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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 ...

Cutting Cost? You must read this

Okay it’s been some time I wanted to write about this. Last year when I was working with a large organization the first initiative they took up as a part of cost cutting initiatives was they reduced the thickness of the tissue paper used in the loo. Then they removed employees (LOL)

Just looking at the crazy ideas people are getting these days, I thought I shall share all such nonsense to the world and might be who is crazy but did not get these ideas can implement them.

1.    Remove tissue paper from bathrooms.
2.    Remove the soap solution at the wash basins
3.    Use cheap paper in the loo or if you think your guys only wash, remove the paper
4.    Do not put any glasses next to the water purifiers. Ask people to get their own bottles to fill. If you want to be kind, just put one glass and place a poster saying, “This glass is washed twice everyday”
5.    Don’t use coir or soft carpet. Use a plastic one. It can be cleaned easily. The cost of carpet shampoo can be avoided.
6.    Switch on only every other alternate light. Switch off the remaining.
7.    Switch off the AC during lunch hour.
8.    Charge for four wheeler parking space. This way all employees shall get only two wheelers or use public transport and reduce the carbon footprint 

9.    Switch off the coolers; just let them function only as purifiers.
10.    Cut the size of the coffee cups.
11.    Install the coffee machines very far from the employees’ work spaces. So they get frustrated to walk till them and stop having coffee.
12.    Rent some space in front of the office for a chaiwala who sells cigarettes etc. so people would prefer going out for a smoke and then have tea there.
13.    Also you would get some rent.
14.    Call those guys who place TVs in offices for advertising purposes. Ask them to start their business in all common areas and they would pay you for it.
15.    Rent small office spaces in cafeterias to people who would like to sell clothing or some fancy stuff etc.

Technical

1.    Install printer, don’t give paper. Keep the paper with the manager
2.    Allow Google access to only employees who are on a project
3.    Remove dialing outside number access to all employees, except managers or above
4.    Do not provide any stationery to the employees.
5.    Give the manager one diary yearly, enough

If I get to find or hear any other nasty things in this domain I shall post it.

Have fun guys.

Acquisitions for expanding business

I think by now its official. Mphasis is acquiring AIG Systems and Solutions India Pvt Ltd. Mphasis is trying to expand its customer base by leaps and bounds by this acquisition as AIGSS has many clients across AIG with the highest revenue generator being AIG Corporate systems. 

And to tell you, AIGSS had to roll out a lot of young heads to compensate some numbers. 

SBI - No one can beat them

The guys who wrote the software should really be appreciated.

"Indiscipline" has taken over good part of the Software Industry

During my college days, the computer illiterates use to call me a good programmer and under that assumption I used to be in a hurry to keep the name going on. Once there was a task given and we were coding in C. As usual in my hurry to complete it first and faster, I have completed the program. There I press "CTRL+F9" just to see some garbage. Wondering what would have gone wrong I quickly checked the 100 lines of code. Couldn't find an error. My professor came in and started debugging, rather just checking the functionality. In the mean time I think good number of people in my class somehow completed the program.

Still my prof scrolling up and down ... and suddenly I see that I have missed the "&" before the variable name in the "scanf" statement. :-)

That was history, however this is what is happening in the industry today. People are always in a hurry to see their product selling in the market, and in that hurry the programmers deadlines are pushed and what one gets into the market is a faulty product. The sales guy sells it, cos he knows how to handle the POC and a foolish partner picks up the product to implement.

Tough times start when actually people start implementing it.

In the other scenario, these days, people are in such a hurry to implement and show how great they are to their customers; architects are not even making design documents. Finally they mess up the project and somehow deliver some nonsense. If you have read my previous article, its because of such hasty implementations in past the future becomes grim and even after knowing this, people repeat mistakes.

To conclude ... I want to write about a funny experience I had ...
Once when I was taking up a final lab exam for a batch of Electronics engineering, a girl submitted her observations to me. The few details were
Project: Implementation of logical gates using circuits and verifying results.
Precautions:
1. The connections should be tight
2. Readings should be taken without parallax error.

