Category: Uncategorized

Here’s an interesting take on the entire “Offshore” development paradigm that every American firm worth its salt has implemented.

Ed Burnette from ZDNet contends that over the course of time, most jobs in IT will deal with maintenance/sustenance of a product/system (since that’s an unending task, until the product itself is end-of-life-ed), as opposed to actual product development. In fact, he already sees this happening today:

“A colleague told me today that 70% of her time is spent maintaining the old version of the software as opposed to working on the next version. By maintainence I mean duplicating customer reported problems, fixing bugs, creating hot fixes and service packs,  tweaking performance to address complaints, and so forth”

And it is these kinds of tasks, he says, that he would much rather see being done in India than here. According to him, right now it is the opposite situation:

You have a long list of innovative ideas and features that you’d love to put in the next version, but you’re unable to find the time. Management promises that you’ll be given time as soon as these maintenance things let up. But they never let up. Management promises to clear your schedule, to restrict maintenance to part of the team and let you have some breathing space. But then the next day a high priority gotta-have-it-now defect comes in. Experienced, highly qualified and highly paid developers become firefighters, running from one emergency to another. Meanwhile the remote teams, with no such baggage, get the new projects and growth opportunities, and produce quicker results because they can do it full time.

And then Ed calls for a reversal of roles. Actually, I’d say that has happened already.

Most Indian companies today deal with “Level 2 and Level 3 support”, and handle customer issues and product defects. The teams in the US, instead, focus on the next release, feature-adds, and longer-term strategic issues. It’s a lesser form of outsourcing (the o-word has come to imply really low-end jobs; call-centres), but it’s all about focussing on your core competencies, letting your top workers do what they do best, leveraging your talent pool to maximize value to the customer/client. From the point of view of a firm in the Unites State, you don’t want your top developers fixing bugs, handling customer issues, since that requires less creativity, less talent and more drudgery than true product/system development.

What about this situation from the point of view of India? Next: Part Two: Commoditization of Science, and Art as the Differentiator.

Here’s an article on Rediff.com about the possibility of newspapers becoming extinct. The premise is that the Internet as a distribution channel, with online newspapers, blogs, wikis and message boards as the content, supported by online (in place of print) advertising, is threatening the very existence of newspapers. According to the article, newspaper circulation is declining, and there’s a vicious circle being formed, with newspapers wanting to shore up revenues by charging advertisers more, who won’t pay until circulation goes up.

In the context of India, though, the threat to the print medium has little to do with the Internet. The penetration of this medium is so poor in India it doesn’t even matter. So from a newspaper’s point of view, blogs, wikis and other online sources of news can take a hike, they don’t even register on the threat radar in this country.

The real threat to newspapers is from Television. From the 24×7 news channels in most major regional languages, and English and Hindi, of course. From the fierce competition among them to provide up-to-the-second updates on everything from cricket scores to the stock market to politics.

The usage model I’m increasingly seeing is: most folks catch up on news throughout the day via TV – or at least in the morning and then during prime time. (which is why the 9PM news bulletin is such a big deal). The next morning they don’t want to see the same news again, this time in print – they’ve already seen that.

What they want is analyses and opinion pieces with regard to that piece of news. They want special reports on a range of topics. Something to complement what they’ve already seen on TV the previous day. That’s the challenge before newspapers today. Content matters more now. I realise that I’ll probably be raising a few hackles here – given readers’ loyalty to newspapers – but the Indian Express seems to be gaining in popularity and readership over the past year. It’s got to do both with the steady improvement in the op-ed section of IE, and the gradual but unmistakable tabloidization of the Times of India. The newspaper is taking the place of the “weeklies” that used to dominate this kind of print content in the 80s and 90s – they’re becoming “dailies” in a different sense.

Now this is really exciting – “MTNL, BSNL to kick-off IPTV from Mumbai, Chennai“. Television via telephone lines! [ via]

It remains to be seen if anyone can offer these services, over MTNL and BSNL’s lines, or if the two state-owned telcos will attempt to “lock-in” users into their content. The problem, of course, is MTNL and BSNL have not yet decided what business they are in. If they are telecom companies, then they ought to stick to maintaining the telecom infrastructure around India. But they imagine that they are ISPs, too – so they’ve “locked in” consumers into using only MTNL’s Triband and BSNL’s DataOne Internet services over their copper-wire infrastructure. Now they also imagine that they’re content providers. Going by past experience, there’ll be a messy “licencing” and “bidding” process for channels/content providers to provide television over, for instance, MTNL’s Triband service.

