Good bye, 2011... Welcome 2012.

As 2011 come to a close and a new year begins, wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year!

Looking back at 2011 from economic perspective, we have seen reports, that the world had not come out fully from recession and some even predicting a double dip recession. 'Gold' has out shined all other investments in the year. From about 1900 INR (22 carat) towards close of 2010, it had reached to about 2600 INR, a whopping 40% return on investment.

Had predicted and written in my blog in Sep 2010, that gold will continue to raise and the same happened. However, along with gold, the USD appreciated against INR towards close of 2010, the likely reason provided by experts is the slowing down of Indian economy in the last quarter of 2011. In spite of repeated raise in the interest rate by RBI, the inflation refused to come down, which can also be the possible cause of slowdown in the economy.

While developed countries real estate sector woes continued, I would say, India real estate market was able to sustain in 2011. However, I read an article about the challenges in Indian real estate sector and hence one need to see, which way it would go in 2012.

Indian automotive sector which had  been reporting increase in sales even during 2008-09 recession period had for the first time  reported a dip in the sales towards in last couple of months of 2011. So, would this be the indicator for Indian economy in 2012?.

Lastly, the Indian IT sector had been able to sustain its growth, though it did not have an exponential growth. The operating model might see a change in coming years. To me, the word onsite, offshore or near shore might disappear in few years time and the focus would be towards ' Cloud' computing.

Well, time is the answer..... For the moment lets be optimistic, welcome year 2012, which is my 4th year in blogging as well ....

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Unleashing Genius - A review

To me, our Indian school education is more oriented towards testing memory power. No doubt, getting high marks in school is a significant achievement, but at times students and parents tend to overlook the importance of logical thinking or apt handling of situational problems, which arises from time to time . In this world, analysing and  handling situational problems effectively is  paramount towards successful living.

Unleashing Genius by Dilip Mukerjea is one such book for children which, I would say, particularly to the teenagers to put their brain to test and enhance its capabilities towards logical thinking

The book's opening chapters details out as how the brain functions and then takes you through various technique towards enhancing one’s mind power.

Technique like ‘Mind mapping’ would greatly help children to understand & remember any topic which they study. In Management, there is common used technique called Ishikawa or fish bone diagram, which is toward product design or quality defect prevention and I found ‘mind mapping’ technique similar to Ishikawa’s diagram.

I found details like 'reading dynamics' interesting, more particularly, the description and illustration on ‘A Learning miracle’, ‘ Recall during Learning’, ‘Recall after Learning’ can provide significant assistance to anyone who wish to learn new chapters or subject. This technique would be quite useful for examination preparation perspective as well.

The book also takes you through topics such as creativity, braintertainment – basically an entertainment to brain, Jokes & some memory exercises as well.

In all, quite a good book for children and good one to be included in school library. However, I felt pricing is on the higher side (INR 1195). Hence, to make it more attractive, I would suggest the author, to look at the feasibility of including  CD / DVD with voice and animation along with the book. This would make reading interactive, so that knowledge dissemination and the presentation flow is effective.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

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'Aadhaar' - The challenges ahead.

Read an article in a leading daily about Aadhaar card . To me, it looks like "Aadhaar"may hit a road block.

Apart from cost, which is estimated to be very high, I had other thoughts, when I went to 'Aadhar' centre for getting enrolled about a month back.

A. For each card, it took about 15 to 20 minutes per person to get all details & biometric captured in the system. If this is the case, imagine the amount of time / locations it would take to get 120 crores of population, further the article point out, that less than 10 crores had been enrolled so far, from the start date.

B. The support or maintenance cost of these system would be quite huge. Since biometrics image of 4 finger, thumb impression, retina images are being stored for each record, the database might run in Giga or even terra bytes.The maintenance of such system would require huge cost for servers, software/ database upgrade, issue fixes, application patches etc. The running cost may run into multiple crores of INR annually.

C. A common man might have enrolled for these identification namely, Voter Id, PAN, Passport. Except for biometric data, all other relevant data should be present already with corresponding government agencies. If this being the case, not sure why the same data cannot be cleansed and used (particulatly, if biometric data is not used). Majority of our population would have any one of the above identification, hence it would have been much easier for the UIDAI agency to focus on left out population.

In any case, I believe UIDAI might have answers for the above?.

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FDI in retail sector

Couple of days back, India had given green signal to FDI investment retail sector. We are seeing a mixed response on its impact in media.

I still remember early nineties when there used to be protest for introduction of computers in government sector and when a famous food joint opened its operation at Bangalore, but all these died down over period of time. Hence, these days, we find food joints like KFC, Mcdy's, Subways becoming common name in Indian market and co-exists with Indian restaurants. I don't think Indian restaurants had any impact, it only gave consumers more options and also probably, increased Indian restaurant quality in service due to competition.

Also, interestingly, FDI investment was allowed into real estate sector in 2005 and I do not remember any such protest when FDI investment was allowed in real estate sector in 2005. Considering, south east asian crisis, that happened in late 90's, real estate would have been the sector which might have required protection.

This being the case, I do not understand the point in keeping retail sector under protection. By opening up retail sector, I believe its going to provide more options to consumer. When we have accepted 'Washington' apples to be sold at mamaji's shop, what's the point in opposing 'Nagpur' oranges to be sold at MNC hyper market?

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Oracle EBS - To Upgrade OR Re-implement?

If its time to upgrade to next release of Oracle EBS, then depending upon the EBS footprint and complexity, the most likely question which comes up in one's mind is whether to upgrade or Re - implement.

Before, I try to put my answers, lets look at, what is Upgrade Vs Re-implement.

Upgrade : If you are earlier release of Oracle EBS like 11i and wish to move to new release of R12, you have an option of upgrading you application system / data base to higher version.
Apart from sequence of technical, functional steps that include DB and application upgrade, it might require upgrade or redevelopment of custom code unit.

The advantage is upgrade - planning and execution, can be performed at comparatively lesser time.

Re-implement: It is just like implementation of new version of ERP software, the only difference is the earlier version of ERP application is onsidered as a Legacy application.

So now, if you in older version of ERP system, the below listed details, could be the likely factors, which would favour re-implementation instead of upgrade,

• If quality of master data in current Oracle EBS system is not upto expected standards, this means, data cleansing has to be carried out. The master data could be customers, vendors, items, COA etc.



