me, myself, and cmu

to grad or not to grad

2011-12-07T22:14:00.008-05:00

Grad students are having to, in some cases, commit 15% of their future 2.5 decades or earning to escape the debt burden. Check out this article on Bloomberg. The stories are indeed sorry tales but nonetheless they are bets taken by adults.

Supply side:

The usual argument that providers of expensive grad education tend to make is that possessing a grad education yields higher earning power over a period of time. Students must not buy into such arguments. You can't drive a car by seeing the rear-mirror.

An interesting turn to this topic could be that of regulation in graduate education. There is no discussion about regulations at the supply end of such programs as the govt allows high-cost programs to advertise. Indeed, similar to qualified investor regulations, the govt must have regulation in the grad education sector. Nonetheless, the counter-argument is that prospective students for graduate education are in a position to make their own decisions accurately.

Demand Side

The usual reasons for students to sign up for expensive Masters programs are:

A hope that the students will have better future as against status quo
Laziness to work their way through in the industry and resultant escapism
Genuine career switch needs (Finance professionals wanting to go to sectors such as Tech or Education as those have better job prospects than Finance).
Genuine thirst for knowledge and/or upgrade of skills (this population knows what they are paying for and are usually not prone to be victims)
Potential to enter a Ph.D. program after the Masters. This must be usually done if there is a intense need for intellectual stimulation.

Prospective grad students must be cautious to:

conduct due-diligence w.r.t. placement statistics without undue influence by family or friends
avoid succumbing to laziness - it will be an expensive escape :)

What's the solution?

Treat it as a business endeavor: Most of the Masters programs have a very extensive business plan by the schools. These programs are treated as cash-cows or in some cases, are rainmakers for the educational institutes. So should you! Create a thorough business plan complete with range of ROI, scenario-based risk management plan, and alternate paths in case things are not working out. See if you have support system in place for worst case scenarios.
Gain experience prior to enrolling for Graduate program. This makes the candidate more employable than without experience and allows the big jump in compensation post-grad. However, this goes out for a toss if you have a substantial gain in doing a fast-track combo (undergrad and grad in 5 years instead of just undergrad in 4 years).
If the prospective candidates decide to go for full-time, try finding fast-track options, unless you are a career-switcher. However, evidence suggests your odds are stacked in your favor if you are a part-time grad student.
Search for part-time options for the grad program

This helps you keep your experience clock ticking
This helps to keep the cash-flow
This also allows you to pace up your studies.
Allows tighter stop losses. For instance, if you are vouching for that MBA in Finance and figured that Dick Bove is saying there will be 150k-200k jobloss at banks, you can either suspend or completely drop out without significant loss

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T23:34:00.007-04:00

Steve Jobs,

You will be missed. Several generations will be affected. Your contributions are peerless. I hope you inspired several other inter-disciplinary leaders in several spheres of the society, including but not limited to business.

Here's a tribute from Google at the most valuable ad-board of the world, their own homepage.

Here's a tribute from your own firm:

Bill Gates has noted his tribute here:
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Steve-Jobs

Here's a tribute from the educational institution, which you chose not to complete your education at:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Jobs.html

Eric Schmidt mentioned that you defined a generation. Particularly, I liked this part:

Steve was so charismatically brilliant that he inspired people to do the impossible, and he will be remembered as the greatest computer innovator in history.

Here's a tribute from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/123826622/apple-visionary-steve-jobs-dies-at-56?sc=fb&cc=fp

May your soul Rest in Peace.

biggest gift yet

2011-09-11T19:24:00.005-04:00

A multi-faceted Mr. William Dietrich II announced a plan to provide Mellon University with the largest gift yet.

Given that most of the private higher education institutes in this country operate on the basis of endowments, such a big boost will provide significant financial flexibility to the future administrations. This gift becomes effective after Mr. Dietrich passes away. Also, this gift will bring CMU's $1 b fundraising campaign to the $950 m mark.

This puts Mr. Dietrich II in the elite category of being in top 10 largest gifts by an individual to any higher educational institute. The edited version of the event, which was held on Sep 7, 2011, can be seen below.

This is a big boon for inter-disciplinary education especially because Mr. Dietrich gave this gift to primarily support inter-disciplinary studies. He mentioned that it was inspired by the quality of faculty members and alums; in addition, he liked the global approach adopted by the institute.

I am particularly happy because these were the exact reasons why I chose to gather CMU for my graduate education. Given an opportunity, I would back to campus in a heartbeat.

service management and asana.com

2011-09-11T11:26:00.003-04:00

If what Justin Rosenstein says here is true, then asana.com may end up becoming a great service management solutions suite. Large companies certainly need some platform similar to that of Asana.

I am yet to check out the beta version and present my review.
asana, IT Service Management, google, facebook

capacity management and twitter

2011-09-04T22:50:00.003-04:00

Capacity planning at twitter has clearly come into question with recent whales, especially after allowing picture sharing !

waiting for iphone 5

2011-08-13T12:52:00.002-04:00

So, I was at a Starbucks in midtown and overheard the couple next to me speaking about iPhone release date. I was surprised that they came out with such a news on Saturday morning. Anyways, I checked up and found that it was still rumored to be available from Sep 7, 2011.

I've been waiting for iPhone 5 (or whatever the next version is called) myself so I could upgrade. I've thought of trying the Windows phone for a while but could never work towards that. This time around, I will not wait for Apple to fix it's problems. I am not one of the jailbreak junkies and so, I don't care about the jailbreak version of the OS being available. I just want to try the next version.

rendezvous with dara birnbaum

2011-07-27T22:40:00.005-04:00

On July 27, CMU NY Alumni Chapter organized an evening rendezvous with Dara Birnbaum, a United States Artists Fellow Award winner and a CMU Alumna.

The press release for the Marian Goodman gallery can be found here. Her prime piece of Arabesque was very thoughtfully done. We got to meet with her Editor as well. The one video work missing a mention in the article but present in the South Gallery is 'Addendum: Autism', which is interesting and it caught my particular interest. I did get a chance to discuss it with her in person and she presented an interesting perspective to it.

She epitomizes the inter-disciplinary interests, which CMU alumni carry. She studied Architecture at CMU and later, moved to Arts and became a dignified personality in it.

Her seminal well-known work is:

Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979
Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978/79 (video) and

At the meet, there was a guest (with someone) who has a NYC foodie blog and he performed some instant magic tricks with people's business cards (such as floating them between his two palms).

Overall, it was a nice evening which was followed by a dinner at Brasserie 81/2.

why don't laptops have ergonomic keyboards?

2010-12-12T12:59:00.004-05:00

One more acquaintance of mine got added to the growing list of Carpel Tunnel disease sufferers. She's a consultant and works with her laptop for a good amount of her day whenever she's not busy with meetings at client sites.

It's a shame that none of the laptop makers have come not up with an ergonomic keyboards. Also, it's a shame that in a litigant society such as the United States of America anyone is yet to sue laptop manufacturers for the same.

The day will come when laptop manufacturers, similar to cigarette manufacturers, will be asked to put a note on their products - "prolonged use of laptop is injurious to health" ! The reasons contributing to it would be:

poor keyboard designs leading to carpel tunnel syndrome
fertility issues in males if laptop is kept on laps for prolonged periods of time due to poor heat management designs by manufacturers 1
toasted skin syndrome

Given that laptops are unhealthy for humans by design (... because if you put it in a position to rest your hands, your neck will be in pain and vice-versa), here are some tips for healthy mobile computing. I believe every consultant, sales person, etc. must be aware of these tips.

1. "Laptops Can Damage Male Fertility," M. Hachman, Extreme Tech, 12-09-2004.

SAPped...

2010-11-27T04:58:00.002-05:00

SAP was ordered to pay over a billion dollars in damages to Oracle in CA, US. SAP admitted that the firm's subsidiary illegally downloaded Oracle's software. At the same time, SAP estimated the magnitude of damages to be ~40m. However, the jury awarded 1.3bn as damages to Oracle for copyright infringement.

I bet SAP feels a bit SAPped !

