Happy Andhra Formation Day - November 1st

Every time we get holiday on November 1st, sure everyone born in Andhra Pradesh remembers Sri Potti Sriramulu garu.

Is remembering him enough? Does enjoying a holiday alone, makes us a proud and responsible Andhrite?? I am sure we all dont think so. This person gave up his life just to bring this state to us. He gave up food, water, shelter comforts everything for us. Today the state proudly boasts of big time IT parks, huge growth in infrastructure and many other goodies. However, to the very truth, today there are many Potti Sriramulus out there who dont have water to drink and food to eat.

All of these people (freedom fighters) brought us freedom which we couldn't handle properly. Who ponders about this? I am sure all of us do, in our offices, at cubicles at social gatherings etc. Then why dont we have the right results? Because actions are pending.

The first best action which we all should implement is ... I think, we should vote. Every time there is election, wherever we are in India, we should make a point that we go back and vote, because we are educated enough to choose the right leaders.

The second best thing we can do is to save the natural resources like Water, Food, Vegetables etc.

I thought to mention my thoughts this way about a great day.

JAI TELUGU TALLI

Puzzling???

I have been to Visakhapatnam recently. I took a pic at the airport. Can you see the picture clearly and make out whats wrong there?

Ok, chance 2.

Got it? The emergency exit door in the airport was locked with a big size steel lock. I just wonder how did they get the idea of locking the emergency exit. This is how things are.

Is it really necessary to show verbal aggressiveness?

I think Indian cricketers are putting up a bad show. Why should somebody show facial aggressiveness or be aggressive verbally? Actions of the game are the ones which are supposed to be spoken, rather than shouting or using abusive language on the other team.

Phlegmatism should be practised by our team. When they are on the international stage they need to follow the law and rules. If the other team resorts to verbal aggressiveness and uses abusive language the team is expected to lodge a compliant with the authorities. Or, if the example of Arjuna Ranatunga be taken, he has asked his entire team to leave the field quietly when Muttiah muralitharan was given no-ball thrice mentioning his action wasn't right.

Similarly our countrymen can simply walk away from the field saying they used abusive language rather than retaliating in the same fashion. If done so, what difference exists between them and us.

My fellow countrymen, we are professionals and lets be so.

What is BSI according to Germany?

What is BSI according to Germany?

BSI is a kind of organization in Germany which is equivalent to NSA in USA. It is trying to provide standards and guidelines to all the government organizations as well as private organizations in their country. The countrymen who designed Enigma now have an organization something like NSA. Does that mean we are going to see new algorithms replacing Triple-DES etc?

Also there is a new framework coming up from SOx especially for Europe called the EuroSOx. People argue it would be similar, however.

CEC - SIM v7.x?

Are you hanging with any version other than 7_1_1???? If you are then get ready to be completely outdated soon. Yes you got it right ... it Sun Identity Manager 8.0 set to release very soon.

I have written the new features of 7.1 after it got released. This time I have the privilege of writing about 8.0 even before its release. The top best feature of this version would be Role Management.

Features:

Flexible Role Modelling
Bi - Level RBAC
Business Roles
IT Roles
Also provision for Multilevel RBAC
Offers Role Subtypes, defaults being Business, IT, Application and Asset
New Sub-Types can be created
Extended attributes on Role Subtypes

Now you will also be able to search on Role Subtypes, for example "all application roles" etc.

New Role Features ...

Activation:

• Required: Get activated directly
• Conditional: Rule based, i.e. if the user object is getting an update and it requires few other privileges then it is allocated
• Manual: Implicit
  

Role start date and End date: What other granularity can one ask for?

Role Change Approval Process: If the actual Role definition itself is set to change then it should go through an approval process.

These are very few of the amazing features of 8.0. Keep waiting for it to release.

SUN Identity Manager rocks.

LasVegas - Interesting facts

The casinos ...

1. Flamingo
2. Rio
3. Paris
4. Ballys
5. Ceasers
6. Harrahs

belong to One person. All these six are connected one to another via all modes, escalators, lifts etc and is called the LasVegas Strip.

The big three in Vegas are MGM, Ceasers, Bellagio. The musical fountain that shows up every evening at intervals of 10 mins is a feast to eyes. This is the only show that comes for free :-)

All remaining (Comedy, classic, nude) shows have a minimum entrance fee of $40.

CEC - The Professional Services Party

Wow ...

