Rising Rupee & The software Industry

The country is equally happy and sad about the rupee's value rising. All the people who are getting the money in form of $$$ are crying these days. There are few intelligent people who say, that software professionals now should work for six days a week. Few managers think that the salaries should be cut. Most companies think freshers are better, as the cost is low, and they should be hiring freshers like crazy.

These were the same people, who previously never were ready to give opportunities to freshers. I have few points to say/ask all these people who are trying to kill the happiness of IT staff and anticipate success.

1. Do you know how much bench are you maintaining?
2. Do you know how many people are just coming to office and spending time in lawns and cafeterias?
3. Do you know what are your stationary costs for every department?
4. Do you know how many people use laptops in the purpose they are meant to be used?
5. Do you know how many people make personal telephone calls from office?
6. Do you know if all your delivery managers are taking right decisions in sending people to onsite?
7. Do you know how much money is wasted in booking and cancellations of train and air tickets due to wrong decisions by senior management?
8. Do you know how much of money is wasted because of few processes not being automatized?

THE BIG QUESTION

9. Do you know why is the attrition rate so high in your organization?
10. Do you atleast realize that people leave only because of managers not for a name?
11. Do you know what is the cost implication if an employee resigns?
12. Do you have a check whether your managers are trying their best to retain people?
13. Do you have a check on your managers, whether they are acting with their intellects or acting with their egos, when dealing with their subordinates?
14. Do you know how much of money is being wasted because of mismanagement or wrong planning?

These are the areas where one should look to cut costs, mere increase of billable hours/working hours of employees doesn't suffice. On an average, in a reputed company in India, every employee works for more than 10 hours a day. That makes whooping 50 hours. All this time he is subjected to stress.

Companies I think should check how can they make the employees perform better, but not longer. This world is about working smartly, not the other way.

Lets try and make things better smartly, rather than just behaving like confused kids. All comments are welcome.

Reporting Solutions in ILM

Recently I came across a good article in PC World. It says ... MissionControl 2.2 is compatible with Version 1 of Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) and includes support for SQL Server 2005 to support its reporting features.

Give a read ...

Memory allocation in Tomcat Application Server

Longtime back I was told, if one needs to increase the memory pool size that can be occupied by the Tomcat app server, all we need to do is to tweak the catalina.bat file in the bin.

Just add -Xms A -Xmx A (where A denoted the number of Megabytes), in the catalina.bat file, at the end of line, where the java options are listed.

However from ver 5, its a little bit different and easy. All one needs to do is ...
Click on configure and then ....
Now specify the amount of memory allocation in the Maximum Memory Pool option. This will enable Tomcat to use more memory.

My Good Friend Rajesh R

My entrance into the Identity management space started first with training by a free lance SUN trainer, Rajesh R. (Still couldn’t figure out what that R is! J). Somehow, once after the training is done, I was the only person who was able to keep up a professional relationship with him, from my batch.

Wondering why I am writing about a friend of mine here?

He is a person, from whom, I have learnt that it shouldn't be our career or job that should control us, and rather it should be we who should be controlling them.

He is continuously on the move every week, training corporates, on Sun Clusters, Sun Identity manager etc. Later I started feeling a little jealous of him. You know why? He travels to different places, interacting with many different minded people and thus making a wonderfully large fraternity. If you ask most of the people in the Identity Management space in India, everyone knows him. This is what I always dreamt of, thus a little bit of that “J”.

This person, is not human, a proper AI based machine, working properly with TIME and CALENDER. He updates his blogs everyday, he writes his recordings/finding etc of every day in time. He has been helping every IDM guy/gal in the Indian subcontinent by either directly solving the problem or interconnecting people.

He is an amazing guy and I am very proud and happy to be his friend.

You may kindly visit his blog http://blogs.sun.com/rajeshr

Identity Management made my life

Wonder how a domain in the security compliance space, made one’s life? Read on …

Early June 2005, when I was working for GE Capital International services as a Security Specialist, I was given an offer, to move to Identity Management domain, which has just sprung up as a new practice in that company. I was wondering what that move can cause to my career. Always thought, a firewall would stay all the time as the technology exists but what is this IDM? However took a daring step to move into the domain. The next week I went to a training on the Sun Identity manager basics, IDM 2525, provided my Mr. Rajesh, a renowned trainer in the SUN Space. The first good relationship started with friendship with him. Later, other few members from Satyam technologies, who also attended the same training. Another friendship with the AVP, (GE) from Thailand, who clicked a photograph of mine with another girl (whom I don’t even know), assuming her to be my girl friend, funny!

