Anil Nair's Blog

Are you Anna?

2011-08-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

The recent Lokpal issue-led revolution by Anna Hazare has been a great victory for India. It has shown the world that voice of the people can be expressed in a peaceful nonviolent way to have an impact of historic proportions. For anyone who was not present to witness the pre-independence struggle of India, this was a great way to get a glimpse of what India went through to get independence from the British. In the age of sophisticated military and terrorist warfare comprising of unmanned drones, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, it is great to know that the Gandhian principle of non-violence is still as effective as ever.

There are widespread celebrations across the world about the success of this revolution. Social media is abuzz with media, celebrities and the people congratulating the common man on the victory against corruption. I feel this is well deserved and appropriate. But this is also a time to reflect and see what this really means for all of us when the emotional energy fades away. I believe this victory should be treated as a first successful step in a long journey that never ends.

It takes two to tango. People have conveniently ignored the fact that the other side of corruption is us - the very people who are fighting against corruption. While the person receiving a favor or a bribe is always portrayed as the villain, let's take a brief moment to look at the other side of that trade. In many cases, going the easy route is usually a matter of convenience and is not perceived as corruption. Rationalizing by saying that the bribe receiver is forcing us to do it is no longer an honest argument in the post-Lokpal era. In a country like India the infrastructure, systems and affordability are equally responsible for the state of corruption.

Are you Anna? Here are some questions I want you to answer before you answer this question. Do you declare all your assets and sources of income to the income tax department? What do you declare to the customs official while returning from your trip abroad? What do you choose to do if you have to take leave from work to stand in line at a government office to get a license or a document? Do you offer to pay cash instead of cheque to get a discount at your shop? Are you a consumer of illegal software, music and movies? What will you do when your own son or daughter can get a life changing education if you take just one difficult decision? What will you do when you have a sick child needing urgent attention waiting in line for a hospital bed? There are countless such questions and the answers are not easy. It will take time for us to get there and the only way we can get there is acknowledging our role in the transformation process.

So let me ask again - Are you Anna? I think a more appropriate phrase to use is "I want to be Anna" and not "I am Anna". All I can say is, saying you are Anna and being Anna are two completely different things. That shouldn't come as a surprise to us because otherwise we would have seen at least a dozen Mahatma Gandhijis in 100 years. I don't want us to beat ourselves because of our shortcomings. Aspiring to follow a higher standard itself can bring about revolutionary changes even if we fall short at the fringes. But it would be foolish for us to declare victory saying it is all someone else's fault and we have solved the problem.

M&A in a SaaS world

2009-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

People often casually talk about mergers and acquisitions in the SaaS space. Some say this space is "ripe" for M&A. There is already enough statistical evidence that M&A has more chances of failure than success. SaaS company acquirers should take this data point even more seriously.

There may be several reasons to acquire a company in the SaaS space e.g. to buy your way into a market, buy innovation through acquisitions etc. But the most critical part is the post-acquisition integration. Since SaaS is still an evolving space there are no clear SaaS platform leaders. In fact there are hardly any SaaS platforms in the market.

Without a standardization or maturity in the SaaS platform market, every SaaS vendor has a purpose built platform for their product. This applies to any company out there including Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, NetSuite, Concur etc. Imagine integrating the platforms of these companies if they were to merge. It is a non-trivial problem and should be a huge consideration for the acquirer for one simple reason - margins.

The margins for a SaaS company is very heavily dependent on how scalable their SaaS platform is. By scalability I don't mean only technical scalability. It is also the cost of scaling. If the cost of scaling is high then the business is not scalable. I can easily imagine a cost-of-scaling metric that will eventually be used to value a SaaS business just as customer acquistion cost and customer churn numbers are key metrics used to measure a business like Netflix.

Integration becomes a challenge with highly custom platforms and without integration the benefits of economies of scale become a dream. I don't think there is a realization of this fact in the industry. So I think major M&A activity in the SaaS space is nowhere near. And the ones that do get acquired by bigger players like PayCycle by Intuit, will forever remain independent operations without ever achieving the benefits of economies of scale.

