CloudBus

It is rare to find a Make in India Cyber Security Solution in an exhibition, conference or seminar, as one scans the various forums one finds a few Make In India Cyber Security Solutions. If India wants to be a Digital State then there is an urgent need for Cyber Security Solutions Made in India for Indians and managed in India. We do have a few home grown OEM security solutions but their engines are loaned from foreign security companies.  We claim to be an IT superpower, does it stop with being cyber coolies? or does it go beyond that in making world class solutions to protect our Digital environment.  All our mobile data is stored in a foreign country, we use solutions that we find free or paid from foreign shores, of course the internet is one world but who controls the data controls the digital world. There were enthusiastic Indian entrepreneurs who did try to make Security solutions in India but I have not see any of them making it to the big league. Maybe Indian CISOs trust

You are all set for the final of the cricket match and you have bought seats with vantage points and are now on the way to the cricket stadium. Your mobile tells you where you will get parking for your car and you smoothly ease into the designated parking space. No tokens, no slips, nothing; you park and then the mobile guides you to the bus that will take you to the stadium. As you ride the bus, the mobile highlights the various important landmarks on your way to the stadium. In the next ten minutes you learn everything that is of interest to you. The mobile tells you to get off the bus and then guides you to your gate. You wave the mobile and the stadium gates open for you. Before that you have already been beaconed and tagged an a non-security risk. As you enter the stadium, your body and clothes are fully scanned for explosives, guns, drugs, and other hazardous substances. Your mobile guides you to your seat and the layout of the stadium pops into your screen and it gives you a 36

This article was published in Information Week India on 10th October and is reproduced in this blog. India is poised for a digital revolution. With a government pushing digital services, and a huge focus on on empowering every citizen with an identity card, a bank account, insurance and a digital interface, the future is bright for IT in India. With the announcement of opening local data centers in India by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Microsoft is well placed to explore the huge opportunities that will be unfolded in the days to come.  The Microsoft India cloud proposes to begin with three data centers and will provide the world's best cloud computing that India needs so desperately to handle the large volume of digital transactions,  need to cut down costs and handle the data that will be generated by digitally enabling a billion Indian citizens. Additionally, Microsoft will be able to offer their cloud services in a number of Indian languages, thus eliminating the need for

India's biggest challenge has been to empower its citizens with financial inclusion by providing banking to its unbanked population to Banking. The government's initiative of opening 15 million accounts in one day sets the tone to make sure that every adult citizen has a bank account in India.  Critics say it cannot be done, but we know from history that carpet bombing is the best way to overcome a challenge. The Indians have set out to a economic transformation in their country, by empowering its unbanked citizens the menace of cash in the system can be overcome thus improving the GDP of India. It is estimated that the cash economy in India is bigger than the legal economy in India, the cash in this system is known as black money in India and has strong parallel network for banking in cash. If you use a credit or debit card with an Indian merchant he will charge you about 2% to 3% extra as the transaction fee for using the card, this encourages customers to pay in cas

A contentious issue  is about Governments and our personal data; but the Government already knows more about us then we can imagine. At Birth our parents get a Birth Certificate and the Government records this in their data base, our date and time of Birth, hospital where born, your parents names and address and of course your gender is recorded in a data base. When we join school our personal data is collected and during a Census personal data is again collected. When we get our Driving License we need to give data including our name, parents name, date of birth, address, physical deformities and some bio-metrics. When we apply for our Passport the Government collects data about us including bio-metrics; when we apply for a Visa to visit another country we readily give our personal data including bio-metrics. We pay tax to the Government and have to provide both personal and financial data to the Government. Central Library - Bangalore The Government is the Custodian of Cit

If you want to convince your Board of Directors on cloud adoption, a good place is to begin is with a SAAS (Software as a Service Solution) for the Members of your companies Board. Do you  know  in every board meeting confidentiality, integrity and availability are the key for Board members and they also need to be kept informed of various actions taken by your Company. The  important events are the quarterly Board Meeting, Extraordinary Board Meeting and the Annual General Body Meeting. Most Board Meetings start with preparing a Agenda and a Board Note which highlights the points to be discussed and approved by the Board of Directors. This has to be prepared and circulated among Board Members with utmost secrecy since any leakage will harm the company and may lead to regulatory non-compliance. It takes a number of days to prepare the Board Notes and the weight of the completed Board Notes paper dossier is heavy and need to be securely delivered to the Directors of the Board.

