FAA stats and flight delays

Consulting teaches you one thing for sure - how to be smart about your travel. Be it filling up of bags in a smart way or be it checking out for flights in smart ways.

For a naive user, flightstats.com is good enough. However, someone wanting further information, can drill down at the FAA site here. Ground stops at your destination indicate that you are now going to have your flight out in that time period. In such cases, call the airlines you are flying with to confirm if you should reach the airport or not.

You can also sign up individual air carriers' notifications which can email and/or text you about it. However, if you are following the FAA method above, then you would find this providing information with a lag.

IT going Green?

IT is going Green - what do you mean by that?
To put it in layman's terms - The usage of IT in an environmentally friendly way is termed as Green IT. Deloitte has a point of view published here.

Why do you think has

• GE kicked off a Green agenda? Their sales are estimated to be $ 20b via sales of environment friendly products.
• Citi, largest financial services provider, committed to invest $50b in carbon reduction projects over the next 10 years? For doing the right thing
  
• Wal-Mart, Fortune #1 retailer, announce Sustainability 360? better PR

They have done so after rigorous assessment and have concluded that environmentally friendly efforts are demanded by the consumers, lawmakers, legislation, and above all, it makes financial sense.

Wait a minute....financial sense - are you insane? Carrying out those initiatives are such a huge capex - you gotta be kidding me when you say it makes financial sense. The counter-argument to this objection is that similar to any other project evaluation, these companies have generated business cases towards their Green initiatives. Believe me, the boards wont let them undertake initiatives without significant business reason. Green IT initiatives make sense as they are a good strategic import: its demanded by customers (revenues), and finally, reduce financial risk (cost).

Venture Capitalists (the money masters) must ask the entrepreneurs to show the Green piece as a section in their proposal. Not every project has to deal with greening pre-dominantly. However, most of them can have certain practices capturing that aspect.

The governments can help as well. The legislation must get more stringent in the developing countries where the adoption rate for electronic items is high. If the developing nations are not regulated with regards to electronic waste then alike oil problem they can create waste problem. India is going to generate about 470 ktonnes of e-waste. This is not a match by any standards to that generated in the US, a country about third in population of that of India. However, the as GDP increases, so does the consumption of the individuals. Besides, with entrepreneurs rolling out initiatives targeted at the (somewhat) bottom of the pyramid, the implications can be huge. The trend about thinking Green is not prevalent among the entrepreneurs in these nations.

We have talked about business and government. Let me shift the focus now towards the individual. Yes. You ! -
What are some of the ways I can be Green with my IT usage?
(If you are reading this then I am safely assuming that you come in direct or indirect contact with a computer.)

• Check the power ratings for your battery, computer, processor, etc.
• Put them to stand by modes whenever possible.
  
• Screens occupy most of the energy in a computer usage (esp CRT screens). Shut those down whenever not at desk (this includes lunch time as well).
  
• For laptop users such as myself, remove chargers as soon as battery is upto 100% or even above 96%. Over-charging heats up the lap (can be fatal) and reduces the battery life.
  
• check out these other tips for holidays by Google blog - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/save-some-energy-over-holidays.html

I bet you will find many ways to save energy while using IT both, at home as well as at work.

More thoughts on this later...
until then...have a socially responsible day !

sample papers for itil v2 to v3 bridge exam

Exin is offering ITIL V3 bridge book for free. All you have to do is go to this link, add it to the cart, and check out. Select the procedure as invoice and the cost is Eur 0.

Take advantage of it while you can.

Who robbed the poor kid from the 100$ laptop?

Nicholas Negroponte, an MIT prof, decided to apply C.K.Prahlad's concept of trying to find gems at the bottom of the pyramid. He wanted to reduce parity in education which students get in the developing nations from those who get it in the developed nations. He formed the initiative OLPC or One Laptop Per Child. This was a brilliant effort by Prof Negroponte to work towards removing social iniquity. He got backing from the UN at Davos earlier.

Google stepped in to help as well - of course with money and a desire to sell their platform of SaaS software. Intel stepped in as they didn't want AMD to capture the market. Imagine what kind of market this brings for the vendors. A huge 200 million set of kids who will grow up with all this and eventually get used to it and demand the same thing when they go to work or consume at own expense when they grow up.

Operational difficulties and economics led to his price point going from 100$ to 188$. Volumes earlier estimated weren't there by orders of magnitude. The orders didn't come through. It is a hard-sell in these developing nations for spending 188$ on a kid when his/her entire schooling education can occur on that amount. The quest for capturing the market led Intel to come up with its own 230$-280$ laptop, slightly superior to the OLPC-made laptop.

However, the tech giants stomped the effort - check out this article. Who is to blame? Nicholas says that he is frustrated with the interference from the tech giants and the insidious sinister behavior which threw off his original calculations about the market-size and how much he would be able to capture - a classic business planning mistake by new entrepreneurs - not acknowledging and assessing competition correctly. Forget the tech-giants, the locals in India, Taiwan, etc competed to get a piece of the pie and I bet that Nicholas didn't have them in his business plan. Now, he feels frustrated !

On the other hand, Prof Nicholas expresses that we are not in laptop business. He must actually be happy that either this way or the other way, OLPC's objective must get satisfied - one laptop per child. Intel joined the board of OLPC - saw that these guys didn't know how to run the business the way it should be and decided to run off in their way - nothing wrong in it. Is it incestuous behavior? depends on who is looking at it...

Such contradictory stances by Nicholas probably sends out signals that his ego is hurt due to no success of his initiative. An academic devoting himself to nonprofit efforts must keep a check on his/her ego. I understand that the process of tech-giants muscling him out could have caused agony - but his original purpose was OLPC - he must have that in his mind - he will always be known as the guy who took this brave initiative of reducing the rift between developing nations and developed nations. I would always respect him for that !

Citi needs service management !

I had blogged earlier about Citi slashing IT jobs here. With the latest news about Citi planning to reduce the workforce by upto 45,000 employees, I have come to a realization that the company needs a re-alignment. I am not for the cause of re-org by breaking up the firm into pieces. What they have right now is a giant behemoth which no one would be able to grapple around. Even Reuben, a man who handled the asian currency crisis, denied to take up the responsibilities after Chuck Prince quit. To realize the synergies from their earlier mergers, Citi needs operations' experts in place.

Operations experts, huh? Then hire management consultants... outsiders, objective, etc etc...
The reality is - Citi is a listed company and consultants get chopped off when the cost constraints hover on the head of the middle managers. Consultants charge huge rates. Instead, Citi can directly buy this talent from the market as they need on-going success and not a one-time remedy. So, what qualities they need in their operations-experts?

Last week, the Wall Street Journal had this article on how "tough" bosses were the most successful bosses at private equity backed firms:

"We found that hard skills, which are all about getting things done, were paramount," says lead author Steven Kaplan, a professor of finance and entrepreneurship. "Soft skills centering on teamwork weren’t as pivotal. That was a bit of a surprise to us."…

Mark Gallogly, a co-founder of Centerbridge Partners, a New York private-equity firm, says the academics’ findings match many of his beliefs about what’s important in a CEO. He puts a premium on bosses who can hire well, excel at efficiency and execution, and can be aggressive but respectful. By contrast, public-company CEOs may need more soft skills to manage relations with wide shareholder bases and other diverse constituencies."

