digital-post

A Birdie Eye View

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:23:59 PST

There are four Golf Courses in Gurgaon, more than 600 acres of Greens. This may not be a topic of discussion for majority of residents but I wish to draw your attention to this rather neglected sport. Golfing in India shot into prominence since 1970 when Government of India officially banned hunting. Many a hunters switched to Golfing as a respectful substitute that involved aiming, shooting and collecting trophies.

Haryana Government’s annual spent on sports was less than $1 M in 2008 but they produced 1.5 medalists in the Beijing Olympics. Wrestling champion Sushil Kumar lives not just across the street in Delhi but he gets all his provisions except water from Haryana. Second only to Kenya, Haryana has most efficient utilization of public funds in sports. In contrast when we consider golf, with its massive investment in golf infrastructure, the sport has not lived up to the high standards set by the state. Miffed at these findings the State Government of Haryana levied 25% entertainment tax on golf. News like this should have led to international protest at World Economic Forum but not as much as a formal letter from IGF to reconsider the decision was sent to India.

Many of the sponsors of the golf, I have spoken to are deeply disturbed by the turn of events for golf in fiscal year 2009-10. Golf was worst hit by Global Recession, stated here merely as a fact and not to gain readers’ sympathy. Right when things had started to look up on the economy side, golfing world was struck by yet another tragedy caused by one of its greatest ambassador. Now try explaining to your CFO that golf is a sport and not entertainment! Two audit firms appointed by corporate finance and commissioner of tax have independently recommended not granting sports status to Golf until it gets included in 2016 Olympics. A traditional marketing approach to such temporary setbacks is to initiate Golf Appreciation Academy for Finance Professionals/Future CFO’s/Accounting Firms and hope for the best. In hard times hope has diminishing conviction.

There is no time to grief, extraordinary times call for radical approaches. For the very first time in the golfing history certain sales executives were hired to boost the golf membership numbers. Combo offers of golf with Kitty Parties, Yoga and Nature Walk were presented to prospective clients. Major credit cards offered golf to their exclusive Platinum membership with flimsy entry criterion. If this was to continue unabated there will soon be golf deals at retail store near you! Purely from a marketing and branding perspective one may not agree with the Sales approach, but it is hard to ignore the effectiveness of these programs. There are many unbelievable stories in golfing circles romanticizing the sport; most famous one of course was the hole-in-one offer from BMW.

I am sure you are still wondering what it has got to do with you. Your loyalty to Cricket is not up for sale. The only sporting activity to your credit is the automatic morning jogger. You may not be a Golf aficionado but you belong to an aspiration generation caught in the juggernaut of India growth story. Your ability to scale Gurgaon’s shining buildings is unmatched. The glass ceiling that one hits on their way up can easily be overcome by golf. As you stand alone contemplating in your corner office, the only sport that reciprocates back with same loneliness is Golf. You don’t choose golf, Golf chooses you!

Picture Credit

It is never too late to learn Golf as long as you have the right wardrobe to go with it. Jeans are forbidden and round neck t-shirts can cause a mini riot at the course. If you try to smuggle a golfing-set bought at Father’s Day sale from Hong Kong chances are that you will barred from at least 3 Golf Courses in Gurgaon. Though I get no commission in promoting these brands but you cannot go wrong with Callaway, Ping or TaylorMade. The object of the game is to whack a tiny ball and have fun finding it on the course; eventually the ball gets exhausted and runs down the nearest hole. To the beginners golf may appear to be a game of chance however with some practice at calculating weighted averages a handicap is assigned by the authorities. Handicap allows beginners to mingle with scratch golfers without loss of self-esteem. If the Olympics committee adopts golf handicap system for other sports the medals tally will be reflective of Population, GDP and Bilateral Trade. USA could get out of its massive budget deficit simply by allowing other countries to square it off with some medals in return.

When God created humans he deliberately hid a perfect golf swing in the body. The purpose of every golfer is to search for that perfect swing. There are so many external factors to enhance the swing like the number of dimples on the ball, the size of the iron, direction of the wind, the dew on the grass, etc. but if the swing is too shy to come out, it can ruin a perfect weekend. Golf is a discussion game, give a golf club to a recluse and he will be a gregarious chirping bird. It is for this property Golf is effectively used by business to negotiate difficult deals. I could suggest to Times of India to include Golf in season 2 of Aman ki Aasha, it may just turn out to be better a diplomacy tool than Sufi Music.

Driving Advisory for new drivers in NCR

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:51:03 PST

Driving in Delhi or National Capital Region (NCR) to be precise is not for the faint hearted. The roads here follow different rules and folks who have been living here for centuries can claim some degree of complacency while driving. As for migratory workers from Bengaluru, driving car with “KA” registration number, it is like putting out a vacation update on the Facebook! It is very unlikely to be taken seriously if you were to give a polite indicator to merge in the left lane traffic.

Car registration numbers have undocumented hierarchy on the Delhi roads. At the top of the list are the Yellow Cabbies, the more dilapidated the condition of the taxi, higher is the right-of-way. Cabbies are followed by Car with “UP” registration numbers. These cars belong to folks living in Noida & Greater Noida where law & order is yet to catch up with the fast pace of NCR economy. It is better to allow these vehicles quick passage to their domicile state where they are much better equipped to deal with irregularities in traffic. The cars bearing DL (Delhi) or HR (Haryana) registration number have right-of-way in their own states as nature would have ordained. The rest of the cars follow hierarchy rules depending on the distance from Delhi and language spoken in that state. Punjab is farther from Rajasthan but commands higher right-of-way, purely on language bias. A Marwari car driver from Bikaner is unlikely to win the war of wits with a Punjabi driver from Amritsar.

Folks in Bengaluru having grown on Subroto Bagchi pleas to Kiss the World must be appreciative of Delhi car owners who have fully imbibed the lessons and there is no car left unkissed. This usually happens when the rules of hierarchy are broken in public. If a car has been hit at the rear one can refer this as an unsolicited advance and demand for explanation. The outcome of the discussion will depend on four possible states.

Car in the rear, clearly at fault	Car in the front victimized	Possible outcome
Driver A	Driver B	Kiss and make-up
Driver A	Owner B	Owner B launches a physical assault on Driver A; Owner A sometimes joins Owner B making it difficult to tell what really happened.
Owner A	Driver B	Owner A can detain Driver B until Owner B agrees to pay for damages.
Owner A	Owner B	An all out verbal war breaks out and traffic comes to standstill. A policeman from the nearby junction is called to dispense justice. The guys merely swearing cannot be booked as no law has been violated; the Policeman waits for one of them to get physical. The guy who hits first is booked under IPC section 106.

The moral of the story is that all drivers are assumed to be at fault. This is where Delhi differs with Subroto Bagchi. Now kids in Bengaluru may be respectfully waiting for Respected Ramesh Anna to make his next move on busy Yalahanka junction on their way to “Aditi International School”. They have so much to learn from their Gurgaon classmates as Mr Chander Singhji Rohtakwale at the wheels throws 3-people-on-motorcycle off the Sohna Road on their way to “Pathway School”. No amount of respect for Mr Chander Singhji will help him to skip the hangover drink on Monday morning.

One cannot blame the drivers all the time. The owners set unachievable objectives for their drivers. I know of people who hire driver to save 15 minutes of travel time on a normal 45 minutes journey. The drivers know this game quite well to accept these seemingly unreasonable terms of employment. On any given day the owner to driver ratio on Delhi roads is 3:1, and a good driver knows how to play with the owner’s psychology. Owners love their cars and readily make way for the honking maniacs following them. The driver also knows that for every suggestion of his owner to drive slowly or honk less will allow him 5 minutes margin of delay.

There are some people who have migrated to Delhi after spending good part of their life in Mumbai. The problem with Mumbaikars is that they drive in lanes. Though most of the free thinking Mumbaikars are not ready to debate on the subject; the standoff between North Indians and Marathi Manus is direct fallout of new school of drivers from North India not abiding the Lane Driving principles in Amchi Mumbai. A person from Mumbai draws an imaginary straight line from his home to destination and will not take any deviation unless obligated by law. This is a serious problem in Delhi, where every third person is an expert in the Fence Driving technique. Fence driving is a condition caused by driving in two lanes at once, this apparently gives the driver advantage to choose a lane that progress faster but it causes deep anguish to the following drivers. Though I do not want to sound like a Male Chauvinist whatever but women have mastered the art of Fence Driving. Whenever they a see a lane on the road, they are urged to pass it exactly through the middle of the car. Delhi Police is considering doing away with Lane Marks on roads to assist ladies to drive in lanes. There is another theory suggested by my friend on Fence Driving and Fairer Sex, lane driving makes ladies uncomfortable as they get in line of sight of people looking down on them through the rear mirrors. By driving in the middle of lanes they can avoid rear view ogles. I would suggest that Delhi Police must request IIT Delhi to study this problem in further details before taking any measures.

