Bidding Adieu! :-)

Hey People,
I am done with my 1st semester in MBA, and the course which required me to take up this blogging activity has come to an end. Since, this would officially be my last Post in this blog. However, you you can still follow me on Reverie.

Thanks for all you readings, comments and interesting thoughts...I did enjoy it :-)

TC & Cheers,
Arpitha :-)

Technical fit between "Technologies"

I use Google chrome because it is light weight & an open source browser! I use Face book since it is the best socializing network site I have come across! Is it possible to get the best of these two and fit it together? Off course it is possible, and that is exactly what RockMelt is all about.

If you think in these lines, then what would happen if we bring about the best of each technology and fit them with each other! Wow, the sky is the limit for such innovations! We have just taken our first baby step towards innovation within technologies rather than adapting/ re engineering them.

However, for me Chrome still has some bugs that are not so user friendly. For example:
1. When I need to upload pictures into Picasa, the chrome browser just allows 5 pictures at a time!!
2. A few tabs in the HDFC net banking website is invisible in chrome browser.

On the other hand, FB still has the privacy issues that needs to be handled without much account setting complications it currently offers.

Therefore, it is not only important to come up with hybrid technologies, but emphasis must also be on how to make these technologies user friendly, defect free and compatible for future growth and development of IT world. In other words creating "AVATAR" !

Taking Globalization to the next level.

By Globalization we mean that now the whole universe has into a one single connected entity. Thanks to the latest technology and boom in the e-world. People have no limitations of physical barriers for most of their professional, personal and business activities. But, when it comes to traveling to different places many people feel they are digital crippled. This could be because of:

1. Hardware compatibility issues
2. Different vendors offering different roaming traffics for cell phones
3. Different electricity supplies

Spain & Portugal are making an attempt to ease this issue , by exempting the roaming charge for cell phones in their countries. This is looked upon as a advantage for the vendor and the customer. The vendor can make up for the loss by the increased usage of the service at the same time, the customer need not worry about roaming traffics. Hence based on the business activities between 2 countries if we try to make them more digitally compatible it could become a catalyst for further business growth and development.

Privacy Privacy Privacy!

In the current digital world, people leave behind their digital identity knowingly or unknowingly and over a period of time a digital dossier of an individual is created which would be sufficient for someone to misuse!

We have had many anti-virus, anti-malwares which help minimize this risk for the end users. A new addition to this family is Lookout for smart phones. The basic services provided by them are

1. Anti-Virus Protection
2. Data backup
3. Privacy Dashboards

Apart from the numerous extra features for power users. A minimum rental of $2.99/month or $29.99/year is charged for this service. Though close to 3 million users have downloaded the freeware version of this, the users who want to pay the premium service is unknown.

But if you come to think of it, we spend close to $60+ monthly for smart phones and the various application which are add-on to it. When we can spend so much for communication purpose will we not spend another $3 to protect us and people connected to us from becoming victims of digital crimes!

Multitaking with Technology

We have all seen the evolution of phone from been a land-line connection to mobile-phone! Along this process the cost of the service also has reduced at the same time various other tasks i such as SMS, Internet, radio to name a few were introduced in due course of time.

When one starts wondering, that we have hit the brim of exploring the usage of cellphones for multitasking, we see one more task that can be accomplished with cellphones. This is what AT&T has done this time.

Our Cellphone numbers are becoming our Identity and used as a surety for online shopping. They are becoming the digital dossiers not only for our personal life but also for our business life. So, where ever you shop, you just need to link your bills to the cell phone number and the amount is reflected in your phone account.

This idea can be extended so that it is similar to what Microsoft's Card Space. A single identity for all purposes whether it be for ID verification, shopping, paying utility bills. Hence user can use their cell phones alone for all personal & transaction purposes. This would be a great example of taking technology to a whole new . Though the pros of this are very lucrative, we must analyze the cons before jumping into conclusions and implementing them.

"IT"s Impact !

Its been close to 2+ years since the world turned into global recession. The worst effected was US, which indirectly effected countries like India and China, who had bulk revenues coming from the US.

These countries were seen more as revenue generators than revenue creators in the IT fraternity. However, a lot has changed in the recent times, with a stable GDP each year recorded by China & India they are looked upon as the next destination for investments by all. We have every other country, government and political leaders lobbying for making their mark in these economies. To support my argument I am giving the example of IBM Net Income Rises 12 Percent buoyed by strong performance in Brazil, Russia, India and China as well as solid sales of analytics software and services.

IT has always been an everygreen field for investment right from its inception. It might have faced a few hiccups once in a while, but has always comes back to business with a bigger boom. This is turing power and economoy into the hands of the 3 world countires. This only exmplifies the magnitde of impact IT has!!! Hence organizations who are not IT-friendly must start looking at it more seriously and be up-to date with the current technology.

Tweets becoming more Feeble!

It was about 8-9 months ago when I, 1st started using twitter. What intrigued me to use it was a political drama that happened around that time. "Tweets" of Twitter was the one that ignited it. The hype for Twitter was so much that , it was becoming more popular than blogging amongst many users.