The academics found that these five traits were the most important to success…

1. Persistence
2. Attention to detail
3. Efficiency
4. Analytical skills
5. Setting high standards

…and these were the least important to success…

1. Strong oral communication
2. Teamwork
3. Flexibility/adaptability
4. Enthusiasm
5. Listening skills

My observations suggest these are the qualities that enable the low-cost highly scalable operations of some service providers (read Infosys from India, Neusoft from China, etc) to maintain their high margins vis-a-vis the snobbish consulting firms of the developed nations charging high rates at higher operations costs and lower margins.

Citi's services are mostly commoditized. They need to check out what's mentioned in Service Strategy module of Service Management's latest version 3 - differentiate on the outside and simplification on the inside ! If how's their question then they must start to operate similar to the PE controlled firms.

Citi - you have a long way to go - the results of all this will take atleast a few quarters - provided there is a mindset change amongst the existing employees.

architecture patterns and IT service management

While researching for patterns mentioned in v3, I stumbled upon this book titled "Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children " over here.

v3's Service strategy discusses about patterns in services' resources' requirements. This puts architecture patterns in the driving seat.

Surprisingly enough, Prof Krishnan (CMU fame) and myself were planning to work on something in this direction with Mellon Bank for Sourcing services. Having such patterns back from the service providers can help clients to retain the knowledge and to a certain degree, control on their architecture.

Personally, I think that based on industry, definition of IT service management may blur or become accentuated. For instance, in the financial services space, it is less efficient if one differentiates between a business service and IT service. I feel that the whole part is a business service and IT service is so embedded in it that the IT folks cannot live in isolation in most of the cases. Of course, there are certain functions in which they can be siloed out and made to function. For instance, infrastructure. However, in case of other IT services - they are all integrated to the business services tightly. This puts another most debated question in front of us - shouldn't ITIL name be expanded to have IT Service Management rather than having the term Infrastructure in it? Shanon Taylor, architect of v3, is working in that direction.

Finally, IT Service Management will evolve to become a subset of Business Service Management - which has been around since a while now. I am not trying to nominalize the value that ITIL v3 brings - I am just expressing that it is an old wine in a new bottle :P

why MISMers should focus on Google APM?

Consulting is a hot favorite for the MISMers (MISM students) as they want to utilize and deploy their newly gained knowledge about business-enabling via technology and running technology as a business immediately.

However, Google APM is a profile that helps you achieve that as well. Check out this set of 18 globe-trotting Google APMs. Of course, this is also a publicity stunt run by Google recruitment to attract the best talent at cheaper rates (yea, Google's cheap in their payscale - but what the heck, they give awesome stock-grants - about 200 shares per APM and on top of that, such perks). Check out this take on Google's APM program.

Unlike the consulting firms, Google maintains the entrepreneurial spirit of these young bright minds by providing them opportunity to spin their own projects, enabling them to be successful, and finally, bringing those to the market for the greater good of humanity. Much credit goes to initial founders and global product development chief such as Marissa Myers. Ms. Myers is young, energetic, and understands that the new generation folks would get put off if they are restrained from doing certain other things at work. How to channelize this huge burst of energy for the company's benefit is something that the Google leadership has mastered. Of course, it may appear that everyone's running amuck with any idea - however, that's not true. There is method to the madness and I wont divulge more details given to me by an ex-Product Manager during my interview for Product Management position earlier this year.

I would strongly recommend Google Product Management for those MISM students who yearn for the blaze of glory via entrepreneurial pursuits. I was oblivious about this opportunity till half-way into my program. When I discovered about it, I was obsessed with it. Google didnt' move fast and after 5 months of waiting I had to sign up my papers with my current employer, as Google was dragging the recruitment decision.

Google has been sharp enough to identify MISM as a program to source their PMs and APMs. Last year, they started having CMU on their radar for the same. Earlier, they saw CMU as a location for Devs, etc. However, the perception has changed and they intend to hire APMs and PMs as well. I hope this relation builds over a period of time and gets formalized making Google as a formal recruiter for the MISM program, similar to the consulting firms such as Deloitte, Diamond, McKinsey, etc.

google health

Google wants to digitize your health data. Check this article for more details. Rationale is simple: it is aligned with their original vision of the firm - To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Well, I must say - they are well on their tracks. I like Marrisa's quote on "I am feeling yucky" !

On a side note related to this, they are also working towards mapping human genome. Google's helping the lead scientist in the field do that. They are good at organizing large amounts of information such that it's easily accessible - that's what they will do with their algorithms and techniques for the Human Genome project.

certifications in the new world

Gartner predicts that the current and emerging new hot skills are as follows:

1. Project Management
2. Service Management
3. IT Governance
4. Sourcing Management

These and several others.
I felt that a valuable way to indicate one's proficiency in atleast the knowledge about the same can be with the help of certifications. However, this is not to say that anything can replace practical experience. Theoretical knowledge and certifications (by passing tests) cannot substitute an experience.

I've listed the relevant certifications:

PMP - for Project Management
ITIL - for Service Management
CGEIT - for IT Governance
eSCM - for Sourcing Management

I hope this is helpful for budding IT operations management professionals.

which version of google are you on?

Fred Luddy, the CEO of Service-now.com, mentioned this phrase at the NYC Executive briefing as he was trying to emphasize the importance of flexibility in SaaS implementation for Service Management tools. I was invited for the event by VP, Strategy at the company, who is a good acquaintance of mine.

Truly enough, Google's version is not known to anyone. It is irrelevant for the front user as long as all his data in various dimensions is stored for future retrieval and analysis by back-end data storage.

My close encounter and the dialogues with Fred revealed me his persona of an architect, a researcher, a scientist - being dominant over his persona as a CEO. He was former chief software architect at Peregrine, which got bought over by HP.

Surprisingly enough, service-now.com has been able to come up with an on-premise deployment for clients who may be wary of data residing on service providers servers in a SaaS model. For instance, the event had a leading global investment bank indicating how they plan to rip off their older software of Peregrine for IT Asset Management and install service-now.com's suite.

Imagine the impact of this new paradigm - This nature of an on-premise deployment can help allay government's fears and make them a potential client for such services.

ITIL v3 talks about cost distribution of small proportion of fixed costs and large proportion of variable costs in order to make internal IT services' offerings competitive and flexible (to scale up and down based on business needs). Service-now's SaaS implementation ensures just that.

I see this company as a rising star. The product is awesome - way beyond what some of their competitors have to offer. The team is great. Finally, the timing is right - as US market starts ITIL adoption and we are reaching a point of inflexion for the same.

does ITIL v3 marginalize value of CMU's MISM program?

As I read ITIL v3 since summer this year, I realised that most of the techniques mentioned in the books (primarily Service Strategy and in general, all the five books) are taught in MISM and more. Also, based on one's interests, one can shape program to become an operations expert for IT operations or services' operations. I had a doubt whether this was all the information/knowledge I paid for at MISM? Does the release of ITIL v3 appreciate value for one of the alums at the cost of rest of the current students?

Well, ITIL v3 does not marginalize MISM program. In fact, it enhances the value of the program - by highlighting that one of the alumni (Majid Iqbal) from the program was one of the authors for the ITIL v3 set of best practices. This highlights that CMU MISM program's students are thought leaders.

The pure inter-disciplinary approach that the school promotes and adopts creates a rich culture which leads to innovations. As Bill Gates mentioned on the Charlie Rose show, the world is far more inter-dependent today and we have multi-lateral alliances everywhere. In such a world, it is essential to create these linkages between various disciplines.

