While reading this article on RWW, I went to Mark Zuckerburg's Facebook profile and lo! I see all of my own contacts on that page as people who subscribed to Mark.

Facebook is all about personalization, while Twitter is all about network effects.

Couple of weekend's ago I visited Lavasa  - build about 50 kms away from Pune in the Sahyadri range of hills; its a good attempt to create a Dalhousie or Mussourie equivalent for Western India. While the weather conditions in Western India do not give you the luxury of creating a 'cool' hill station - it sure isn't a bad place to spend a weekend lounging and relaxing.

However, as I read through some pamphlets which we got during our trip and researched a little more on its concept - I was intrigued by the tall statement made by Lavasa Corporation which claims that "Lavasa is envisioned to be a more liveable city of the future where residents can live, work, learn and play in harmony with nature". While I could fathom the live, learn and play - the 'work' aspect didn't quite convince me. My wife suggested that the 'work' aspect probably relates to the workers in hotels, resorsts, hospitals and schools located in Lavasa; but when I dug deeper into the masterplan [1] [2] I found out that it does envisage "a 365 day economy with a host of non polluting industries being the main economic driver; these include R&D and training centres, IT and biotech industry, KPOs and those related to art, fashion and animation."

What appeals and bothers me at the same time is that the concept is Lavasa runs contrary to most of the urban planning beliefs that are emerging across the Globe. Lavasa is modeled on European model of small towns with low skylines, spread across acres of land to provide for an exquisite living. This model of development, while looks exquisite and glamorous, is contrary to the numerous research conclusions [3] [4] [5] [6] that dense cities are more efficient, hence less wasteful and thus more sustainable for an economic and environmental perspective.

Secondly, let us assume that all the empirical research on denser cities, might be wrong - for example dense cities mean individuals have less 'mental space', there are more ecological problems arising out of confined spaces in which people operate (example sanitation), or that the costs of maintaining dense city infrastructure outweighs the benefit they accrue. Even in this scenario - I fail to understand how a city like Lavasa which is built off the expressways, far from the nearest airport would attract talent to run the R&D centers or KPO's that it wants to set up.

Thirdly, Lavasa is built on assumptions arising from European lifestyle attributes, so much so that it has actually aped European cities in design. For example, Dasve - the first model town at Lavasa is actually a copy of the Italian town Portofino [7] (on which one of the streets is named). I doubt if European way of living developed in the colder and dryer environs of the northern hemisphere can be sustained in the tropic environment of India [Criticism: 8]. The resources needed to sustain the lifestyle of west in India would be huge and lead to wastage of money, power and water - all scarce resources for a country like India.

Finally, from an economic standpoint - we are all seeing the crisis which Europe is going through. While it will be unfair to say that the city planning is the reason for the crisis - but surely the amount of public spending done by European governments across the social security infrastructure - which includes development and maintenance of these sparse but cozy towns - is one of the major reasons for the debt crisis being faced by Europe. In this larger context, is it really a good idea to develop a city based on European model?

Before I conclude, I must clarify that I am not against the concept of developing Lavasa. Surely in the new India where we have wealthy and growing urban middle class which seeks comfort in every aspect of life, from their workplaces to homes to holidays and weekend getaways - there is place for projects like Lavasa to prosper. I am sure there will be many who wouldn't mind buying a 'weekend house' in Lavasa and even more who would visit the place again and again to recoil for a weekend or two occasionally.

Lavasa sure will also take the load off the severely abused Lonavala-Khandala stretch as a weekend getaway for Mumbai-Pune residents. Such a place is also good for setting up boarding schools and recuperation facilities (with advanced medical care). However, I don't see Lavasa as a place for setting up KPO offices or R&D centers. I think the makers of Lavasa should change their vision to make a more liveable city where residents can live, learn and play - the work part doesn't quite fit!
.

Flickr Image courtesy Mr. Conguito

How many of you know that the close buttons don’t close the elevator doors in most elevators built in the United States or that buttons below the signal at crosswalks "meant" for people to trigger the signal change are mostly all disabled! [Source]

Well - I just realized that there are several actions we do which are also such "placebo" actions. One example is pressing a "Ctrl + Home" or "Ctrl+End" on a browser. Pressing the Control key makes sense only in either a Word Processing software like MS word or when you are typing inside a textarea (like composing a mail etc.) wherein pressing a "Home" key will take you to the beginning of the line you are typing in while pressing a "Ctrl+ Home" will take you to the beginning of the document / text.

However, when we are browsing a webpage on a browser - there is absolutely no reason to press the Control key because either ways pressing "Home" will take you to the beginning of the document and pressing "End" will take you to its end - irrespective of whether you press the control key or not!

I am keen to do a mental exercise to identify what other 'Pleacebo Actions' are embedded in our behaviour on computers, while driving vehicles or while walking etc. Do a any of you recollect any examples? Please leave comments! 

Photo by Flickr user lrargerich

I am sure all of us are taught the virtues of practice in Childhood - most often "Practice Makes a man perfect" or familiar Kabir's doha:

Image Credit: Kevin Dooley via flickr

The Cloud is often considered an amalgamated progression of web2.0 (SaaS) and virtualization technologies(IaaS) - which it indeed is! However, the emergence of Cloud Computing also draws from a organizational shift in IT departments - from in-sourced to outsourced. What started in IT depts as routine maintenance outsourcing is now taking shape in form of the Cloud which promises to not just outsource routine operations but everything including financial management (move from Capex to Opex) of IT infrastructure owned by the company.

As the organizational structure shifts from in-sourced IT to the Cloud - it impacts the role of the CIO, which has been a much talked about topic. However, what has not been talk about much is how the Cloud will impact the rest of the IT department and the roles of techies in it. To understand the impending metamorphosis - we need to understand the existing position of the IT department.

Across organizations departments are divided into core business departments (Manufacturing or Service Delivery - including Supply Chain and , Sales, Marketing, Finance / Accounting) and support departments (Admin, HR, Procurement, Customer Relations, IT etc.). While the activities of core departments varies drastically based on the industry in which the company operates, the activities of the support departments remains more or less the same.

Even more, almost all support departments do the same core activity - vendor management. Yes - think about it! Your Admin department doesn't employ the office boys or sends runners to deliver the couriers; heck you don't even own the office space most of the times - so all the Admin department does is to manage vendors who provide these services. Procurement - as the name suggests clearly does just one thing - procure services and goods from vendors. Human Resources - well may be not vendors but they manage "employees" providing their services to the company; if you think of employees as freelancers - HR is again just 'sourcing' and 'managing' freelance vendors.

IT however, has had an uncommon origin - IT started with some computers being used by the company, grew into a mini-factory of its own within organizations and large IT departments ended up managing warehouse sized data centers with huge server farms and loads of techie (read: non-business) activities being carried out day-in day-out. Remarkably, this also happened because till mid 90's "IT vendors" continued to concentrate on core stuff like making computers more and more powerful or creating smarter networking devices and operating systems.

Untill mid-90's,when Indian IT companies rushed to the scene and the likes of IBM and HP realized the huge potential in 'IT services', many IT departments had already grown to humongous sizes - especially in computing intensive sectors like Financial Services and large FMCG's (which needed large ERP's). IT department was doing so many activities which no one else in the organization understood but were understood to be so critical to the organization's functioning that no one dared to interfere with IT.

All this started changing with outsourcing when large components of IT organizations operations were taken over by outsourcing partners. But, there was a critical dependency, due to concerns around ownership of data and privacy and other data related regulations in many sectors - the infrastructure (data center, servers etc.) continued to be owned and controlled by IT department. In many cases the actual workforce managing the infrastructure was outsourced but the management power remained with IT departments.

