Did not want to jump in and comment with all the noise. However, there seems to be a MAJOR point missing in all that I've read - MARKET EXPECTATIONS
If one reads Raju's letter carefully, there seems to be an invisible struggle within the "Mea Culpa" tone that is saying - I did what was expected of me by the market ? Is this true ?
I've sat through a number of earnings calls / shareholders meetings (Disclosure : I own shares in quite a few IT companies - but, never had SATYAM) where the analysts are always asking just a common set of questions. These being
- What has been your revenue growth and what will be your revenue growth ?
- What has been your margin % and growth ?
These questions themselves are fine - however, the expectation of benchmark is that revenue will grow at almost 100% Y-O-Y and margin will always be upwards of 40% !!
These are not sustainable in the long run and are unrealistic benchmarks.
As long as the expectations of analysts and market watchers are not "reasonable" expect the response to it to be correspondingly "un-reasonable"
The market has to realize that 30% revenue growth, 15-30 % margins are all "GOOD" and "REASONABLE" in a growth market and these are sustainable values that show good governance.
Is it the expectation / is it mandatory to have 40% + margins to tell the market that you have a well run company ?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Managing managers : The art of whitewash ?
A couple of evenings ago, during dinner with a visitor from the US - someone I know very well, the issue of outsourcing to India and the problems experienced came up as a natural point of debate.
Background
- A major networks product company has outsourced their product development to an Indian vendor. The vendor has been late in delivering the project to such an extent that the original US company has lost it's competitive advantage in the market and with the downturn it may have also lost the window of opportunity.
We started to discuss the different approaches that are taken and why this has either worked / not worked in this particular case
- Getting a 3rd party to validate work : This is being done by an US company and the process has not been effective : could the main reason be that that this "validation" company does not
a) Understand the onsite-offshore play and is hence stuck in-between with no value add ?
or b) The intermediary is not involved in the product development process and hence is always having to fall back on "process" compliance / status reports to understand viewpoints ?
or c) A combination of the above 2 with a the real issue being that the intermediary is playing a "relay" role only and is not capable / empowered to make decisions ?
- Ensuring that a senior person capable of making decisions is working with the offshore team to validate delivery.
On this point, the discussion moved to the next question ie. "what is the value then of the offshore delivery team ?"
- Ensuring that someone from the offshore team acts on-behalf of the onsite team ?
Apparently, this was tried with very little success and the main reason for this being
a) Tendency of the senior management of the offshore team in taking the status mechanism and obscuring the real status !
b) Mixed messages between the team on ground and the reviewers
c) Incapable team leadership in terms of priority of issues to be addressed / sequencing (always supply driven sub-optimal solutions)
Notice though, that at NO time during the discussions, was there a question on the CAPABILITY of the delivery team ?
In the end, does it mean that we have just incapable project managers / general managers in the system ?
Or, are they supremely capable in "whitewashing projects" ?
Background
- A major networks product company has outsourced their product development to an Indian vendor. The vendor has been late in delivering the project to such an extent that the original US company has lost it's competitive advantage in the market and with the downturn it may have also lost the window of opportunity.
We started to discuss the different approaches that are taken and why this has either worked / not worked in this particular case
- Getting a 3rd party to validate work : This is being done by an US company and the process has not been effective : could the main reason be that that this "validation" company does not
a) Understand the onsite-offshore play and is hence stuck in-between with no value add ?
or b) The intermediary is not involved in the product development process and hence is always having to fall back on "process" compliance / status reports to understand viewpoints ?
or c) A combination of the above 2 with a the real issue being that the intermediary is playing a "relay" role only and is not capable / empowered to make decisions ?
- Ensuring that a senior person capable of making decisions is working with the offshore team to validate delivery.
On this point, the discussion moved to the next question ie. "what is the value then of the offshore delivery team ?"
- Ensuring that someone from the offshore team acts on-behalf of the onsite team ?
Apparently, this was tried with very little success and the main reason for this being
a) Tendency of the senior management of the offshore team in taking the status mechanism and obscuring the real status !
b) Mixed messages between the team on ground and the reviewers
c) Incapable team leadership in terms of priority of issues to be addressed / sequencing (always supply driven sub-optimal solutions)
Notice though, that at NO time during the discussions, was there a question on the CAPABILITY of the delivery team ?
In the end, does it mean that we have just incapable project managers / general managers in the system ?