PowerPoint = enemy or a friend ?

2010-04-29T16:14:00.010-04:00

An interesting article from The New York Times caught my attention as the heading read:

We Have Met the Enemy. He is PowerPoint.

First, I didn't know about the PowerPoint culture in the U.S. military - Microsoft must've made some good dough getting them addicted to PowerPoint. Second, I didn't know that they were obsessed with bullet points - they should check out the Beyond Bullet Points methodology. Third, it surprises me because military folks are supposed to be detail-oriented and Powerpoints are usually not delving in the details. One of my acquaintances had an opinion that Powerpoints are for folks suffering from ADD.

PowerPoint is a way of life for management consultants, especially when you make tons of presentations to clients. If your job lurks around sales or pre-sales, all the more necessary to know powerpoint well. That brings me to the point to share some of important tips:

1. Learn how to make a good pot file.

A good consultant must always have a .pot file as a tool at his/her disposal. This helps you put up good decks in minutes. You don't have to run helter-skelter.

2. Learn how to present a PowerPoint effectively

A polished flawless PowerPoint deck by itself is not the key to success. It is a necessary condition but not sufficient for an effective presentation. Know how to present a powerpoint effectively and this takes us into the realm of why effective communication is important. Beyond Bullet Points is an interesting concept that started in the last decade and one should read it as a tool in their toolkit to effectively apply it if you know the audience hates bullet points.

3. Learn when to use them and when not to

As much as a polished powerpoint is important, it is imperative to know when to use it and when not to. Certain situations, especially in sales, may not require a powerpoint deck.

recession survival skills or business best practices?

2009-03-02T13:16:00.003-05:00

A popular magazine came out with an article such as "5 recession survival skills". I condemn this approach of journalists to fill up pages for selling their magazines.

The points mentioned in this article are good business practices to use even in good times - not just bad times. I fail to understand why would anyone spend more than necessary amount even in good times. In business, thrift has to be a way of life and a mindset. However, such organizations cease to exist due to their excesses in costs.

Of course, there are organizations where inefficiencies are in-built and a part of the culture. The case in point is Citi. I had blogged about them way back here.

limit on executive pays in the banks?

2009-02-04T14:00:00.003-05:00

I read this news and I was taken aback: Obama limits pays to top executives of bailed out banks to $500k. Taken aback because I thought Obama was more pragmatic than this. This is a popular move and not the "right" move.

If you give peanuts, only monkeys will come. If Obama brings in such limits, he will not attract talent. Talent is required to carryout this job with certain dexterity; and such talent is scarce. He can definitely attract some academics such as Vikram Pandit. However, he won't be able to get the go-getters or the true mercinaries required to resolve this large mess.

Wall St is used to pay for performance. Talent is hard to get. This talent is globally mobile. They will go to other nations and take up occupations there. Jim Rogers has moved to Singapore. Halliburton has moved its headquarters to Dubai. There is a reason why Reuben retired from Citi. He knew that the efforts put into Citi going ahead won't generate adequate returns.

interesting debate about Google Earth

2009-02-03T14:19:00.003-05:00

Gulliver's travels section in The Economist presented this interesting debate regarding Google Earth here.

Mumbai killing rampage was planned by the terrorists using Google Earth. However, that planning can happen by their personal visits as well. That's how earlier terrorists had planned their attacks in 1992. An Indian court's plea to ban Google Earth from capturing Mumbai pictures is a knee-jerk reaction by folks who lack capacity to do good policy engineering.

IMHO, anything under the sun can be misused. For instance, the planes were used in case of 9/11 for bringing about destruction. This does not mean that planes must be banned.

I still support Google Earth.

regulatory reporting and technology jobs

2009-01-26T02:12:00.010-05:00

As economy slips into depression, there is a destruction in the number of jobs. However, a new set of jobs always emerges. This time, the new set of technology jobs are in the fields of "regulatory reporting"

Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Bank of America(NYSE:BAC) have been nationalized. New York is no longer the US financial capital anymore. For now, it is Washington, D.C. They call the shots w.r.t. dividends paid, executive staffing, etc. Jobs will be created at two locations:

a. Points of operations - for collecting raw data

b. Points of customer-contact - in Washington DC. "You gotta please your sponsors !" was what a leading Director at Citigroup told me once while I worked for him on an assessment project.

These opportunities are similar to Sarbanes Oxley Act related requirements. They are short-term in nature. I had expressed this point of view in April last year in the form of a post: paulson creates business opportunities for consulting firms. Diamond Management and Technology Consultants agree with this and came out with a point of view (Jan 2009) much after mine (March 2008).

How can one prepare for these regulatory requirements related positions? Think about it - it's very obvious from the words: regulatory reporting.

is itsm relevant in the current economy?

2009-01-15T23:47:00.008-05:00

David Cannon's name alone drew a good crowd for the monthly meet of ITSMF USA's - New York LIG. The weather was aweful.

The topic for tonight's discussion was "Is ITSM relevant in the current economy?" An effective presentation indicating why is ITSM not only relevant but also effective. Some practical tips and suggestions helped the presentation worth while. He did bring up Majid's slide on Service Strategy. He also brought up a slide on a topic that I was a Teaching Assistant on - "Enterprise Architecture as a Business Strategy" by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, David Robertson.

IMHO, ITSM is relevant for parties interested in realizing the complete potential of IT. I have seen environment where businesses abdicate from their responsibility of making IT as a service successful. Such environments are relatively hopeless. This is where the pitch for a Service Manager comes in. Think about it.

It felt good to be back to these LIG meetings. I used to attend those until Nov 07 and thereafter started my travel projects. Now, I will be attending these on a regular basis as I am working locally and can control my timelines.

After the presentation meeting, the organizers, myself, and David decided to go out for socializing. We had a few drinks at Connolly's in midtown Manhattan after the presentation was done. This took me back to the CMU days. The last I met David Cannon was at Walnut Grill in Shadyside, (Pittsburgh, PA) in early '07 while he was guiding us for the CMU SMO Student Interest group.

I regularly keep updated via various sources. One of the most under-rated and relatively unknown source in the developed world is the Infosys blog on ITSM - ITSM Service Matters!

imminent boom in healthcare IT...

2008-12-13T14:56:00.003-05:00

This post might sound opportunistic. However, I have to discuss this thought as I see new markets opening up. Specifically, here I discuss for the benefit of most of the IT management professionals who visit this blog of mine.

Here's the money trail for the healthcare IT boom to come in the next few years. Immediate gainers would be folks experienced in EMR and allied fields.

Certified professionals will be in heavy demand and will have good earning potential. One must keep the pulse of this market. Networking can be achieved via HIMSS.

Research opportunities now emerge for healthcare topics as the funds will be diverted towards the same. Those interested in PhDs must check out this as a potential problem to solve and a solution that helps reduce costs for the companies, the taxpayers, as well as the govt.

ultimate ad spot

2008-10-23T08:54:00.004-04:00

Yes - if you partner with Google then you can get the ultimate ad spot ever - the Google page.

Check out this ad for the G1 phone.

With the Learn more - Google indicates the discrete nature it always exercises in its approach. A gentle giant. If they wanted, they could say "Buy It" alike some other websites. However, they are elegant and they say "Learn More"

I feel like extending my contract with Tmobile just for having this phone. However, on second thoughts, I feel that I must wait for a second version of the phone and some other carrier as Tmobile's service in NYC is inferior relative to Verizon.

consultants...

2008-10-05T11:29:00.001-04:00

Dilbert presents Dogbert the consultant !

check here ...

It is hilarious !

best practices....(and Dilbert)

2008-09-03T08:56:00.006-04:00

Dilbert series presents another amazing strip about best practices.

Check here.

This makes me think if all those companies who want to copy best practices from other companies have competitive advantage? I say this because some so-called ITIL pundits indicate that the ITIL publications creates level-playing grounds for companies not knowing best practices.