There are places in Delhi where it is not advisable to go by your own car and one must seriously consider commuting by public transport or rent a cab. Most of the next gen kids look up on Google Map and conclude that taking Bahardur Shah Zafar Road is the best way to reach Chandni Chowk. Things start to fall apart at one approach Tilak Bridge, if one does make it to BSZ Road the theory goes that one in every ten car does not make it to the other side of this slow moving road. I would like to add Cantonment Area to the list of caution purely from a disciplinary purpose. Cantonment Area is home to the Indian Armed forces and when it comes to subject of following discipline in public life there is an invisible but palpable conflict with the civilian society. Some of the NCERT schools in past used to make claims on discipline but thanks to reforms kicking-in the last bastion of discipline rests with Armed Forces of India. One can tell as we approach the Cantonment Area by the frequency and size of the speed breakers. All junctions are manned by uniformed men; there is hushed silence in Cars and Buses as the traffic goes past the Cantonment Area in an orderly manner.

The last piece of advice is on developing watchful ability to track your fellow drivers for taking on the mobile revolution a bit too far. When a driver answers a phone call the car slows down to crawling speed. But if the car swirls, this could only be due to driver attempting to send SMSes. It is best to get out of the way and keep safe driving distance in such events.
I hope these notes were useful in your endeavors to enjoy driving in Delhi. My suggestion is that you take your chariot out this weekend and like Vir Abhimanyu drive into the British designed Chakra Vyuh called Connaught Place. You can only tell if you come out unbeaten that you are true son of soil and let your family be the witness of your bravery. God bless and drive safe!

First KPO Job Survival Guide

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:34:18 PST

All you remember is that you were in Delhi to attend cousin’s wedding and some well-wisher persuaded you to attend a walk-in interview. In the interview you nodded affirmative to seemingly benign questions on flexibility. There you have it, an offer from ITES Company in the fast growing BFSI sector. Trouble with most of the freshers’ is that they are not really up-to-date on corporate buzz words. It is never too late to learn but first a short congratulatory note from the author on landing in first job.

Flexible Timing – graveyard shift as they say it on the Radio.
Relocation – plan to shift the office to nearby SEZ where the state government is extending 10 years tax holiday
Open communication – boss speak
Open door policy – disguised observatory deck to measure gossip level on the shop floor.
Calendar – an entity that defines precise space-time coordinates of working class against the wishes of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
IT Policy – no you cannot change proxy server settings to access internet.
Ergonomics – the art of preventing injury caused by office equipment.
Induction Training – stage show conducted by fumbling professionals accompanied by reluctant props like projector, wireless mic and power point presentations.
Helpdesk – Someone who closes your ticket within 24 hours without solving the underlying issue. You need to understand their SLA before you know your KPI’s.

At first things would appear to go smooth; it is only in the third month of your captization you are struck by an acute sense of anxiety. You were able to cope with problems like not having proper assignment, a permanent boss, a personal bank account, a proper desk etc. etc. however it was the news that your mentor has resigned was straw that broke the camel's back. You have tons of personal issues (like upcoming sister’s wedding, landlord issues, medical report suggesting swollen gall bladder and transportation.) Did I mention the trouble you were having clearing the online diction test? What is coming in the way of an imminent exit is your consent to work the graveyard shift.

Everything can wait, take that one week unpaid leave to attend sister’s wedding. There are pleasant surprises waiting here

Your mother has been preserving three months salary checks diverted by your office.
The glances you receive in return of your lecherous ogle towards neighborhood girls have significantly mellowed down in despise.
Your cousins seem to be paying extra attention to your choice of accessories which as per their assessment is the only hurdle in getting employment.
Your dad is so proud of you; all the second grades in school have been upgraded to first division and the money you wasted on internet café’s are said to be instrumental in molding you into a techno-financial wizard.

Your decision to not pursue Chartered Accountancy is hailed. The choice of joining IIPM’s Executive Program decreed by eminent SRK turns everyone so green that you could claim carbon credits. You return with a renewed vow to embrace your job with the sincerity it deserves.

The landlord problem in Gurgaon is perhaps the most difficult one to overcome. Most of them, landlords, prefer to keep “ladies” tenant. The vulnerability premium is just one factor, consider this, ladies follow 10 pm curfew rule, switch off lights/fans before leaving for work, don’t invite guests at odd hours and the neighbors seldom complain about them. What is worth trying out is to get a separate visiting card with your caste, gotra, eating/drinking preferences, number of brothers/sisters, link to online matrimonial advertisement and other personal details. Having a good conduct certificate will come in handy in finalizing apartment or paying guest situation. Do make sure that you are within walking distance of your pickup van route. For every 250 meters extra distance you double your laundry bill and for anything above 1 km you run the risk of missing morning meetings at least 14 days in a month. What you save in rentals is made up by losses in annual incentives.

You must consider buying a smartphone with GPRS connection. I am not saying this out of love for Telecom. This will be your only contact with the outside world for next few years. Don’t buy the one with touch screen, somehow the airborne particles in Gurgaon don’t agree with the sensitive logic of touch screens. Your phone makes a personality statement about who you really are. The multi-level caller-tone settings, ringback tone, the wallpaper, the Bluetooth earplug, your dreams, your hopes, are all bundled in this device. Remember, unable to express ones aspiration is most common failure in job.

Alignment of personal objectives to that of company is worth considering during first few years. Most of the corporations are run around vision, mission and values statements. It is easier to follow the system then to challenge it. The first step towards alignment is to get written down objectives from your manager. It is up to you, it can be a short 5 minutes discussion with supervisor if the vision and mission is clear. It could lengthy two hours negotiation if we do deep dive into the value statement, where your manager plays important role in getting the best out of you.

Photo Credit
The confusion in our industry occurs due to minor misunderstanding between the terms “client” and “customer”. Client is your customer’s customer. Mr Client in question was responsible for increasing cost of operations for the Mr Customer. That is where we step-in. By disposing off client’s request with utmost efficiency and professional courtesy we create win-win situation for everyone. NASSCOM is currently working on finding corroborative evidence to prove that countries that outsourced work to India have improved happiness index?

Taking pride in one’s daily work makes world a better place.

After Rolling Credits, Bhuvan wants Lagaan

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:31:07 PST

Photo Credit: Aamir Khan's Production

Just a few days back the “Three Idiots” team were fighting an industry outsider for making public outcry on story credits. Not a single writer or lyricist from the fraternity spoke in support of Chetan Bhagat. The latest row between Javed Akhtar and Aamir Khan can be best described as “you reap what you sow”. Indian film industry is ruled by big banners and larger than life film stars. Most of the film stars have their own production banners. This system ensures that almost 95% of revenue from the films is retained within a small group of contributors. The rest of the gang is treated on pay per use basis. Over the last few years corporate money has started coming to films. If there are adequate copyright laws that allow creative worker like directors, writers, lyricists to retain royalty, it will be game changing. This is making the big banners baulk. What is most surprising is that many of the producers were at some point in time on the receiving end of the same unjust practice.

It is hard for common man to understand the Copyright Laws, the First Sale Doctrine, the Moral Rights. Are there laws pertaining to inspiration, adaptation and translation from other works of arts? When does one cross the boundaries of artistic freedom? In most cases it boils down to cost of litigation versus what one can get out of position of advantage. Consider the following cases -

· Is it legal for you to borrow music CD and copy it for personal use? This may appear to be quite straight forward case of infringement, try explaining this to your 13 years old daughter who just traded music CDs in return of her Archie’s comic collection.

· Is if ok to play copyright music at a school concert? What if the school is charging a small fee from parents to participate in the annual event? Is it ok for a music teacher to charge fee to teach copyright music?

· What approvals/permissions are needed to throw a dance party at a private club? Who is liable for possible violation of copyright; the DJ who brings in collection of latest music or the organizer of the party? Are party mix songs violations of copyrights or improvisation of the original?

· How do we establish that the movie rental shop in our neighborhood has permission to rent copyright movie titles? Is it ok to copy the rental movie on the home computer for future viewing (assuming legally purchased CD ripping software is pre-loaded on the computer)?

· Can a company or organization take cable or satellite connection and connect it to the TV in cafeteria or any public place for that matter (airports, malls, institutes etc.)? Is a shopkeeper permitted to connect multiple TV’s to a single output by using repeaters without the knowledge of broadcaster? Are the window shoppers watching TV liable for infringement?