All these days it used to be like only me and harini working for SUN IdM PS-India and few interactions with people in the same in US. Only know by name.

Today Arun Shresta, my practice head threw a party to all the PS folks. I met, Rene Ugarte, Mark, Steve Hulme, Chris Timmerman - the geek, Tiffany Ryan, Greg Buchanan, Sharif, Manish Chopra and many other.

It was kind of home after meeting all these senior guys and having the tech talks with them.

The party went well, however being a vegetarian I dont think I had any much options. In a wonderful situation like this food was the only concern. Unimaginably bad. Well thats how the life of a Veggie would be in USA rather anywhere outside India.

CEC - Identity Management

Monday evening I attended the session on Identity managment. Johnny cope was there taking the session. It was supposed to be a deep dive session, however everyone started asking/discussing solutions to their client problems. However their team is currently, I was informed, are making a team which only takes care of preparing images and deploying on public access servers. Thus the presales guy who visits the client can directly login with his id and give them a demo. Also licenses to try the product online for a week or couple are being to be sold so that the clients can check the product for a while before taking the decision.

SUN Identity Manager rocks.

NetBEANS Plugin:

Many of us know the BPE will be scrapped off, phase wise and finally everyone is expected to use NetBeans to create all custom objects in Sun Identity Manager. Every version of NetBeans vs IdM war file there is a .nbm file that needs to be imported into the Netbeans. I got my hands dirty using the NetBeans 5.5 and SUN Identity Manager war file for 7.1.1. Its awesome to use Netbeans instead of BPE, except the heavy memory requirement NetBeans has.

Tuesday I would be attending wonderful sessions like RBAC, VIDT, Security Considerations for IDM etc. Will post it soon.

CEC - Indian Telecom scenario.

I attended a session on the telecom scenario in India with Vodafone being the case study. There are few amazing statistics that I would like to mention which I came to know.

1. Vodafone has presence in 62+ countries
2. 1.2 Billion population of India is almost greater than the population of both USA and UK combined
3. Only 20% of Indians use mobile phones. (There may be a scenario that one person may have multiple connections too)
4. 87.9% of the Mobile users in India use only Prepaid
5. Indian operators are providing the cheapest call rates compared to the entire world
6. The target by 2010 is that there would be 500Mn Mobile users in India
7. Vodafone just by acquiring Hutch got 30Mn subscribers which is almost 13% of its worldwide subscription

Aren't there facts amazing.

Will keep posting.

First updates of CEC??? Nope Vegas First

Vegas ........ ah what a place?

The first thing one needs to know is .... "whatever happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" is the quote here. Its a different world altogether a fantasy world. You never know when its night and when its a day. At night the city just looks like gold spread all over. If there is money flowing anywhere then it is here. People just spend money like anything. The description of Vegas can be given better by a poet or a story writer, for a person like me, its simply speechless.

SUN has organized the conference in Hotels Paris and Bally's. I stay in the later. This is just in front of the Ballagio where the eleven stand and watch the fountains after walking away with the 16 million dollars. I was just watching the same today.


Everyone I met, during my journey to Vegas asked me only one thing, "Conference at Vegas???". And I didn't know what to say. Whatever may be it, the place is a wonderful one to visit in one's lifetime.

Will keep posting.

SUN - CEC 2007

Just a week away from now is the SUN Customer Engineering Conference 2007 at Las Vegas. Are you coming? Well this is going to be another exciting event from SUN with around 3500 people around the world including employees, vendors, partners etc attending it.

My area of interest would be Identity Management and SOA.

The highlights are ...

1. Free certifications for Solaris, JCAPS, Java and many other
2. Lots of techno videos
3. Prizes for bloggers ...

Oh what not ... CEC 2007 has everything to offer. Hope to see/meet great people out there.
Keep checking for more on this event in the next week.

Google Apps Provisioning API V2.0

Google is providing an API for user provisioning into Google applications.

Google Apps allows website administrators to offer their users cobranded versions of a variety of personalized Google applications, such as Gmail. The API provides functions for creating, retrieving, updating and deleting user accounts, nicknames and email lists. With the help of this API one can code their custom adapters for Sun Identity Manager or management agents for Microsoft Identity and Integration Server.

Go ahead and read on ...

1. Provisioning Reference

2. Java based API reference

However the point of note is the Provisioning API is only available to Google Apps Premier Edition and Google Apps Education Edition partners.