Moved

Moving to SmallPandas.com

Hi All,

I am now moving to Full Fledged Paid Hosting to my own domain www.SmallPandas.com. Henceforth, I will be blogging there.

Why? I want to put my hand inside the code, play with it, add lot of widgets and yes bit of AdSense too, also can create own community around it in the long run.

What is the name SmallPandas!! ? 🙂 I wanted a catchy name….Panda being my surname and also name of that small cute Chinese & also Indian bear Panda, and my blog is focussing on “Startups”, therefore coined the name as Small Pandas.

SmallPandas.com is a blog about “Evolving Technology, Entrepreneurship, Globalization & Strategy“, so my contents will be on technology and also management side of it.

Welcome to SmallPandas.com

Some tips from India’s successful entrepreneurs

Rediff has an article on India’s millionaire Net entrepreneur, some tips from these successful entrepreneurs

Sanjeev Bikhchandani (Naukri.com) says :

“With no venture capital ready to fund us, we realised from the beginning that we had to earn revenue from day one to stay afloat and cover our costs.”

“Today investors are ready to give high valuations to Net companies and want to grab companies that have a first-mover advantage in their space. Or those that have a dominant market share, a good brand and, of course, if they already are profitable”.

Deep Kalra (Makemytrip.com) says : “If you can’t deliver the service at the most efficient price, at the right time, and map all the customer queries effectively, users are not going to come back to you.”

India, Then and Now, a Tourist Paradise and an Intellectual Pool

A colleague-cum-friend (Australian) of mine is travelling for holidays in India for next 3 months, so he came back happily to share about his approval and how long the Q to Indian Embassy in London, UK was, etc! I had a Brit friend next to me who had a pun unintended query “Why do you need VISA to go to India”  😉
I smilingly asked which countries you can travel without having a VISA, he said of course any in Europe, I said, ohh you see India is not in Europe and there is no free entry to Brit or any other nationalities to India as was possible during Imperial times 😉

Though I am not sure what he meant with that pun, but this brought back one famous discussion we used to have, when I was doing my bachelors during 1990’s and my senior used to say “There will be a day when foreigners will stand in Q to get VISA for India” the way we do now to go abroad to work there. I was not very positive then thinking it may take at least 25 years to reach to that stage. But hey, I was wrong, it only took 15 years (from 19991 onwards) to really see things happening in favour of India. There has been number of reports discussing of reverse brain drain and Indian returning back to grab the huge opportunity, so I won’t go into that discussion now.

Today India facilitated a five-year tourism visa with a provision for multiple entries for tourists. How prepared is India for Tourism? I think more infrastructures is needed to make India world’s hot spot in tourism, many part of India is still unexplored, planning commission (both state and national govt.) should utilise the tourism Industry to convert the rural India to natural tourism. This is a beginning and there are many spots in India still remain hidden and unexplored. The mindset of Tourism department/ agencies must go global in accepting and really making effort to make tourist happy. I hear states like Kerala, Rajasthan are prime destination for Tourist!! What are other state doing??

I remember, as a child I would have hardly seen any foreigners in many state run small airport like Bhubaneswar or Vizag. People used to flock around if they see a foreigner. However, now many foreigners live in India & working with multi-national having global operations. Life has changed in totality in 10 years!!

So what about the Intellectual pool/capacity of India? Some strongly agree and some say it is cheap labour. I have heard both category and have argued with both categories. Here are my takes… as a child I was told the only way I can survive in this world is by speaking beautiful English and solving mathematics in lightening speed. Even today, this is true; competition starts from very early ages in India. Also as part of living style we believe “knowledge and prosperity” are the essence of life. IITians have pioneered these essence and they are the people who really took their knowledge to global landscape. Most Indians can talk more about history and geography than most Brits I have met. This is not a comparison but my analysis is to draw focus that gaining knowledge and learning more to survive are part of daily life for any professionals in India. Therefore there is a tradition towards acquiring knowledge. However the higher education mainly engineering in second rung colleges or state colleges has been the most disappointing fact. The course curriculum has always been old dated, with no scope to do practical and in the process more graduates are coming with plenty of theory knowledge than applications. I see an opportunity for organizations to align with educational institutions and guide them to produce skilled graduates. Therefore there is a concern that India is not able to supply the amount of skilled people an organization needs for an exclusive R&D operation in India. But given chances and proper grooming, I bet they will produce best of the best.

To those categories who say India is only cheap so let’s go there, my take: – Labour is cheap but with that you get to be in a country which gives you huge market opportunities when the PPP of average Indian goes higher. So don’t go for cheap labour only but go for a strategic future. And also work smart to retain key intellectual resource because they are there too apart from cheap labour.

How successful is ePaper?

I first got an access to read Indian newspaper online in full content as ePaper while I was living in Helsinki, Finland during 2000. I was happy reading Times of India’s ePaper seeing every Indian city edition and was having instant access to my favourite section there.
Life has moved on since then, many newspaper has added ePaper and now living in UK I wonder that I dont see such initiative from many in UK though Ft.com has such facilities.

With small scale CMS, hundred of free online news, bloggers publishing information steadily, I am no longer a fan of ePaper and this random news feed makes me to be on the tip of information-berg and no longer bound by a single soure. So in one way I am liberated.
Has the ePaper been a success ?? I don’t think so because no longer reader treat one newspaper as the only reliable or centre of new information. This pattern has been broken to pieces with information popping from various corners.
However new technology such as paperless newspaper or electronic paper will further enable traditional newspaper to stay ahead in competition with and may make ePaper approach relavant. But what stops disintegrated news source to integrate to offer a electronic paper. So the user has flexibility to choose what they want to read and the same will be packaged and delivered. Therefore it is better to stay disintegrated at this moment and get integrated later. For now ePaper has not much value offerings.

Market focussed or Internal Resource & Capabilities focussed?

How should you design your organizational strategy? Should it be market focussed fulfilling the market need so that whenever market trend changes, your organization needs to keep the pace to stay ahead in the game. Strategy Management Gurus (Robert Grant is one of my favourite strategy management writer) says that in the fast paced innovative world, it is utterly impossible to chase the ever changing market therefore organization should focus on internal Resources & Capabilities mode of organization strategy design.

For instance Google’s (there are many such organization, Google is just an example) Resources & Capabilities allows it to designs products and services which is based purely on what it can offer create rather than getting driven by market. Be it their PageRank technology or AdSense or other services, all has been possible due to skills and capabilities. Therefore it is not necessary that an organization should always focus on market to drive the strategy. However market definitely provides lot of input to validate whether an organization’s capabilities are in sync with what market can absorb/adapt or is it very futuristic that capabilities won’t work at present market trends. That’s why we see innovations failing because those are ahead of their time.

So somewhere there is a fine thread balancing the Market approach and an organization’s resources & capabilities. When this balance gets distorted, we see young and innovative companies displacing the traditional company (Old and mature) in every decades of industrialization. Example: Microsoft giving tough competition to IBM or recent success of Google or may be partial disturbance in Yahoo’s organization strategy model.

Should an organization continue to add resource & capabilities but what is the milestone to do so?

What are the criteria to add such resource & capabilities?

Can an organization survive without remaining market focussed?

So what is the secret of managing strategy in an ever changing market place?

This is a short and thought provoking analysis; I will continue my thoughts on this aspect. Do share your thoughts.

China vs. India == Central Command vs. Individual

You would have heard, read many articles these days comparing booming economy of China and India, explaining and comparing how each country is poised to be the next century economy hub. Here is an interesting article published in Economic Times, India. The author writes ..

So in India, when we build one Sardar Sarovar dam, thousands pour out to galvanise public opinion, right or wrong, in their favour. But when China decides to build the world’s biggest dam – the Three Gorges — nobody gets to know how many get displaced and hopefully rehabilitated. Whether the executive and political talent of China is individually as good as ours may be questioned, but collectively, it is an unbeatable delivery machine.

Now, the micro level. An average Indian is a free bird. He can be born the poorest in the remotest part but can rise to the highest chair in the country. He can choose to work or not work. He can work wherever he wishes to work and whichever way he decides to work. The legacy of the value system favours the citizen, inflicting him with only softer indictments. He can be as ruthless as he chooses in his expression for or against anyone. Therefore, an Indian is supposedly in charge of his individual destiny.

