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.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
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 !
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 !
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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 !
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 !
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
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 !
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 !
usability and free products: google, yahoo, microsoft
Can you imagine having a service provider (having no monopolistic advantages) trying to give you, a user, a hard time with their interface for your interaction. What do you do if you have other options? Switch !
Ease of use, and relevance are of prime importance. There is a reason that there exists a graduate program named "Human Computer Interaction" in some of the leading universities. There is a reason why these students get hired by most of the leading companies quickly. Ease of use does matter.
Check out why Google made it's way much ahead of its competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft. Google has about 55%+ market of the search market. Yahoo is about 25% and Microsoft, a pithy 5-8%. There are many reasons and HCI is one of the prime ones. Larry Page, one of the Google founders, was a HCI grad student ! Their products beat Yahoo hands down. Microsoft was busy with anti-trust trial and totally lost track.
Microsoft has now started having good HCI products in their portfolio. Also, Yahoo has a similar ideology. They still don't have as much user-inclusion in their product developments. An acquaintance from Microsoft program management team for their search product explained me their process and I believe that they still need to allocate more time for the usability piece. However, to be fair - they are getting better!
Ray Ozzie has discovered that Google is way ahead and MSFT was left behind. However, he also respects them. At the same time, he is pushing his product dev team to get their act right with Live search product. He wants Microsoft back in this game. This market is going to double from USD 40b to USD 80b in 3 years. Microsoft cannot afford to stay back with a mere 5-8% market share.
One way to get back in the game is consolidating the smaller players. I foresee this consolidation happening. How - I dont know....! Let us say, what if the software giant makes a kill and buys out Yahoo? Picture this -
At today's price of 30-32 and outstanding shares of 1.34b, we get about 40b market-cap. If MSFT makes a bid of 20% higher, it will be about USD 48-50 b. MSFT can afford this purchase without any leverage - given their warchest of cash they've built up on their books. Besides, they needn't buy the whole pie; they can just buy a 51% stake at about USD 24 to 25 b. If they wait a bit, they can get it for cheaper as the stock market capitulates due to economic outlook - lol !
MSFT-Facebook romance is going on anyways. (Is this due to the Harvard connection???) So, MSFT will have a good usability team at hand and will be back in the game to take head on with GOOG. This wont be a serious threat to Google because the merger will be disruptive for both the companies from a talent perspective. However, this move will still strengthen Microsoft's position vis-a-vis Google and this move is the only way for Microsoft to get into this search arena, if they are serious about it.
Going back to the usability game, it is interesting to note that Govt of America has considered this seriously and has guidelines at usability.gov.
Ease of use, and relevance are of prime importance. There is a reason that there exists a graduate program named "Human Computer Interaction" in some of the leading universities. There is a reason why these students get hired by most of the leading companies quickly. Ease of use does matter.
Check out why Google made it's way much ahead of its competitors such as Yahoo and Microsoft. Google has about 55%+ market of the search market. Yahoo is about 25% and Microsoft, a pithy 5-8%. There are many reasons and HCI is one of the prime ones. Larry Page, one of the Google founders, was a HCI grad student ! Their products beat Yahoo hands down. Microsoft was busy with anti-trust trial and totally lost track.
Microsoft has now started having good HCI products in their portfolio. Also, Yahoo has a similar ideology. They still don't have as much user-inclusion in their product developments. An acquaintance from Microsoft program management team for their search product explained me their process and I believe that they still need to allocate more time for the usability piece. However, to be fair - they are getting better!
Ray Ozzie has discovered that Google is way ahead and MSFT was left behind. However, he also respects them. At the same time, he is pushing his product dev team to get their act right with Live search product. He wants Microsoft back in this game. This market is going to double from USD 40b to USD 80b in 3 years. Microsoft cannot afford to stay back with a mere 5-8% market share.
One way to get back in the game is consolidating the smaller players. I foresee this consolidation happening. How - I dont know....! Let us say, what if the software giant makes a kill and buys out Yahoo? Picture this -
At today's price of 30-32 and outstanding shares of 1.34b, we get about 40b market-cap. If MSFT makes a bid of 20% higher, it will be about USD 48-50 b. MSFT can afford this purchase without any leverage - given their warchest of cash they've built up on their books. Besides, they needn't buy the whole pie; they can just buy a 51% stake at about USD 24 to 25 b. If they wait a bit, they can get it for cheaper as the stock market capitulates due to economic outlook - lol !
MSFT-Facebook romance is going on anyways. (Is this due to the Harvard connection???) So, MSFT will have a good usability team at hand and will be back in the game to take head on with GOOG. This wont be a serious threat to Google because the merger will be disruptive for both the companies from a talent perspective. However, this move will still strengthen Microsoft's position vis-a-vis Google and this move is the only way for Microsoft to get into this search arena, if they are serious about it.
Going back to the usability game, it is interesting to note that Govt of America has considered this seriously and has guidelines at usability.gov.
global sourcing
Mellon bank's senior officials visited CMU for a presentation on Global Sourcing. They wanted insights into what incremental innovations they can make in order to add productivity, security, performance, and nurture further relationships with their vendors, namely, CTS and INFY. The representatives from both CTS and Infy were present there. I had a talk with Ajay Bhandari, Sr. Engagement Manager from Infy thereafter on some other dimensions.
I could think of application of ATAM from SEI for architectural evaluation by Mellon and Octave from Cylab. Besides, all my productivity tips will go straight to their wiki and cannot be discussed any further. Its interesting to know that this was part of curriculum for a grad education program. Besides, the crowd also provide some other strategic insights for certain cultural aspects. I must appreciate the step forward from Mellon to place a Mellon personnel at offshore DC to be their eyes and ears for the sourcing initiative to be successful.
eSCM certifications are now happening both for service providers as well as clients. These are conducted by ITSqc or IT Services Qualifications Center. Global Sourcing is maturing to the next level. More on the topic later...
I could think of application of ATAM from SEI for architectural evaluation by Mellon and Octave from Cylab. Besides, all my productivity tips will go straight to their wiki and cannot be discussed any further. Its interesting to know that this was part of curriculum for a grad education program. Besides, the crowd also provide some other strategic insights for certain cultural aspects. I must appreciate the step forward from Mellon to place a Mellon personnel at offshore DC to be their eyes and ears for the sourcing initiative to be successful.
eSCM certifications are now happening both for service providers as well as clients. These are conducted by ITSqc or IT Services Qualifications Center. Global Sourcing is maturing to the next level. More on the topic later...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)