Google's Business Strategy!

Have you ever wondered what is the business strategy of Google?

Though its core businesses are Search & Advertisements, Why is it getting into anything and everything in digital media? You can notice Google's presence even in unconventional areas such as Healthcare and Energy where IT hardly had a role to play in the past.

I have certainly wondered in the past...What kind of a diversification strategy is this?. Is this a concentric diversification that is aligned to its core competencies?

First of all, Can you define Google's Core competencies?

I have seen business articles that appreciated Google that it beats traditional core competency theory and breaking new grounds in business strategy.

But it looks like the strategy is not a mystery anymore, when I read this recent perspective on CIO.com titled Is Google Killing Economy?. The first interesting perspective is that its written by a Lawyer and second it throws some significant light on Google's world-size ambitions.

The hint I could get from this perspective is that Google would get into anything and everything that has the scale of Internet.And you know the scale of the Internet. Its worldwide!.

The lawyer has raised some serious concerns on Google's motives and claims Google is trying to monopolize the Internet, like someone else tried to monopolize the Desktop industry.

End of Hardware!

Too much hyped up a title for this post?? I dont think so...

In fact, I got this title from one of the amazon books that I came across recently. Sometime back, I had written about the evolution of hardware devices such as analog devices in recent times like how they are morphing themselves into smart, internet-enabled digital devices. But, if you notice, those devices are actually relinquishing their physical forms...

For example, we were using analog alarm clocks a decade ago. Do we buy them at all today?
I dont see many of the today's smartphones have keypads. KeyPads are disappearing and converged into touch-panels within the mobile devices. Today, I came across this mobile app from General Motors that plans to have embed your car key functions within an application. Here, your physical car key disappears. One more example - recently California Administration recently came up with an innovative idea of turning car name plates to digital sign boards that can display advertisements.

Maybe, Ten years from now, we will use less physical devices compared to today's scenario. As the book states, we may not see huge physical machines such as Cars, Utility machines going away.They would be still around. But, what I see is that most of the information-emitting or information-requiring special devices will go away. They would all converge to a new digital experiences.

Yes, the new digitial experience that is gaining momemtum these days is 'Augmented Reality'.

Augmented Reality is a term for live direct or indirect view of physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. Its basically an enhanced view of reality mediated by technology.

One of my colleagues introduced me to Layar, an augmented reality browser for Android platform. It is available in most of the smartphones today. Using the browser, the user can view enhanced / additional or hidden information by focusing the mobile on a real-world object / location. This is enabled by GPS technology & Internet feeds with exclusive additional information about the real-life objects. For example, using this app on your mobile, you can search for health care facilities or even jobs around your location or a Service person can view the hidden mechanical parts information within an automobile.

One could explore the other possibilities of this technology by looking at the examples quoted in Wikipedia.

I personally believe this technology has lot of utility value and could explode in useful business/consumer applications in future.

More than that, It could also be the beginning of the end of Hardware devices.

Future of Portals

What is the site that you frequent quite often in the last six months?. Has it changed?

Here is my experience..

I used to visit my personal dashboard on Netvibes.com atleast once a week. But, Of late, I am seeing myself visiting LinkedIn very often compared to Netvibes.com. Am visiting LinkedIn to keep up with my contacts, find old/lost contacts, participate in group queries/discussions. If you are not visiting Netvibes, you should be visiting Facebook. Yes, the focus is clearly shifting from Portals to Professional/Social Networking sites.

I believe the reason why networking sites are such a big hit are - its about "me", interacting with people is fun than interacting with plain information,its real-time/lively, the information flow is bi-directional, it can bring new opportunities.

I dont know what LinkedIn is thinking about its roadmap. But, I firmly believe the personal home pages of these networking pages can become "the universal web desktops" and gobble the personal portal solutions like netvibes.

This Web Desktop can provision access to whole lot of services including networking. Yes, the networking would become "one of the services" provided.Many other services could be knowledge portal, bookmark sharing, access to social/enterprise applications and gaming.

And more importantly, the users would expect those sites to learn about themselves instead of users teaching the site about their preferences. I have been using Netvibes for more than three years now. What kind of knowledge it has acquired to provide me better services?

In the context of emergence of these networking sites, where do the personal portal sites stand? More importantly, in the Enterprise IT context, do you still need those expensive Portal servers?

Portal servers are expensive, complex and attempts to provide one-stop solution for everything whereas lightweight portal alternatives and new user behaviors are emerging in recent years.

Time has come for Enterprise IT to evaluate their portal investments and take decisive actions. Interestingly, this article also shares the same views about the future of Netvibes.

When do we see a Blue Ocean in Indian IT services industry?

Its the end of first quarter in Indian financial year 2010-11. And the season of IT service companies announcing their quarterly performance results. And ofcourse, the associated market reactions.

