the last to get on the bus as I pushed her up and Vishal pulled her inside – I crouched down separated from her once again. We were all told upon coming out of the hotel that we would be taken to a police station to identify ourselves. However, 30 metres away they were let off the bus as gunfire continued – they ran to the Regal Cinema and into Vishal’s waiting car and away to safety. I ducked under some concrete barriers for cover as the gunfire continued. (It later turned out that pictures of this moment were the ones that made the international news.) Shortly thereafter an ambulance came and drove a few others and me away to safety. An hour later Anjali and I were again reunited at her parents home. Our thanksgiving had just gained a lot more meaning.

Some may say our survival was due to random luck, others due to divine intervention. Being 72 hours removed from these events, I can assure you of only one thing: Far fewer of us would have survived if it weren’t for the extreme selflessness shown by the Taj hotel staff, who organized us, catered to us, then in the end literally died for us. That is not to take away from the extreme bravery and courage of the Indian commandos, who in pitch-black darkness and in unfamiliar, close-quarter terrain valiantly held the terrorists at bay. It is also amazing that amongst our entire group not one person screamed or panicked through the entire ordeal and there was an eerie but quiet calm that pervaded – this is one more thing that got us all out alive. Even people in the adjacent rooms who were being executed kept silent.

This is to remark on the truism that only when faced with the worst of humanity can one witness the best. It is much easier to destroy than to build, yet somehow humanity has managed to build far more than it has ever destroyed. Likewise in a period of crisis it is much easier to find faults and failings, rather than celebrate heroes. It is now time to celebrate our heroes.

2008-08-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Breaking news 22nd August 2008

"The iPhone played Gooseberry on my Wedding Anniversary"

A study by senior UK parliamentary officials concludes that iPhones are becoming a leading cause of minor marital frustrations. In a survey of female inhabitants of Clapham Junction, London, the snazzy new gadget was found to lie in third position, fast creeping up on its rivals, the X-box (1st place) and the PSP (2nd place).

Greasy Anthony, long term owner of Tony's cafe on Northcote Road, said that his wife had gone back to Turkey in a huff after he bought one. "But I no missing that fat cow, I just playing on the X-box and surfing the net on iPhone, innit" he revealed.

One concerned wife of 2 years suspected that her husband's anniversary greeting was sent automatically by the iPhone, which she labelled a "silicon-based gooseberry".

Respondents* also cited incidences of "Playing PSP under the table during Serious Conversations" and "taking Grand Theft Auto more Seriously than Real Life"

The zoom function on the iPhone was revealed to be the most irritating feature.

* total number of survey respondents=1

2008-08-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

China Telecom - Missing Dog

2008-07-25T11:54:00.000-07:00

Randy Pausch passes on

Rest in Peace, our prayers are with the family.

2008-05-06T14:23:00.000-07:00

2007-11-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

Turning the World Upside Down

Ever wondered what the world looks like if were living on the south pole? You'd probably have more respect for the folks down unda....

2007-11-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

How not to Die (Paul Graham)

Excerpts:

Another way of saying that is that half of you are going to die. Phrased that way, it doesn't sound good at all. In fact, it's kind of weird when you think about it, because our definition of success is that the founders get rich. If half the startups we fund succeed, then half of you are going to get rich and the other half are going to get nothing.

If you can just avoid dying, you get rich. That sounds like a joke, but it's actually a pretty good description of what happens in a typical startup. It certainly describes what happened in Viaweb. We avoided dying till we got rich.

When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Often the two occur simultaneously. But I think the underlying cause is usually that they've become demoralized. You rarely hear of a startup that's working around the clock doing deals and pumping out new features, and dies because they can't pay their bills and their ISP unplugs their server.

Startups rarely die in mid keystroke. So keep typing!

Another feeling that seems alarming but is in fact normal in a startup is the feeling that what you're doing isn't working. The reason you can expect to feel this is that what you do probably won't work. Startups almost never get it right the first time. Much more commonly you launch something, and no one cares. Don't assume when this happens that you've failed. That's normal for startups. But don't sit around doing nothing. Iterate.

2007-11-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

Larry Lessig's talk at the TED conference

2007-11-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

2007-09-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong

I always wondered what Louis Armstrong's expression would be when he's singing this song...

2007-09-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

Spurring Value Creation in IT Services

Excellent article by McKinsey - an interview with Satyam's Chairman (reg. required).

Excerpts:

On Org Design:
...traditional hierarchical models will not be effective in a knowledge industry. Rather than focusing the whole business on delivering value in one way, as you might see in a textile mill, at Satyam value was being delivered in many different ways, depending on the services our clients needed. To cater to these differences, we created an organizational design that distributed leadership more uniformly. Ownership of results shifted to leaders who were closest to the relevant stakeholders, which could be their colleagues, investors, clients, or even society generally.

On Value Creation:

... recognition that value creation follows a similar structure irrespective of industry, type of function, or level within an organization. For that matter, philanthropic undertakings also reflect the same value-creating structure. In that sense it is analogous to fractals in science and mathematics. Not to get too esoteric; fractals are self-replicating constructs that become increasingly small, like the sections of a seashell or the buds in a stalk of broccoli. While they are similar, they are not necessarily identical. You can look at a business in the same way and try to find a pattern for value creation, an essential DNA that repeats itself in every area and at every level.

On Leadership:
We consider ourselves in the business of building leaders. The most effective way of realizing our goals and objectives is to grow leaders faster than the competition. Taking a non-India-centric view in attracting leaders from all over the globe and growing existing leaders through focused leadership-development programs is paramount to our success.

2007-08-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Dilbert? You gotta be kidding me

Took a look at my site logs and found that I'm #1 on Google for "Dilbert Product Management". Woo-hoo... but wait... why are so many people searching for Dilbert-ian product management?

Is it because market realities are disconnected with the product management process? and all cries for clarity is impossible to determine such as defining contribution margin of a single product in a bundled sale? Or endless use case writing that the developers never use? Hmm.

2006-11-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

Data Security

Then one day end-users discovered that they couldn’t log in. We rushed to the server room and found the monitor riddled with error messages. We tried rebooting, but the server complained endlessly about this missing .DLL and that corrupt file. Even worse, it wouldn’t let us copy those files from the installation disks. After finding some files on the backup tapes and downloading others from the Net, we got it to boot into Windows and run the database server. But it was ugly. No support, remember?

Then it dawned on me. I looked at my boss and said, “Did you see a firewall?”

“Firewall?” he said, looking troubled.

We looked hard. No firewall. The server was connected directly to the Internet, public IP and all, with no firewall as protection.

Why blog?

Business blogs can be a good choice for both large and small companies - most companies already have a profile on the internet, but especially smaller companies are struggling to get visitors, and have serious problems reaching people interested in their field of business. Start a blog and use various ping services to reach out to millions of readers all over the world!

You know your field of business the best
To run a company you will have to know what you’re doing - you know your field of business, maybe even be a “guru” on the topic - why wouldn’t you share your knowledge? Why wouldn’t you also be known as the “guru”?
Reach more people
You might already have a news-section on your website, but who is reading it, besides your existing customers? With a blog it is easier to reach new readers!
Let your employees compete
Give each employee a user on the blog, and let them blog about your companies business field too. While they compete on getting most comments, they write better and better content, in your companies best interest.

What if MS designed the iPod?

2006-05-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pXL5_RvGrs

Its all in the packaging. Apparently this video was made by a consulting firm responsible for MS package designing. It's interesting to see why we are completely oversaturated with junk messages...

2006-04-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting MS Video

In People-Ready Overview the manager discovers that not having the necessary tools really caused his firm to suffer. The reality is that this is only a part of the problem... appreciation of the uses of technology is the other. Handing a loaded shot gun is not enough, you need to know how to use it!

2006-04-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

INSIGHT webinar series

Larry Weber has some fantastic insights into the evolution of Marketing, and the impact of new media.

Note: Registration Reqd.

2006-04-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

Leadership

by Rebecca Edgerton

Communicate. The paramount skill here is listening. Second is giving credit and admitting fault—hand-in-hand with honesty and tact. And I believe that laughter is the lubrication that keeps communication rolling along.

Guide. My management approach used to be to tell. My sentences started with “Do this,” “You better,” and “You must.” Today, I rarely tell. Instead, I coach through open questions. Most sentences now start with “What” and “Why” and “How.” I pity the people in the 1970s who suffered through my early management outbursts. Somehow, over the years, I learned the value of open hand instead of closed fist. Today it's clear: The best managers guide people to solutions through coaching and mentoring. A very quick primer about those topics:

Coaching is guiding through questioning, and it focuses on solving a defined problem. A coach helps someone shape a solution by harvesting ideas from that person. The questions are the stimulant that stirs the person's thought process. As everyone knows, the best solution to someone's problem is the one he or she designs and believes in.

