Imagined Communities

Just finished reading “Imagined Communities” by Benedict Anderson, and I am seriously not impressed. The book is difficult to read and has a strong left bias.

I believe that all human beings have a strong need to belong. Add to this a primeval power dynamics and a probabilistic system, and we get some interesting results over time. Any form of organization, even the communist brotherhood, can be defined as stupid imagination of the mind. The rise of the concept of nation is indeed another invention to organize, control and belong. Disproving and scorning it will never be a problem. Nevertheless, the human beings would have to settle on an alternative form of governance that is stable if they have to either understand or leave this abstraction behind. And I seriously hope that the alternative form is not Communism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Pol-potism or the like. The book could have been written in simpler words with lesser footnotes and could have traced the development of the concept of nation with lesser normative/value based judgements.

I seriously doubt the book’s usefulness for a business student, except perhaps to learn a trick or two about propaganda and make believe. Students of nationalism or history will, however, find it useful. My recommendation to an MBA would be to avoid it.

When Azure Meets Joomla, Facebook and Twitter

Two days ago I attended an event by SalesForce.com, CloudForce 2010. In the CRM world, SalesForce is an awesome company that has given companies like Siebel or SAP a real run for their money. I feel it is the best CRM around. Not content to occupy the CRM space only, SalesForce is now targeting cloud computing with a difference: it is trying to marry cloud computing with content management systems and rich-internet application (RIA) development to develop and popularize an alternative application development and deployment model. A very ambitious and daring venture, I must say. Even though the market is immature today, in the world of IT changes can be pretty fast. Or they can linger on (if not, we wouldn't find a single mainframe on the face of earth). A complex proposition at its best, I see many "goods" and "bads" to it.

On the up side, SalesForce has built a brilliant RIA and is trying to leverage its knowledge to both help and tie in its clients. It is doing a brilliant effort to make partnerships and sell the idea on the force of its network. The marketing strategy seems to be brilliantly thought out, and the execution is marvellous. The deployed applications are said to take lesser time, are on the cloud and readily deployable to browsers, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. With lower costs, it can potentially be tempting for an entrepreneur to use the set up to launch an internet application. With "Chatter", they are also trying to be the secure facebook of the corporate world. With tools to analyse Twitter feeds and integrate it with SalesForce products AND the applications developed, the possibilities indeed seem mouth-watering. Having a functioning CRM RIA is a big plus here.

On the down side, I feel they are trying to do too many things and trying to be all things to all people. I am not sure how this hopscotch of ideas (as suggested by the title) would work out without some seriously tough strategy planning and implementation. There have been systems that have promised develop once and run anywhere in different ways, but have failed when they have not given enough flexibility to developers and designers. Content management systems like Joomla or Drupal come in handy on a typical LAMP set-up with a nice net based UI to develop a reasonably powerful and secure application that can run on any Windows or Linux based cloud. At any time a company can switch the cloud-operator or host themselves. With SalesForce, you are pretty much tied to them if you want the app. Joomla and Drupal, however, may not be compatible to build mobile device applications, and would still need you to maintain or upgrade your own code. Another worry I have is that they have tied-up with Adobe to deliver their application development IDE. In many of my earlier blogs on RIAs, I have often complained about the lack of end-user focus in Adobe RIA applications like the erstwhile Flex. I sincerely hope SalesForce does not depend on them only for this IDE.

In conclusion, the product definitely has an immense potential to succeed, but the path is far from easy and there are some problems that I can already envision. It will be interesting to see how the application develops eventually.

The Rise of PaaS

After Software as a Service (SaaS) we are now slowly entering the domain of Platform as a Service (PaaS). As the Internet speeds pickup and our hardware increasingly becomes more powerful, there is little to stop this transition. With enough competition in the domain it would possibly present benefits to a lot of people from a business point of view at both ends of the spectrum.

The possible apprehensions that a business may face while adopting PaaS include:

1. Security: Keeping proprietary code on alien servers may be hard to stomach for many businesses, with a constant fear about data-theft and data-loss. This is always going to be top-priority
2. Speed: Technically proficient companies may feel that they are ceding control of the speed of application as they would no longer control many things in the server, database and application development. For majority business owners, though, this may not be as big a consideration.
3. Portability: This would be another major issue. With their experience with computing over the last so many years, business owners in general would hate to tie down themselves with any PaaS provider. This means PaaS provider would have to either leverage some existing and popular framework or invent and popularize an entirely new one. Both challenges are not for the faint-hearted!