Transfer files from Mac to PC

2009-06-13T17:25:00.000-07:00

Problem: Mac formats hard disks using HFS+. Windows uses NTFS as the default format. Apparently, you can use FAT or FAT32 formatted disks on both Mac and PC - there are some limitations on files sizes and number of files. But in Windows Vista Microsoft has introduced a new format called exFAT replacing/enhancing the FAT file formats. What a nightmare! I couldn't use my USB external hard drives (NTFS) with the Mac - it could read the contents but could not write anything from the Mac.

Simple solution: If you are having a Windows and a Mac on the same home network, there is a simple way to share files between the two - via FTP. Just go to your Mac system preferences and enable file sharing for the concerned user using ftp. You can then use a program like FileZilla on your PC to access files on your Mac. It will ask you for the Mac user name password of the person who shared the files. Once you get in, you can just drag and drop files from the Mac to the PC.

Insecure Leadership - A Source of Organizational Politics

2009-06-05T21:33:00.000-07:00

Insecure leadership in an organization is a key source of organizational politics. Insecurity makes business leaders act in very funny ways regardless of their role and the size of their organization. There are many signs that can tell you that your management has insecurity about their ability to add value to the organization. Some common signs:

Hunger for credit: Leaders becoming stingy in giving credit where its due and worse still, trying to take credit for their team's effort
Promoting incompetence: Leaders surround themselves with people who don't threaten them
Denial about circle of competence: Leaders unwilling to accept their circle of competence - just because you are someone's manager doesn't make you an expert on everything
Desparate contributors: Leaders unwilling to accept that at times they will have no value to add to the team's work - it is ok to say "I have nothing to add" (like the great Charlie Munger)

Insecure managers directly limit your organization's growth because they are often so focused on protecting their fiefdom that they compromise the best interest of your business.

Future of cloud computing and SaaS

2009-04-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Cloud computing is the next BIG thing with all the major platform players aggressively going for the land grab. Each player has a different approach and are trying to provide their offering at different levels - from raw computing and storage to application fabrics and SaaS platforms. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, IBM are some key players betting big on this trend.

There is a lot of confusion and debate about which platform will prevail and what is the best approach on cloud computing. My take is that it is going to follow the path that the internet economy has taken. Broadly 3 layers are likely to emerge. These layers of clouds with current day analogies are mentioned below:

Infrastructure clouds - Provide raw infrastructure. Current day Amazon EC2 similar to an older day Savvis. There could be any number of providers in this category primarily differentiating on cost.

Development framework clouds - Provides application development framework. Current day Microsoft Azure similar to an older day Windows + .Net combination. Infrastructure cloud will be included and could be outsourced to a strategic partner. There will be a less than 5 cloud providers this category with limited portability amongst each other.

Application clouds - Provides higher level abstraction to build applications. Current day Salesforce.com similar to an older day SAP. There could be any number of providers here. But the likely scenario would be a 2 tier system where large application companies like SAP and Oracle have their own cloud and other smaller application vendors sharing clouds or are part of other eco-systems. The platform with a better eco-system will emerge as an eventual leader - similar to Google in search-ads and eBay in auctions. The ability to reach a wide number of target users or customers will eventually be the key driver for application cloud adoption rather than ability to build applications. The ability to build applications will eventually be similar on most major platforms.

Another trend likely to emerge is the creation of special purpose clouds. This would be similar to special purpose social networking sites or radio channels. There will be aspects around data security, workflow, availability, SLAs and eco-system that will be better suited for market segments like legal, government, finance, insurance etc. These will be built as value-added-clouds using the infratructure and application clouds.

My new Macbook

2009-03-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

I have been a DOS and Windows user for over 15 years. Not just an end user but have been a developer/user for that long. Including programming on Windows 3.1.

Over the past 2 years I have had to spend significant amounts of time "fixing" my home and work computer for seemingly trivial reasons. Fixing always involved going to see what are the unwanted softwares installed, looking at the process list to see what is consuming 100% CPU or memory, installing 3 or 4 software from various places to get 1 simple thing done.