Mentoring is longer term guidance that sets direction for a protégé, such as future career focus. It works through a process of discussion, negotiation, definition of actions, action by the protégé, and feedback that leads to new discussion.

Negotiate. This is the best route to win-win. Only through negotiation can the manager discover the real agenda behind project assignments, deadlines, budgets, and so on. The key here is openness and willingness to delve for clear definition of requirements. Negotiation is essential to managing expectations. It's also essential for handling conflict and delegating effectively.

Respond. My email inbox is both my bane and my bounty. On many days, it collects more than a hundred emails. My phone also demands attention, and people often stop by to ask for five or ten minutes. So prioritization is the key. A person in my office always takes precedence, then a phone call, and then an email—unless I have a scheduled commitment elsewhere. So when I talk to people, the phone should go on “make busy.” When I'm on one line, I rarely click over to the other line to see who's calling. And I've turned off the email beep because it was just a distraction. But it's also important to clean out my email inbox and clear my phone messages every day. Even a brief response is better than nothing. Every exchange is an opportunity.

Monitor. Compliance with production stats, quality benchmarks, budgets, and schedules is always necessary. These factors shape internal and external clients' opinions about services or products. As Ernest Bramah said, “A reputation for a thousand years may depend upon the conduct of a single moment.”

Nurture. People like face time with their managers. They also appreciate a bit of personal exchange about kids, hobbies, and more. If every communication is task-focused, little relationship is built. People often report that a good relationship with their manager is a huge incentive. This interaction also allows the manager to watch for creativity and ripeness for promotion; to identify the person's motivations and hot buttons; and to check for stress, confusion, or frustration.

Encourage. Everyone has down days, weeks, and even more. Everyone has projects that drag and goals that seem to fall by the wayside. By knowing an employee's motivations, the manager can provide person-focused encouragement or incentive.

Educate. A strong leader teaches and learns something at least once a day.

Brainstorm. Brainstorming with employees is one of the best ways to identify their development opportunities. It's ideal for seeing how someone's mind works. Brainstorming is an open environment in which anything goes. It is a nurturing and safe activity that gives people instant validation for their ideas through the momentum of enthusiasm. Good brainstorming continuously builds on ideas and is agile enough to turn sharp corners. Good brainstorming is learned by example. My, what a segue to the next point!

Model. I don't believe it's necessary for a manager to be able to do everything that the employees do (you might disagree, but that's another topic). However, it is essential for the manager to model every behavior that he or she expects from the group. Leadership isn't just words or actions—it's also facial expressions, appropriate use of humor, support for top-down decisions, and consistent and suitable optimism. In other words, a leader must manage the subtext beneath his or her words. The best way to do that is to believe in what you're doing. If you don't, then it's time for reflection and possibly time to find another venue.

2006-04-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

Anything for a sale...

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive

2006-04-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Ex-Sun exec lambasts Sun's late layoffs | CNET News.com

John Shoemaker comments on Sun(the complete version here):

Sun's reduction-in-force actions were too little, too late

"This single failure to make a tough decision to reduce headcount at Sun was, I believe, the critical event that precipitated Sun's now infamous decline," Shoemaker said.

"Pivotal among (Sun's) missteps, in my opinion, was the board of directors election to allow Sun's COO, Ed Zander, to leave. Ed Zander is a strong executive leader with a brilliant strategic and marketing mind," Shoemaker said.

Shoemaker also criticized expensive choices at Sun, such as the Santa Clara, Calif., company's $4.1 billion acquisition of StorageTek, which came to $3 billion once cash is factored out.

Sun's Java software initiative was costly, too, he said, employing more than 4,000 developers to create a product adopted by IBM and other competitors.

At the same time, the market shifted to buying large numbers of low-end servers--often running Linux...

2006-04-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

Powerpoint - Do's and Dont's

Collection of some great atricles I've read so far:

10/20/30 rule: Guy K
Bona tempora volvantur--by Guy Kawasaki: The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Breaking the habit:Dharmesh Shah

Net-Net: we need an alternative to Powerpoint! Entrepreneurs of the world - help! And be sure to follow read the articles above when you pitch your biz case in PPT :)

2006-04-03T14:09:00.000-07:00

HOWTO: streamline sales structure in a complex organization

This link (subscription reqd) talks about HP's Mark Hurd making the changes necessary to streamline a sales structure:

Eliminate unnecessary layers, clarify accountability
Thus began one of Mr. Hurd's biggest management challenges: overhauling H-P's vast corporate sales force. Last July, Mr. Hurd eliminated a sales group that sold a broad portfolio of H-P's products. He divvied up the workers among H-P's PC, printing and corporate-technology businesses to give the salespeople a chance to master the specific products they sell.

Specialization means better sales

H-P's corporate salespeople were responsible for hawking a broad portfolio of products and typically didn't specialize in any one product area. They reported to a group that operated independently of H-P's product-based business units. As a result, the three units also had little control of the sales process -- even though a big part of their budget went to the sales group.

Change compensation structure to include revenues AND MARGINS!!

In November, Mr. Hurd changed how H-P salespeople are compensated. Sales commissions were linked to how much revenue the sales teams generated. But, with his eye on the bottom line, Mr. Hurd also linked commissions to the profitability of the products sold. At the same time, H-P directed salespeople to use just one type of software from Oracle Corp. to track the sales pipeline. That move enabled Mr. Hurd and other executives to get an uncluttered view into the sales deals being chased at any one time.

Limit number of accounts, especially the named accounts

H-P narrowed the number of sales accounts that each salesperson was tied to, with the goal that each person would call on three or fewer accounts.

Consistency in collaboration process

...[conference calls] they occur every Monday, so salespeople could be on the road meeting customers the rest of the week.

2006-04-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

From Gizmodo:

We Heart Apple, Bose, and Dell - Gizmodo

Forrester Research has discovered that the top three “trustworthy” electronics manufacturers were Apple, Bose, and Dell. Microsoft scored lowest in both perceived growth and trustiness while Sony is floating somewhere in the middle.

2006-03-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

Michael Goldhaber's work is stuff to pay attention to!

The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net

2005-12-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

The Cow in the Ditch: How Anne Mulcahy Rescued Xerox - Knowledge@Wharton

Excerpts from:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=1318

Mulcahy, whom Fortune this month named the second most powerful woman in business, nearly didn't have the chance to muse on Wall Street's impatience. When she became Xerox's chief executive in 2000, her company didn't look like it would live long enough to deliver any kind of profits again, whether quarterly or annual.

At the nadir of its troubles, Xerox's cash reserve dwindled to nearly $100 million -- almost nothing for a firm of its size -- while its debt ballooned to almost $19 billion. At the same time, it discovered accounting improprieties in its Mexican subsidiary, setting off a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. Customers and employees began to fall away. And all this occurred against the backdrop of a weakening economy. "It was alarming how fast things began to unravel in late 1999 and 2000," she said. "We thought we had coined the term 'Perfect Storm.'"

A cold call to Warren Buffett didn't work as well. Buffett took the call and invited her to dinner in his hometown of Omaha. She flew to Nebraska, aiming to sound him out on investing in Xerox. Her chance came over dinner. When she finished her pitch, Buffett replied, "You know, I never invest in technology companies."

"So I decided we were going to do all of our [profit and loss statements] on a geographic basis. Is it appropriate in this day to have geographic P&Ls? I don't know, but I'll trade off organizational design for clarity and accountability any day of the week. I took out a lot of layers and think it was instrumental in improving performance."

2005-12-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

SAP picks up the staff who wander off the Oracle acquisition trail

says Computerworld.

Claiming staff have left in huge numbers from Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards, McBride said SAP has gained plenty of talent from Oracle's long list of acquisitions.

"The SAP ecosystem has been greatly strengthened; we receive an inordinate number of resumes so we are picking up the inside truth," she said.

2005-11-30T13:05:00.000-08:00

ex-PeopleSoft execs are doing OK!

Stumbled upon this article that talks about

PeopleSoft diaspora - 2005-08-15.