Then started my troubles. The next three months we didn’t have any much work to do. Just going to gym and whiling out our time was the best work we had. People, who chose to stay back in the Infosec space, started getting good work and laurels too. Those made me feel that I was at a wrong place. Later at the end of September we finally kicked off with a small project. When I mean small, it was really small. Today as a consultant in the IDM space, I would say, the project could have been completed in two phases of maximum a month in total. One should believe that the project took five months almost, missing on all the dead lines.

Next came, my other good friend, Johny Cope as a trainer from Neogent Corp, USA, to train us on the advanced Sun IdM. I am proud to say, that I was the only person along with the, said to be my girl friend girl, to complete the entire training in my training. I owe to the girl, because without her encouragement and push, I wouldn’t have attended that training. Once after the training, I realized what I can do in this IDM space.

The next project I did, I alone completed it in around 45 days. The next one, rather small, I have completed in a week.

Still wondering, how IDM made my life? Yes coming to that. This lady, with whom my snap was clicked, became my good friend and my best team mate. Any work, we both used to complete in no time, just because of her analytical nature and her encouragement for me. She also helped me attend the advanced training. However suddenly she had to leave the company, and joined Deloitte. I started feeling the gape in my team, because without her I was alone.

Then I felt, how it would be if my best team mate, who understands me very well in almost every situation, becomes my partner for life! Pondered over it, and then felt we both should be together. Got married to the intelligent, analytical, friendly, cute, naughty girl, Harini. See now you understand how IdM made my life.

When it comes to IdM at least she is the best for me to suggest. And when it comes to life, she is my best. Thus I successfully made an IdM family. We both are currently working for SUN Microsystems as Consultants in the Identity & Access Management space.

Error Severity=???? Sun Identity Manager

Recently a friend of mine asked me what is the below error?

<ErrorMessage severity='error'>New employee number is not present in Oracle HR.

Reasoning:
Whenever, programmers use, log4j functionality in their code, you get these kind of error descriptions. The different types would be, Warning, Error, Critical etc.

Easy Implemenation tool for Sun Identity Manager - ViDT

Six months prior I think people were hearing something called VIP - Velocity Identity Package. This package, as announced, was supposed to be providing HR synchronization etc and many other things. After joining SUN I was lucky enough to get a feel of this product, currently called as ViDT.

Briefly ... The software provides you the following

1. The ability to run multiple instances of SUN IdM (SIM) of different versions at the same time

2. The ability to create and maintain multiple projects with multiple instances of IdM

3. Compatible with all releases of SIM

4. Creates the forms for you, if you feed in data

5. Creates the workflows for you if you feed in the required data

6. Creates all basic administrators etc required for any implementation

7. Creates all the required policies

8. Creates the Design documents

9. Creates the other Project documents

10. Finally bundles you all the code for deployment at the customer end

Boy, one has to get a touch with it to understand how easier the life becomes for a SIM implementor. That too, after the release of 7.1 with many other features ViDT seems to make life much better.

This is a invention of the Neogent Inc, which was acquired by SUN last year.

My Sojourn with MIIS

Microsoft Identity Integration Server: Another sweet product from Microsoft.

This is a product in the Identity Management space. To my knowledge, unlike many other products available today in the market, MIIS is home-made. Via this blog, I am trying to post the knowledge I have received from my one year old friendship with MIIS.

The top features:

1. A state based, Synchronization server.

2. A decent provisioning system.

3. As usual lucid to understand and work

4. As common, has a wonderful group of people working on this and sharing their ideas and solving problems @ MMSUG@yahoogroups.com

5. An inbuilt tool to write your code and thus reduce your pain of writing code

6. Biztalk enabled workflows

7. Doesnt do a RIP v1 kind of data routing.

8. Precendence based Synchronization

9. Has connectors to many known databases and LDAPs

Bad Features:
> Complete Microsoft shop
Means, you have to use all MS products only to implement this product.

