Google Earth in Trouble

Something which is very innovative which is totally new and has an element of distinctiveness has to be in news either for good or for bad reasons. Google Earth on the 7th Anniversary of Google is in trouble with countries like India, Korea and England objecting the satellite pictures which feature on the website.

Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. One can download the software Google Earth from the website and install it on the computer view every finest detail of a place or a building. By using google earth one can view the North Block, The south block the dock yard of mumbai the Prime minister's residence and numerous other places which are humanly inaccessible and come under Z+ security.

Google Earth is an innovation in itself and is perhaps the best way to see the earth other than seeing the place in reality. Its a huge application and is very memory and bandwidth intensive.

The controversy was raised today on the star news channel when it mentioned that google website is capturing all the high security zones of the country with the help of a satellite and this is posing a serious threat to the country on a whole. Nothing is happening intentionally but seeing the technology advancements happening, this kind of tool can be a boon to the people involved in anti social activities.

Lets see what is the Google's Take on this news.

Brazillian Grand Prix - A Moment of Ecstasy

The post on a formula one race comes after a very long time. The last post on a formula 1 race was on European Grandprix way back in June.
The Grande Premio De Brasil became the grand prix, which perhaps Fernando Alonso will cherish for his life. Held in the Interlagos circuit in Brazil the Grandprix made Fernando Alonso the youngest formula 1 champion at the age of just 24 years.
The other highlights of the Grand Prix was the 1, 2 finish for the Mclaren team after 4 years. Juan Pablo Montoya took the chequered flag followed by Kimi Raikkonen in the second place 2 seconds behind. It was a great victory for Montoya keeping in mind his failure in the last moments of the race in the last Grandprix. Well Mclaren will cherish this moment for their life. They are leading the Constructors table now with 164 followed by Renault at 162. The driver’s championship is over now. But the constructor’s championship is still on. The next race is the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. It’s the world’s fastest track with speeds of 350 KMPH.
The good part of the race was the return of Ferrari to performance with Schumi finishing on 4th and Barrichello finishing on 6th. This was very important for Ferrari seeing their declining performance in the recent races.
At the end of the day both the campaigns Mclaren and Renault had celebration in their crews. It was a win-win situation for both although the Mclaren’s superb finish could not stop Alonso from becoming the world champion.

Computer Upgrade

The title of the post says it all. I had absolutely nothing to write about except for my boring weekend which got a little spiced up because of a major upgrade or call it migration I did for my 5 year old computer.

I, rather we, got our computer 5 years back on 18th October 2000 exactly the day when KBC got its first Crorepati in the form of Harsh Vardhan Nawathe. That time I was absolutely mad about KBC and some how I managed to catch up with both KBC and computer arrival. I know how much of effort had gone into getting the computer, since my requests at home are never entertained so easily, neither are they given any importance. The things now have changed very much. Initial expense on the computer was Rs. 52000. In this rate now perhaps I will get the best of the breed PCs. But I was pretty satisfied at that time since it was one of the best branded PCs available in the market with the latest configuration and hardware.

For more than 3 years my PC was functioning very well until I started tinkering with it. As with SAP, if you tinker wth it, you will be in trouble kind of situation. Slowly problems started cropping up in the PC with the first problem cropping up concerning to the slowness of the PC. That time I was in Manipal and we were using Win ME only since our PC could not support Win XP. After I came for the summers in April 2004 I did the first major upgrade for the PC by moving from 64 MB RAM to 192 MB RAM and from a normal CD Drive to a DVD + CD Rewritable drive. Cost of this upgrade was close to 4500 Rupees since the memory for a P III computer costs you more than a memory of a P IV computer. Thereafter a series of other enhancements took place for example a LAN card for the broadband connection and a USB Port for the digital camera and the laser printer.

With ever increasing amount of data in the computer and scarcity of the disk space leading to extreme slowness in the computer, I decided to upgrade the hard disk from Quantum 15 GB to a Seagate Barracuda 80 GB. Surprisingly my motherboard supported the new hard disk. The cost of the new hard disk was 2600 which is perhaps the lowest price in the market. Now I have plenty of space to store whatever I want. I also migrated the entire data from the old hard disk to the new hard disk in a NTFS partition. The best part of upgrade is that even with NAV 2005 the system start up time has reduced considerably and their are no hang ups which use to happen with the old hard disk.

In the future I do not see any major upgrade happening for my computer since there are no parts left which need any enhancements. for the first time, in this weekend, I have not stepped out from my house. Waiting anxiously for the homecoming where I will meet all my TAPMI pals.

Oracle buys Siebel

Within a month later after the most hyped acquisition of I-flex solutions, Oracle has yet again proved its mettle in mergers and acquisitions by acquiring world's number 1 CRM solution company SIEBEL.

On monday 12-SEP-2005 Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced that it has agreed to buy Siebel Systems, Inc (Nasdaq: SEBL) for $10.66 per share. The offer is valued at approximately $5.85 billion, or $3.61 billion net of Siebel's cash on hand of $2.24 billion. This makes this deal of Oracle next only to the peoplesoft deal which was valued at $ 10.8 billion.

The deal within one shot makes Oracle the World's no. 1 CRM solution company as said by the CEO Larry Ellision. Siebel has close to 4000 customer and close to 3,400,000 users use the Siebel Solution in North America. This acquisition will help Oracle scale new heights in the area of CRM applications.