Here's a sample of Former PeopleSoft executives who've landed on their feet:

Executive, PeopleSoft Job, Current Company, Current Title

Kevin Parker, co-president and CFO, Deltek Systems Inc., CEO

Philip Wilmington, co-president, OutlookSoft Corp., CEO

Guy Dubois, VP-International, Cramer, CEO

Ram Gupta, EVP of products and technology, Plateau Systems, director

Michael Gregoire, EVP, Taleo Inc., CEO

Robin L. Washington, SVP of finance, Tektronix Inc., director

Murray Creighton, SVP-Asia-Pacific, Taleo Inc., Asia VP

James Shaughnessy, general counsel, Lenovo Group, general counsel and SVP

Craig Halliday, president-Japan, Mincom, EVP

Brian Hearing, VP, Authoria Inc., VP

Les Wyatt, VP, Harris Broadcast Communications, VP

Bruce Johnson, VP, Certus, CEO

Heidi Melin, VP of marketing services, Hyperion Solutions, chief marketing officer

Kevin Horigan, VP of Public Services, OutlookSoft, SVP

Kara Wilson, VP of marketing/communicatins, Network General Corp., chief marketing officer

Paul Pronsati, VP of operations, Taleo Inc., operations VP

Bill Hewitt, VP of global marketing, Novell Inc., SVP and chief marketing officer

Gary Conway, VP of corporate marketing, Nextel (Sprint Corp.), marketing VP

2005-11-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

MVNO woes

The recent happenings in the MVNO world is mystifying - continued investment for the same demographic and the same piece of pie. As Om points out here, it apparently talks at least $500m to even begin investment in this area.

Wonder how much of that costs can be reduced by an MVNE such as Visage?

2005-11-15T15:06:00.000-08:00

Build-it-yourself cell phones

Tired of waiting for phones to work like you want them to? Look no further!

2005-11-09T13:14:00.000-08:00

Ray Ozzie Memo

One of the foremost software thinkers of our time changing the course of one the most important companies in the history of software.

Here it is - uncut!

Enjoy.

2005-11-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

Breaking News: Microsoft will offer Office as a service

From the WSJ:

Microsoft Corp. is creating online services coupled with its two major software lines -- Windows and Office -- that are designed to open new opportunities for the company to sell subscriptions or advertising associated with its software.

The offerings include Office Live, an online version of its Office suite of business productivity applications. The service is designed to make it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to set up and maintain Office than it is today.

This is a direct response to Google+Sun, which Larry Page declined.

In another thrust, Microsoft plans to offer elements of its MSN online service to Windows users under an online service called Windows Live. The Windows Live service will house Microsoft's Messenger instant-messaging service, a new Web mail service dubbed Kahuna and Microsoft Spaces, the company's service for creating the online postings known as Web logs, or blogs"

This seems like a resurgence of Active Desktop circa IE 4.0?

2005-10-31T12:38:00.000-08:00

Halloween Mind Teaser

A buddy sent me this link.

Can you find the 3 differences in these two pictures? I have only found 2 so far.

Happy Halloween!

2005-10-29T18:32:00.000-07:00

Hype!

A few months ago, I plunged into a new world of communications. Immediately folks I worked with threw jargons at me - SIP, Wi-Max/Wi-fi, IMS, IPTV, VoD and on...

This article on LightReading does a good job of demystifying the hype and reality.

2005-09-26T16:29:00.000-07:00

VoIP Investments

Om comments here that (VoIP) Forecast Calls For Pain VoIP revenues per Frost & Sullivan are peaking at $4B by 2010.

I agree with the assessment that VoIP will continue to be a second line and not a primary replacement of the PSTN line unless bundled in some form of a triple play offering. The only fly in the ointment here is that Comcast (very visionary) has although rightly put this as a phone service (not a VoIP service), they continue to charge a price premium than a Vonage which does not make sense.

True value from triple plays is by offering new services - not just consolidated billing - to justify the price premium.

2005-09-01T15:05:00.000-07:00

Management gets analytical, and why IT needs to wake up

Amazing that how the same principles apply to large and small companies. HP's Mark Hurd has a candid interview here. Guess what I like - start with the end goal (3 year plan), work backwards, put metrics in place and then go from there. Funny how matrix structures have a way of destroying accountability, strategic thinkers devoid of execution and lack of appreciation of systems.

I used feel back for IT folks complaining about business users, but now I see why - the problem is on both sides.

IT treat business users are a necessary "pain-in-the-ass" constantly demanding change just when everything is "stable", so they retaliate by making things as hard as possible, like punching in a 5 digit code before every non-local call.

Reality is that there is an awareness problem. IT people - get out of your cubes and sit with the business users.Spend time understanding how users use tech, and help them. Then see how the appreciation flows your way. Good luck!

2005-08-28T23:33:00.000-07:00

Om Malik’s Broadband Blog ? Telecom’s continuing death spiral

2005-08-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Ran into Larry Grey of Grey Sparling PeopleSoft Expert's Corner in San Ramon yesterday. He's started a company called Grey Sparling Solutions Inc. with a couple of ex-PeopleSofters.

The classic pattern of all new companies is to include some form of blogging as connectors to the marketplace, and Im glad to see Larry starting off the right way. Pick these guys if you are a PeopleSoft customer and want to continue to leverage your investment with additional innovation in 8.4x, 9x be damned!

2005-08-12T04:07:00.000-07:00

So you got a raise?

Hilarious!

Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com - The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams - Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

2005-08-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Think of men as hunters and women as farmers in India?

Read the autobiography of Sudha Murthy, the "real" founder of Infosys...

WWW

Nithin on ? Story of Narayana Murthy And Sudha

2005-07-27T12:20:00.000-07:00

Infosys loses sales head, 4 others to follow

Per this report

CIOL : Executive Track : Basab Pradhan quits Infosys

2005-07-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

Wipro's Vivek Paul starts a new journey

Here's why:

The inside story: Why Vivek Paul quit Wipro

2005-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

Video blogging tips

Shooting Web video: How to put your readers at the scene

2005-07-23T10:06:00.000-07:00

Om draws a nice parallel between 747 and PCs, IP networks.

Om Malik’s Broadband Blog ? Did Silicon Valley Build Its Own 747?

2005-06-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

Flickr Art: Creativity in the strangest places

Check out this creative collage on Flickr - this was created by programmatically combining 50 images of pictures that users have tagged the same.

2005-06-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

Different angle, same thing

Lessig referred to JC Watts. Who's he? After some Yahoo-ing I discovered a speech given by Watts to the NRA.

Watts makes a powerful point- is spirituality being erased in the name of political correctness? I attended a "convent" high school with was run by a catholic church, and being essentially an Hindu did NOT make me a convert, or hate christianity. It had the opposite effect - better understanding of a different religion makes me appreciate what are the good parts in both, and empathize better with other cultures.

I worry now about my daughter about to enter kindergarten in a month in the USA growing up without any spirituality besides the one at home, which she surely will not pay attention to since it is perceived as so wrong in the outside world.

2005-06-23T16:45:00.000-07:00

Lessig's presentation style

I've listened to Larry Lessig's presentations on freedom from copyrights for sometime now thanks to ITConversations, but never got a chance to watch them. You can see what impressed the auidence so much here.

I'm truly transformed today.

2005-06-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Time for a change

Decided to change the name of this blog to reflect something bigger than one's job. Sure, for a long period of time it defined who I was. But no more.

2005-06-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

EDS is rumored to sell A.T Kearney

Per the WSJ, EDS CEO considers management consulting "non-core" and wants to focus on basic outsourcing. Its ironic that other India based firms are coming from exactly the opposite direction and are expanding into management consulting. Maybe Infosys or someone will consider this purchase?

2005-06-04T14:24:00.000-07:00

CRM in the mobile world Enpocket - Products and Services.

2005-06-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

Voice Scrambler for cubicle privacy

I need one of

The New York Times > Technology > these Electronic Silencers.

2005-06-01T04:47:00.000-07:00

Google Earth = Keyhole next gen?

New version's out for beta testers Google Keyhole = Google Earth | newrecruit per this post.

2005-06-01T04:42:00.000-07:00

Interesting. This would have helped me in my GRE...

Common Errors in English

2005-05-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

Winning by Jack Welch, other lessons of leadership

This is a stunning new book by Jack Welch who has been a great influence in my professional life. I was a little skeptical when I picked up the book at first as a rehash of his autobiography, but was pleasantly surprised.

One section that is very useful is the strategy section, or how NOT to do strategy. The exercise to follow the latest analyst trend devoid of competitive assessment is weak, and really needs to be changed to what he recommends - an honest candid view of where we are today, and where we want to go ,and the obstacles to get there.

The problems in doing this: a) no time from top management for true strategic analysis, besides traditional SWOT. b) Candid discussions killed due to politics c) People in the room not qualified/interested

I guess its frustrating to see problems happen when solutions are in sight, and not having the ability to do anything about that at a macro level.