• Due to change in business, you wish to have your COA structure redefined.



• Do away with customization and adopt standard modules / new features of R12.



• There is a business process change / add more modules and you do not wish to add new modules to the existing business application due to above defined points.



• If one is considering consolidation of two or more ERP instance, which may be a business decision due to business merger or acquisition.

Decision for upgrade or Re-implement might be significant, particularly if you are moving for major release. Normally from, Oracle EBS release 11 to 11i or 11i to R12, are considered as 'major release'.

The above list may not be exhaustive, there could be other inter dependent factors and hence it calls for a detailed study involving key stake holders of the business and based on the finding of the study, a decision could be taken towards upgrade or re-implementation of Oracle EBS.

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Cloud computing - Part 3

This is in continuation of my part 1 and part 2 on cloud computing.

As we progress, we would well be moving away from ‘Silos’ based computer system and application. Cloud computing infrastructure would be residing in data centre, this would call for efficient use of hardware and more over manpower would need to support multiple servers or application. Optimization and effective control would play larger roles in infrastructure management of these data centre towards cloud computing.

As per National institute of standards and technology, US , some of the key characteristics towards cloud computing are,

Resource Pooling : The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve multiple consumers using a multi-tenant model. There is a sense of location independence in that the customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources.

Rapid elasticity: Capabilities can be elastically provisioned and released, in some cases automatically, to scale rapidly outward and inward commensurate with demand. To the consumer, the capabilities available for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can be appropriated in any quantity at any time

Measured service: Cloud systems automatically control and optimize resource use by leveraging a metering capability1 at some level of abstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage, processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can be monitored, controlled, and reported, providing transparency for both the provider and consumer of the utilized service.

As this leads to a situation where, cloud computing needs to provide services wherein there is zero downtime and resources being shared, so naturally hardware for cloud computing is getting evolved, the technology related to Grid computing, clustering – RAC, Data Guard, better performing machines like Exadata has been increasing offered by vendor towards satisfying the characteristics of cloud computing.

A brief look at the terminologies and technology used,

A cluster consists of a group of independent but interconnected computers whose combined resources can be applied to a processing task.

A clusterware is a term used to describe software that provides interfaces and services that enable and support a cluster. The combination of oracle Clusterware, Automatic Storage management provides a unified cluster solution that is the foundation to Oracle real application cluster database.

Real Application Clusters allows multiple nodes in a clustered system to mount and open a single database that resides on shared disk storage. Should a single system (node) fail, the database service will still be available on the remaining nodes.

It might still require few more years before cloud computing matures and it might well re-define the IT outsourcing map.

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The Habit of Winning - A review

“Sow, whatever you wish to reap”. Sub conscious mind accepts what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. Your subconscious mind is like a bed of soil that accepts any kind of seed, good or bad. Your thoughts are active, they are the seed, so naturally negative or positive thoughts and thereby attitude depends on what you sow on soil (subconscious mind) and grow over period of time. These excerpts and interpretation are from book “The power of your subconscious mind” by Dr Joseph Murphy.

The author - Mr Prakash Iyer, through his experience has nicely mixed sports and corporate world stories to induce positive thoughts in one’s mind, which is very essential to become a leader. A leader does not mean that you need to lead a team of people, to be successful you need to be leader of your own life at various stages. Not just young professional or managers, I would say it’s a must read book even for youngsters.

Any such program or book, always need to have take aways, which one need to keep working to reap the benefits and towards this, the book has many real life example from sports and corporate world, whom I sure most of us know,
The author had provided details about cricketing legend like B.S Chandrasekar and Marvan Attapatu life, we would not been talking about these cricketers, had they not overcome their challenges to make their habit of winning. For years Attapatu’s test innings scores were in single digit and he had been dropped repeatedly, this did not deter him from making the attempts, having perseverance, self belief and working towards getting back into Sri Lankan side, also going ahead and becoming a successful cricketer. This being the case, India might be the only country, were too much importance is given to exams and there are stories of student taking their life due to just one failure, which is a tragedy. Whenever one fails, one need to take lesson out these sportsmen life and think like a sportsmen.

Short stories about learn to give more, no struggle - no success, getting out of your comfort zone, staying focused, perseverance and interpersonal relationship would take you towards making your habit of winning. In all, a good book to anyone, who so ever wishes to work through his or her betterment and make winning a habit.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

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Are you safe from ATM - Skimming?

About a year back, I had written in my blog about email Phishing A year later ATM card skimming seems to growing at alarming rate. If you are an ATM user, are you safe and a broader scale, how safe is India?

Though, have been hearing about, ATM card skimming for some time now, was not really bothered to check more about it, since I thought such theft could well be confined to developed economy. But after reading today news paper reporting about 80 people account at Chennai have been hacked through cloning of ATM card, which left their account depleted, my mind radar was inquisitive to know more about the same. Its also disheartening to note that such 'cloned' ATM transaction had even happened at abroad.

The below presentation had clearly brought the technique used towards skimming ATM card.

How ATM card skimming and PIN capturing scams work.

View more presentations from worldstuff

Interesting, while browsing the web, I came to know that even new technology like 3D printing is used to camouflage the skimming device, so that one would find it very difficult to identify such a device fitted in ATM.

Unlike Phishing, were at least one might have a track record as money is transferred from one account to other account, with 'cloned ' ATM card it would be a challenge from police and bank.

Technology related to money need to evolve over the time and security needs to be made strong, otherwise criminals can get better on the system. ATM being in use for more than a decade now, the security needs to be revisited & improved.

Well, technology can be a boon and at times in turn out to be bane, if not properly put to use.

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Cloud computing - Part 2

This is in continuation of my part 1 on cloud computing.

Organizations are not going to jump into cloud computing, they would evolve and move towards characteristic of cloud computing infrastructure over period of time as they feel confident about the same. As far as cloud computing is concerned, I believe we are at stage, similar to, as of early 90’s with respect to IT services outsourcing. IT services were outsourced, so that organization could concentrate on the ‘core’ business area, cloud computing could well be a further step forward.

Now, let look at the service models normally considered in cloud computing.