"Today is a great day for Siebel Systems' customers, partners, shareholders, and employees," said Thomas M. Siebel, Chairman of Siebel Systems. "The combination of Siebel applications with the development capacity of Oracle to enhance our CRM product set assures our customers continuing success. This is a very beneficial business combination that will allow us to be even more effective in delivering high quality, leading edge solutions into the hands of satisfied customers."

The most important advantage for Oracle from this acquisition is the enhancement of the Project Fusion architecture wherein it will deploy the best in class practices of Siebel to enhance the application. The Oracle President Charles Phillips was once again in the limelight after the recent acquisition of I Flex.

Keeping in mind the size of Oracle and its extensive R & D capabilities, it is expected that substantial efficiencies will be seen after the combination of two businesses. The acquisition will get reflected only in the 2007 US GAAP report of Oracle.

The CRM applications capture and streamline all customer interactions which enables the CRM users to better understand, service and anticipate their own customers' needs. Of all major segments of the enterprise applications business, CRM is the largest and fastest growing - estimated to be more than $8 billion in 2004 and expected to grow to $10 billion by 2009, according to IDC. Siebel's CRM and Oracle's enterprise applications and middleware share an architecture that embraces industry standards, and a significant majority of Siebel's implementations run on the Oracle database. This is the quite the similar case as of I Flex.

The financial implications of transaction in terms of the shares is as follows: Siebel shareholders will receive $10.66 per share in cash for each Siebel share held, unless they elect to receive Oracle common stock, but no more than 30% of Siebel's common shares may be exchanged for Oracle common stock. In the event that Siebel shareholders holding more than 30% of Siebel common stock elect to receive Oracle common stock, the equity consideration will be pro-rated.

Earlier this year, Oracle closed its PeopleSoft merger, which began as a hostile takeover attempt and took almost two years to complete. The Siebel deal, however, is expected to wrap up by early 2006.

This deal could actually be a major problem for the partners of Siebel like Microsoft and IBM. It is expected that Microsoft will roll out its own CRM product and will stop supporting the Siebel product. Analyst's are saying that IBM seems to be standing still while Oracle is building an application stack. Another competitor in this market is the SAP which is having a share of $ 1.7 billion in the $ 11.4 billion market.

The challenge which lies ahead of Oracle now is to integrate the best practices from PeopleSoft, Oracle and Siebel. The answer I think lies in the Fusion Architecture.

Ganesh Chaturthi

This post is dedicated to Ganesh Chaturthi which was today. Its been two long years since I had attended Ganesh Pooja at home. The last two years we had poojas in TAPMI itself. It was fun there but usually it was an affair between a few people only. This time I am fortunate enough to be at home with my family on this pious occasion.

Ganesh festival starts today and continues for the next 10 days. Its a very popular festival here in Hyderabad. When we were in Gwalior I never saw the kind of excitement which I see in the people here for Ganesh festival. Close to about 6800 ganesh pandals are being put up in the city. But rains are playing spoilsport as always. The main day occurs when the visarjan ceremony of the ganesha takes place. Its exactly 10 days from the day of chaturthi that is on 17th of September. I read in the newspaper a comment by Deputy Commissioner of Police saying that the visarjan is on saturday and its a great relief for the police for making arrangements. Numerous arrangements have to be made in concern to the traffic diversions and arrangement of special buses and arrangement of cranes on tank bund. Close to 20000 police personnels have been deployed at various locations in the city.

Let's hope the visarjan ceremony happens peacefully and successfully as always.

My New Blog

This post is dedicated to my new blog which is on quizzing. Long time back I had posted some stuff on this blog related to punchlines, adlines and taglines of companies. I thought it would be unfair to mix my personal blog with this info which can be a very good resource for quizzing. Hence I decided to start a new blog dedicated only to punchlines, adlines, taglines and adslogans of companies and brands.

The web address is: http://brandtags.blogspot.com

Every week I will be posting one quiz on this site which will cover one topic. The first one in the series is on Global IT industry and includes Indian and foreign companies. Have a look at it. Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

The Elegant Universe - 2

As I had mentioned in the earlier post about continuing here I am. Well the last part of the series was aired on sunday night from 10 to 11. Believe me it was a treat to the eyes to watch all the happenings in the Atomic scale.

If one has read Atomic and Modern Physics in detail let us say from standard text like the Reznick and Halliday, one would come across the Fermilab. A fermilab is basically a research laboratory which provides leadership and resources for qualified researchers to conduct basic research at the frontiers of high energy physics and related disciplines. One of the foremost discovery which took place at the Fermi Lab was Quarks. Thereafter numerous particles have been discovered in experiments which are conducted in 4.5 Miles long accelerator.

In one of the experiment concerning string theory, two protons were made to collide with each other. No observations were made when the collision took place sideways kind. But when the collision took place head on then a particle called as Graviton was formed. The identification of such a particle is that it is not visible in the results but decreases the mass of the two protons. This graviton is the most important and vital particle to explain the string theory.

But there were lot of problems with the String theory in the initial phase. There were in total 5 views of the same theory proposed by various scientists across the globe. But soon it was discovered that they all were the same but were looking different because the conditions surrounding them were different. Hence it was given the name lately as the M - theory. No one knows why the name M was given.