In future, plenty of new problems will emerge with newer dimensions. Whoever solves them will have certain set of best practices - those can get recorded into ITIL v4, v5, v6, etc. What CMU teaches you is how to approach a problem from different dimensions and solving problems with effective and enduring solutions.

I don't intend to spark a huge debate here by assuming superiority. There are a lot of aspects that can be changed in the program dynamics. However, it is clearly a program that's unmatched. If you want people who bring business solution by leveraging technology then currently, MISM is the place to hunt such people from.

branded entertainment

Date: 10-18-2007
Venue: HBO office in midtown – 1100 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY.

Organized by – IRTS Foundation, a foundation that offers New York City based educational luncheons, seminars, and workshops which cater to a diverse range of media interests

Speakers:
Advertisers:

§ Robert Friedman – President, Media & Entertainment, Radical Media

§ Robert (Bob) Riesenberg – President & CEO, Full Circle Entertainment

Network folks:

§ Dan Longest – Sr VP, Integrated Marketing & Promotions, ABC

§ Linda Yaccarino – Exec VP & Gen Manager, Turner Entertainment, Ad Sales & Marketing

Hollywood Reporter rep, Gail Schiller was the moderator for the Q&A session.

Event description:

The event had response from 70-80 folks and about the same number of turnout. It was well-organized as it made the most optimal use of everyone’s time. A set of pre-chosen questions were asked for the large majority of time and then the podium was opened for the audience for about 15 mins or 2-3 questions

Audience:
Broadcasting and Publishing were the two prime domains of the audience.

Notes from the Q&A:

Branded Entertainment’s demand drivers:

§ Declining engagement power of the 30-second TV spot – however, its not going to go away

§ Fragmentation in the media industry – this leads to difficulty in reaching critical masses

§ Time-shift leading to use of devices such as the TiVo.

BE’s demand has increased by multiples but the supply is restricted. There are very few advertisers who don’t ask for BE. The networks cannot supply enough BE because:

§ Relevance: They want to have the right spot in the program for the right brand

§ Limited inventory: The networks want to ensure that the inventory does not lose ratings due to incessant brand-placements.

§ They may not be ready themselves (this was not discussed at all)

T&T has a focus on micro-series, why?

§ Mobility – multi-layered communication

§ The other means are not enough for the advertisers

Business models are one of the two:

§ Revenue sharing

§ Barter system

Mostly, it is the latter in case of large networks as they are not running behind the ad agencies.

Challenges:

§ Infancy stage of the industry

§ Impatience shown by the advertisers – Ratings, Retention, Recall become a challenge for the networks if they don’t turn down the impatient advertisers

§ Focus: Large project teams – cross-functional service areas within the networks and/or ad agencies. In order to address this issue, liaison groups are being formed (say Promo development group at Turner which liaisons between the ad sales group and the programming group)

§ Fit: Brand must fit naturally with the content, adding to the story in a relevant and a tangible manner. However, folks are bringing in money to get irrelevant stuff done. This may kill the industry in its pre-mature stage.

§ Scalability: Limited inventory and controlled environment by the networks leads to lack of scalability in the model. Networks have the control. They do exert it. However, they are undertaking initiatives for the same – such as staff augmentation and/or staff training in the BE direction.

New trends:

§ Pressure on “creatives”: Creatives are going to find themselves squeezed due to the huge demand for the BE content. Network sales folks have aligned themselves with the best interest of the network. For instance, for the network sales folks, the focus has changed from selling programs to selling “commercial pods”. This will further put pressure on creatives to align themselves with network’s objectives.

I think this can lead to inflation of wages or significant terms and conditions change for the writers. Writers’ guild has already asked compensation for brand placements in their scripts.

§ Cross-media: A new emerging trend is in the increasing demand for cross-media BE.

deck creation and consulting

CMU MISM instilled certain slides' deck-creation qualities in me which cannot be emphasized any more. My success at deck-creation and logical structuring have helped me quite a bit at my consulting job. Creating decks instantly with MECE, Mynto's pyramid principle, etc comes naturally to me - thanks to CMU MISM. These were directly or indirectly learnt in the CMU environment.

Also, the creation of POVs were inspired from the Telecom Management class of Dr. Sakir Yucel and the Managing Services Organizations by Majid Iqbal. This training has helped me develop some provocative POVs at the firm.

Ramayya Krishnan, the chief architect of the program, has well said in this video - how IT/IS interact with policies, how they interact with the business processes, etc is very important to leverage IT's capabilities. Business technology and IT Management are forte for CMU MISM students. Andy Wasser summarizes well in this video by saying "... the students who want to see a business opportunity and intelligently know how to apply technology !" CMU MISM is a business technology program.

Currently, only progressive consulting firms have realised this aspect. Sooner or later, the rest of the IT world will realize that and source their talent from this program.

network nyc

Network NYC is at 3 West Club this year - will look forward to meeting other CMU folks there. Thereafter, the event's organized to go to Connolly's for an after party. I plan to swing folks to Tonic (nearby) after that. However, let us see what will be the mood be like. We may end up going some other hipper place - Tonic's kindda lame for me.

However, I must have energy left. Too many assignments.
I have an early morning-long meeting till noon in midtown with an investment bank and a hospitality major. Later, I have to continue to work on the point-of-views that I've been working on. It's provocative and will be out soon on the firm's site. In the evening, there is a media sector special event on Branded Entertainment at the HBO office at Times Square. The prime part is that I have to present it later to the organization at the Quarterly event. Though I am an FSI major, I am a TMT minor. I guess that explains my choice for NYC - lol !

My cousin's coming - so, he will be my responsibility from tomorrow evening till Sunday morning. It will be great to meet him after almost 2.5 years.

I look forward to the coming days!

kalam @ cmu?

Check out this piece of news - Dr. Kalam getting an honorary Ph.D. from CMU !
He left the president's tenure this July.

I wish I could've been there to meet him ! This brings me back to the initial argument of whether I should go back to CMU or continue working at my workplace ? If I were smart I would go back eventually. The odds are stacked in my favor for my correct utilization. Here, the odds are not exactly stacked in my favor to make the best use of my knowledge - however, it aint a low probability - hence, still hanging around.

for all aspiring consultants

http://www.gettingdrunkinfirstclass.com/

This is a fairly hardcore site written by a consultant while exhibiting his feelings about the profession. I have no comments about the same.

communication in a geographically dispersed team !

A recent article at NYTimes indicates how email/calls can lead to more conflict and miscommunication at work. The article outlines possible solution for the same towards the end. I didn't know about the Asperger's syndrome until I read this email. You can read the article here.

I can relate this back to a course by Ed Barr at CMU on Professional Writing. Specifically, he had devoted one whole lecture (8% of course time) on email communications along with an interesting assignment.

Future of IT consulting

This article from HBS on "Future of IT Consulting" was something worth going through:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3402.html

On a side note, I am trying to catch up with my reading, as I get settled with my new job and the new place where I've relocated myself.

One of the interesting notes which I already experience in the market-place is:

Many CIOs say they will do less outsourcing in the future. This is driven by several factors, including a decrease in the number of new, "gorilla" ERP and CRM initiatives and the increasing need for rapid and flexible modifications to existing systems. What they do outsource will be the "body shop" activity when they need more capacity, but they plan to keep the deeper expertise in their companies.