I feel, I am still missing something.

Well, this system works primarily as a Metadirectory server. Later it was modified to have the functionalities of a provisioning system.

The architecture:
The application MIIS is at the center, with its own repository called Metaverse. Now it gets connected to different data resources and creates virtual spaces (tables in the MIIS SQL Database) to edit the data that is being imported from the end data resources. To be clear, as any and every data manipulation that has to be done cannot be done on the end resource, we need a place where we can do that. That is called the Connector Space.

For example, if a particular table in an end resource contains 15 columns and we need to work on those fifteen, then we import all these values into the connector space. Later depending upon our needs we would import only the required amount of columns into the metaverse-the main MIIS Repository.

One life Cycle:

End DB -> MIIS -> End DB

Lets talk about a cycle. Data is pulled from the end Authoritative database. The data entirely, will be pulled into a table called mms_connectorspace (table contains data from all data sources, uniquely identified by the dataSource identification number). From here the business rules start getting applied. All rules, related to filtering ids or creating new values or making logical decision etc are worked on this data and final output data is pushed into the Metaverse. To implement all the required resource specific business logic, one implements a DLL for every resource. Now that the data is in the Metaverse, the other logic, like provisioning and deprovisiong and synchronization comes into picture. To handle all this, a special rules extension DLL called the Metaverse Rules Extension DLL is written. This takes care of the afore mentioned. Provisioning or the data being written is written only to the end resource connector space, i.e. the mms_connectorspace with the required id. Then upon export, with specific business logic DLL is configured for every resource, to take the data from the mms_connectorspace table and write it to the endDB.

This is the story.

The advantages in MIIS

1. You get most of the code easily written, because of the reference

2. There is a particular file that can write code for you

3. There are a wonderful set of people at MMSUG@yahoogroups.com just waiting to help.

This relatively, costs you lesser than remaining Identity Management Products.

For those who dont know much about Identity and Access Management, just one line, In the last RSA Security Conference, it was Bill Gates who came up the stage not to announce any other language or operating system, however for their new product ILM 2007 - Identity Life Cycle Manager (MIIS + CLM +++)

TIM vs SIM - A Snippet

I was reading a blog called "Identity Crisis" in Sun blogs site. Found a wonderful article on TIM vs SIM, related to Gartner's ratings. I donot want to replicate the content, however provide the link for you all to read.

http://blogs.sun.com/IdentityCrisis/entry/like_how_lame_is_that

Finally, Air Deccan proves itself

To my previous blog on the low cost flier, this is an Add-on

As every one now know, Mr.Mallya has taken 26% stake in AirDeccan, it proves that Mr. Gopinath has created the right impact in the industry. There was a review published in Times of India, if I could write it here ...

Air Deccan out numbered King Kingfisher in all aspects like, number of Flights, Destinations covered, Pilots and crew employed etc. That was really good to see.

To reiterate it was because of companies like AirDeccan, we have a drastically and positively changed air travel scenario in India.

Sun Identity Manager 7.1 is out

Sun Identity Manager 7.1 is the latest version of the Sun Java System Identity Manager product offering, augmenting the Periodic Access Review (PAR) feature, auditing capabilities, and adding/updating resource adapters. This update improves upon the industry-leading Identity Manager 7.0 solution with:

# Periodic Access Review Enhancements

* Dashboard view
* Remediation request during PAR
* Entitlement history

# Advanced Auditing Capabilities

* Policy violation prioritization
* Audit policy scan scheduling
* "Test" mode ability for audit policy scans (What-If analysis)
* Audit Log Publishers (JMX, JMS, and Scripted)

# Resource Adapters Additions and Updates

* Hybrid LDAP/RACF Mainframe Adapter (New)
* SAP GRC Access Enforcer (Virsa) (New)
* Lotus Notes 7.0 (updated)
* PeopleSoft HRMS 9.0 (updated)
* BMC Remedy Service Desk 7.0 (updated)
* Novell GroupWise 7.0 (updated)

# Other Improvements to:

* Administrative and End User Interface
* Identity Manager IDE
* Role delegations

# Bug Fixes and Platform Support Updates

So all set to rock with the latest one.

How to Reserve things, even before you are born?