It would be interesting to see how MTNL would react if there were a service that offered, let’s say, an ad-supported, web-based TV-channel that operated via the RealPlayer or Windows Media Player plugin inside a browser.

I’ve set out to read up on as much as I can on the immense penetration (and hence usage) of broadband internet in South Korea, which Wired Magazine had dubbed “The Bandwidth Capital of the World” a couple of years ago. Even though I can just look and wish we in India’d pull up our socks and get that kind of (or even better) infrastructure here. Anyways, I’ll leave wishful thinking for another day, and list what I’ve been reading:

Om Malik: How South Korea got its Broadband Mojo
Om Malik: 200 KBPS is Not Broadband
Om Malik: Broadband? What broadband?
ZDNet: Broadband: Lessons from South Korea
Wired: The Bandwidth Capital of the World
San Francisco Chronicle: The future is South Korea
CNet: South Korea’s house of the future
Emergic.org: Venture Capital in South Korea
The Standard: Online Social Network Scores Hit in South Korea
Newsofttechnology: South Korea Pushes Mobile Broadband

So Rajdeep Sardesai has finally made a re-appearance on the Indian News Channel scene, after his well-publicized departure from NDTV. CNN-IBN has been airing news for about a week now. I conlclude that NDTV has some serious competition. And competition is always welcome! After all, NDTV 24×7 only had to compete with India Today’s Headlines Today in the English News channel space, HT was small fry, whichever way you look at it. CNN-IBN is a different ball game.

As “Editor-in-Chief”, Rajdeep now has his own news channel to play with, after realizing that at NDTV, he’d be the perennial Number Two. And the channel bears his stamp. Opinionated and aggressive, CNN-IBN’s anchors and news reporters don’t shy away from voicing their take on the news item they’re presenting/reporting. This is welcome, provided it isn’t taken too far.

In terms of look and feel and structure, CNN-IBN is an NDTV clone. Absolutely. This isn’t a bad thing, considering NDTV had modelled itself on BBC World when it separated from Star News. And the channel has poached some very capable NDTV staff. Ones that come immediately to mind are Anubha Bhosale, Bhupendra Choubey, Nilanjana Bose and Veeraraghav. (I know I’ve missed out on a couple of names). Numerous others look familiar too.

CNN-IBN has an urban focus, and it makes no bones about that fact. (That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feature issues from rural India). It tracks events more aggresively than NDTV does, and follows up on them too. A case in point is the recent demolition drive by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.

I noticed that CNN-IBN has a more positive touch to it than NDTV does. I think NDTV lost its way somewhere in the second quarter of this year – its hour-long news bulletins lose steam around the 25-minute mark, and become boring, sometimes downright depressing. CNN-IBN often features stories of innovation, goodwill and hope from both rural and urban India. This is very very important, since it’s going to be what makes avowed NDTV watchers switch the channel to CNN-IBN. They may not even realise why they’re switching – it may be subconciously, but it will happen.

CNN-IBN calls itself a “journalist-driven channel”. They’re spot-on. Notice the way the channel centres its program promotions and advertisements around the anchor. This is very CNN-ish – remember the focus on Christiane Amanpour, Nic Robertson, Richard Quest (the last two were poached from BBC), Jonathan Mann, and another bearded buy whose name I can’t recall – something to do with a wolf. NDTV, on the other hand, is more programme-driven. The focus is on “The Big Fight”, “We the People”, “Walk the Talk”, “Bombay Talkies”, and the like – regardless of who hosts them. One the one hand, personality-driven programmes (CNN-IBN-style) will attract more viewership, but on the other, it’s hard to sustain the programme if the anchor walks away. That’s why NDTV was able to seamlessly transition the Big Fight from Rajdeep to Virkam Chandra, and is able to use all of Sreenivasan Jain, Shai Venkatraman and Miloni Bhat for Mumbai Live. CNN can’t afford that luxury; it’s got to keep its anchors happy. Also, NDTV’s top brass are now familiar faces on TV – Prannoy Roy himself, Barkha Dutt, Sonia Verma, Vishnu Som, Vikram Chandra. CNN has to build those reputations now. Expect poaching galore! Hmm – for these personalities, life has never been better!