The destiny of an average Chinese rests with the central command. He contributes more than what he gets, be it in urban or rural China. For past 25 years, he cannot have more than one child. Whether he works as a white or blue-collar worker, he has to maintain discipline. He has multiple responsibilities for civic behaviour. He cannot be unproductive in work or indulge in any economic crime. Punitive deterrents are too severe. He may lose his work permit and revert to his village along with his family, ending his urban dream forever. At home, he has to look after his family comprising his wife and his one child, parents of both spouses. There could be grandparents too. All these, with little or no social security. Clearly, the Chinese system holds the destiny for each Chinese.

==> This article is more in-line with Nobel prize winner Economist Amartya Sen’s thoughts like

**Development should be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people experience
**Development is just not economical but political one too
Based on Sen’s thesis, Human Development index has been designed covering (i) political freedom, (ii) economic facilities, (iii) social opportunities, (iv) transparency guarantees and (v) protective security. Each of these distinct types of rights and opportunities are essential and closely interrelated in advancing the capability of a person. To appreciate the inter-connections between these freedoms, an empirical linkage that tie the distinct types of freedom are central to our understanding of the instrumental role of freedom. The approach of considering each of these freedoms to development is termed ‘capability approach’.

==> I liked some aspect of Chinese system whereby they put the overall country and its destiny ahead of the individual when there is a big question mark about country’s destiny. That doesn’t mean that individual has no value, it all depends upon how well the country has defined the parameter to fulfill individual’s basic need arising from such decisions. Taking India as an example, to implement any infrastructure projects like roads, dam, etc etc which has huge and positive impact on millions people for generations to come, has been always difficult. May be the political & bureaucratic system is not functioning well which makes people suffer from decisions and in return NGO’s block such projects. This is where India lacks a democratic but fast-functioning system to define country’s destiny rather than blocking both individual and also country’s destiny. In one way, India’s slow system is soft-peddling individual’s own destiny. To me such soft-peddling is why we see millions Indians still below poverty line, having lived in villages then urban and then Ultra urban India, I can say that in India, individual’s destiny has been man-made. India has lot to learn & implement from its proud son such as Amartya Sen.

Rapid Application Development Frameworks – Ruby On Rails, Java!, PHP

With hype(also reality) around Ruby on Rails facilitating rapid^n application development, I did this comparative analysis around latest RAD tools/technologies. Here are my findings.

Ruby On Rails – If you are starting up, doesn’t have too much time, money or partners to support you? You can easily handcraft most of the application development using Ruby On Rails.

Java – Ohh not the age old Java but fresh brews 🙂 Being a Java geek (who is about to switch camp to PHP), I gave another fresh look at Java frameworks.

Grails is an amazing RAD tool, if you are a hardcore Java/J2EE geek and looking for robust application development and adores frameworks like Spring, Hibernate, you can use Grails and utilize your specialized skills
If you doen’t have time to go through all frameworks and primarily looking Java based RAD, then Grails still can help you with plenty of scaffolding code and easy to use automated code generation. You can write a simple CRUD application using Grails in few minutes.

If you are looking for RAD only for web development in Java (because many java geeks believe with Spring and Hibernate, the solution can be developed with the same speed as in Ruby on Rails), then check out Stripes.

PHP – You are the PHP gem and want to stick with PHP? Good news I am joining your camp from Java :). Recent frameworks like Symfony is making headlines …as Yahoo Bookmark as the latest implementation using Symfony. If you are from Java camp and have used Hibernate in the past, life is much cooler with Propel ORM which is used inside Symfony.

More options in PHP – CAKE is very good framework too, so also PRADO and many others.

The reason I am preferring PHP is because of newer frameworks, Object oriented development, high availability of developers/programmers in PHP, if my idea works well then I can safely offload application development by hiring PHP geeks with reasonable salary (I will have to pay only .35 times less than that of a Java geeks…that is great savings for me)

Ruby on Rails, my friends love it, we are developing stuff using it. But I am still looking for more and more developers and programmers adapting it and building great community.

What about ASP ? 😦 oh I hear it is fast and all those but you know I am on Open Source side. 😉

What are your preferences?

Managing innovation and turning innovative ideas into products

I came across an excellent article by Roger Smith (his blog : ctonet.blogspot.com) on “Technology Impacts on Business: Disruption, Globalization, and Innovation Management”

This is an old article but I found this has excellent information on technology impacts. In one part of this article, Roger has attempted to identify a process for managing innovation and turning innovative ideas into products. The following are the activities of such process

Market Learning
Instill a mindset of constant market learning. Use large, small, formal, and informal sampling to extract information.

Find a Place in the Value Chain.
Map technical innovation to business success. Every innovation must demonstrate that is has value to the company.

Effectively Build Business Models.
Understand the value chain and how the company plays in that chain. Modify the business model to incorporate innovative products.

Fight for Funding.
Every innovation team should include an expert in resource acquisition.

Build Partnerships.
Modern products and services often require more resources than exist within a single organization.

Transition to a Business Unit.
Establish a transition team and write a transition plan.

Managing Individuals.
Balance the composition of the innovation team.Include people with skills beyond intelligence.

28% of Immigrant Entrepreneurs In US are Indians

Rediff (Indian online newspaper) writes :

Indians account for 28 per cent of all foreign-founded private start-up companies in America, according to a first-of-its-kind study, ‘American Made: The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on US Competitiveness.’

The study found that over the past 15 years, immigrants have started 1 in 4 (25 per cent) US public companies that were venture-backed, representing a market capitalisation of more than $500 billion. Moreover, a survey of today’s private, venture-backed start-up companies in the US estimated that 47 per cent have immigrant founders.

India was the most prevalent country of origin with 28 per cent followed by the United Kingdom (11 per cent), China (5 per cent), Iran (4 per cent), and France (4 per cent).

UK Supermarkets fail online delivery test!!

Yes that’s what London Lite newspaper writes.

The online service of Britain’s biggest supermarkets has been branded “dismal” in a secret shopping test which found them to be slow, inaccurate and short of stock!!

The five largest internet grocers, Tesco, Sainsbury;s, Asda, Ocado and Waitrose, all failed to deliver a simple list of 33 items.

I find this report amazing of how little has changed in internet shopping, I think with money muscle and existing distribution channel these big players have been running the show.

BT hiring 6000 staff in India & Earning $250 million by 2009

BBC reports : BT has also formed an alliance with Indian firm Jubilant Enpro in order to seek out opportunities in the market. India is one of the world’s fastest growing telecoms markets but it is fragmented and service levels vary. BT said it believed its Indian business could generate sales of $250m by 2009.

My Thoughts : To my friends/bloggers in UK, whom I have been meeting in various meetups and events. One thing which always puzzle me in UK is 90% people believe Globalization is one way ..that means everything from UK is going to go away to India/Asia/some other developing countries. However I keep saying the Globalization is multiway, it is bound to produce benefits for overall economy and make market more competitive. Hopefully they see the benefit of “250 million $” sales of BT from India.

Come on folks, time to embrace fast-paced globalization, give in one hand and take in 2 hands 🙂 or other way depending upon competitiveness.

Exciting days for Internet Consumers in India

Exciting days for Internet consumers in India…

Vivah(a Bollywood movie) is Bollywood’s first movie which went online premier. Rajshri media has produced this movie. Vivah will be premiered over the internet for $10, This is the first time that a Bollywood movie is premiered live on the internet (legally). Update -In fact none of the Hollywood movie has done online premier yet 🙂 so looks like Bollywood is encashing the global Indian diaspora audience and also Bollywood audinence from various countries. Content is king!! & consumer wants content and medium freedom, so let them watch media wherever they want to be. Way to go Bollywood..

Read more about Rajashri, ContentSutra has an excluisve interview with them.

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India’s Top Cricketer Anil Kumble has started a Softwar product company StumpVision for various sports products, starting with Cricket. That is a matser stroke Anil, you give thousand of Indian entrepreneurs of this generation to bring the best on world space!!

The company has built products using Microsoft technologies and Steve Ballmer launched StumpVision services in India!!!

World Internet penetration : US figure is staying static

ReadwriteWeb article :

We noted that as a percentage of world Internet penetration, Asia increased from 35.6% to 36.5%. This incremental increase is happening month by month, whereas the US figure is staying static.

My Comments :
As internet penetrates throughout most of the world, the interesting market will be those which allows you to add on consumers rather than those which are static.