That is when I started walking into the apple store at the local mall. Started looking at all their products and the hype around them. It took me a very very long time but I still couldn't spend the few extra $$ premium to buy a Mac. Eventually, I bought an iPod touch. Just a few months after using the iPod touch, I realized that it is not about how much memory or CPU power the Mac had. It is not about the number of features that a computer has. I felt that in a small device like a music player the right design can significantly enhance the user experience. I officially became an Apple convert when my 3.5 year old daughter started using the iPod touch with no training.

So finally I made the leap and bought my first Macbook a month ago. So far it has lived up to my expectations and has been an amazing experience. I use the macbook as a home computer to browse the internet, photos, music, video, video chatting with family...

I have one advice for people on the fence - BUY A MAC.

I found a very useful blog by David Alison that gives tips on some of the quirks around keyboard shortcuts and other aspects of making the witch easier. I found it very useful.

Microsoft's strategy for search and cloud

2008-12-30T13:22:00.000-08:00

This piece was triggered by a couple of The Motley Fool articles regarding Microsoft's plans on Cloud Computing, SaaS and search. This is one of my favourite websites but I was disappointed with the lack of depth in these articles and the superficial content.
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/12/30/an-open-letter-to-steve-ballmer.aspx
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/12/29/microsoft-just-doesnt-get-it.aspx

I think the Motley Fool should sharpen their research on the longer term strategy with Microsoft Azure. Microsoft is going to win in the cloud computing race as being one of the leading cloud computing platforms. I don't think anyone will have the dominance that Windows has in the PC market. Microsoft is going to make it possible for the existing developer community to develop, deploy and maintain cloud applications with little or no retraining.

Standards would emerge forcing the cloud computing players to provide portability across platforms. Today all the providers have emerging platforms with Amazon being the leader in the services offered. But providing utility services is not the only goal that these platform players are looking at. There is the utility/infrastructure services and then there is the Service Delivery Platform services. These two capabilities combined is a tremendous value to application developers and customers of the platforms.

On search, I don't think search quality is the issue with Microsoft search anymore. The lead Google has in the search space is due to the eco-system and network effect its search has. Indexing more web pages better and providing minor improvements to the search results is not going to be a game changer. Microsoft will have to build the network effect and that is the toughest challenge to overcome in the viral web marketing environment

Leadership: Knowing your role in the process

2008-11-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

People often envy and criticize leaders and question what they do. Here is a simple answer: they are people in the front making decisions. Leadership is for those who have the courage to make decisions and are not afraid of failing. In my view there are three types of people in the world - whether it is your personal life or professional life.

Decision makers
These are the leaders. The people who analyze information at their hands, filter the important from the unimportant, and take a decision. Decisions are often taken on partial information. If precise and complete information was always available you could train computers to take decisions. An important aspect of leadership is knowing that there is no way to lead without failures. Bad leaders are often who are afraid to fail. These leaders delay acknowledging failures and hence make the consequences of those failures bigger.

Influencers
Influencers who understand that they are not in charge of making the decisions but realize the importance of participating in the decision making process. Influencers are of 3 types:

Future leaders who are training themselves by putting themselves in the leader's shoes.
Perpetual influencers who are best suited as advisers to leaders and lack other aspects of leadership
The negative influencers who are typically putting their personal agendas ahead of the leader's primary responsibility. Leaders need to recognize this group and eliminate their influence.

Followers
This is a very important and perhaps the most important group. They implement the leader's decisions and vision. Followers need clarity. Clarity in:

Decisions: Clear articulation of the decisions, the rationale, objective and goals.
Communication: Clear communication and constant reminder of the goals
Operational mechanism: Clear way of setting goals, measuring success and tracking progress

Each group has its place and is a necessary function for progress. What is important is to know who you are and the role you are playing and do it well.

Microsoft PDC 2008

2008-11-01T20:42:00.000-07:00

I attended Microsoft PDC 2008. It was my first time at this event. I must say that I was impressed as seeing Microsoft's focus on the right things. Below is a highlight of areas I found interesting.