The companies having intensive IT functions want to keep outsourcing to
Where will the IT consulting arms of the Big Four in audit go from here?

a. The headcount-increment predictions are flattening out, as seen from their projections for the next year.

b. Most of the functions performed by the consulting arms of the Big Four are geared towards the above mentioned "body-shop" activities. For instance, if you look at the IT consulting arm of a leading Big Four firm, it has huge chunk of ppl (more than 50%) devoted in their Systems Dev arm and barely, a few in their IT Strategic Management arm.


What do I suggest for my regular readers?

One must work towards developing one's own skill-sets. Do not go behind the names of the companies. Within those companies as well, you are evaluated based on the work you've done in the past and the work you are doing now. Thus, one must remain highly selective in the work one does. You will automatically be picked up by one of these firms, if you are working in a niche area as an expert. I say this because they want ppl as they are operating (20%) far above their healthy attrition levels (which are 12-13%).

Also, it makes logical sense to load up one's skills at one's own consent than what the firm's want. Most of the body-shops want only one skill - working hard on whatever you are put onto. Thus, specialization is only a matter of chance and not a pre-meditated, strategic play. As Ayn Rand puts it: "Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think."

globalization forces

Headlines today in WSJ: Some in Silicon ValleyBegin to Sour on India

Labor wage-arbitrage is about to vanish for Indian firms in high-end skilled work. Companies such as Infy, WIT, SAY are facing a double whammy due to this:
a. On one hand, they have the rising labor rates
b. On the other hand, they have strong INR eating up their bottomline.

What's next?
Companies look to other offshore locations: Phillipines, Vietnam, Czech (I bet my money on it), Brazil, etc. Globalization forces are getting work from one low cost nation to another one.

Virtual work is also carried out and pretty well - check out this list/ranking of the coding market here.

What must one do?
Figure out what skills are sold at a higher rate and are untradeable. Create revenue streams in the same at places of the highest offered rates.
Along with this, always be in a nation of predictable (and preferably low) inflation.

Google's 411

Google has decided to crush 411 (in a way).
Check out this new *free* service from Google named "Google voice local search".

Dial 1800-Goog-411 from any phone.
Differentiator in this service is: it's free !

Lat/long tracking and monetization of the same is on its way now :) This was a hot topic in last year's convention of "Future of technology" where Eric Schmidt alluded to a possibility of this happening.

Long-live the Google trio !

whats next?

Anxious readers of the blog ask me: "What will happen to this blog?"

I am in a dilemma.

On one hand I propose the following: This will become my technology blog - as in, random thoughts on technology would be put here by me. CMU inspired me to remain in an inter-disciplinary zone and relevant inputs will be posted here.

On second thoughts, I feel that I should start another one in order to acquire a focus to my discussions. This is also because the current blog is to log experience of a CMU student.

Well, I will make a quick decision on this front. Until then, this will remain my dump for many other things.

SaaS implementation

A new genre of service providers is emerging - SaaS service providers.

Here's a link about the same - Bluewolf, with experience in SaaS implementation have taken over as the pioneers. Salesforce.com has a consulting team - however, Bluewolf does implementations in many places as their services are cheaper. They can execute it and stay competitive due to economies of scale and scope. Now, joining Google for Google Enterprise Apps will help them quite a bit. Definitely, Bluewolf is at quite a bit of risk if they dont broker the contracts correctly with the end client or the service providers.

Will eSCM apply here? - both in case of CL and SP? Should it apply here?
As per me, the answer is yes - if you have a different point of you then you and I must talk ! :)

Pgh - the most livable city

To my own personal experience and absolute delight - Pittsburgh is rated as "the most livable city".

The nine subcategories mentioned are all that matters for me:

1. housing affordability (cost of living);
2. transportation;
3. jobs;
4. education;
5. climate;
6. crime;
7. health care;
8. recreation;
9. ambience (museums, performing arts, restaurants

Housing was very very cheap and hence, at times, I regret on my decision to move to NYC for work (my current employer offers the same pay in pgh and nyc). Crime rate is low in Pgh and hence, the insurance rates are low. UPMC provides healthcare right then and there.

Transportation is convenient if you have a car.
Jobs are good for those who have it. For those who are looking, it may not be the best market !

Well, as I've mentioned in an earlier post of mine, if I get tired of the city, I will move back to Pgh :)

value added by ivys!

Donald Asher has come out with yet another interesting writeup for schooling !
Check this out: http://teacherweb.com/CA/PacificaHighSchoolOxnard/MrsGillett/Is-the-Ivy-League-Worth-It_.pdf

Does Ivy League matter (beyond finance)?

Also, another advice of having least debt when one gets out is very important. Developing social skills and technically skills is an equally important advice. Thus, getting into an environment where there is a good balance between to the two makes more sense.

This is what I was thinking when I used to see the undergrad students at CMU. CMU is too expensive when it comes to learning undergrad education. Then, why invest so much when a person from some other school is also going to join the same job? Also, these days recruiters and companies have smartened up. With good training programs, they would hire folks from lesser known univs and then train them in order to drive down the prices of the labor from these highly known univs.

So, candidates who are applying need to think if they are getting a good value-added when they join CMU or are similar returns possible elsewhere (say Kelly, or the likes). Returns will vary from person to person based on which skill is valued how much by the individual who is evaluating it! For instance, developing social skills may be valued highly by someone lacking it but may be valued less by someone already possessing it.

Infosys BPO and eSCM

Infy BPO gets distinction:
http://itsqc.cs.cmu.edu/Default.aspx?EntryUID=e9d290e7-e800-42c3-8700-49d5baddf279

Check out this article. First assessment led to Level 4. This has happened for the first time. Infy has yet another feather in its cap !! This is an outstanding achievement for Infy and shows how all its arms are well-enabled.

Graduate !

The last week at CMU was fairly eventful. Here's the account for pre-graduation, graduation, and post-graduation.

Pre-graduation:
The semester got over and I was partying non-stop ! Two parties in one evening on Thursday - first, at Prof Steve Roehrig's place and then later at Firehouse with Turkish Students Association (TASA-Pgh). The initial one was sober and a good opportunity to meet the faculty members in a social setting. TASA party was fairly nice as I met a new dance partner Ashley ! Next Friday, we went to Matrix for another night out with her friends.

Graduation: This was a memorable event for me - not because I was graduate but for reasons as follows:

First, the graduation dinner was a cool plan by Val - this one was at Le Mont ! As CMU represents, it was a fairly international dinner - ppl from origins of US, Iran, China, Bosnia, and India !

After the dinner, myself and Gorana went to Firehouse as she wanted to check out the place.

Second, Val's mom was present for cheering me up at the diploma handing over ceremony for MISMs. My parents didn't make it to the US but I had someone from my American family to cheer me up !

Third, Bal & Val gave me the exact gift that I wanted :) Val's mom gave me a graduation gift too. Her actual gift was being there for cheering me!

Graduation day was a day to cheer an effort and the sacrifices that went into getting the degree. Clearly, I was not ready to leave school once I was there until April. In April, something happened and I was so ready to graduate - I feel the emptiness without the school even now !

When I came to CMU, I had a situation similar to the one Odysseus had in Homer's Odyssey. On one hand, he had the beautiful Calypso and on the other, he had his kingdom Ithaca. Odysseus went for Ithaca and I went for Carnegie Mellon U. I wish that alike him, I will be able to get what I want.

Post graduation:

After graduation, I left my townhouse in Sq. Hill. Believe me, I was happy to leave it - lol !