After this the theory gets too complicated and even today it has not been able to explain the match between quantum and relativistic mechanics.

The Elegant Universe

The title of the post as it suggests is all about trying to answer the fundamental question concerning the creation of universe and certain other things for which even the most advanced of sciences have no answers. But after seeing the program "The Elegant Universe" on Discovery Channel I feel we are very close to perhaps understanding the most intriguing question: How come the Universe came into existence.

From the child hood one thing which has been haunting me till date is this universe. How come this universe came into existence and why does life exist only on earth and no other planet was so fortunate to have life on its surface. Of course I have not been able to do any justice to my inquisitiveness over a period of time because of prior engagements but one program on Discovery has actually given a new thought and a new insight to my thought process.

I usually do not watch discovery. Very rarely once in a while when I get bored out of watching each and every channel of the umpteen numbers which our cable operator provides, I do surf Discovery. But this time while I was watching KBC in the break the promotional campaign for this series appeared and I decided come what may I am going to watch this series. I do not know how many of us have watched it but perhaps it was one of the fascinating programs with absolutely superb effects and picturisation which made all the difference. It was aired on Discovery from 2200 hours to 2300 hours on 26th, 27th and 28th of August. The title of the series was "The Elegant Universe".

Now I will go back about 10 years down the line way back in my 10th standard in school. That was the time when I was first introduced to the topic of Atomic Structure. Atomic Structure deals as the title suggests with the structure of atom, composition of matter, electrons, protons, discoveries like mass of electron etc. It starts with the famous Sir Ernest Rutherford Alpha Scattering Experiment and ends with the conflict between Quantum Theory and General Theory of Relativity.

General Theory of Relativity as all of us was proposed by the genius Albert Einstein who is said to have used his brain to the maximum possible extent among all the human beings on earth. The extent to which he used his brain was about 11 %! The General Theory of Relativity gives an explanation as to how come the strong force which is Gravitational force between earth and the sun comes into existence. It postulates that the sun creates around it a very calm and quiet surface something like a mesh and and the gravitational pull which exists within this mesh actually makes earth revolve around the sun. But this theory does not say anything about the other three fundamental forces which exist in nature. The Weak force, the electromagnetic force and the Nuclear force. Enter Quantum theory.

Quantum Theory considers the electron having a dual character. It says that the electron possesses both wave as well as particle nature. This was very well supported by the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, The Debroglie Law, The Pauli's Exclusion Principle and the most famous of all the Max Planck's Quantum Equation. So according to the quantum theory it’s impossible to distinguish between wave and particle. Quantum theory was able to explain very well the weak force, the electro magnetic force and the nuclear force but it could not explain the very fundamental force of nature – The Gravitational Force. There lies the major problem.

The General theory of relativity can explain the fundamental force of gravity but cannot explain the forces which exist at the atomic level whereas the quantum theory can explain the forces at the atomic and sub atomic level but cannot explain the gravitational pull. It is said that Einstein spent last 30 years of his life in trying to figure out how can general theory of relativity explain the sub atomic forces.

So in short we can say that, Relativistic quantum field theory has worked very well to describe the observed behaviors and properties of elementary particles. But the theory itself only works well when gravity is so weak that it can be neglected. Particle theory only works when we pretend gravity doesn't exist.
General theory of relativity has yielded a wealth of insight into the Universe, the orbits of planets, the evolution of stars and galaxies, the Big Bang and recently observed black holes and gravitational lenses. However, the theory itself only works when we pretend that the Universe is purely classical and that quantum mechanics is not needed in our description of Nature.

String theory is believed to close this gap. Now what string theory is all about is one of the major questions which the program answered in a very nice manner. We talk about atoms. Inside atoms we have electrons revolving around the nucleus which consists of protons and neutrons. Beyond this we have not really gone. But we know numerous tiny particles like gravitons, bosons etc which exist in the atom. Now if we look inside electrons, the string theory proposes that there are strings like structures which are the most fundamental elementary particles which constitute the matter.

This is an example which was shown in the Discovery channel and which clearly explains the principle of string theory. Think of a guitar string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across the guitar. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be excitation modes of that guitar string under tension.
In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or excitation modes of elementary strings. In string theory, as in guitar playing, the string must be stretched under tension in order to become excited. However, the strings in string theory are floating in space-time; they aren't tied down to a guitar. Nonetheless, they have tension. The string tension in string theory is denoted by the quantity 1/ (2 p a'), where a' is pronounced "alpha prime” and is equal to the square of the string length scale.

If we imagine the size of atom as the size of this Solar System, then perhaps the size of the string would be a Tree on our planet!!!!!!!!!!!!! This makes impossible for the physicists to see it in reality. Post to be continued.
The title of the post as it suggests is all about trying to answer the fundamental question concerning the creation of universe and certain other things for which even the most advanced of sciences have no answers. But after seeing the program "The Elegant Universe" on Discovery Channel I feel we are very close to perhaps understanding the most intriguing question: How come the Universe came into existence.

From the child hood one thing which has been haunting me till date is this universe. How come this universe came into existence and why does life exist only on earth and no other planet was so fortunate to have life on its surface. Of course I have not been able to do any justice to my inquisitiveness over a period of time because of prior engagements but one program on Discovery has actually given a new thought and a new insight to my thought process.