· Can an author write interpretations of religious inscriptions or public documents and take copyrights on it?

· Do the producers of reality shows, contests of music and dance using copyright music need to take permission from the copyright holder? How do they know in advance what song is the contestant going to choose?

· Can you sell your music or video or books in a second hand sale?

· Can comedians or mimicry artist make parodies of copyright material? Can I edit a copyright picture and use it for my blog? Can this be considered fair use, if I give credit to originals?Professor Lawrence Lessig has been fighting for copyright battle rather alone.

The answers to these questions are country and people specific. Most of us intuitively believe that technology will help protect copyright laws. Conversely, people also believe that whatever is technically possible must be legally correct. If one is to investigate last 20 years of technological trends it suggests otherwise. Technology has made it not only easy to reproduce but also improve the quality of reproduction. Internet has increased the reach of sharing the copyright material across legal boundaries. Another reason why technology investment in copyright protection is not worth the effort is the market trend where the selloff occurs much before the payoff.

In 2006, Steve Jobs jotted down Thoughts on Music article where he concluded that DRM cannot protect music piracy and most of the music companies prefer to distribute music without DRM. Steve made an important observation “No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.” In January 2009 all the songs on iTunes Store available as DRM Free. A classic case of producers opting for selloff instead of investing in DRM. Same is the case in famous Google Books Library project.

We need a robust copyright law that is independent of technological advances and is built on collective conscience of the consumer. The consumer is somehow not willing to digest few billion rupees annual income of film stars and producers. The menace of pirated CD’s is the collective response of the consumer, who somewhere asserts like a Robin Hood by stealing it back. Next is what, should Aamir fight for making audience the part of his creative process?

Inspiration for Middle Managers

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 04:56:38 PST

It is tough to be a middle manager in a large corporation. No, I am not talking about identity crisis in commuting using company provided transportation. This is more personal, it is about your career. Your present job may require you to look nervous in the presence of boss but confident when your customer calls. You must plan your vacation a year in advance but roll-up sleeves for the contingency created by unplanned leave of your fellow beings. Your expertise lies in letting your supervisor believe that he actually fixed the bug just by reading the crashdump report. It is time you take up this session seriously before things get out of hand.

Edison once said “Genius is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration”; trust me he would have rephrased it for the modern times, even the GE Research Lab has increased the Inspiration Quotient to 10%. Your family members vouch for the hard work you have been putting in lately and if it was not for the air conditioner duct opening right above your desk, you will be perspiring like a peeled onion. Perspiration has been commoditized by Indian Middle Managers; it is Inspiration we must cultivate. Allow me to be the torch bearer of moment-of-truth, creator of thought provoking crystallization of ideas and invoker of gentle inspiration.

Module 1: The approach we will be using will that be of self discovery and remediation. The object of this module is to introspect. There is nothing better than reflecting on ones industrious existence in a cross-functional-offsite-meeting and in a flicker of weakness admit to the misery one brings to the very corporation that provides for your next generation. As a good external facilitator it is my humble duty to help put these thoughts coherently in more general terms usually divided in three specific areas of management interest –

1. Communication
a. Your company has too many meetings or too few (both are problem)
b. You provide inputs for the meetings that you never get invited to or worse still you attend meetings where key decision makers are missing.
c. You never get sufficient inputs from upstream or the downstream guys have unrealistic expectations from your team.
2. Teamwork
a. Your colleagues send you reports and presentation as PDF attachment.
b. No one tells you why your role was changed but everyone saw it coming.
c. You only respond to emails to clarify false allegations made by incompetent colleagues who make you look small evident from the fact that they copied your supervisor in an email titled “gentle reminder”.
3. Speed
a. You just learned that your competition is ahead, which was so contrary to what you said in the recent campus recruitment sessions conducted by the same HR who recommended this offsite training.
b. You also learned that your previous company used to deliver more with lesser people (which was the precise reason for your early departure from the torture factory).
c. Social networking sites are slowing down our teams. We got to have an external factor.

What we learned in the first module comes as no surprise to anyone, except you, so please stop taking notes. The discovery process helps you learn why your company sucks in a very detached manner. That way, it is much easier to solve these known problems by the reduction method taught in elementary geometry. Not to mention thousands of management books are dedicated on these very subjects. Imagine if someone in a fury of compassion drills down to specific issues like “developing more people with Java skills” and questioned everyone for wasting company resources listening to some Inspiration Freak. Focus on detachment first, by bringing out trivial Java issues, you are exposing your inabilities to groom people and of course you are leaving out serious organizational problems unattended. You must control your urges. It is good to show camaraderie towards emperor’s new clothing by dressing as one and not by standing out.

You are most likely to make the obvious error of jumping to rectifying the stated problems. Your mind is perhaps clouded. Please take a short email-check-break, we will resume shortly.

Module 2: This module requires you to participate in some outdoor activities. These are specifically designed to make you feel wretched. Impossible tasks designed by experts permanently etch in your memory that you qualify as a backstabbing opportunist. Inspiration leaders do this only to ensure recall value and it is part of their brand building. Some people take these exercises seriously and get hurt. Here is my advice – participate in these tasks in actively disengaged manner, remember, this too will pass.

Module 3: I know you have waited long for the conclusion. You deserve it -

1. There is nothing wrong with your company. It will continue to do great.
2. There is nothing wrong with you. You are just protecting your turf. If the companies were half as magnanimous as they expect you to be, there will be no patent battles.
3. You cannot be nice and ambitious at the same time. Most of the conflict comes from choosing one path but treading on the other.
4. There isn’t enough cash in the world to fulfill all the dreams. The money that there is around comes from very few dreams fulfilled.
5. Courage is very hard to find, it is fear that makes the world work so hard.

Ten Predictions for Twenty10

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 00:42:10 PST

There are many ways to begin a New Year. Most people do it with resolutions however many of us are usually nursing broken resolutions by January end. According to me there is no better way to start the New Year than by Publishing Predictions. It sounds lot more intelligent. Resolutions are for those who want to correct the mistakes of past but prediction are for giving ourselves room for making new mistakes. Predicting anything outside professional area will surely be dumped as blasphemy, hence I have confined my predictions to Telecom and Internet.

Five Telecom & Internet Predictions of 2010 for the Global Market

1. The year of the gizmos: 2009 saw launch of hundreds of gadgets, it must come as no real surprise to you that 2010 will be the “year of gizmos”! New players will jump into the fray but this will not start a price war. The reason being that competing device manufactures are dependent on less competing component makers. The savings from cheaper data access by Service Providers will get spent in subsidizing new gadgets. Telco’s are not complaining gizmos are certainly better than selling dongles.

2. The cloud gets an address: The persistent resistance from enterprise to use cloud based applications, will result in apps providers to collaborate with IT Giants. The 2010 will see the emergence of smarter application services making enterprise work as internet islands. This is good news for IBM, HP, Oracle…

3. Data plans will get smarter: Telco’s will move towards efficient management of point-to-multipoint traffic delivery using crowd-sourcing analytics. The data plans with accelerated downloads (as opposed HSI) will be discounted to create differential value for uploads, sharing and collaboration. Opportunity for smart rating and charging systems based on intelligence from DPI.

4. Talk back to your Avatar: Did you forget to fertilize your farm today or maybe your virtual pet is suffering from attention deficiency? Internet is not everywhere. Is Zynga listening to your needs? Social Games will tie up with micro-blogging platform or bulk-sms providers (short-code) to allow users to talkback to the virtual world.

5. Search with a Purpose: Search engines will upgrade from “Context” to “Purpose” for better user experience. The search will get smarter and use location intelligence too. Unsolicited push-based search service is lurking round the corner.

Five Telecom & Internet Predictions of 2010 for the Indian Market

6. 3G License: The 3g frequencies have been struggling to make its way from Sanchar Bhavan files to the 3 sectored antennas. 3G promises to bring work instructions (read email) on the go. 3G also allows friendly social networking connections to poke us during working meetings. Wonder how revenue from all these services will add up to pay for whooping 35,000 crores ($ 7B) of license fees.

7. Work from Home: We have learned the way of outsourcing work thousands of miles away from the country of its origin however we have not found a suitable model of moving the work 20 miles away from office to the employees home. Telecom and IT companies have opportunity to unleash plethora of offerings to make it easy for enterprises to keep people off the road.

8. Web to the rescue of consumers: We have one voice/data plan for country; we have one price for coke, why do we have to pay more for veggies and fruits in big cities? What is needed is allowing farmer to decide the MRP and building the supply chain around MRP? Web based Cooperative Society Application (on the lines of AMUL) can revolutionize the Agri products. Cloud computing champions listening?

9. Number Portability: No one needs it. Tell me honestly if you remember more than 2 phone numbers and if you really believe that your mobile number is your identity. The hassle of going thru’ MNP procedure isn’t worth it. The dual SIM phone is a better option than the overheads of MNP. 2010 will see premature death of MNP.

10. Value Aggregation Services: The battle for value added services will move from innovation to sustenance. The effort spent by operators to be the first one to launch the next big innovative, differential and killer application has only resulted in increasing their sustenance cost, interoperability issues and increased customer care needs. Operators will inch closer to outsourcing low yield value added services to value aggregation service provider.

Will the real parents of 3 Idiots, please stand up?

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 10:49:08 PST

Consider this, Rudyard Kipling wrote "The Jungle Book" which was adapted by Disney's to make an animation film. The film had a completely different storyline from the original work of the novel, but Disney's give the story credit to Kipling along with the screenplay writers. Disney's understand the importance of creative work and sensitivities involved. Closer to home we have a raging controversy over story rights of "3 Idiots". Well I have not seen the movie nor have read the novel, hence am fully qualified to give completely independent views on this matter of grave national interest, with an objective to put an end to the controversy. Most of the bloggers and media persons have twisted the controversy to be that of "success has many fathers", but the underlying issue is quite different.

Writing a screenplay is not a kid's play. The reason why people watch movie many times but read the novel only once defines the importance of the screenplay writers magic. The movies are watched by much larger audience than the novels. Often screenplay writers have to work very hard even though the basic story idea is handed over to them. The medium of expression is different and its demands are daunting. Screenplay writers are like foster parents as against the novelist who is the biological parent.

We Indians have natural tendency to side with the foster parents. This is becoming too subjective a matter for people with scientific bend of mind to take it anymore. Remember the debating session in your school where you were asked to argue "who was Krishna's mother Devaki or Yasoda?" and lengthy references to "Surdas ke pad" to prove the point. Invariably Yasoda-team won the debate and the Devaki-team-members were destined to become obscure blog writers in future lives. The law is lopsided too and will perhaps side with the biological parents. The fact that Mr Vidhu Vinod Chopra had to buy the rights of the novel is sufficient evidence to prove who "original" creator of the story is? Mr Chetan Bhagat wins, QED.

In spite of hard evidence the creators of "3 Idiots" were convinced that they created something new and original to claim the rights. This cannot be a subjective screenplay writer's decision alone. We need better tools to nail this down. I am currently working on "Story Genome Mapping Sequencer" project. Scientific evidence will be based on AmpFLM (Amplified Frame Length Metaphorism) technique commonly used for parental testing. In future, my lab will provide legal assistance to worthy foster parents to retain rights of their adaptations, without having to wrestle doubting thomas (read: media) in full public view.

Google @ War

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:35:38 PST

Year 2009 has been a soul searching year for Google. Google with its business innovation and policy of not charging the common man for either software product or services has been a major sour point for many technology, media and content companies. Following companies have come out in open and criticized Google.

• ATT and Google fighting it out in FCC over Net Neutrality and Free Google Voice.
• Microsoft – Teamed with Yahoo on consolidating the search engine market with its Bing offering has been making lot of news.
• Apple – Declined to onboard Google Voice triggered the dormant conflict of interest out in open. Mutual admirers and technology partners become warring enemies.
• News Corp surprised everyone by blaming Google for the fall of print media. Free Content is at the core of conflict. A partner of the yore is now ready to delist all Fox sites.
• Nokia/Symbian – Symbian criticizes Android for not being open. Not to mention that Microsoft holds similar views about Android.

Recent announcement of Google entering the handset market has confused its Android Partners. While there are others who are still trying to figure out if Android will have a competing cousin ChromeOS?

The Google Wave is still to make any splash as most of the Gmail and Gtalk Users haven’t found a compelling reason to migrate. Wave is perhaps threatened by its own predecessor’s success.

The best way to summarize Google’s strategy is that there are far too many decision makers who are testing the market with easy access to cash. Subsidizing software services with a single source of revenue can be dangerous. The only parallel one can find to this is in case of Intel splurging their hard earned Pentium money in telecom standards and protocols, board design, graphics, network processors, etc.

Will Google be able to sustain a long term war with diverse market segments or will it consume its resources fighting on too many fronts. Google has been able to create threatening market position on some of these fronts will it be able to create a sustainable revenue model which can match its search engines? Only time can tell!!

The Media Godfather

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:42:21 PST

Idle thoughts on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:06:46 PST

The traffic snarls at the Toll Plaza is daily affair for most of my colleagues. Their minds go numb at the gross national wastage of productive working hours and precious fuel of the idling engines. The talks on Green Energy and awareness around greenhouse gases seem to be meaningless. Many of the folks waiting in long queues are engineers and can algorithmically prove that wastage caused by Toll Plaza is more than the productive collection by DGSCL. One enthusiastic company MTS proclaimed that they will bear the burden of Toll during the peak traffic hours. Good suggestion but the reporter says that officials at DGSCL are not pleased with it. I am sure MTS meant Free Talk Time at Toll Plaza during peak busy hours and the reporter at the TOI would have gotten carried away.

Searching on net found some links which report that the Toll Plaza was designed for 75K vehicles/day and is currently experiencing 200K vehicles/day. Not sure why DGSCL increased the Toll by almost 50% in last 18 months? Isn’t higher number of vehicles giving DGSCL better return on investment on their original business case? There better be a good justification for this highway robbery, anyone for RTI followed by PIL? You know how an idle mind works when stuck in long queues.

Not sure what the official reports says but it is my guess that more than 70% vehicles do not use the ETC (Electronic Toll Collections) Tags. Given the situation what can be done? I have asked several taxi drivers while waiting in the queue on my way to Airport, on what they think can be done to make things better. Most of them have given exemplary suggestions –

The toll must be in round figure. Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 30 so on and so forth.
The vehicles which get into Tag Lanes and insist to pay cash must pay Rs 10 more.
The display on each Toll Gate statistics like Average Queue Waiting Time, Time to serve One Vehicle, Number of Vehicles in the Queue. Of course DGSCL can consider broadcasting this to Radio Stations and use it for internal training and rewarding their staff.
There should be a ramp of 10-15 degree for around 500 meters. This will allow vehicles to switch off engines and use the slope to roll the vehicle. This will help in reducing fuel wastage.
Collect return Toll from daily commuters.
Register vehicle Mobile for mBanking payment of ETC charge. A simple Bluetooth device or SMS based service can help facilitate authentication of online payment.

What are your suggestions? Please do share.

The Last Samurai

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:03:35 PDT

What is common between Microsoft & Oracle? The fact they make tens of billions of dollars in software revenue, sure! And that their predominant source of revenue is from software products. They were founded in late 70’s. I am sure you know all this. What is new is that in the times to follow great software product companies like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP will either disappear or switch to services model. This makes Steve Ballmer and Larry Ellison, The Two Last Samurai of the software products.

It is extremely important for upcoming software ventures to understand this trend for the successful implementation of their selling Strategy. Basis of my analysis is the revenue data from Top 100 Software companies. 70% of the top Software Companies attribute their revenue from the Products. However what is more interesting note is the fact that product revenue is only 24% ($200 Billion) and the rest from services. Based on these findings and other supporting data we can conclude that selling of software products or RTU is on its way out. It is also clear that large numbers of products only companies are dependent on large system integrator partners to be successful. Many of the software companies are now dependent on Internet for selling Software as a Service (SAAS). The latest trend of “Cloud Computing” and selling software as a utility or infrastructure or transactions or bundled with content; are all indicative that software as RTU is disappearing.

These changes will bring fundamental changes in the way Software Development Centers are organized. I have listed some of these changes -

1. Product Management and Program Management roles will get merged under one person. No more hot potato meetings.

2. Product Management will move up the value chain. The new age product manager will be responsible for Sales and Business Development. No more hypothetical discussion in the beginning of the year what we must build to sell.

3. Feature priority are now decided by the end-user metrics. Let user enjoy the value but not the burden of platform.

4. No more professional services or SI certification issues.

This model will unleash highest level of optimization in knowledge workforce. The trouble is that most of the organizations are not able to come to terms with their own established processes and structures.

The Curious Case of Data Dumping

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:05:43 PDT

I have all the material ready for my next provocative blog. Yes the one that will make me controversial and unpopular!