I went to meet Bal and Val for this one last dinner at IL Pizzaiolo (Bal said that I must have Pizza out there before I leave Pgh). They used wood heated ovens to churn out some delicious and sizzling pizzas. The cheese was unmatchable. They beat the Giordano's (Chicago fame) hands down. However, I got some information due to which my stay in Pgh got extended. In a way, it was a fortunate accident as I got to have some family time. :)

Next day, Val bhabhi made some tasty Chinese dinner and we watched another movie. Yea, she fed me just like my Bhabhi would ! Later that evening, we watched Da Vinci Code (yea, this was a movie on my pending-list). Finally, on Saturday evening ,we went to horse racing at Meadow Lands. That was a fun evening and then we watched Notes on a Scandal.

Last day in Pgh morning, I checked out Pandolfo's with Bal and Val. It was a sumptuous meal. While leaving, I was sobby and almost cried while I sat in the car. I have decided that if I am unable to settle down in NYC, I shall go back to Pgh !

MSFT's India research

MSFT has taken the research in India further ahead. This is one of the ways by which knowledge-oriented firms are tightly integrating their supply chains. They are having partnerships with IISc and IITs.

Check this link regarding the work they are doing. I feel that optimization of water usage in agriculture is an essential resaerch for India. Why is discussed in later parts. However, I end this segment with the conclusion that either MSFT is being a really good partner and enhancing their image in India OR MSFT seems to have struck a deal with GoI about helping India in whichever way they can for getting the GoI contracts :) In either case, it works for benefit of India. I hope the researchers/students pick up these projects and get them to the levels where by they become practical and freely available. For instance, Virtual India - a la Google Maps for India by MSFT !


About agri development in India.

As India becomes wealthier, the price of non-tradeable services and wages will increase as the general price level goes up (Balassa Samuelson effect). However, revenues from agriculture will not go up as much (they will go up a bit on count of better practices). Therefore, agriculture as an occupation will become less viable. Therefore, on cost-side, economies of scope and scale will happen ==> we will see consolidation due to smaller farmers finding it infeasible to compete. Mechanized farming will come into the picture as this consolidation happens and the fixed costs requried for mechanized farming start getting justified for the larger farmers.

Now, what must the Govt of India (GoI) do?
One of my mentors suggested that GoI must use agricultural subsidy to redeploy agri labor force to some other work.

I feel that this is an extreme step. I think that the education budget can be increased to create vocational institutes which will help ppl choose re-training themselves. If GoI does not have a budget for making the vocational institutes then they must
give monetary incentives (say, tax incentives) to private sector companies who can make provide it for profits equal to the tax incentives. If none of this happens then a social entrepreneur can take this up as a non-profit business concept.

what area of strategy to specialize in ?

Another common question by prospective management students:
What area of strategy to specialize in?

Answer:
What area depends on what you want to do and your skillsets.

Option 1:
If you have good project management skills then you might want to do implementation of strategy. This is important because it is often found that the implementation of a strategy fails to match with the original vision and goal of the project (I consider an entire business as one large project here)

Option 2:
If you do not have good project management skills but have good analytical skills w.r.t. market research, economics (both macro and micro), design skills, etc then you might consider designing the strategy as your option.

For best results, a firm is well-off giving the design work to someone who has these skills as well as possesses the experience mentioned in the earlier option. Experience is important in order to make the design "pragmatic". Often, the companies cannot procure such folks and do a trade-off on either experience or design skills due to shortage of time.

Bottomline: Get a better grip of fundamental concepts for the field before thinking of strategy area. It is a buffet dinner out there - you yourself need to figure out what suits your palate, appetite, and digestive system.

graduation

This is a follow-up post to an earlier post here. Comtemplating on my journey of MISM - naaaah, there's plenty of time for that later.

Graduation's in the air and there are celebrations all around. One full week of parties and catching up with friends, et al.

Last Sat night, we went clubbing to Firehouse to celebrate this one last party with colleagues before everyone disperses for their internships and full time positions.

Yday evening, there was a welcome event at Six Penn Kitchen for the newcomers (the event became slightly unpleasant because there was barely any food after 5.30pm and party was scheduled from 5pm to 7pm- I must say that the organizers did a dismal show in the party estimation! The choice of place was good though.

Tonight, some of the existing students have a dinner at Anisha's place - her parents have come down to visit her and her brother for 3 weeks. She's invited everyone for a dinner made by her mom :)

Tomorrow night, there's another party at Prof Steve Roehrig's house !

Friday night, I plan to go clubbing - but Pgh night life is not as active on Fri nights - unless there are $1 drinks - lol ! Letsee - I missed Diesel lounge last Friday night when Anisha visited it - I might go there this Fri night.

Thereafter, on Saturday evening, a graduation dinner with my Indo-American family (Bal, Val, Val's mom and some other guests) at LeMont ! This is right after MISM/MSIT ceremonies in the evening.

Catching up with friends over coffee, lunches, dinners is the routine for this week prior to the graduation. I have to make a list of who all are left to be met.

I've to get my gown and cap in the meanwhile. Also, packing for the move from Pgh to NYC is going on. That's the only painful part these days.

customer service

Yesterday, I interacted with a Geico agent for getting my plan changed and having a new quote. This official was amazing. I was trying to put a finger on what was making this consumer facing employee better than the other call center agents. Some of the points were:

1. Emotional Quotient (EQ):

The person seemed to be emotionally intelligent. High EQ helps the consumers as it becomes more of a social interaction rather than a routine call-center call.

On this front, I had a terrible experience with the IBM Thinkpad call center. With terrible, I dont mean that the SLA was violated or the person was nasty. The agent was simply too thrifty in the interactions and appeared socially inept, if you can say that.

McKinsey backs my empirical evidence with a more detailed study here.

This reminds me one of my Infy bosses (he was way up in the food chain but somehow I was reporting to him). This individual had good customer interaction due to higher EQ. What mattered was not only the action but also the reaction to certain events. His reactions were well-thought.

I think in sourcing management, companies must ensure this part in the vendor selection process - the EQ of the client-facing personnel.


2. Good knowledge of their domain:

The responses made by the agent while I was thinking out loud were critical to my decision making. Those inputs were well explained w.r.t. pros and cons.

3. Ethics:

"Only do things which if posted on front page of The Times will not make you feel ashamed." says Warren Buffett. There's so much truth in this.

One has to be consistently ethical in order to gain respect and save face. As the Oracle of Omaha says further "It takes 20 years to build the reputation and just 5 mins to ruin it" This is so true. It is reflected in Geico, which is his holding company. The frontline will be capable of selling more and more services with this attitude.

I conclude this post with the following:
Firms training customer facing employees must impart a foundation of base-values in EQ to all their customer facing employees. This is a knowledge-based era and the tacit interactions have outgrown the implicit ones and thus, the need of having a higher EQ.

where do MISMs go?

Prospectives frequently ask this question to me in order to judge RoI of MISM program: "Where do MISMs go (after they graduate)?"

I decided to blog on this as it is really easy for them to check.

Professional social networking group such as linkedin are open and can be easily checked out by searching on keyword "MISM". They are everywhere - consulting firms such as Deloitte, McKinsey, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc....product firms such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc financial services firms such as Goldman Sachs, Barclays, UBS,etc , and on linked in there are atleast 156 users (while I am posting this ..) who are returned as a search result to MISM.