The Cloud is going to break this last link to bring down the hegemony of IT department / management! The Cloud adds a layer of abstraction between the business usage of IT and the underlying infrastructure. For example, when an business starts using a SaaS application - all it needs to do is to pay to the vendor directly per user. So as far as a business department knows which service fits its business purpose, there's nothing for the IT department to do!

Even in case IaaS - even if an organization opts for an internal Private Cloud, the server farm is virtualized and business is directly provided with "virtual servers" which they can scale up and down anytime without bothering to think about security, performance, provisioning additional capacity etc. All that is taken care by the Cloud orchestration platform underneath! The application is anyway managed by a IT Service provider.

Thus, with  the Cloud coming in, the IT department's role is also squeezed to vendor management. Help business select the best vendors (referred to in the IT services parlance as 'sourcing') and manage contracting and service levels of existing vendors. That definitely means of course is shrinking the size of an IT department; but more importantly also means a change in nature of activities performed by IT department.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean bad news for the IT administrators and other techie staff - they are not likely to loose their jobs - rather just re-position themselves from the internal IT department to the rolls of an IT services company. But yes, it does mean bad news for the 'traditional IT managers' - who will quickly need to gain skills in more strategic activities which have to do with leveraging technology for business gains or activities relating to vendor management such as vendor sourcing.

All this of course means more agility to the organizations and better control for business departments!
.

[Warning: Suited for techies and tech enthusiasts; others may find it boring]
I was talking to one of the new joiners at our firm today - we were talking about a client using Sun's hardware for a project when he asked why Sun ran only Solaris and no other OS - I started to explain him that Solaris was actually a Unix variant when the conversation turned to free software, Linux etc. and generally into  the lineage of operating systems, the history of modern computing etc.

During our brief chat I realized that for most of us post-90's generation, the seeming "excitement" times in computing were either the mid-90's when Linux and GNU/ FSF grew or it was even later when Web2.0, Software as a Service etc grew. But I think the most exciting times for the computing industry when the real "pirates" swarmed the industry was the period of 60s / 70s when the foundation of the personal computing world was being laid.

The foundation of personal computing - unlike what most people think - was neither laid by Steve Jobs / Apple nor was it laid by Bill Gates / Microsoft; most of what we saw taking shape in the mid / late 90s grew out of the multiple "under the surface" projects which were undertaken by enthusiasts in mid/ late 70s.

In the 1960s, computing was mostly done on behemoth mainframe systems - in contrast to today's commodity computers where each component is standard - a hard disk from Seagate or WD all are alike and fit into any computer; a computer from Dell and HP run the same Windows Operating System (OS) alike - mainframes were monolithic in design. Each component was designed ground up for the same mainframe, there were no commodity manufacturers of components, and, every mainframe had its own OS written only to run it - you could hardly ever port an OS from one mainframe to the other.

So the story goes that, sick of the routine to write operating systems from scratch every time they manufactured a new mainframe computer, computer companies (AT&T/Bell and GE) - who built these mainframes - funded a federal project at MIT to create a 'reusable' OS which was titled Multics - Multiplexing Information and Computer Services. This would potentially have been the world's first  "commodity" operating system - however as most federal projects go, the Multics project never succeeded in delivering a final ready product to the industry and was gradually scrapped.

However, two engineers working on the project - Peter Neumann and Dennis Richie (Yes! the Daddy of C programming language) in parallel created a "smaller" clone of the Multics OS which to mock Multics was named Unix. Unix had many remarkable features - first it was 'generic' such that it could be deployed on different hardware devices, second it had software 'components' or modules which fit into each other independently - thus you could leave out components that you didn't need for your device; it was also the first OS to have a clear segregation between system kernel and system utilities, third it was built on a foundation principles of large scale systems - so it had all the essential features such as security, user accounts, scalability of kernel to suit the needs of any robust system.