I usually do not watch discovery. Very rarely once in a while when I get bored out of watching each and every channel of the umpteen numbers which our cable operator provides, I do surf Discovery. But this time while I was watching KBC in the break the promotional campaign for this series appeared and I decided come what may I am going to watch this series. I do not know how many of us have watched it but perhaps it was one of the fascinating programs with absolutely superb effects and picturisation which made all the difference. It was aired on Discovery from 2200 hours to 2300 hours on 26th, 27th and 28th of August. The title of the series was "The Elegant Universe".

Now I will go back about 10 years down the line way back in my 10th standard in school. That was the time when I was first introduced to the topic of Atomic Structure. Atomic Structure deals as the title suggests with the structure of atom, composition of matter, electrons, protons, discoveries like mass of electron etc. It starts with the famous Sir Ernest Rutherford Alpha Scattering Experiment and ends with the conflict between Quantum Theory and General Theory of Relativity.

General Theory of Relativity as all of us was proposed by the genius Albert Einstein who is said to have used his brain to the maximum possible extent among all the human beings on earth. The extent to which he used his brain was about 11 %! The General Theory of Relativity gives an explanation as to how come the strong force which is Gravitational force between earth and the sun comes into existence. It postulates that the sun creates around it a very calm and quiet surface something like a mesh and and the gravitational pull which exists within this mesh actually makes earth revolve around the sun. But this theory does not say anything about the other three fundamental forces which exist in nature. The Weak force, the electromagnetic force and the Nuclear force. Enter Quantum theory.

Quantum Theory considers the electron having a dual character. It says that the electron possesses both wave as well as particle nature. This was very well supported by the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, The Debroglie Law, The Pauli's Exclusion Principle and the most famous of all the Max Planck's Quantum Equation. So according to the quantum theory it’s impossible to distinguish between wave and particle. Quantum theory was able to explain very well the weak force, the electro magnetic force and the nuclear force but it could not explain the very fundamental force of nature – The Gravitational Force. There lies the major problem.

The General theory of relativity can explain the fundamental force of gravity but cannot explain the forces which exist at the atomic level whereas the quantum theory can explain the forces at the atomic and sub atomic level but cannot explain the gravitational pull. It is said that Einstein spent last 30 years of his life in trying to figure out how can general theory of relativity explain the sub atomic forces.

So in short we can say that, Relativistic quantum field theory has worked very well to describe the observed behaviors and properties of elementary particles. But the theory itself only works well when gravity is so weak that it can be neglected. Particle theory only works when we pretend gravity doesn't exist.
General theory of relativity has yielded a wealth of insight into the Universe, the orbits of planets, the evolution of stars and galaxies, the Big Bang and recently observed black holes and gravitational lenses. However, the theory itself only works when we pretend that the Universe is purely classical and that quantum mechanics is not needed in our description of Nature.

String theory is believed to close this gap. Now what string theory is all about is one of the major questions which the program answered in a very nice manner. We talk about atoms. Inside atoms we have electrons revolving around the nucleus which consists of protons and neutrons. Beyond this we have not really gone. But we know numerous tiny particles like gravitons, bosons etc which exist in the atom. Now if we look inside electrons, the string theory proposes that there are strings like structures which are the most fundamental elementary particles which constitute the matter.

This is an example which was shown in the Discovery channel and which clearly explains the principle of string theory. Think of a guitar string that has been tuned by stretching the string under tension across the guitar. Depending on how the string is plucked and how much tension is in the string, different musical notes will be created by the string. These musical notes could be said to be excitation modes of that guitar string under tension.
In a similar manner, in string theory, the elementary particles we observe in particle accelerators could be thought of as the "musical notes" or excitation modes of elementary strings. In string theory, as in guitar playing, the string must be stretched under tension in order to become excited. However, the strings in string theory are floating in space-time; they aren't tied down to a guitar. Nonetheless, they have tension. The string tension in string theory is denoted by the quantity 1/ (2 p a'), where a' is pronounced "alpha prime” and is equal to the square of the string length scale.

If we imagine the size of atom as the size of this Solar System, then perhaps the size of the string would be a Tree on our planet!!!!!!!!!!!!! This makes impossible for the physicists to see it in reality. Post to be continued.

Life - A Roller Coaster Ride II

If the post looks like a sequel to the post which appeared before yes you are right it is a sequel but believe me its not going to be totally in relation to that.

I ended that post on a pretty much pessimistic note which actually speaks of the state of affairs I was in some time back. Well I believe that uncertainty in life can come because of two sources. It can be either because of a situation you are in or it can be caused because of a human intervention. For me most of the time uncertainty came into picture because of the situations I was in but there is a lot of connection between the two also. Well usually uncertainty can be created by a person itself in a particular situation but even situation can change so much that they can create uncertainty in the behavior of a person.

I never trust people easily. It takes a lot of time before I get friendly with people and trust them. This you may know very well If you know me. But people may try to be too friendly with you and possibly you may fall in trap sometimes. But nevertheless I have been quite lucky not to fall in such traps since I think I can judge people very well. But I never thought I can also go wrong. I did finally.