Azure Service Platform
Yes, Microsoft is late to arrive to the cloud computing race. Amazon has shown world the way to monetize the cloud computing paradigm. But I think Microsoft is thinking right and doing right in this space. Cloud Computing is not a choice for Microsoft. It is a natural progression in the evolution to a distributed computing model. It has realized that conquering this new frontier is critical for its existence. I believe Microsoft is going to make it easy to extend every aspect of software development, deployment and service to cloud computing and become one of the top 3 players in this space.

Windows 7
With a focus on Performance and usability, I think Microsoft is finally thinking right. I have long believed that the PC has changed from being a computing device to a consumer electronic device. Apple has demonstrated this through the way it makes it easy to do the most common things easily on its Mac units. I believe Microsoft is going to make the PC a consumer device with its Windows 7 OS. One example is the demo of the ease of home networking shown at the PDC 2008

Silverlight
Microsoft boasted about Silverlight 2.0 and said it has 25% penetration of all internet connected PCs. That is pretty impressive and demonstrates the distribution channel that Microsoft has through its dominance in the PC market. I think Silverlight is an important technology in Microsoft's overall cloud computing strategy. Good to see that Microsoft is aggressively working on adoption, developer productivity and creative tools around Silverlight

Surface
Amazing new technology. I had seen it on TV when it was launched. I was more impressed when I played the scavanger hunt game on 5 sets of surface computers located at 5 different locations at the event. It demonstrated the capability of camera based vision system, multi-touch, intelligence and ruggedness very well

Books: The Game Changer

2008-10-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

Just read this great book - The Game Changer (by A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan). It is based on the phenomenal story of innovation in P&G and other companies and how others can benefit from it. For the benefit of someone who has not read the book, here is a very high level summary:

P&G operates in a highly commoditized business space and depends on 2 “moments of truth” for its business to grow

Product selection - when the consumer is shopping
Product use – First time the consumer uses the product (and of course every user experience

Innovation - Customer is the focus and business growth is the outcome

Customer has to be the focus of every innovation
Every innovation has to lead to business growth
Innovate with everyone – including competitors (Believe it or not P&G has a JV with one of its competitors)
Make innovation “routine” (Counter-intuitive)
Check out a few platforms that are used at P&G to collaborate for innovation:

http://www.ninesigma.com/
http://www.innocentive.com/
http://www.yourencore.com/

Micro-racism

2008-06-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Around the globe the western world is often criticized for racism. Some part of it is history. It is a tough legacy to overcome. It is a slow process and needs a lot of policy and social changes to eliminate and still there will continue to be pockets of traditional racism in the social fabric.

What is alarming is the failure to notice the micro-racism around the world. This is the attitude of exclusion and discrimination amongst narrower segments of the society. I have found the most appalling examples of this behaviour in India. You can call it protectionism or remnants of the caste system but it is just another flavor of racism and I call it micro-racism.

Attempts in Bangalore to ban non-Kannada movies; places of worship have been destroyed causing riots in the whole country; fanatical bias toward Tamil language in Tamil Nadu; Preferential treatment given to local people purely based on their last names, which in India reveals a whole lot about your origins. These are all examples of micro-racism. I say this not because I don't believe in keeping the local culture and traditional alive, but because of the chosen means to the end. Take for example the Tamil language. I personally find it one of the most poetic languages I have known, very much like the Urdu language. But it still doesn't justify forcing it on people.

The recent incidents in Maharashtra is an example of an age old political agenda of treating people from other states as outsiders. Believe it or not these are the same people who are reaping the benefits of their own children and grand-children bringing in the riches from immigrating to other countries.

Destroying the present and future to make up for the past is not right. I am a fervent supporter of local economies and keeping age old traditions and culture alive. But banning new change to keep old culture alive is not the right approach. Often the policy decisions made by government and religious organizations are based on emotions and not based on well thought through rational frameworks. I am surprised to see that having a good education alone doesn't equip us to leave emotions out of policy making.