After knowing this and the avg base from career services page on MISM website, they can judge alum's sals from salary.com or something. Stop harassing existing students or alums about what salaries folks in their batches got - it is not only impolite (politically) but also indicates immaturity of the candidate to discuss salaries with an alum. Salaries vary widely. As a thumb rule, ppl with experience tend to get higher salaries than those without. However, along with experience, relevance is often important. If your earlier experience is not relevant to the job offer you are getting there is a high probability of having lesser salary. Besides, the progressions will be smoother.

I like to give an analogy of a buffet dinner to those who ask me such questions. It's a dinner table out there - you must pick or get prepared to pick what suits you. For instance, some ppl may not like consulting and hence, there's no point for them to go towards that. Some other set may like coding and they should go for that. Its a soul-searching process which one must undergo and not just get a job for a "paycheck".

There are ppl in the current and previous batches who have turned down higher paying offers (and I am talking large differences - to the order of US$35k) in order to choose the work which they want to do. This is a sign of maturity!

I often say that you dont have to be a MISM to get a huge sal - that you can get by doing coding on Wall St (lol !) . The reasons for joining the program must be right or else at the end you will be left unsatisfied.

Define what you want to do and search in that direction. The result may even indicate that MISM is not what you want. In that case, do not invest in it just for the sake of doing a Masters.

Frankly speaking, CMU's inter-disciplinary approach is awesome and based on one's readiness to slog, one can achieve their objectives if worked well. Of course, CMU is Computer U. and hence, one has to keep in mind that one should not crib about not making it for some trading position after MISM (though there are ppl in the past who have made it). For achieving that, there are different programs (may be different schools) which one must consider.

Bottomline: Do your research well, before asking questions to an alum or an existing student. Then, ask crisp, concise, and precise questions while presenting context as well.

MRO boom in India

In the current mini semester, I took a course called Marketing Applications of Data Mining (SAS was used as the mining tool) by Prof Alan Montgomery. The objective to take this course was learn analytical Marketing concepts and techniques (from an entrepreneurial and consulting perspective). That was achieved !

The course was fairly intense and demanding (with me having to provide atleast 10 hours a week). We had a presentation in which we had to present our marketing plan to the Sr. Management for a fictitious firm named Cell2Cell.

Recently, I read this article on India's possibility to become the market research hub of the world. Market Research Outsourcing or MRO is picking up pretty fast and one of the firms that's making headway is Markelytics.

I am unsure if this company wants to get bought by some other firm. However, I think, one of the Indian service providers must buy it before one of the MNCs or Google Analytics buys it. The reason to buy is that it can become one of the offerings for the consulting arms of these service provider firms and help them climb up the value-chain faster.

Besides, it can serve as an internal shared-services unit for other arms of the consulting firms. Consulting involves rigorous analytical research with hardcore data. Most of the consulting companies fail to do it and the consulting presentations are based on superficial research than an in-depth data-driven one (no matter how much they claim they dig, it ain't enough). As Dr. Montgomery says, "Data mining leads to amazing results and sometimes inexplicable ones !". However, data is data and hence, must be respected.

eSCM-SP best practices must be laid out by service providers such as Markelytics at an earlier stage to ensure that they can differentiate themselves and provide greater satisfaction than the regular vendors to the client. Clients will have to get ready with eSCM-CL as well.

eSCM-SP done !

...finally, my first step in this direction is done. eSCM-SP is done !

Dr. Hefley introduced me to the current provision that CMU students can attend eSCM certification courses for no charge at the ITSqc's Execution Education Center and I hopped on to grab the opportunity.

The Service Provider model was authored by Mark Paulk, Elaine Hyder, and Keith Heston. I had the opportunity to go for a dinner with Dr. Paulk, and Dr. Siegel on the first evening. It was a delightful event at the Monterey Bay with a great view of Pittsburgh during sunset.

Executives from a leading global service provider and a leading financial services firm had come down for the SP executive education.

On the concluding day, I rushed through my test to the speaker talk on Services Research by Robert Morris, VP of Services Research. I introduced to the concept of industry-academia collaboration between IBM and CMU via CMUSMO and he was amenable for such an arrangement. CMU already has an arrangement with IBM as is indicated on this page.

Thus, I had a heavy dose of Services arena in this week !
The whole schedule made me highly efficient as I had high productivity....yea, they say, adversity is the mother of all inventions....lol !

social solutions to poverty

Dr. Scott Myers Lipton conducted a session on social solutions to poverty. He presented some interesting facts. He flew down from San Jose on invitation.

Apparently, he is a clearcut democrat as he didn't support policies by Bush administration regarding acting as per the Church to reduce poverty. Besides, he also appreciated the Clinton era for the reduction of poverty. One of the significant potshots at the Bush adminisitration included removal of the word poverty by Mr. Bush as it is too abstract. I didn't know that trivia - lol !

According to him, the top ten effective and interesting ways to eliminate poverty were:
10. Provide assets to young women and men, as suggested by Thomas Paine (1796) and recently by Michael Sherraden (2000)
9. Living wages, as indicated in Robert Pollin (1998) and Matthew Carrey (1830)
8. 40 Acre and a mule, as suggested by The Freedman's Bureau w.e.p. Du Bois (1901) and Randall Robinson (2000)
7. Worker owned cooperatives, as suggested by Huey Newton
6. Public works, as being worked upon in the Gulf coast Civic work project
5. Centers of civic engagement, as suggested by Huey Long (1935)
4. Re-distribute wealth - of course in a sensible way - basically a capped taxation
3. End hunger, as suggested by EPIC by Upton Sinclair in 1934
2. Strengthen unions (by far this was one of the stupidest one I must have heard from him)
1. Economic bill of Human rights, as suggested by Martin and Franklin.

What I didn't like about the presentation was that in order to be sensational he was taking some of the assumptions to the extreme. He was making one feel bad about the DJIA reaching about 13k. Some of the facts were not being presented in the correct light.

Also, I didn't like his emphasis on the US focus. I rarely agree with Mr. Bush. But, on this one, I definitely do agree - the removal of the word Hunger because it is truly abstract (especially in the US context). If we look at the Gates' efforts and Buffet's help and their interview on Charlie Rose show, we will realise that they focussed their efforts to help across races, across geographies, across gender, and across world in absolute terms. That sounds more intelligent than a mere US focus. Also, I wonder why Mr. Lipton did this today - was it for sensation?...was it for attraction from the crowd? ... cos he mentioned that he did some work in Africa, etc. however, he repeatedly emphasized on America....which was something that bothered me. Social solutions must be across the board and not just restricted to the US. I am not against the US but just vouching for a universal solution. Huge imbalances lead to issues such as the World Wars and hence, the concern.

I feel that as long as the society is material-minded, it will be difficult to reduce this gap and it might keep on increasing. Of course, Clinton administration did some good things to reduce poverty proportions and create new jobs and the Raegan and Bush administrations did some stupid things to increase poverty proportions. However, some of the above remediations are not good enough - for instance the strengthening of the unions.

This reminds me of his presentation of fact that form 1947 to 1979, the poor got richer faster than the rich got richer. This is an ideal climate which we wish to attain. However, after 1979, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Thus, there are few historical incidents that lead to this. The housing market was about to collapse in this time frame when the administration came up with some measures to forgive mistakes by the bankers and bail them out. There was an adverse supply shock in form of oil problem. After that, there started forming a lobby of pre-boomers who started asking each other for favors. Also, the boomers were more and more material minded (This was the culture that cherished Madonna et al. ) Thus, the poor got poorer and rich got richer in this second era.

