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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