Open Source Software

For the last 10 years, open source software was supposed to take over the business world by storm. It makes sense for enterprises to embrace this model as it is free (at least from licensing point of view) and saves lot of money. Still that had not happened. Why?

The enterprises are primarily worried about maintenance aspect of open source software. If they run into a bug or an issue, who would they turn to for help? Similarly, if they need a new enhancement, who would they request that from? In the past few decades, enterprises moved away from the practice of building their own applications and adopted implementation of 3^rd party packaged software solutions. These 3^rd party providers don't have any incentive to make their IP public and loose lucrative license revenue. But there are providers like Red Hat, who pioneered a hybrid approach of supporting and maintaining open source software, thus alleviating some of the fears of enterprises. Still that practice is limited to systems and infrastructure software and not a common practice for enterprise applications software. 

My Boss Doesn't Know Anything!!

If you are higher up in the organization, often you might have faced this situation. An employee who is technically very strong comes to you and complains that he cannot work for his new manager as he doesn’t believe that the new manager is any more capable than he is. More often than not, he is referring to the technical skills of his new boss. 

I have heard slightly different complaint from some of my friends who are at middle management level in their respective organizations. They claim that their manager is of no use. They have no clue why their boss’ boss gives her so much weight and takes her wherever he goes. 

Let us take a deeper look at both the scenarios.

Cricket explained to a foreigner

Long time back one of my British friends shared with me this funny explanation of game of Cricket:

You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes-in until he's out.

When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.

When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!

Many a times, the game could still end up in a draw even after playing for 5 days!!

Outsourcing - why companies support it?

I discussed in my previous post why America is losing in the outsourcing battle. In this post I would like to examine the reasons for companies going offshore.

Outsourcing has been grabbing headlines for the past few years. Many developed countries view outsourcing as a threat to jobs, industries, and whole economies. On the other hand, Microsoft, Google, and other technology companies claim it as an effective tool to obtain much needed skills to remain competitive.

Contrary to what many of us believe, cheap labor is only the starting point and not the main driving force behind outsourcing. That is pretty much evident from the 100K+ US dollar offers the multinational companies throwing at fresh graduates in India and China. Then why are these companies going to China and India, if it not entirely for cost advantage? Two words: knowledge workers.

Bangalore, Beijing, and Boston - Tale of 3 Cities

A day never goes by without our president Barack Obama mentioning American jobs moving from Boston to Bangalore and Beijing. Is this threat real or just perceived?

Let us go back and visit the history of US industry for the last half century or so. Manufacturing industry (Textiles, Steel and others) moved out of USA in 1970’s. Auto industry moved out of USA in 1980’s. High Tech manufacturing including Semiconductor industry moved out in 1990’s. Finally, we have been witnessing the migration of software industry during 2000’s. Interestingly, these were the best years in US history. During this period, we saw huge improvement in productivity, creation of more wealth, and creation of more jobs than lost to off-shoring or outsourcing.

Market Segmentation

If you are working for an enterprise software company, you might have noticed that your company targets its offerings to a certain segment of the potential customer base. Most traditional segmentation depends on the total revenue of the potential customers. The definition and the boundary of these segments vary from company to company. For example boundaries based on the revenue could be: >$1B as high end, $100M-$1B as mid-market, and <$100M as low end. But are these boundaries real?

What to look for in a company when changing jobs

If you are a senior executive with a proven record, more often than not you get a call from an executive recruitment firm with a great opportunity available. It could be a start-up that is looking for professional management team to take it to next level or an established public company that hit a roadblock and they need someone with an outside view to correct the things. Either way, the challenge for you as a candidate is to assess the opportunity and see if it is a good fit for you.

There are lot of factors one might have to consider. I normally look for three factors as a preliminary check: products, customers, and management. Coming from software industry, my observations and analysis are based on my experiences in this industry.