Bill Gates advice to the Youth

I came across this article on LinkedIN. Its a good read for everyone. Go ahead, read it from here.

My old team at SUN is no more

I learn't that recently on the first week of January, the whole team of SOA/BI was removed. All the resources were let out in RIF. That was so unfortunate to know. I am sure everyone would find wonderful jobs again.

Also I hope Oracle keeps the wonderful suite of IAM products of SUN going.

My experience in Sales

Long time ago, when I was pursuing my masters, as a part of the course I had a to complete a three month internship. I got selected into an organization which was into Networking and Server sales. The three months I spent there were pathetic. I almost forgot those days.

However, I have recently saw a Hindi movie, which depicted the true picture about sales. After watching this I remembered my old experiences.

During the internship, for the first few days I was asked to collect existing Customer feedback on the sales done with them. One day I ended up at an Agricultural Research University in Hyderabad. I met a professor who was in-charge of a Digital Library project. I met her and asked for feeback. She almost started crying. The story unfolded so ...

Our sales guy approached her long back and started explaining her about SUN's initiative in digital library solutions. He recommended her a server which was priced at Rs.5 Lakhs or half a million in Indian currency. She, I assume asked him if it would work with any custom software and he said yes. The Prof. blindly bought it. In the other part of the story, which happened before, someone else approached her regarding a software solutions to Digital Libraries. She gave the contract to them to write a software for the university.

Now on the D-Day they had both the software and the server. They kept the software CD in the CD-ROM of the SUN server and expected something to happen. Oops!!!!! nothing happened because the software was written in .NET. The university realized this and called the software vendor and requested to rewrite it in Java. The guy accepted it for another 2Lakhs, which the university did not have.

So the day I went there I learnt that because of all this fiasco, the Prof got demoted, the solution came to a halt and they have a software and hardware which do not work together. The prof boots up the server and checks yahoo mail once in a week.

After this she tried calling my sales guys many a times, in vain.

This is how sales are ... People are duped 1000% of the times in software. That is the reason why software is selling.

There would be a time when people would certainly get intelligent and then I wonder what these IT sales guys do?

If you want to know the name of the horrible company I worked for ...

Blame the software???

Yesterday my brother was narrating what happened at his workplace. Before that; he is working for an MNC which serves a large international clientele.

Last month his account was credited with salary which was more than his CTC. He assumed it was the variable pay or some extra pay for working on weekends. Later he enquired and to a surprise many employees got excess salary. Before everyone could even think of celebrating the company sent a mailer saying due to some wrong calculations everyone got credited excess salary and the same shall be deducted next month.

This is how companies are being managed. What quality can be delivered by such people to the clients???

Wish you all Happy Ugadi

Is the SUN setting?

I still can believe if its true that IBM would acquire SUN Microsystems one of the world's best companies. I am a technology guy, do not understand much of these business gimmics, however is it for this that someone struggles so hard to make a brand help the world by their open source products etc and then shrink the company and sell if off???

Its harldy a few years back SUN was more than $30B company and now its hardly $3B, why? Is it someone's strategy to bring SUN down and buy them? What is the problem? Or is it that SUN's strategy of business has flaws?

I wonder if tomorrow IBM or whoever would ...

1. Sell the SUN Identity Suite/JES?

2. What will happen to SUN PS?

3. What will happen to the Open Source initiatives?

At least as a person who loves the products and as someone who respects SUN, I would not appreciate this. The management should have taken enough steps to keep the brand up and glowing, rather selling the shop.

Wish you a Wonderful New Year

Congrats India

Picture Courtesy: www.isro.org

Congrats to all the Indians. A most awaited moment in the history of Indian Space Mission has just begun. Its not far when all the myths are broken and an Indian lands on Moon.

Kudos to ISRO and all its associates.

It happens only in ..........

Recently I visited my Car Service center. While they were working on my car I was going through the workshop and was shocked to read this (last one).

An Observation

I was going through Linkedin and just clicked on a survey. The results it showed for the survey have something noteworthy. Check it out.

Why IDM initiatives fail?

First check this post


What is said here is true. The people who are building solutions only think of technical issues always, rather than the features which are roots of the organization, viz. Processes and Policies. From an architecting perspective it is very crucial to understand the processes of the organization and then chalk out a plan for work rather than checking out what can be done by the product.

I feel, technologically everything is possible, with the only two constraints - TIME and MONEY. If a space shuttle can be sent to MARS, then an Identity implementation is possible, with or without the chosen product's features. However the feasibility of a solution with respect to time and money has to be planned when one architects.

Just my thought ...

The picture of a person whom I adore

Yes, it is Whitfield Diffie the inventor of the Public Key Cryptography.