A Sensational Title: Anti-data-dumping law to bridge the digital divide

Some background patronizing information: Most countries introduce anti-dumping duties to protect the local industry. Without getting into the history, open market arguments etc., the fact-of-the-matter is that anti-dumping duty is a reality. Commodity and manufacturing sector comes to ones mind when international trade pundits discuss anti-dumping. Developing countries bear the brunt of taxation trying to sell their low-cost produce in developed nation. Interestingly in the knowledge industry the dumping of knowledge products and services are in reverse direction.

The Case Opening Statement: Internet, the new media is controlled by developed economies and a handful of global players have cornered most of the new medium across the globe. This kills the chances of developing local industry and hence the underdeveloped markets will lose out most of the advertisement revenue and marketshare to the developed markets. I would like to argue that to protect small and local internet web services there is a need to introduce anti-dumping duty on global players.

Circumstantial Evidence: I collected some evidence to build my argument.

The above tables show that there is direct correlation between the internet advertisement revenue and explosion of content on the web pages. The global internet traffic and proliferation has grown as well adding to the demand side.

Hard Evidence: The next piece of evidence needed was to nail down the perpetrators. This came from an unusual sourceTeleGeography’s Global Internet Map.

Agreed, this is not an easy to read map, hence for analysis purpose I have used some spreadsheet tricks.

In mature market like Europe 75% of the bandwidth is consumed within the region. However the less matured markets like Asia and South America are largely dependent on the fat pipes from North America and Europe. Interestingly but not surprising USA exports 85% of internet traffic outside of North America.

The Usual Suspects: In any anti dumping situation there are beneficiary interest groups. I had the list of usual suspects in mind, however to establish the facts rested my case based on the latest Analytics Reports -

Cold Feet: I must admit that in spite of such strong case and so close to being self-appointed for the next round of Doha negotiations, I have developed a cold feet to continue pressing charges!! Why? Well, first of all USA is a net importing nation and secondly USA is net importer of "Advanced Technology Products" including Information Technology and Communications. This will perhaps come as a shock to most of the technology producers who look upon US funded venture ~~capital~~socialists and track closely NASDAQ technology companies.

Let Go: I will conclude with a note of sympathy to world's largest producer of technology to reconsider its views on Software. It is up to US Knowledge Workers to decide if an eyeball attention is worth more than technology and knowledge!

The Great American Internet Brain Drain (loss of knowledge in return of eye-ball)!!

Enanomics

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:03:33 PDT

Choice of Free Products (or Services) is of utmost consumer interest regardless of our ideological beliefs. There are several blokes on the Internet who strive to give quality product or service completely free. The analysis of “Free” is essential to our understanding of Enanomics (web economics). When it comes to web technologies the cost of each transaction cannot be measured accurately, there is some kind of uncertainity principle. Nano-economics or Enanomics has not been understood properly and is not even defined in Wikipedia, let me make a humble beginning.

The Institutional Free:

As a class VI student I recollect an essay on Mother Teresa. She would accept broken biscuits from local bakery to feed the growing needs of her institution Missionaries of Charity. Charity missions have two important elements (a) champion visionary and (b) public private partnership to channelize spare/unused resources for the goodness of society.

In any given technology the hard part is to develop the tools and knowledge. It requires champion visionaries to build and enrich tools or knowledge. One can look up to institutions like universities to sustain this effort (BCD UNIX Project). GNU and Wikipedia are two examples which have been built on charity model. The principles used by GNU and Wikipedia developers are to keep software tools and knowledge above business greed. This philanthropy drive helped in getting the best people to contribute for noble cause. The time-management inefficiency in knowledge industry is being channelized for contribution towards building GNU and Wikipedia.

It is not that GNU and Wikipedia are allergic to Money. Every Wikipedia page carries the slogan “Wikipedia is sustained by people like you. Please donate today”. Likewise one can support Free Software Foundation through donations as well. Wikipedia has Alexa Ranking 7 and can easily switch to self-sustained Advertisement Model, but then I could lose my OpenId for spreading such blasphemy! The time saved by millions of people searching for right tools or information is good enough reason for well meaning people to contribute and make it available for “Free”. Though unlikely but if for some reason Wikipedia was to file for bankruptcy, UN will declare it as “World Heritage Site”! The power of “Free” cannot be undermined in a democratic society.

Disclaimer: there is a conspiracy theory that GNU and Wikipedia were created to check the monopoly of Microsoft, though I do not subscribe to it. These are just good examples of how to institutionalize “free” for a good social cause.

The Free Institutions:

All other free stuff on Internet has sound business plan. The business plan could be around “renting virtual shelf to distributers – Amazon”, “target advertising social networking platform - Facebook”, “viral or pyramid marketing tool - Twitter”, “Online publishing – Wordpress”, “Direct mailers – Hotmail” etc. There are times when web developers go awfully wrong with their business plan and they turn to selling their software for "Free" or as "Donationware". This usually doesn't work, they must join SAAS Therapy group to get out of their self-inflicted misery. We are in the early days of Enanomics, so let me start with supply and demand equations.

Uncontrolled Inelastic Supply: Web services are structured around creating seemingly infinite supply, e.g. “Unlimited Storage with email account”, “Unlimited connections in a social network”, “Unlimited Blogs”, “Long tail @ Online App Store, Music Store, Books Store, etc…” In reality the supply is never unlimited. There are sufficient checks to ensure that unlimited supply has limited shelf-space or shelf-life.

Example 1: Only 2% users of MSN Live visit skydrive (25GB free storage on MSN Live). MSN is fairly safe to take the bet that the doomsday of reaching the storage capacity of thousands of petabytes for its hundred million users, will never happen.

Example 2: Amazon has millions of items to sell. The way Amazon builds its inventory is by creating virtual shelf space on its website. The real world seller’s chances of making millions by selling “12mm washers” using Amazon platform is less than winning Australian Lotto. Amazon can charge a small fee for virtual space; Amazon gets rich by charging few cents for lending virtual shelves. It is the ability to create a platform which seemingly provides unlimited supply that differentiates web from real world. However when the rubber meets the road, FedEx wins! Think about it, typical IT cost for any enterprise is ~4% of its revenue, what is a better option, create your own online store or rent space on Amazon, you decide! Blockbuster realized this and was quick to respond with its own online store to fight back the Netflix onslaught. So it isn’t the perceived long-tail of inventory which gives Netflix the competitive advantage.

Controlled Elastic Demand: Theoretically, free-service generates infinite demand. However web service providers are protected/limited by total users with internet access, bandwidth price, network throttling of traffic and deadweight loss (marginal gain from “reading my free blog” vs. “completing your project on time”.) Dead weight loss is caused by “people who would have more marginal cost than marginal benefit are buying the product”.

A Simple Supply-Demand curve of an Ad-Based Web Service

First Law of Enanomics: If everything in the micro-economic or macro-economic world remained constant, the web service provider revenue is a function of internet traffic.

The question that still remains to be answered is that why at zero prices there is no deadweight loss? Web service providers understand the value of “Time”. Any end-user who is not able to find an item on-line in two clicks (assuming average bounce rate of 45% for any given website) will lose the customer resulting in deadweight loss. The web tools like search engines, recommendation engines, folksonomy etc help in building a commercial model which can be tapped by industry. These web tools drive ecommerce and fall under the “Free Institution”, free to user billed to supplier.

Second Law of Enanomics: When the price of a service falls to zero, the demand is proportional to marginal benefit.

There are more laws to come!!

Beware of an Anti Salesman

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:02:46 PDT

Why Sales?

Driving in Delhi, I once came across beggar woman selling tissue papers boxes on a busy traffic signal. Tissue paper is a symbol of vanity and hygiene. Why would anyone in their right senses buy these items from a roadside beggar? Ability to create need for a product and to be able to serve it to customer's delight is what Sales People do. Only a Reformist will come up with an idea of selling tissue papers at traffic lights. Reformists are concerned about uplifting bottom-of-the-pyramid and sustainable-growth models. Though reformists have good intentions they are perfect examples of anti-salesmanship.

If you ever come to Gurgaon watch out for Sales folks lurking around every corner. You are more likely to encounter a Sales Person taking you for a ride than a Rickshaw Puller. I can say it with complete certainty that there are more Sales People packed in 1 kilometer wide strip distributed equally on both sides of Gurgaon's lifeline NH8 starting from Ambience Mall to Hero Honda Chowk than there are in Manhattan, NY. Apparently during the global meltdown every company has been advised by their investors to focus on global economies, Hints: India and China.

Pre-Qualification?