Will we see the pattern of competition between the static(and developed market) in US/Western countries vs promising market in Asia/non-western countries(include all) and turning the later market base as the home ground for innovations? I think so….but not so soon, western market offers a big potential currently.

Seven Essentials of Leveraging Web 2.0

Dion Hinchcliffe has an excellent article on The Habits of Highly Effective Web 2.0 sites
Seven Essentials of Leveraging Web 2.0

* Ease of Use is the most important feature of any Web site, Web application, or program.
* Open up your data as much possible. There is no future in hoarding data, only controlling it.
* Aggressively add feedback loops to everything. Pull out the loops that don’t seem to matter and emphasize the ones that give results.
* Continuous release cycles. The bigger the release, the more unwieldy it becomes (more dependencies, more planning, more disruption.) Organic growth is the most powerful, adaptive, and resilient.
* Make your users part of your software. They are your most valuable source of content, feedback, and passion. Start understanding social architecture. Give up non-essential control. Or your users will likely go elsewhere.
* Turn your applications into platforms. An application usually has a single predetermined use while a platform is designed to be the foundation of something much bigger. Instead of getting a single type of use from your software and data, you might get hundreds or even thousands of additional uses.
* Don’t create social communities just to have them. They aren’t a checklist item. But do empower inspired users to create them.

Orkut Vs. MySpace

Roger has an excellent post on Orkut Vs MySpace, I missed commenting on his prior article on same subject. Find more about his analysis in following posts.

http://prof.rogerkondrat.com/2006/11/02/answering-questions-asked-about-my-earlier-orkut-post/

http://prof.rogerkondrat.com/2006/11/01/orkut-the-undiscovered-country-or-is-it/

I think Orkut has an excellent strategy to not to become a hype substance and fad soon. Orkut has taken the traditional “get mature and capture market share route” thereby slowly and steadily making its way by allowing users to build strong community. For instance, I have got 10 request in a week to join in my college groups and other social groups in Orkut but None in MySpace. Why so? Why are my contacts all in Orkut, not in MySpace!! 🙂 I don’t know but my friend/social list includes contacts from US,India and UK and hey Canada too prominently.

But apart from the fact that Orkut is a big story in India having million of users and already killing some service provider ..did they kill Fropper, India’s dating and social networking site 😉 ?
Now coming back to MySpace Vs Orkut. MySpace is hero in USA but USA is fast moving market and it is tradition there to topple established player. May be Facebook is on the way or some other Social network. Whereas Orkut is Hero in Developing Countries like India and Brazil having massive user base. And the tradition in such developing countries : Once you are a Hero, you get praise for the life time 🙂 . And strategically if you can stay in market place longer without fading, you can travel either way East to West or vice-versa. Will MySpace user-base remain loyal in USA ? I don’t think so 100%.

Therefore forget all Alexa ranking, other statistics …simple formula for me is “the longer you have user with you, you remain/will be the leader”.

Every Intellectual property at Google’s doorstep?

To me sounds like Google is ready to buy any intellectual property they find useful for their stack. Now they bought JotSpot. I had thought that with Writely, it will be enough for Google to build their own Intellctual property around it and build a classic application. However it looks like every valuable Intellecutal propery is knocking Google’s door. What might be the reason?

I think Google is at the juncture where Microsoft was when it was building up stacks to launch Office suite buying from every possible solution provider to build Word, Excel or other Office products. Rather than spending huge R&D upfront to build such subsystems, they are getting pieces to stich them for the final product.

While writing this, I find readwriteweb aricle on Elephants and Evolution very interesting because it conveys that Google can’t do everything …therefore hold onto your intellectual property and go solo 🙂 Can you?

Oxford to set up first research centre outside UK in India

Rediff Writes :
Oxford University will invest 10 million pounds initially to set up its first business research centre, which will study a wide span of issues in the country starting from infrastructure and education to social entrepreneurship and business taxation.

London finance and business service sector to grow by 7% – its fastest since 2000

Lite (ThisIsLondon.co.uk) mentions (on 27th oct 2006) in the news print :

London set for faster growth :  The centre for economics and business research now expects the finance and business service sector to grow by 7% – its fastest since 2000 — while shops and wholesalers will see growth of 2.8% against 1.3% last year!!

Inspiring Entrepreneurs – Lord Karan Bilimoria

I must admit I have been a die hard fan of Lord Karan Bilimoria, more than Cobra Beer :). Lord Karan is the Founder and Chief Executive of Cobra Beer. I have been following Cobra Beer’s innovative initiatives, be it the ultra cool Cobra Advertisements, Cobra Vision, Entrepreneur support activities like in TiE.

Through Cobra Vision, Cobra conducts, sponsors competition for producer, director, scriptwriter, AD film maker, etc.

One thing inspires me about this company is their sheer passion to “Be different”. Rediff (Indian online newspaper) has published an excellent interview with Karan. Some insights to how Karan has built Cobra with a decisive passion, commitment and eye for detail.

Rediff quote

Wasn’t it crazy of you to venture into business on your own?
My family thought I was mad! They did everything possible to discourage me. It all started when I was once playing polo in India. A polo stick maker said: ‘Look, why don’t you sell our sticks in England?’

I was 27 at the time. I always knew that I wanted to get into business at some point in my life. So I said why not give it a shot? I sold Indian polo sticks to places like Harrods and Giddons, the suppliers to the Royal family’s stables.

It was difficult. The buyer at Harrods was very rude to me. But eventually I managed to see the head buyer and got my foot in the door.

I discovered my core advantage was the fact that I was totally at home in England, and totally at home in India.

I could add value by putting the two countries together. I didn’t make much money. But that first year gave me the experience of importing, sourcing, market research and selling. Invaluable!

Did you have a mentor? Someone to guide you around the pitfalls of the business?
There was an Indian gentleman in London called Keshav Reddy. He introduced us to Mysore Breweries. He was the uncle of my partner at the time, Arjun Reddy. Arjun was a childhood friend who had an entrepreneurial bent: he’d been involved in managing his family farms and business from a very young age. So we teamed up to start Cobra. But he left the company a few years ago.

How did you raise finance?
In every possible way you can imagine! And that’s where being a chartered accountant helped a lot. It was always the biggest single problem I had: how to build a brand with no finances of my own. But one thing I believe in very strongly is the brand and the future of the business. So I’m very, very reluctant to sell my own shares. And that’s difficult because people say to me, your company is going places and I want to buy shares in it. No, sorry. You can’t.

MyBlogLog : Way to Create Your Own Blogging Community

We all bloggers happen to know each other through tag, feeds, in meetup events, via Blogging platfrom Dashboards, etc. Once known, either the connection remains through regular visits, feeds or in community meetup events or we again go back to the original mode of meeting by chance. Now for me that was big NO-NO in blogging. Why do we blog? Atleast I blog to participate in a community where I can learn and share.

I started with Blogging with Blogger, with its community flavour , I though it will be great to know fellow bloggers. But soon I was disappointed that there is nothing much tools to explore, and build my own community. Then the cool WordPress came and I was fascinated (I am still) in its community driven Dashboard, tagging and other features. However I was still felling some uneasy, why can’t I see my fellow Blogger communities. There is kind of fence separating the bigger community. I was also searching in an article how to find best bloggers
This week I landed in MyBlogLog through TechCrunch. I instantly got what I was looking for so many days of blogging!!! Communities which I can see, feel, join irrespective of what platform they use, whether I have them in my blogroll or not, even if I haven’t heard about them from anywhere!!

I am happy that I am no longer blogging alone 😉

Google Co-op will seal fate of few Vertical Search engines

Google Co-op will seal fate of few Vertical Search engines
Have you heard about Google Co-op? You can build your own vertical search engine on top of Google using Google Co-Op !!!!!
Though this is released in May but now it has gone in full public mode and anybody can access this co-op partner program from Google.

Now think for a second what will happen to those vertical search engines having invested millions in building their own solutions!!! I think some of them are doomed unless they have value added service in addition to the vertical search. Let’s take example of Vertical Job sites (avoiding naming some of them ;), some of them are plain vanilla ones without any value addition. Now with Google Co-op anybody (with little higher technical knowledge) can launch a vertical job search engine in few days time. And on top they can put the investment completely to value addition services making mockery of the independent vertical search engines (non-Google ones)!!!