We have also been seeing number of press conferences by CEOs of Indian IT service companies.

If you have been observing those press events of those CEOs, the typical issues that would get discussed are - billing rate corrections, hiring numbers, profitability, geo-political risks, growth/profitability numbers, dollar-rupee currency fluctuations.

But, Why aren't we seeing light on some of the toughest customer problems that are solved by these companies, in that quarter?. Why aren't we hearing anything about some of the impressive technology solutions that they provided? Why don't we learn anything on their future technology seed planting activities?

Indian IT services industry has achieved the dominant status in offshoring nearly a decade ago. And all these years, we have been hearing only the general management talk from the leadership than the customer value management enabled by information technologies.

Have you ever seen a CTO or a equivalent role from a Indian IT services company talked to the press in detail about the company's technology perspectives or its vision for the future? The answer is resounding 'NO'.

On the contrary, I was reading the interview of Cisco India Globalization Officer in a leading newspaper in Bangalore. In the interview, the EvP talks about some of the real problems faced by urbanization and how Cisco's technologies can help solving them. He goes on talking about some of the projects that Cisco is driving. Of course, he touches upon General management aspects as well.

But, if you read the interviews/blogs of Indian CEOs (from IT services companies), you will learn only about general management innovation/outsourcing offshoring trends among customers.

Clearly, this was required a decade ago when the whole offshoring concept was new and emerging across the globe. But, not today. Today - Globalization is at its peak. And the speed of technology change/Innovation is rapid. The potential to create new value based on Technology is tremendous. The needs of the customer, the needs of the industry, the needs of the society are constantly changing. And the indian industry should lead from the front than getting stuck in the past.

Agreed, Cisco is a Technology/Products company and Indian IT services companies are 'IT-intensive Customer Services' companies. But, that shouldn't stop them from leading the global outsourcing/offshoring industry on technology front.

In fact, Indian IT service companies have a stronger advantage that they work with numerous clients across the globe to solve some of their pressing problems using technology.

Its time the industry flip its orientation from shareholders' interests to customers' interests!.

Why Boeing acquires Cyber Security capability?

Today morning, Over a cup of coffee, when I was reading the business section of Times of India, I came across this interesting acquisition - Boeing acquiring a Cyber Security Technology firm.

I understand there is quite a lot of activity happening in cyber security space, given the fact that number of threats are increasing every day. But, I was thinking - why would a traditional OEM / aerospace manufacturer get into the business of cyber security?

Apart from aeroplane manufacturing, the other key business of Boeing is Defense, Space and Security Systems. There are couple of areas where Boeing is planning to use the technology.

- as a capability that can enable secure networking of ground, air and space products
- as a defense for Boeing's network
- as a capability that can be deployed across its business units
- The acquired company can open new markets to Boeing

Pls note that its not seen as an IT capability. It is a compelling business capability. Going forward, I would say companies would build/promote cyber security as an integrated business capability like legal, HR and physical security.

Boeing has been supporting Military/Defense space for decades. With the ever-increasing influence of Internet, the defense strategies are shifting from traditional 'hardware' weapons/equipments to 'emerging' 'software/IT' enabled solutions. That's a significant paradigm shift!

I have talked about this transition in my earlier blog post as well.

With more and more businesses evaluating ET-based solutions and Internet getting embedded into pervasive devices, the need for cyber security solutions is only going to explode!.

Why Mobile Innovation Is Blowing Away PCs

Though our Laptops were mobile for quite sometime, We never had the luxury of add-on devices such as GPS, Accelerometer, Integrated Camera. Until a couple of years before, even having a bluetooth enabled Laptop was a rare scenario.

Have you ever thought why?....

I was of the opinion that Mobile applications are picking up because of consumerism, mobile devices proliferation, increased competition across vendors, accelerated innovation, etc...
But, that's not true...

This is an interesting article from Techcrunch that clealry highlights there are fundamental reasons behind this Mobile Innovation!. And some of the reaons the article claims are that increased participation of small vendors across the globe, and tremendous competition from them to outdo each other in terms of product innovation, increased flexibility in accomodating structural changes in terms of hardware/chipset, platforms, software and systems integration.

The article also states that we simply dont have them in PC/Laptops because that ecosystem does not exist in that space. That's quite a revelation!.

At this rate of innovation, I wouldn't be surprised if the mobile ecosystem comes out with an innovation that would introduce structural changes in Enterprise IT platforms, especially software applications.

Like the way, Agile concepts disrupted the application development methodologies/processes, I guess something like a rapid development model would disrupt Enterprise IT application development and system integration as well...And that innovation could come from Mobile space.

IT is becoming ET! [Enterprise Technology]

Excellent Perspective from CIO.com!