There are two simple questions one need to ask (a) did you cry watching cupid SRK and Kajol in the movie DDLJ and (b) did you feel remorse killing-the-lady-with-money in GTA: San Andreas on Playstation3? If the answer to both these questions is “No” you can apply for Sales job. Having cleared the simple test you need to give yourself a suitable title. The best thing about Sales is that there are no hierarchies; you are either Head of Sales or an Account Director. If you do not like air-travel and prefer to use your own driver you are better off as an Account Director. Head of Sales is more dependent on company provided transportation. If your company has a policy to give a title like “Sales Executive”, please change your job or consider moving to Noida. Even Eureka Forbes has stopped sending door-to-door sales executives in Gurgaon. Having said that remember that your growth is determined by “target” and not by “title”.

There are usually few pre-sales folks in the team. You need to remember that pre-sales has nothing to do with “Sales”. Primarily due to in-depth technical bend of mind these folks are around to satisfy the deep sense of knowledge gathering in the customer organization. In fact you can take the pre-sales person from competition by signing a simple NDA, without any difference to the eventual outcome. Some pre-sales folks prematurely lose technical enquiring attitude and move to Sales, in case the company’s flawed HR policy supports such moves. You need to be extremely careful of crossover Sales people; they are not the pure breed. They cry watching TV serials and they buy stock of paper napkins at traffic signals!

Need Target Practice?

It is likely that one may not achieve targets due to certain unfortunate events usually attributed to everyone but oneself in a given Sales Cycle. This is not a tragedy. A good Salesperson keeps a log of all the opportunities created in the market and has an anti-thesis for why his company should not spend resources chasing point-deals which is efficiently done by channels. I must quickly add that managing channel is a procurement function which is most likely running from company’s Noida office. With this explanation you do run the risk of promoting yourself to higher Sales target. Let me introduce the first mantra of Sales here – “all future targets are achievable, the problem always lies with the current target.”

No one ever moves out of Sales, not even a speeding BPO van ever hits a Salesman crossing the chaotic DLF Cyber City roads. I always wondered why the richest real-estate tycoon could not afford to build a sub-way for pedestrians across the most expensive landscaped buildings in DLF Phase III, Gurgaon. No sir, this is not a design overlook. It is based on deliberate HR request for live battlefield training for Sales People. The customers and vendors are separated by these busy roads. The first test of a Sales Person is to find a parking lot, then cross these streets without getting killed. This is followed by 2 levels of frisking if you enter any DLF premises. Remember I told you about starched shirt at the very beginning. I am told that the metal detector does not beep for a successful Salesman. Sales People usually achieve zero gravity when entering into the overloaded lift. On arrival at customer premises a security questionnaire, laptop serial numbers and a fake encounter with front desk person who feigns complete ignorance to the fact that their company has a procurement department. Only after solving these three hurdles one gets past the Pearly Gates. Sales is not for the faint hearted.

Competition, what competition?

Speaking about competition there is none amongst the Salespeople who have long been with the “industry”. The competition, if at all, is superficial. This is hard lesson to learn for a new bee, however after going through a few job changes, acquisitions and mergers the loyalty to brand, product and country fades. Everyone talks to everyone else about the opportunity. Two drags of Wills Light and out comes the Sales Strategy. This may appear to be a bad move to novice, but this is the ultimate test of Sales Networking Skills. It works two ways if decoyed properly, you get to know the competition strategy and when the customer finds holes in your offering, you know exactly who is feeding the customer. Hopefully you have back-pocket full of alternatives. Time for the second Mantra: “every mistake is deliberate and no one can surprise more than your own misadventures”. I could have said “believe in yourself”; but would you switch to Sales with that slogan?

Cycle of Sales

In my business the Sales Cycle is 12-18 months. There are usually 4-5 companies shortlisted from 500 odd potentials for any given opportunity. This makes anywhere between 250 to 2500 people actively working on the opportunity and equal number of people in the headquarters updating status. It is almost certain that 90% of people will be disappointed at the end of this exercise. Sales people are born with skills to create and combat Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A good Sales Person uses this skill for creating mindshare. An Anti Sales Person can get the RFP cancelled or worse create Fear, Uncertainty and Jobloss (FUJ) in his own organization.

In either case the chances of disappointment exceeds the chances of success by a factor of magnitude. One out of 5 is a good chance when compared with an insurance telemarketer or Sales Exec at Merc showroom. However this is not good enough to be successful Sales Person stationed at Gurgaon. This inherently faulty structure is unsustainable and soon the business fraternity reorganizes itself to correct the situation by going into a process of consolidation. There are a few outsourcing deals announced. The Market sees value in companies who outsource core services to product vendors and the product companies who outsource core product development to service vendors. Of course the customer care is carved out as separate business and outsourced to far out land, safe distance from customers. This creates tight coupling between technology producers, provider and consumers. A Sales Person understands this cycle best. They know winner “never” takes it all. You never lose a deal; you always get some part of the deal, just by hanging-in there!

Plumbing the Torrent!!

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:22:54 PDT

Recently Sweden passed the local IPRED law. The law allows copyright holders to force ISPs to reveal details of users sharing files. It is understood that the Internet traffic dropped by more than 30% immediately after the law came into effect. Sweden is also the home of most popular File Sharing website “The Pirate Bay” having 22 million users. A court in Sweden has jailed the owners of The Pirate Bay in a landmark case, found guilty of breaking copyright law. Most administrators believe that tougher laws can prevent file sharing, but I do not agree. Internet piracy is cross border as most of the Content is hosted in the countries where IPR violations go unnoticed.

Infringement of copyright is not the only problem posed by peer networks. Peer networks have longer session time, massive redundancy of data and inefficient use of bandwidth. Falling storage prices and browser assisted web accelerators are adding fuel to the fire. What can the ISP’s do? Not all the countries are equipped with Cyber laws and enforcement capabilities. ISP can fix the leaking taps but not a hole in a dam!

It is not easy to filter peer networks. QoS based filtering and Deep Packet Inspection devices provide first level of defense against abnormal traffic patterns. However with improvements in HTML based peer networking methods the blending of p-2-p traffic makes it very difficult to be blocked at traffic shaping.

Consider a situation where every end user’s upstream demand starts growing. This demand is stochastic (random) process and the networks are not designed to uplift heavy data from multiple sources. From a network design perspective, the caching & retransmitting data at end-user client/browser will cause reverse flooding of the network core. In that respect Torrents or any kind of web-client based accelerator have worst bandwidth efficiency performance. The impact of IP Networks is lot more significant for upload traffic than download traffic. The ISP's resort to selective blocking of sites, traffic patterns, etc leading to significant public ire for "censorship" of content.

Can ISP's not exploit the opportunity in this challenge? Here are a few suggestions for ISP to consider for plumbing the Torrents:

A) Fix the leaking tap: Adopt asymmetric charging model. Typically user gets more downstream bandwidth than upstream. ISP put lot of focus on downstream charging plans based on download speed, speed-on-demand, gigabytes to unlimited downloads per month, rate plans based on the time-of-the-day or day-of-the-week etc. We need to devise tools to measure and publish “Upstream Leverage Factor”. This factor will determine sustainable upstream traffic per user in the network. The operators can use this factor to devise data charging plan for upstream data usage. There will be a limit set on the upstream data usage the operator can charge fee for this limit. If ISPs make uploading to be paid service the dynamics of file-sharing and peer networks will change in more than one ways.

B) Building Dams: Since most of the ISP’s are in pure bandwidth selling, they do not consider investing in content distribution as a viable business option. If the users are paying for upstream bandwidth, there is a clear business case for creating storage networks. Content storage capacity can be built on access aggregation points. Flash memory price, foot print and storage capacity are at the sweet-spot to build Terabytes of distributed storage networks, without having to invest in centralized data centers. The ISP’s can sell storage space to web service providers as well. E.g. Personal Picture Library can purchase network storage hosted by ISP and offer free uploading service to their users.

C) Make channels: The uploading of user data can be divided into "syndicated" and "user generated". The syndicated data uploading is done by authorized agents of content distributor’s networks of web service providers. Authorized agents will invest in setting up high speed connection and storage capacity. The ISP can offer hosted content management services to syndicate partners. It will force bandwidth intensive websites like YouTube, Flikr to either make end users pay for bandwidth or develop distributor network of partners who will pay the ISP for uploading User Generated content.

I believe that these methods can effectively curb the peer to peer file sharing menace without having to send anyone to jail!

Innovation lacks Ideas backed by Research

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:19:12 PDT

My job often takes me to DAKC, Navi Mumbai. Entering from Gate No 4 towards the left is the lonely Corporate Head Quarters Building. A deserted road marked prominently by the following words of wisdom, signed by Anil Dhirubhai Ambani -

Innovate or perish. That is the only imperishable truth in this new era of knowledge driven economy.