The posts raises many a questions than giving answers. Perhaps its what the destiny wanted. Addiction is definitely a bad thing but not liking. But when liking turns into something more serious then it definitely becomes a close cousin of addiction. Simplicity, prettyness, wholesomeness, innocence all can really take one for a ride if one does not tickle his brain at the right time. Trust is something which is fundamental to any relationship and once that goes everything goes for a toss.

Somethings are predetermined in life. Certain other things we determine for ourselves by our deeds. There is another set of things which perhaps are decided by others for us and which actually create lot of difference in our lives which may be good or bad. We never know. But if it is good we feel happy, if it is bad we really cannot say anything to anyone and accept them as something like destiny.

I sometimes think what the hell I have done bad on this earth that I should suffer whereas others should enjoy. It is said that if people face challenges everyday it is going to follow up with a quiet peaceful and pleasant incarnation where nothing outstanding happens at all. Now whether that happens or not we really do not know.

It is said that challenges are designed at a soul level to give rise to a change in individual. Change then opens the door to the opportunity for transformation and transformation is our main purpose of life whether it is from a child to a parent or from ignorance to understanding.

So perhaps this is an experience for me to transform my life. But to what ? The question remains unanswered.

EDS in Talks to buy CITIGROUP Stake in Polaris

One of the very recent news. EDS is in talk with CITIGROUP to buy there 43.2 % stake in POLARIS for a value of about 787 crore. This is second exit of CITIGROUP in continuation of the exit from I Flex which they did in the early last week.

More news on this will be known only in a few days time. If this materialies EDS will grow in India by an inorganic route and will stand neck to neck with IBM and Accenture which have very big presence in the Indian Market.

More on this later when news gets confirmed.

Life - A Roller Coaster Ride

If one has to experience life one has to undergo its turns and twists. A life which is monotonous in nature with absolutely no changes happening whether in personal or in professional front is not really living life. In my office on the first day in Hyderabad we had an opportunity to interact with one person by name CGK. Actually people call him by this name but his real name is quite long. He was supposed to talk about sales process and related things in the organization but he ended up talking about life, emotions, expressions and how should one live life and so many other things also. Well to an extent he was like a refreshing one in the crowd of people who always had interaction with us only for knowing our profiles and interest. This person actually gave lot of other insights to me.

We always believe that there should not be any problems in our life, no worries, no tensions and no hiccups. We do our best to avoid problems when met with. But sometimes the things move in altogether different fashion. I believe in one statement which I quote from one of the short stories which I read in 10th standard : " The Unexpected Always Happen and Expect only the Unexpected if you believe that you should be in any shock". This sentence has become more or less part of my life. With the kind of events happening around me I strongly feel that I may end more in problems than having their solutions. The problems are so entangled with each other that by the time I feel happy that something is in place the other thing goes out of place.

To be continued.

One Exciting Week

As the post says the week gone by was perhaps one of the most exciting week's in the recent past. Seeing the kind of events which happened in the week gone by one can definitely remember this week for the days to come.

The week began with what can be termed as the acquisition of the year, Oracle acquiring I Flex solutions by purchasing close to 42 % of the stake of CITIGROUP in I flex. More on it is provided in the post below. The next in the list was again a very big buy out which did not create many a ripples in the Indian market but definitely in the west when Adidas acquired rival firm Reebok for 3.8 billion USD giving NIKE tough competition in the USA market. It was also the week when one of the mega merger in the Indian Pharmaceutical industry was called off. The merger between Matrix Laboratories and Strides Acrolabs was called off due to valuation problems. Ideally the merger between the two companies would have created an entity which would have been sixth biggest in the country in the area of Pharmaceutics. Reliance life Insureance acquired AMP Sanmar Insurance company. The torrential rains in Mumbai took the entire life out of the city putting the people into the worst of problems possible. Ofcourse the various data centers in Mumbai of various banks also got effected and this impacted the ATMs all over the country. Thanks to the DRS everything started working properly within a short while.

In the Bombay floods ONGC suffered huge losses when the bombay high oil well of the company went into fire and caused serious losses amounting to close to $ 500 m. The demerger of Reliance group of companies also took place which created 4 new companies on the name of Reliance.

So this week according to me was one of the most exciting weeks wherin lot of things in the Corporate India happened. Let's hope the action continues.

Adidas Buys out Reebok

Well before I could relax for a while digesting as to what happened yesterday there is yet another path breaking news involving perhaps the most established names in the sporting gear industry. Yes you guessed them right. In the arena are now the two major sporting brands whose accessories we wear day in and day out.Adidas and Reebok.

At about 9:15 CDT Adidas announced that its going to buy Reebok for about $ 3.8 billion giving the company about 20 % of the US market and the potential to become a very strong competitor to Nike, which is the current market leader with a little over 30 % market share in this market.

Under the terms of the deal, Adidas-Salomon AG will pay $59 per share for all of Reebok International Ltd.'s outstanding stock, a premium of 34 percent to Tuesday's closing price, as disclosed by the Adidas Chairman and CEO Herbert Hainer. Shares of Reebok rose $12.79, or 29 percent, to $56.74 in early New York Stock Exchange trading after the news. Adidas shares rose 6 percent to 156.93 euros ($193.11) in Frankfurt trading.