2005-04-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Watch: My Web

Yahoo! introduces a new feature to keep persistent content from web searches.
Interesting at the least, probably competes in a low way with del.icio.us - but without the tagging. The important thing here is that searching is a way of sorting through random stuff to get to what you want, but once I found something I want I'd like to classify it in an orderly fashion. "My web" misses that point and is basically advocating searching as the only metaphor even in a reduced domain space.

2005-04-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! acquires.... Flickr!

per this note in FlickrBlog, it is confirmed that Yahoo! is now the new master of of the the most innovative websites of 2005, the beginning of Web 2.0, IMHO.

It's unfortunate that HP decided to acquire SnapFish instead of Flickr, as they needed Flickr more... I'm sure Google was deciding on what to do here as well. :)

2005-04-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Web 2.0 is here

So you've used Craigslist, and also Google Maps. Well someone's married the two. This is very very cool.

2005-04-06T17:21:00.000-07:00

Travel Tips

For all frequent travelers like the one I've become, I found this link very useful:

Flash / How to Fold a Shirt

You are welcome. Send me your PayPal donations ;-)

2005-04-06T14:33:00.000-07:00

Here's an intersting technology development - its called AJAX ( short for Asynch Javascript and XML). As this Microsoft Watch article talks aboutCould Ajax Wash Away 'Smart Clients'?, and Mary Jo questions - will we see a world divided between Ajax and Smart Clients? The reality is that smart clients are no different from Ajax if MS truly wants to see this survive and get adopted.

The interesting piece is that it is not an either/or situation - smart clients will need to have common foundations, and perhaps the only way they will deviate is in the usage of Flash. As my buddy Chuao points out, here is one company called Xamlon that integrates Ajax and Flash( you can also read the news article here).

Don't forget to check out their cool demo here.

2005-04-04T13:05:00.000-07:00

CTIA presentations from New Orleans

Here's the link:

Business Wire: The Global Leader in News Distribution

Don't miss ESPN's George Bodenheimer talk.

2005-03-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

Too much tech

Last week, I was in New Orleans for the CTIA Wireless 2005 conference. This was the happening place for Gizmodo-heads. Everyone who was anybody in telecom was there. It easily seems like the whole industry which was facing a slump is suddenly awake and alive with ideas. There were CxOs from all kinds of companies - service providers, applications, device manufacturers, chip manufacturers with a conspicous absence of systems integrators. Of course, the exception to this rule is the telecom unit of Patni where your's truly is currently employed.

The funniest part of this event was networking. With everyone having a cell phone stuck to their year, it was really difficult to have a normal F2F (face-to-face) conversation. On once occassion, I called the guy in front of me who was on another line and introduced myself as the person standing in front of him, just to get his attention! That worked!

2005-03-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

More on Desktop Search

OK, so after some experimentation in the best way to find information on my PC, I stumbled upon ViaPoint here. This is a new class of applications that are becoming increasingly prevalent - founded upon the new platform for the web - Google web services. ViaPoint simply extends desktop search and sits on top of the Google Desktop Search tool.

The goal as I understood it was to make it easier to categorize and provide a rich user interface to find your stuff. The concept is great, but falls pretty behind on the execution, IMHO. The scan process takes infinitely long, the install is a whopping 75 Megs and at the end of the day, what a Google can do with just 3 Megs seems more than the sloooow unintuitive interface that ViaPoint provides.

I see that as a problem. Anyone else care to refute?

2005-03-23T12:34:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! now jumps into Desktop search

Try out the beta version here. I have the Google version installed, and the absence of indexing PDF is very painful... since most marketing collateral are found that way.

2005-03-04T14:14:00.000-08:00

Are you a HedgeHog or a Fox?

Obviously taken from Jim Collins "Good to Great", here's an interesting read for those who have asked about what their next career step should look like. It should be something like this:

Here's an extract:
... a Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles:

1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at). This discerning standard goes far beyond core competence. Just because you possess a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.

2. What drives your economic engine. All the good-to-great companies attained piercing insight into how to most effectively generate sustained and robust cash flow and profitability. In particular, they discovered the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics. (It would be cash flow per x in the social sector.)

3. What you are deeply passionate about. The good-to-great companies focused on those activities that ignited their passion. The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.

2005-03-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

Google Maps

Talk about changing the way maps work with a cleaner neater interface, and introducing some great technology! Google Maps takes the cake.

Here's a link to an explanation of how this works.

On a related note, here's a link to a visual overview of the California Coastline. This is a manual painful process of accumulating photographs of the coastline.

2005-03-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

10 Years on the Web

Yahoo! turns ten today and releases this to commemorate.

2005-03-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

Sayonara Oracle

Well, 'tis 'bout that time to day Goodbye. Just sent a note out to my friends and colleagues at PeopleSoft (now Oracle) that its time for me to move on.

There has been a lot of changes and yet so much remains the same. Its hard to look at the empty offices. Its hard to imagine the dramatic nature of change of leadership at the top. But it happens. There's a lot going on right now... except that very few of us are privy to what it is. I'd love to tell, but you know as much as I do now.

I've been fortunate that I chose to leave, was not laid off, unlike my friend Skanda here. He has a heart rendering tale that is a must-read - we have successfully evolved modern society into a heartless, terror ridden economic machine where people's contributions absolutely do not make any impact as compared to the bottom line.

Is it impossible to hire people and run a profitable business? I asked myself this question over and over again. I think I have an answer.

I'm betting my career on it.

P.S. ex-PeopleSoft folks, you need to take networking opportunities in your own hands.. so don't delay, register here at PeopleSoft Alumni Network now!

2005-02-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

This one was too funny!

(c) Dilbert.com

2005-02-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

This scenario is not too far away

As noted earlier on BoingBoing, this link to the ACLU's clip may be closer to the truth that we can imagine. I've had the pleasure of working with different vendors on several technologies that come very similar to this all under the umbrella of CRM.

In a nutshell, we want to run a large company as a small business.How do we do that? By enabling all pieces of customer information in the hands of the company representative.

Let's say that you are calling your mobile phone carrier. It is likely that they have all the phone numbers you dialed. They also have your social security number. It is not inconcievable now that they can get a lot of information about - who you dial the most, or who calls you the most; they can link with a host of publicly available information, crossreference your email id with all public accounts and get consumer data from Axciom and similar providers about your details.

What will the company rep do with all this information at their fingertips? Something very similar to the video clip above. All the public domain knowledge must be balanced responsibly with commercial interests. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if taking a legal approach to this problem is the only solution.... shouls software vendors be held accountable for explicit violations of privacy?

2005-01-30T22:05:00.000-08:00

Robert Cringeley's expansion on the Mac mini

As quoted here Bob Cringeley has a great theory that involved two companies that I greatly respect in terms of their innovation and business models - Apple and Netflix.

Quote:

"You do realize that the MiniMac is the Netflix killer, and the next wave of the "digital content" revolution? With the MiniMac, a decent set of HD movies as well as old content, an iFlix client connecting to legal content and BitTorrent to transmit, Apple has eliminated the most costly part of the NetFlix model while maintaining all of the good pieces. When you examine the NetFlix annual reports you can pull out the fact that one of their most expensive costs is the handling of physical media. The man power, physical shipping, and multiple location warehousing is much greater than the cost of getting the content.

"Apple can use their existing contract with Akamai to deliver graphics to instead act as a collection of Torrent Tracker nodes. All they need to do is to start to build the actual content and then wrap it in a reasonable DRM solution. Tie it to a program that keeps the list of movies that you want to watch in a download order, and then keeps the top 5-7 on your MiniMac. You sign a subscription with Apple to pay $20 a month to have 4 movies. Since the top 7-5 on your list are down, you could instantly check in one movie and check out the next one.

Compelling? I think so!

2005-01-14T15:39:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Management, Part 2

Jon Udell wrote an interesting article on the (in)ability for vendors to invest in

basic web pages for knowledge management and allow a collaborative

community based approach for knowledge gardening.

I blogged about this here a while ago.

There seem to be a few basic problems here:

a. Vendors are highly skeptical of trusting knowledge outside of the boundaries of their own company - although it has been repeatedly proven otherwise

b. Vendors do not have a correct strategy to reward the contributors

meaningfully.Vendors, however have talked internally about tracking via points that

can be exchanged for training credits, marketing goodies etc. Reputation management is a key here to sustain the contributions.

c. Message Boarding - by this, I mean the perpetual fear that there would be an outpouring of negative feedback on the products that would overwhelm the site admins and would add unnecessary overhead on the maintenance of the site.

Knowledge management is very much a fundamental part of CRM and self

service is on the priority list for every large customer I have worked

with - but in a very limited way. Until the fundamental perception of

how a community can change the support costs can be communicated,

companies will continue to do business the same old way - if you have

a problem call 1-800-help!