Indian Corporate Sector has adopted “Innovation” as a mantra to leapfrog the mundane methods of routine jobs. The top-down communication is highly efficient and almost every manager worth its salt is quick to jump on the “innovation” bandwagon. A call center manager lecturing his newly acquired team on the merits of innovation ends up with 50% attrition in the next six months. The team is not able to clearly figure out how to innovate, surely get the threat “or perish” and looks for a safe heaven. The head of HR in such organizations receive the annual award for innovation for outsourcing all critical functions, leaving the company vulnerable in the times of uncertainty.

Based on my little understanding of this subject. I have started keeping note of what Innovation is not. Here is my list of exclusivity for Innovation:

Innovation is not “outsourcing”
Innovation is not consolidation or unbundling of assets
Innovation is not “Mobile VAS”
Innovation is not India Times "reality show"
Innovation is not “invention” (I learned this recently in a corp. seminar, to my horror!)

Paul Jackson of Forrester Research explains the Innovation Hierarchy as below:

Growth based on short-term impact has taken a beating due to economic slowdown. The new age Indian Corporate Giants like The Infosys, The Wipro, The Reliance Communication, The Airtel, The Future Group, etc. had spotted impeccable market timing to create successful businesses in Telecom, Retail and ITES. In my view these companies have successfully adopted all the “evolutionary” methods of Innovation.

Indian Industry has deliberately stayed away from the “revolutionary” innovation due to high risk and low return. Developing new products and fundamental research leads into a path of unknown results and unviable businesses. Only the rich countries can afford that. The table below on the number of patents filed by country is a good measure of research and creation of intellectual wealth.

Industry sponsored research spending is quite low and everyone looks up to government for providing subsidies and tax holidays on research spending. In absence of incentives most of the institutions take up research topics which have little commercial value. Venture Capitals have some apetite for risk. Barring some effort in the VC circle our dependence on developed nation for product ideas is overbearing. We cannot blame the industry as well, we are a poor country, and hence raising capital for commerce has to be backed by known & repeatable success stories. India Research spending has been a consistent 0.6% of GDP, however China has tripled its R&D spending since 1996 from 0.5% to almost 1.5% of its GDP.

It is not lack of talent which leads to poor spending on research. It is the lack of incentive to individuals and lack of management of talent which has lead to this situation. It is important to get quality ideas which are backed by research. Our future and next spate of growth will come from innovation in products (not services). This requires deep pockets, long gestation and lot of market competition.

What is innovation? Product Innovation for a developing nation like India is ability to meet the requirements of every customer at an affordable price. An example of innovation will be AMUL. Its business model is long term sustainable and ensures that quality product at affordable prices. There are several areas which are still begging for innovation in our country:

Potable Water
Sanitation for everyone
Low Cost Housing
Primary Education
Primary Healthcare
Public Transport

The list goes on. We cannot be dependent on West to solve these problem. Corporate India will perhaps not see a business case to invest.

How do we propose to address these?

DESTINY - by an anonymous poet

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:18:05 PDT

Realize that destiny is not lying in wait

it's with you here and now. Its not the road you walk it is the walking.

Wether friend or enemy, it always answers to your name for you are destiny.

Control the self and destiny acts within you,

wills within your will, uncoils the universe within.

But even destiny needs a nudge -

leave the fatalists to blame their fate on fate.

My daddy greatest!!

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:33:02 PDT

1977 was just another year. Emergency had ended and so had my VIII standard exams at St. Paul's in Udaipur. My school had switched to CBSE advocated 10+2 pattern and the idea of spending an extra year in school was like a joy of getting better than expected golf handicap. Our school always announced the annual results on 6th May. We will pack our bags to go to Jodhpur to spend the rest of the summer vacation with our bickering cousins the very next day. Trembling hands unfolded the mark sheet searching for "Promoted to class IX" and the joy of finding it right in the middle of page 3, promptly signed by Reverend Father Coutinho, was an answer to the long prayers the night before. I quickly rushed to class V to check how did it go for Girish my younger brother. We were all set for our annual voyage to the Thar Desert.

Jodhpur was a difficult town for us and was filled with many regrets. Our bicycles were back in Udaipur and we were at the mercy our cousins. Many of them now knew how to fly kites and ride scooter. They were allowed to go to the cinema halls by themselves, they could wear long bottomed jeans and keep long hairs. Copying Amitabh style was considered normal. Day one was filled with comparing notes. Standing next to my six month elder cousin who had apparently grown much taller than I, had left my mother quite anxious. Our marks were well hidden behind good-second division which is still a well kept family secret. It was too bad that we could not answer in English to the questions posed by cousin sisters who were in St Mary's, which I must admit was better disciplined all-girls school.

The day ended with complete loss of self-esteem and biting mediocrity. Pretending to sleep, I could still overhear papa and mausaji (uncle) discussing the post-emergency politics. Changing subjects my father said that he has great expectations from me. I was doing extremely good in school and was preparing for IAS examinations. He had already subscribed to the magazine "competition success review" studded with IAS toppers photos and interviews. This was too much aspirational burden to take on in a single day. I dozed off and many years have passed since I recollect the "good-old-days".

I couldn't fulfill all my dad's wishes and get my photo published in CSR, but let me tell you that here is no reward greater than fulfilling even half of our parent’s dreams. Parents live their dreams through their children. Mother's love is unconditional it provides the strength but it is daddy who provides with all the challenges and raises the bar.

Today many social scientists ape western principles and advise parents to hold back. Things are definitely going to change in the western world as well. President Obama never met my dad but he is clearly aware of problem of aspiring Asians and their higher success rate of churning talent.

Interpretations of the Ballad with an Apology to Satyam Employees

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:10:15 PDT

"The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Cannon to right of them,
Canon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them

Volley’d and thunder’d;

Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the ten thousand.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew

Some one had blunder’d:

Their’s not to make reply,
Their’s not to reason why,
Their’s but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death

Rode the ten thousand.

The poet refers to "cannon" to right to the right wing politicians who have decided to keep mum on the subject of impending layoff at Satyam. The poet also refers to "canon" to the left (please note the missing 'n' in cannon) are the media persons who have already declared an"end" of the light brigade on their headlines. The cannons in the front are the customers who are calling the shots by cancelling contracts, with each shot killing chances of revival of hopes.

The poet has carefully captured the "mounting" tension of the "benches" by depicting them as the riding horsemen whose voices seem to be gagged in their attire and drowned in the noise of shareholders who have taken forward calls on the falling soldiers marked by 3 straight upper-circuits on the national stock exchanges. You see every dead soldier is now worth more to the company than alive. "Into the mouth of hell" is the asset value of an employee. It is a sarcastic remark on the state of IT companies who once swore by the bench strength to win more business and hired like crazy in their pursuits to please the same shareholders.

The command "Forward the light Brigade" asking the question was there a man dismayed? The question begging to be answered to unveil any doubts in the minds of decision makers. Probably no one, the erstwhile board and the new board are unanimous that the only solution in these tough times to send their men to the gallows. Lord Tennyson leaves the question unanswered on the "Someone had blundered" since the case is still under SFIO investigation and it will be premature for him to pass the judgment.

The rest of the poem is offering no help to employee as they go past the cheering crowds into the wilderness of unemployment statistics. More than 300 thousand such soldiers have their jobs in the hands of top 5 IT top decision makers; one can only hope that they make right choices.

The poet seem apologetic on the state of affairs and rather sad about the foregone outcome of battle in the times of innovation and employment being its incidental outcome.

Three Reasons why not to make lists

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:25:25 PDT

I am not sure how it all started but making lists while writing articles seem to be a cute trick to lure the readers. No one at the end of the article remembers the list but people never seem to get enough of it.

Ever noticed that most of the experts when asked to answer a question always have a three-points answer. It is only Mr Narayan Murthy who can come up with an extempore 7 points (or more) response. Jack Welch books have so many lists of things to remember that I wonder if he made them all up for the young management wannabe CEO's! Self-help Guru Dr Stephen Covey got so obsessed with his seven habits that he had to dedicate a new book "The 8th habit" to get out of it.

In my view the origin of list lies in our education system. We were asked to write down important notes in tabular form and index bullet points for memorization. Making lists was learning tool during school days. In work-life Lists are mostly used for time management. Not to mention the list of lifestyle desirable; seven wonders, top 10 movies of the year, top twenties songs, Times 100 celebs, Forbes 500, etc.