The whole presentation also took me back to the discussion of Nickel and Dimed book by Barbara Ehrenreich.

concept of retention team at the work-place

In hot job markets similar to that of the current job market, some employers definitely need to have this concept of retention team at their workplace. This is similar to the US telecom service providers and/or financial service providers providing incentives for customers to stick out with them.

From my limited exposure, I can say - some of the Indian software service providers, some of the US consulting firms, etc need to have this concept.

Recently, an acquaintance of mine, who has abt 2 yrs SAP experience with Accenture, decided to look out. To his delight, Deloitte offered him a grand package. Also, Deloitte sponsors MBA if you were with them for 2 yrs and promise to stay for 2 yrs after MBA. Thus, it was a no-brainer for him.

He was called by HR from Accenture telling him that he is getting an out-of-turn bonus and other incentives. However, the total package that they planned to offer him was lower than what Deloitte could offer him - so, it was a no-brainer for him. Besides, MBA education funding is another lucrative attraction for him.

Jack and Suzanne Welch expressed concern in their podcast and article on Brain Drain. Private Equity firms or PE are poaching away the talent from the regular companies either directly or by competing on campuses with extremely high pay packages. They suggest a retention approach of having a separate track (or as they call it promotion slope) for such achievers who can be identified earlier in their careers. For this reason, middle to senior managers must know their teams well. This forces them to be detail-oriented as they will have to sit with their HR managers to see what William F. Pounds, CMU alumnus and current Dean @ MIT, says "Net Flow of Talent". This will require use of sophisticated skills such as data-mining in order to have a slight edge over others who run the show on an ad-hoc basis.

I feel that this has to be done by the executive team and not by the middle managers. Middle managers who had to climb the ladder rung-by-rung may have counter-productive emotions involved in the process of giving some other newcomer a faster track than what they had.

I hope the concept of retention team evolves further.

bomb scare at hamburg hall, CMU

Here's the article from Post Gazette. Hamburg Hall, a historic landmark (1900), is the place where my program(MISM) has its lounge.

I will not comment anything as this was a routine alarm for a suspicious liquid and cannot be correlated to heightened security post VTech's unfortunate incident - CMU security was always fairly vigil.

mba in itsm

I could hardly believe till I saw this - there is an MBA program with ITSM concentration - at Dallas School of Management.

Long live ITSM !

My blog for exploreitsm is here.

Citi slashes IT

Here's an article on Citi's current strategy for cost-cutting. The cuts would be mostly on cost-center of Citi - IT. This was bound to happen - the firms were just getting their feet wet (or maturing the relationship with the service providers) in the last 3 or 4 years. This is backed by evidence from a previous article pointing to a Deloitte survey in 2003.

While helping students think through their offers (at MISM), I had always asked them to assess profiles based on nature of job, what they want, etc other than just the pay. When it came to financial firms, one of the dimensions I asked them to consider was whether they were a part of the revenue drivers for the firm or the cost centers for the firm. If they were the cost-centers then there is a possibility that they will have to face one of these days (where they face the axe) !

I get some pleasure in seeing that my thought process was in the right direction. However, I feel sorry for those who will be under the axe because of this step by Citi.

The article highlights on them using offshore services providers ! Election year has come and we will see increasing backlash against outsourcing. However, for global firms such as Citi - it doesn't make sense to run operations from here if they can be done cheaper in some other location on the globe and is able to do so with reasonable SLA adherence.

However, outsourcing need not be the only option. Use of ITIL concepts and other best practices can help reduce costs and make IT more agile and competitive as well. Besides, mindset of converting these cost centers to revenue centers with the existing staff will help achieve the golden middle path - however, that would take more time than Wall St. can wait before next quarter or year ! Also, that would involve significant re-training of existing folks.

Outsourcing, if undertaken, must adhere to eSCM-CL principles developed at ITsqc by an inter-disciplinary set of researchers led by Bill Hefley ! It is a near-complete model w.r.t. dimensions to think about when it comes to Sourcing initiatives.

On an arbitrarily tangential note, a good choice to go long on would be Indian services stocks - which heavily serve these folks. Long live Indian service providers !

What Board Needs to know about IT !

Board IT Engagement Maturity Model.
Yes, Yet another Maturity Model ! This one deals with how boards of directors are approaching information technology and how they must approach.

Ken Porrello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, introduced this concept at CMU today for a set of ISM grad students. He has close to 20 years of experience in various industries and currently, oversees some of the India operations as well. He is one of the senior partners at the TI practice, where I would be joining in June this year.

Phase 1 of his research included Boards of 455 companies in the United States. Phase 2 is going to include a broad participation in form of 1000 global companies. The phase 1 outcomes can be seen here. The magazine Corporate Board Member also mentioned about this research initiative at Deloitte in their magazine.

At the end, he applauded CMU for having such an interdisciplinary program such as the MISM program.

international finance

Pulchritudinous purveyor of intellectual zest - that's what I will term Prof. Chris Telmer as !

I wish I could've taken his 12-unit course than a 6-unit one - but most of the MBA courses at Tepper are designed to be 6-unit ones.

I wish so because I have rarely seen a professor as involved in his work as him. He starts his concepts with extremely basic premises. This is the hallmark of most of the experts - they are able to express their thoughts with simplicity - be it Prof. Chris Telmer or be it Rakesh Jhunjhunwala !

Today, we had this video on international economics in the form of the DVD Commanding Heights - an awesome set of DVDs - I am going to make sure that I go through them before I graduate.

A sample of the same is posted below.



Concepts of International Finance are absolutely essential for a manager in the future with both goods and services becoming tradeable throughtout the nations of this planet. Prof. Bob Dalton had introduced me to Prof. Telmer's class as one of Bob's International Business class was focussed on how to handle opportunities, risks, etc in International business scenario w.r.t. International Finance. I realised that in order to develop a deeper intuition, I need to ask Bob for guidance and he guided me to undertake Chris's class.

Finally, Prof. Chris Telmer doesn't go to agree with what all the big boys have to say. With correct rationale and strong supporting argument, he even criticized the hoopla being carried out by notable speakers (Buffett, Roubini, Roach et al) about the US trade-deficits. The paper can be found here on the NYU website.

Finally, on a resigning note, here's a video on how India saved its day by having meritorious ppl in place.


I hope the current Govt remains in place for some time to come !

challenging times ahead...

Next week is going to be hectic ! Mid-terms, assignments, taxes, what not !
Time management will be critical and keeping good health would be essential.

I might sound masochistic while inflicting this pain on myself by taking up so many courses though only 3 units worth work was required for graduation. But hey, I wanted to see if I can do it- this one last time :) I started off school with 7 courses and ending with similar workload.

Letsee how it goes !

keywords on your resume

I knew about this all along: Check out this article for more information for the same.

No wonder, the amount of interview calls I received reflected a high hit-rate because I didn't laze out and submit the same resume to every position. Crafting the resume to fit the position advertised is important and well-reflected in this article. I had been searching for such an exhaustive article since long and finally, Marc's email showed me the same.

I had no idea that there exists services like these - using which one can get certified as a resume-writer. Services are getting highly specialized and hence, the need for qualifications. This highlights how important one's resume can be - at least to get the foot in the door - thereafter, its all you !

...last mini...