What gives NDTV the edge? Its partnership with the Indian Express, and its ability to use Shekhar Gupta for Walk the Talk. Make no mistake, it is crucial for a partnership between a TV news channel and a newspaper, because of the manner in which people are increasingly using the two media. Through the day, audiences watch news channels, and stay abreast of the latest – hence the special focus on Breakfast, Lunch and the 9 o’clock news bulletins. What they want from their newspaper the following morning is not news per se – they got that already – but opinions and analysis of those issues from the previous day.

Personally, I am thrilled by the appearance of a channel that’ll give NDTV a run for its money. Expect better content from both these channels. And don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for Arnab Goswami’s upcoming news channel too!

Every moment in life is a choice.

Before you manage anything at all, learn to manage yourself.

Accept that you cannot do everything at once.

In continuance with the “look back at 2005” trend, here’s a list of the significant books I devoured in the past year, in no particular order. I guess I’ve missed out on a couple; will update this entry later.

India Unbound – Gurcharan Das
The Elephant Paradigm – Gurcharan Das
iCon – Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon
Timeline – Michael Crichton
Angels and Demons – Dan Brown
Wings of Fire – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Ignited Minds – A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Jack – Straight From the Gut – Jack Welch
Iacocca – Lee Iacocca
Business Maharajas – Geeta Piramal
The 7 habits of highly effective people – Stephen Covey
5-point someone – Chetan Bhagat
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – Richard Feynman
The Dilbert Principle – Scott Adams

Atanu Dey’s added his comments to a transcript of Lee Kwan Yew’s (Singapore’s First Prime Minister and great statesman) speech at the 37th Jawaharlal Memorial Lecture on 21st Nov 2005 in New Delhi.

Part One.
Part Two.

Ok – absolutely everyone seems to be doing this, and I’m not going to be left behind! So here’s a look back at the major posts on RG.org/blog over the last 12 months. It’s also a second look at what a roller-coaster ride 2005 has been, and a wonderful way of reviewing how my interests have changed over the past year. So without much further ado, presenting

RG.org in 2005!

February:

• Thoughts on Wireless Internet Access in India
• On moving to a new Internet Service Provider
• Hula and the Future of Software
• An analysis of HP’s future strategy, post Carly Fiorina

May:
April was the month I presented a paper that Pallavi and I wrote, at IBM’s T. J. Watson Research Center. While on that trip, I was bitten – hard – by the writing bug, and consequently came up with a nifty travellogue. Here it is:

• Where have I been?
• NYC Trip – Notes from Singapore, Germany and from over the Atlantic Ocean!
• NYC Trip – First 24 hours in NY!
• NYC Trip – After Day 1 of the Conference
• NYC Trip – After Day 2 of the Conference
• NYC Trip – On my way back
• How Do You Solve The Problem of Coffee?

In addition, here’s the Flickr photo set from the trip.

June:

• In May, I made my first trip to Goa in 4-and-a-half years! A Photologue from the trip.
• On reverse-engineering, patents and open source.

July:
IBM’s Services Business re-organisation – and related thoughts.

August:
In late July, I delivered a talk at IBM’s ExtremeBlue Expo in Bangalore – I was the Lead Technical mentor for an ExtremeBlue SpeedTeam over the summer, and we came up with a great product!
Bangalore Musings
IBM’s India Software Labs organised, as part of a larger event, a science-fiction story-writing competition, and one of my little tales won the first prize! Here are my two entries:
The Brainwave
Lotus MindNotes (the prize-winning entry)

September:

• The State of Pune’s Infrastructure, Part 1
• The State of Pune’s Infrastructure, Part 2
• The State of Pune’s Infrastructure, Part 3

I finally made it to the print medium! My take on Google’s intermediate-term product strategy, was published in the September 26 issue of BusinessWorld India: Winning Where Netscape Failed.