Remember: There is always room for innovations and in my example I am taking cases of those which are dummy vertical search engines)

For me now the real Vertical Search Engine war has begun. Also I think with this, Google is combining social search with vertical flavour and allowing community to mushroom around it.

Google has played the check step and launching the community soldier to play checkmate step. 🙂

How long you should take to implement and launch a new idea?

I met with an entrepreneur in City who has a great idea but he went “cheap route” to implement his idea. He outsourced his idea to an IT professional in some third world country with a condition that his cost of development will reduce to 1/9 and the developer will take 9 months in developing the solution!!! So if the cost would have been 9,000 GBP, it will cost him only 1000 GBP :-). Sounds cool on paper. But after 9 months he realised that what turned out is a crap product development and total waste of 9 months!!!

During this 9 months time, there is already slightly similar concept already in UK marketplace and his solution is still far from achievable. This case opened my eyes that how come entrepreneurs keep forgetting the basic market principles!! As a Startup entrepreneur, I think one should

-Move faster into marketplace

-Reduce entry barrier (mainly cost which is major factor for Startups) but not at the cost of time to enter to market!!! Very Very Very important

-Feel as if somebody else is dreaming your idea

-Invite partners to your idea (This reduces the burden of upfront investment)

– Build what is essential to enter to market

-Participate in the product development, be it marketing or on technology side

Any other key suggestions ?

Oracle is considering launching its own Linux operating system?

This article talks about a rumor : Oracle is considering launching its own Linux operating system?

If Oracle goes into Linux, it will be able to deliver custom-made complete packages that will include both the operating system and all applications needed.

Rumors are that Oracle has its eyes on Linux releasers RedHat or Ubuntu maker Canonical for partnership (buyout?!). Linux is a popular platform for database servers. It was rumored Oracle is looking forward to introducing an Ubuntu-anchored software stack (OS-apps software bundle). Oracle’s offer could include even a dedicated hardware solution for it.

==> I think this is bound to happen because Oracle is depending too much on IBM, MS and Apple for operating system. Linux is that zigsaw which will solve Oracle’s puzzle of having an OS and application on top of it and also drive into open source.
Will they buy Redhat 🙂 ..with that they will get Linux and also JBoss which RedHat had acquired few months back. JBoss has become the best Java/J2EE Application Server whereas Oracle’s Application server could never be in the top league. Infact there was a rumor going on whether JBoss will be acquired by Oracle. But RedHat acquired. May be time for them to buy both at one shot 🙂

BBC outsourcing to India

BBC reports : The BBC is outsourcing some of its accounting and financing services to India in a move that will save it £20m a year for the next decade.

The contract, which includes managing payroll and financial management, has been won by Xansa.

Symantec says : Web apps and services prove high risk

The report worries about the ‘relative ease of discovering vulnerabilities in Web applications compared to other platforms’. Source code is easily obtained, they are frequently updated, and because there are few restrictions to distinguish valid input from invalid, web applications are ‘susceptible to common types of input validation vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection’.

The technologies underpinning Web applications and Web services also give Symantec cause for concern…

Symantec is concerned that in the rush to develop Web services, the underlying Web applications that use them are not receiving the same level of security auditing as traditional client-based applications and services.

‘As Web applications continue to gain in popularity, Symantec expects to see an increase in the number of attacks taking advantage of the interconnected, interactive nature of AJAX to increase the number of potential targets.’

==> I think recent trend suggets that with newer technology and more focus on developing solutions faster rather than robust and secure is bound to create issues in future stability of the product. I keep hearing comments like “AJAX” enabled, hopefully they are secure and manegeable!!

User generated content, will money change everything?

In Clickz, there is a great post about User generated content, will money change everything by Rebecca Lieb.

She has excellent compilation of cases

Quote :

Social Sites Start Paying

Ignoring for a moment how high agency billable hours for conceiving and creating all the aforementioned campaigns might be, there’s a small but growing trend toward monetizing user-generated content. Revver appends ads to the user-submitted videos on its site and splits the take down the middle with the content creators. There’s even a cut for an affiliate, if one’s in the mix.

Sure, the majority of citizen content creators are in it for the glory, a little recognition, a chance to be heard, or even to publish. And yes, winning a contest to create a Super Bowl ad would certainly spruce up an ambitious college student’s résumé.

But isn’t there something just a little miserly and crass about major brands like L’Oréal and Chevrolet turning the tables on Web 2.0 and customer control? Certainly their agencies can’t be happy when the account goes up for review and their rival’s willing to work for a one-year supply of breath mints.

Will it be long before diamonds in the rough emerge from corners of the Web other than the blogosphere and demand to be paid what they’re truly worth?

Corus accepted Tata takeover offer

Tata is one of India’s reputed and ethical company, it came into existence during British Rule (1860’s) and it has contribution to Indian Air lines, Steel, Administrative service, Software service (TCS) industries. More on Tata Group in Wikipedia

Infact TCS was the 5th best employer in UK in last year. Also Tata owns UK’s Tetley Tea.!! So they have been contributing to UK economy and a global economy. With Corus steel (formerly British Steel) acquisition, Tata is definitely going to propel UK’s steel industry further in global place. Such globalization is the mantra of next century whereby western countries continue to capitalize the marketplace by associating with Asian/South Asian/African/developing countries and brining the hope of prosperous life to all human being.

I believe world market is operating 1/30(a random number) of its potential because vast majority of market is still to be explored and bring into global market place.

Globalization is the way forward!!

Aussie Rules in Oval

I am in Oval today, ohh not for Ashes but for “Aussie Rules” 🙂 I have been invited to watch Aussie Rules with my Australian friends. I had no idea about Aussie Rules… AFL Challenger Trophy 2006 Geelong v Port Adelaide. I got to know more about Aussie Rules before heading to watch the match.

USA is lagging behind Britain as foreign Student destination

FT.com article : According to the report, the US increased its international-student enrolment by 17 per cent from the 1999-2000 academic year to 2004-05, compared with gains of 29 per cent in Britain, 42 per cent in Australia, 46 per cent in Germany, 81 per cent in France and 108 per cent in Japan. Some observers claim the reason for the slow pace of growth is due to the perception that the US is unwelcoming to international students. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US State Department imposed tougher standards on foreign students seeking visas to study in the US, which made visa processing times slow to a crawl.

Technolgy changes and its Impact on Export Pattern of Services

The export pattern for services is totally different than the export patterns for products. Fisk, Grove and John in their book “Interactive Service Marketing” suggests three patterns for services as follows

Outbound Service Export : Send the service provider to the foreign Market

Inbound Service Export : Bring the Customer to the Service Provider

Teleservice Export : Deliver the service to Foreign Markets Electronically

However I think the technology has already impacted services delivery and some of the export pattern have become anti-pattern. Here is an analysis

Outbound Service Export : Send the service provider to the foreign Market
In IT services industry, we have seen outsourcing companies from India, Eastern Europe travelling to host country to provide service. However with new ICT medium like on demand work force (oDesk, Elance, and others), virtual workforce spread across the world, it is no longer required for the service provider to travel to host country. Therefore as technology evolves, virtualization will enable service provider to provide service without entering foreign market.

Even Dell proved that staying back in USA, it can still serve the rest of world using supply chain partners instead of locating itself in every part of the world. Therefore enterprise applications, advanced inventory and delivery solution is enabling service provider to avoid this pattern 🙂 Are we going to see a nice Curry freshly made in India travelling to London on demand rather than the curry shop trying to fit in the crowded curry marketplace in London 😉

Inbound Service Export : Bring the Customer to the Service Provider

This is an interesting pattern, common example is foreign students travelling to host country Universities. Like Chinese or Indians travelling to USA, UK, Canada. However technology change is already impacting this pattern too. With Satellite based ICT medium, student can study in an USA university from Bangalore, India 🙂

As research reports suggests, the future advances in health care will enable Doctors to operate patients using IT tools and technology!! However Tourism industry might sigh a relief as it can’t be replaced by virtualization, unless I intend to live in Second life 😉

The third pattern as suggested by Fisk, Grove and John is the solution to the above two pattern is as follows.

Teleservice Export : Deliver the service to Foreign Markets Electronically

This is the only export pattern that can survive for foreseeable centuries.

Excellent list of questions that management teams should ask

I read this post of Andy Sacks via Ed Sim’s blog.