Now after having been a faithful user of Twitter for a couple of months, I have released the Twitter is fading away.

Of the 10 people I follow, hardly 1-2 tweet once in fortnight. The tweets are so short and less informative that, it never really calls for a conversation/ re tweeting. I have been tweeting regular, but the response to my tweets have declined drastically over the months. The Tweets are almost same as status update feature provided by Orkut/ Facebook. So why bother to log in to Twitter Application and do it? While there is no response or active users who follow you. This is the exact conclusion drawn by the social media analytics company Sysomos posed in a survey.

I wonder if Twitter is an example of Bleeding Edge Technology. For all the hype it had created during its infancy, it should by now have out performed other socializing and communication based competitors such as FaceBook, Blogs, Orkut.

Eager to see what steps the Twitter takes to get back to business. Would it go for a process re-engineering or a process-improvement approach?

OAuth A win-win situation !!

Every web page we browse now a days invariably has a Face Book / Twitter connect and now a days even others such as RSS Feed and Blogs. A Live example would me our FLORES MBA homepage

Till now all these application were using their own set of API's for allowing them to authenticate and sign in the user. But now a new trend is emerging with a standardized token called the OAuth being used. Recently Twitter made this mandatory [though previously OAuth was one of the possible options]. Also, Face book had its own customized API, but now even are moving to the OAuth token. And we can see Google is also catching up in this race : Google Adds OAuth Support to Google Apps

The possible conclusion we can draw is; Since connecting using Socialization/ networking Website apps is growing, the top players want to be accessible and available. Hence, many of them are moving to a standard for connecting to thier apps!!! So this would be an ideal example of Supply Push where customers are buying the OAuth!!!

On the other hand, previous version of the OAuth token had many data and security issues. Such as the data of a logged in user was passed from one page to another page in the URL!!! Now we see due to the pressure of maintaining high security of users data OAuth Tokens have been modified to meet the customer requirements. This would be an ideal example of Demand Pull where the supplier changes as per the customer requirements.

Hence, by establishing a harmony between the supply push and demand pull we can attain a state of win-win situation the supplier and the customers!!

EU Targets to invest in IT

We are witnessing a new trend emerging, with respect to investments made by Governments. Usually, Governments invest on Infrastructure, Production and such tangible commodities. But lately it is investing in IT!!! For example Radio Frequencies to Be Reallocated for Broadband in EU.

We can conclude a lot from this investment plan by EU:

1. They have the maximum Broad Band (BB) penetration currently. But, the internet is accessible to only 25%!!! Also, services which rely on radio spectrum account to around 2-2.5% GDP. So by exploring the option of investing in IT, they will increase the speed and depth of BB penetration. This in turn might result in increase in GDP :-)

2. With many 3 world countries in Asia, having faster and broader BB access, EU have realized that IT is indeed needed to be competitive. Hence, they are taking stringent actions to make their plan work!

3. Apart from having economic development with IT and gaining an edge over other countries, EU might be concentrating on the larger business. By having a faster BB connection, they could attract a lot of local and global companies who would approach them for creating or maintaining IT systems for themselves. They could attract a lot of organization who would invests for Research & Development in IT field.


Hence, it comes as no surprise as more and more public institutions, have started investing on IT.

Mergers & Acquisitions impact on the e-World

Its been close to a year since I attend a session in my previous organization about "EAI - Enterprise Application Integration". The lady who conducted the session gave an insight on the upcoming trends in the IT world. Now after knowing about emerging trends in IT, I can appreciate the session even more.

With over decades of software development and with astronomical amount of data been transacted, stored, analyzed, data-warehoused and data-mined, the IT industry has almost stagnated with respect to development of new software. The ones which are new ; basically provide out of box features to the existing software. There is nothing much left to newly invent in software. So the next challenge IT is facing is the Integration of these applications. This is because the business world is now all about Mergers & Acquisitions.

Hence, the true challenge lies in the fact that how IT can enable smooth transition and integration of various business process across different organization merging. This would reflect the potential role IT plays in any organization.

I wouldn't be surprised if SAP ( leader in proving tools and apps for this purpose) emerging as the biggest entity overtaking giants such as Microsoft and Sun-MircoSystems!!

Why Oracle concentrating on new bee "Techies" ?!

As we all know Oracle is a huge organization in the world of hardware and software. And it is a known fact that they are always open minded in terms of expanding their business not only geographically but also with respect to technologies. So it was no surprise when they bought Sun Microsystems. In continuation to this, they are providing a Student Coders Free Access to JavaOne.

This comes as a surprise for many, who know that oracle was a customer oriented company; their main focus is to generate maximum profits from their in house tools. Hence, the very fact that Oracle is trying to access students with its technologies is an eyebrow raising topic. My view point on this is:

The e- world market is very competent. In fact when Google is pressurized with competition then none are spared :-). Hence to stay in market and to be popular just like many other companies such as Microsoft, Oracle needs a good marketing strategy.

