Month: July 2012

Co-operation in Capitalism

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If I have ever met you in person (or if you have frequented this blog for some time now) then you would know that I often extoll the virtues of the selfishness citing Ms. Rand and her essays on Capitalism.

In fact I at one time have had a heart to heart conversation with the founder of an organization whose heart is based on contribution and co-operation, stating that the philosophy behind Capitalism is different from a contribution oriented nature. It’s a muddle anyways, in fact the more you think about it, the harder it gets to really identify between the dark and light. There are ample examples where co-operation has been utilized for filling the coffers of different capitalists.

As a point to prove his case, this founder asked me to read a book … the Evolution of Co-operation. If you think game theory is fun, then you should definitely read this book! It’s highly recommended. I did read through the book, but I think it has taken me a bit long to fully understand it … just around 2 years or so!

Today, as I was reading a blog article on a news article based on that very book, a blog article by CFA Institute, I realized what the founder meant to say. That Co-operation can exist within a capitalistic system. The problem with most systems (and this is possibly the places which Ms. Rand glosses over) is that they have a tendency to go corrupt, to go weak. Socialism and Communism suffer from it and this was faced by Ayn Rand all through out her life.

But the solution to that problem is not Capitalism (as suggested by Ms. Rand), a corrupt Capitalistic system is worse if not the same as a corrupt Communist system.

However, that’s not the point of this post, the point is simple. That competition can occur only if there are implicit co-operative signals within the market. Signals such as agglomeration wherein competitors flock together at the same place such as an expo, exhibition or a khau galli to sell their goods.

Another personal lesson learnt – ideals are just that … ideal. In real life, you have to deal with corrupted ideals.

Convergence

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Back in 2006, When I had joined TechMahindra, we had the opportunity to meet the then British Telecom’s top brass. One of the major fears that BT’s top management conveyed to us was that Google could move in on BT’s business. There was always some talk about convergence and voice and data networks to come together. All such terms seemed weird and for us this was all new and difficult to digest.

It has been 6 years now, and I can see BT’s fears being realized. The top guys have long since moved on to more greener pastures, voice services have started emerging over data oriented plans. Things such as Virtual PBX, which used to be a voice based product is now being offered over the network. Using the fundamentals of VoIP, suddenly all the previously voice based products, which used to be the stronghold of telecom operators have suddenly started being offered on the internet/network. If you are confused about VoIP, here’s a great article by Chris Pirillo about the same.

The benefits of turning a voice based service into a data service is two-fold.

  1. Anyone can launch voice based services – sites such as Skype, Jahjah, etc have taken the market by storm. It’s cheaper for the end-user and the entry barriers for service providers has dropped down
  2. Accessibility to the internet is far more widespread as compared to access to a particular telecom network. This means that I do not have to worry about getting access to Vodafone or 3 network in order to use a particular voice based service. As long as I am connected to the internet, I am good. This increases the ease of convenience for end users, and multiplies the target market size for the service provider.

With convergence, the only major loser are the retail arms of the major telecom operators. With most voice based services now easily available over the internet, an individual customer need not look at purchasing the telephone line. What earlier used to be a necessity in each household, the telephone has slowly lost footing in most houses nowadays … to the point of being relegated to a corner in the household.

With convergence comes a change in way different services are being offered, a change in consumer behaviour and finally it serves as an usher to new technologies.

Series on CRM

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Today, I sat down and started writing a post on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementations and it’s failures in most organizations.

The idea came to me as I was reading one of Andrew McAfee’s posts on his blog, the business Impact of IT. In case if you do not know about Andrew McAfee, you can read up on his blog at HBR.

There have been many theories and reasons on how to start implementing a CRM and what are the typical pitfalls. If you search for this on Google there will be pages on pages of do’s and don’ts. Of these I have read a good number, however theory as always is so vastly different from practice that when you are on the ground, it becomes difficult to relate (and subsequently apply) theory to real life problems.

I consider the CRM implementation at Pristine a failure. It’s not fully implemented yet, and its not fully being used as well … but those are precise points why I consider it a failure. I was intending to write a piece on this on my blog.

As I kept on writing relating my experiences with the implementation, adoption and failures of CRM systems, I realized that one post won’t do justice to this (I had touched around 1000+ words and there was room left for more!) and decided to split this into a series of posts.

In the next few weeks, I will keep writing regular posts on the CRM system at Pristine and how it has failed … and how it can be revitalized.

Updating this post after 5 years, the CRM system we installed has been a resounding success and a continuous source of business insights for the organization.

Antivirus Comparison

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As the Chief Technology Officer at EduPristine, I have been involved in almost all high profile purchases that we have done in the tech department. Starting from the latest allotment of machines and laptops  to the software licenses which are needed by the firm to avoid any piracy issues. These are pretty easy to do and follow … but when it comes down to purchasing software licenses for my family’s personal use, then the same set of equations do not apply.

When I decided to purchase a set of anti-virus packages for my house (we have two laptops and a desktop), the price point was NOT the deciding factor, neither was the performance or the memory print. I thought that I could put down my thoughts on each of the popular anti-virus solutions out there.