2005-01-14T15:00:00.000-08:00

Andy Hertzfeld on Blogging and Podcasting

In this Cnet News.com interview, Andy Hertzfeld (of Folklore.org) says:

No. I think people overrate blogging. I think the overall phenomenon to me is Web pages. Blogs are just Web pages, a certain stylized form of Web page. Much of the blogging is driven by egotism.

Is it really? It is easy to mistake this as egotism due to personal nature of the information being shares. Andy - would this be non egoistic if this was a simple web page? The real point here is that blogging has unleashed a simple way for non technical users(read: not webmasters or developers) to post information on the web in a universally searchable manner. This, I would argue, has far more benefits to the community than to themselves. The blogs that singularly focus on themselves are very lonely indeed.

Andy goes on to say:

I'm down on podcasts. I think that's ridiculous. Suddenly you're taking the information and making it completely inaccessible. You can't read it, and besides a podcast is nothing. It's streaming MP3s that's good, but no one can take credit for inventing a new term because streaming MP3s is simple and has been around for a while. Doing it through RSS enclosures is basically bad--to automatically download big files before hearing them.

This is an interesting observation, and I tend to agree with this to an extent. I have several MP3s that I listen to from IT Conversations, but sometimes it takes me at least 5 - 10 minutes to determine even if I am interested in the content of the conversation. How nice it would be if I could immediately see a transcript for this even before I download, and that I have the ability to search for the content that I need before I decide to download ?

2005-01-11T22:42:00.000-08:00

RSS and Enterprise Applications

Here is a phenomenon that is sweeping the next generation of the Web often called Web 2.0 - the ability of expose information to a devoted set of people via RSS. What is interesting here is the lack of adoption in the Enterprise application areas. Do Enterprises do not need this ? Here are few examples:

CRM - can we get a RSS feed for new Knowledge base items that have been added for the products that a customer may have purchased? Or a Sales rep being notified when new marketing collateral comes out, competitive information is published or pricing is changed?

SCM - how about when a customer can easily track shipping information, replacing or augmenting formal ASNs(Advanced Shipping Notifications) with RSS feeds - that are personalized and relevant?

Typically event based frameworks have tried to get a stronghold in the enterprise application space - the ability to raise alerts and explicitly manage subscriptions, role and permission based content management, and end user filtration to ensure only the relevant messages get to the end users. This is a typical example of the control and auditing that is common in enterprise apps. Contrast this approach with the ones that we are seeing right now, founded on very basic principles:

a) There is only one set of information

b) The end user decides what is relevant and interesting

Now only if we add the capability to audit this information, and provide the ability to aggregate the RSS information into a portal, enterprise apps will now have a capability to participate in the next wave of the web.

2005-01-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

Finally, a Mac for the rest of us

Apple today unveiled a $499 version of the Mac called the Mac mini. Why is this significant? Price. Steve Jobs has historically been opposed to pricing things cheaper, preferring to innovate rather than compete on a price basis. Look at the Mac family v/s anything that is out there - Mac is always more expensive, and feature-rich.

Jobs says that they would now like to go after a low cost market that has historically not seen any innovation. So, does a stripped down mac mean innovation ? Or does it mean a demo-ware loaded machine that serves as a sampler to upgrade?

Marketing books tell us that there are 4Ps that you need worry about - Product, Placement, Promotion and Price, and that the last one is the easiest to change, but is the hardest hitter towards profitability. Undercut the market and you set the stage for low-cost innovations, a la Dell. There is no other way to go but down. So being caught in a commodity war with the other PC makers hardly seems like a prudent step. I would expect similar cuts to follow from Dell, Gateway and others-hey, if Apple can release a Mac for under $500 with 5% market share, why can't the big boys for the same reasons?

The new $99 iPod shuffle does not seem to have the same oomph that the original iPod did - most notable is the lack of display and the innovative roller wheel to control what was playing. This like a direct strategy to capitalize on the iPod brand and sell it cheaper to unsuspecting crowds taken in by the iPod glitter and make a very ordinary purchase. The other way to look at this is - how could Apple keep their music download business healthy if the original iPod is still out of reach of a large market segment (the under $149)? Since $0.99 download must be losing money, this is an excellent way to make sure that the volumes will push that part of the business into profitability.

2004-12-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Simplicity of Computing

Adam Bosworth recently posted an article that is required reading for all technologists and product managers. He argues that we have made software more complex than necessary in the B2B Entrprise world and there is a great need to simplify in order to effectively adopt these into mainstream technologies.

Case in point: consumer oriented technologies have overtaken enterprise technologies in terms of adoption, collaboration and data sharing. Why is it easier to have an RSS feed that can be subscribed and read by hundreds of users immediately, whereas trying to attempt the same via a commercial Integration Broker is a pain in the wrong place ? Not that this is not possible, but setting up the perfect configuration with the layers and layers of abstraction to get a simple message to go between two systems is incredibly difficult in my personal experience.

Bosworth argues that the technologies that have survived are simple, flexible and imperfect - they have allowed for immediate easier adoption and hence evolution. If people are interested in a technology, they will improve it. Trying to come up with the most perfect technical solution the first time around will probably ensure an immediate demise due to lack of adoption.

Quote: "On the one hand we have Blogs and Photo Albums and Event Schedules and Favorites and Ratings and News Feeds. On the other we have CRM and ERP and BPO and all sorts of enterprise oriented 3 letter acronyms."

The reality of this statement is that computing for enterprise users should be no different that for consumers for easier adoption. Yes - the requirements of running a business is arguably more complex, but if the future of computing is going to be based on reputation (as proven by eBay and Blogs) we need to take a serious look at this from a CRM perspective ASAP.

2004-11-09T19:42:00.000-08:00

Pricing in Hi-tech companies

This is a favorite topic of mine - pricing. It intrigues me when we have so many ways of pricing to completely confuse customers. Here are some common ways, and what works and what does not:

a. Price by CPU

You pay an egregious amount of money like $one kajillion per CPU. If you add more - perhaps indicative of excessive usage since more CPUs = more people using the app - you need to pay more.

Pros: It's a logical premise to an extent.

Cons: Difficult to capitalize of falling hardware costs. If you can now afford a multi CPU box for much cheaper, the costs are offset by the increase in payment to your vendor. Definitely a bad strategy for a customer.

b. Price by Seat/Named User

You have to declare the number of people - internal and external - using the application.

Pros: For a small company with a back office role, it probably makes sense.

Cons: This ignores one critical aspect - growth of a company and user adoption. More users should mean good things for both the company and vendor (from a reference perspective). Definitely doesn't make sense to penalize the customer.

Companies like Chordiant, and other call center companies like Genesys have made their $$$s here.

c. Enterprise Pricing

The pricing model is not restrictive and is based on the revenue growth of the company. If the revenue increases over the next few years, you owe more to the vendor. You do not if the investment does not affect revenue.

Pros: Very customer centric, profit sharing model with growth actually being encouraged.

Cons: Not every vendor's solution has a direct impact on revenue or growth. Customers will be reluctant for such pricing schemes from smaller vendors.

Some examples of who do this are PeopleSoft, PeopleSoft and PeopleSoft :-)

d. Subscription based pricing

Based on per user, this is a monthly subscription fee that will be charged.

Pros: Useful is stretching out payments over several months, resulting in better cash flow management.

Cons: Lack of stickiness (really a vendor problem). Easy to switch. Low F

e. Utility Pricing

Pay as you go pricing,you pay by the drink. More you use, more you pay.

Pros: The nirvana of Sun and IBM and HP for utility computing. Helpful for companies that have a spike in computing for some weeks based on seasonal demand - so a period of spikes followed by slumps.

Cons: Practical solutions that have been put into place is still in the early adopter phase. Large upfront investments will need to be made by some companies desirous of introducing this functionality to their customers to budget to spikes in demand.

f. Free

Now what can beat this ?

Pros: You gotta be kidding me!

Cons: Cost of support, maintenance. Necessary to have skilled resources and/or a quick relief support structure to be viable for the enterprise.

2004-10-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

So what about Knowledge Management?

After working with several large Fortune 1000 companies re: their Knowledge management(KM) initiatives (or often called "contact center consolidation project", "web self service project" or by several other names, the end result remains elusive - KM is still remains a buzzword.

So what is KM anyways ? Is it search? Is it classification of information? Several vendors have attempted to define it their way - notable among them are Primus (recently acquired by ATG - the content management company), Kanisa, Serviceware, SupportSoft etc.