SAaS : Software – as – a service :
This model is talked about quite some time now, business application are hosted on server maintained by data centers. Legal issues, security, integration and confidentiality of data of the deterring factors on this model at this point of time. Once policies, procedures and standards get defined and refined our the period of time, this is bound to get adopted, over period of time.

In terms of usage, the application are accessed through web browser and terms and condition could be governed by service level agreements.

Possible examples could be simple free generic email service to complex ERP system. Some time back, read an article in leading newspaper about ERP application in cloud computing at Tirupur, India. Its interesting to note, cloud computing has gaining acceptance even at a generally convervative society like India and that too at small town like Tirupur.

IaaS : Infrastructure – as – a service:
Computation servers, storage, hardware are considered under this service model. One would also find free on storage offered in web, this could be refered as IaaS.

PaaS : Platform – as – a service:
Development and deployment platform could be offered as a service to developers to build, deploy manage, application on SAaS.

If one looks at cloud deployment strategy, its normally, public, private and hybrid clouds. I feel the name itself quite significant to describe about the type.

The next question is any one's mind would be, what kind of hardware does one require towards hosting cloud computing?.

At this point of time, normally cloud computing is deployed in traditional model. By traditional model, I mean one might have a server to cater database tier or application tier, which is almost a 'silos' based model. But, since cloud computing, one need to have efficient hardware and manpower(refer to my example of restaurant) to manage cloud better in a data centre. This is where hardware could play a main role, the new technology like grid computing, Real application clusters, automatic storage management, server scale up features plays in important role toward better management and deployment of cloud.

Will briefly provide more details about the hardware part in the next write up.

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Happy 'Eco-friendly' Deepavali!!

Wishing you all a very happy and eco-friendly Deepavali !!!

For most of us, lighting of fireworks is the highlight of deepavali. For many of us, its not deepavali, if one does not ignite sparkling colour light OR hear deafening sound after shutting the ears. In fact, I have known communities where there would be indirect competition amongst neighbours to show their money power, as who lights fireworks for maximum time and also with array of newly introduced crackers.

Interestingly, you could hear the same set of people crib and talk about pollution and global warming the day before or day after. If you have a friendly chat the response would be "Chalta hai... its just one day fun and enjoyment".

To me, one can always do much better things with the money saved as well!!.

Good luck and Happy Deepavali again to all those who celebrate it in 'Eco-friendly' manner.

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Cloud computing - Part 1

As the IT field evolves, it becomes more mature & the need to optimize cost naturally drives the innovation and creativity. The new concept coupled with technology, which is now doing rounds is ‘Cloud computing’.

I had come across people, with limited IT knowledge enquiring me as what is ‘cloud computing’ ?, though I had tried to explain to them in best possible way, most of the time, I end up a vacant stare from them, which was indicative that they did not understand the concept or background behind cloud computing.

Quite recently, I have started giving them example of home with Kitchen Vs restaurant towards explaining the concept behind ‘cloud computing’. A kitchen at home is dedicated for home, the resource – may it be the vessels or appliances or the cooking person is dedicated to that home. The owner of the home invests in kitchen and avails the benefit of having the kitchen to him or her or the members of his family. It’s the owner of the house who has to maintain the kitchen. When one compare home kitchen with restaurant, the end objective is same, which is specific food offered, but how food is prepared or serviced is different. One does not own anything is a restaurant except for the food offered. In a nutshell same is concept between Traditional IT offering Vs cloud computing.

Just like home kitchen, in case of traditional IT offering, the company owns the hardware and licenses for software and at times company outsources application development to a 3rd party which is comparable to chef hired (if a person is rich) to prepare food at home. With Evolution of IT sector in hardware & software, we are marching towards ‘restaurant’ model of IT services; you just pay for what is your end objective - ‘processed food’ or services. Like in a restaurant, in which you are only concerned about the quality of food and expected service offering and not much bothered about who is the chef, waiter or the kitchen appliances or even where the kitchen is, so is the case with ‘cloud computing’, the customer is focused on service offering and not on hardware, software or resources employed to provide the service offering or end product.

In the next part, I would dwell more technically on cloud computing… till then happy reading!!!..

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Kodaikanal - The princess of hill stations

Kodaikanal - This word bring a cool and pleasant feeling in everyone's mind. We’ve decided to have few days of vacation in first week of Oct. With about 2 to 3 days available, we got into planning to make a trip to Kodaikanal Or Munnar. After animated discussion with family members, we finally decided in favour of Kodaikanal the "princess of hill station" in India.

How to get to Kodaikanal:

The next immediate thought was, how to get there and the accommodation. As we just had few days, we decided in favour of taking my car from Chennai to Kodai . I was sure the drive through the ghat road, would be a pleasant one as I can determine the speed of my car and stop anywhere as per my wish to enjoy the scenic views, further I wanted to drive in morning hours to enjoy the beauty of nature.

Accommodation:
This certainly requires planning accordingly to each one’s budget and need. To us, as we would be taking our car, we were looking for a cozy place little away from centre of town with good view of valley or the hills and need to be quite decent place to enjoy the stay. As a matter of fact, I would have spent about couple of days in planning, searching the web and reviewing the comments toward's identification of accommodation. If one is looking for a confirmed accommodation, all hotels or resorts require payment in advance, which is quite natural on part of owners of accommodation. We did not want to lock the accommodation without seeing the place and since we would be having a car, we thought we can roam in search of alternative location if one is full or if we don't like the accommodation. So, we narrowed down to a list of about 4 accommodation places based on internet search and reviews, our top in list was Carnival resort .

Reach Kodai :
First day we started from Chennai at around 11:30 AM and Madurai is about 440 KM, the road have been made as a 'express way' quite recently with toll collected every 50 to 60 KM. To a person who has passion to drive, I would say it one among the best highway road in South India, may be because it’s newly laid particularly from Villupuram to Madurai. We reached Madurai by 6:00 PM and rested at Madurai that night.


Next day morning, we left Madurai by 8.00 AM. Madurai to Kodaikanal was about 120 KM, with 50 KM stretch on the ghat road. We entered the ghat road around 9:30 AM, I would say it was a pleasant feeling to be in control of the wheels and drive up the hill. It was nature at its best, as weather was perfect for the drive with scenic view around you, one would feel the mesmerizing beauty of nature.