I believe that the cause of micro-racism is that the local culture and people feel threatened and usually have an inferiority complex against the alternative. The philosophy of forcing ideas and culture on people is always easier than promoting it through free will. But it is not the best approach to nurture local culture.

Bringing out interest in local culture in innovative and interesting ways is the best way to keep them alive. The new generation has a crucial role to play in discovering the past and keeping it alive for generations to come through free will. You have to create a framework for people to discover and enjoy the treasures in the diversity of India.

Shut Up and Listen!

2008-04-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

All of us have met people who already know what we are going to say before we say it. May be I should start talking by saying "Shut up and listen!". These are people who try to complete your sentences or guess what you have in mind. Some of it is to show how fast they can understand your point some of it is just this fast moving impatient new world.

The truth of the matter is there are very few people who are real geniuses who get your point in round one. I call them geniuses because they can understand even a poorly articulated point. There in lies the crux of the matter. Most of us can't articulate our point well. This makes it worse when people try to project that they have understood a badly articulated point even before it is made.

Articulation of what you want to say has 4 parts - the context, the key point, the justification or explanation, and the delivery.

The context: This is usually required when you are changing the conversation or starting a new one. It is important to set the context before you share your key insight.
The key point: This is your punch line. In this fast moving impatient world it is best to get to your point as soon as possible.
The justification or explanation: This is for those who don't get your point from the punch line or there are some key insights that led you to arrive at your conclusion.
The delivery: This is the most important aspect. You have to think how you can make your point in the least possible time using the least possible words.

Next time you are with someone who won't listen or won't let you finish, just try to tune your style and see if it gets better.

Role of Technology in Media Censorship

2008-04-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen the ads running during prime time? Watching a game or a G rated movie with your kid requires a constant run for the remote to block inappropriate ads. It is the same while watching a funny video on YouTube with unexpected and undesired content flashing all around you. Today you can block access based on channels or specific time slots but that approach is too coarse grained. We need to look at censorship differently.

There are so many ideas, already implemented elsewhere, that can be applied to this problem. Let's take the phone industry. They can measure every phone call down to the second and decide how to bill you based on the package you have bought.

The key to the solution is thinking cohesively about media creation, media distribution and media access. We rate media in a coarse grained way and hence it is impossible to control it at the access point. Imagine the possibility of having a viewer rating preference button on the remote. While watching a sports game with your kid you switch to the G viewership mode. The access point - TV, IPTV on your computer or your mobile wireless device - detects your viewer rating preference and replaces an ad for an R rated movie with an ad for a G rated movie.

The realisation of such a cohesive solution lies in innovation around three areas.

Media creation: Create content with adaptable delivery e.g. Being able to watch an R rated movie in G mode and being able to make this decision half way through the movie
Media distribution: Increasingly we are moving towards dynamic content and contextual ads. Take into account the user preference for rating of the content.
Media access: Enable the user to have the ability to add rating as one of his viewing preferences

As far as technology is concerned, the media industry needs to get out of the singular focus of how to protect & monetize content. Let's get the technology crowd creative and change the way we get entertained.

Keep The Radio Alive

2008-03-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

Listening to radio is one of the strongest memory I have while growing up in India. Music, regional programming, news and sports - All India Radio's Vividh Bharthi had a little of everything for everyone - even children's programming. The radio medium was not open to the private sector then but the programming was comprehensive and the quality was rich. The memories like listening to the program dedicated to song requests by people from the armed forces are etched in memory. Many of the family Sundays and late night with friends have the sound of the radio in the background.

Radio as a broadcast medium has declined in popularity since then. Television has dominated the late 20th century. Internet is fast becoming the new kid on the block with the ability to let the audience engage and interact with the content. In fact, Internet is becoming the platform for delivering all media including TV and Radio. The much awaited media convergence is around the corner.

Regardless of the new media that come along, radio has some special qualities that make it my favourite.