I remember the IT department used to be called as 'EDP' in my school days - Electronic Data Processing Department. In some companies, it used ot be called as 'MIS' - Management Information Systems Department. The Job of the department would be centrally digitize and manage the backoffice functions such as accounting/payroll in a central organizational unit.

The CIO.com article states that, with the advent of PCs and networks, MIS department was decentralized and that led to the evolution of IT. Pretty interesting to observe that how a technology innovation leads to organizational / management structure within the company [The arrival of LAN within the company].

Now, IT is hugely populated with COTS products and Of late, with Software-as-a-Service solutions. Is that all?. No, it looks like its going to change again and its called 'Enterprise Technology'.

When MIS was limited to only computer-savvy professionals, IT expanded the role of technology to larger set of people within the organization such as engineers, business people using spreadsheets/office/collaboration software. Now, with advent of ET, the technology would be made available to larger set of population outside the organization, beyond its own employees, to even those customers who have not traditionally used any devices or phones.

It falls on the idea of 'Internet of Things' where technology is going to get embedded in every possible device that the end customer interacts with. And this paradigm is going to amoss large amounts of data to the Enterprise. And the Enterprise would be challenged to make intelligence out of this vast amount of data to add value to the end customers and their environment. And the key difference from IT and ET is that ET would be wired to the physical world - physically touching the customers' lives.

Now the question is, Is the traditional IT department geared up to face this challenging trend?. I dont think so.

The key challenge would be the ability to envision, conceptualize, architect, build and operate solutions that call for 'Inter-disciplinary' competencies. When I say inter-disciplinary, the future Enterprise Technology solutions would require amalgamation of multiple competencies such as hardware, software and embedded technologies. While the traditional Enterprise IT shops are used to architect/operate software-only / software-intensive solutions.

Are you game for this new IT?

Why iPhone apps are such a big hit?

Have you ever wondered why iPhone is able to make its apps so famous?

1 Billion Downloads in just over nine months. Stunning numbers, isn't it?

I have a Palm PDA that I bought few years ago. I do love the device and its user interface and applications. There are thousands of applications available for Palm platform. But, if i have to look for the most attractive or useful application for Palm, I need to visit umpteen number of sites. One way, its good there are quite a few options. The other way, it makes life cumbersome. I dont really get to see the most used or rated application in one place. And that's exactly the problem iPhone solves.

When I was evaluting the application architecture for iPhone, I was thinking there should be a rapid programming model that shrinks the time-to-market of these applications. But, it was not the case. Some of the iPhone application frameworks are still talking about Model-view-controller or multi-layer architecture. The applications may have a magical user interface. But, there is no silver bullet in terms of its application architecture!.

So, the crux of the famous equation is the 'Management Innovation' combined with 'Technology Innovation' - The economics that gives 70% cut to the developer community, Apple's Certification mechanism for applications, Application Store - the single storefront to search, purchase and download the application onto the device in one go and integrated withit the snappy UI - All this leads to the success formulae. Here is a perspective from IT consultant - Yourdon.

Once Steve Jobs was asked about the secret of success, he said 'its the chemistry'. Yes its the chemistry of the hardware, OS and the applications. He also added - You can't expect that chemistry between a Dell Hardware and Microsoft Windows OS'. How true?

Next Peter Drucker!

Is Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, an IT Services firm based out of India.

This is what Tom Peters claims!.

One of the key challenges facing the organization these days is not just to make their IT systems agile, but to make their Organization Structure and Culture more agile and adaptive to the ever changing market needs. This is very much applicable to knowledge industries, like IT services.

When the same talent who used to work for one company can be easily poached by any other company by offering more compensation or designation/role, the only thing that could differentiate the incumbent company and increase its influence over the individual is its organization structure and culture. In the longer term, its the org. structure and culture that defines the DNA of the company and it would persist for a longer time, while the projects can come and go.

Having said that, the traditional 'command-and-control' model of organization structure is being challenged. The companies that adopt these hierarchial model are not able to be innovative or leading the industry in specific areas. And in a Knowledge industry like IT services, as Management Guru Peter Drucker says, the employees are well informed and knowledgeable than their bosses. This makes the problem much more complicated.

Now, what would be alternative? - Vineet Nayar has come out with a new book called - Employee First, Customer Second. The title of the book can be counter-intuitive to our traditional management philosophies. But, some of the principles what Vineet articulates are just radical and challenges the status-quo.

Some of the interesting thoughts from his book, as quoted here

• Its time to switch from the traditional pyramid model to 'Inverted' Pyramid model of organization. In a company that is over hundreds of employees, the top management will not really have a clue on the ground realities and hence the company could be dis-oriented or driving in the wrong direction. Hence, its time to retire the centralized, command-control model to decentralized, collaborative model, where each network node is self-empowered. The leadership will only be guardians of corporate principles, adovates and encouragers


• Making enabling functions like Quality / General Management to be accountable for the employees, not the other way round. This would improve the effectiveness of the organization. [I still need to get into the details of this point. Am curious to know more on his thoughts on the enabling functions.]