As the CEO puts it "Its a once in a while opportunity of combinining two mega companies and make them still stronger." I do not remember such mergers in the past and last mega merger which I remember was one of AOL and Time Warner which was over valued at over $ 360 billion. Even in IT industry we have not seen such big time mergers except for the take over of PwC global consulting by IBM.

Reebok's board has approved the offer price and shareholders are also expected to follow the same.

The deal brings together two impressive stables of athletes and entertainment endorsers. English soccer star David Beckham and rap artist Missy Elliott are under contract to Adidas. Reebok sells a line of shoes branded with rapper 50 Cent's G Unit logo and is endorsed by such NBA stars as Allen Iverson and Yao Ming. It also gives Adidas, which has outfitted soccer stars for years, access to Reebok's licenses to clothe players in the National Football League and National Basketball Association and sell the gear to fans.

One of the analyst said this "Adidas, in conjunction with Reebok, has the potential to say, 'We want better terms or conditions or we'll take our business elsewhere',"

The best part is the Reebok will continue to operate in its own name. We know this is extremely crucial for such companies since its their brand which sells the most.

Let's hope this brings in more better products and services for the customers and ofcourse stiffer competition for Nike too.

ORACLE Acquires I-Flex Solutions

This post is coming immedietely after I got the above news from souveer who generally does not calls up but he did it that too on a very odd time of 7:30 pm.

At about 8:00 AM EST (6:30 PM IST), Oracle made the announcement saying that they have acquired the 42 % stake of CITIGROUP in Iflex for about $ 565 m. The deal will be worth $ 909 m if additionally Oracle is able to acquire 20 % from the market. The 20 % acquisition s going to be an open offer to the share holders of I Flex at about Rs. 882.62. This is mostly as the President of Oracle says is going to be a regulatory requirement rather than company's interest. It has more to do with the accounting norms and will help in combining the balance sheets of two companies faster. Oracle has said that I-Flex will continue with the existing partners like IBM and other technology vendors. Citigroup one of the major customers of I Flex will continue to be its customer for the next 5 years and there will not be any change in this. From I flex point of view this is a real good opportunity to tap the US markets since Oracle runs on close to 5000 banks worldwide and 9 out of 10 top tier banks run Oracle in US. Also since 90 % of the implementations for I Flex involve Oracle as the back end there are no integration issues either which is one of the most common problem after a company takes over another. Oracle has said that the acquisition will get completed by the end of 2005 and I-flex will continue to trade on NSE and BSE. Charles Phillips President, Oracle Worldwide will join the I Flex board. Some of the reasons sighted by Oracle on acquisition of I Flex are:

• Global footprint for I Flex presence in 114 countries
• Wide Customer base
• Consistently ranked number 1 by International Banking Systems
• A very strong Product base
• Help Oracle make a stronger footprint in the Banking Industry

Well all these reasons look very good and a deal which can give the customer a more improvised banking solution in terms of robustness, enabling the banks to serve their customers better and faster. But on the hindsight this is a signal of an era of M&A activity in the arena of IT industry which has not been happening at a much larger scale now. Well Oracle acquisiton of I Flex is definitely to make a foot print into India but it has more to do with the way large IT giants like Accenture, IBM, CSC or others are looking for small product companies to acquire.

Another way to look at it would be if we looked at the strategy of Oracle recently. Oracle if we see has been acquiring number of companies in each of the emerging areas like Retail, RTE Data Management, Identity Management, ERP. In the arena of Retail they acquired two firms Retek and Profit Logic which is helping them in transforming and developing the retail solutions for the burgeoning retail industry. In the RTE Data Management, which is going to be the next stage of ERP following SOA, they acquired TimesTen which is a market leader in this service. If people who are reading this blog are from my TAPMI class remember way back in the 3rd term of MIS class I had given a presentation on Real Time Enterprise. Well that's going to become a reality soon. I am happy about it since I said that its a forward looking business strategy and will take some time till Service Oriented Architecture picks up. Next in the list of acquisition which Oracle did recently is Oblix. Oblix is one of the leading service providers ofIdentity Management Solutions. If you are not aware of what a IMS is please forgive me and since its tough to explain that here. So what does all this suggest to us. It clearly suggests that Oracle is moving out of its Database company image to an all rounder image of a end to end computing provider. By acquiring such companies Oracle clearly wants to position itself as the leader in each of the vertical they are operating into. Moreover the database business of Oracle has been facing lot of pressure of competitors like DB2 from IBM and MySQL from open source. The major threat in this case is the second one which is a open source product and is catching up at an amazing speed among various customers in the small and mid size segments. So for Oracle to stick up with Database industry may not be wise and hence they ventured into ERP. Thereafter it was no looking back for Oracle. They did the messy acquisition of PeopleSoft which we had seen in the December 2004. With PeopleSoft they also got JD Edwards. So its all the three ERP rolled into one. Also adding to the technology front this acquisition will help build next generation banking solution based on Oracle's latest Fusion Architecture which will be based on open systems as per the analyst report. Continuing the similar trend if we look at the offering of the Oracle for the financial industry it includes largely either enterprise wide applications like Customer Analytics and Management solution or compliance based solution or Enterprise Infrastructure and Management Solutions which include applications like BPM, Portal, Database etc. But what it needed was a solution which is industry exclusive like a Core Banking Solution for Retail Banking Industry, Treasury, Corporate Banking and Investment Banking. So here comes the biggest gap which is filled by I Flex in totality since Flexcube together with Reveleus and others cover end to end solutions for the banking industry. Hence this completed Oracle's offering for the banking and financial services industry.