However, I question this statement. Best practices will keep evolving and are tailored to a specific environment. ITIL is a best practices compendium as of May 2007. More best practices have evolved since then. Hence, the companies can gain competitive advantage in their IT Management only if they have people with right skillsets. Human capital is as important as practices in place.

advertisements in india are creative

2008-07-19T08:12:00.004-04:00

As a part 1 of this series, I would like to make an assertion that Indian advertisements are fairly creative even if they have social constraints to not go beyond certain boundaries.

A highly focused ad mechanism by a company in the buses in Mumbai. This takes advantage of c k prahlad's hypothesis about jewels at the bottom of the pyramid as well as creative marketing. Some creative entrepreneurial thought must have gone into this.

In my trip to India after 40 months, I wanted to experience every means of transport in Mumbai - the trains, the buses, the taxis, the autorickshaws, everything. I boarded a bus and lo behold, I found an entire system with a speaker system, a small screen and what not.

++:
Local ads can be directed into this device based on the payments by the local ad-spot bidders. This piqued my interest and I further delved into knowing about the company.

They are capturing a significant time spent by folks traveling. They can extend this concept to the first class compartments in the railways as well.

--:
They haven't yet made a facility to update ads real-time. The ads are still uploaded using some hardware mechanism. This will lead to lack of scalability after some time. The marginal cost will increase as the volumes increase and hence, they have to figure out a mechanism to uplink the unit in the bus using telecommunication device so that the content can be uploaded real time and assets can be tracked from a central location.

One could expect this in developed nations. However, in India, the entrepreneurs were scared about the investment due to potential losses due to multitude of reasons such as lack of public property safety, ability of generate adequate revenues, and technology limitations. However, apparently, noone had time or interest to do any harm to that screen. Yes, Mumbai has become so expensive that there is an implicit self-select mechanism built in. Even the slum dwellers are fairly civic conscious now!

India - lage raho....lage raho..

a graduate program in service management!

2008-07-16T08:02:00.003-04:00

Check here for the new program at CMU for experienced candidates in the field of Service Management. It is being offered by Institute of Software Research in the School of Computer Science.

Already, ITIL v3's Service Strategy was successfully bid for authorship by one of the CMU folks (Majid Iqbal) earlier this decade. Now, ITSQC in conjunction with ISR and SCS has introduced this new program. The pitch sounds convincing. I wouldn't be surprised if PRC govt sends its folks to learn in this program in order to support their budgeted 5-year plan to increase services in China.

msft: accelerating market share?

2008-05-31T23:56:00.007-04:00

I wanted to blog about this musing earlier. However, other competing priorities delayed this.

MSFT has just 5% of the search engine marketshare and wants to expand it to a formidable # 2 slot. Currently, Yahoo has #2 slot and has expressed its dissent in joining hands with Microsoft.

MSFT has resolved to alternative means to capture market share - cash back ! An interesting thought in a dwindling economy and the most bang for the buck as it targets the highly lucrative click-thru-to-revenue.

How can they expand the volumes for the same?
1. Targeting gems at the bottom of the pyramids: I mean the emerging economies !

For instance, if the MSN folks can make their finance site for India better, they will be able to eat up that entire market. Google has no product for that market and the Yahoo product is appalling.

Another example is if MSN can introduce bill-pay for Indian service providers. The population will happily get onto MSN site for paying bills at nominal premiums of INR 10 or a quarter.

2. Focusing their information security dept's innovation to online payment safety.

What is still lacking in their product?

accuracy:
As against the rival Google, the accuracy of the Live search product is inferior. For instance, I gave a search string of "Sony Cyber-shot W120 Black 7.2 MP". Despite of the fact that the product was available on the website, it wasn't the first one that came up. It came up way at the bottom of the page and that too, I had to scroll down. At Google, the only product in response to this search string was the one I was looking for.

This reminds me that "attention" is a pricey commodity for which every advertiser is craving for. If the search result is not at the top then it loses the relevance.

cheapest prices:
Also, the price was not comparing itself to other deals that may be available. However, that's a flaw that even Google has. Google checkout had higher prices for this search than Microsoft search.

I think that MSFT can innovate on the cheapest prices point to get an edge!

moody's bug in the model and the art of IT management

2008-05-28T20:36:00.006-04:00

Moody's recently discovered a software bug. Details of the story are here.

This incident exemplifies the reason why financial services firms need to follow a more rigorous service management approach. Service Validation of the IT Service Management paradigm from ITIL v3 would've helped. However, I am reasonably assured that Moody's IT staff didn't follow it.

The IT departments of US financial services' institutions are more matured when compared to IT departments of other industries in technology and speed-to-market aspect. Yet, they are neither frugal nor disciplined. Some of the reasons are:

The attrition rate: In an inflationary economy at locations such as NYC, the attrition rate is cause of their miseries but also the reason why they must have a strong process rigor
Demand for agility: This leads to lack of strict discipline in IT operations. I do not propose that one cannot achieve discipline without agility - one can; it just needs practice and perseverance.
Demand for higher speed-to-market: This leads to lack of thought given to service-strategy as well as service design. As the industry is matured, if someone comes up with a service idea, s/he wants to take it to market ASAP to capture the market share.

I am pretty sure there are many other cases such as Moody's that result in losses and may have been absorbed either by the consumer and/or the banks. Time for the banks to think about their money now!

talent war...

2008-05-17T21:34:00.007-04:00

The global war for talent is intense! Nature of work, composition of workforce, and new world order are the key drivers for such a war.

First, the organizations are operating in an environment with ever-increasing proportions of tacit knowledge. This stems from the fact that the proportion of services in the global GDP is increasing and the fact that many services are getting highly specialized.

There was a Congressional hearing on why CEOs of loss-making investment banks were compensated millions of $s. The board members from the compensation committee for these companies were drilled by the Senators. However, the board members had a simple stance: there is a war for talent and if we have to run our businesses, we will have to award these bonuses. Such politically satisfying rituals help the elected representatives to go back to their people and say - "ah, I tried ...did you see that on the television?" :P. Also, there are surveys by IPS-DC on executive excesses (2006 report, 2007 report). The ludicrous hearing by the Senators (I watched it on C-Span) and/or the surveys had no effect on the pay-practices in the financial services sector. This is evident from the recent WSJ article on "Say-on-Pay doesn't play on Wall St."

Second, the increasing global nature of workforce is posing other set of challenges. McKinsey & Co had an article on why multinationals struggle to manage talent. Mobility among countries and cohesiveness in achieving cultural diversity are prime challenges for multi-nationals. The global workforce today demands wage equality across the globe and is ready to move around to other companies that offer so. For instance, one of my former colleagues at a US-based system integrator/consulting firm didn't get US visa (lottery issues) and the firm could not make arrangements for him in some other country than India. She didn't want to be in India due to wage-difference. This led to her resigning and joining some other global consulting firm that could deploy her in Europe.

Third, the huge transfer of wealth from the US to West Asia (via oil) is leading to demands for talent at higher wages in a global demand uptick. The new world order is causing countries with immigration policies non-conducive to immigrants to lose out on competitive workforce for the nation. For instance, most of the financial services firms which cannot get visas for their workforce in the US are retaining the talent by deploying them in the UK or Canada. Similarly, west coast companies (such as Microsoft) is deploying its workforce (that lacks visa) in Canada.

Another evidence of the war for talent is apparent with the current talent-sourcing practices of leading organizations. Cyber sleuthing, an art practiced and perfected by Shally Steckerl and the likes, along with the boom for niche jobsearch sites for 100k+ jobs (The Ladders.com or 6figurejobs.com) are evidences for the same.

As Friedman mentioned in his book "The World is Flat", the companies that are not ready to change will cease to be competitive and later, the countries that are not ready to change will lose out. I think that the companies that are ill-equipped with HR policies to tap the global talent will lose out in the medium to long run and the countries that are having mis-aligned immigration policies will miss out in the medium to long-run. So, catch up with the times - change or else there will be nothing left to change !

fear and loathing at the airport

2008-05-11T01:22:00.007-04:00

US air traffic is simply atrocious. The aircrafts are getting older - so are the flight attendants! The snacks and food offered on flights went from complimentary to paid and to disappearance (they don't want to have the inventory management headache!) - LOL.

Safety is in question. First, lack of inspection by the authorities is increasing the risk. Recently, we saw a spate of a large number of flights being canceled due to pending inspection. In a bid to keep the carrier running, safety was prioritized. The rich no longer want to fly with commercial airlines and they fly via NetJets! There were 339 incidents in 2007 when two aircrafts came dangerously close to each other or to objects on the ground. I experience more bumps in landing these days, hmmm.....are those due to reduced paychecks to the flight pilots?

Consolidation emerged much to the disadvantage of the chagrined consumers. Prices were hiked as soon as the Delta-Northwest merger started coming into transition phase. I see further consolidation in form of combining the points, miles, etc. The airlines must be cursing themselves for introducing the points system to begin with.

The options provided to the consumers are causing the issues to a certain degree. To woo the customers, airlines provide tons of options. However, the infrastructure required to support it is simply absent. For instance, take the condition of La Guardia airport. It is no where close to the state-of-the-art airport-designs I have seen at other domestic or international locations. Yet, it is a nerve center for the entire US traffic. Any backlog there causes cascading effect in the system. Such airports need to be corrected in terms of design.

Most of the US airline carriers are trying to improve. Air aviation is a highly leveraged business with huge capex and/or leases (depending on how you laid it out) unless you have a niche target market to focus on luxury flying. The fuel prices are leading airlines to become very insensitive to the consumer needs. Airlines started taxing consumers with charges for checked in luggage in order to make up for prices. Southwest has good hedge against oil. What about others? I saw someone shouting on cnbc when the oil went up by $11 /bbl (chuckles).

I blog this as I am waiting at the airport due to a flight cancellation - they said that there was some weather issue. However, another airlines is letting its flights go at the same time to the same destination. Is this an outright lie? who knows? Can FAA do something about it? Do they care? Blakey unabashed the airlines publicly last year. Does he have enough powers to do something?

time management

2008-04-13T08:50:00.002-04:00

good tips on time management by Prof Randy Pausch. He has less time in life left and hence, wanted to share all these interesting tips . Its about 76 mins but would be well spent as against a movie or something.

google and the art of recruiting

2008-04-11T14:47:00.007-04:00

"I said Google, not Sizzler, " says Micky Rosa, the kingpin for the card-counting affair and the MIT professor in the movie 21.

As innovative as they get, I love Google's recruitment strategies ! Last time I made a remark like this was when I interviewed with them. This time around I make this comment after watching 21.

The product placement of "Google as a prestigious job" in the movie 21 was brilliant. This truly exemplified the "context-sensitive" nature of Google !

In the past, I have seen cyber-sleuthing as a technique being deployed by them at a massive scale in an amazing way to fetch talent from the open market - now, this. Well, the firms thirsty for talent have a thing or two to learn from Google !

...truly world class? forex prudence is missing...

2008-04-08T15:41:00.007-04:00

For Indian service providers to become truly world class, they will need to spend on in-house forex talent. Check out this case where the story suggests "Nishar said that company does not have have any in house expertise to enter into forex deals." from the cnbc article.

This indicates low risk-management maturity of the vendor. If the earnings are in USD and costs are in INR then one cannot ignore forex. In the past, I had blogged about how Infy couldn't manage its forex here.

I extend this hypothesis of managing forex better to any Indian exporter. If you want to have a sustainable business in a global economy, you must have economists and forex specialists at your disposal.

Business case for forex specialists?
Now, in case of Hexaware, Nishar can argue that he cannot afford to have a full-time position for just forex as Hexaware is relatively small. This observation leads to business-case for forex consultants. I am not talking about forex-agents, who sometimes claim to be forex consultants. I am talking about hardcore economists or forex specialists.

Govt intervention?
For India to be truly world class with the nature of companies it is coming out with, GoI policies need to incentivize forex education initially. Traditionally, everyone has been focussed on engineering and medical to such an extent that there is huge dearth of these other functions' personnel.

paulson generates business for consulting firms

2008-03-31T08:52:00.008-04:00

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, will create huge business opportunity for consulting firms with his proposed regulation. It's the broadest reform of oversight in the financial markets since the aftermath of the Great Depression.

Businesses are amenable to the same as it will streamline the regulation to avoid such fiascos such as Bear Sterns. It will result in reduced profits but will reduce risk of persecution later.

This regulation translates into a huge opportunity for the consulting firms because both the Fed as well as the commercial sector will have a run for becoming ready for the new era! Consulting firms will flash their accelerators to get the business. As time will be of importance, the billing rates will be at a premium.

robbed by the FCC...

2008-03-30T02:06:00.002-04:00

Yes, the American consumers consumers were robbed by the FCC from cheaper Internet-access and communication charges. Instead, the FCC ended up making the two telecom giants get a tighter grip on the consumers than ever before with the spectrum auction's results.

Mobile-phone companies have long opposed open access. Verizon even sued the FCC last year in a bid to block a move toward open access. It failed, then did an about-face, promising to open its network to third-party devices and applications in the future.

Verizon wireless was awarded the largest chunk of the spectrum auction and also, allowed to make a decision about accessibility to its spectrum by others. This is not in line with what Google tried to petition against.

The Economist notes:
"ONE of the dirtiest tricks played on American consumers is the way their country’s mobile-phone companies force them to use phones sold through the companies’ stores, then lock them into two-year contracts with punitive cancellation fees. Asians and Europeans—who can take their mobiles from one provider to another, and use them on different networks around the world—shake their heads in amazement at Americans’ meek acceptance of such anti-competitive practices."

As it is the interest-rate cuts have been making me skeptical about allowance for market forces to thrive by themselves. The spectrum auction fiasco further disturbs me as bureaucratic intervention and incestuous relationships have created this broad daylight robbery from the consumers!

PE firms must deploy ITIL v3 in their portfolio companies

2008-03-18T07:24:00.004-04:00

Recently, an article of mine was published on thinkingstreet.com here.

ITIL v3’s business service management approach makes it the best fit for adoption by private equity (PE) firm for deploying in their portfolio companies in order to enhance the value of their portfolio.

The prime objective of a PE firm is to obtain controlling interest in a target company and restructure the target company over a period of 3-7 years such that its value enhances and sell it once the market value is more. It can be reasonably concluded that the value of the PE firms is a function of value of their portfolio companies.

This objective is achieved by deploying best management practices and cutting on flab in the operations of the target company. Usually, in a PE firm, a partnership’s investment activities can be divided into four stages: selecting investments, structuring investments, monitoring investments, and exiting investments .

ITIL v3 fits well at the stages of structuring investments and monitoring investments. The PE firms can leverage the best practices in the only written IT Operations’ guide. The beginning of a v3 project is resource intensive. However, it starts yielding benefits within 6-12 quarters depending on how it was deployed.

The prime reason that v3 is a good fit for PE is due to its business service management approach for the IT services. Besides, v3 introduces the much needed dimension of Financial Management and portfolio approach, a dimension that was missing from the earlier versions but was of high significance. The address to value creation, value capture, and value networks makes it well-aligned with the objectives of the PE firm.

The concept of market spaces discussed in V3 helps the IT department think beyond the immediate internal customer. If the IT arm of a particular portfolio company can start providing services to external customers, the value of the portfolio company will be enhanced.

Also, V3 adopts a lifecycle approach, which is pragmatic as compared to the earlier modular approach, which discounted the fact that the business place is constantly evolving and that IT needs to adapt. When a portfolio company is being restructured by a PE firm, there are significant changes, which can be addressed on the IT side only by a lifecycle approach.

On one hand, most of the IT shops find V3 abstruse and hence, either delay the adoption and/or are too busy putting out fires in order to adopt it. V3 will act as a shaman between those who worlds. The resistance is easier to overcome in case of a PE portfolio company than in case of a regular company. The structuring of the organization is in such a way that the partners can exert significant pressure to get initiatives off the ground quickly. Besides, the managers of the portfolio companies must not oppose the adoption of v3 in these environments as they gain an experience, which sells for a higher rate in the market, if they can prove a successful deployment.