Microsoft does its bit of advertising by giving free Beta version software’s to students and programmers who belong to the category of perspective employees & customers. I am also one amongst the beneficiaries who not only got to know about the latest offerings of Microsoft but also ended up developing web application using their tools and technologies. I also am a customer for life time with them, just because I am accustomed to their products. I believe, oracle is taking its first baby step towards exploring this idea of marketing!!

Well, the next thought is, why advertise it to students? Why not do it within corporate employees, customers etc. It is most unlikely that once a person is well versed and familiar with a certain tool or technology, he/ she would opt for a switch. Hence, by educating the students and providing them with hands on experience Oracle might be trying to add Dedicated Users / Customers into its list.

And the next reason might be, there is amplification of advertising their products, by exposing it to students. Since, students are very active in their social networks, and through word of mouth the amount of information spread is astronomical!!

Last but not the least; I guess Oracle wants to remove the idea from people's mind that it is not "developer friendly". So this might be their first attempt toward breaking the taboo.

P.S : I would like to dedicate this post to all my friends who work as oracle :

1. Abhijith Jain

2. Sindhuja S

3. Sachin H. B

4. Apeksha Mahesh

Technology is changing everything

Down streaming the product and attempting to make the product more purchasers friendly had led to two major changes:

1. The products will evolve continuously to meet the consumer requirements. Unlike the olden days where the product version was not that dependant on customer views. This will not only increase the customer satisfaction, but will also act as a platform to increase the customer base for a given product.

2. The power of purchasing a product, unbiased solely lies in the hand of the customer. Hence, products which are not user friendly will be eradicated from the market, as there is no room for false advertisements that might lure the users to purchase it. This is possible because the user now has the advantage of reviewing the product before purchase. Be it in terms of feedback given by other buyers or the critiques posted by subject matter experts online.

Thus, the focus is now making the products more customers friendly. In any given organization high priority is given for customer satisfaction. Retaining the older customers and at the same time engaging with newer customers.

A few steps that firms need to take towards down streaming of their products could be:

1. Providing internet access to users within their stores, and having some kind of discounts for people who provide feedback about the product online.

2. Providing incentives to user who introduce the products to other consumers, online.

3. Give a recommended list of items whenever the consumer either visits the store or logs into the product website. This should be based on the previous history of similar purchases made.

4. Ability to buy or sell used products within the vicinity of the organization instead of using 3rd party systems such as e-bay. This will not only increase the market scope for the product but also will provide assurance to the costumers about the re-sale value of the product. Therefore, gaining customer trust!

The Social Network - Set to release on October 1 2010

The story behind the creation of "Facebook"; a 5 Billion member socializing website, is set to be released on October 1st 2010. While the media is quite excited about this and a lot many have given good reviews about the film, a lot of questions remain lingering in ones mind about the popularity of this movie.

Facebook acts as a platform for networking and keeping in touch with your family and friends virtually. Most people may not like the fact that the evolution of this website, created a struggle between the founder Mark Zuckerberg and his classmates. Is this the reason that the liking towards another horror movie due to be released superseded this movie liking? It could also be wrong marketing strategy. I had been to a multiplex recently and the promos of this movie were very cynical. It showcased the vicious plots, double crossing, legal battles to name a few as the baseline of the movie. How can advertising these, possibly market a socializing network website creation story!!! What other possible approaches to market this movie could have made it more popular? May be a few positive elements added during the promos, would have made the viewers of movie and fans of "Facebook" more accountable to watch this movie.

Yet another question is, what this the right time to make a movie on Facebook. Agreed that 5 billion users are in Facebook. But really what proportion of internet users are on Facebook, and what ratio do internet users represent when compared to world population. Hence, a person not aware of internet forget Facebook may really not be interested in this movie. Looking at the Facebook popularity penetration amongst pople, had they waited for a couple of years and then made the movie. Then there is no doubt that the fan base for this movie would have drastically increased. Also, with many governing agencies planning/ indicating a ban on a few chatting websites, many movie watchers might be more skeptical about watching a movie on how it was created. When it is in the brim of being banned!!!

So at the end of the day, do we blame the marketing strategy for the low popularity for this movie before it is being released or the bad timing for release? I need to explore further and see what happens after the movie is released to critique on it :-)

Hey Guys & Gals,

I have created this blog for my MBA Fall 2010 Subject - Information System. I just wanted to let the readers and followers know about the title of the blog. When I was creating this blog, I thought the reason behind creating it. And the first thing that striked my mind was "Effective Communication" using this blog. Well, the word Effective Communication is so common in the MBA field and we hear it day in day out. Hence, in order to make it sound more inquisitive, I did a translation of this to Sanskrit; The oldest language in India, from which most of the other regional languages are derived. Therefore, I have "Artha Acaksa" as the URL and Blog name.

Artha -> Effective

AcakSa -> Communication.

I still am not sure, what topics I would be blogging about. But do watch out this space for regular blogs which would improve my communication skills and the readers knowledge [ Hope SO!!!].

About Sanskrit -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit