Oracle and Sun Merger

After many days of rumours of IBM and Sun merger, we hear the news that Oracle will take over Sun.

It is amazing how iconic technology companies just fail to do business and eventually survive. I can think of Digital Equipment Company (DEC) which along with IBM, Unisys etc started the computer revolution. Among many products they had worth mentioning are, Operating System VMS, PDP Mini computers, Alpha Superfast microprocessors. When the PC revolution started, they lost market and were taken over by Compaq. It is unimaginable for me that Compaq a PC box seller would take over a true technology company like Digital. Compaq was a great marketing company but hardly a great technology company. Then, HP took over Compaq. Digital technologies are now part of HP. However, one finds no information of VMS, Alpha, or Digital Unix. All these products have been laid to rest.

Sun is a special company as one of its founders was Vinod Khosla, an Indian. In many ways it resembles Digital. It has its own microprocessor - Sparc, its own OS - Solaris, its own Hardware etc. Interestingly, Sun has promoted Java - the most popular development platform. Sun did amazigly well during the DotCom Boom. It had acquired Staroffice and started open source project Open Office. It has acquired Mysql, a popular and formidable database. However, one of the problems of Sun was anti-Microsoft stance. Scott McNealy wanted to kill Microsoft. Many of the Sun's projects were designed to be Microsoft Killers not revenue earners. Someone commeneted IBM made more money out of Java than Sun. How Ironic!

There is raging debate on implication of Suns acquition on its Open Source Projects specially MySql and Open Office. My feeling is that MySql will not be killed. In India, we had the case study of Coca Cola acquiring Thumsup. Thumsup still survives after nearly 20 years of acquition. If Oracle tries to kill MySql, it will assume a new avatar and survive.

However, there are lessons to be learnt from Sun travesty. More on these lessons another day.

Elections and Euphoria

Tomorrow  is election time in Bhubaneswar. We have slowed down on many of our activities to observe the election code of conduct.

I had my first taste of election in 1977. 

I joined college in 1976. It was emergency them. Mrs. Indira Gandhi has been critisized by everyone for declaring emergency. Of course, freedom was curtailed for everyone. There was no freedom of press. There was general sense of fear around. One of friend's father who was a labour union activist was arrested and put into prison. However, as a young student, my observation was that classes ran on time. Professors came to the class on time. The examinations were held on time. My college had a history of being banned by the university due to unruly student behaviour. This was a thing of past during the emergency.

In 1977, the emergency was lifted. The general elections was called. The Janata Party was formed by everyone other than congress. We watched with great excitement the as the Janata party gained momentum. The leaders of the party were tall and famous. George Fernadez, Charan Singh, Biju Patnaik, Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Jagajivan Ram were some of them. We all rooted for Janata Party. Of course, we could not vote as we were underage. When the results were being declared, we gathered aroung the Soochna Bhavan. We completely enjoyed the drama and suspense of the results being declared. Janata party won by a thumping majority. We were all euphoric. There was a sense of deja vu all around. Morarji became the first non-congress Prime Minister. 

My first disappointment surfaced when my college union called for a strike to make some demands. There were no classes for a few month. Fortunately for us the final examinations were held on time. The same chaos surfaced the the central government with parties within the janata party fighting with each other and the Government collapsed in 1980.

China at that time going through transition and lais the roots for its economic resurgence. They were liberalizing like there is no tomorrow. In India, the Janata Government threw out Coca Cola and IBM.

In my view, no election will ever be as exciting and euphoric as the one in 1977.

Elections and Technology

TOI calls it the dance of democracy. Other news papers have coined various names. We are talking about general elections. The election posters have replaced telco billboards. Election Ads have replaced toothpaste ones. Every newspaper carries Ads of at least three parties every day.

I think elections can compete with Bollywood and Cricket in the entertainment quotient. In fact right now IGL (Indian General Elections) is competing with IPL ( starring cricketers and bollywood stars). Let's see who will entertain the public most. Both can compare with a Agatha Christi Thriller. The result will be known at the very end. But, Hercule Poirot and Prannoy Roy et al. will privide the entertainment of a life time.

The Election Commission is very IT savvy. Witness the evm machine, the voter ID card. When florida was counting and recounting and re-recounting the votes, India was carrying out voting through EVMs and with no glitches. Amazing!

A couple of days back I got a call from Naveen Patnaik. When I tried to interrupt, It did not work. It took me some time to realize that Technology was fooling me. It was a recorded message. Then, I have received calls from many contestents. All of them are recorded messages.

Any web site I visit today has an Ad from lkadvani.in. This appears many more times compared to the matrimony ads which was the most visible ads. If the population of India drops, you can safely blame the elections.

It is surprising to see how the official machinery, political parties, voters have embraced technology to make this election a memorable one. I hope that the deserving candidates win. No matter who wins the elections, the marriage between the technology and elections is a winner.

Software Market in India

Sometime ago, IT department in Orissa invited bids from IT Biggies like Infosys,TCS, WIPRO for a software project. Most of these companies did not respond. The project was eventually awarded to a smaller company.

I came across a news story where wipro and tcs are competing for a government software project.

India was never a big software market. All IT services companies depended on the West for their bread and butter. TCS catered to the domestic market. But Infosys, Wirpro never did projects in India. It was because the market was small, the margins were this and west had the glamour. Today the scenario has changed. The markets in the west have saturated. The growth is non-existent. The economic downtuen has hit companies and their IT budgets.

And, the Indian market is growing. The Government spending on IT is growing. These are signs of country coming off age.

In Japan, the country was closed to foreign palyers but the japanese companies fought fiercely for the domestic market. The country was very quality conscious. This helped in building world class companies in every industry sector.

I hope that in India similar phenomenon would take place. The domestic market should give rise to many more Infosyses in every part of India.

Strategies in Economic Downturn

I had an opportunity to attend Oracle Executive Summit. The prevailing theme was what to do during the current Economic Downturn. 

Each of the presentations by Oracle executives had the same (obvious) message: invest more in IT; The Upturn is coming soon; you will be ready for the upturn when it comes.

However, it is serious problem on hand for everyone in our sphere. For the students, campus jobs will be hard to come by. For the institute, more student applications for our programmes is expected as a result of the first reason. For the Institute, more applications are expected for our faculty positions. For the Institute, mobilizing funds from the Indutrry will be challenging as they have put a stop on the discretionary spending.

I will rephrase the advise from Oracle summit for the students: invest in education so that you are ready to grab the opportunity when the industry offers.

For the Institute it is opportunity to acquire faculty talent during the economic downturn. More important is to develop and retain the talent when competing forces claim the talent during the economic upturn.

The economic downturn has already brought some benefits. As the steel and cement prices mellow, the construction of the campus will be be somewhat cheaper.

Hirakud and Heavy Engineering

I had an opportunity to visit Hirakud Dam in Sambalpur. There are a few thoughts that occurred to me.

One thought is the constant efforts of the Human being to tame nature. The Dam was built to contain floods which happen in the Mahanadi Delta. This effort is only partially successful as evident from the recent floods in 2008. We may or may not have tamed the nature but surely we are destroying it. Normally at this time in Sambalpur one should be freezing. The temperature is unbearably high at this time of the year. At this rate, one gets a feeling that all human activities including building dams will one day make the earth un-liveable.

I had a look at the powerhouse in Hirakud which produces clean electricity. The turbines, the generators, the sluice gates are huge and marvels of heavy engineering. You get to see iconic names like English Electric, MAN, Hitachi on the equipments. And missing were any Indian names. While we in the IT industry thrive on smallness of our design, the Hirakud presents a picture of everything mammoth and gigantic. IT has become synonymous with technology obliterating (in the popular perception) the existence of the other forms of engineering. While India has become a powerhouse in IT arena, we still have a long way to go in the Heavy Engineering towards becoming a world leader.

The Dam has a life of about 100 years and it is already 50 years old. As children we studied about the Hirakud and Bhakra-Nangal Dams and we thought that these are eternal structures. Hirakud has reached middle ages and perhaps will cease to exist in our life time. It is a very poignant thought that some thing as mighty as this will vanish before our eyes.

The Dam was built in eight years. Unbelievable, but it is true. This is a tribute to the spirit of newly born India that we could achieve such feat in such a small time.

There are lessons for us here. We must learn to celebrate the spirit of engineering. We must learn to co-exist with nature. We must achieve the speed at which Hirakud was built in constructing our campus. And, Build an Institution which will relevant in changing times.

Photoscape

My favourite image viewer was Irfanview for several years. It can view pictures, crop, resize picture, create a slide show etc.

Couple of years ago, I adopted Picasa from Google. Picasa could organize pictures on your system like itunes did to music. It could create a slideshow while playing a background music. Most important feature is it can upload pictures on the Internet and create slideshows for the web. Last year in my rotary club , I presented the secretary's report as a picasa slide show with a Yanni piece in the background. It was an instant hit and got me outstanding secretary award in the district.

Photostory from microsoft was another nice software. It creates a movie out of pictures with a background music. When my wife Sanjukta presented secretary's report for the Innerwheel Club , I used Photostory to create it with some latin flute music.

A couple of month's ago I came across Fast Stone Image viewer. This can project a slide show on an extended display. I use my Samsung LCD TV as an extended display to my notebook. The presentation is very good.

When we started our new website, I told Susmita to cycle pictures to break the monotony of the website. She was curious to know how to do the photo editing. I told her about Irfan view, picasa etc. To get great effects, you will have to use Photoshop or some such software. Photoshop is really hard to master for amateurs.

Then, I came across a really cool piece of software Photoscape. You can do all kinds of stuff like put frames around pictures, round the edges, correct for backlight, stitch photos etc. I was floored by its abilities and simplicity of use. Susmita now uses this to give a facelift to the pictures in our website.

I have always believed that the good things in life are not expensive (like air, water and street food). It is absolutely true in case of software. All the cool pieces of software mentioned here are free (except Photoshop).