If I were a stakeholder in the third version (popularly known as v3), I would pitch it to the PE firms, in order to have increased adoption for my Operations’ guide.

US recession is a boon for service providers well-entrenched in India

2008-03-04T10:18:00.006-05:00

Recession in US puts Indian firm on a good footing for leveraging the relatively inexpensive image of their services ! The economies of scale established by leading firms entrenched in India is remarkable.

The usual principal-agent issues impede these firms from making off-shoring decisions. Indian service providers have demonstrated good capabilities around the same in the past. After initial doubt, outsourcing had gained ground in last 5 years. Further, the contracts are up for renewals. We will see large bout of negotiations for the renewal of contracts and further large proportions of sourcing.

eSCM - Sourcing Capability Model encompasses all the sourcing issues and the Indian service providers are rapidly climbing the ladders of the eSCM capability levels. You must check out on the eSCM website for the list of the Indian firms.

Currently, the leading Indian service providers are making offers that are hard to refuse. No wonder - when the doom-gloom about the R-word started, progressive companies such as Infosys started booking the 30-seconds-slots on CNBC in the US.

From the vantage point that I am looking at, this recession is a boon for the Indian Services, in general, and software services, in particular.

contingency firms v/s retainer firms

2008-02-20T08:07:00.002-05:00

While going through the emails I received last week, I could see some recruiter emails - some from contingency firms and some from retainer firms. This got me curious on digging on the net for finding the differences in how they operate. Click here to read a good differentiation.

par excellence

2008-02-17T11:06:00.004-05:00

Google doesn't stop to impress me with their products. The newest one which impressed me was the ability to give a certain name to a tab in iGoogle and get related widgets automatically.

Here's how it works. If you are signed in the iGoogle webpage, click on Add a Tab. Give it a title, say notes. You will see a tab with multiple notes gadgets. I thought may be this was too obvious. So, I went ahead and added a tab called India. Huge number of widgets came up on that tab ! Same with stocks, technology management, etc !

This is amazing new step to keep Google users stuck to its page !!!

microhoooooo

2008-02-01T15:08:00.003-05:00

Microsoft bid for Yahoo at $31 a share in a bid to gain some market share in the rapidly evolving online ad industry.

An earlier post on this blog here, expressed the possibility of consolidation with Microsoft buying Yahoo. Microsoft senior leadership was astute and kept this possibility on bay for a while. They made their move with an unsolicited bid when the Yahoo stock was beaten down due to lacklustre performance by Yang and the Gang. Larry Ellison moves in similar ways.

The media expressed that there may be anti-trust problems. Now, you gotta be kidding me! Together Microsoft and Yahoo will cover only a quarter of the total space that Google commands. I learnt at least this much in my Business Law class from Prof Hersch. I am not sure why the popular media made these comments. This just indicates how the media runs hurriedly to create sensational headlines rather than providing any thought to it. None other than CNBC said this and other channels followed suit ! This sad display of journalism reminds me of Prof Chris Telmer, who used to rip apart the pink press (financial press) for spreading false notions in the minds of the naive readers. Astute and educated investors read most of the pink media with a grain of salt due to such incidents.

Of course, Yahoo and Microsoft have huge share of email accounts. However, I am not yet sure if they have good enough products to target ads in that fashion. If they build it together, they will save money on building that. May be both already have products in the pipeline...who knows.

Going ahead, we will witness some interesting times in the search space.
1. MSN Money must leverage Yahoo Finance for their content but not the UI. The international market and eye balls (remember - Jewels at the bottom of the pyramid!) that MSN Money will get with the inclusion of Yahoo Finance content on MSN Money will surpass that of Google Finance easily.

Google Finance does not have any grip in the foreign markets - for instance, the Indian market. Whereas Yahoo Finance has a good set of data (though there is room for improvement for the international markets. Besides they roll no the RIC codes and hence, have a standardized convention for naming the stocks.

2. We will have a very colorful time watching the titans clash for the online ads market. MSFT has been ramping up its Live Search staff with good talent from around the globe. They have some way to go in order to make themselves equivalent to that of GOOG. However, they are on the right path.

3. Will MSFT be able to retain the top talent from YHOO? or will they be bought away by GOOG or facebook? Time will tell. Most of the sources I talk in Yahoo with tell me that they will not like to work for MSFT given that when they chose their careers - they had a choice and they actively chose YHOO over MSFT.

Another take on it is that this was a la The Art of War move by MSFT in which MSFT doesn't engage YHOO into a battle but just surrounds it. YHOO has nowhere to go. Mr. Yang and Gang could not maintain a high valuation for the ailing online giant. GOOG cannot make a bid as they dont want another regulator hassle from the DOJ for another anti-trust trial (this time it will be fatal).

In conclusion, 31 bucks a share is not a bad price to pay considering the additional steady revenues it will bring in. Microsoft senior leadership was astute and kept this possibility on bay for a while. Let us see how YHOO responds to this bid.

infy and the art of PR!

2008-01-31T07:46:00.000-05:00

At 5.30 am, while working out at the gym, I saw few frequent Infosys ads on CNBC and I thought that it does merit a blog here.

Infy has relentlessly worked towards branding efforts - more than any other Indian service provider. The vision that the top management has is way ahead of its peers. No wonder their media hits are way higher than its peers in the Indian service provider business.

What drove them towards this obsession with branding?

Vision:
NRN's vision as conveyed to me by their Healthcare and Lifesciences chief during a campus presentation at CMU indicated that Infy wants to leverage its deep expertise that it develops at the grassroot levels in order to deliver business solutions. Also, I could practically experience this at one of our client engagements, where the management consultants who were brought in could not provide the most optimal solution due to lack of grassroot level knowledge. Most of them suffered lack of depth.

If one has good contextual knowledge for a client then one can provide a better solution -- there's no doubt about that. This is more relevant to complex transformations than simple best practices implementations for simple transformations.

Pressure to upsell:
In the GDM or Global Delivery Model, the revenues were primarily in USD and the costs were primarily in INR. With weakness in USD against INR, there is a huge pressure on their margins. This is forcing them to upsell.

Timing is right:
The timing of ads is right - with slowdown, US businesses will require more and more of outsourcing. The businesses cannot hold on to costly US-based resources if they want to stay competitive.

Lessons learnt:

Competing on price is not the silver bullet -
This reminds me of our lecture in International business by ex-chief economist of Gulf Oil (bought by Chevron in 1984). Sustainable business requires that one must compete on the quality and not on price. This came up during the Matsushita US market-entry strategy for a specific product.

Perception issues -
No matter what high-end services are delivered by Infy, they suffered from perception issue of being "cheap" or "inexpensive". Upselling the services is difficult once this happens. I remember doing a high end work that is delivered by some of the snobbish consulting firms and charged at 5-6 times.

Manage the forex actively-
Sound International finance principles need to be deployed if you want to be a true "global player." Infy lacked in this aspect. I remember the conversations I used to have with one of our Group Manager - Infy doesn't know how to handle forex and he used to have a popular perception that - ah, they are such a large firm, they must be having experts in place. Hell no! They didn't have experts until 07 in place. This was especially true with USD tanking more than 20% against INR in less than a year. Global players such as Merck have much more complex strategies in place for forex management. If Infy wants to become a true global player, they will have to increase the sophistication to mitigate this risk!

business planning

2008-01-28T21:50:00.000-05:00

The art of the start - check out this small demo by Palo Alto software guys -
http://www.paloalto.com/ps/bp/demo/sba/index.html#

I would blog about this topic in much more details later.

consultants and recommendations

2008-01-24T07:35:00.000-05:00

Dilbert had a neatly outlined strip on recommendations. A software is recommended against and still gets installed causing it to be a DoA! You can check the strip here.

After checking out the strip, a few questions that linger reader's mind are :

How to make persuasive recommendations?
How to prevent political agendas from derailing your recommendations?
Do recommendations become negotiations? If yes, how do we negotiate?