• By renewing the Organization structure and culture, we would be unleashing the power, passion and talent of 'value-zone' employees. This would lead to the Growth of the company.

Am not sure whether HCL Technologies practices what Vineet has talked about in the Book. Neverthess, its a timely thought!. And any company that wants to be leading and growing needs to consider these thoughts.

Coming Soon: Apps for your car!

This is interesting!.

If you look at the trends where the technology is progressing, it looks like the following. The devices which were once analog or mechanical are transforming to Intelligent machines.

analog-> digital -> Internet Enabled -> Information enabled -> Collaborative -> Smart -> Intelligent/Learning systems.

Joining the trend now is - Cars. In this newsclip, the car manufacturing company audi announces that future version of its cars will have computer-style dashboards that will have the capability to download apps from the Internet.

Its not just a technology innovation. Audi is also contemplating a business model, where the customers will be able to selectively download and pay to activate modular features in the car.
This will enable deep personalization of the products through Internet-enabled services.

On top of it, Audi also claims that its cars will behave like 'learning machines' that will be able to leverage the information and predict/recommend the driver's behavior.

Avatar 3D and ERP - What is so Common?

Does the above combination sound strange?...

May be...

But, that is the coincidence that came to my mind when I read Why I hate 3-D and (You Should Too) by Roger Ebert in Newsweek. In this article, Roger says that he is not opposed to 3D as an option. But he opposes 3D as the future, a way of life for movies going forward.

I didn't watch Avatar 3D version. But, recently I watched DreamWorks 'How to Train Your Dragon' in 3D version. I should say that was one of the best entertaining movies that I had watched in recent times. I felt that the script of the movie was so interesting that I would have watched it, even if it didn't have 3D features. In fact, I would have loved to watch it in 2D version. The 3D version was distracting and it didn't add any enhance the movie watching experience in any way.

I am disappointed that next Dreamworks summer release Shrek 4 is also going to be released in 3D soon.

The 3D technology is hyped up so much that its already making inroads to Home entertainment. Samsung has introdcued 3D technology in LED TVs in India. And thats not all, there is a whole bunch of movies waiting to be released in 3D. Does it worth the hype?. I dont think so. I agree with all the reasons that Roger has mentioned in the Newsweek article.

Ok, So What?. How is it related to IT? or ERP?

Will come to that observation in few mins...

In the article, Roger concludes - Whenever Hollywood is threatened, it turns to Technology like sound, color, Dolby, DTS, and 3D. This is the observation that made me to think of the correlation to ERP...

Now..cut to ERP technology...

I recently upgraded my car stereo to Pioneer music system. And One of the reasons for doing that is to listen to Audio Books. The first Audio book that I rented was 'Beyond Goal' from Dr.Goldratt. I listened to this book couple of times, purely because there so many messages in that. I could write several other blog posts just on the thought-provoking speech by Dr. Goldratt.

If anyone has read Goal/or read Dr.Goldratt's articles, one could understand that Dr.Goldratt takes a hard stand on ERP. And He clearly outlines why it is so hard to derive benefits from ERP these days... Trust me, not just ERP, any significant IT investments that a company want to make, must listen to Dr.Goldratt to understand the process of yielding benefits from it.

And he goes on to say that, Whenever ERP fails to provide any new ROI/new benefits to the company, it simply turns to ....Technology...How true is that?

If you are watching the ERP industry, you dont need a evidence to prove this statement. We are only hearing about technology "innovations" namely SOA, BPM, Composite Apps, etc. We dont hear anything at all about Business Process Innovations/New Business Solutions. And Whenever the ERP vendors are cornered for innovations, we get the answer of new technology upgrades. And you know that, People just don't buy those!.

Now lets come back to 3D technology...

Isn't it a nice correlation to say that whenever we run out of ideas to provide real value to the end customers, we turn to technology based ideas?. And We use that as the reason to "charge the customers more" because the customers get a 'seemingly premium' experience. And if you look at it, that new technology opens up a whole new market around it. In case of 3D, its the glasses, TV, projectors, etc. In case of ERP new technology - new middlewares, new visual modeling tools, new monitoring tools, etc.

And thats one of the reasons that I am not intrigued to blog so much these days...all the time we hear about smartphones, social networking, graphics and games. I dont deny that they are true innovations. But, I dont accept that they are the way of life...We are told by the media to believe that thats the only innovation happening in the industry...

And, we as consumers, when we start to focus on real issues, we will also start to see real innovations...