1. What are the hardest problems in our current business approach – the market issues that we keep struggling with over and over?
2. What’s (surprisingly) easy about our business – the things that are working better than expected?
3. Where’s the parade?  What major trends are we trying to get in front of with our business?

What would our business look like If we:

• Stopped trying to do what’s hard,
• Did more of the things that are easy, and
• Made sure we were in front of the biggest parade we can find?

I think this is an excellent list of questions that management teams should ask themselves about their business every six months or so.

Valuable thoughts from Tom Peters on Noble Peace Prize Winner

Muhammad Yunus, the Noble Peace Prize Winner of 2006 is a rare hope to millions in Bangladesh and also bound to create more social entrepreneur in South East Asia.

Tom Peter writes in his blog

The story, of course, is amazing. Moreover, it dovetails with all of my Primary Biases:

Small can be beautiful & powerful!
People first!
Trust!
Women rule!!!!!!!!
Giant forests from tiny seedlings!
Self reliance!
Community based!
Self/Small group management!
Banish the bureaucrats!
Keep it simple, stupid!
Hands on!

Web2.0 Burst – Reality Check

There are predictions and analysis going around the web that Web2.0 is waiting to go burst!! Some time the Google -YouTube as the first hint of a bubble burst!! Some others say all this community participation, hit count is not measurable units for sustaining a Web2.0 growth!!

Here is straight question to them, when did you correctly predict the last dot com burst? After it happened, right? I might be on the wrong side of Web2.0 who passionately thinks Web2.0 is here to revolutionise the way we use “web” to do things. It has started its path of innovation and may be on the way it might burst but it will definitely have its impression the way web1.o had in terms of successful enterprises like eBay, Yahoo, Amazon and Google, many others. Yes Tom Dick and Harry website failed and they were the culprit of dot com crash because they thought anything can earn them profit in this crazy web market place.

However market has learned from that harsh reality and at least now we see only 1 in 10 Web2.0 solution having the old Web1.0 mentality of launching any damn solution in marketplace and capitalise from the hype. They are bound to fail but I doubt if they will take the whole Web2.0 with them.

Another major factor which is helping marketplace to stay stable and educate Web2.0 entrepreneurs is the Social Media i.e. the blogs, community reviews. New entrepreneur are able to learn what is happening in market place and able to “market research” before jumping which according me was completely missing during Web1.0. During Web1.0 every new entrepreneur thought in terms of “if they can do why can’t we”! However in Web2.0, the entrepreneurs I have met are thinking if they can do, let’s think what other way we can do the same/variant. You see the difference? Market research has reached to masses and they are aware of failure of copy cat solution and therefore staying away from polluting web2.0 marketplace.

During Web1.0, some VC ruled mind of entrepreneurs!! I think the VCs got blind with a new technology and potential of returns and forgot all the basics. Without educating/participating along with the entrepreneur to innovate services, they invested heavily thinking marketing is all the mantra to go big. But see what the successful players did like Amazon or eBay; they were purely innovative and followed principles of market leaders rather than spending to build services which customer can never use!! BTW there were intelligent VC’s backing these successful players 😉

Now let’s take Web2.0 and VC!! These days you hear community, community…innovation…innovation and on the way you hear small related VC news. Frankly speaking many Web2.0 entrepreneurs are building services which are sustainable because they no longer need to spend millions in doing market survey, pay millions in advertising to seek user’s attention. User is right there with them from day one. In this scenario, VCs are investing in solutions which has already got market appeal or innovatively placed. There are exceptions but they are 1 in 1o.

Another major factor which will support Web2.0 is the success of global offshoring. During Web1.o, IT was still a new thing in many parts of the world therefore all innovations were aimed for US market only. However post dot com burst and with Web2.0 US is not the only market!! Take any case be it MySpace or YouTube(they are just an example), the global audience is behind their success. This has become possible because due to offshoring lot of new market has been created(or getting created) which now offers more potential than it did during Web1.0.

Demographic factor : Web2.0 has younger internet audience and participating across many parts of the world. We hardly saw them during Web1.0.

So let’s hold on to the theory of burst. Let’s concentrate on how Web2.0 gets it’s full due.

aql : Impressive Mobile Solutions!!

aql has developed fantastic application all aimed at making your mobile really participate in day today world!!  Though you can view all about them in their website, I felt it will be worth to let my readers know in brief about various product/service they provide. They are as follows

Ex SMS-WAP customer?
We have developed a gateway which attempts to emulate the old sms-wap ringtone, logo and text HTTP Post interface.

Email to SMS Gateway (outgoing messages)
If you are looking for a quick and simple way to add SMS functionality to your service, or your systems are already setup with email notification then have them relayed to you as text messages via our email to sms service.

Premium rate billing (Shortcode) services
aql offer a simple-to-integrate API for use with our premium rate mobile terminated (MT) billing services. Click here to download the connection documentation. Ordering a shortcode cannot be done via our website – please contact us to discuss any aspect of our shortcode or premium services. If you are unfamiliar with the SMPP protocol, we also offer an HTTP/HTTPS gateway which offers simple integration.

HTTP/HTTPS Gateway (outgoing messages)
Developers can use HTTP posts to interface with our systems for outgoing messages, now supporting postback confirmation for message delivery, for more details click here.

HTTP/HTTPS Speech Synthesis (text to voice call)
Developers can send HTTP post data to our speech synthesis gateway. Our platforms will then convert this text data into speech (english only) and call a specified number with the synthesized message. This service is ideal as the basis for services for the blind or visually impaired or for messaging to networks which cannot accept text messages.

Extended HTTP/HTTPS Gateway (address book and distribution list sync)
Developers can integrate our address book and distribution list features via this powerful API. This includes uploading and modifying addressbooks, distribution lists. (note – needs to be used in conjunction with our standard Gateway).

SMPP/SMPP(SSL) Gateway (outgoing messages)
High volume operators can use our SMPP gateway for message delivery.

XML-SOAP / Web Service Gateway
Developers can use our SOAP Gateway to quickly interface their systems to aql.com. SOAP is supported by most of the available technologies including  the .NET Framework and Java.

MMS Gateway
Ringtone Gateway
Ringtone Content Gateway
Resellers – SMS site bundle

In response to numerous enquiries from resellers, aql has created a collection of scripts which form a simple SMS website which can be re-branded by resellers and hosted on their own servers. It allows users to sign up and also for an administrator to assign credits.

I also heard they have a solution which does SMS to RSS feed conversion!! Though couldn’t locate more about this in their website, do you know any such convrter app (SMS to RSS Feed)?

Who would have thought 20 years back that Elephants will get to wear Microchips

Who would have thought 20 years back that Elephants will get to wear Microchips 🙂

BBC article : Microchip for Mumbai Elephants.

Elephants in India’s financial capital Mumbai are to receive microchip ‘licence plates’  …The implants cost 200 rupees ($4.40) and will be ready to be implanted into the animals’ ears over the next month.

In Another article,e-ration card is being introduced to check black marketing of daily goods

A computer-based automated ration card and public distribution management system would be set up under a pilot project which would connect the shopkeeper, the warehouse and the consumer through computers,” said an official.

The company said the e-ration card system would enable monitoring of fair price shops from one place, which in turn would help checking black marketing of commodities.
==> We human being believe technology is the cure for all evil but then we also create evil to break the technology. Anyway to change the evil (like black marketing & corruption) which has lasted for centuries in India, I think technology solution will be one angle to solve this..

I think the social media and explosion of new media will revolutionise countries like India, because information is flowing and can no longer be hidden from layman and can’t be manipulated for goverment agency benefits. However there must be initiative from government to create independent information hubs which assures relaibility of information. I will address this in a separate article.

Enterprising Young Brits!!

Part of the Make Your Mark – start talking ideas campaign, the competition is open to anyone aged 30 and under who has grown their own idea, exploited an opportunity, or developed a new way of doing things. The judges are looking for a balance of commercial flair and creativity, and will reward not just the quality of the idea, but also how you made it happen. This could be by starting up a business, developing a social enterprise, or doing something enterprising in order to help others.

THE CATEGORIES

Business Entrepreneur –
For enterprising individuals that have started their own business, large or small.

Social and Environmental –
For ventures combining the principles of a successful business with an emphasis on the social and community benefits it can provide.

Innovation at Work –
For someone who has had an idea and made it happen within their workplace.