Kindly leave your emailId

I get few tech queries. Most of them are posted as comments. When I want to get back to them, I do not have their mail id.

Thus kindly post your mail id.

Thanks a lot.

Tripit.com

A little bit out of the box, however I have been just told about an amazing tool provided by http://www.tripit.com.

Features:

1. Just send your trip itinerary to plans@tripit.com and it automatically creates your id with your email and sends you a password
2. It also parses your email and plans your calender accordingly.
   
3. Using the calender update URL you may synchronize your personal calenders.
4. Also when you expand your network by adding friends it shows where they are and to them, where you are.

Isnt this cool???

All the frequent travelers out there, register on http://www.tripit.com

Faking one's experience has become the practice of the Industry???

Pondering yesterday about what has everyone got for what they are, I was astonished by the fact that all the class toppers in my class are just doing good, however the average guys are doing much better. My engineering class toppers are just working for ordinary packages in good companies and the others are working for exemplary packages.

Faking one's experience has become a part and parcel of many IT professionals' lives. I can tell you a wonderful story.

Few of my intelligent and hardworking friends resorted to their masters after completing engineering. Remaining people who couldn't clear their exams or didnt get jobs were just roaming on roads with their parents money for almost two years. By the time these intelligents completed their Masters, these people who enjoyed their two years flaunted their resumes in the industry with an experience of two years and got better jobs. These foolish intelligent guys were obviously freshers and deserved less than them.

Moral: So you may have fun for two years after engineering; goto Goa, roam around with your girl friend and then finally struggle for six months to be in a better position.

Pointers:
Companies like Wipro, Infosys, Satyam, I mean name any big brand, there are atleast 30% of people joining them via lateral hiring with fake experiences. These people fake their experience their payslips and get a good pay and better grade than the ones who are genuine. These big companies which boast about background verifications do very little to stop it. If anyone has to say anything against my word, I can prove my statements.

Ethics have no place in the Indian IT industry today.

One another technology which has fallen prey to these fake guys is SAP. Every Tom D**k and Harry goes to some place in Hyderabad to get software installed for Rs.2000 i.e. a mere $50 on their machines and get courses learnt for a mere Rs. 10000 i.e ($250) and thats it once done, these people call themselves a 3 yr experienced and get paid almost 100 times their SAP tution fee.

Is this the only way to go ahead? If so, one can enjoy his school, college and everything, finally buy couple of certificates and one PC with printers to print his fake resume and submit it. Thats it he would have a better situation than the guy who slogged all his life?

I dont remember the ending of the story by SomerSet Maugham but today atleast the grasshopper wins. Will there be some change in this pattern?

Final word, I think even the NASSCOM is sleeping.

My Sojourn at the states

November 28th is when I came to St.Louis planning to complete an ongoing project. There were many issues without answers. And once I was at the client's place, only then I understood all what they did to bring up the issues. Kept resolving one by one to complete the LDAP ActiveSync Identity management project. Although not everything was complete I still had to move out of the place. One best thing that happened was the LUNCH at RUCHI, the Indian restaurant. Wow, it was an amazing lunch.

Then on Sunday, we have left to Salt Lake City, an amazing place expect for the climate. It was freezing for me. I have never ever experience what negative temperatures were like before here. I was walking on the roads when it was -6. Its killer cold for me. Lot of Indian restaurants around.

Finally after a two tough-cold weeks at Salt Lake City, I am moving to Austin tomorrow. Expecting to meet some old friends. Will update

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to one and all.

May this festival of lights bring prosperity, peace, love success for everyone.

About Diwali: The very reason why we celebrate this festival is to mark the victory of God/Good over evil. Two different stories that we hear are ...

1. Few people say, its the day when Lord Krishna along with Lordess Satyabhama fought and killed Narakasura.

2. Few others say, that Lord Rama killed Ravana and liberated Lordess Sita this day.

That is the piece of information I know :-)

Anyway have a great festival.

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.

Chakde India

There was a day, when I was one among many other citizens of India, commenting bitterly on the performance of our team at the world cup. Felt they do not have commitment nor interest. Oh one cannot find words of our feelings at that time and just only thinking that the 11 have made a mess.

Today watching the movie, Chakde India, I truly felt I was wrong in my thoughts. No one goes into a game to lose. The only difference is some get right directions to go ahead and some unfortunately are deprived of it. Everyone has ego. All of the 11 players are champions in their own states. Thus fail to either coordinate or give attention to others. May be the army's rule of Break and Build should be adopted for a team to succeed.

Every point in the movie only showed that TEAM WORK is the only key to succeed. I have really learnt my lesson out of this wonderful movie.

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