Some years back while still in school, we were made to recite Swami Sivananda’s Universal Prayer every Saturday morning. The lines

 

O’ Adorable Lord of Mercy and Love,
Salutations and Prostrations unto Thee.
Thou art Omnipresent, Omnipotent and Omniscient,
Thou art Sat-Chid-Ananda, Thou art the in-dweller of all beings!

Grant us an understanding heart,
Equal vision, balanced mind,
Faith, devotion and wisdom…

still rings in my mind every now and then. This prayer helped me through my student days to stay focused on the immediate goal – tests, exams.

But, how times change!?

Brass Horse

In my pursuit of a living, I usually forget that joy, prosperity, “happyness” is a function of my own inner-peace (yeah, Kung-Fu Panda!). Which, I had in plenty – way back then! Now, not a day passes without me getting frustrated about something. Be it a domestic attention or an assignment at work, be while at home or on the road, be it when awake or when asleep, some or the other event gets my goat.

I find I’m not alone in getting frustrated so often and about everything. In fact every second person I speak to nowadays, has an axe to grind. About their work, family, friends, cricket, politics, economy and even about failings in the latest movies!

Amongst my various efforts to find succour, dwelling upon the above prayer has been a frequent and sincere attempt to find my lost inner-peace. But events beyond my control or even participation continuously drive me crazy. So much, that I am frustrated about being always frustrated!
A few other attempts at curing my fetish of getting frustrated are trying to blank my mind, piping the latest film music at a very high volume directly into my ears – so that all the frustration in the air do not get into me, etc.

Now, if the spelling mistake in the title of this monologue didn’t get you frustrated, hope the rant has woken your frustrations to a small extent!

PS: This is an experimental piece. If it has frustrated you or woken up your hidden frustrations, please accept my apologies.

Though rhetorical, it hits the point right on its head. It is a matter of common knowledge that the current owners of Skype were very edgy and wanted to sell it off to anybody who could pay up its latest market valuation (around USD 3 Billion). Various analysis of the buyout have explained that Microsoft is looking at the value that Skype shall add when integrated with Outlook, Sharepoint, Office and their other enterprise collaboration tools.

Skype was one of the very few internet services for which I had paid (both for personal as well as official uses). Skype has also generated an innovative economy in which many well known musicians (esp. from Mysore) conduct classes over the internet for students from all over the world and get paid by the hour. SkypeIn was another service which provided an economical way for small cos to get a US number.

Skype is a service that makes real money and contributes to real economy when compared to other much hyped services like Facebook, Twitter – which have been valued at more than 20 times their revenues. So, in my opinion Microsoft have really snapped up a really valuable service that could multiply its revenues several fold.

But is the price right? At USD 8.5 Billion, every analyst worth his salt even in India is saying, that it is too steep a price to pay. Some “analysts” like this one say Microsoft wanted to keep Skype out of Google’s reach. While this one says Google aborted an attempt to acquire Skype many years ago. And some say Skype might get wired into Microsoft products’ DNA and hence provide a fully integrated communication and collaboration tool.

I have a drastically different take on why Microsoft paid a steep price to acquire a supposedly dull technology company like Skype. Also, before that I believe that integrating Skype into Microsoft is going to be anything but easy. Skype is built entirely using open source technologies. Though some of Skype’s communication protocols might be proprietory, most of the network elements use only open source technologies. Over a period of time Skype too has lost its original charm on developers. According to several places on the internet, post-acquistion many of Skype’s technology people might make a quick exit to the nearest startup.

The trickiest part will be migrating the users onto either Microsoft’s Live infrastructure or Facebook’s social infrastructure (Rumours has it that Microsoft may throw Skype at Facebook to thwart Google). Given that most users do not like changing their usernames, access methods and other functions that easily, managing the user database is going to be one thankless job to begin with. Add to that the payments made to Skype by paying customers like myself who want value for our money to be provided in full. Microsoft is going to have its hands full with this acquisition.