October:

• Imagining the Google Lifestyle.
• OpenSUSE, and the Community-driven business strategy.
• Gates’ view of India, and Comparing Silicon Valley and Bangalore.

November:
Mumbai’s Amazing Dabbawalas.

December:

When the state is in the business of running business.
Dada Makes it to Parliament and Other Stories.
Photologue of a drive to South Mumbai.

I was initially planning on putting up a post regarding how our Parliamentarians (and indeed, our legislators) seem to spend all of their time in the Parliament (and Assemblies) debating endlessly over frivolous, needless issues, and then the only bills that are passed (and consequently, the only laws that are framed), are ones that are irrelevant to the real problems that face us. The immediate motivation for that came when the honourable MLAs in the Vidhan Souda in Karnataka decided to rename their capital. Exit Bangalore, enter Bengaluru. Wow! How much work did that take? Zilch. Nothing.

Other examples that come to mind are of course, Mumbai’s dance bars, renaming Indian Airlines as “Indian”, “upgrading” Pune and Bangalore airports by “allowing” one flight each to Singapore and Dubai (by AI and  IA only, of course) – never mind that both these airports are already jam-packed with airplanes and passengers, with no room for capacity expansion at all. Tough decisions like sorting out the VAT mess, expanding the tax net, urban land reform, dealing with the sever power shortage in major states, getting rid of illegal slums in our cities, downsizing the Government, – I have barely scratched the surface of the list of problems that *really* matter to all of us. But while I was contemplating how to write that post, along came something so ridiculous, so unbelievably stupid, so frivolous, that it simply eclipsed all of my thoughts on the topic, and established itself as the new nadir of our Parliamentarians’ conduct:

Sourav Ganguly’s exclusion from the Indian Cricket Team was made an issue in Parliament.

Not only that, politicians from Bengal – including the (previously thought-of as sensible) Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and minister Ashok Bhattacharya have made their displeasure public. An “irate” Buddha called up Sharad Pawar  – the new BCCI honcho – and demanded his (Ganguly’s) re-instatement into the squad, Bhattacharya opined that Sourav was the victim of a “deep conspiracy”, and finally, the proverbial last straw was when the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee – former Parliamentarian of the Year – said that he would allow a discussion on the issue next week in Parliament.

My eyes widened in horror as I read this last piece of news in the papers this morning. Surely we elect this 543-strong bunch of people for reasons better than to debate the composition of the Indian Cricket Team! I have nothing whatsoever to say whether Dada’s exclusion from the team was right or wrong – that is not the matter here at all. Even if it were a very unfair decision, should our MPs be debating this? Do they have nothing better to do? After spending the last two weeks haranguing over the Volcker report (And what came of that debate? Nothing, since some Committee is still “looking into it”.), trading charges over whether the NDA-did-it-too-not-just-us, and then the Questions-for-money scandal,  next week we will be subjected to more ugly scenes of Bengal-vs-Maharashtra in Parliament, since folks around the country have reduced this matter into a delightful Bengali-pride-vs-Marathi-arrogance fight. Sharad Pawar has pleaded, and most rightly so, that sports and politics should be kept separate. Sensibly, he said that “there is no point discussing it (the selection process) in public”.

You want to talk about sports, if nothing else, Parliament? Take this, then: Why is KPS Gill heading the Indian Hockey Federation for the last 12 years (more, I think), and why has Indian Hockey not improved an iota in this timeframe? Why do we still have to change our coaches every year? Why is Priyaranjan Dasmunshi heading our Footbal Association for years and years now, and why don’t even stand a chance in the qualifiers of the Football World Cup. Why are these individuals not accountable for the results on the field? Why is the Indian public not a direct stakeholder in the manner in these federations are run? Why is it that the only organisation that is auotnomous, that is (or used to be) free from politicians’ clutches, the BCCI, has managed to make itself the richest cricketing body in the world, and that cricket has remained the only sport in which the country can make it to the Top 5 in the world? That it is the only sport which has a healthy and vibrant domestic league (which is not postponed year-after-year)?

These are, again, matters which need debate, followed up by tough decisions and firm actions that not everyone will find welcome. Do our MPs have the stomach for this?