To cut the story short - it is from the cradle of Unix which was (when it was developed) an open standard for Operating Systems that the DOS (predecessor of Windows) and even Linux emerged. In fact, the story continues that Unix became a proprietary Bell Labs property with time because it was developed by Richie and Neumann when they were on rolls of Bell and further development was funded by Bell. To escape the clutches of Bell - Richard Stallman created GNU (mocking Unix as GNU's Not Unix) as a open sourced 'copy' of Unix [ref].

Similar to how modern day OS emerged from Unix is the story of email and internet as well. Large mainframe were too costly to be dedicated to one or few users. Each mainframe could simultaneously perform multiple tasks of different users. Hence just like we have "accounts" on GMail or the office network - different computer engineers had "accounts" on a single mainframe.

Since different computer engineers often worked in shifts with their own 'respective accounts' on the same mainframe, they needed a method to asynchronously exchange information regarding the system. It was for this that the method of "username@system" invented which was the precursor of the email that we use today. The internet itself started from a early "point-to-point" communication between two or more large mainframe systems (which is why the email protocol needs a 'system' name after the @).

Another foundation of today's computing world is the commodity 'programming languages' which make programming for different kinds of hardware platforms possible without having to learn a new language for a new hardware. More importantly, programmers will relate to the fact that the syntax and constructs of most modern day programming languages are similar and in most cases identical and are all derived from one 'mother' programming language "C". "The origin of C is closely tied to the development of the Unix operating system" - as quoted from Wikipedia.

There's a lot more to write and the inquisitive should read all all they can on Wikipedia about Babbage's Analytical engine, Mainframes, Unix, Linux, GUI, Email, World Wide Web, OSX, DOS/Windows, C, GNU/Linux,  PHP etc etc. However, in essence, I think as a computer enthusiast if I would like to live in a period other than today - I would like to live in the swinging 60s and the period post that - not for the dizzy hippy movements but for the immediate succeeding revolutions which happened in computing and software programming which shaped most of what we see today in form of internet, Cloud, tablets and mobile apps.
.

I read through this awesome interview with Steve Jobs taken way back in 1995 before he created the second revolution of his life (iPod et al). While each section of the interview is breathtakingly awesome, I wanted to reiterate some gems specifically, hence quoting them here. For the whole interview transcript go to this URL http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/sj1.html

1.

...a lot of people come to me and say "I want to be an entrepreneur". And I go "Oh that's great, what's your idea?". And they say "I don't have one yet". And I say "I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you're really passionate about because it's a lot of work". I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don't blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life. If you've got a family and you're in the early days of a company, I can't imagine how one could do it. I'm sure its been done but its rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you're not going to survive. You're going to give it up. So you've got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you're passionate about otherwise you're not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that's half the battle right there.

 2.

Somebody once told me, "Live each day as if it would be your last and one day you'll certainly be right." I do that. You never know when you're going to go but you are going to go pretty soon. If you're going to leave anything behind its going to be your kids, a few friends and your work. So that's what I tend to worry about. ... I think you have a responsibility to do really good stuff and get it out there for people to use and let them build on the shoulders of it and keep making better stuff.  

I think the work speaks for itself. I don't think that people have special responsibilities just because they've done something that other people like or don't like. I think the work speaks for itself. I think people could choose to do things if they want to but we're all going to be dead soon,

3.

The Web is the missing piece of the puzzle which is really going to power that vision much farther forward. It's very exciting in that way. Secondly, it's very exciting because it is going to destroy vast layers of our economy and make available a presence in the marketplace for very small companies, one that is equal to very large companies. It is going radically change the way goods and services are discovered, sold and delivered, not only in this country but eventually all over the world. As you know, electrons travel at the speed of light and so it tends to bring the world much closer together in terms of providers and customers. 

 4.

... the original vision [for Apple] --which was to make this thing [Computer] an appliance, to get this out there to as many people as possible

5.