Ballmer has reportedly taken a hands-off approach on Skype allowing it to be managed by its current executive team itself. This in my opinion is the correct approach to take by Microsoft and hope they’ll act only as an investor and strategic partner.

Finally, whatever the buyers and sellers involved in this transaction may say and how much ever the analysts may point out to the synergies and potentials of the acquisition, my strong suspicion of the buyout is that it is some kind of a quid pro quo by Microsoft to Silver Lake Partners, Andreessen-Horowitz, Canadian Pension Board and eBay. And along with several other people I also believe that Ballmer doesn’t have the kind of vision to think about Skype as a strategic fit.

Well. Good Luck Skype!!

We too were in a similar situation some years back. We wanted to raise some capital to upgrade our infrastructure, power backup, furniture. We had recently incorporated our former partnership firm into a private limited company. We approached State Bank of India with our requirement. SBI also had recently started a dedicated unit staffed with sufficiently experienced and friendly managers.

We were informed about a scheme called Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE) run by the Central Government to support small companies like ours. The idea is that the Fund guarantees (insures) your loan. If you default, the loan is repaid to the Bank by the Fund. To do this, the Fund charges a annual fee (around 0.5-1% of your loan amount) as a premium for insuring your loan.

Here are some notes learnt from our experience with taking and repaying the loan.

1. Loans are available from Rs. 1 – 50 Lakhs.
2. The basic requirement is that the unit must be registered as a Small Scale Industry. To register as a SSI you have to go the District Industries Centre and submit an application. (They are working on taking the registration online as well. http://122.181.176.179/dic1/). YMMV!
3. The loan application must be backed by a sound and realistic business plan. (We were quizzed sufficiently on the business plan by very competent managers)
4. Though the credit worthiness of the promoters/partners is not a criteria their background, qualification, experience, net worth are factors that are considered.
5. The business plan must also be accompanied by finalised quotations, proforma invoices, purchase orders from established vendors or service providers. The proceeds of the loan are paid directly to them as per the plan.
6. In most cases, 100% of the required amount will not be sanctioned but a certain percentage is expected to be contributed by the company as margin money. (As with any other home loan)
7. There might be a holiday period of 3-6 months (based on your negotiations) when only the interest on the loan needs to be paid.
8. Typical tenors for these loans are around 5 years or 60 months.
9. The interest rates on these loans are typically 1% more than the PLR.
10. Upfront fees and charges include processing fee, CGTMSE’s fee, Stamp duty charges, Charge creation fee with the Registrar of Companies (If applicable),
11. Annual charges include the bank’s regular fees and charges, insurance, CGTMSE fee.
12. In addition to the Term Loan, you can also avail a working capital or Over Draft based on the same guarantee.

The bottom line is that, raising a credit line without putting your precious assets in the line is possible and easy. Some people scoff at the very idea of raising credit and recommend taking angel investments instead. But IMHO that is a hugely debatable point on its own and shall save it for another day.

You can find it here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/03/the-road-to-the-cloud-how-do-y.php#comment-161898196

Contrary to popular perceptions, implementing cloud for the enterprise has to be a planned and carefully executed exercise. In fact even migrating from your locally hosted email and collaboration suite to Google Apps could turn out to be a flop if you dont have the necessary variables sorted out.

Some basic and necessary steps towards a successful move towards cloud

1. User interest, education and participation
2. Policies and Priorities sorted out with the management and legal teams
3. A good understanding of the SLAs and guarantees from the service provider.
4. Access to data backups and ease of transferring them off-cloud. (You never know when you may need them)
5. Sufficient thought and planning into Plan-B and Cs.

Once the plans are through, provisioning and migrating to the cloud is the easiest part. (That’s what makes the cloud The Cloud). Say migrating to Dropbox!

The most difficult part is the user education and satisfaction. With most enterprise deployments you have a service rep handy to resolve any user queries or to fix/customize software issues. But with most of the cloud services, “What you see is what you got!”. Your users satisfaction is your most precious partner. But as veteran IT professionals can vouch, users can be a pain too.

