Thought Garage

There was so much pressure on Indian IT Services firms for a long time to enter product space and they refused and insisted that Services is the key. After all, their strength and  innovation is in creating market driven and efficient service delivery models.  They not only succeeded with flying colors in delivering services, they influenced the entire world to turn to services. So in more than one way, there were right on about services.  Some key milestones that indicate the strong inclination towards services just the way Indian IT Services headed all along: IBM once synonymous with PC sells its iconic PC Business and rebrand itself as IT services (or emphatically Smart Solutions for the planet) HP buys EDS and says it is critical to enter Services business as profits drop in all other directions. Dell buys Perot Systems, seen as following HP. Xerox , the iconic innovator buys Affiliated Computer Services, citing exactly the same reason of survi...

  “Reinvention and Wipro go hand-in-hand ..” – Wipro.com The story of Wipro looks like a fairy tale in many aspects. Think about a vegetable oil refining company (started in 1945) that re-invents itself as one of the world’s best IT services firm. It has been a long way and Wipro continue to amaze me in more than one aspect. Its integrity at first and its no drama, straight forward business acumen. (unlike other celebrities across the street that were never able to walk their talk). Though I left Wipro a while back, I continue to follow it. Here are some new developments that kind of surprised me a bit. New Front Page Online If you look at the new Wipro.com website, one may mistake Wipro for a brand new startup that is trying to define its identity. Though the company is little older than the Independent India itself, in a way, Wipro appears to be doing the same. Home page with a full blown illustration that projects Wipro as the agent that changes the new world o...

Google Chrome’s Telugu rendering was awful when it was first released and until a few days ago. The latest version of Google Chrome now renders Telugu fonts quite better (still inferior in crispness to Apple Safari). Try it out and see for yourself.

Vonage started offering Unlimited Calls to India under its $24.99/m existing plan. It includes both landlines and cell phones. If you are already a Vonage subscriber, make sure you have Vonage World plan to get this great deal. If you are not a Vonage subscriber already, think about it. For $24.99 you get unlimited calling to India (and about 60 countries) and have a landline number to make unlimited calls within US. Two Months FREE Get TWO MONTHS FREE if you signup by clicking on the image below. If you pay whole one year upfront, you may get an additional 20% off.   Click here to get the TWO MONTHS FREE offer.

I thought Memory prices have gone down significantly in the recent years and adding up a 4GB RAM should cost you below $200. But on Apple Mac Book pro, adding a 4GB RAM costs an additional $1000. Is it just because of Apple? or prices are really that dear?

Some analysts argue that 'Cloud Computing' is only for small businesses, ISVs and web startups where there is a need to start low (and cheap) and scale later. The underlying assumption behind the argument is that, in enterprises (read as large businesses), demand is quite predictable and doesn't change so often. Well, that is not quite true. While number of Employees in the organization may not change so often, their usage patterns are much like any web application startup. For instance, take an enterprise with 10,000 employees. The enterprise IT department has developed an intranet web application for Performance Reviews. The web application will be accessed by Employees and Managers at the beginning of the year to set Goals. And will be accessed in December to appraise performance with respect to the set goals. The application will also be accessed sparingly by employees and managers through out the year to make necessary status updates, follow ups on action plans etc...

We are almost in the middle of September, yet H1B cap for year 2010 is still at 45000. That means, companies can still file for H1B petitions, if needed. As of August 28, 2009 , approximately 45,100 H-1B cap-subject petitions and approximately 20,000 petitions qualifying for the advanced degree cap exemption had been filed. USCIS will continue to accept both cap-subject petitions and advanced degree petitions until a sufficient number of H-1B petitions have been received to reach the statutory limits, taking into account the fact that some of these petitions may be denied, revoked, or withdrawn. - USCIS Website I mentioned (before the season started) that I would be surprised if the Quota limits are reached at all, while some are discussing the chances for a lottery again. This reflects the job market more or less and restrictions imposed on certain firms in hiring H1Bs.

Front page of ‘The Times of India’ Bombay on the day India became free, the 15th August 1947.

"One surprise I discovered during the process was that IE8 includes a Cross Site Scripting filter which effectively blocked this attack. I'm very impressed with the effort that Microsoft's taken to mitigate one of the most common web application security issues. Every other browser vendor needs to add this functionality yesterday." http://brian.mastenbrook.net/display/36

Today’s discussion was on one of the most abstract concepts, ethics. It is rather difficult to take sides, as whatever you say could be right and wrong at the same time, as there is no clear definition as such that defines an ethical behavior and lots of space for subjective interpretation. The discussion started some where but centered on Ethics and one question. Company A makes special heart valves that save lives of heart patients and are sold at say $100 a unit. The company is making 90% of profit on each sale. The key question was ‘knowing that if the company could reduce its profit margin to say 20%, it could save more lives, is it ethical for the business to make 90% profits?” Most seem to think it is unethical to squeeze 90% profits and it would be ethical if company reduce its profits to some lesser value. My understanding is that, it is ethical to keep whatever profit you want in your business. But it could be much more humanitarian to give away some of those profits to...

It always intrigues me that traditionally in India (and in fact most of the world) we try to remember and talk only about the better half of a person once the person is gone, while we always spend talking about the other half when the person is in front of us. And often talk behind a person. Why can’t we treat a person as the person really is, no matter in front of that person or behind or once passed away. Can a really bad person becomes a lot better person just by death? I believe, you show your true respects by treating a person by the true nature always , as you perceive. Its lot more important to express those feelings when the person is in front of us. Good or bad, is relative and fleeting. Anyways, the EENADU news paper that has always (most times) criticized quite vehemently has an eulogy that is worth noting. Here it is.

As per latest News reports, a helicopter carrying Andhra Pradesh CM YS Raja Sekhar Reddy went missing without any communication for about  9 hours now. Suspected mechanical failure with Helicopter. Update : News reports now confirm that YSR along with 4 others died in the helicopter accident.

I work in a company where we develop software for Wireless carriers and all our software is expected to provide service availability at 99.999% (Five Nines). That means just about 5  minutes outage for an entire year. And its really a big deal if that target is missed (and result in hefty penalties). And as consumers of a telephone service or a cell phone we expect that cell phone works all the time. You never know when we need it. On the web though its a different story. For many services we are quite fine with outages now and then. Unless you are a business consumer and your business depends on having an internet portal up and running all the time ( like Dell.com or Amazon.com), an outage normally doesn’t affect anything. We regularly see ‘Maintenance or Scheduled Outage’ Notifications on most web applications and we thank them for the notice. As per Gmail’s official blog , Gmail service availability is at 99.9%, which means about one and half a minute per day outage or about...