The basic problem with this narrow definition is that it ignores the people and process aspect. Knowledge Management is the ability to harness knowledge between the ears of the your assets - the ones who walk out of the door at the end of the day. The boundaries of the enterprise are expanding - they include your partners,suppliers, distributors and customers - who have more knowledge about the quirks of your product that some of your employees. The challenge then is not limited to your enterprise that these vendors attempt to address, but how to extend these to others and bring them into a referenceable but growing database of information.

It is interesting to note that given the current parameters of a fixed time and fixed budget - the initial wave seems to be of expanding service by outsourcing/offshoring by adding new bodies at a fraction of the cost. Lets extend this forward to 5 years or more and offshoring too will become cost ineffective due the real problem - information explosion. It is impossible to keep pace with the exponentially increasing information and the demand for accurate service about specific products by relying on people addition alone.

So what's the solution? Transparency. Allowing all external parties like customers etc to collaboratively participate in documentation, review and feedback. It starts with basics - discussion groups. Then advances to Wiki-webs and more. Open source by definition is more open to this process than established oragnizations, even though the number of users touched by the latter is several orders of magnitude more!

The key concept here is keep people and externals interested in the contribution process - reputation tracking and rewarding is key. Can a customer or partner gain points in exchange for contributing solutions ? Do the points mean something? (for e.g. a million points at one point an answer to get a PeopleSoft Shirt is certainly not worth it).

Today the concept of reputation is silo'd and locked into systems (so laments Marc Andreessen) - for e.g. its impossible to pull your reputation out of eBay and apply it to Amazon or to a business website). One notable exception to this rule is credit history - it seems to be consistently followed in the USA - and again is silo'd in one way due to three credit agencies :). Can the next logical extension to credit history be reputation history? Hmm....

Will an enterprise automatically campaign to have the most reputable people in the industry be their contributors? Will Microsoft expand their Passport strategy to include reputations? And then again - maybe not!.

Tracking back to the original issue tof KM - the bottomline is simple - multi-million $$$s in procuring search software will not help here. The real problem is far deeper than that and requires thought and persistence to gain a competitive advantage in the long run.

Tell me what you think.

2004-10-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Will Product Managers get Offshored?

Intriguing (and scary)question. One that needs to be examined a little further. Here's some facts:

Most of the offshored/outsourced jobs are for call centers(inbound and outbound-telemarketing etc), back office workers(claims processing, underwriting etc) and HR related(payroll processing etc) .
With the exception of these above jobs, most of the customer facing occupations are not being offshored - sales, business development, account management etc
Companies have not yet learnt to leverage lower cost nations for strategic advantages, only for cost savings
Strategic guidance and direction is still being closely held in the US, with the execution activity being delegated to offshoring destinations
The mass job layoffs in Hi-Tech seem to be all those kinds of jobs that directly overlap with execution related or otherwise known as "non-strategic jobs".

Let's switch to India for a minute. Talking to my cousin who works there for a major software company, he mentioned some key challenges for workers there:

Emphasis on working US hours leads them to work graveyard shifts, causing a complete imbalance in their social life
Irrespective of the location of the work being done, collaboration is key between local locations/employees and remote workers. The knowledge that local employee may soon been let go causes a severe strain in building smooth business relationships, and delay in the work being performed; sabotage and process delays are very common.
Smarter employees in offshore nations often complain of lack of quality work being sent, and lament the lack of creative/design work - this leads to tremendous turnover and lack of job satisfaction.

So on first thoughts, if we define product managers as "representatives of the voice of the customer"- there is still a great chance that this will remain as an exclusive US-only activity. The reality of the situation is that most US centric companies have a poor understanding of product needs from a global perspective(short of multi-language transaltions and running on Unicode databases).

Customers in various geographies have unique and distinct needs that are very different from the US, and true representation is possible only when product managers are recruited from local regions, and are encouraged to enlist the participation of local customer groups in the evlauation of a product before launch. Unfortunately, this means a couple of things: The perspective of the company has to change from "offshoring product management" to "global product management" and empowering regional product managers to take business decisions that are not overridden by the US based HQ.

The shift has started from the bottom end of the labor pyramid and is slowly making its way to the top.

Bottom line: There is a plausibility that product management jobs will get globalized, albeit not in traditional sense of the "offshoring" word.

2004-10-16T23:12:00.000-07:00

Netflix,TiVo and Six degrees of separation

It was interesting to see NetFlix lower their fees in response to Amazon's entry into the market - no wait... on rumors of entry into the market. The stock market reacted immediately to the news and dropped the price by 40% in one day. Why in the world would you want to do that ?

As I dug deeper into this mystery some things became clearer: Leslie Kilgore - the CMO of NetFlix previously served as the director of marketing in - none other than - Amazon.com! Wonder what her buddies warned her. Something so strong that NetFlix decides to cancel their UK launch and focus on the core US market. Hmmm...

On the other hand, TiVo and Netflix announced that they would jointly develop a product to download movies over the internet. And the driver of this deal: TiVo Chief Executive Mike Ramsay who also happens to sit on the board of directors for Netflix. To Mr. Ramsay's credit however he resigned from the board as soon as a"commercial" deal was made. Does this make the situation ethical ? hmmm...

Let's see another director : Richard Barton who sits on several board including the IAC. What - never heard of it ? Here's a summary from stockhouse:

IAC/InterActiveCorp is the world's leading multi-brand interactive commerce company. IAC consists of IAC Travel, which includes Expedia, Inc., Hotels.com, Hotwire, Interval International, and TV Travel Shop; HSN; Ticketmaster, which oversees ReserveAmerica; Match.com; LendingTree; Precision Response Corporation; IAC Local and Media Services, which includes Citysearch, Evite, Entertainment Publications, Inc. and TripAdvisor, Inc.; and IAC Interactive Development which includes ZeroDegrees.

Here's my prediction then: Prepare to see more of Netflix in not only consumer households, but in hotels as well. Imagine a world where your rating,preferences and queues travel with you around the world. All hotels that you stay in are linked to NetFlix's servers to beam you the next movie you are interested in. TiVo already knows your habits, Netflix wil help propagate it.

And all because of six degrees of separation.

2004-10-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

Collaboration Tools for Product Management

For those of you in product management, collaboration is key to identifying trends, gathering requirements, peer validation and basically having a single repository for information.

The issue with today's PLM (product life cycle management) tools is that they rely heavily on workflow processes, and expect documents attached at every step of the workflow to some how assist in collaboration. The fundamental problem with this approach is that even though process is very important when the requirements become clear, the chaos during the collection phase needs to be better facilitated- so that the important information floats to the top, and the rest can be at the bottom as a lower priority.

So when a tool like JotSpot came to my attention - I grabbed it for a trial run. So far - it addresses some real cool areas and is based on the wildly popular WiKi methodology, except that the founders talk about building enterprise applications on top of this.

There are several tools that offer the "workspace" centric approach - for e.g. Groove, Lotus Notes, Discussion groups etc that allow threaded conversations and searching across them. What is needed is a channel agnostic way to aggregate content (which Jot allows by integrating with email, RSS, web pages etc), and web service based external integration.

The founders in their conversation with Jon Udell seem to have missed the point about the key applicability in the enterprise space, but focus on a enabling Wikis as a quick development tools for specific business apps. This will point them against standard development tools vendors like IBM, BEA etc with far greater resources that they have, however innovative this product currently is.

What Jot needs is to clearly define what business market they want to go after, with tools to simplify adoption and more user interfaces. Editing a page and adding code may be a piece of cake for a developer but try showing the demo to a sales rep and sees if s/he'll dig it !

However, it is a great concept and I look forward to the founders repositioning this from something that is universally useful to nobody, to mission critical for somebody.

Call me if you need my help!

2004-10-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

Tough to be in IT

Look at the landscape if you are in IT today - vendors like PeopleSoft want to make it easier to use their applications, product managers are supposed to know their target users, goals and behaviors - so much so that the need for IT should be minimal. Your management is looking at the cost and feels that outsourcing of "non-strategic" tasks is the best strategy - except that 80% of the people in your company IT fall into that bucket. Look at your user community - they are never happy with the performance, usability, scalabilty of any thing you implement, especially a new application.

Painted this way, it really looks like the perfect storm. So is it the end of IT (as Nick Carr so infamously put it) ?