Teen –
For anybody making an idea happen who is aged 13-19.

Creative –
For enterprising individuals, businesses and endeavors in the creative industries.

HOW TO ENTER

Find all details in http://www.starttalkingideas.org/youngbrits/

October 23 is deadline for submitting your entry!!!

Why Government web sites are so dumb?

One thing is common across many of the government websites : they are so dumb. There are 1001 govt. policies aimed to make IT reach masses like web accessibility, easy to use, informative to citizens but while applying the govt. websites itself miss to implement those policies!!! Ohh thats rude but I am afraid that’s right.

I read an article about BrandIndex, which is a daily measure of public perception (in UK) of more than 1,100 consumer brands across 32 sectors, measured on a 7-point profile: general impression, ‘buzz’, quality, value, corporate image, customer satisfaction and whether respondents would recommend the brand to a friend. We interview 2,000 people from our online panel of more than 130,000 each weekday, more than half a million interviews per year.
Having focus on IT industry, I thought I can see all the reports and clicked “DailyData” in the menu. I was asked to login 🙂 I looked option to register!! O Gosh I dint find register option, the only option I see is Sign up for our weekly newsletter!!

I dont get this,BrandIndex is about daily measure of public perception and they have online panel…. etc…but the very basic Web Accessibility not in place, navigation is poor ………….

I then clicked on “YouGov” link which took me to YouGov page where I see “New panel member Sign here” 🙂 …common BrandIndex Web Team, the layman will never know that they have to go to YouGov, where did you mention that?

Matt Buck’s Cartoons & experience of internet impacts

Have you seen Matt Buck‘s Blog http://www-hack.blogspot.com/

I got to visit his blog while reading Guardian Unlimited, his following post opened my eyes of how Internet is changing pattern of doing things and thereby creating and also destroying innumerable industy.

Courtesy Matt Buck’s Blog : Working in the print industry, as so many cartoonists do, has been a very interesting experience this year. The second coming of the internet appears finally to have arrived and many of our traditional markets are disappearing as business finally cottons onto the fact that people like getting their news via screens.

This implies a massive change, not only for the self-employed seeking new places to work, but also more brutally for a lot of staffers who are discovering that there is no real job security in a moving marketplace. …..

Attached is his Cartoon

Some statistics : Get Online Safe Study by the UK Govt

BBC Reports of Get Online Safe Study by the UK Govt, here are some statistics on market capacity and to think what kind of solution will fit customer needs in UK.

**57% of UK households had a internet connection and 69% of those were linked up via broadband.
** In the first six months of 2006, British shoppers spent more than £13bn online
**17% of people had no anti-virus software and 22% had no firewall

Sell time, Buy time?

Slivers-of-Time is a new way of working. You list the hours you would like to work and local employers buy them. The Slivers-of-Time programme is funded jointly by the UK government and private companies.

Many people can only be available for work at irregular times. Many companies and parts of government need to top up their workforce for peak periods, which can come unexpectedly. At the moment, these irregular bookings of temporary labour carry too many overheads and are too likely to cause problems. That is now changing…. with Silvers-of-Time.
Benefit to Employers:-

For employers, this new marketplace means the end of muddling through short staffed because of unpredictable requirements. It can cut the overtime bill and bring in new pools of staff who want to work at the times you need them. Induct a pool of Slivers-of-Time workers and you have a pre-trained additional workforce to be turned on and off as required.

Some Type of Work that one (time sellers) can do :-

 

Call centre/Customer service

• Answering calls from the public
• Making calls
• Helping customers fill out a form
• Directing customers to the right department
• Typing data into a computer

Sales/Interviewing

• Asking questions from a form and writing in answers
• Explaining the benefits of a product or service
• Approaching members of the public with questions
• Handing out leaflets

Teaching

• One-to-one coaching
• Explaining how a computer works
• Help with basic literacy/numeracy
• Assisting people as they begin work

=> I think this is a great programme having backing of Govt and this will support many small scale and large scale organisation to leverage seller’s time(flexi employee) without getting them on board with all the hassles of employment criteria and operational issues. Such programme will help UK  industry continue to leverage the local employment market and not depend solely on low cost offshoring.

It is amazing that the UK introduces excellent and favourable conditions for employment market in comparison with USA. For instance any skilled worker anywhere in the world can come and search for work in UK legally and without having an employer (through HSMP)!! Dependent work permit holder can legally work. Whereas in USA, even a high skilled dependent can’t work!! and worst is you need a H1 sponsor to get you inside USA. Many of my friends are living in USA for last 7 years and their wives can’t work although they are skilled like MBA, Bachelors of engineering in IT, etc

Good that UK industry is still competitive in introducing  innovative schemes.

How to find Best Bloggers?

Folks, tell me how do I find best bloggers on variety of topics. I don’t want to go via Technorati or search thousands of Feeds, any other route?

I think having a social blogger network which rates blogger based on content and endorsement/appreciation from fellow bloggers and other aspects will solve the problem of searching top bloggers. For instance I found Helen’s Musings of a mobile marketer blog via Ewan’s blog SMStextNews, Beers & Innovation blog and Marketing Nirvana via Roger’s  Technological Winter Blog.

I instantly liked all the above blog, their contents are excellent and they have fellow blogger appreciation.

But can we apply the same parameter to create a bloggers rating system? There are already such mechanism in place like http://www.top100bloggers.com/ but I don’t think they work as there is no way they let me know who wrote an excellent article on innovation on mobile recently, whose article has been read across many part of the world, etc etc.

Suggest if you know such rating systems.

Google Code Search Vs Krugle

TechCrunch about Google Code Search… I did a comparison between Google Code Search and Krugle

I had done couple of searches using Krugle in the past here here, I had found plenty of reference to stale projects in SourceForge or some other Forge 😉 !!
To be a smart Code search engine, there has to be certain algorithm (PageRank type) which ranks search results based on usability, reference in other code and various other factors..
I did a search again today to compare Krugle and Google Code search for “shopping cart” and language “java”. Krugle showed 90% Sourceforge project code and Google showed 90% code from variety projects!!!  I like variety.

I think Krulge folks will be left behind in this game unless they get away with this drop down feature to choose language (put that in advanced) and index variety of proejcts, only “nutch” based search won’t help once Google enters in the game!!

Web 2.0: Quick Software Development & Issues with changing Operational Process

During my conversation with Roger (his blog :  Technological Winter) on certain Web 2.0 companies, I asked Roger what stops a web 1.0 company to quickly adopt to a web 2.0 feature? Roger had a perfect answer: Because Web 1.0 companies are built in such a way that they can’t become web 2.0 in record time as there are issues involved in shifting to a new operational process.

That was a perfect insight of why new players in Web 2.0 have stormed market place and giving web 1.0 companies run for their money.

However as web progresses to next phase (some call it Second life and some call it web 3.0), I think some web 2.0 company will wash away because they are trapped in the same issue that web 1.0 company faced!! That is they had developed the software quick and dirty way which is tightly coupled with an operational process.

Let’s take an example: A social networking hub web 2.0 companies has launched successfully and attracting great community around it, the software has all web 2.0 features like community content, trackback, people collaborate and share information online. So the software solution is aligned with the trend and perfectly meeting with the business requirement. Let’s say the web has transitioned to Second life/Web 3.0 and operational process, user’s preference and way of doing things has changed which the present software solution can’t handle!! So the company is stuck to be washed away.

This is where Software architecture matters, if the web 2.0 solution is designed using practices like
**”Loose coupling” (the  subsystem must be loosley coupled and easily replacable)
**”Behaviour aspect separation” (User or community behaviour must be captured separately and designed to evolve with time)
**”business process workflow”(you get these as open source using JBoss JBPM, in 30 minutes we can create a operational workflow),
**”Framework based approach” (solution must use frameworks which are evolving in community like Source Forge, Rails, etc ..and making it easier to adopt new approaches)
**”Plug and play” (solution must have open interface to plug any new feature, like widgets..an example)
**”Easy migration” and many other factors

Then it becomes easier for the software solution to accommodate any operational changes in the future. Though it makes sense to launch a quick solution in marketplace to gain FMA (First mover advantage) but I think it must be replaced by a scalable solution sooner based on the above mentioned practices. With this, your web 2.0 solution can easily transform to next phase of innovation in web.