Or, are they supremely capable in "whitewashing projects" ?
Friday, December 12, 2008
Data access acceleration : HW or SW based GRID ?
For once, I thought I'd blog on a technical subject :-)
The question that has been in my mind is that - which is a better option for large volume data management - is an hardware solution better or a software solution - or even a combined one ?
About 2 months ago, at the Oracle Open World conference, I watched Larry Ellison announce the HP-Oracle DB machine. During the presentation, I was both bemused (with the idea that this was Larry’s / Oracle’s second venture into the hardware territory post NC) and the fact that for Oracle and HP to come up with this meant there was a real issue with the proliferating data.
As most of the readers would be aware, the last few quarters have seen a tremendous number of activities related to Virtualisation, Grid computing, Cloud computing and High volume data management. What are the options?
Hardware Options: Generally handled with Virtualisation and Grid computing effort as is also Custom Built machines (e.g: HP-Oracle DB machine). While it is a clean way to get to an array structure (CPU slices + Storage Array etc), I am not really sure if this is “efficient” – simply because, the core software / application was never written to take advantage of this.
Software Options : For a “pure” software option to work – there has to be two important components; A mechanism for Caching (In memory caches) and a mechanism for load balancing / splitting into parallel processing threads.
In my opinion, there is going to be a push for a combination of the two with distributed service architecture to manage the growing SOA / message structures inherently with a combination of GRID and CACHE (in memory).
I see three major players in the market today with fairly similar / competing offerings;
You can also see similar postings in the cross link at http://calsoftblog.blogspot.com/
The question that has been in my mind is that - which is a better option for large volume data management - is an hardware solution better or a software solution - or even a combined one ?
About 2 months ago, at the Oracle Open World conference, I watched Larry Ellison announce the HP-Oracle DB machine. During the presentation, I was both bemused (with the idea that this was Larry’s / Oracle’s second venture into the hardware territory post NC) and the fact that for Oracle and HP to come up with this meant there was a real issue with the proliferating data.
As most of the readers would be aware, the last few quarters have seen a tremendous number of activities related to Virtualisation, Grid computing, Cloud computing and High volume data management. What are the options?
Hardware Options: Generally handled with Virtualisation and Grid computing effort as is also Custom Built machines (e.g: HP-Oracle DB machine). While it is a clean way to get to an array structure (CPU slices + Storage Array etc), I am not really sure if this is “efficient” – simply because, the core software / application was never written to take advantage of this.
Software Options : For a “pure” software option to work – there has to be two important components; A mechanism for Caching (In memory caches) and a mechanism for load balancing / splitting into parallel processing threads.
In my opinion, there is going to be a push for a combination of the two with distributed service architecture to manage the growing SOA / message structures inherently with a combination of GRID and CACHE (in memory).
I see three major players in the market today with fairly similar / competing offerings;
- Oracle with it’s COHERENCE offering (Object oriented in memory DB cache) which is actually a product / company acquisition – Tangosol.
- Gemstone with it’s GEMFIRE offering (again OODB / in memory DB cache) and
- Gigaspaces with it’s XAP offering
You can also see similar postings in the cross link at http://calsoftblog.blogspot.com/
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Making a shared computer PERSONAL - An experiment in education
Disclosure - this is an overview post, please lookup Sikshana blog for actual details / instances etc.
--------------------------
As part of the Sikshana process, Subbu (the resident computing / education expert) was posed with a simple question : If we distribute a laptop / class in the rural schools, how do individual students preserve their own environment and work over several days / periods / sessions ?
The problem seems simple - but, this has a major impact on the psyche of the individual kid. Today, if a child is working on a drawing / painting project, there is a good chance that while using the shared computer, another child will over-write / update / change the first child's work.
Even if that happens on a rare occasion, the child is left disillusioned about the whole project.
This is a tremendous problem not just with sharing, but, also with preserving the session as "active" so that there is no loss in time the next instance the child logs onto the system.
Subbu has come up with an ingenious solution (I believe). The idea is to provide a USB chip with enough software to make the chip the default session handler.
Every kid is given a 2 GB chip (Sikshana is in the process of distributing a 1000 of these to kids), which the child owns.
Every time the child accesses the computer, the child inserts his / her own chip and is up and away immediately. Saves time and also the heartbreak of having someone else destroy one's own work.
The question in my mind is : Is this not the same for offices too ? Can we not make this a commercial process ?