IMHO, ensure that the users know what they are getting into before signing the dots.

Then comes the maintenance and the management. In my experience, the management wants reports on every single variable in the system. (Eg. How many people were actively using the CRM from home between 1400 to 1800 hours last sunday? Eeks! For an Unix admin, it could be a one liner in sed/awk, but you’re dependent on the cloud app now

Make sure your management knows the capabilities and the limitations of the cloud based service in advance.

Now, when the system has been adopted in full swing, what happens when there is a downtime? Of course systems have been down right through the ages and nobody expects anything better from cloud based services (but for an improvement in performance and minimum downtime). But with the app in the cloud, you do not know the variables that have gone wrong, you do not know what is the ETA for the system to get up, you do not know if somebody with a malicious intent has gotten into the system, you do however know that you are the fall guy for the users!

So, it’s absolutely essential that you keep the app provider on her toes and keep you updated on the goings on in the data center or the underground garage.

If by chance the provider has totally lost it and is unable to bring your access to the app back, time to switch to the Plan B and Cs. You surely remembered to negotiate the backup plan with the provider right? And you have the latest tarred backup (from yesterday midnight) safely tucked away in another cloud based storage provider some half way across the planet, right?

Now you can put on your superhero costume and get the data to their respective users and start looking for yet another app provider!

Remember the only difference between the CLOUD and a complete CLOD is U!

ಕಳೆದ ಭಾನುವಾರ, ಕೆಲ್ಸ, ಜೀವನದ ಮಧ್ಯ ತಲೆ ಕೆಡ್ಸಕೊಂಡು ಇದ್ದಾಗ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತರೊಬ್ರು ಫೋನಾಯಿಸಿ ರಂಗಾಯಣಕ್ಕೆ ನಾನು ಹೋಗೇ ಇಲ್ಲ, ಸಂಜೆ ಹೋಗೋಣ ಅಂತಿದ್ದೀನಿ ಅಂದ್ರು. ಸರಿ, ನಾನು ಬರ್ತೀನಿ ಅಂದೆ. ಸಂಜೆ ಹೊತ್ತಿಗೆ ಮತ್ತೊಬ್ಬ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತ ಬಂದು ನಾನು ಬರ್ತೀನಿ, ಆದ್ರೆ ಈಗ್ಲೇ ಹೋಗ್ಬೇಕು ಕುಕ್ಕರಹಳಳಿ ಕೆರೆ ಸುತ್ತ ಒಂದು ವಾಕ್ ಮಾಡಿ ಹಾಗಿಂದಾನೇ ಬರ್ತೀನಿ ಅಂದ್ರು.

ಸರಿ, ನಾನೂ ವಾಕೋಣವೆಂದು ಹೊರಟೆ. ಒಂದರ್ಧ ಘಂಟೆಯಲ್ಲೆ ಇಬ್ಬರು ಕೆರೆ ಪ್ರದಕ್ಷಿಣೆ ಮುಗಿಸಿ, ರಂಗಾಯಣದ “ಭೂಮಿಗೀತ”ಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದ್ವಿ. ಅಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಮತ್ತೊಬ್ಬ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತ ಟಿಕೆಟ್ಗಳನ್ನು ತೊಗೊಂಡಿದ್ರು.

