The Hindu Business Line : Each question is like a six-inch step...

Want to grab Sam Pitroda's attention? Try disruptive technology. But it has to be big, because he is not `a guy who takes something that is small'. If there is a technology that will shake up everything, I am interested, he tells the authors of Inspired! from EastWest Books (ewb@touchtelindia.net).

Fine, but what is inspiration? It is the adrenalin that motivates ordinary human beings to rise to perform extraordinary feats, writes H.V. Goenka, Chairman of RPG Group in the foreword. Inspiration is "the dynamic force that quickens our creativity and kindles our enthusiasm so that we transcend our limitations and accomplish our goals," define the authors, Ganesh Natarajan and Manjiri Gokhale.

Their book is a bunch of tales of inspiration from people in different realms. The first is of Anu Aga of Thermax. She is amazed at the `self-limiting beliefs' of many successful women.

"Their stamina level is low; while travelling they need help, etc. Can we remove the ceilings we ourselves have put there, before we expect the corporate world to lift its glass ceiling?" asks Aga.

Meet among the pages of the slim volume Kiran Karnik, the `messiah with a difference'.

His goal is `to more than double India's share of the global software production'. Among the `turning points' was the `six-month dipstick study' he ordered soon after taking over as the president of Nasscom (National Association of Software and Service Companies).

The study was aimed at understanding `the expectations of the nearly thousand members of the association.

What did the half-year introspection find? That ad hoc lobbying was no longer necessary and that the credibility of the body as a source of data `had taken a beating'. Karnik is candid in his observations. "India has a zero-product base," he concedes, when talking about IT products. "Indians are merely going for software programming," rues Karnik. "It is like a car mechanic repairing cars, which is a tremendous ability. But though we can repair cars we cannot design them! We are merely roadside mechanics!" Agonising analogy.

What does he think of BPO (business process outsourcing)? Tremendous potential, he says. "To be more specific, it would be knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) which includes business informatics, market research analysis, customer behaviour pattern or analysis of stock markets wherein you are executing a higher order of work in back office operations and are combining domain expertise with IT exposure," explains Karnik.

Elsewhere in the book, you can catch up with Nandan Nilekani of Infosys. "It is not important to just be efficient in communication, as one can be very busy, but accomplish very little," he says. "It is important to treat time as a precious resource and prioritise what needs to be done, eliminating other less important commitments."

Nilekani reminisces: "In the early days of the company, some of us were based in the US. But we lived there with the knowledge that we would be back in India as per business needs. We did not set out to acquire Green Cards and become US citizens."

His advice to young people is patience. "Postpone the need for gratification. People who cannot wait for the big rewards usually end up with much smaller positive reinforcements. I bought my first car in 1987. Till then, we would all take the bus to work."

Also, "Meritocracy and hard work are the foundation of successful individuals and institutions." Pitroda too would lay stress on work, thus: "Young people should be work-centric. They should derive pleasure from work. Honesty, sincerity and loyalty all add up."

Imbibe wisdom from Satyam's Ramalinga Raju - that leadership mantra is about three things, viz. `belief in people, the power of knowledge, and doing things with passion'. He exhorts that if you have a hypothesis, you must quickly but surely validate it, `before someone else does'.

Ask the right questions, urges Raju. "Each question is like a six-inch step. Then you can climb mountains. When you break down things into logical components, the goal appears achievable; the sight of the whole mountain is scary."

What does Raman Roy, the father of BPO, have as counsel for the young aspirants: "Success without hard work happens only in books and movies. In real life, it takes thirty years of hard work to become an overnight success."

Good read!

Think grid when IT lags behind

What businesses need is an IT infrastructure that can realign itself expeditiously to new business priorities.

How to make computing `a utility, a commodity, and ubiquitous'? Brajesh Goyal and Shilpa Lawande have the answer in Enterprise Grid Computing with Oracle, from Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) .

"Enterprises today are always on the edge and looking for opportunities to secure and expand their business. Flexibility in business operations has become a necessity for survival," note the authors. The lag, however, is in IT (information technology). Lead times are long.

"It may take many days or months before IT can handle the needs of a new application or business process, and it often means going through the entire process of acquiring and building systems from the ground up."

As a result, companies may often find it difficult to obtain the very information that they need to run the business and make decisions. What businesses need, therefore, is an IT infrastructure that can realign itself expeditiously to new business priorities, declare Goyal and Lawande. "They require rapid and predictable turnaround times for provisioning requests for computing power, storage, information, and application flows."

Aren't our machines working full-time already? The answer seems to be no. `The current hardware utilisation at a typical enterprise' is at less than 20 per cent! Also, enterprises spend one-to-four times the acquisition costs on the ongoing management of these resources, point out the authors. So, we can reduce overall costs by simplifying `the operation and management of IT systems,' they suggest.

Three essential characteristics of the enterprise grid computing model discussed in the book are: virtualisation of resources, dynamic provisioning of resources to consumers, and logically centralised management of resources.

"Virtualisation decouples the ownership of a resource from its consumer," explains the book. "Virtualisation provides a layer between the resource and the consumer of the resource so that the underlying resource can be replaced with a comparable resource without affecting the consumer."

Resource can be `physical', such as `servers, storage and databases', or `abstract' like `information and application logic'.With virtualisation in place, you can dynamically provision the resources in an automated manner. And the administrators can centralise management `to manage, monitor, and provision resources'.

Great guidance on grids for those who find themselves gridlocked in IT.

Tailpiece

"We're still getting used to the new boss of grid computing!"

"The one who was hired from the power utility?"

"Yes. And he keeps talking about metering and load-shedding."

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