We reached Kodaikanal around 12.00 Noon, immediately called Carnival resort and got the direction to reach the place. I would say Carnival resort is about 1 to 2 KM from town centre. When we reached the place and we immediately liked it. The view from balcony was the best, it was as if you are in middle of woods, though it’s not far away from the town centre.

The CARNIVAL RESORT was quite new one and understood from reception that it was opened in Dec 2010, the place is very calm, neat and one side facing hill view with lush green canopy trees .We relished every moment of our stay there.

We visited many places which were quite popular, but we liked Bear Shola falls for its greenery, with no crowd around , we felt like being in middle of woods. Not sure as why this place is not promoted much towards tourism at Kodai, probably its might be due to narrow lane of about 500 metres where parking of vehicle could be difficult and one needs to walk or trek for another 500 metres to reach this place.

We stayed two night at Carnival resort and started our drive back on ghat road during the morning hours to relish the beauty of nature.

In all, I would say, it was a relaxing trip to Kodai and enjoyed nature beauty.

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Master data management - An overview.

From mobile telephony to web, counter sales to call centre, you find application & system to support customer & sales. However, this might keep creating discrete system, if there is no one source for master data. The new buzzword in IT industry is MDM, Let's briefly look as why MDM (Master data management) have become significant these days.

An enterprise normally tend to use many IT solution & application, to maximize its product reach & access to the market.

All transactions revolves around master data. The master data mean the operation data like customer, product, account head. Any business entity have to manage this master data effieciently without any redundancy to be effectively planning,execution & reporting.

First place, if one looks at possible causes of redundancy of data.

i. Mergers & acquisition: Quite a common cause, two similar companies in a specific industry vertical could be merged or one acquire the other. Naturally, they might have multiple system, where same customer is are available or a product might be called X in one system and the product with same attributes might be called as 'Y", which results in duplication and confusion.

ii. For orderbooking a company could use self serviceweb application or order entry through manual intervention or through mobile application, hence in this case, customer base name could vary if the two system uses different Database / master data.

iii. Though these days single instance ERP are used by multinational companies. There could be a situation when multiple instance are required due to some statutory needs of the country or due to time zone.

Fragmented inconsistent data on product, customers slows time-to-market, creates supply chain inefficiencies, results in weaker than expected market penetration, and drives up the cost of compliance. Fragmented inconsistent Customer data hides revenue recognition due for the customer, introduces risk, creates sales inefficiencies, and results in misguided marketing campaigns and lost customer loyalty. Fragmented and inconsistent Supplier data reduces supply chain efficiencies, negatively impacts spend control initiatives, and increases the risk of supplier exceptions. This might also cause failure in usage of business intelligence or data warehouse reporting system.

“Product”, “Customer” , “Supplier” and even "account head" are key business entities which are refered as Master Data.

Due to all the above, there is an increase need felt towards maintaining the master data across the organization. Hence, in the last few years, software vendors have come out with tools and techniques to maintain the master data across organization.

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ERP - Market maturity.

In about a decade's time, the ERP market has become more mature. The major players in these market have consolidated their position. Though, its pretty difficult to compare what one had in ERP market about a decade back and what is now available, however, some feature worth noting are,

Application availability over web.

Singe instance, meaning a company having operation across geographies have single application and consolidate resource usage.

ERP in cloud computing is slowly catching up, this mean company need not own /licence for the application, hardware or IT support team anymore.

ERP products and increasing becoming "plug and play" type. Earlier, ERP product had very few module revolving around finance or manufacturing domain, but these days entire business process including sales, service and Business intelligence are covered. Due to this, customization or extension of form based application would reduce OR has reduced. In a way its better to avoid customization due to maintainance cost and cost incurred due upgrade when the standard product is due for upgrade.

Instead of customization, one would definetely find a standard product to plug the gap perhaps you may not find from the same product developer but from a third party product developer. So natuarally integration would play an important role. 'Customization' is something like you own it and its your responsibility to take care of the 'baby', whereas once you have choosen the standard product through licencing route you have outsourced support.

I also feel, we would be slowly moving to time when a ERP expert will be in position to support multiple customer and provide his service and support from even a remote location due to high speed internet availability.

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Cascading effect of Debt.

In the next few weeks, there are two issues watched closely.

i. Raising of debt ceiling by US.
ii. Bail out package for Greece.

About two years back (2008-09), financial institution and banks were in trouble, which required to bail out and so was the Greece. Money had been pumped in to save them, but still money or 'wants' (you may call it Debt is not fading) has kept growing.

I would say 'Debt' is spending future money for present, whether it's for government or as an individual who seek Debt. One the factors which influence 'inflation' is Debt. This means 'Debt' allows free flow money in the hands of government or an individual, who would naturally look at way on investment for better returns or asset creation, so that one can pay back the debt at later point of time.

For a moment, lets compare early days, whether its government, financial institution or individual the debt content was well in control or meaning people showed reluctance or thought twice before taking the debt route of financing. This made asset prices look more realistic in earlier days, without causing bubble every now and then.

Naturally, it looks like the usage of 'future money' or debt is creating financial tsunami every now and then as well.

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Beauty called Life and Nature

"What's real beauty ?", so if there is going to be a real beauty, it also mean there is going to be "not so" real beauty or temporary beauty or which cannot be beautiful as time progresses. Ideally, human being or even for that matter animals may look beautiful in prime, but loses out their charm as age catches up. So this would also spin of another question, which is permanent beauty?.

This means, a permanent beauty or real beauty is one which is not only beautiful now, but for generation together. Naturally, nature or wonders of the world comes to one mind for a real beauty.

For a second let's think, how our life would be,

• If we do not get oxygen from tomorrow or if oxygen generation is rationed.


• If there is sudden stoppage of water formation, meaning hydrogen combining with Oxygen to form H2O.


• If earth takes a day off and does not rotate on its axis.


• If plant, trees and vegetable stop growing or not available from tomorrow.


• Sun loses it radiation characteristics.

If any one of the above happen's we might not be talking about beauty. Some time, I feel we human being take all the above gift or real beauty for granted without appreciating the forces which drive it and look upon temporary desire or beauty as a real beauty.....