ಸೋಜಿಗ ಅಂದ್ರೆ ನಮಗ್ಯಾರಿಗೂ ಅಂದು ಯಾವ ನಾಟಕ ಅಂತಾನು ಗೊತ್ತಿರಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಹೊರಗೊಂದ್ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಬ್ಯಾನರ್ ಮೇಲೆ ರಂಗಾಯಣದ ಗ್ರೀಷ್ಮ ರಂಗೋತ್ಸವ ಅಂತ ಬರೆದದ್ದು ಮಾತ್ರ ಕಾಣಿಸ್ತು. ಟಿಕೆಟ್ ಕೊಂಡಾಗ ನಾಟಕದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಒಂದು ಪಾಂಪ್ಲೆಟ್ ಕೊಟ್ರು. ಅದ್ರಲ್ಲಿ ಓದ್ದಾಗ ಗೊತ್ತಾಗಿದ್ದು ಯಾರೋ ಸುಳ್ಯದ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಮಾಡ್ತಿರೋ ನಾಟಕ – ಢಾಣಾ ಡಂಗುರ – ವೈದೇಹಿಯವರು ಬರ್ದಿರೋದು ಅಂತ.

ನಾವು – ನಾಟಕ ಮಕ್ಳು ಮಾಡ್ತಿರೋದು – ಹೇಗಿರತ್ತೋ ಏನೋ ಅಂತ ಅನ್ಕೊಂಡೆ ಒಳಗ್ ಹೋಗಿ ಕೂತ್ವಿ. ಹೀಗೆ ಯೋಚನೆ ಮಾಡಕ್ಕೆ ನಮ್ಮ ನಮ್ಮದೇ ಶಾಲಾ ಸಮಯದಲ್ಲಿ ಆಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ನಾಟಕಗಳ ಜ್ಞಾಪಕ ಸರಿ ೬:೩೦ಕ್ಕೆ ಸರಿಯಾಗಿ ಶುರುವಾಗೇ ಹೋಯಿತು ಮಕ್ಳೆಲ್ಲಾ ಕುಣೀತಾ ಬಂದ್ರು, ಅವರ ಹಿಂದೆ ಒಂದ್ ಮಗು ಡಂಗುರ ಇಟ್ಕೊಂಡು ಬಂದು ಶುರುನೇ ಮಾಡ್ಬಿಡ್ತು “ಕೇLrಅಪ್ಪೋ ಕೇಳಿ…” ಅಂತ.

ಅದರ ನಂತರ ಹೇಗೆ ಸಮಯ ಹೋಯ್ತೋ ಗೊತ್ತೇ ಆಗ್ಲಿಲ್ಲ. ನಾವೆಲ್ಲ ನಕ್ಕೂ ನಕ್ಕೂ ಸುಸ್ತಾಗೋ ಹೊತ್ತಿಗೆ ನಾಟಕ ಮುಗಿದೇ ಹೋಯ್ತು. ನಾಟಕದುದ್ದಕ್ಕೂ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಪ್ರದರ್ಶಿಸಿದ ಕೌಶಲ್ಯ, ವರ್ಚಸ್ಸು ಮತ್ತವರ ಕೈಚಳಕ ನಿಜಕ್ಕೂ ಅಚ್ಚರಿ ಮೂಡಿಸಿತು. ಹಾಗೆನೆ ವೈದೇಹಿಯವರ ಕಥೆ ಬಹಳ ಮೆಚ್ಚುವಂತಹದ್ದು.

ಪ್ರೈಮೆರಿ ಶಾಲೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಓದುತ್ತಿರುವ ಮಕ್ಕಳ ಕೈಯ್ಯಲ್ಲಿ ಇಷ್ಟು ಚೆನ್ನಾಗಿ ನಾಟಕ ಮಾಡಿಸಿದ ಜೀವನರಾಂ ಸುಳ್ಯರವರಿಗೆ ನಾವೆಲ್ಲ ಧನ್ಯ. ನಾಟಕದ ಕೊನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಪಾತ್ರಮಾಡಿದ್ದ ಮಕ್ಕಳನ್ನು ಪರಿಚಯ ಮಾಡಿಸಿಕೊಟ್ಟ ಸುಳ್ಯ ಅವರು ಹೇಳಿದ್ದು “ಹವ್ಯಾಸಕ್ಕೆ ನಾಟಕ ಮಾಡಲು, ಕೆಟ್ಟು ಹೋಗುತ್ತಾರೆ ಅನ್ನುವ ಕಾರಣಕ್ಕಾಗಿ ಮಕ್ಕಳನ್ನು ಕಳುಹಿಸದ ಪೋಷಕರಿಗೆ ಈ ಮಕ್ಕಳು ಅಪವಾದ. ಇವರೆಲ್ಲಾ ಈ ನಾಟಕದ ಜೊತೆಯಲ್ಲೆ ಹತ್ತು ಹಲವಾರು ವಿದ್ಯೆಗಳನ್ನು ಕಲೆತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ, ಶಾಲೆಯಲ್ಲೂ ಕೂಡ ತುಂಬಾ ಬುದ್ಧಿವಂತರಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ” ಅಂತ.

ನಿಜ. ನಾವು ನೋಡಿದ ಹಾಗೆ ಈ ನಾಟಕ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾ, ಈ ಮಕ್ಕಳೆಲ್ಲ ಎಷ್ಟು ವೈವಿಧ್ಯ ಕಲೆಗಳನ್ನ್ನೂ, ಬದುಕಲು ಬೇಕಿರುವ ಧೈರ್ಯ ಸಾಹಸಗಳನ್ನೂ ಕಲೆತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ ಅಂತ ತಿಳಿಯುತ್ತೆ. ಈ ನಾಟಕ ಮತ್ತೆಲ್ಲಾದರು ಪ್ರದರ್ಶನಕ್ಕೆ ಬಂದರೆ ದಯವಿಟ್ಟು ತಪ್ಪದೆ ಹೋಗಿ ಅವರನ್ನು ಪ್ರೋತ್ಸಾಹಿಸಿ.

ಈ ನಾಟಕದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಮತ್ತಷ್ಟು ಮಾಹಿತಿ ಇಲ್ಲಿದೆ

Remember Argentina a decade back ? Almost bankrupt, they liberalised their economy based on the directions of the World Bank/IMF. Pension funds too were privatised and people were given more choice and freedom. Now they’re reversing the decision. They figured that the private guys were too risky to be entrusted with their life’s savings.

Back here, private pension funds are to start operating from April 1, 2009. What a day! Symbollic ??!! Of course not. It’s the first day of the financial year and they can’t help it Of course it’s not without it’s share of controversies.

Meanwhile in Japan, public officials discover to their chagrin the penalties for mismanaging pension records – vigilante style.

Overheard on the pipes,

Q: Why did the Credit Card agencies start their own Pension Funds in the USA ?

A: They figured out that the people might have learnt a lesson from the market meltdown and start investing their remaining credit worthiness in savings plans like pensions.

Somewhere in the middle of this road, I saw a middle aged man walking briskly in the drizzle. Hearing my vehicle, he suddenly turned and waved his hand. I stopped near him and he asked me if I could drop him. I said I could and asked him where he was headed to. He asked me to drop him somewhere further in the road from where he could take a bus to the city. It started raining heavily by now and as a car passed us by, I was wondering if I did a right thing by offering him help. He could have hitched a ride in the car and saved himself all the drenching

As we neared a bus stand where a bus just overtook us and stopped, my passenger asked me if I too were going straight towards the city. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked me to drop him somewhere near my place from where he can go further. Though puzzled by his request – he could have chosen to board the bus and travel safe and warm – I consented and continued the journey inspite of getting drenched thoroughly.

After about 30 minutes of driving through the varying rain I almost reached my place. Just before I was to take a turn, he asked me to stop at the nearest bus stop. I stopped and he got down. But he kept his bag on the seat and asked me to wait. I was puzzled. He then started searching through his shirt pocket. I asked him as to what happened. He didn’t reply, but took out all contents from his pocket and started shuffling, sieving and vigorously searching through them. All the while, I was standing there trying not to look like a fool.

Finally with a winner’s look on his face, he took out his visiting card out of the mess and handed me the same. And said, “I’m an insurance advisor with this company. We’ve very good tax saving plans. Please do call me to know more. Please tell your friends also”.