My answer - absolutely not! There is a LONG way to go as a hi-tech culture before we can even write IT off. My experiences with IT folks in companies show some revealing characteristics:

a. Vendors are light years behind providing the "perfect" solution

Yes - all the plans talk about making IT obsolete, putting the power in the hands of the business users ( like allowing end users to execute DML statements on the fly in production - ya you heard me right!) still leaves a lot to be desired. And why is that ? The key reason I see is due to the multiple points of failure in any complex application - there are just too many variables that the vendors cant design/test/foresee in a controlled lab environment. For eg. the exact mix of the platform, database, hardware, software version, skillset of IT, skillset of user will always yeild different permutations on how the software eventually ends up behaving. And who can help fix this - IT.

b. IT outsourcing

This is a hotly debated topic. While it is true that IT infrastructure has elements that can be outsourced, the competitive edge that a company derives by keeping resources onsite, well paid and motivated cannot be easily duplicated. Business Agility. What wins in the market is the ability to experiment, react quickly to feedback and experiment again. Outsource your IT and you are stuck with "standards" - the standards that once gave you a competitive edge are now becoming strait jackets - driven by vendors that serve only one agenda - theirs.

c. Business community - IT's customers

I was recently in a conversation where the business users were completely livid due to a migration to a newer system, touting the strengths of the older one, even though the newer system addressed 80% of the key pain points. Why is that ? Because change is hard. IT folks need to spend a lot of time with the end user community in recuriting leaders, educating them about the change well in advance and getting buy-in. Lets face - NO software will solve problems, people do. Its important not to ignore this fact and put in change management in your project plan.

So is IT needed. As far as I can see - absolutely! Will it be needed in 10 years ? perhaps. But that is another article all by itself...

2004-10-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

Innovation and Microsoft

Robert Scoble's website has an interesting discussion of what Microsoft's contribution to innovation is. Ok most of them are MS bashers who are critical about their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy, and argue that almost all innovations are NIH - "Not invented here".

While I agree with most products that the MS bashers talked about, the one attribute that MS has contributed IMHO is the user experience. It is an enviable competitive advantage that MS has to define the next generation of user interfaces in any application that continue to influence consumer and business applications.

Ok - I hear the Mac team screaming already - Notice I did not say that this honor belongs to MS alone.

Perhaps its the touch with the largest number of human beings on the planet that ever use a computer - the first learning with the MS UI suddenly raises the bar with all other applications that compete or that attemt to interact with a user. I have seen this many too often that the question posed is "Why can't you make it work like MS xxx" where xxx can be their favorite product.

In this new world of services-oriented architecture, the user interface title is again up for grabs. Can MS continue to dominate the interface standard with A2A (app-to-app) just as they did with usability for an end-user application? Hmmmm...

2004-10-10T17:49:00.000-07:00

PeopleSoft Alumni Website

Steve Tennant, an ex-PeopleSoftie has created a new PeopleSoft Alumni website. This is absolutely great news and here's the blog to cast a vote in its favor!

2004-10-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

The Wonderful World of Digital Photography and their Providers

Being a photography enthusiast, I'm really curious to see how the digitial photography market is shaping up. There are the manufacturers - the Kodaks of the world - fim makers and camera makers - the Canon's of the world. There are the consumers - like you and me. And then there is the Internet for the new virtual showcase.

Lets briefly list the players here who want to be our virtual showcase : Ofoto, Snapfish, Yahoo! Photos.

And then there are ones who want to help "organize" our virtual shoebox - Google, TypePad(from MoveableType), Microsoft and of course the 800 lbs gorilla - Adobe.

And then starts the great convergence war. Kodak - the maker of traditional films wants to be the leader in the new digital medium to avoid obsolescence. They acquire Ofoto.

Google looks and this and says - hey! We are the leaders in search, so we should go acquire someone so that when people want to search for photos, they will absolutely use Google. And oh - let's make it available free of charge so that there the ultimate form of vendor lock-in - free funtional product with high emotional investment value.

So what is Microsoft doing - why researching to make this experience easier of course. In this article entitled "Life of a digital Photo" MS reasearchers are hard at work in crafting a next gen software called "Media Browser" - which BTW will be completely renamed when the product marketing guys get their hands on it - whic allows quick identification and classification of photos - time cluster views, subject/topic views etc.

Since classification is a primary nut to crack for all these management software, here's another vendor that claims to do this, ableit for web search. Now the prospects of lasting against Google or MS - you can guess.

The latest vendor to jump into this is Flickr. Offering tons of new services, this is a service I have my eyes on at the moment.

And there always are the niche vendors - PaintShop Pro, Adode and others who really want to stay on the tools side of the business in making the experience of editing photos much better rather than get on the search side of the business.

The real question is - is digital search the future of photos ? Perhaps. I'm not convinced yet that we have seen the end of the competition in this space. Im still expecting the digital version of Creative Memories, and the makers of shoeboxes to wake up one day and go "Hey - we need to go digital!".

What are the pre-reqs of this business - One is disk space, the other is computational capacity, third is management. So I would predict storage companies like EMC, Processors like Intel in the first two categories to do very well. The third layer of management is very muddy right now with all the vendors mentioned above.

Add to the vertical integration confusion strategy with all major vendors wanting a piece of this digital phot0 pie (including HP, and the ability for the iPod to store photos) will be very interesting to watch.

And not to forget - what about the cell phone manufacturers with embedded photo phones ? It is only a matter of time when Motorola and Samsung and others embed 3.1 Megapixel camera phones and then they demand management and organization tools as well.

So as consumers - the best is yet to come. Who would I bet on ? A vertically integrated cradle-to-grave company or pure photo management company ? Right now it would be the latter.

2004-10-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Confessions of an IT Cook: Ingredients for a Service Oriented Architecture

So we have all heard this over and over. Here's the magic receipe for SOA, as per the industry :

Ingredients:

Multiple business applications, preferably residing in multiple databases
Lots of platforms
Lack of integrations, needing lots of manual scrubbing and redundant data entry
lack of standardized processes
Lack of common definition of fundamental constructs like Customer, Product, Item

Steps to a perfect solution:

First, identify all discrete business steps within every application
Create web services !
Now mix all the web services in all the apps together and shake well
Make sure that you pour this into a container that can hold all of them - call it the "orchestrator", "glue", "process integrator" or whatever
Now slap on various user interfaces on top of this and call them "consumers"
Just for fun, sprinkle some "business process tools" on top of this and let your end business users run amok with the combinations, just like a kid in a candy store who wants a mixture of jelly beans !
After this, all you need is to examine how great your culinary skills are - just use a "business activity monitor" and if the tempearture drops or rises above thresholds - just set off an "exception workflow" and you are all set!

So - what am I missing ?

2004-10-07T19:55:00.000-07:00

IP Telephony and Web Callbacks

An interesting technology gap exists the innovators of IP technology and the adopters in the Enterprise - specifically referring to the multitude of contact centers and helpdesks. As Jon Udell mentions in this article there is a big difference between computer telephony and IP telephony - nowhere bigger is the contrast in the enterprise consumers. The big problem does boil down to the inability to articulate business benefits brought on by cool technology.

Why are vendors like Genesys, Cisco and Avaya still able to convince enterprises to cough up millions of dollars (no kidding there) and still charge the antiquated "per-seat" licensing ? What is per seat when there are virtual call centers, work-from-home agents and the like ? Isn't it only logical for these enterprises to seriously look for open source linux-based solutions that are fundamentally cheaper and more easily tailorable ? No - not yet! The main reasons are as old as the open source v/s commercial battle with one twist - the business leaders in the call center have not yet come to appreciate the benefits of technology.

The argument is that the demographic of future customers for customer support is changing - the workforce of the future will be younger, will demand more channels and more flexibility in how problems get resolved. Why wait on hold for 30 minutes when I can schedule a web callback ? How about IM'ing me when you have resolved a problem ? Send me a text message if you can find me online. These are very plausible scenarios that will not be addressed by enterprises with their wait and watch strategy.

In the meantime, the tech divide will continue to manifest as one of the most annoying problems in civilized society today - customers waiting for a human touch. With the over emphasis on automation in the form of self service, Natural language processing (NLP) etc it's ironic that the same crowd has placed an over-reliance of technology in one area to effectively alienate themselves from the very audience they were expected to serve - the customer.

2004-10-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Now Amazon gets into Search...

I find it amazing that the equivalent of the OS battles of the past, and the browser wars is now being played out as search wars.

The undisputed king of search of course is Google, but now that they are public - the real question in management's mind would be how do you make this profitable?

One approach that they seem to be taking to become the operating system of the Internet. Which means that they solve the fundamental problem of providing the connectivity and plumbing to retrieve information - become a platform of some sort. All the other companies like Amazon with their latest spinoff A9 is planning to wrap content around the search OS.

And thus starts the grand convergence. Yahoo! Search takes on Google, Microsoft takes on Google and Yahoo!, and content again threatens to be king. Yahoo! has a great headstart from a Portal perspective ( is it just search in a different way?) and is what A9 trying to do here similar to Yahoo! ?