Simplicity & reach: It is really easy to understand the medium and consume it. Radio technology is not threatening to the consumer. Even the technophobes are at ease with it. Listen to radio in a remote village, while travelling in a high speed train, while cruising in your car or relaxing at home.
Element of surprise: You can never beat the feeling of learning something unexpected while driving to work. Or the feeling of nostalgia that hits you when you hear a song that refreshes a golden memory.
Quality of programming: Radio has to engage the audience only through their sense of hearing. The bar for quality of content is very high because you can't supplement it with visuals. Quality of programming on NPR and Vividh Bharthi are a testimony to this.
Voice as the great equalizer: Have you ever felt that you have known a person for a long time without ever meeting the person? Radio can do to you. A specific personal experience was listening to Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. The association caused me to read "All I Did Was Ask" but the voice on radio and the conversations are just so much more memorable. When you are listening to someone, you are focused on the content and not judging them on their race, religion, sex, or looks.
Listening skills: Radio helps developing listening skills in people. In our education system and in the corporate world listening is a very underrated and underdeveloped skill.

There is a lot I am discovering about radio as a part of social culture in different parts of the world. Listen to an old recording of "The Jack Benny Program" from your local library or the vibrant Radio Mirchi while you are stuck in traffic in Mumbai. Radio is an interesting window into our history and culture.

Two very interesting and relevant innovations on the Internet are Pandora (radio from the Music Genome Project) and Mercora (radio using peer-to-peer technology). I hope such innovations keep the beautiful medium of radio alive and interesting for a long time.

Greatness And Consistency

2008-03-15T08:42:00.000-07:00

What makes someone or something great?

There is no simple answer to this question. For different people and in different contexts it may mean different things. There is an excellent book by Jim Collins called "Good to Great" that explores this topic.

But here is my take on it.

The stand out attribute that separates the good from the great is consistency. It doesn't matter what the context is. Here are some diverse examples:

Warren Buffett the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway - Anyone can pick stocks and can make good investments. His consistency in applying his investment evaluation principles makes him great.
Apple, the company known for it's breakthrough innovations - There are many companies that innovate with one product and maintain leadership. Game changing innovations and raising the bar for it's competition through innovation consistently is what makes Apple great.
Sachin Tendulkar one of the greatest cricketer in the history of the game - He is widely regarded as one of the best batsmen the world has ever seen. But what separates him from other good player is his ability to consistency influence the game through his great sense of the game. Michael Jordon, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods are few others in that league.
Foreign Affair - This is a small Santa Clara business that specializes in Honda, Acura, Toyota and Lexus service. The consistency in honesty and customer delight in their service separates them from the rest.

If you can do something well then doing it consistently is the road to greatness.

The next big innovation in SaaS

2008-03-08T23:29:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest technology innovations in the coming years is going to be how to protect information regardless of where it resides. Software as a Service (SaaS) has come a long way and technology advances have made the complete SaaS eco-system viable. Some key elements that have transformed this space:

The access points: Multiple access points providing information anytime anywhere.
The network: The spread of broadband and wireless internet access at affordable prices headed in the favorable direction.
The backend infrastructure: This is a complex domain and the success depends on building an infrastructure that can scale infinitely. Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and T-systems are on the forefront of the innovation here.

In all of the above, the innovators already know what it will take to serve the next generation and have set things in motion.

Perhaps, the most important innovations in this area have yet to come. Today companies and individuals alike are paranoid about keeping their data in the cloud. Three big factors that will determine success in this area:

Trust: There are various trust issues related to data storage, processing and access. Providing flexibility and access to information while protecting the information is a non-trivial challenge that needs to be solved. The solution needs to be end-to-end. It is not enough to protect the data stored on the server.
Education: Today, it is too complex to understand how data gets protected at various levels.
Simplicity: The key to mass adoption is to make it simple – simple to understand and simple to use.

There is a lot of ground to be covered in this area. If there are innovations in this area that can win trust and are simple to understand and use, we will look back and call them the ones that put SaaS adoption on the fast track.

Story of Stuff

2008-03-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Nicely made presentation. You may have a different view point or want to question some facts. But this one surely gets high marks on how it is presented - really well done to make these complex issues simple for everyone.