What all this means to the IT Industry on a whole. It means that we are now moving onto a era wherein we do not expect the small players to sustain for long time competing with big players. Its only the beginning but we have to see to what extent companies like Oracle, IBM etc will succeed in this mission. Also product based companies in India are too few in number to name a few are Polaris, I Flex, Infosys etc. But again the revenues from product for these companies do not even constitute 20-30 % of total revenues exception is ofcourse Flexcube which contributes close to 56 % of the revenues for I Flex. Hence to what extent will acquiring such small companies will be helpful for these bigwigs is really a question not yet answered.

Well what is the opinion of Polaris on this acquisition will be known later only because CITIGROUP also wanted to exit from Polaris where it holds close to 42 %. But the catch in this case is that CITGROUP cannot exit from the company without the formal consent of Arun Jain. So we have to wait and watch what would CITIGROUP do next. Well the news has already hit the stock market and even inspite of bad first quarter results I flex share price zoomed by about 45 rupees to close at 897 which is more than the price offered by Oracle. Now how does one solve this mystery. Remember CRISIL price shooting up when S&P made an open offer to buy CRISIL.

Its been 2.5 hours of blogging. But I still feel writing more and more about it because this is one merger which is going to change the shape of the industry in which I am working. Let's see what is in store of me.

GODSPEED.

KBC - 3 Days to Go

It will be a delight to watch Amitabh Bachchan once again on the television. Yes KBC is going to come back on STAR PLUS. In my previous post I had mentioned the way Star Plus kicked the campaign of KBC 2 in a very emotional manner. There is actually lot of difference between the two versions of the show in terms of its marketing and promotion. This time the show is being promoted as the one where one gets “UMEED SE DUGNA”. In the promotions star plus has picked up some very different kind of people from various jobs who just had hope in them to succeed one day and this makes them to get to the hot seat. The campaigns are also targeted on the other shows like the “Fame Gurukul” on SONY and other shows like the hit one “The Indian Idol”. But more importantly it’s the power, of Amitabh Bachchan which keeps the show kicking and I definitely believe that he will do much better this time. If any one of you are watching the Star Plus channel by any chance, it’s the same strategy which the channel adopted on 3rd of july 2000, when KBC came first on the television. On 3rd July 2000 also Star plus came out with 3-4 new programs that changed star plus, the television industry and the characters in those program itself. This time also the same strategy is being worked out by launching some good programs on the weekends from Friday to Sunday because on these days as per my observation none of the channels carry good programs. So grabbing this opportunity looks very ideal. I am eagerly waiting for the KBC to start for and want to try my luck once again. Because “Umeed Par hi to Duniya Kayam hai”

Chennai Visit

Well I am back but after exactly 8 days. Today I was almost dying to write something from morning because several things happened during this week which needed to be put into words and expressed. Ofcourse the main one and close to my heart was the chennai trip which had a both official purpose and personal purpose to be served. Although very little to do with the official part of it, nevertheless we took a photograph with the CEO which made it look official.

The official part of the trip was the Chennai Polaris Day which was held in Chennai Trade Center one of those places akin to Pragati Maidan in Delhi. It was a fun filled event in which the first part of the event was dedicated to presentation made by each of the corporate functions and the second part of the day was dedicated to the cultural programmes which included Group Songs, Dances Skits etc. No end to it crowd going bonkers over the show in many cases which included the Rajnikanth related performance. Of course regionalism dominated the entire Polaris Day Culturals which included 5 out of the 7 shows in which Tamil was the language of conversation. Moreover our MTs played a very crucial role in the entire roll out of the show. One aspect of all the program to be kept in mind is that all the programs had to do something or the other with the organization and the SDLC in IT projects. Well I enjoyed most of the programs being an audience and ofcourse our people Anjani, Ramakrishna and Kranthi were part of a western group song which in itself is oxymoron. Will not be revealing more details here. After the closure of the show we all left for Navalur. It was raining cats and dogs in chennai on that day and somehow we managed to reach the guest house well before closure of dinner and without getting drenched. What happened in night only three of us know.

The day after was a mixed bag. Having a talk with one of the members of my fan club and obviously the other member is extremely angry with me anyways. But I can't help it. The decision is a conscious one. In the afternoon we all went to VGP. All refers to Arun P, Anjani (we managed to pull him out somehow out of the guest house), Rama, Bhadra, The one and only Kranthi, and above all Vasudha. Even Mr. Anirudh joined us. It was the birthday of Bhadra so we did a little bit of cake cutting too. Nice time we had. Although I was there for a very short time only there I did enjoy that part of it. Then I started back with just one hope in mind. As Amitabh Bachchan puts it

"Umeed Pe Yeh Duniya Kayam, Umeed hai to aap aasmaan chusakte hai, Umeed hai to aap HOT SEAT par bait sakte hain."

Well as I said before in my blog entry that I am not very lucky in number of incidences which happen in my life and this is one of them. Fine I reached Egmore 1.5 hours before the Bus departure itself. Boarded the bus and came back to Hyderabad with a skeptism in mind.