Count on nature's blessing to you and I am sure you will feel the real beauty in your life and nature.

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Six Sigma : A PM's prespective

Some time back, I had a opportunity to present to my peers in the organization about Six - Sigma, based on my knowledge.






Many of you might be aware that large manufacturing companies do follow the six sigma methodologies towards continuous improvement of their operation. These companies use six sigma methodologies for executing their project.

If you are hearing about Six sigma quality initiative for the first time, then probably my presentation might useful to know what is six-sigma in brief from a project manager's prespective, I have also made an attempt to compare Six sigma with PMBOK (Project Management body of knowledge). Hope its interesting...

I found a business week article published some time back that interested me. I always thought that one cannot follow six sigma blindly, statistical methods are important, so is creativity and making judgment based on a situation after quicly analysing the facts.

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Assembly OR Parliament .... Do we know the candidate's background?

Being a weekend was a beach, as I stroll past a group of senior citizen the discussion was around the politics, the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s political scenario was flashing through their speech. The talk was about how simple the politician those days and how they were all glued to All India Radio when election announcement were made.

I could hear discussion getting into the candidates in fray for election in that particular assembly, each one commenting about the candidate on his own knowledge his \her age, business, assets and what he has done and so on...

To be very frank, if any one asks me about the back ground of the candidate in fray in my assembly segment, I would not know. Well, how do I? They were all selected by their party’s high command. But then the question ultimately is, we, the people select candidate for particular assembly segment. Yes, popular promises are made by candidate, however the candidate ability or approach are important if these promises are to turned into reality, this is where I believe candidate background would play an important role.

This assembly election at Tamil Nadu was different, there were stringent condition imposed by Election Commission which made common man happier. At same time, I understand while making nomination some background details are provided by candidate. I feel these background details, should be published in election commission web site and displayed in voting booth as well, so that the common man is aware of the candidate background.

A person’s background is checked before he is recruited by corporate. This being the case, the background of the candidate who is aspiring to be a people representative should have his background checked or at least his background related to education, yearly earning, police verification and records, asset and liabilities details along with salary offered and perks provided can be published, so that common man is kept well informed about his or potential representative.

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Factors which influence the success of ERP project implementation - Part 3

The post is continuation of my earlier post (Part 1) and (Part 2) on the same subject. We will now look at other few factors.

Phase 3:

Business Process Engineering or Re-engineering: An ERP system has to be configured to work as per expectation. The business processes have to be mapped to ERP product and set up have to be configured. The process of requirement gathering towards set up requires coordinated effort between functional consultant and the business process area owners through workshops. An iterative approach needs to be followed, meaning the system has to be set up 2 to 3 times to map the requirement and refined if needed, before actually performing the set up in production system. Such iterative approaches of mapping business to systems are referred as ‘Conference room pilots’ (CRP). Data migration from legacy system and their strategy, Interfaces to feeder system needs to defined and agreed up and tested.

Training: At times, training to end user is overlooked. Inadequate training is the one of the cause for bottleneck in training. If possible it’s better to work out a strategy for measuring the training effectiveness. There are some thoughts that training can be done towards production move. But, its better training is provided from the stage of defining business process, so that even if there is a change in business process user can appreciate the changes.

Support team & cut over planning: It equally critical, plan is also worked out for the support team to be in place post go-live. Normally Implementation team would be handing over to the support team. The support team is either in-house or out sourced. Cut over planning means the activities that would be carried out by the time users stops entering into the legacy system and the time by which user starts using new ERP system. Effort also need to put towards cut over planning particularly, the activities as how reconciliation of legacy and new ERP system would be performed post Go-Live and as what are the activities, which would be performed during the cut over period with assigned owner to each task.

Go-Live and beyond: Beyond go – live, there is a certain period, which is required towards stabilization of the system. It’s also easier said than done. Though these can be guidelines for a general scenario, each of the ERP project are unique has its own challenges and situation changes based on various factors, this is where project managers and PMO can play a vital role in steering the project to safety and thereby achieve the end objective of a successful implementation.

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Factors which influence the success of ERP project implementation - Part 2.

The post is continuation of my earlier post (Part 1) on the same subject The first 3 factors are can be considered as Phase1, the below mentioned factors can be towards Phase 2.

‘One Team’: Once it’s decided to go in for ERP, the next step is to have a steering committee, which will play an important role to tracking the project towards successful implementation of ERP system and proactively address risks. Ideally, the steering committee should have proper representation from management, different vendors associated with project. An ERP project can have different vendors like,
• Hardware
• Servers
• Operating systems
• Networks
• Software Licensing , consulting or IT service for implementation, training and support.

It would be a good option to have a project management office, which would look into day to day coordination reporting into the steering committee. Each of these tasks performed by vendors has dependency on start on the other vendor. Hence, PMO office should be proper control on all task executed by Vendors.

Schedule, Budget, Scope: From this stage of the project, Project management plays important role in success of the project. Budgeting would have been preliminarily done at the “Phase 1” of the project, but these would be more of ball park number (Variation of 20 to 25%). At this stage, more accurate estimate needs to be worked out.

ERP implementation has other stream as well, which has dependency in successful implementation of the project. Project management tools/ software can be used to track some of the key project related parameters.

Project deliverables, sign off and change requests: The project as such can have broken down into different phase with a work break down structure (WBS) with deliverables defined for each milestone or phase, the sign off and change request procedure agreed with all stakeholders. This should be brought about by the PMO team and agreed with ‘Steering Committee’ Till about phase 2, it’s more of setting up the ground rules towards successful execution of the project. All these might take considerable amount of time. The next phase is the actual execution phase of the project, on which I will continue further shortly.

Till then, happy reading.

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Factors which influence the success of ERP project implementation - Part 1

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) system had evolved over the period of last two decades. By ERP, I wish to look at ERP system with user base of at least 200+ with more than a million dollars in investments. I believe Oracle Application, PeopleSoft, SAP, Baan, MFG PRO etc would qualify into this league. ERP implementation has its own challenges from the stage of conceptualization to actual usage and beyond. I thought of sharing my views as what can primarily contribute to success of ERP implementations.

This would be the first of my series in writing about factors which contribute to success of ERP implementation, which is more from management perspective.

Management support and confidence: This is the first and foremost factors which determine success of ERP project. Any entity or business has to put effort and time in analyzing the need for an ERP system, before a decision to go for an ERP system. An entity, which is capable of investing more than a million dollar would definitely have some kind of legacy system, which would be doing the ERP function to an extent, hence its important as a first step to perform the following.

1. Cost Vs Benefit Analysis.


2. Return on investment.

When cost of implementation is considered, apart from license and consulting cost, it is important to consider the maintenance cost for post implementation and this, also varies upon on size of implementation.

Both needs to be worked out and I would suggest only if management is happy with above estimates & expectation there is need for a new ERP system.

Choosing the product: If decision is taken towards ERP implementation, then the next step is to find out the ERP product which would suit them better. Few factors, I believe which is essential to be considered for choosing the product.

Product suitability to its business, support the seller provides, future upgrades & scalability, cost & availability of consultants to provide support in future needs to be considered apart from pricing before choosing product.

Implementation Approach: ERP’s can be tailored to suit a business needs, this is commonly referred as ‘customization’. Customization can plug the gap from business solution perspective. However, its always better to avoid customization or at most keep customization to a minimum considering the following factors.

• Additional cost involved in development and testing.

• Maintenance cost even after deployment in production.

• Any business process change might empact customization and this woulr require enhancement of the customization and thereby cost.

• When upgrade happens in future, the customization has to be upgraded as well which would incur cost.

On all the above factors, management need to play important role towards success of the implementation and they can be considered as preliminary phase or phase 1 of the ERP prject implementation.

Will continue with other factors at shortly, till such time happy reading and happy to receive your comment.

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GDP Vs Debt... How does one classify a country rich?

If anyone is asked with a question as which are the richest countries, the answer would normally be any developed country like US, UK, Japan, Netherlands etc. Even, I was thinking in the same way till, I hit upon some articles which showed the public and external debt content in some of the developed countries.

Interesting the top developed countries seems to have high content of public and external dept when compared to their GDP.

List of countries with high Public Debt

List of countries with high External Debt.

So as per wikipedia report, interestingly Libya and Algeria have low external debt whereas external debt are highest with US and UK.

If external debt is high, then how come the exchange rate of these country currency is strong when compared to other countries whose external debt is very low meaning well under control?.

Would be quite happy to receive an explanation from whoever is knowledgeable on world economy and currency exchange rates.

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'Payanam' - Movie with a difference

It would be a welcome change for any movie goer who watches Prakash Raj's 'Payanam' -tamil movie.



One can rarely imagine an Indian movie being produced without the usual masala of fews songs, couple of heroic fights, romance, sentiments. Payanam is one such movie which would not have any of these, but still, I did not feel any dull moment while watching it.

The story revolves around 'plane hijack' and the rescue operation. I would rate it as Indian version of "Speed", the producer of the film is aware of their limitation, contraint and had produced the film accordingly.

Nice effort and good to watch!

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ERP - SME groups on cloud computing.

I read with interest a recent news article in a leading daily about a cluster of garment making unit in Tirupur, India, predominantly SME joining together to go in for Enterprise Resource Planning through cloud computing.

'Cloud computing' is one where in the application is used over Internet, where the customer pays only for the services of using the application and he does not pay for the cost of owning the application (software), hosting the application on the server, both of this can call for a huge investment.

'Cloud computing' service provider will own the software (application) and host the application on the server and upgrade both hardware and the software from time to time, so that business using cloud computing should not need to worry about the same.

I believe this should be best suited for SME's (small and medium sized) enterprise, particularly if the SME's are from same business verticals.

Like in the case, of Tirupur, garment manufacturers have joined together toward using ERP through cloud computing. Being from the same business vertical, the business process is going to be almost same (Procurement through Pay or Order through Cash receipts) or common, which would benefit the group from overall cost & resourcing prespective, they can even explore the possibility of shared service centre. Probably, the associations can have tie up with cloud computing vendor so that it benefits more business entities within the association.

Now, that ERP's offer multi-org facility, meaning, there is a privacy and confidentially of data being ensured even, if data or transaction reside on the same data base, it would really benefit if ERP is used under cloud computing by a group.

Good business initiate, which is worth exploring by cloud computing vendors, associations or groups of same business verticals!!.

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An Indian emotion

Some events in life causes emotion, the feeling depends on individual personality. Being an Indian the emotional bondings are much more.

Hmm... do you think why say so?, otherwise, Indian film industry like Bollywood, Tollywood, Kolliwood would not have survived, there has always been a song sequence linked to emotion, whether its Love/Hate or Elation/Sadness or Anger/Sympathy? .

Leave alone film, looks at India social environment not a single day passes without these emotions being expressed or played by politicians or cricket match featuring India, you will find all the ingredients of the emotion expressed. India is a land with a bundle of contradictions and each one are bound to ignite strongly opposite emotions at times. Its not just one moment, I had many such mixed and opposite emotions in just as a flash.

Till about late 90's India was considered as poor and developing country, the western world was ever green and it for the land of opportunities, not any more now. In the last few year, there was so much talks about India, across the world India is considered as 'economic power house', 'India arrived', 'India and China are the future" and further term such as 'BRIC' (referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China) were coined to refer higher future growth countries and India is considered as land of opportunities, I get elated, when ever I hear these comments.

In early 90's India's economy was at doldrums, there was much talk about 'balance of payment crisis' with IMF on which India had to pledge gold to bail out, in less than a decade the situation changed and Iam quite happy for the economic policy maker who had vision, to bring in the desired changes and the results. However, as I get elated, some events happens the very next moment used to bring sadness,

* When at home or office, a sudden power cut. No clean drinking water on tap, hmm.. when we get into a developed country we just drink directly from tap.
* When driving or walking, road rage by auto wallah and two wheeler driving as those they do not have tomorrow without following road rules. There is really no empathy to others while driving, with each one think road is his own.
* The amount of scam, corruption, un-accounted money stacked outside India as reported in news paper.
* uncleared garbage on the road.
* Road accidents, pot holed road, road being dug the very next day by some agency after relaying.

* On one side you have few Indians featuring as top riches in the world having expensive home on the other side of the road you have poorest almost living on the platforms.