I broke into a wicked smile, thinking I should tell him that I was also one of his breed some time back and that the only client I could manage to snare — was myself and sped.

But ruminating about the whole event, I am amazed by the tenacity these people demonstrate. I know several people who have managed to achieve considerable businesses even under extreme adverse conditions.

I need to learn a lot from them.

Do you realize that we don’t understand globalization? Globalization increases Extremistan. That’s one problem with this Tom Friedman guy—he [the bestselling author of The World Is Flat, which argues the advantages of globalization in the internet age] didn’t seem to understand the very simple dynamics that globalization forces redundancy out of the system. And whenever you don’t have redundancy, you have Extremistan. Things are way too efficient, so the smallest mistake blows up. We depend so much on the internet. Tomorrow, if there’s a problem in Bangalore, we’re toast for a long time, you see?

I’m on a committee at the Pentagon, [the Highland Forum, a study group on risk] and one of the founders of the internet is on it and all these people understand that we need more redundancy in the system to avoid a second crisis that may come from the internet, because we don’t understand it.

And to think of it, the Internet was founded to provide redundancy in case of an emergency.

Life’s awesome

But more interesting than that are the mergers happening in the internet media world, which IMHO is a pointer that the industry needs consolidation big time.

CBS bought CNET Networks, Condé Nast bought Ars Technica, Vodafone bought a Social Networking Startup – ZYB.

Particularly interesting is the Condé Nast deal. With the latest one, they have three of the most popular and high-traffic websites of the tech world – Wired, Reddit and Ars Technica.

But here’s one issue that I couldn’t find anywhere on the net. It might help you if you are running zimbra and encounter this issue

When clients try to send emails through Zimbra (SMTP Relay) using SMTP Authentication, the authentication used to fail though the webmail (Zimbra’s own as well as Squirrelmail and even POP/IMAP ) worked. Poking at the logs showed:

Aug 14 07:44:07 localhost saslauthd[26944]: auth_zimbra: vendor.informedia auth failed: cur
l_easy_perform: error(28): Connection time-out
Aug 14 07:44:07 localhost saslauthd[26944]: do_auth : auth failure: [user=vendor.in
formedia] [service=smtp] [realm=] [mech=zimbra] [reason=Unknown]
Aug 14 07:44:07 localhost postfix/smtpd[19245]: warning: unknown[122.167.6.251]: SASL LOGIN
authentication failed

Running saslauthd in the debug mode was not a big help either. Zimbra uses soap and a specific authentication mechanism (called zimbra) for sending the credential info and interfacing with saslauthd and the webservice. IOW, tomcat (the SOAP provider) should be getting requests. But looking at the tomcat logs showed up no such requests. Trying the URL manually, from my laptop I was able to connect to the URL. No use, still.

But trying to connect to the URL using lynx on the server itself pointed out that the response time was large. It was taking up so much time to resolve the host (local hostname) that saslauthd used to time out.

Ahh!! The solution was now so simple. Install a local caching DNS server and try out the name resolution a couple of times. That does it. It did!! The whole thing’s working like a charm, ever since

Also, while at it, I discovered a cool tool for testing out SMTP issues. No more setting up accounts on Balsa/Evolution.

shashi@anacoluthon:~$ apt-cache show swaks
Package: swaks
…
Description: SMTP command-line test tool
swaks (Swiss Army Knife SMTP) is a command-line tool written in Perl
for testing SMTP setups; it supports STARTTLS and SMTP AUTH (PLAIN,
LOGIN, CRAM-MD5, SPA, and DIGEST-MD5). swaks allows to stop the SMTP
dialog at any stage, e.g to check RCPT TO: without actually sending a
mail.
.
If you are spending too much time iterating “telnet foo.example 25″
swaks is for you.
.
Homepage: http://www.jetmore.org/john/code/#swaks

Now, on to the next task …