Some blog articles on Second life, web 3.0 :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life
http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-portable-profiles/
http://yuri.typepad.com/yuri_blog/web_30/index.html

Blog direct from train :)

Yeah you read that perfectly, I liked the concept of (mob)blogging  from train, got to know about it via SMS Text News blog site …find out more about train blog : http://www.trainblog.co.uk/web_index.php

Also read the comments 🙂 some funny ones as below

29.09 09:07 Ipswich Station

“Is it me, or is the man working at WH Smiths in the Station in the morning the rudest, miserablist bloke in the world ? Puts me in a bad mood even BEFORE I get on the train !”

27.09 15:46 Known problems ahead

“Why do One wait until you’ve boarded a train and moved 100 yards before telling you there are massive delays ahead? I’d rather know BEFORE I get on.” See more of these comments in http://www.trainblog.co.uk/blogs.php?page=3

I liked this concept because

–I can use it to tell my wife (instead of spending on phone call, can send SMS to train blog 😉 that I am stuck inside train (I have been pissed of  innumerable times for the travel between from Guildford to Wimbledon)

–Instead of browsing all possible rail operator website (btw they never update it or update when there is no problem 😉 ..I can reliably browse Train Blog site to know travel updates instantly. Note – Hey Train Blog folks, I think you should add a feature to categorise, like user adding travel issue comments (like accident, train line blockage, etc) should go under category “Travel cautions”. I believe this will help community a lot. But reliability of such updates will be an issue.

–I can read real time funny comments 🙂

All the best Train Blog team ! way to go!

Principles that all countries can follow to mount an effective response to offshoring

ACM report on Globalization and Offshoring of Software.

There are some general principles that all countries can follow to mount an effective
educational response to offshoring:
1. Evolve computing curriculum at a pace and in a way that better embraces the changing nature of IT.
2. Ensure computing curriculum prepare students for the global economy.
3. Teach students to be innovative and creative.
4. Evolve curriculum to achieve a better balance between foundational knowledge of computing on the one hand, and business and application domain knowledge on the other.
5. Invest to ensure the educational system has good technology, good curriculum, and good teachers.

Offshoring benefit for Startups

ACM has released a report on Globalization and Offshoring of Software. Here is snippet of what the report says about the startups getting benefitted due to Offshoring to India.

It is tempting to view offshoring by startups (whether to an Indian firm, say, or to their own overseas subsidiary) as an unmitigated loss of jobs for US workers. Nevertheless, the real situation is more complicated. Lowering the cost of undertaking a startup could mean that the barriers to entry are lowered, thus encouraging greater entrepreneurship. The jobs created by this entrepreneurship should be counted against those lost by offshoring. So, correctly estimating employment net effect of offshoring in the case of startups is very
difficult.

Mixers and other events in October

PaidContent folks are here in London on 17th Oct http://www.paidcontent.org/london-mixer-on-oct-17th-venue-rich-mix

New Media Knowledge folks are doing Beers & Innovation: Aggregators & Upsetters event on  17th Oct http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2006/10/17/beers-innovation-aggregators

Software workforce in Britain

FT.com has an interesting analysis on software workforce in Britain

*This year a restatement of gross domestic product, which took into account software development, increased GDP by 1 percent.!!

*Software industry is contributing £20bn a year to economy.

*Each year, 40,000 IT jobs move offshore.

*The number of students studying IT has halved in past five years!

*Industry, academia and government must work together to encourage IT as a competitive career choice.

Why Asian Startup companies can’t create revolution to topple established players?

Startup in USA and many other western countries are known for their persuasive breakthroughs bringing radical changes to customer’s need and preference and thereby causing massive impact to the established players. Recent example being Skype(causing trouble to established telcos), Jobster (causing trouble to Monster), MySpace (displaced Friendster), many other such examples.

However if you analyse Asian market, once a player gets established, it is fairly difficult for a Startup company to topple them. Why so?

I don’t know the exact answer, but yes I have few suggestions that may be some of the following factors are the reason behind such phenomena. Note – These factors are generalized but there are exceptions

1. Asian market has more loyal customers attached to an old service provider and they don’t try new service provider ?
2. Fear of failure, therefore Startup companies are very reluctant to try something different ?
3. Because Asian culture and mindset in general is “survival” type ?
4. Lack of funding or investment support to make that BIG decision ?
5. More Asians are follower type than leader type?

There can be more…

Downtime blights council sites

Computing Magazine says : ‘In terms of maintaining availability of web sites, councils are failing miserably,’ ….‘One web site in the study was down for nearly a week.’
Flintshire, Mid Beds and Westminster councils were the worst performers of the 100 sites monitored over a two-month period. Between them they were unavailable for 357 hours.

UK Civil servants struggling with move away from paper

Computing Magazine says : Survey suggests some in Whitehall have problems getting used to the electronic age

Nearly half of civil servants have admitted sending out wrong documentation, while some government departments still rely on paper rather than electronic documents, according to new research.

‘It is increasingly important for public sector bodies to have clear guidelines on how to manage information that is circulating inside and outside companies in order to achieve the twin objectives of meeting compliance regulations and organisational efficiency. Organisations must assess how information is stored, how it can be accessed, what electronic transactions are legally binding and above all, the appropriate enabling information management systems to control information flow.’

Online Royal Mail Postage : Where is time saving?

BBC story : “You would have heard about Royal Mail online postage service .

Customers pay for postage by credit card over the internet for first-class, second-class, recorded, special and international deliveries.
Each item of mail is given a barcode, printed off at home, and regular mail can then be posted in a post box.

But recorded and special delivery items must still be taken to a Post Office.”

So you will only save time if you are sending ordinary posts. I think the system still far from mass usage (read corporate, also primarily small business) unless there are ways to avoid going to post office even for recorded and special delivery items.

Leadership lessons from Bosch’s “CEO”

Franz Fehrenbach : Bosch’s “CEO” in this FT(subscription) article talks about Leadership lessons :

In a team you don’t always need to be the best but you need to bring the best out of them team!!

It is extremely imporatant that you have experienced foreign cultures!

The world is so complex that it is only through teamwork that you can be successful. it’s a team, yes, but a team with a head and clearly defined responsibilities.

The State Of The Indian Internet Market

ContentSutra has a report on “The State Of The Indian Internet Market”. Some revelations

**India has approx. 45mn Internet users; only around 10mn are power users (for research and ecommerce)
**Lack of credit card penetration hampers growth, but alternate modes of payment are emerging.
**Non-standardized ecommerce products will take time to gain traction

Smaller companies in the UK’s Yorkshire and Humber do not use a computer!!

Ft.com (subscription) : Almost a third of smaller companies in the UK’s Yorkshire and Humber region admit that they do not use a computer. Half say that they do not have broadband and more than a third have yet to connect to the internet.

I think this is startling revelation of a great market not getting looked after. In my previous job, my employer was based in Leeds and I always used to think Yorkshire must have lot of software services providers.

The article also says : The lack of an in-house expert to manage IT, and the fear of becoming dependent on one person or one external supplier or consultant for IT expertise is also a deterrent.

I think this is a classic case of web2.0 widget based solutions like WordPress, TextPattern, TypePad, and others can create solutions which are driven by community and there is non fear of getting trapped. However from an economics point of view, only small service providers will try to be in this market due to less revenue proposition but I bet this is a market a startup IT service provider must look into.

Roger Kondrat’s Web2.0 Event

I was invited to Roger’s web2.0 event, it was a superb event. Here are my comments about the event…

I met lot of young entrepreneurs and felt worth of mentioning them for my audience here. Don’t ask me why I am writing now after 2 weeks … I had a manic time with loads of study to catch up and software to develop for our customers.

Here are the people I met and their blogs.

Roger Kondrat – http://prof.rogerkondrat.com
Ewan J. MacLeod – http://www.smstextnews.com
Sumon – http://www.sharpshoot.blogspot.com
Chris – http://www.crowdstorm.com
Chris – http://blog.jobneters.com/
Darren – http://www.darrenstraight.com/blog/
James – http://www.trendcatching.com/

McKinsey interview with Narayana Murthy

The Quarterly: But the boom in offshoring has also inspired US-based services companies such as Accenture to open up operations in India—essentially to compete with you on your own terms in your own backyard. What will this mean for Infosys?