McAfee – This used to be an awesome security package has somehow declined over the years into this clunky bundle which is forced (read pre-packaged) into your computer’s operating system. I generally try and avoid this these days.

Norton Antivirus – Norton AV is by Symantec and used to be the top AV of its time, over a period of time it became clunky and heavy almost making the system which it was meant to protect inoperable. But over the past couple of years, they have re-written their entire system from scratch. You can read more about Norton Antivirus. From what I have been reading about Symantec and Norton is that it is one of the most respected and widely used antivirus. Overall, this package works and it is doing well with the SOHO segment. The only disadvantage that it has it is popularity among the technical crowd, so much so that even hackers are using the Symantec name to extort money from unsuspecting victims.

ESET – I first heard about ESET when I was in Hyderabad, the best part about this package is the light memory print. It runs well on old machines. However, for feature junkies, there are newer versions released already which have better UI, more features and obviously a higher memory print.

Kaspersky – I have tried the demo version and I was impressed, over the past few years it has been consistently topping the charts. I do not know how much of a performance trade off it leaves behind, but it sure is the most effective of the lot!

For the average user, Microsoft has also released the Microsoft Security Essentials, which keeps your average trojan at bay.

In the end, if its peace of mind with usability that you want, then do give Norton or Kaspersky a whirl. If its the ability to be very very specific, then its ESET.

The changing image of Orcs in Pop Culture

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Orc

This Sunday, I was watching the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King on TV and it struck me that the orcs in the movie are positively evil … Chaotic Evil in fact. They are completely selfish and have no respect for society, value personal goals above everything else and are seeking to destroy things. Do note, that the book was written in the 19th century by J. R. R. Tolkien and he intended to pose orcs as those wretched and evil creatures.

Many games were inspired from this epic … Dungeons and Dragons, Diablo … and not to mention Warcraft. Warcraft at the outset posed Orcs as Chaotic Evil as well … but in later versions, Blizzard decided to make this race playable … no doubt due to player demand. First the race became playable and was turned into Chaotic Good … then they actually took a u-turn and finally became Lawful Good.

The reason why this shift in alignment was done, was so that players could identify with certain aspects about the race and start playing with the race. Secondly, in all the previous references of Pop culture, the Orcs end up on the losing side … because they are evil and good always triumphs over evil. No one wants to end up on the losing side … why would you play a game where you know that whatever you do in the end you will lose? Thus, to stop the obvious end … the Orcs were made into a lawful society, with a war chief to rule over them.

Over a period of time, characters developed in Warcraft … and you had Thrall the War chief of the Orcs. Thrall was honourable, Thrall was good and benevolent … Thrall later on went on to become one of the most powerful druids of the Cenarion Circle in World of Warcraft.

A race which initially started off as pure evil, has now to date become a race which stands for honour and pride. From the human flesh eating orcs in LOTR, to the honorable orcs in World of Warcraft, the orcs have certainly gone a long way in their brand image. Although I am an Alliance fellow myself, I can understand why the Horde has an appeal to people … I wonder how many of those people would have stood by the Orcs had this image transition not been done.

Android driving up the Mobile Growth Rate

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In the world of venture funded start-ups, a lot of the tactical operations of the firm actually are based upon the latest buzz word. This buzz word can be anything from Web 2.0 to semantic web to HTML5. The start-up is actually trying to get more traction in the market using some gimmick or marketing stint … working on developing technologies doesn’t bring in the big bucks, but it sure as hell does bring you the attention that a start-up strives to get.

For example, the current industry buzzwords are HTML5 based app for mobile. Why mobile? Well because mobiles have been consistently beating the PC market for the past 5 years … smart-phone sales have been out-stripping the desktop sales by far. Operating Systems such as the Android system (which is a collaboration effort between different organizations) have started taking the majority of market share than the giant Apple. What’s important is that the Android OS allows mobile manufacturers to bundle up the operating system with their custom hardware. The best example of a company doing this is Samsung, these Samsung Galaxy deals just go to show the sheer variety that is offered to the consumer … using the same Android OS. I am not speaking out of my hat, there are well established industry reports and widely renowned business analysts who are singing the same song!

Mary Meeker from Kleiner Perkins has released this internet trends report of 2012, if you jump to slide 10 you can see that Android based device sales are outstripping iPhone sales by 5 times! You can find an Android device on almost every price point in the market. Compare this to an iPhone or any other smart phone (Blackberry … meh!) and you will notice the immediate difference in the pricing policies adopted by Apple. This is one of the main reasons why adoption rates of Android based phones have gone up and will continue to grow at an exponential rate.

This is one of the main reasons why LinkedIn has immediately released an HTML5 based app for mobiles, Facebook is buying more and more mobile based organizations (Tagtile, Instagram, etc). The internet is slowly shifting from desktops to smartphones, and there is no emergent leader in this area at present. Well, there’s always Google and Apple for operating systems, Samsung and HTC for devices … but what about apps? The App market that Android offers is way better and offers a higher variety as compared to the other app markets.

The world is waking up to this fact that mobile growth rate is going to fuel the way for internet penetration. In mobile, its going to be open technologies such as the Android to drive this growth.