Recommendations can become negotiations depending on the situation (the ones who get recommended, the ones who recommend, the political agendas of different stakeholders, etc). Consultants in advisory capacity always face such situations where the recommendations can become negotiations.

Consulting is an art and not a science. As Dr. Young taught us the psychology of audience decision making in his course on Consulting and Conflict Resolution, I recall a few of the prime points are as follows:

Insist on using objective criteria. For instance, in case of software architecture negotiations, a good method to use is ATAM or Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method
Focus on interests and not positions. Use data to back your interest - it could be industry reports from authoritative sources such as Gartner, Forrester, etc
Like it or not, negotiation is a fact of life
In negotiations, neither be too hard nor be too soft - use principled negotiation to get what you entitle and be good to people as well
Separate people from the problem
Invent options for mutual gains
Use BATNA for folks who are more powerful
Use negotiation jujitsu for difficult folks with dirty tricks

All of the above points are important and they work if practiced the right way. I have experienced it and recommend it to every reader of this blog.

Happy Consulting !

professional services of software products

2008-01-22T21:25:00.000-05:00

Here's a funny depiction of professional services arm of a software product company from Dilbert.

booz allen to break up !

2008-01-21T12:42:00.000-05:00

Check out this news here.
BAH to break up and have its consultancy services separate ! BAH generates about USD 4bn a year revenue. Given this, the firm's conservative valuations will be easily in the ball park of USD 50 bn+. The partners will have a ball in case this deal goes through.

I am trying to gauge what will Carlyle gain if they get control of these assets (which in absolute terms are - NONE! - most of the assets are intangibles). The people may or may not stick out with BAH - given the turmoil that BAH consulting will undergo with new paymasters in form of Carlyle. Also, as partnership targets of sr managers and managers will get hazed out - there may be a certain degree of attrition to face.

Having said that, Carlyle can deploy the staff and the managers in private equity related work. Their existing assets can be used for it. However, what impact they can bring is a suspect as 70% of BAH's consulting division works for the government and the dynamics in that sphere are much different than commercial sector (critical success factors are more political than merit-based).

I am not sure if this will affect BAH Consulting's ability to attract good talent from b-schools !? Time will tell...

FAA stats and flight delays

2007-12-20T12:55:00.002-05:00

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?

2007-12-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-28T09:41:00.000-05:00

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?

2007-11-27T11:12:00.000-05:00

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 !

2007-11-27T10:20:00.000-05:00

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…

Persistence
Attention to detail
Efficiency
Analytical skills
Setting high standards

…and these were the least important to success…

Strong oral communication
Teamwork
Flexibility/adaptability
Enthusiasm
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

2007-11-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

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?

2007-11-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-03T00:56:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-27T20:57:00.000-04:00

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

Project Management
Service Management
IT Governance
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?

2007-10-27T20:08:00.001-04:00

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?

2007-10-25T11:13:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-24T14:26:00.002-04:00

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

2007-10-22T12:04:00.000-04:00

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

2007-10-17T12:10:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-10-15T18:53:00.001-04:00

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

2007-10-10T00:11:00.000-04:00

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 !

2007-10-07T12:17:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-28T19:56:00.000-04:00

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

2007-07-03T15:24:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-28T15:04:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-06-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-27T16:24:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-27T15:18:00.000-04:00

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:

housing affordability (cost of living);
transportation;
jobs;
education;
climate;
crime;
health care;
recreation;
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!

2007-06-25T18:55:00.001-04:00

Donald Asher has come out with yet another interesting writeup for schooling !
Check this out: http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/College/?article=IvyLeagueWorthIt

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

2007-06-21T15:48:00.000-04:00

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 !

2007-06-03T19:31:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-26T11:27:00.000-04:00

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 ?

2007-05-17T08:03:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-16T06:24:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-16T05:21:00.000-04:00

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?

2007-05-09T11:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-05-06T13:50:00.000-04:00

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 !

2007-04-27T00:35:00.000-04:00

...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

2007-04-26T23:32:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-21T15:13:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-14T23:09:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-14T16:52:00.000-04:00

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 !

2007-04-14T10:24:00.000-04:00

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

2007-04-14T10:05:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-04-11T17:24:00.001-04:00

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

2007-04-09T09:14:00.000-04:00

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...

2007-03-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-15T00:03:00.000-04:00

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 !

2007-03-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

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

2007-03-07T20:47:00.000-05:00

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 !

usability and free products: google, yahoo, microsoft

2007-03-07T01:01:00.000-05:00

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.

global sourcing

2007-03-07T00:55:00.000-05:00

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...

stalkerish..

2007-02-25T14:00:00.000-05:00

This is stalking to the extreme !
Earlier, they wanted to know what everyone is searching for - now they wanna know the locations(lat/long coordinates).

Man, this is compromise of privacy - big time :) Ppl give up privacy for services they receive - not knowing what price they might pay for it later.
The recent one in stack is Google's Dodgeball

Is this Google's answer to 2 challenges:
1. orkut not being as popular/usable as facebook.
2. need to locate folks and provide advertisement possibilities to local businesses.

well, letsee wait-n-watch what happens !

which company is your favorite company?

2007-02-18T18:31:00.000-05:00

Usually, many of my colleagues ask me this question: Which is your dream company?
My reply: my own company :D

They ask: Besides that?
My reply: From what perspective?

They ask: to work for...duh!
My reply: None

india business conference

2007-02-18T12:27:00.000-05:00

Date: 2/16
Theme: Investing in India: An Entrepreneur's Canvas
Organized by: South Asian Business Association
Experience:

The event started off with a panel's meeting. Panel included CMU's Ashish Arora, Madan Mohan from Infosys, Rick Russow from USIBC, and some others.

Citi India portfolio owner for CitiCards managed his session over Webex as his flight from NYC got cancelled. CEO of iGate, Mr. Sunil Wadhwani had come down for one of the speeches. Besides, Rick had one speech as well. Rick is remarkably aware about India's political, economic, and cultural panorama(Of course, he had coffees with most of the bureaucrats including Montek Singh Ahluwalia and deals with bureaucrats in Tamil Nadu quite often!) Last speech was by Vish Mishra, from Clearstone Venture Capital. Clearstone invests in India-centric ventures (for instance, BillDesk)

In between, there were breaks with Indian foodstuff lined up (samosas, dhoklas, etc). I was unimpressed by CMU's Indian populace who didn't participate at this event ~ doesn't talk well about the entrepreneurial spirit of the community at the school.

spring courses

2007-02-15T22:13:00.000-05:00

Technically, the school authorities call it the spring semester - I have no idea why - this cold is getting annoying - the temperature is 8F and feels like -2F. Man, that's -18C....! that's coooooooooollllllllddddddddddddd !

I wanted to write this post since a long time but either didn't have time or didn't have an inclination towards it. However, right now, I think I am over my writer's block period and can write ...and yo, I am back !

Macroeconomics

Prof Christopher Sleet has recommended the textbook of the most influential economist in the world - Mr. Ben Bernanke !I have the fifth edition but the professor insists on the sixth one which came out midway between the mini. However, this is a semester long course.

I am grasping some important macroeconomic concepts which help give an added dimension and credibility to any of my analysis.

Some of the CMU students are so impudent - they keep their feet on the bag! Check out the adjacent picture !

Business Law and Ethics

Course on Contracts by Ashish Arora was cancelled. That made me take this course and I am so glad I took it. Prof Dale Hershey has close to 40 years of experience practicing civil lawsuits. The book by Beatty Samuelson on Business Law is exhaustive and interesting at the same time.

This gives me a perspective on strategy analysis and also good amount of information required for a manager while making decisions and taking actions.

Contracts, Corporate structuring, intellectual property, cyber law, class actions, jurisdictions, shareholder rights, insider trading, antitrust, environmental law, consumer law, uniform commercial code (UCC), CISG, etc are the topics which are broadly well-covered in this mini-course.

On a sidebar, I met a bunch of first years (MBA) students in this class for our group presentation - all of them were caught up in a crazy chase for the internships .... 2 of the 4 I worked with got offers from Amazon which are freaking amazing offers :) One got from AT Kearney and one is still looking as she wants more !

