The Reformation of the Corporation.

Today, couple of articles caught my attention:

1. IBM investigates the appliance of services science
2. Cisco's Secret Software Strategy

What is interesting in these two articles? That all businesses the world over have to reinvent to deal with the new realities - high-tech manufacturing from China, software outsourcing from India, etc. And, two of the major companies that help transform the business the world over - namely Cisco and IBM, not to speak of Microsoft, Oracle, etc. - are having to reinvent themselves! While doing so, of course, they have to resort to coopetition or else they will step on each other's toes.

What does this reinvention require? Complete modularization of software components that can be stitched together to provide highly customized business process for any enterprise.

Cisco CEO John Chambers said, in January 2004, "We believe that to compete in this environment we're about to go into, with very good competitors from Asia, etc., that our productivity per employee needs to be $700,000," and seems convinced that increasing the productivity of Cisco's workers is the key to Cisco's competing effectively in the global marketplace.

IBM's own services business reinvention is according to, Paul Horn, IBM's Senior Vice President for Research, "If you can think about your company as a collection of components, then you can re-engineer and optimise them. You don't have to have a four-year ERP job with an uncertain return, you can model the pieces in a simple way will make your returns much higher. It is the start of a revolution in how the whole software and services industry is going to deliver value. It is probably the biggest change in the IT industry, maybe ever. ... It's a big change for us and a critical change in the way IBM thinks about itself. We use technology to provide value to customers so that they don't have to outsource their business to the lowest labour cost in the world, because they're generating huge amounts of value."

The upshot of this posting? I wonder how many U.S. companies are thinking this radically?

Happy New Year 2005 to all of you.

Another year has passed us by. And, lots of things have happened in the past year. Stories of what happened in the world at large, you can read by browsing for example. If you measure happiness by the money you own, then I wish you more of what happened to stockholders last year. If you measure happiness by a richer understanding of what the world is all about, then I suggest you browse through sites such as http://www.vedanta.org. On the other hand, I wish none of you will experience the bad side of what happened in South Asia as a result of the tsunami; for a rather up-to-date blogged news on the tsunami, check out http://www.tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/.

What is in a school's motto?

Recently, I had occasion to discuss school motto with my son. He is an 8th grader, and it was difficult to find a motto for his school. After I discussed with him what a motto is and so on, I decided to publish this small note on the mottos of the schools that I went to (in reverse chronological order):

1. University of Southern California: Palmam qui meruit ferat. (Let whoever earns the palm bear it.)
2. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
3. Bangalore University: ज्ञानं विज्ञान सहितं Jnanam Vignana Sahitam (My interpretation: Knowledge must be accompanied by its rational usage or, equivalently, Knowledge accompanied by rational usage is wisdom, but you can read a scholarly interpretation here).
4. National College: श्रद्दाही परमा गतिःShraddha Hi Parama Gatihi.
   

It seems to me that all institutions ought to have a motto: it makes it easier to channel the human energies of the institutions around the motto.

"The China Price"

If you are a student of globalization of the economy, the December 6, 2004, issue of BusinessWeek is a must read in general and the cover story titled "The China Price", in particular.

Countless economists will prognosticate as to what might happen: What will happen to the overall U.S. economy? If even the so-called white collar jobs move out of the U.S., only service jobs will remain.

It'd seem that the proper way out of this global economic climate for any country is to leverage what can be accomplished elsewhere and build on it. The key word here is 'build'; build on what other nations can produce relatively inexpensively. In other words, be a valuable part of the global ecosystem. Ultimately, the value of any product or service is a function of how the product or service enhances the life of a human being, be it economically or in an aesthetic way.

Biotechnology and Information Technology

It is interesting to note that, on Friday, 1 October 2004, Bill Gates prophesised that biology and information technology would slowly coalesce into one: "If I were a student I would highlight those two areas as the most interesting". You can read more about the story at
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/9818224.htm
The reason, by the way, that this is the case is that the essence of study of life, namely biology, is built on a key primitive, the DNA. It is really amazing that the analog world is so beautifully built by a digital primitive, a sequence, several billions long, of nucleotides drawn from a set of four chemical compounds, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine, commonly abbreviated by the initial letters A, C, G and T.

Salaries of Software Professionals

An interesting analysis of Indian and US salaries for software professionals can be gotten through a paper written by an expatriate professional, Dr. M. Vidyasagar. It uses the concept of Purchasing Power Parity. This paper is very relevant to the hotly-debated topic of outsourcing and offshoring. Ultimately, of course, the free market will triumph as long as the market is kept free.

Telecommunication Equipment Production in India

It appears that the Indian IT sector is getting seriously into the act of augmenting the needs of telecom equipment providers, rather than assist only telecom service providers. And, this realization has occurred at the highest levels of the Central government, as this quote from IT and Communications minister, Dayanidhi Maran, indicates:

" ... India can emerge as the global hub for making telecom equipment ..."

This could mean a highly accelerated growth in this IT sector: telecom equipment providers, worldwide, please take note.

" ... a router is not just a router anymore", - Mike Volpi.

This is what Volpi said today in connection with the release of a new family of routers for small and medium size businesses (SMBs). Once you combine voice, video and data transmission in a single device, the router, the basic routing engine merely becomes a platform because it has to cater now to specialized treatment of the so-called triple-play traffic.
In another news today, Cisco acquired dynamicSoft to strengthen the intelligence needed inside the network. Good move.

Books Online

My professional membership group, the Association for Computing Machinery, has introduced a remarkably valuable new online service to its members, Welcome to ACM's Online Books Program!. This is definitely very valuable and I hope more organizations make use of this. Of course, the one of the behind-the-scenes beneficiary in this food chain is Books24x7 Inc.

On Facilitative Education: An Essay

Education is an interesting activity. The process of getting an individual educated is an inherently complex one; if you do not love to educate another person, it can be very frustrating. (I suppose if you do not have inherent love for an activity, you won't be able to persist in it). I recently had an opportunity to write an essay On Facilitative Education.

India, July 2004

In July 2004, I had occasion to travel in India and Europe with my children and niece. This is the first time I had such a travel spanning several countries and continents.

Telecommunication infrastructure is still in early development stages in India. For a general information on India, please see my travelogue at http://india2004.blogspot.com.

Outsourcing and the US Economy

In the article titled "What Global Sourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers and for the U.S. Economy" in the July 2004 issue of the Communication of the ACM, author Catherine L. Mann argues that "A human-capital-investment tax credit would give workers and the firms the incentive they need to generate and upgrade U.S.-based IT skills to fill the need for more local IT workers."
Several questions would immediately arise in one's mind:

1. How many companies are already doing it?
2. Has the necessary legislation already been created? If not, where is the activity towards creating such a legislation?

Let us hope that part of the thinking during the 2004 Presidential campaign would begin to address this particular problem.