I have seen my son grow up and for whatever reason his lists are follow the binary system i.e. zero or one. It is good to see him cheerful and carefree. Cheerful when he has "one" thing to do and carefree when he has "nothing" in his mind. That may not be good enough reason for you to kick the habit. Let us go through my list of three reasons:
1. Don't make lists make objects of the things to remember. Action buttons with colorful designs is taking over as new user interface, you might end up as a creative art director in web2.0 firm.
2. Connect the objects in story or a flow diagram. It will help develop lateral thinking (e.g. VIBGYOR or My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas).
3. Work usually has life cycle or in a flow chart steps. I am not suggesting learning UML state machine design, just follow simple work flow rules.

101 Reasons to visit Rajasthan on your next vacation.

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:02:16 PDT

Pictures courtesy Mr Atul Jhala of Rajasthan Tourism. A rare glimpse of Rajasthan's majestic palaces, wild life, people and their craft. Locations in this album are Udaipur, Chittor, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Jaipur, Jhalawar and Ranthambore Wild Life Sanctuary. Enjoy!

Pictures worth thousand words

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sat, 30 May 2009 21:06:48 PDT

I am not a great fan of my Nokia E61i considering all the new and fancy models available, but I do like some of its features -

1. Built-in blackberry client.

2. Good voice quality and great speaker phone

I tried my hand on taking some pictures on the way to work and some travel the results are not bad. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

The Pied Piper of India

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:59:16 PDT

If I get a chance to meet AR Rahman, will ask him if the Indian National Congress Media agency “Mindshare” take permission to use the music "Jai Ho" for "commercial purpose" or for "non-profit"? Also did BJP ask for compensation for doing the take off version of the same song? No I don’t want to know the answer, just asking for sounding intelligent !!

I have tried to break a few laws myself. I am using pictures of the three public figures without their permission. Perhaps will get away with that. Also have used a cartoon (Credit: Conservative Punk) and repurposed for a different outcome. Anyways my blog is not a very popular place and is not generating any revenue. A few copyright glitches will go unnoticed. If it does not, I will take shelter under "artistic freedom" to repurpose art. Inspirational art for academic purpose to explain the law using examples following the footsteps of reformists to bring out changes in the society.

I would like to see following changes in the copyright act

1. Reduce the number of years of copyright to maximum 4-5 years. Artist or publisher or media companies are mostly able to monetize their work within this period after which it becomes public property.

2. Make adaptation, translation, and other forms of repurposing of art free from copyrights and allow limited commerical value (Cost Plus Model).

3. Inspirational form of art should have limited commercial value. Cost plus model.

In my view Internet based creative commons and open source effort will change the way art will be viewed in future. Immersive web (web 3.0) will be able to dynamically chain and repurpose huge amount of information. My best example is that of 10,000 people in a stadium with their mobile phones up-linking video to a central server. Theoretically, it is possible to get an accurate, hig-definition, three-dimensional view of the live match. In this case copyright does not belong to any one of the individual and can be broadcasted only if all of them agree on "creative common". Microsoft Photosynth project is also an effort in similar direction.

What are your views on repurposed art and copyright act?

Wrapped Time in a Flat World

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:36:51 PDT

Most of the telecom operators are concerned that 3G and LTE data services will introduce Internet based voice services and their traditional voice business will be lost. What can the operators do?

Telecom bridges three gaps (a) Distance, (b) Information and (c) Time. Telecom Operator's focus is "Distance" and Web-services focus is "Information" with some overlapping intentions. No one is focusing on Time? Let us consider a few examples to understand the issues (Please note I have restricted the discussion to voice calls only) -

(a) Instant Access - reduced waiting time, saved travel time, improved response to customer. This has resulted in setting up call-centers service to reach out to customers. The value add charged by call-center over normal communication service is anywhere between 20-200 times (depending on the country and type of services). If the underlying voice call is FREE the value addition is infinite! The flaw in this model is that call center does not factor in the cost of time of the called party (it is assumed to be zero). Most of the dissatisfaction with call centers is emerging from 2 issues - long waiting for service calls and the unsolicited calls. Obviously the call centers do not care about your time, however call-centers get paid for "on call" time. What you don't want comes unannounced and what you need is on-hold for the next free attendant. This is an unsustainable model which finds it roots in the Toll Free Service. If the service was not “toll free” it could have been better?

(b) Pervasive Access - The personal or private time of individuals has been taken over by telephonic interrupts. People travel long distances to meet someone and find that their face to face meetings are interrupted by telephone calls. Taking appointments, booking calendars, scheduling conference calls, watching movies, why lunch even loo brakes are interrupted with phone calls. If time is money whose is paying for your time? People talk to family during office hours and take work related conference-calls from home.

It is my estimate that productivity of individuals due to unplanned calls has come down by at least 20%. In any given meeting at least 2 people go out of the meeting to take phone calls. Everyone in meeting is interrupted by emails, text messages and everyone is multi-tasking.

Let me kick in my theory here "talk time is free but the time to talk is not". If we were to build a complex talk-time trading system:- One that allows calling party to decide the price they are willing to pay to talk to someone and it also allows the called party's willingness to accept the call at certain price, the transaction would be more rewarding. The operator can decide a floor price for the calling party talk time and the rest of the pricing will be on discovery and market forces. Telecom operator keeps a small percent of revenue. The factors determining talk-time trading is time-of-the-day, presence status and relationship between the calling parties. Now consider a few use-cases of this trading system.

1. Consider that the calling party has signed up for the minimum floor price. If the called party has marked status as available the call goes through. This is plain vanilla stuff.

2. Consider the called party has applied restrictions with check-my-price flag. Now the calling party will need to up the stake depending on the number of suitors and a fee charged by receiver. It better be important. Assuming that calling party has real emergency situation agrees to pay for higher call rate the call matures.

3. Appointment situation. Consider a patient to book an appointment with Doctor. Patient is presented with a fee for available slot much like a flight booking system. Once a reservation is made online during the appointed hour, Incoming calls to doctor will be presented to an online call administrator who can take messages or interrupt the doctor during emergency situation. If the doctor is interrupted network refunds the patient. During the appointment situation the patient also has call restrictions or optional call administrator. The appointment situation can be extended to consultations, education, coaching, etc.

4. Circle of influence. The users can create their inner and peripheral circles. The inner circle belongs to direct work and family relations. Presence information is shared within the circles. Calls are treated differently when being presented outside of the circle. The calling party can present a call with message (e.g. "Your stock broker is calling"). The presence status decides the billing rate. If you are in office and decide to take personal calls or call outside your circle, your office may charge you. If you accept a call in a meeting your phone bill goes up. Likewise if you get office circle calls during personal time, you make extra money.

5. Certain areas like cinema halls, theatres, hospitals, etc will have restrictions and different bleeding oops billing plans!

6. Different subject matter experts can make themselves available on-call for charge. The bidding system decides who is most sought after and the stake goes up.

7. Celebrities can put up themselves available for fan-call for a fee determined by talk-time auction system.

This requires standardizations efforts, inter-operator agreements and massive integration with location, presence and payment platforms. If the operators are willing to open these systems, independent application developers will be interested. Long distance education using video conferencing is a great example of “value of time” for technology provider, content provider, service provider and end-user. The trading system devised for talk-time price discovery would be the best way to grow the voice revenue.

Gen-X Rejects Mandalization of Indian Politics

lchowdhary@hotmail.com (Lalit S Chowdhary) — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:10:00 PDT

The next generation voters and emerging congress leadership has put brakes to growing Mandalization of Indian Politics. It has taken one generation of Gandhi Family to reverse the trend which was set in force by VP Singh by accepting Mandal Commission Recommendation back in 1989. Rise of local parties based on vote banks emerged in the Hindu Heartland.

The Indian Voters clearly understood the better bargain power and influence of smaller parties in the formation of Government. Consider the impact of electing SP or RJD leader who gets to be not only a Cabinet Minister but also in the "inner circle". No issue is decided in isolation. The vote bank is supreme. If a large party comes to power, the voter has no say in their candidate yielding as much bargain power in deciding the fate of the Government as was possible with multi-party alliances.

What went wrong for the smaller parties in Election 2009? I think there are multiple reasons -

1. Ban on traditional media (posters and banners) has had significant impact on smaller parties. The Smaller Parties are not well prepared for electronics media.

2. The smaller parties lacked unity. There wasn't sufficient time to regroup.

3. As a result, smaller parties kept poker face. The seasoned voters couldn't care less but it was perhaps the first time voter, clearly deciding in favour of black-and-white, they were confused by the shades of grey displayed by their leaders.

4. The parties which did not play constructive role during the coalition were punished.

It will be interesting to see if we move to 3 party system in the coming elections. Sitting in opposition for five years teaches several lessons. For now it is "Jai Ho" to the Indian Voter for deciding against indecision.

What is your take?