--------------------------
As part of the Sikshana process, Subbu (the resident computing / education expert) was posed with a simple question : If we distribute a laptop / class in the rural schools, how do individual students preserve their own environment and work over several days / periods / sessions ?
The problem seems simple - but, this has a major impact on the psyche of the individual kid. Today, if a child is working on a drawing / painting project, there is a good chance that while using the shared computer, another child will over-write / update / change the first child's work.
Even if that happens on a rare occasion, the child is left disillusioned about the whole project.
This is a tremendous problem not just with sharing, but, also with preserving the session as "active" so that there is no loss in time the next instance the child logs onto the system.
Subbu has come up with an ingenious solution (I believe). The idea is to provide a USB chip with enough software to make the chip the default session handler.
Every kid is given a 2 GB chip (Sikshana is in the process of distributing a 1000 of these to kids), which the child owns.
Every time the child accesses the computer, the child inserts his / her own chip and is up and away immediately. Saves time and also the heartbreak of having someone else destroy one's own work.
The question in my mind is : Is this not the same for offices too ? Can we not make this a commercial process ?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The mayhem at Bombay : What ails our security ?
After a long hiatus, I am forced today to blog - more out of anguish and anger. Anguish at the meaningless loss : of human life, dignity to a secure living and life as also property. Anger at the way we have been waiting for deliverance from these by our politicians and babus.
It is these 2 institutions that need to be questioned. I'm not even sure who the bigger culprit is ? Is it the IAS babu who is secure in his / her babudom or is it the politician working the vote banks to get ahead ?
Atleast, with politicians, we the citizens have to take part of the blame in having elected them. However, how about the Babus ?
I see the TV and listen to people mouth the same requirement again and again - co-ordination between the forces, secure border etc. How can we get that when we arm our forces (BSF, Coast gaurd, Police etc) with ancient .22 and .303 rifles / revolvers that are from WWII vintage and NO technology upgradation ?
I did not see night vision glasses, I did not see good smoke masks, I did not see even basic things like body armour. We push these dedicated people to the front and sing to their martyrdom, wait to shake their warm hands when they come back out live ?
I also do not think the structure is a problem - it is just execution.
There is "supposed" to be an emergency cell - atleast this was put together after the Tsunami disaster. There is supposed to be better intelligence sharing. There is a National Security Advisor !!. However, it is the effectiveness that is lacking.
What can be done. Here are a few suggestions - for whatever it is worth.
- Get a "technology" upgrade done immediately with state of the art equipment
- Get the local police and the central teams trained on these new equipment including things like frequency jammers and email traces.
- Get some of the key areas (atleast the public areas like Stations, airports etc) under 100% video surviellance ALL the time.
- Step up random checks on all the roads leading to major cities as also the coast.
I'm not sure if there is a 100% solution - atleast we should make it difficult and with no single point of failure. More importantly, we should pass this set itself to a professional team and not one made up of Politicians and Babus !
It is these 2 institutions that need to be questioned. I'm not even sure who the bigger culprit is ? Is it the IAS babu who is secure in his / her babudom or is it the politician working the vote banks to get ahead ?
Atleast, with politicians, we the citizens have to take part of the blame in having elected them. However, how about the Babus ?
I see the TV and listen to people mouth the same requirement again and again - co-ordination between the forces, secure border etc. How can we get that when we arm our forces (BSF, Coast gaurd, Police etc) with ancient .22 and .303 rifles / revolvers that are from WWII vintage and NO technology upgradation ?
I did not see night vision glasses, I did not see good smoke masks, I did not see even basic things like body armour. We push these dedicated people to the front and sing to their martyrdom, wait to shake their warm hands when they come back out live ?
I also do not think the structure is a problem - it is just execution.
There is "supposed" to be an emergency cell - atleast this was put together after the Tsunami disaster. There is supposed to be better intelligence sharing. There is a National Security Advisor !!. However, it is the effectiveness that is lacking.
What can be done. Here are a few suggestions - for whatever it is worth.
- Get a "technology" upgrade done immediately with state of the art equipment
- Get the local police and the central teams trained on these new equipment including things like frequency jammers and email traces.
- Get some of the key areas (atleast the public areas like Stations, airports etc) under 100% video surviellance ALL the time.
- Step up random checks on all the roads leading to major cities as also the coast.