Well when I started this post my state of affairs was very different and my mind was in a kind of different state altogether. But the kind of storms it is undergoing right noww are highly disturbing and effectively can make me absolutely tired. The best way to understand two states. first one is good and second one is bad.

I will close this post here as Mumbai undergoes severe flood wherein even my friends are caught and had to stay in office throughout night.

Let's Hope things get back to normal soon.

Uncertainty Prevails

Well my life can never be standstill. It likes to be challenging and changing all the time. Whether it was the posting in chennai or something else which is happening right now. I have good capacity to adapt to changes but I am not quite sure where any change will take me. What is happening right now is the same. Project Management Office I thought was perhaps the ideal job for me. But after getting to know insights about the office I felt that I should get out of it. So this is one situation wherein the market demand and growth work over personal interest. Let's see where do I go from here.

Although sitting idle in office can be very frustrating but sometimes we can make it a little better by doing certain things. Today in the office I read the latest book in the Harry Potter series. I could read only about 10 pages and then we got some work to do. It was based on securitization. Not much can be told here because of the disclaimer. Tommorrow is the D Day for me. Let's see what's gonna happen.

I do not know whether this post makes any sense or not. But I felt like posting something and vomited out whatever I wanted to.

Back to Hyderabad

Well my last post attracted a lot of attention in terms of comments on the statements I made but nevertheless my intentions were not that. Saw a new visitor for my blog Mr Rex Tom C Vadakel.
Something about the Polaris Induction which we finished only a week back. Exactly a week back we had our final presentations on the various topics given to us and thereafter the most awaited MT reception. The MT reception was held at MGM Resort which is one of the most sought after resorts in chennai. The party lasted till 11:30 in the night and was not a very formal party as we had expected. The senior management of the company too participated in the proceedings of the show and it was all in all a good break from the training which we were undergoing. I too had some of the best moments of my life therein. But only few people know about that. This was the day before we got our postings. The drinks were on the house but then limited. So you know what happens then.

21 days in the induction went away just like that. I enjoyed the induction thoroughly for many reasons than one. Met different kinds of people and worked in groups also akin to TAPMI. Definitely the adaptation was much better this time.

In the first week of induction we also went to Pondicherry. Its a nice place akin to Goa in terms of the road and the infrastructure at place. Pretty much the french touch still exists in the place. The rock side beach was wonderful although we went in the hot afternoon. Ofcourse the major attraction was the Matri Mandir in the Auroville Ashram. I could not see it from inside since we went in the morning.

Also roamed a lot in chennai. Went to pondy bazaar for some shopping, spencer's plaza the most happening place in chennai. Met rahul also. Then met many other people in the E Serve meet like Arun Panicker, Vexy, Sumit, Deepti, Surya, etc. Nice experience. It looks like chennai is having the maximum number of TAPMIans. Also met our senior Teenie Walia in Polaris. She told many things about the company etc.

I came back from chennai on tuesday morning. Thursday is my joining in the Hyderabad office. Let's hope something good is in store for me. Ofcourse I will not like to have another training session here. As Ram puts it Training is for people who are either jobless or are not capable of carrying out the current job.

Adieu.

Back to Hyderabad

Its really a long time since I have blogged. People who might have visited my blog must have noticed absolutely no activity after close to 12th June 2005. The reason being on 14 June I joined Polaris Software Labs, Chennai. My first job. Quite possibly a big challenge in store for me. Today I also got my posting. Its in Hyderabad. Yet again I am back to home town.
But am I really Happy ?
Only I know.
GODSPEED.

Gurcharan Das

The title of the post is the name of my favorite author. I started liking Gurcharan Das only in my MBA when I read his one of the best selling books - India Unbound. India Unbound is my first full fledged book which I have read from start to finish and spent adequate amount of time in understanding what the author wanted to convey. I think it is one of those books which can tell us how did India evolve over a period of time right from independence till today. It gives an excellent account of the license raj, perhaps the worst period in the India's economy. He is one of those authors who does not criticize Late Dhirubhai Ambani of making lot of money by being loyal to the politicians. He says that Dhirubhai was the first person in the history of India who gave people an opportunity to earn money via the stock market. Of the various accounts he gives in the book one of them which really impressed my mind was the way he thought about the marketing policy of Procter and Gamble. Actually P&G wanted to bring out a detergent in the market and it was the idea of a woman whom Gurucharan Das interviewed which was used in the making of the advertisement. He was the person in the country who established the presence of P&G in India. Started the Vicks brand in the country and also made it a super brand after sometime. He retired as the CMD of P&G India and thereafter he has spent lot of time in writing books and being on the board of numerous companies. I have been reading his columns in Times of India which appear on every alternate Sunday. In the May issue of Business Today one more small article appeared featuring GD.

The next feather in his cap is that he is the first and only Indian to be on the panel of judges for selecting the HBR Mckinsey awards. He is going to share the podium with the likes of Sam Palmisano (IBM), Michael Eskew (UPS), and Robert Hormats (Goldman Sachs). We very well know the previous winners in this awards are the likes of Michael Porter, Henry Mintzberg who have well defied the way the companies used to think and strategise.

I am looking forward to the second book by Gurcharan Das on Governance. The magazine says that he is in the middle of the book. Lets hope the author brings out some real good lessons on governance for all of us and even for the politicians.