Digital Transformation

Prof Ramayya Krishnan brings in some good models to think while making decisions w.r.t. IT and deployment of IT for strategic purposes. We mostly deal with IT user category of companies and not the creators.

However, I have a complaint: As participation has such a high grade component, in order to be fair to everyone, he gives way too much time to some of the folks in the class who crave attention. For instance, someone gives a long pregnant pause (just to get the footage) once s/he is given an opportunity to talk. Moreover, there are folks who bring in previous points while the discussion is in a specific flow (no matter how irrelevant they are to the current discussion). Then there's someone that takes at least 3 mins to describe the point s/he is trying to make.

I feel stuck in this class.... I didn't have a choice while taking this course as it has been made a capstone course which is compulsory. It must be dropped from the list of required courses - or must be allowed to be exempted if something similar is done. My strong opinions come from the fact that I had to miss the Capability Improvement for Service Organizations class due to time conflict with Digital Transformation. If DT wasn't a core course, I would've taken the Capability one !

Information Security and Risk Analysis

Interesting course with a great deal of insight in valuing risk. This is close to Options Pricing which I studied last semester. When I put up the point regarding security firms coming up with insurance for the clients w.r.t. managed security services, professor mentioned that there is lack of data. I could quickly correlate it to the fact that in case of stocks, there is second to second ticker data.

Prof Ashish Arora puts out the ideas really neat - these are useful for a consultant in general and a security department personnel in specific.

One of his TA Sasha Ramanov has a nice site which you can check out here. Another TA suggested me the WEIS 2007 event. I will try to make sure I am in Pgh around that time in order to attend it.

Lectures are conducted in Collaborative Innovation Center (CyLab hosts Google, Intel, etc offices here) for the infrastructure setup as the classes are being relayed to Kobe(Japan) as well.

Capstone project: Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking
I can't write much about this as we have to protect the interests of our client.

In order to maximize the learning experience, our advisor Dave Burke has given roles to the folks who did not have experience in those areas. For instance, I have acquired knowledge on being an architect but never worked as an architect before - so, I was made the architect. Someone else hasn't done project management, so s/he took up prj mgr role and myself and someone else who has done it will guide him/her. This method has its own pros and cons.

All in all, a busy semester going on. I can manage to hit the gym several times a week and I am happy about that. Moreover, I am able to undertake other activities such as ice-skating, skiing, clubbing, latino dancing, etc in some free pockets of time.

Rendezvous with a Mayor!

2007-02-03T16:20:00.000-05:00

Last night, at the PNC Park, I had an opportunity to meet the youngest Mayor in the United States Mr. Ravenstahl. He is young, dynamic, understands business terms and concepts well, and a visionary. He is fairly matured for his age and has the burning desire for turning around the City of Pittsburgh. Accordingly, he has taken steps at the micro-levels to work on converting the "Iron City" to a "Techno City". I wished him all the best in his endeavors when I met him and briefly introduced myself to him and where my origins are from (Mumbai).

After the Mayor's event followed the Network Pittsburgh event for Alumni networking. I met a few Deloitte folks out there and met some other interesting folks from the Heinz school who I had never met before. Nice event !

Post-networking meet, we went for the happy hour to Atria's to have some more meetings with the folks. Ron, our career services director, gave me compliment for being the "best dressed MISM" - so flattering ! Thank you Ron !

The travel back home was horrendous. My lips hurt due to the extreme cold weather in Pittsburgh. I didn't drive down to the event because I was planning on having some drinks. Hence, I had to use several connections of the bus routes to reach back home. One such link made me wait for half an hour and I think the temperature was -5 F. This coupled with the thin suit trousers sent shivers through my spine...literally ! It taught me a good lesson that I must never be out in the cold - no matter what my cold tolerance is.

social entrepreneurship

2007-01-28T00:08:00.000-05:00

Jerr Boschee, the grand-daddy of social entrepreneurship had recently visited CMU. Received a lot of gyan from him on why SE ventures must make themselves self-sustaining and how to acheive that.

Moreover, he also mentioned that someone in this field, if in a dilemma (does it matter? types) can approach him for a discussion.

He had visited and taught students in India in the past ...after which he got this enlightment about devoting himself for a social cause - fairly noble person it appears.

ice skating

2007-01-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

screeeeetch, whoooosh, whooop, THUD ...... are the sounds you easily get to listen at the ice rink if there is no music in the background. Yes, my first experience with ice-skating was yesterday evening. It reminded me of roller-blading days of 1995 !

Despite of few hurdles, a few MISM colleagues finally managed to reach the Schenley Park ice rink (on a lighter note, how many MISMs does it take to locate the rink ...LOL). While I was waiting at the rink, I saw quite a few kids doing nice maneuvers. As folks arrived and we tied our skates, we entered the rink with some apprehension. Some crashed at the beginning and some others as the time progressed.

Fortunately, I didn't fall in the first session. In the second session, in the last five minutes, I was stretching too far and my muscles had given up. I was unable to lift up my legs for the gliding action and hence, lost balance and fell. I crashed softly though and it was fun - no pains, no tears. The muscles of the lower back and the tendons of vastus medialis were screaming at me -

Manik Manik
Go away
Come again another day....
Little tendons want to lay !

When I learnt rollerblades, I had someone to teach me baby-steps with the skates on and then hold my hand for making a few rounds of the skating ring. I learnt faster that way. Yesterday was different as none of us were good at this though UD did well at the learning curve part - he was way ahead. However, I did have a bunch of folks who were constantly motivating me. Nah, not my colleagues, but a bunch of folks from UPitt who I met while tying up the shoes. Drea was one of them and she was half American and half Puerto Rican - very warm personality ! She was fascinated by Indian culture as well. I could never believe that she was skating for the first time because she was doing it so well!

All of us (MISMers) had decided that we shall have a look at the city from the point above the ice rink - however, that never happened ! A few other aspects ruined my mood towards the end of the event but that was fine - a part n parcel of this journey called life. After the skating event, I met some friends at Silkys and enjoyed some drinks with them for about a hour or more!

All in all, it was a good part of the weekend activity. Letsee whats lined up for today!

GramIT - phenomenal !

2007-01-13T09:11:00.000-05:00

At the turn of the millennium, I asked KB Chandrashekhar aka Chandra, about when does he think that IT will become a part of India's GDP contribution and help at the grass-root levels. His reply was that when the jobs from all this IT boom in India reach the country-side, it will mark the significant contribution.

Seven years later, I read this news piece on GramIT. If offshoring is to remain India's growth engine, this must happen. Wage inflation and attrition at major centers such as Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Mumbai are causing huge problems on the supply side for the companies who are setting up shops in India. For GramIT employees, lack of other paying jobs make sure that currently, these are not the issues. With Indian service providers moving up the value chain, the lower end work can go to places such as GramIT.

I feel that this cartoon of outsourced CEO is exaggerated. However, moving up the value chain is so evident - few years ago, we could not imagine an Infy employee doing Application Management and yet, I was both, a Project Manager and Application Manager at AT&T. These are functions traditionally offered to US-based consolidated labor suppliers such as IBM, EDS, Accenture, Deloitte, etc Traditional model put virtual team mgrs with other vendors such as IBM. However, cos like Infy are invading this chain from right to left - right uptil client coordinator :)

Will this journey stop?

India has a significant challenge in maintaining its supremacy in being the preferred offshore destination. The offshoring industry is going to be 1.45 to 1.55million in strength and will contribute to about 7% of GDP by 2008 end. Challenges arise from the fact that clustering has happened during evolving stages at locations such as Hyd, Blore, Bbay, etc pushing the prices higher. This has caused huge internal competition within clusters and coupled with lack of supply (talented pool) has accentuated the problem. Let us look at the real numbers.