For Indians reading this, I am sure, after reading the title they understand the topic being pondered upon here. For others, I am trying to represent my ideas about the Caste/Religion/Sex based Reservation system in India.

Longtime back, something happened in India, that there had to be this system brought in so that the poor and downtrodden people can be economically and socially be uplifted. The thoughts and ideas for this procedure to be implemented were noble at the time of Indian Independence.

Current Scenario: {Kindly let me know if you see any positives}

1. The children of a person who is working as a Judge in a district bench, get seats in engineering colleges under the reserved category. His wife, works for a large bank and gets promoted as an officer under the reserved category.

2. A son of an employee, who works as a senior employee in a Port Trust gets admitted into Engineering college under the reserved category. Never even thinks of completing the engineering.

3. A son of a farmer, gets admitted to an engineering college, under the reserved category and also claims to be under the poverty line category. Thus the government pays the fees for him. However, the guy wears a gold chain, a golden bracelet and wears only branded jeans and excellent watches. Never cares to come to the college. I don't know if he has cleared his exams before the stipulated eight years.

4. A servant maid at my village, still is working in the same fashion and her kid is playing on the road.

5. People in few places like remote parts of Rajasthan etc, still have caste feelings. The previously downtrodden are downtrodden even today.

The system of caste-based reservation has never given anyone any privilege. It has only benefited few corrupt politicians. They are working on the same principles of the East India Company sarkar - "Divide and Rule". I see, personally these days, I mean to say, my generation of young people do not have anything called - ill-feelings for any caste or creed or sex. These days everyone are united in our common interests. However, these politicians are making a mess about it.

Once in Times of India, there was a quote - For every Individual himself/herself is the biggest minority.

Considering that statement, I really wonder, why people need to claim as minority. Even if a Prime minister of a country is alone, all by himself, then he is downtrodden and will be attacked socially for nothing. So everyone of us need to realize that individually we are all in the minority sector and providing reservations for anyone doesn't solve any problem

There are many people who are below the poverty line, and many just above it. I think those are the ones who need some reservation to eat, to study, to live etc irrespective of their caste/religion/creed/sex.

Also this system, shouldn't continue from a person's birth to his/her death. There should be a day when he/she should be asked to live on his/her ability.

"In Business - there is no free lunch"

Its better we all think about these things once in a while. All the visitors are requested to post their comments here. Lets dream and work towards having a India - where only skill matters, nothing else.

My thoughts about the low cost flier - Air Deccan

Note: I am not a frequent flier, however!

Talking a little bit about, what I hear these days, most of the times, in the airports.

"Ahh ... next time I am not flying AirDeccan!!!!!"
"Next time you book airdeccan ... you are fried ..."

I really wonder, why people says such things. To be precise, in the world of Telecoms, its Reliance and in the Indian airline industry, its Airdeccan who have brought drastic changes. Longtime ago, Airlines, used to be a reach only to corporates and guys with big bucks. Today, every common man, is able to fly.

Evaluations: I have flew with AirDeccan, Indian Airlines, KingFisher in the domestic and AirFrance in the international.

1. Kingfisher First: Excellent in Hospitality, Timings, Fine food, and gorgeous Air Hostesses. Well, Timing is the main thing which i think every business man cares according to personal priorities. Truly, no one boards the flight to stare at the AirHostesses. Food??? I dont think it matters in domestic airways as almost all the flight durations are just 2-3 hours at the maximum. Now whatz left, ah, the TVs and the shows. Fair, I have seen, either in an early morning flight or in the evening flights, people only tend to sleep, after a stressful day or a start of thestressful day. All this for atleast a minimum amount of Rs.6500 (approx)

2. Indian Airlines: One word to say, First the flight attendants' white shirts need a decent wash. Thats it.

3. AirDeccan: Lets talk about the negatives first. I found only onething irritating in AirDeccan - the Delay time. Rest is great. Precisely, the leg room is relatively better. The flight durations too are fine. Efficiency of pilots too is fine. Well, coming to what I drink and eat over the flight duration. Well, one gets decent food served, on purchase ofcourse, packed and prepared by Cafe Coffee Day. Personally, I had the Veg Combo many times, which contains, a cheese Sandwich, a cake, two Chatpatas and all this for Rs.70.

So, I think I am p.fine, if I get a flight trip for Rs.2000 and a meal for Rs.70 and a one hour delay in the schedule. Infact most of the common people are ok with it. Even then people talk whatever possible, about AirDeccan.

Ex: I was travelling to hometown in Train; A co-traveller said, "I dont even know if Air Deccan flight will ever fly!", Guy doesnt have money/situation/or whatever may be the reason, to travel in II AC in train atleast, thus shouldnt be commenting about the pocket friendly :-) Air Travel provider of the country.

The only reason I am writing it here is, we all shouldnt comment on someone who has brought drastic changes in a particular domain of the market, rather we better try to understand how is it possible.

Kindly post your comments.

SUN is POSITIVE on Gartner's scale

Its certainly a moment of joy, when Gartner has listed SUN as an overall POSITIVE. These days still, there are people who talk a little bit against the Identity Manager product of SUN. There is a wonderful response to such opinions out there @ http://blogs.sun.com/superpat/entry/sun_identity_manager_comes_out

However, I couldn't resist picking up a comparison sheet from the same blog, for people who however couldn't navigate to the link. It's a thorough comparison of products from six vendors - Courion, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Sun and Thor/Accelerate.

10 most Important people in the Identity Space

One of my friends, Subhash Nukala, working for PwC, UK wrote a comment on my article on IdM. I felt, the comment should be actually highlighted rather than just being left out as a comment. Thus publishing the same here which describes the ten most important personalities in the Identity Management Space. The same can be found out @ http://blogs.zdnet.com/digitalID/?p=24

Few of my blogs may contain few ideas common to some other blogs published elsewhere before, however, there are good number of people who come here who don't know about those :-)
_____________________________
The topic of the “10 most important people” in the identity space came up the other day, and it got me to thinking. Accordingly, I put together my list:

1. Jamie Lewis, CEO, Burton Group: Jamie is always at the top of his game; staying on top of identity trends. In addition, he and Craig Burton wrote the original whitepaper outlining the concept of a “meta-directory” - which essentially gave birth to the identity industry.

2. Kim Cameron, Architect for Identity, Microsoft: Besides building a meta-directory that Microsoft bought (now Active Directory), Kim started the “Laws of Identity” conversation that has resulted in InfoCards in Vista, and multiple conversations around “user-centric” identity.

3. Sara Gates, VP of Identity, Sun Microsystems: I’m pinpointing Sara, but this is really aimed at the entire Waveset team (which was acquired by Sun). That acquisition (and the people that came with it) was a turning point in Sun’s identity management business.

4. Michael Barrett, ex-President of The Liberty Alliance: Michael shepherded Liberty through its early years and represents all of that early, hard work that came out of Liberty and directly contributed to SAML2.0 - which became a point of convergence that accelerated all federated identity initiatives.

5. OASIS, standards body: Alright, so its not really a person, but when a standard comes out of OASIS (be it WS-Security or SAML) it gets traction, and identity would not be where it is today without them.

6. Mike Beach, Boeing: Mike was one of the earliest adopters of SAML, but that’s not why Mike is on this list. Mike is here to represent all of the engineers working inside of the enterprise that slave away day after day trying to make all of this identity “stuff” work.

7. Regulators and Legislators: Again, not a single person, but a group of people. Whether its the FFIEC (with their guidance for online authentication in a banking or brokerage context), or Congress (with the requirements of SOX and GLB), these folks drive identity technology forward, even if unknowingly.

8. The “little guys”: By “little guys,” I mean all of the smaller companies and developers that are out there innovating in one way or another. This list is long (and this is not inclusive): Sxip, Johannes Ernst, A10, Identity Engines, Trusted Network Technologies, Applied Identity, InfoExpress, Prodigen….it goes on and on.

9. The Kid in Nebraska: He’s probably 17 or 18, and he doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to come up with the identity *application* that the entire world adopts.

10. The Readers of Digital ID World: Okay, this is as much a “thank you” as anything. We’ve been doing this since 2002, and without our readers (vendors, enterprises and individuals) we wouldn’t know anything.

That’s my Top 10 Most Important Pepole in Identity. So tell me, who did I miss?

Different Mindsets

Today, someone posted a comment on my blog related to "Identity Management". The comment was ... " get a life dude.....we know u copied all tht frm google.. ". First of all I am very thankful to that Anonymous person, that he was here.

This unfortunately is the mindset of people. I was wondering about Mr/Miss Anonymous's knowledge on IdM and their understanding about my experience in the same. Anyway, if you Anonymous reading this, please let me know your email, I would mail to you. I am a person who believes seriously in science and thus believe in discussing things, rather than just airing out opinions.

What Precisely is Identity Management?

“The human experience of IDENTITY has two elements: a sense of belonging and a sense of
being separate.” - Salvador Minuchin, 1974

Identity management technology is ideally suited to automating processes that enable Sarbanes Oxley compliance. It specifically addresses security processes associated with establishing “adequate internal controls” around financial reporting, as required by SOx section 404(a). By mapping these processes as well as internal security policies to automated identity management, enterprises can leverage highly efficient and cost-effective technology frame-works for improving security and ensuring compliance. In addition, the right identity management solution can bring about greater operational efficiencies in general, and provide a significant return on investment for the enterprise.

Drivers for Identity Management
• Organizational Efficiency. Enable transactions and person-to-person communication.
• Competitive Advantage. Capturing new or larger shares of markets and enhancing company position against competitors.
• Security. Enable authorized access and prevent unauthorized access to information and services
• Speed of Reaction to Change. Mergers, reorganizations, departmental moves.
• Fraud Prevention. Hard to quantify, but can clearly provide major savings.
• Consistent Treatment of the Individual. “End-to-end” management of employees, “single view of the customer,” “joined-up government.”
• Integrated Information Infrastructure. Enable move away from “information silos” and “IT-processing chimneys.”

Real world Examples:
An Indian Office of a top US company, paid salary continously for six months after an employee left the organization.

In one of my previous organization's, the email id of my colleague who left the company existed for almost eight months after he left.

Similarly, in every organization, the current approaches to User/Identity management are crude and fail to provide complete security. A one time Provisioning and one time deprovisioning of identities, with complete auditing facilities for every account created or deleted will be the better solution for the existing problems. This is nothing but Identity Management.

This Domain majorly is composed of the following technologies/domains

1. LDAP/Databases
2. Identity Management
3. Access Management
4. Federation

Product Companies:
The top company for IdM, not to boast but a fact is SUN Microsystems. To see the players in the IdM market and thier positioning, try to google for "Gartner's Magic quadrant for User Provisioning".

I shall try to provide some slides in the near future on the same topics. Meanwhile, enthusiasts are request use the most powerful knowledge tool - GOOGLE.

Why India is still a developing country?

This article came as a email forward to me. I couldn't resist myself posting it here.

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house. Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter. Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) . Opposition MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in educational Insititutions & in Govt Services.

The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley.100s of grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India ...

As a result of loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the grasshoppers India is still a developing country .....

Indians (almost) never Change

Note: I accept, myself, I am certainly not completely perfect.

I have been pondering since years if most of my country men, could every be more courteous in the way they behave with one another, understand their limits, talk properly, interact, be open minded? However, its been long I have been craving for such an environment, where its utopia. Finally I joined SUN Microsystems. I was wondering about the environment I am going to get and expected a lot.

However, Indians are Indians. I still find the following even here.

1. They pull out chairs at your table, even without asking you
2. They stand next to your cubicle and start shouting over their phones without even bothering about others
3. People group at cubicles and start jokes, babble and very ugly is they start speaking aloud in thier regional languages.
4. Latest incident: My colleague, kept a cup of tea, in the microwave for heating. A lady came, pulled her cup out and heated her cup of tea and then kept the cup back and left. I cant even describe what an action this is.

Can we ever ever change???????

My Visit to Symbiosis

Its a moment of pride. I was invited by Symbiosis Center for IT, to deliver a lecture on Identity and Access Management. I was delighted about it. I was there on 31st March at SCIT, Pune. Spoke about almost every piece of detail related to IdM. However, as everyone understands, IdM is all about compliance and talking rules, especially listening such stuff, you know becomes boring. I am sure the students were a little bit patient to hear all that.

However, it was a great feeling, to lecture at a place, where I was a student longtime back. Hope to have such many other momentous occassions.