Hmm... the list is endless, as we keep counting and celebrating our independence and republic days.

Oh yea... when I wrote last sentence about independence day or republic day, a flash came to my mind.

A short one about anger and sympathy fight I had few days before during the republic day. I was driving toward beach, being a holiday could see lot of traffic near the signal beach I saw a little girl not more that 10 years selling Indian flag in the signal, she was tapping the glass of each car and showing the flag, and indicating that it cost Rs 20/-

As the time passed by, as I was about to get my signal clearance and bang.. she was right in front of my car, I was quite angry, that if she did not move I would loose the signal and have to wait another 5 minutes at the signal, I kept honking as my mind was desperate to get past the signal. But, as I got past the signal her weeping face flashed in my mind, as no one was purchasing .... What a pity ? she had to sell Indian flag in a signal for her livelihood, my anger turned into sympathy. Should I go back and provide some money my mind asked again.... My second thought said are you crazy?... can you ever think of doing it in this mad traffic crowd?

India is a country which teaches family values, love and affection. Interestingly, a casual kiss or a hug to show love to loved one is offensive at a public place , while even attending to a nature's call or spitting at public place is not offensive, hmmm.. I hate this, again as I said India is a land of contradictions.

Watch this video of Dr Abdul Kalam at European union, I sure you would be proud and happy to be Indian.

Lee Kuan Yew wan changed Singapore from an underdeveloped colonial outpost with no natural resource to an Asian tiger and a paradise in less than 25 years, where is our Lee Kuan Yew?

This post is submitted to indiblogger's Close up "Fire-Freeze" contest, the link take you the face book page. One can post their own stories there and happy to receive your comments here.

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Into my third year of blogging.

I just completed my second anniversary in blogging. My first post was on 20th Jan 2009 and thought of an introspection as what I have achieved out of blogging.

My total posting crossed more than 100, page view of approx 10,000. The page view in the last one month was in the range of 3000. Hmm, that was a sudden spurt, well this was mainly due to some articles such as "GDP Vs inflation" and "Petrol price increase" and interestingly within two weeks both the post became top visited post.

I started blogging just out of passion with a thought, that I should do some kind of interpretation and analysis of information available on business, entreprenuership, IT, Economy,reviews and I believe, I kept up to my own initial expectation. Recently had added product/ book reviews & social cause to avoid monotony and the acceptance from readers was good.

I had made good blogging friends and had an opportunity to appear on a TV talk show organized indiblogger, my family was thrilled to see me on TV. Hmmm, I appeared on TV, had telephone calls flying across to my family member and friends (contribution by my wife) and atleast she started believing in my blogging passion.

Some of my articles got posted on http://trak.in/ and http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/ and after putting effort in SEO, I now have google page rank of 2.

In all was quite happy with my performance as a blogger in the last two years, considering the time constraint any one has for blogging and can proudly say, it was my passion which took me to this stage. Look forward to continue by passion.

Finally, thanks to readers and please do keep visiting

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'Apnacomplex' - Apartment living made easy - Part2

Last week had written about the excerpts of my discussion with Mr Rajshekar, the chief promoter of Apnacomplex venture in part 1. Now, for the rest of our discussion:



iv. In the last couple of years, we are able to see few other similar web based application towards apartment management. How different is your application OR what is your unique selling proposition as compared to other's offerings in similar such product.

Resident Welfare Associations have existed for over decades and there have been software(including web-based software) addressing the needs since many years. There are few players who entered the market after us and few are in the process of entering. This shows that there is market and it is in nascent stage. We believe that there is enough market for quite a few players to co-exist easily at this stage - especially considering that entry barriers into this field are not high. Over a period time in future, like with any industry, the area will see consolidation.
Differentiating ourselves from many other solutions out there in the market is a continuous process. We respect our competitors and are always in the process of innovating to attract and retain customers. The core differentiation is our approach of providing a value for money solution which addresses the needs of the complex with a great customer service.

While one can get flavor of all the features we offer at https://www.apnacomplex.com/features, some of the other differentiating features are:

1. Integrated Solution – We probably have the most integrated solution offering among all the players. ApnaComplex addresses end to end needs of the scenarios that we address. For example, the system can take the input of meter reading for piped-gas (or water or DG) for all flats, raise consolidated invoices for flats (utility charges + maintenance charges), and notify the user of the charges via SMS and email. It allows the administrator to track the payments against these charges which are then available on financial reports such as income/expense statement and the balance sheet of the complex.
2. Anywhere / anytime access to the application - Most of RWAs are managed by folks on voluntary basis. The folks managing the complex have access to the system whenever they can devote time for doing the management activities. They don’t have to be in the association office to be doing this work. The residents have access to the application for viewing information related to their flats and the matters related to the complex. This brings in a large degree of transparency in the complex.
3. Free from infrastructure needs and IT expertise - The application is run by the us in the cloud. The complex is able to get started within no time, needs no investment in special hardware such as server(s) etc. They also get a peace of mind as we backup the system and data at regular frequency.
4. User Friendly – The application is designed for use by novices. Even the accounting features are available as ‘scenario based’ interface rather than accounting terms based. This greatly reduces the learning curve for the users. There are advanced interfaces, for the professionals, which provide greater power and control over the application too. The bottom line is that one need not be a professional accountant to use this application successfully.
   

v. Whats the absorption rate (user /customer licence) since inception?
While we are unable to disclose the exact numbers at this time, the product has been very well received by the market with in a very short span of time. Our customers have been steadily increasing with presence all over India. There has been tremendous interest in our application for all corners of the country.

vi. Apart from apnacomplex is there any other product offering from your company?
Currently, we have a single focus on innovating on ApnaComplex. We are focusing on taking this product to markets outside India.

Hmmm... as you have rightly pointed out, using of the application towards apartment maintenance is still at a very nascent stage. For that matter community living of 1000+ families is a very recent phenomenon, may be less than 5 years. The residents in these communities is yet to get the real feel of the challenges they are bound to get when community living happens. So I believe as the time progresses the absorption rate will become quite high.

Signing off with an anecdote, no body would have thought, 10 years before that matrimonial website will become a reality and popular in India, but in less than a decade many Indian marriage are settled through matrimonial website and hence I believe in less than 10 years time facility management through SAas can become really popular due to the sheer size of community type lying happening in the last few years!.

Good luck Mr Rajshekar for the future of your venture!

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'Apnacomplex' - Apartment living made easy - Part1

In the last few year, apartment complex with more than 100 apartments in same complex is quite common and been accepted way of living particularly in Metro's. However, post handover woes are quite common and so is the maintenance being overlooked. Maintenance management, communication management, issue tracking is challenge for the owner's association. With penetration of Internet, in the last few years, they have been some web based application, which are making the post handover easy through portals.

With each residents having their own priorities and work routine, they hardly find time to meet each other to discuss common issue and work towards resolution of issues, this is where web based application facility management application can be beneficial .

One among such web based application towards facility management is Appnacomplex (www.apnacomplex.com). I had an opportunity to interview Mr Raja Sekhar, the promoter of this innovative venture, presenting below are the excerpts from the interview.

i. Can you please provide a brief about the venture (http://www.apnacomplex.com/)?

ApnaComplex is a web-based Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) solution for residential and commercial complexes. The solution helps in efficient management of Gated Communities and Commercial Complexes by Resident Welfare Associations, Commercial Complex Owners and Facility Management Firms.

Residential and commercial complexes today lack integrated tool which integrates accounting and finances, maintaining facilities including assets, communication between members, tracking and managing residents/tenants and staff. They use a set of disparate manual and computer aided processes for meeting these needs.

For residential complexes, the existing models are not able to scale up resulting in poor management of complexes, escalation of costs, discontent due to lack of transparency, inability to roll out enhanced processes like staff verification and act as blockers in adoption of new technologies.

Commercial complexes have additional requirements around frequently changing tenants which require on-boarding and separation processes. They have unique requirements around monitoring and maintaining SLA, tracking issues, and billing for services provided.

Our offering provides an integrated solution to meet the needs of commercial and residential complexes. It is provided as a hosted solution with zero setup and maintenance cost for the client. It also allows for easy upgrade of functionality and anywhere access to all these functionalities. This comes as pay as you use model without the huge upfront cost associated with traditional approaches.

Our target customers are - Resident Welfare Associations, Commercial complex Owners.
We believe ApnaComplex is ideally positioned to take advantage of the increase in penetration of Internet and mobile, continued addition of new complexes, and shift towards professionally managed complexes to become a credible player in this segment.

ii. Since how long is www.apnacomplex.com is online now?.
Apnacomplex has been online since May, 2010. As this is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering running on the cloud, we have been able to push out new features on a regular cadence since the launch to bring more value and features to our customers.

iii. How are you funding your venture and have you taken the venture capital route?

It is a self-funded venture by the co-founders.

Well.. will continue part 2 shortly, till then if you are an apartment owner, its time to think about the benefits such application would provide or if you plan to buy apartment, think about what is in store after handover by the builder to the association.

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Another round of Petrol price increase...Jan2011 ?!!#$

Hmm... Another round of petrol price increase and it will now be around Rs 63/lit at Chennai, but I fail to understand why?.

Since Jan 2010, I lost count number of time fuel price was increased, if today increase if taken into account, it most likely to be the 5th since Jan 2010. I am wondering what could be the reason, well people linked with this industry might say "petroleum price in the world market has increased ". Oh really....., my mind is refusing to accept it.

Let's quickly look as how petroleum price movement was in the last couple of year. It peaked to 132 USD per barrel in June 2008, the average petrol price in Indian market was around Rs 50 INR /lit. Then came a huge drop, in Dec 2008, it dropped to a whopping 45 USD per barrel, the retail petrol price in the Indian market was reduced to about Rs 45 INR/lit ( a drop of just 10%, whereas comparatively it should have become Rs 15~20 INR/lit in Dec 2008 when compared to international price).

When gold prices movement in India is based on international price, why not then the petroleum prices?

Now, in Jan 2011, it is still at 90 USD per barrel and never at all time high of 132 USD as in 2008, but still in retail market petroleum price to common man is at all time high in India.....My mind was refusing to get reason or logic for such petroleum price increase...

Its bound to "fuel" another round of inflation...

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GDP Vs Inflation.

Whenever, one talks about country's economy, the two parameters GDP and inflation plays important role in determining country's economy. Before getting into the details, lets look at brief definition of GDP and Inflation.

GDP: The gross domestic product (GDP) is the amount of goods and services produced in a year, in a country. It is the market value of all final goods and services made within the borders of a country in a year. It is often positively correlated with the standard of living, alternative measures to GDP for that purpose.

Inflation: The consumer price index (CPI) calculates the change in consumer price of a set of goods and services such as food, clothing, fuel, housing, medical, transport, education etc.

I believe, any country is considered to be in growth path, if year on year GDP% growth is greater than inflation % otherwise inflation is bound to eat up into the growth. Towards, comparison of GDP & inflation parameter, I have taken 3 countries. US which was most affected by economic downturn and China & India, which is claimed to be least affected economic downturn.

USD GDP:

US GDP annual rate for 2010 is 2.6%

US inflation rate :

US inflation rate for 2010 is 1.1%

This means, GDP growth is much higher than inflation which is a positive sign for US towards growth. As per the graph, it was only for few months in the year 2009, growth was around -6% and inflation around -2%, which mean inflation was higher than GDP, this period could well be termed at the worst period in US economy due to recession.

Now let's look at China's GDP and Inflation

China's GDP:

China's GDP growth percentage is around 10% for year 2010.

China's Inflation:

China inflation rate was in range of 3 to 5%. However, comparatively GDP rate of 9% is higher when compared to inflation, which I believe is a positive sign.

Moving on, let compare India's GDP Vs inflation.



India's GDP:



India's GDP rate is for 2010 is around 9%.



India's Inflation
India's inflation rate is 9.7% around October 2010. As per an article in a leading daily, the food inflation has said gone beyond 14% in the later part of 2010. Interestingly, all through 2008 to 2010, the inflation has always scored higher percentage when compared to GDP percentage. If this is true, I do not understand on what basis, India is claiming to have withered recession with minimum impact ?

Again, with inflation galloping in India, are we moving towards hyper inflation ?, on which I had written an article earlier.

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