What is the competitive entry barrier for A9 ? In my mind - it will be access to content. Amazon has the proprietary technology that lets you search "Inside the Book" that Yahoo! does not have currently. Comparing apples-to-apples, the winner in this case would be determined by whether you are interested in searching for public domain (a.k.a free) information that is aggregated in a single place with some value added relevancy checks, or copyrighted content (such as books) where there is an e-commerce aspect to the right to view/consume it.

We'll be watching!

2004-10-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

Any Email or Collaboration product managers reading this?

Harvard Business Review ran a recent article called Why Your E-mail Requests Are Ignored that claimed the degree of effectiveness of an email is inversely proportional to the number of recepients being addressed to. This means - you have a better chance of response when you send a note out to one person, than to four people.

How many times have you been faced with this situation: You need to send the same email to 10 people, with the same content with perhaps a change of the name, and still follow the effectiveness principle stated above?

Today there are a few options, in increasing degrees of complexity :

a. Copy and paste the name in Notes/Outlook

b. Use fancy mail merge in Word to generate 10 copies

c. Use a CRM app - like PeopleSoft, that has correspondence mgmnt and online marketing for mass email generation

I'm surprised that short of a BCC option which is really ugly, this is a simple mail requirement that has not been handled by any client that I have encountered so far. Have you ?

2004-09-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a great collection of presentations at the SVPMA website.

2004-09-02T18:37:00.000-07:00

Innovation in large organizations

A new browser to challenge MS from Google?Its not surprising considering the latest hires, says NY Post. Adam Bosworth (who incidentally moved from BEA to Google) mentioned that the excitement of web services is not in the B2B space, but in the B2C space - "making apps that my mom can use" - as he put it.

So what does constitute an innovative company ? The age old formula of attracting the best industry talent, providing them a sandbox to tryout concepts, a fundamental tolerance toward failure, rapid productization of ones that work, clear differentiation between core competencies and complementary competencies - and enabling easy access to complementary technolgies provided by partners will certainly help.

The Innovator's dilemma is a great book that talks about how bigger companies often stratgeically choose to ignore emerging technologies due to the low revenue stream during the inception stage and find that they have been superseded by the next generation of technology. A recommended read.

My take on this is that during periods of economic growth, companies often ignore the core competency model due to the inflow of cash that encourages risk in non core areas - a classic example is of GE acquiring an investment company, and in lean/declining growth go back to basics, "back into the box", "focus on fundamentals" - which seemed to be the theme at Connect anyways.

2003-12-01T11:36:00.000-08:00

SearchCIO.com | Six decisions IT people shouldn't make

Extract, courtesy SearchCIO.com

Six decisions IT people shouldn't make

By John Hogan, SearchCIO.com News Editor

01 Dec 2003 | SearchCIO.com

IT professionals don't expect business executives to reboot servers or write lines of code. Conversely, senior managers shouldn't burden IT executives with critical business decisions related to IT.

Collaboration is vital to a successful relationship between IT and the business side of an organization, but there are good reasons for leaving IT out of the final say on some key matters involving IT, said Jeanne Ross, a principal research scientist at the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

At a recent Gartner Inc. Web services conference in Baltimore, Ross offered her take on "six decisions that IT shouldn't make." She said that the first three are strategic decisions that involve IT strategy. The second three are executive decisions that revolve around IT implementation and execution. To make her point, Ross used several real-world examples of the good, the bad and the ugly.

1. How much should an organization spend on IT?

This is the basic question that comes up in any discussion about IT, Ross said, and it's one that often gives CIOs and IT managers nightmares. "Clearly, this is not a decision IT wants to make on its own," she said.

It's also a premature question to ask until an organization decides what it hopes to get out of an IT project.

For example, FedEx is only two-thirds the size of rival shipping company UPS, and yet both profess to spend about $1 billion a year on IT. That doesn't mean FedEx spends too much or UPS spends too little, Ross said. It simply means that they have different priorities to achieve different business goals. The former bases its IT decisions around a business model of providing niche services -- at a premium, of course -- to its customers. The latter uses IT to create new business efficiencies that drive down costs.

2. Which business processes should get IT funds?

Once the first question is answered, the challenge becomes how to divvy up the IT budget. Ross said that because many organizations have far more IT projects requests than they could possibly fund, decision gridlock becomes a problem. "What we found is that they end up not making any decisions and going for more than they can handle," she said.

An example is the case of Hershey Foods, which a few years ago tried to simultaneously implement ERP, CRM and supply chain management systems. What the candy giant ended up with was a crisis in which product deliveries were botched for the critical Halloween season.

The lesson here, Ross said, is that senior management needs to step in and decide what the organization's top IT priorities should be. "If we can't do everything, what can we do?" she said.

3. Which IT capabilities need to be company-wide?

It may seem like a great idea to have an IT system span the enterprise, but it's not always a good choice. Ross said. If IT makes this decision on its own, there's no guarantee that the business as a whole will benefit from it.

GTECH, a provider of lottery services to government agencies, has a strong incentive not to make mistake about which IT systems to deploy across the business. Many of its government contracts stipulate that GTECH will pay customers $10,000 for every minute of lottery system downtime.

"That gives them a lot of motivation to spend a lot of money making sure they have no downtime," Ross said. "Most organizations don't have that same motivation."

4. How good do an organization's IT resources need to be?

When Dow Corning deployed an ERP system, business management demanded that there be no downtime. The IT organization said that through disaster-recovery planning and backup systems, that was entirely possibly, but it would cost "an arm and a leg." Armed with that knowledge -- and two arms intact -- management was able to determine how much downtime it could realistically afford without having a negative impact on business operations. The answer? Four hours at a stretch.

5. What security and privacy risks will we accept?

Determining security and privacy risks are similar to determining levels of system reliability. Ross said. In this instance, however, it's a matter of both technology spending as well as expending time and effort to train users on policies and practices.

Last year, Yale University launched a Web site where applicants could enter their Social Security numbers and birth dates to find out whether they were among the lucky 10% to win acceptance. Unfortunately, since high school students often apply to several colleges, Ivy League rival Princeton had much of that data and beat some applicants to the punch. Fireworks graphics and a congratulatory greeting were displayed for only the first time the site was accessed, so some accepted students thought they hadn't made the cut.

The resulting controversy was a privacy nightmare for Yale and an ethical fiasco for Princeton, which suspended an admissions official over the incident.

"This was a case of senior management -- or at least business management -- not being involved in the design of the system and not thinking through, with IT, the privacy and security issues," Ross said.

6. Who should get the blame if an IT initiative fails?

This is perhaps the most important of all six critical IT decisions, Ross said. "Now, of course, the logical scapegoat has been and tends to be IT," she said.

Several years ago, when Patrick Zilvitis became CIO at Gillette, senior management told him that they wanted a PeopleSoft enterprise software system deployed company-wide. Such a deployment would have been difficult at best given the high degree of autonomy that Gillette's business units enjoy, but Zilvitis knew it would have been disastrous without a senior business sponsor. Because he was still in a honeymoon phase as CIO, Zilvitis was able to hold out until one vice president agreed that there was such a critical need for those applications that the VP would shoulder the responsibility. Ultimately, that VP realized that no one from IT would have been able to clear the business hurdles involved in the deployment.

The pain experienced by several companies in dealing with these six questions is a valuable lesson to the next generation of IT and business managers, Ross said.

"None of these decisions could be made without IT input, of course," she said. "IT needs to be there to explain the options, to explain what the technology can and can't, to highlight the costs.

"So IT plays a very important role in all of this, but if business managers don't make these decisions, it really doesn't matter what IT does. Nothing good will come of it."

2003-11-28T01:24:00.000-08:00

This talks about how we have turned education into a kids race - where we believe that sooner they start, sooner they finish.... which is not true. I intend to follow David's readings more.

Much Too Early by David Elkind - Education Next - Summer 2001

2003-11-02T00:50:00.000-08:00

Good source of info on Port scans that I saw on my machine.

FAQ: Firewall Forensics (What am I seeing?)

2003-10-29T15:05:00.000-08:00

Aberdeen Report on SIM

Enterprise Incentive Management: A Market on the Move

2003-10-29T13:25:00.000-08:00

Intersting read.

CommentWire by Datamonitor - Indian call centers: cracks begin to show

Job disillusionment is perhaps the most general way to describe the problem facing India's call center workers. According to Manesh Mathew, director of HR consultancy PeopleEquity, "A number of unique factors peculiar to the call center work environment impact the call center professionals and their perception towards their work. These range across a gamut of human issues which include peculiar working hours, working days/holidays determined by geographic considerations, assuming pseudo identities, learning foreign accents, operating in alien business environment, altered social and family life, besides harboring the risk associated with working in a nascent industry."