Narayana Murthy: I think we’re well positioned against the big multinational IT services companies, such as Accenture, IBM Global Services, and EDS. Their customers now have a greater awareness that Indian companies can offer very high-quality application-development and IT-consulting services at much lower cost.

But their coming here doesn’t change the basic economic difference between their businesses and ours. Typically, in the application-development work we would do for an average client, about 70 percent of the effort is done in India or another cost-competitive country. Our general and administrative expenses are centered primarily in India and are about 7.5 percent of revenues today. By contrast, the US companies that are our competitors, despite a strong presence in a country like India, by and large have the majority of their workforce in the United States or in the local market. It is not easy to let go of that workforce. So the economics differ.

Also, it’s not easy for the multinationals to create a workforce equal to ours in a country like India. The multinationals have to compete here for the talent and then train the people. There are many processes that have to be built up over a period of time to do that effectively. And of course, just having talented employees trained to deliver services is not enough.

It’s not just a question of renting a building and hiring a few people and then saying to customers, “The shop is open.

Advantage of Job Board

There are plenty of job boards taking shape like TechCrunch’s CrunchBorad, and 37signals and India’s own JobMilan.com. Will these Job Board survive in the face of big competition from The Monster 🙂 I think Monster is a big player having all the muscle to compete on a larger scale and also they are working on a volume based market segment whereas job boards are primarily niche market segment like publishing jobs which are very much technology professionals, key positions, startup jobs, etc. Therefore job board and the job portal(monster and all) are for different market segments.

What are the advantages :-

When a company puts job advertisement, the same gets hidden inside big ocean but if use job board it is going to be live for many days and visible to million of visitors.

Some job board also have blogging features enabled (like in http://www.JobMilan.com)which allows community participation, there is a disadvantage to wrong publicity but if managed well community can guide career opportunity seeker to the employer.

Job Boards are on top edge of the technology, so as technology introduce new ways, Job Boards will be the first to pick it up and provide that leading advantage.

Some Job Board give facility like subscribing to certain type of jobs through feed readers, for example “send me all java jobs” or “send me all start up jobs”, these create a community of follower of the job board and creates cross referral of the jobs.
Any other advantage ? kindly suggest.

Software is heading towards Automation? So soon?

My company Adipt’s  chief technologist had pointed us to a new Java framework, Cognition framework

He has written in company blog

Congintion framework tool generates quite good amount of code and a nice web page without a single line of code!! Amazing guys, this is perfectly way towards automaiton, machine is bound to take over we human programmers  We will be still masters (designer and architect) but nitty-gritty code/development/programming will be trivial. Atleast that’s what I felt after seeing the demo.

Web 2.0 : Industry Life Cycle

Web2.0 is the latest driving force for new innovation in the web, every day we see many new social media, products, solutions claiming to be web 2.0!! What is web2.0, who are the true web 2.0, can web 2.0 sustain longer “Industry life cycle”, what are the lessons thet we can learn and apply to build a successful web 2.0 product solution. This article explores the above questions in the following section.

Web 2.0 : As Wikipedia defines : Web2.0 is the second generation of internet based services that let people collaborate and share information online in a new way – such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools and folksonomies.

Some of the web2.0 principles :

• Web as platform, reach out to the entire web not just the center.
• Harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain.
• Data is the next Intel inside.
• End of Software release cycle, i.e. Operations must become a core competency and Users must be treated as co-developers, in a reflection of open source development practices.
• Lightweight programming models to build loosely coupled systems and allow syndication.
• Software above the level of a single device i.e. not limited to any specific platform, technology and devices.
• Rich user experience i.e. enabling user to use web as a medium to collaborate, classify and editing,etc.

Core Competencies of Web 2.0 Companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability.
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them.
• Trusting users as co-developers.
• Harnessing collective intelligence.
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service.
• Software above the level of a single device.
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models.

Some of web 2.0 companies:
Google, Flickr, Wikipedia, Yahoo, YouTube …many others

Let’s apply the “Industry Life Cycle” stages to web2.0.

Many of Web2.0 innovations are definitely at the introduction stage.

Technology solutions like small scale CMS or Blogging application like TypePad, WordPress, Drupal, XOOPS and many others are enabling web 2.0 developments. However innovation is at its peak with various tools and technologies being introduced to take web 2.0 to its nth dimension. For instance rich internet application technology like OpenLaszlo,Flex, Google GWT, Ajax, social media are propelling web2.0.

Industry Life Cycle Introduction Stage:
During web1.0, market penetration was difficult because web1.0 companies relied too much on adding functionalities without involving the end user’s preference and participation in evolving a solution. It was built on more hype than substance.User experience was not taken into consideration.Process innovation was rarely part of solution.
With web2.0, the barrier to market entry is lowest!! If we see the success of YouTube or Flickr, they were not backed my multi-million VC fund or mega advertisement to reach to the end user. They followed the classic “allow user to participate and be co-developers of the solution and end user of the service”.
Also developing web2.0 based solution is not expensive because of availability of open source, community support software and evolving solution rather than one mammoth final solution. Web2.0 solution is designed based on principle like any user(IT savvy or not) must able to understand, participate and experience web. This makes web2.0 adaptive yet persuasive.
So are we seeing that the traditional industry life cycle “Introduction stage” principle failing here!!! I think so or the least “Introduction stage” stage has partially merged into Growth stage for basic web2.0 solutions . However if the solution has innovative process, patented ideas, I think the product will have an introduction stage.

If your idea/product has a definitive introduction stage due to innovation/patented ideas, process innovation, key differentiator, you will successfully lay out an entry barrier and continue to introduce persuasive breakthroughs in market place. Google is the leading example.

Let’s explore web2.0 in growth stage, we will take example of YouTube for this.
Growth Stage :
Accelerating market penetration
Standardized product technology
Mass market

YouTube was founded in February, 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.
On July 16, 2006, YouTube announced that 100 million clips are watched on YouTube every day, YouTube is currently one of the fastest-growing websites on the World Wide Web, and is ranked as the 15th most popular website on Alexa, far outpacing even MySpace’s growth.
An article in the New York Post suggested on July 23, 2006 that YouTube may be worth anywhere from $600 million to $1 billion. (References : Wikipedia)

The above snippet on YouTube proves that it has quickly transitioned to Growth stage! The question is whether YouTube’s business model has been designed(or getting designed) to penetrate market not only in Europe or USA but also extend to other parts of the world. The threat to YouTube is while it’s expanding, there are copy-cat solutions from competitors!! However as web2.0 philosophy says : Harnessing collective intelligence, turning the web into a kind of global brain, if YouTube continues to innovate and expand the community to other continents, I think it will have advantage over copy-cat solutions and will lead the market growth.
But wait! Don’t you think web2.0 also allows other copy-cat solution to create solution and penetrate market at the same speed as YouTube! It does, as we saw introduction stage has become almost negligible due to least cost to develop (due to open source software) and less entry barrier.
So welcome to world of doom unless your web2.0 solution have substantial business model to innovate, generate and continue be the market leader.

Don’t copy cat solution unless you have a business model. What is important for web2.0 is continuation of market penetration and quick expansion of solution to other parts of the world. Because unless your solution has that “innovative” angle, you will see many copy-cat solutions in record time.

Maturity stage and Decline stage, I can think Friendster http://www.friendster.com/ which was replaced by the arrival of MySpace.(Friendster still making ways back)
Factors like knowledgeable customers, quest for technological improvements and lack of community participation nature made Friendster decline. Does this answer to the critical question we often see in Web 2.0 communities…how long before some bubble burst?
I think we are seeing high innovation and introduction of products in web, however not all of them have business plans or uniqueness which can’t be duplicated, therefore only those will remain successful who keep introducing leading advantages through technology, process, product differentiation and driving the future.

This is an attempt to apply traditional industry life cycle to web2.0 and analyse the pattern for introducing robust web2.0 solutions in market place and also continue to lead the market.
Any thoughts, kindly share.

References :
Contemporary Strategy Analysis by Robert M Gran
Strategic Alliances – HBR
O’Reilly
Wikipedia
http://www.danah.org/papers/FriendsterMySpaceEssay.html

Another weblog

This is my 1, 2,3,4…I think 5th blog 🙂 I have been writing in blogspot,few wordpress but nothing personal yet. Therefore I thought to create a “very personal” and “professional” blog where I can write independently and can write about any topic that I feel about.

Welcome to my blog.