I actually think there's actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest calibre. I've never had a distinction in my mind between those two types of people. They've just been to me people who pursue different paths but basically kind of headed to the same goal which is to express something of what they perceive to be the truth around them so that others can benefit by it.

May God give mankind the collective strength to keep the flame created by Steve Jobs alive - may God ...

• prevent all of us from slipping into the complacence of having progressed enough in technology 
• give at least some of us an insight like he had given Jobs to create art out of science
• keep giving us leaders and innovators like Steve ... 
• Amen

Management  = Art + Science

Management is the Science of converting business activities into measurable inputs and the art of converting management theories into mathematical equations (read: business models), in order to predict outputs of such activities with reasonable accuracy and reliability.

Management is application of scientific methods to business situations.

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.

Management is the process of dealing with or controlling things or people

Management is finding a convoluted way of arriving at the same results which otherwise can be arrived by heuristic capabilities of experienced professionals.

Management is the art of faffing so as to make 'hunches' look like scientifically derived results.

Management is the art of (mis)leading the workforce into believing that there is a method to the madness of running a business.

This discussion on Facebook got me thinking - are the riots in UK a result of simply unemployment or immigration of unskilled labour? I think the answer is not so simple. Let's look at the facts:

• It isn't the immigrant labour force which is engaged in rioting. A lot of rioters are 15-18 year old natives of the UK - born and brought up in the UK. Born to parents who themselves were NOT immigrants but locals.
• A lot of those who claim they are unemployed and can't make ends meet are also those who often "refuse" to work. 

Reader Alert: Controversial and based on non-verifiable facts

As a part of my day job, I often interact with vendors - IT service providers, equipment manufacturers, software / middleware providers, and even consultants like me. Ever since the market for Cloud based services has opened up (sometime since 2009) - vendors across the board have come up with their variation of Cloud services.

As I explore more and more Cloud products on the ground - I find that vendors are mostly rehashing old products and technologies under the Cloud label. Well, this isn't surprising because the Cloud is not something completely new. As I have previously written, the Cloud is just an evolution over Web2.0.

However, what concerns me is that vendors are brazen enough to go to market without even making the minimum necessary changes to these products before they can be labelled as 'Cloud'. Simply rehashing the packaging and some time not even that.

Let me elaborate - true that if you an application vendor then Cloud simply means that rather than sell your application to an enterprise for a licence fee and allow them to run it on their own hardware, you now can sell it as a service charged per user per month (et al.) by hosting it on your own hardware and allowing the customer to access it through the Internet.

But, this does mean that you need to alter some portions of your application. For example, you need to change the way your application manages its user IDs to enable multiple customers use the same instance of your application without accessing each others data - this is often referred to as multitenancy in the Cloud parlance.

However, what I have often observed is that vendors do not undertake any modification in their application. Instead they tell customers that they will set up independent instances of the application on the same server to handle multi-tenancy. This way each customer's application runs on an independent virtual machine. While this approach may work, it means that your application is going to use far greater resources of the server, as a result your cost of hosting the application will go up and this would ultimately result in higher pricing for the customer.

Similarly, to move to the Cloud, you must now change the way your customers pay you - it should be based in usage rather than a lumpsum payment. However, vendors often venture out in the market without redefining their costs and their pricing strategy. When asked about pricing, they try to dabble by putting across 'bulk pricing' strategy. In effect, all this again prevents customers from harnessing the power of the Cloud. Unfortunately, since customers too have been used to the older pricing models they often agree to such pricing even though it may be disadvantageous in the long run.

When looked inside the psyche of vendor organizations, I sense that most of them are waiting for the 'market' to make the move - a customer who pushes hard for the real Cloud model or a competitor who offers real Cloud service (and starts converting their customers). No one wants to proactively change what they have been doing for years - they are all happy just relabeling the wine bottle.

In between all this - Cloud is like the invisible man - suited in full ballroom attire but without the man inside!

Image Credit via flickr by Ariaski