(Don't) Go Green!

Will explain the title in few moments...

Yesterday, I attended CyberSecurity Conference organized by CII (Confederation of Indian Industries, Southern Region). I must say it was one of the useful conferences that I attended in the recent past. The reason is that the conference was not organized just for techies/IT companies but for the complete ecosystem of corporates, industries and Government representatives. Its pretty interesting to see that these conferences throw some light on real-life problems that are currently faced by the Government, Corporates and Individuals in using Internet services [and not typical sales pitches or IT solutions looking for problems].

My Technical white paper on the title "Cloud Security" was published as part of the conference proceedings to the participants. Dear Readers - Please contact me in Linkedin with a message for your copy of the paper. I would be happy to share!.

I wanted to post my takeaways from the conference. I have a long list but I will try to capture few important points.

Tamil Nadu Government is collecting close to Rs.1400 crores on commercial taxes via online. Indian Railways is hugely popular in recent days because of online booking facility. Income Tax Return filing is enabled via web. And more and more Government departments are going online in the coming months for not just information sharing but to host applications/transactional services.

The Generation X and Y may not be able to imagine banking without online banking facility. Lots of people that I know don't even visit Banks to perform their transactions. So does insurance companies - Premium collection, Insurance Renewal, Investment updates - all getting done from the convenience of armchair.

More and more - Internet is becoming a public infrastructure like railways, road and electricity/water - on which wide variety of personal, commercial, social services are being offered. When I equate Internet to electricity/water, People are increasingly becoming dependent on the Internet infrastructure for their day-to-day personal and business operations. Do you see the significance now?

And the next generation of apps that we foresee in the Internet are - Internet Services (SaaS) that are connected to Hardware devices/controls - take for example - Internet services that are connected to Home energy meters and Security controls.

Now, We are talking something serious. The usage of Internet usage is moving from convenient/comfort zone to Highly critical/safety and security zone. With the significance of Internet and its services increasing day-by-day, Can anybody afford to overlook the security risk implications?. They better dare not...

And this whole conference is centered around this very theme.

Now, coming back to the title of this post - Don't Go Green. Someone in the conference mentioned that - As the Go Green campaign gets momentum across the world, people and their ecosystem are moving from physical/transactional ecosystem to offline/web-oriented ecosystem. This is good because it will save energy from various perspectives. But, at the sametime, going green should not be seen just as one-dimensional. It has serious implications..and sometimes even dangerous on other dimensions.

The conference had some eminent personalities from Government like Senior Leadership from Tamil Nadu Police and Indian Military. And one of the speakers went on to say - The next war will not be based on bombs and bullets but on Bytes...!. May sound little fictional or unrealistic to believe!. But, its undeniably true..And We already have several indicators in the World that affirms this direction.

We have enough evidences on cybercrimes happening in Banking/Corporate world and at Individual level.

The question is - Are we prepared?

Big Fat Truth Behind Business Intelligence!

This was a revelation!

Can you guess the adoption of BI solutions among Non-IT users such as Sales and Marketing roles for their day-to-day informational needs during their operations?

Your Answer - 50%?

A BIG NO!

Here is what Forrester analyst Boris Evelson's has to say:

"I recently talked to a few dozen non-IT professionals (specifically in front office roles, such as sales and marketing) across multiple industries, regions and company sizes. Guess how many of them fully or partially relied on IT for their day to day operational and strategic information needs? BIG FAT ZERO!!! This finding was a huge surprise to me – yes, I did expect to find something like less then 50% reliance on IT, but I surely did not expect to find 0%.

It is truly amazing that after 30 or so years of BI software, services and solutions vendors and internal IT organizations making a strong push and a case for BI, they are still not even making a dent in the front offices"

This finding may not be music to the ears of BI Professionals. But, this looks like the brutal truth behind the history of BI solutions.

So, What are the reasons? Of course, the Forrester blog post talks about BI on SaaS as one of the options that could drive adoption.

But I would like to draw my observations on multiple dimensions:

1. The 'Velocity' in which IT could turn around BI solutions to Business. Traditionally, IT is perceived as slow especially in implementing new BI solutions because of significant lead times in Business understanding, Ensuring Data Integrity, etc. You might have heard of Agile Application
Development. Ever heard of proven case studies in Agile BI or Agile Dimensional Modeling?. The solution lies in radical changes in the way the BI solutions are constructed - not just the IT service provider, but the technology/product vendor and the process organizations.

2. Every business has now hooked onto 'High-Velocity' working environment. By High-Velocity, I mean, the decision making cannot depend on past data or metrics sheerly because of the reason that the data/metrics must have become irrelevant with respect to time. So, Most of the decisions are driven purely by intuition rather than metrics. What could the solution? - Applying 'right-velocity' principles...and not just rushing decision making across the board.

3. BI helps only when somebody 'wants' to optimize something, and not 'have to' optimize. This is a cultural change and its very hard to achieve. The solution lies in radical transformation in the organization structure, incentives/rewards and day-to-day operational business processes.

4. Last but not the least, Data Quality. Siloed application architecture will not lead to actionable Intelligence. Without proper Data Stewardship in place within the organization, it would just be a Garbage-In-Garbage-Out.

Enterprise Architecture Discussions @ LinkedIn

I have been discussing about some of the pressing issues of Enterprise Architecture within the organization with fellow professionals in LinkedIn Enterprise Architecture Network. They can be found here (This discussion is about the relevancy of EA practice in a diversified business model) and here (This thread is focused on the value proposition of EA). I think its a great opportunity to connect with professionals across the world and share some of the common problems being faced in the industry. Thanks to LinkedIn!.

Cisco's Innovation in Emerging Markets

Top Multi-national organizations are getting serious about Emerging Markets. In a move towards gaining market share in these markets, those MNCs are indigenously designing products/services that are exclusively tailored for those specific market needs. This is a paradigm shift. And the examples are GE and Cisco. GE recently designed low-cost Electronic Cardiogram devices for rural India and it has become a major hit. Now, the same product has started creating significant demand in developed markets like Europe.

The other innovation which I wanted to blog in this post is about Cisco's latest innovation in alliance with a Commercial Vehicle Manufacturer in India - Ashok Leyland. The company Ashok Leyland has recently demonstrated an intelligent vehicle (bus) with Wireless connectivity to a remote control centre that can be used initially in the context of emergency healthcare. Cisco has designed the entire communication system for this intelligent vehicle.

The interesting part is that the platform can be enhanced to be used not just in healthcare, but in other contexts such as education, defense, banking and security as well. Cisco also claims that if the business demands more such applications, they can be deployed on the vehicle platform.

I would like to draw some interesting observations here:
1. Ashok Leyland - traditionally a manufacturing company - is incorporating Technology to introduce its new generation of its product line. This shows that slowly but steadily Technology is making inroads into traditional businesses such as manufacturing. The fusion of business & technology is going to define the future product lines of several other industries as well. Its very similar to GM's Onstar network services but here the idea is applicable to larger audience (since its targeted at commercial vehicle segment)

2. Cisco, being a multinational, has started looking emerging market business seriously. It is already planning to shift the base location of several of their top leaders to India. This move demonstrates the company's commitment to the emerging markets and it would enable new growth initiatives get accelerated faster than before.

3. The core idea behind this offering is the ability to deploy new business applications on top of a Telematics enabled IT platform. As Ashok leyland articulates, the company shifts its gears from being a vehicle manufacturer (product) to intelligent mobility solutions (services). (Reminds you of iPhone's platform based apps?)

Teleportation

Some time back, I was introduced to the word 'Teleportation' in the context of IBM. IBM research has been working on the concept of Teleportation that aims of disintegrate an object at one place and reappear intact in another place (with out physical movement of the object). Can you believe?

If that research becomes successful, can physical objects be sent from one place to another (without physically transfering them)?. I think the logistics/courier companies would go bankrupt, I guess. :-)

I happened to see the same word in a different context few days before. Very similar - Sun's new virtualization software has introduced a new feature - called "Teleportation". Using this feature, end users would be able to migrate "live" and "running" virtual machines from one host to another. The source and target hosts can run on different processors and different operating systems. Still, the the VMs can be migrated seamlessly from one host to another. They call this feature as 'Teleportation'. VMWare offers this feature in the name of 'Vmotion'.

Using this feature, downtime of servers can nearly be eliminated, especially when servers have to be rebooted or during scheduled maintenance/upgrades.

Next Multi-Billion Dollar Opportunity for IT!

Has anyone seen this opportunity?. It looks like Google and Microsoft have been preparing themselves for quite sometime.

Will talk about what they are doing in just a little while..

First, the news is that US Government is planning to spend multi-billion dollar in Healthcare IT. Most of the spending is going to be centered around Electronic Patient Health Records related Solutions. If this stimulus plan gets approved, it is going to openup Healthcare IT market like never before. It will bring tremendous opportunities for Electronic Health Record technology/product vendors, HealthCare IT solution providers / Hospital systems.

Check out this newsbriefing to know more about this plans in detail.

Now, what does this newsbit has to do with Google or Microsoft?

Google and Microsoft have been incubating similar HealthCare IT solutions for the last few years. Maybe on a low key - Google is providing 'Google Health' whereas Microsoft calls it as 'Microsoft Health Vault'.

Both the solutions let the patient key-in and manage their Electronic Health Records and online and selectively share that data with the partner ecosystem. The partner ecosystem would be Health Care providers, Pharmacists, Insurance companies, etc.

Now, with this kind of platforms and solutions in place, the patients can expect to experience the following set of services in near future:
- Health Predictions based on your current medical records
- Video Conferencing with Doctors with (Doctors having access to your medical history)
- Recommendations/Targeted advertisements/medicines that are highly personalized
- Upload infomation from their Healthcare devices directly to the platforms (e.g. glucose meters, bood pressure cuffs, etc. from various vendors)

Both Google and Microsoft are offering these services for Free to Patients. While both the solutions look identical, there are major differences. First, Only Microsoft provides support for uploading data directly from Medical devices. And it supports a variety of devices from various vendors when compared to Google. Second, Microsoft is investing significant amount of money in Health Care IT related solutions, while Google grows the platform organically.

There are competitors as well like Dossia, who provide similar EHR platforms to corporates. But, Google/Microsoft have the muscle power to outperform the competitors and has the ability to build a wider ecosystem around its platforms.

Both the platforms are not subject to HIPAA regulations yet. But, eventually they will need to comply with government regulations, if they want to address the privacy and security concerns of patients.

Top 10 Trends for Enterprise IT in 2010

This is the season of the year to talk about the Enterprise IT Trends for the upcoming year 2010. As usual, I am not going to talk about Technology Trends. Being part of Enterprise IT, I would like to write about the forecasts for Enterprise IT shops (especially the bigger ones).

This recession has structurally impacted the IT organizations to seriously re-look at the opportunities for cost optimizations - be it organization structure changes, new process introductions, new way of partnerships with their vendors to get more value for the money.

From my perspective, the new year will see the following 10 developments.
1. Get ready for the long tail. The age of million dollar projects, billion dollar outsourcing contracts are gone. IT investments are scrutinized at various levels and only the critical projects are cleared from the annual budgeting process. To combat the bureaucracy of convincing the top management on high-cost projects, IT managers have started to fragment those projects into smaller bites that would be less scrutinized. This could be a tactical change in terms of defining the projects and funding them. But, it has its own consequences. The immediate result is that this approach leads to proliferation of long-list of micro/mini projects that requires the attention of both IT shops as well as vendors (not in terms of complexity. But, in terms of numbers).
2. Need for new Governance Models The proliferation of micro/mini projects leads to new forms of IT Governance. Especially, when this long-tail is being managed by multiple vendors and requires hand-offs between the participants, greater level of attention is required to ensure successful accomplishments. The Governance functions like Project Management Office, Operational Excellence Groups will get into the mainstream management operation system of Enterprise IT. New Tools, New Processes and methods would come into existence as part of the Governance.
3. Total IT outsourcing - Year-on-Year, IT is forced cut costs but deliver more value to Business. Now, that can only go little distance. Beyond a point, the Enterprise IT organizations would have to compeltely depends on their vendors if they have to radically deliver on their cost pressures. One of the solution is to completely hand-off the entire risks to one or two IT vendors who will directly manage a portion of IT relieving Internal IT staff. Its upto the IT outsourcing vendor to manage their own staff and infrastructure and deliver on cost expectations.
4. Business and IT - Alignment getting more wider - Relating to point no.1, if there are more and more number of 'parts', that is small projects, there is no 'whole'. That leaves a 'hole' in Business-IT alignment. Few years before, in a consulting assignment, one of the senior leaders of IT in a huge manufacturing company in US said - 'Our organization strategy is to build silos' - of course, pun intended. But, that is the reality. Any intra-organizational efforts to integrate the systems are seen as 'boiling the ocean'. And hence, the alignment is going to be a continuous challenge.
5. SaaS apps for new business verticals - Customers, Business/IT - would be demanding more and more SaaS applications from the vendors. CRM is only the beginning. Though there are concerns towards security, the cost equations are so compelling to resist for the IT leaders. This would lead to emergence of SaaS applications in new vertical functions.
6. Vertical-oriented, Platform-based BPOs - BPOs are getting smarter. Not just plain/mundane, back-office functions, Customers are getting improved options. For example, some of the vendors are offering complete 'channel business anlaytics' on their own platform/technology stack relieving the business/IT shops from capital investments and offering
high-value solutions 'on-the-tap'.
7. Flexible perimeter security - If a company has to consume services outside the firewall or export data to a vendor, the traditional perimeter methods are going to be challenged. The scenarios will get complicated if there are composite applications that are developed that has a mix of both internal services plus external systems. Lots of work are happening in this area by cloud vendors as well as Chief Security Officers. Some of those solutions will get into mainstream in the coming year.
8. Reporting/Data aggregation tools becoming a key capability - With proliferation of projects & information and increased need for compliance/Governance and scrutinity, there will be too much of reporting and data floating all around the company. And if a company needs to systematically view and manage the data, reporting tools and technologies would become a key requirement both for IT as well as Business. Analytics - is still seen as an 'exotic' food for Business/IT. It may take few more years to see real analytic solutions that solves compelling business problems.
9. Software Compliance Management Solutions - With increased transition to Open Source, Companies are also being vulnerable to underlying license infringements. There is a clear need for education in terms of the range of licenses, their limitations and usage options. New breed of solutions such as Software Compliance Management solutions (e.g. Black Duck) are gaining momentum in the market. IT shops/vendors will put themselves at greater risks if they ignore these considerations.
10. Innovation in packets - As the economy showing early signs of recovery, some of the high-performing departments in IT would look for inexpensive innovative experiements with latest technologies (e.g. Android/Mobile based applications). This would be a tactical arrangement to test the waters and not a sustainable organization model. However, this could be a good business opportunity for IT service companies if they can carve out a meaningful offering that suits multiple clients.

Promising Acquisition - III

This is third in the series of Promising Acquisitions.

MindTree, an Indian Software Services company,recently acquired the Indian subsidiary of Kyocera Wireless. The Indian unit is engaged in wireless product development, software engineering and product testing for its global parent.

I have always admired MindTree for two reasons - Mindtree lives by its values. It clearly articulates what it stands for in the software services market and it also clearly articulates its path towards growth. It has aimed to achieve $1 billion dollars by 2014. To achieve this vision, Mindtree has been actively working on identifying several growth engines that could propel the company towards its vision. And the recent acquisition is one such initiative. According to Asok Soota, the chairman of MindTree, the businesses that has the ability to contribute over 10% of revenue have been identified as growth engines.

This is not the interesting news...The news which I want to highlight is the capability that has been acquired by Mindtree due to this transaction and what are the new offerings that we can expect from Mindtree because of the new capabilities?

Yesterday, Mindtree has announced that it would enter in 3G Mobile Handset business. Yes, in the Phone Manufacturing business...Can u believe a software services company getting into the product business?. I just cant. I truly believe that companies are not just making inorganic moves just to make topline look good...but also making creating endeavors to establish their mark in the industry.

According to the press release, the new business will offer feature-rich, white-labeled mobile handsets to telecom service providers or original equipment manufacturers. The Kyocera team, acquired by Mindtree, has earlier delivered 45 million wireless phones and has extensive experience in 4G technologies like WiMax. It also has experience in getting the product manufactured by contracting partner ecosystem. MindTree has also emphasised that it is going to invest on generating IP in this new business.

Incentives to Change!

I have insisted in the past that IT shops being run as a Business with General Management Principles. This approach would not necessarily cultivate creativity and collaboration in the organization. There is tremendous amount of scope for innovation in reforming IT organization structure, incentive mechanisms and roles/responsibilities. Hardly very few companies have experimented with those kinds of ideas.

I wanted to highlight some of other interesting ideas that got my attention in the recent past. US Federal Government has recently announced (and ended) a program called 'Cash for Clunkers'. This program encourages the car owners to trade in their old cars with new/used cars with financial incentives. The objective of the program was to promote energy efficiency and get rid of old cars. This initiative was also aimed to trigger some demand in the automobile industry.

Now, How do we relate this idea to IT?. Here is a perspective from CIO.com. This blog post in the CIO website proposes an idea - Cash for IT Clunkers. Can we promote a program where users can trade-in their legacy hardware/software assets with new/cutting-edge technologies which would result in end-user productivity & efficiency and obviously some financial benefits as well.

My thought process is that these kind of mechanisms need to be experimented in the CIO shops / Internal IT organization itself. These mechanisms will give an opportunity to rejuvanate the IT landscape with creativity and get rid of older and expensive systems.

I also wanted to highlight some of the similar ideas happening in other industries...(especially in India)

1.Levis (Jean Trouser Brand) recently introduced a campaign where people can buy a Jean on EMI (Equated Monthly installments). For example, if a Jean costs Rs. 1500, and an ordinary consumer (who is used to pay only Rs.500 for his Jean) would be able to avail the benefit and pay only Rs.500 for 3 months. Thats creative!. Through this program, Levis tries to capture the market share of middle-class consumers who are not their regular customers, but always aspire to purchase high-value items. Would we see such ideas in procuring new product/tool licenses in IT industry?. We'll have to wait and see.

2. Recently, there is a company called BagSutra floated a business where people can rent expensive/designer bags on daily rents. The benefit to the customer is that they dont need to buy those luxurious bags for themselves. At the same time, they would get to change the bags very ofen by becoming a member of this program. I dont see any direct relationships with IT industry per se. But I think SaaS gives this flexibility.

In summary, creative pricing & marketing ideas would certainly accelerate the adoption of new solutions.