In order to avoid suffering from Senioritis, I took up quite a challenging workload for this mini. Besides the regular project work going on for Citi and the Macroeconomics class (yea, its a full-length gig), I have the following on my platter:

Macroeconomics:
Prof Sleet continues this mini (yea, it's a full-length) further with Macroeconomics. We dig Ben Bernanke's book further for some more models, theories, etc.

International Finance:
As Prof Bob Dalton suggested, I have taken this course to learn how to finance cash flows in international business, and of course, how to manage risks (using say, hedging) and take advantage of opportunities made available by market sometimes.

Prof Chris Telmer has a specific chutzpah ! He is Canadian and pronounces "out" in the typical Canadian way. Besides, the part which makes the class interesting is his variety of interests. I couldn't believe when he mentioned Jimi Hendrix in the history of International Finance :) Very interesting. I look forward to see how this class shapes up. I am already excited with the first assignment as it was a good excercise for me.

Marketing Applications of Data Mining:
Fairly demanding on time. Learning curve involved is slightly steeper (as we have to learn SAS). However, that's a good thing. Heinz course on Data mining didn't have SAS involved and I wanted this eclectic mix (as its offered by Tepper) and not a pure Data Mining class (as offered by Heinz). Of course, nothing beats Auton Lab's data mining stuff at CMU !

Corporate Finance:
Lynn Pastor continues this semester with Corp Finance. (I have taken atleast one course per semester with her:)). Curriculum for Corporate Finance is fairly similar to Valuation class I have done and I think I may drop it eventually. Let me figure out my schedule in the next 2 weeks. The course does not have much demands - similar to earlier classes such as Accounting, Principles of Finance, etc

Sourcing Management:
Bill Hefley, ITsqc Director, is delivering this super-awesome course !

Man, he knows more about India than most of the Indians do (lol!). Of course some may argue that he is doing business with India and hence, must know about it. CMM Level 5 is created in Pittsburgh and implemented in Bangalore (this is a statement by my fellow colleague!). He knows Indian IT services business folks by names and they know him personally.

In this course, we go in depth with eSCM and several other aspects of Sourcing. This will be one of those dreamed of courses for me and I am fortunate that Bill chose to deliver it this semester :)

IS ProjecT:
Yes - The Project ! This is shaping up well and getting exciting with me studying more of ITIL and application of the principles to solve client's problems. We are close to entering the design phase soon.

Business Process Modeling:
I sampled this course last week and figured out that it is a great course. Karyn Moore, my academic advisor as well, is delivering this new course. Text book seems good and so does the tools involved in the course learning (IBM Websphere Business Modeler).

ITIL certification:
Have to get this done in this mini.

TAship for Enterprise Architectures course:
Yes - this mini the class is offered as a distance lecture making the dynamics completely different as compared to the earlier one. We had to change the syllabus, readings, nature of assignments, interaction protocol, etc. in order to ensure students get the most for their money.
Nice exercise though !

I have taken courses which demand quite a bit. The committment will be for 8 weeks and hence, I dont want to enter something I am not comfortable with. As you can see, this mini is fairly challenging w.r.t. time management. Off I go for the next meeting.

cap exempted

Soooooooo relieved to know from our Office of International Education expert on immigration matters today - "You are cap exempted". Yay - I dont have to worry about the damn caps (65k or 20k ...whichever).

I just have to do my OPT procedure with USCIS - no hassle of non-travel during the change of status filing as OPT still remains F1 status and employment authorization for the same is truly not change of status. Change of status will happen later - at the end of OPT when I file for H and that time, I dont have to wait till Oct 08 - lol

...Infy zindabad !

associate offers in indian b-schools !

Finally, Associate positions make a scene on the indian b-school campuses... Check out this article on the same ! Ppl wanting to invest in US B-schools now have some hard time to think - instead of investing 10s of thousands of $s, they can get a cheaper one in India- but the competition is intense.

So, someone might say - if one is capable of competing - it makes economic sense to get one in India. However, that's not the case. The # of associate positions is fairly low. In IIM-A, out of 235, only 12 associate positions were made. If you compare that vis-a-vis a US b-school campus, the ratios are different. Moreover, the experience and backgrounds of US bschool folks is richer (it is changing though - it is getting dominated by desi folks these days !).

However, I am glad to see this progress year after year. Schools such as ISB are placing huge pressure on IIMs to perform. Even if they have bureaucracy, they have to cater to demands. I still remember huge demand for managers was a topic of discussion in 2005. The demand is evident in the Indian labor markets. Many companies are promoting their engineers to management positions whenever they cant fill those up with MBAs. Alternatively, they hire managers from tier 2 and tier 3 schools which drives up demand for students from those schools resulting in huge boom.

Supply must be ramped up from qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Soft skills are extremely important for this workforce to be prove themselves to be globally competitive. Team spirits are extremely important and lonely wolves lose out in the long race. I see Indian schools still requiring the soft skills part to be developed !

Most of the foreign firms which hire on Indian firms are looking out for typeAs. Their hiring does not indicate that we have a globally competitive workforce which is capable of grooming leaders. Leaders are groomed in a different setup than the one provided by the Indian schools. I wish someday they progress to GROOM leaders !

neo biz harp

It is fairly apparent that my exams are over. :P

The Verizon article in WSJ today morning made me log this post. Verizon wants to get into gaming and other stuff in order to capture value of the market they are creating. Stupid ! - they didn't play it safe like AT&T. Their top managers shouted from the top of their lungs that ATT will find it difficult to expand capacities later on. Expand for who? AT&T spent only 4.3 b whereas Verizon spent 20b. A huge committment doesn't always result in a huge return. Verizon has several plans but the original visionaries of the FiOS deal are still around - ask them and they seem to be scared. Scared that their plans may not pan out what they originally planned it for.

For instance, in the gaming space, there is already this company in place: Digital Chocolate. Name of the company aptly suits it as it is going to indulge public in mass-consumption of the cellphone gaming.

Podshow is another firm which will take major piece of the content provision pie in this convergence game. It will be mostly the non Verizon firms which will come in and derive value from the high bandwidth networks made available. How can Verizon stop them from free-riding? Differential QoS is already in doubts due to the whole net-neutrality saga.

There is no point for Verizon to spend so much on the backbone in order to create such large networks which will eventually be used by others. One conspiracy theorist mentions to me that the person who politically forwarded this decision for laying out the fiber had personal interests in the entire affair. Neither the shareholders nor the BoD were convinced about this. So, what does a shareholder do? Sell !

btw, other neo-biz which excited me recently were: Tell Me, Akimbo, Good Technology

Tell Me: has created this seemingly huge platform already. Slowly, steadily, they plan to takeover. Before we even knew, they have 35 m folks working on their systems daily ! They arent the state of the art but they have been able to capture the market relatively fast. Personally, I love the Tmobile IVS - its awesome !!! However, in this world where network externalities come into play - Tell Me may start to rule !

Akimbo: Your wish is on demand ! This continues in my line of harp - IPTV and the digital convergence. Akimbo is well-positioned to take advantage ...they might be little too late to create a lock-in with set top boxes similar to those of 2Wire's or Scientific Atlanta's. However, they are making sure that they have the content !

Good Technology: got acquired by Motorola - dayyuuummm ! Motorola's fatherhood may either provide a huge impetus or suffocate this new startup's spirit. Let us see what happens. Good Technology take advantage of the fact that there are more cell phones than personal computers !

Now, I need to get going to prepare for an engagement tomorrow !