How do mergers/de-mergers etc boost IT business ?

Hi Folks..yet again, I need your inputs.

I am trying to understand how IT services vendors benefit everytime there is a merger/demerger/joint venture/integration etc on the cards.

Consider a simple example where there is a major bank A. A buys out a mid-size bank B. Now, for accounting purposes and to be able to serve customers better, A must integrate all of B's computer systems into their own. If, for instance, A runs on SAP, B has to be integrated into this SAP system. Just imagine how much money an SAP solution provider/implementer could make out of this !!!

Where do I start with the statistics ? is there any way businesses can go around this ?

Customers and Vendors come together

Hi Folks...I am trying to do a short post on the scenarios where customers and vendors (this may be in any field of business, not just IT) come together and form a partnership or joint venture and service other companies.

I would like to tell you where I am coming from:
In the IT industry, for instance, vendors/consultants create IT systems for customers doing business under various industry sections such as bankinng, manufacturing, life sciences. In this scenario, the vendors have the computer knowhow to build stable and robust computer solutions to everyday business problems. The customers, on the other hand, have the subject matter experts who understand what these systems should look like.

This coming together of two fields of businesses produces a huge knowledge base for both the companies. I wonder if the two companies can package and sell this knowledge base to other companies in similar business areas.

Your comments will be appreciated !

IT teams do not understand the impact of their work

As someone who audits IT projects for a living, I have seen this a lot. It bewilders me sometimes..but then, I do realize that as in all professions, IT-ians are also so caught up with the daily hum-drum that they somehow fail to see the big picture.

I have seen project teams who just do what they are asked to do without questioning the rhyme or reason for doing it.

Why is it? Is it because IT is making its foray into such diverse fields of business that it is impossible for a Java programmer to understand banking terms in one project and then start all over again and learn the minutia of manufacturing in the next ?
That could be a good reason..but I would have thought that once an engineer, always an engineer. Someone who has gone through Engineering would try to ask questions...not maybe to understand everything, but atleast to be able to hold ground when talking to the functional experts.
Another field where this diversity of knowledge would be applicable would be management. Folks coming out of Business Schools might be facing the same problems, albeit to a lesser extent. They come with a generic broad knowledge base and are asked to learn the jargon of the specific industry in which they are employed and turn things around.

Maybe it is a good skill to acquire - curiosity.... Picking up tidbits and trying to make threads out of it is something that every IT-ian would require more and more as IT starts pervading every known field in life.

Maybe, one day, you as a software professional would need to learn how to make dal tadka so you can design a cookery software !!!

Lousy example...but I hope I make my point.

Building widget-style dashboards

Yes...I have seen the latest version of the Mac OS X. I know it has widget-style dashboards.

I want to know if we can build similar internal dashboards for companies.
Would these require downloadable client software ? That would not be a feasible solution since a lot of new machines are added to the network at any point of time and this would involve adding these client software to the image.
Which leads me to the next question : Is it necessary for all machines owned by a company to have a standard image ? How is this enforceable in the scenario where 25 % of the desktops run on Linux, 60% run on Windows and the rest run on Mac, Abracadabra etc ??? Would you have to build non OS-specific client software ?

This is a much bigger problem than I thought...!!!

Cellphone malware spreading through bluetooth

Read This

This is why my phone started receiving all those weird .sis files...
Last night, in trying to connnect my phone to my Mac, I had switched on thhe bluetooth in my phone. (moron that I am, I didnt realize that my mac is not bluetooth enabled !)

I forgot to switch off the bluetooth on my phone.

The article states :

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F-Secure said Lasco.A arrives to the phone's messaging inbox as a velasco.sis file that contains the worm. When a user installs the velasco.sis file, the worm activates and starts looking for new devices to infect over the Bluetooth protocol.

"When Lasco.A worm finds another Bluetooth device it will start sending infected SIS files to it, as long as the target phone is in range. Like Cabir.H, Lasco.A is capable of finding a new target, after the first one has gone out of range," the alert said.

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Another clue would have been that this happpened only when I was travelling in the bus...obviously there was a bluetooth device around that would have been infected with this virus!

Switching off the bluetooth on my phone now..lets keep our fingers crossed...

05-Jan-07 : How do you test Dashboards ?

05-Jan-07:
Talked a lot about review coverage and compliance..I am generally confused about the difference between these two terms.
I am also slightly worried about the way we are developing the tool --- there is a lot of ad-hoc ness about it with only a part of the team providing its inputs and ideas. We have, further, neglected to take inputs from process owners and SMEs.

The other aspect which concerns me is the lack of will towards testing. We have not made any major efforts towards correcting this trend. We pay very little attention to how we test charts and dashboards. Perhaps we lack expertise in this aspect. Testing transactional components of the tool has been far easier and far more effective (only relatively speaking, of course !). We have faced major failures in testing the OLTP components. Need to improve this further.

I keep coming back to the variations across locations in a huge company. In an earlier post, we talked about variations in attitude, about the personality of the local managers flavouring the workings of the locations. What I am also finding out is that there is an ugly side to this personality impact -- ego. People are not very malleable when it comes to taking learnings from other location managers..its a cut-throat world out there...and accepting learnings is almost equated to accepting defeat..

Finally, is there a chance that people in locations across the company will embrace the tool, but keep using their own local procedures/processes unchanged..parallely ? That would be a disaster...yes Sir...a major disaster !!!

03-Jan-07 : Standardization anyone ?

03-Jan-07
Most of the day was unproductive...

Discussions with Chennai,Bangalore are showing me how vast and varied we are as a company.
The culture is different...the attitudes are different, the approach is different. Against this our tool doesn't stand a chance.

But it was a good idea to ask all the branches to deploy this tool at their locations instead of going directly on the company portal. This way most of these folks are getting a first-hand account of what it will take to use this tool. It also probably enlightens the top management about where all these branches are going and how they are planning to get there.

There are quite a few management lessons to be learned from the deployment of this tool :

>> When a company is growing at multiple locations, the top "Federal" management is expected to keep an eye on what the local cultural/demographic factors or patterns are.
>> When there is a local Regional Manager, there is bound to be a possibility that his/her personality will drive the way the branch goes about achieving its targets.
>> Setting targets for each individual branch is not enough..this is too obvious an observation to be written down, but I somehow get the feeling that it has been forgotten by everyone in the everyday hustle-bustle.


Questions to be asked now:
>> Is it necessary for the entire company to follow exactly the same procedures/tools for tracking quality ? If yes, what are the expected benefits out of this ? What is the cost of not doing so ?
>> As a company, are we on the same page on "What is quality" ? Isn't there a quality policy that defines for us the vision of this "Quality"..do we also need to follow the exact same processes ? What is the cost of enforcing this at such a vast scale (and growing...)
>> When the company adds a new center/aquisition, is there an induction/certification process before we accept/embrace it as part of our company ? Again, what is the cost of doing this ? and what is the cost of NOT doing this ?

Standardization has its benefits and costs, its values and pitfalls...where do we find the balance ???