There are about 14m young grads in India with about 2.5m new ones getting added each year. However, only 10% are suited for the MNCs setting up shops. English skills remain a major issue. Bigger problem lies in the fact that Indian univs have varying quality of education. IITs and IIMs are world-class. However, the quality steeply declines as one goes into the second and the third tier institutions. The higher suitability figures lie in the engineering crowds - roughly 25% are suitable for MNCs. However, given the supply side constraints of engineering schools and huge demand in no. of IT workers and middle managers required, the wages are being pushed northwards. This is similar to demand for a stock in absence of floating stock and institutions placing huge orders.

Some doomsdayers say that Indian wages will get equated to US wages. This belief is misplaced. When the threshold of 30% of US wages will be crossed, Indian IT labor suppliers ( Infosys, TCS, Satyam, etc) will start looking in other low-wage labor supplying countries such as China. Infosys Shanghai already has already been set up and TCS has made several acquisitions in China. PRC provides cheap programmers but costly managers (with dual language skills) and hence, cost of team is the same at both the places in India and PRC. Suppliers are looking at Philipines as another destination for call centers as they have lesser Indian accents and can understand US accent with relative ease.

So what must GoI do?
---------------------------

Disperse the clustering

This is risk-diversification. GramIT is on right track - more such things must happen in India which will help both, Indian populace coupled with capitalists. More regions will get developed. Currently, due to origins of most of IT entrepreneurs being from Southern part of India, they are mostly concentrating in the South with Pune, Chennai, etc being the alternative destinations to avoid clustering issues. However, MNCs such as Accenture, IBM, et al have set up their shops there as well. So, cos such as Infy run to Kolkatta, Jaipur - nice solution :)

In order to enable this dispersion, government needs to focus on infrastructure such as airports, utilities, telecom network, etc. The effects of neglect by GoI in this matter have been benign so far but they will rapidly become a hindrance for the growth in next 3-5 years.

Airports
When interrogated about the bias for Chennai and other south Indian destinations, entrepreneurs mention that the infrastructure in other places is not as developed. For instance, Infy setup a shop at Chandigarh but there's no easy international airport access. Hence, government must focus on developing international airports fast. Jaipur is a good destination because of the international airport decision made in 2002 budget.

Telecom network
If telecom network is well developed then telecommuting can be started in India leading to easing pressures on wages. This will help dispersion of work in low-wage areas within the country. GramIT is the best example. Labor is available at $800 per head at less than 5% churnover rate- wow !

Utilities
Individual companies have been making sure that electric power, water, etc do not become an issue at their offshore development centers. For them, it makes business sense as economies of scale ensure lower marginal cost which they can pass on to the customer under component of reliability. However, GoI can provide this to the smaller startups who can compete far better. This takes us to the next aspect why should GoI support smaller ventures.

Showcase the depth and the breadth of Indian pool

India's talent pool can be showcased in other fields such as industrial R&D, Finance & Accounting (culture which invented zero man !), etc. Small ventures are starting in these arena and must be helped by GoI in various forms and they will reap the benefits of the same in next 5-10 years in form of higher $ revenues, money sent back by expats, etc. In order to scale up on manufacturing supply, we need roads, roads, and roads ! Bharat Forge is an innovative auto-component solutions provider helping companies from the developed nations become more competitive. I agree beating PRC is very difficult given the lead they have over India...however, its not impossible. PRC supplier rates are going up. India can become an alternate supplier location for competitive supply chains.

Brand India as a destination for alternative services. This includes wide range from medical tourism in Hinduja hospital in Mumbai to exotic Himalayas in the north and the healing Ayurveda destinations in Kerala. Our slogan must become:

What can Mr. Bharat do for you?

Besides, investment in educational infrastructure is required.

Private sector
Companies such as Infy, Wipro, TCS, etc must invest in educational centers. Profits seen today on a quarter to quarter basis will vanish soon if they remain myopic and do not address this 3-5 years pending issue. Their margins will be squeezed out if they dont invest in educational institutions which ensure a steady stream of good quality graduates. For this, both Indian as well as MNCs will have to form a consortium of sorts in order to invest together.

GoI
It can help setup an IIT in every state. Even if quality of existing grads is improved then the existing numbers will yield huge supply metrics which will satisfy demand of foreseeable future. India still remains a low-cost labor supply nation with cost of a grad being 12% of that of US grad and working hours being atleast 5% higher (2058 hours p.a. vis-a-vis 1900 p.a in US).

Bottomline: Collaborative execution committee between corporate world and govt is required which will yield results that can help country reach the BRICs dream drafted out by Goldman Sachs in y2k.

Ethics...

2007-01-08T22:12:00.000-05:00

Check out what Bill and Warren mentioned at UNL.
This is a video on how they instill ethics in management under them.

winter break ends..

2007-01-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

With the last week in the winter break, I want to blog the winter break experience. After the initial hedonism, I wanted to focus on family-time and health.

Bal, Val, and myself headed for a trip to Virginia beach in the week before Christmas to celebrate Christmas at Val's mom's place. On the trip, we once took an exit towards Williamsburg which has one of the oldest schools of US - College of William and Mary. On that night, we went for holiday lights at the beach front. The waiting line was quite long for the car-drive-thru but we were enjoying with christmas carols in the background. The best lightings were the ones towards the end - depicting the 12 days of Christmas.

Next day, myself and Val headed for the Virginia beach museum and I checked out some marine species out there. Touching a ray-fish with bare hands was the high point for that visit ! Later in the day, we forgot that the shops will get closed after 3:30 pm for Christmas eve and we were having difficulty finding a good place to eat. Finally, we got to eat at Val's favorite Mexican place. ....yummy salsa they had. The family spent the evening watching "walk the line." I watched it for the third time - but everytime I keep on finding something new in it. Well-made movie, I must say. I extended in the night to watch "Christmas with the Kranks."

On the day of Christmas, we all awaited the princess to come - Angelina - Val's niece. After she arrived later in the day, the gift exchange ritual started and undoubtedly the princess was the center of attention. I was in complete festive mood because the family provided me with such warmth, care, and hospitality. The gifts which Bal, Val, Val's mom and Val's sister gave me will go long way in helping a student like me :) Thank you for everything...it was so thoughtful of you guys!

When I went to bed that night, I had the glum feeling while thinking that this will all soon be over. However, I must say - I enjoyed every bit of it. Bal and Val have become like the bhaiyya and bhabhi I never had.

While we were returning back to Pittsburgh, I got to check out the downtown Va beach. Then we headed back - as we came - Bal driving all the way. IN between, we took a break at Tyson's corner - a bit before D.C. and Bal did some shopping there. Val ordered her Prada shoes on the phone to her Saks salesperson in downtown Pgh as we were not going to make it to Pgh by 7 pm in the evening.

We planned to hit the gym after coming back - unfortunately, gym was closed early that day. Val made nice pasta and beans (yummy thoe were - I got to get the seasonings recipe from her) and we watched a movie. Next day morning, I got up early to join Bal for the gym and then back to my routine I've been having.

The day before New Years was spent at their place as we worked towards getting down the tree which was put upstairs. Man, this tree was special - it had traditional ornaments and also, ornaments such as elephants - can you beat that? This year, she had 2 trees - one upstairs and one downstairs !

New Years was awesome - with friends at the Prive lounge. I did some shopping before heading for the New Year bash - bought some stuff for my younger bro during the after-Xmas sale. From 2nd Jan, I've been working on various projects (personal and professional) and this week the winter break ends - with good memories to treasure for long time to come :)

UK users gagging for IPTV

2007-01-07T07:01:00.000-05:00

Check this out - this is just the beginning of the end for the cable folks .....as mentioned by the proponents of IPTV gang.

However, I feel that cable folks have some long way to go before giving up the battle. Comcast had taken up AT&T Broadband last year - and their results haven't been as impressive yet. Company has megalo-debt with it and it will take some time before they make themselves fit in order to compete. This keeps them on their toes at all the times in order to strive for the best. The consumers are the obvious ones to benefit due to this competition.

Stay hungry - stay foolish !

Apple Keynote Bloopers

2007-01-07T06:58:00.000-05:00


Some funny clips of Steve Jobs and his gang over at Apple mssing up on their very important keynotes. ....so much for the ones who try to poke holes into Microsoft's imperfections ....