With respect to development of Rich Internet Applications, this would only further complicate the equation in this nascent field. Tie-ups, support, marketing and smart technical development is the way ahead, I guess. The big horses to watch include Red Hat, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, Google, HP and SalesForce. I am sure many others would try as well. I feel that the dominant advantage would lie not primarily with better technology but with better marketing and reach as the product will increasingly get commoditized. Lets see.

Immigration and Difficult Choices

With reference to Tony Barber’s article, “European countries cannot have it both ways on immigration” in FT on September 4, I feel that Europe’s predicament about immigration is self-invented and will only get worse as time goes by.

In an earlier letter to FT I had advocated for a careful immigration policy for UK. I think the same holds true for Europe. Either Europe officially promulgates that it is not open to people who are different from them or they live with the spectre of "open" immigration. Unfortunately, it is perhaps cheaper in terms of wages to get the people who are "unlike" them. Split wide open by contradictory economic and social considerations, sitting on the sharp wedge of human rights declaration with the sword of a dwindling, ageing population hanging over its head, Europe indeed finds itself in a very uncomfortable position.

What I understand is that EU countries wish to maintain a healthy proportion of young, working, tax-paying population so as it is able to finance its generous (and I dare say populist) welfare policies. Immigration is the only viable alternative if fertility rates do not improve (even that would take time and would have to be actively supplemented by immigration). The other unpalatable choice may be cutting benefits wholesale, raising minimum working age, reducing wages, cutting pensions and raising productivity per person. I don’t think that any politician who cares about his career and understands even an iota of economics will even dare to say or implement this, or, for that matter, even people will not accept it. There would be strikes, riots and the like. So, Europe is pretty much stuck with immigration whether it likes it or not. Try as it may, its demographics will change, its social structure will change, its politics will change; as is already happening. Whether the change is for better or worse will depend on the countries and their ability in successfully integrating the immigrant population.

The Hedge Fund Manager and the Economy

Even though I have no problem with hedge-fund managers paying more taxes, I am not sure what it has to do with fixing the economy. Yes, to a socialist mindset the appeal may simply be the effect of “equalizing” it a bit more, but in practical terms I would say it is nowhere near top-priority. Politics can make a show of “fixing” the problem by finding a scapegoat and then getting back to business as usual, but will this solve the problem of an economy living precariously on the edge? Is this the best that the Government can do? Will we ever see more concrete policy changes instead of populist posturing which can think of nothing but CEO pays, Wall Street bonuses and “equalizing”? I wonder.

If CEOs are Accountable, so is Tony Blair

With reference to “The hatred of Blair is over the top” by Mr. Gideon Rachman in Financial Times (August 30, 2010), I would like to remind Mr. Rachman that CEO accountability is the norm of the day. The top-leader has to always take responsibility for the mistakes that are committed under his tenure, and the same holds true for Mr. Blair. Labelling it unfair makes no sense. Further, whether UK looks back at the wasteful extravaganza of Blair years, that set the stage for the financial meltdown, with nostalgia or disgust will depend a lot on the effectiveness of spin-doctors and the not-so-remote-possibility of a collective public amnesia. Barring this, the UK may not let off the hook so easily the leader under whose tenure such disastrous policies were implemented and the country went to a meaningless war. And it is no different than holding the CEO responsible for disastrous company policies.

Looking to History for Roots of Management

I have just finished reading three books: "Concept of Corporation" and "The Practice of Management" by Peter Drucker and "My Years With General Motors" by Alfred P. Sloan. I read these books to understand how management as a subject was born and what is management all about actually.

History, I have always believed, has the roots of what we see today and lessons about what to avoid. The central theme that I have picked from these three books is that optimum decentralization with a strong core is the secret of managing growth. Not only it makes managing easier, but also it helps to test and evaluate managers without endangering the whole enterprise. An enterprise that cannot generate its own leaders is bound to run into trouble sooner or later. To generate leaders and retain good people, the company's course of action and its expectations from its people needs to be transparent. This brings us to what Mr. Drucker calls managing by objectives, that everybody in the organization has clearly defined goals and is able to track his progress objectively. The next challenge is aligning the interest of the individual to that of company by helping each person to see the whole rather than one, small, obscure part. Giving people more responsibility and meaningful tasks are the suggested remedies.

The concepts, as simple as they may seem, offer a powerful perspective supported by recent books like "Good to Great" and "In Search of Excellence". This makes me feel that there do exist some basic, common-sense tenets or principles that remain unchanged over time, but still need some experience and wisdom to apply correctly. Perhaps this will keep the management an art known by many and perfected by few.