I asked two simple questions.
How do you get parallax error when you have a result of 1 if light glows and a result of 0 if it doesn't?
When from did you start having losses in results if the connections were not tight in electronic experiments?

What am I doing?

Yepp, its been sometime that I got uncertain about what should I be doing. Finally I have decided to move a little ahead in Identity and learn somethign on Identity Governance. I am currently working on Sailpoint's Identity IQ implementation for a large bank.

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.

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

Is your Identity Management Implementation complete?

I have question? Who exactly is implementing the complete Identity solution? My identity management experience is just 3 years, by December 12th. I have worked with various clients. I have not found even a single organization using the Identity management product (which ever they bought) to the fullest. I mean the provisioning capabilities of the product are not used properly.

And the major reason people state is, they are not clear about their organizational roles. How long? I mean it has been longtime organizations started having the need to implement IdM solutions and still no one's figured out how to make it complete? The sales pitch of many identity sales guys says, other than compliance one can achieve profits by limiting calls to the help desk, reduce the number of administrators managing resources and all such other stuff, but is it happening?

I have seen many orgs, asking us just to send an email to the admin rather than provisioning. The admin creates the user and says done to make the audit log. Thats it, the auditor is happy and so is the company. Is this what is Identity Management?

What is the way ahead for all these implementors and organizations? Investing this much on the solutions/products?

A different thought:
How about saying a discplined approach from the beginning of an organization would have avoided this mess? Security/Process these terms come in only after the mess has already happened. Recently I was talking to an ISO in a big company and he said first I need the process to be in and then we can think of security. Wow, dude are you into information security?

If an organization can have processes set from day one and follow them and be disciplined, things will be better.

Some hero from some workgroup creates a beautiful html page and says from today we can use this for some XYZ work. Its launced and the hero is rewarded. Later after 10 years when this page becomes critical and the creator has already left the organization without any documentation, pffffffhhhh then you know what happens.

So any new entreprenuers? Guys be cautious today to avoid huge unnecessary investments tomorrow.

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

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.

Another Moment of Pride

I have been invited again to take a guest lecture on Identity Management at SCIT. This time it was really good to take the class as my experience gave the right touch. This is the ultimate joy I find, as I teach at the same place where I was once a student. Happy me :-)

Six years passed - the stains of blood remain

Six long years have passed by and the sight of the twin towers raining to sand and dust is still clear. A day when the entire world was taken back by shock. God knows who are all the people involved in and out other than our times magazine cover photo guy with the long beard, Mr.Laden, one quick question ... what did you achieve?


It has been a tradition world wide to punish brutally the innocent for mistakes of few. What is everyone achieving by spilling out the blood of their brethren? Where are we going ahead in this world?

Columbus came in to find new places to have better world and we started a word called Global village only to live together in peace and prosperity but not to test our new shiny explosive inventions against one another.

We are trying to reach mars, why? So that we can introduce some kind of terrorism there?

A common man be an American, a Palestinian, a Pakistani, an Israealian or an Indian never want a war. People who are hungry dont need bullets, rather need something to eat and some love to share.

There is nothing one can achieve by waging wars, Ashoka taught us this lesson and we still seem not to be interested to learn.

Its time we make this world a wonderful place to live but not a park of landmines. Lets spread love.

My condolences to all those families who lost their loved ones and salute to all those firefighters and armed personnel who lost their lives helping in those situations.

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.

First one here

This being my first post, I want to write a few lines about myself here. I am InfoSec enthusiast. I have started my career on the same lines in 2004 with GE. There after a while, I have moved into Identity Management. This domain, once I really started working, I understood, is really enticing. Later I have joined Wipro, moved to Ilantus, and now go settled in SUN Microsystems.

The journey was short but is filled with lot of mixed experiences. Especially the journey with Ilantus, which you may read in the other Blog.