I'm not sure if there is a 100% solution - atleast we should make it difficult and with no single point of failure. More importantly, we should pass this set itself to a professional team and not one made up of Politicians and Babus !
Monday, August 25, 2008
Teach India - will the format work ?
I have been watching the Teach India series of ads and the campaign with interest. Having been involved in Primary education for a number of years, the development / the campaign to do raise the awareness and create a media structure of "mass" volunteering is very interesting....
However, part of my skepticism and part experience is making me take a bit of a "back seat" and watch what happens next. The reason(s) being
- I've never seen campaigns that start to evoke the "feel good" factor really pick up steam
- In my interaction with the teachers in primary (esp rural) schools, there is a marked interest in continuity or we (the so called arm-chair intellectuals) run the risk of creating an "excuse" for the teachers / local influencers to point their finger and blame "another" set of people
- Continuity DOES NOT come by a few 2-3 hour sessions, IMHO it takes greater committment.
- Was speaking to a few people who have volunteered and ALL of them were looking at 9-11 kind of session once a week ie. on a Saturday. Have never seen this work either as Saturday AM is the most muddled time for a rural school
What has been good though is the campaign coverage. I do sometimes wonder what would be the "effect" if we had just run a similar campaign asking individuals to contribute an hour's salary and then "hire" real full-time teachers to teach ?
I am sure people will lampblast me for suggesting such an idea - but, I must confess, when it was proposed to me, I thought the "efficiency" of such a process should be much better ?
However, part of my skepticism and part experience is making me take a bit of a "back seat" and watch what happens next. The reason(s) being
- I've never seen campaigns that start to evoke the "feel good" factor really pick up steam
- In my interaction with the teachers in primary (esp rural) schools, there is a marked interest in continuity or we (the so called arm-chair intellectuals) run the risk of creating an "excuse" for the teachers / local influencers to point their finger and blame "another" set of people
- Continuity DOES NOT come by a few 2-3 hour sessions, IMHO it takes greater committment.
- Was speaking to a few people who have volunteered and ALL of them were looking at 9-11 kind of session once a week ie. on a Saturday. Have never seen this work either as Saturday AM is the most muddled time for a rural school
What has been good though is the campaign coverage. I do sometimes wonder what would be the "effect" if we had just run a similar campaign asking individuals to contribute an hour's salary and then "hire" real full-time teachers to teach ?
I am sure people will lampblast me for suggesting such an idea - but, I must confess, when it was proposed to me, I thought the "efficiency" of such a process should be much better ?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Getting people to "Visualize" in India
This is a post after a bit of a gap. I guess I'm as prone to the writers' block as anyone else ;-)
Thought I'd post a few comments on how we are NOT trained in our schools to visalize. ...
As most people in our Business Team will tell you, I have this pet peeve that people cannot put together a proposal if they cannot visualize the work to be done. This may sound insane, but, the idea is to get them to think about what needs to be done before they go about describing it in words.
This is exactly the same principle that is used in design (E-R diagrams, state diagrams, Business flow diagrams) or even in mindmaps.
Unfortunately, this continues to be a struggle. Probably the issue is much deeper ?
Late yesterday evening, I was in conversation with one of the senior members who was going to go to Chennai to train a few people. He mentioned that one of his standard questions to guage thinking capability is to ask people to "draw" the equation (a+b) square. ie. get people to explain the concept of why there should be the "2ab" portion. I was not surpised to hear that less than 30% of the people asked to explain could do so !
Maybe we should do a company wide session on visualization followed by De Bono's 6 thinking hats ?
Thought I'd post a few comments on how we are NOT trained in our schools to visalize. ...
As most people in our Business Team will tell you, I have this pet peeve that people cannot put together a proposal if they cannot visualize the work to be done. This may sound insane, but, the idea is to get them to think about what needs to be done before they go about describing it in words.
This is exactly the same principle that is used in design (E-R diagrams, state diagrams, Business flow diagrams) or even in mindmaps.
Unfortunately, this continues to be a struggle. Probably the issue is much deeper ?
Late yesterday evening, I was in conversation with one of the senior members who was going to go to Chennai to train a few people. He mentioned that one of his standard questions to guage thinking capability is to ask people to "draw" the equation (a+b) square. ie. get people to explain the concept of why there should be the "2ab" portion. I was not surpised to hear that less than 30% of the people asked to explain could do so !
Maybe we should do a company wide session on visualization followed by De Bono's 6 thinking hats ?
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