Another cloud conference and exhibition which is well attended by the Information Technology Professionals who make sure they attend all the Cloud Computing Sessions without fail. They understand what is said and learn diligently from those who have adopted the cloud, the cloud vendors and the thought leaders but  never translate into Action for their organization. Sitting on the Fence is not going to take you the cloud, you must experience the cloud to appreciated its benefits, attending conferences and exhibitions will make you cloud ready but you will need to lead Cloud Adoption. You must Bolt over the fence and embrace the cloud as your own and then you will reap the rewards. More surveys show the fence sitters tick "Yes" for cloud adoption but never translate the "Yes" into action. As an IT Professional are you going to be a fence sitter or do you plan to roll up your sleeves and jump over the fence and take your organization to the cloud. The choice is

Cloud Computing is changing the face of computing and is a disruptive technology which no professional can ignore today ! It has moved center stage and is the Future of Computing; are you prepared to harness the cloud? If you are a Business Leader then it is time for you to understand the use of cloud computing as a strategic business tool. The Cloud is an Utility and is for everyone to use and no longer confined to the Technology Geeks. If you have not prepared then it is time for you to attend a course on Cloud computing which will help you understand on how Cloud Computing and Business can be woven together to add value to the bottom line of your enterprise. Whatever your role be in the enterprise, a member of the Board, the CEO, a C level executive CXO, CFO, CMO, CRO, CHR it is time you understood cloud computing as a business enabler and how to harness this utility. It is time for you to sign up for a Cloud Computing Program for Business Leaders which presents Cloud Comput

Recently I had to send a document to my friend and realized I did not have his email easily available, I realized that most conversations with my friend was on Facebook. My dependence on email had diminished, I am connected with more people be they family, classmates, work mates, acquaintances and others by social media. Social Media be it Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Hangouts, Twitter has become central to our lives.  Over the years I have  lost my ability to write personal letters and had switched to a different style suited for emails; today my style of messaging on social media is again different. Messaging by Pictures at Nazca - Peru ! Social Media messaging is driven by Pictures and then text, a family get together shows it all in the pictures or video posted on social media.  The pictures speak for themselves and the tags are  footnotes to identify people or the location. The world has shrunk with social media, we no longer need email ids, we just key i

When  rubber meets  road we start our journey with a route plan. The same applies for your Cloud Journey, you need a route plan on where you plan to reach .  .  Photo Courtesy : Aish Thamba The cloud is like driving on an open road with clear skies and it is possible that you may break the speed limit; if you are lucky you may receive a speeding ticket before you crash your car, the same applies to the cloud, you need to be aware on the speed you choose for cloud adoption, else you may encounter turbulence. It is important that you have  route plan when you plan to ride the cloud, do keep speed breakers and other checks to make sure your cloud journey  is safe and effective.  More on the route plan in my next post ! 

The cloud phobia among the skeptics peaks with a random cloud outage and is immediately touted as a cloud failure using social media tools and email services that use cloud as a backbone, and the message is "we told you so". Photo Courtesy : Kenneth Menzes Millions of people are using Cloud Based services for their social interaction and are blooming in their social interactions. Social Media services including this blog run on the cloud, including Google, Facebook, Twitter to name a few and yes there have been outages but no one is complaining. But the skeptics wait for one failure and then run riot and tout cloud computing is a failure and one needs to get back to the data center. The paradox is many companies that use the cloud to run their business have great  market value. Facebook :  173 Billion Twitter : 24 Billion  LinkedIn : 20 Billion  Google : 392 Billion  This is a small sample of the market value of cloud driven companies, their founders are legends

Indian start-ups are high on SMAC and are brimming with ideas and many are working hard on their ideas in a garage somewhere in Bangalore or yonder;  working day and night to bring out the next big winner in the cloud, but can they hit pay dirt like Hewlett & Packard? Many of these start-ups will be driving SAAS solutions on the cloud and Nasscom has added  momentum by leading the charge with a target of 10,000 start-ups a very modest number, India can  do with a million start-ups'  to service the world  and create economic value for India. The first aspect the start-up needs to get right is the domain name,is it "startup.in" or is it startup.com, starup.biz, starup.net,  it is nice to be nationalistic but in the cloud SAAS you are building could be used by anyone in the world and will  need a global address.; also is the start-ups  twitter handles and other social media address available in the proposed name of the start-up? The website is the start-up's

I had a wonderful buffet today and was amazed at the aggressive pricing of the food on offer, after a sumptuous meal my thoughts wandered Cloud Computing.   The Buffet  pricing was based on the philosophy that the customer will pick and choose what they need but overall the price will average out and so will the margins, since no two people have the same appetite or intensity to eat.  More experienced buffet eaters know what to choose and eat and I call them value pickers, if they pay Rs. 300 they will make sure they eat that value of food irrespective of its consequences to their health. The second are the health conscious eaters who will pick healthy food which is valuable in nutrition and good for their health. The last is the one who will eat what they need and leave the rest on the buffet table.  To adopt any one of these strategies one needs to have experience with buffets, I still remember one of my classmates who used to visit a Chinese Buffet on Sundays, on the third Su

Social Media is here to stay as more companies join the band wagon every day, many companies believe the first step in Social Media is to create their company presence with a  Facebook Page, Twitter Handle, LinkedIn company page, Pinterest presence and finally a Google Plus+ presence and maybe a few more to be safe ! Most companies do not have a social media strategy or a social media management agenda or team, most of the social media management is outsourced to ad agencies or social media specialists. Companies need to understand  they are best equipped to respond and support their customer through social media; customer engagement is too valuable to be outsourced ? Business could use the services of social media strategists who can help them with their campaign and build a road map for their social media presence and  so train their team to handle social media in real time. Companies who do not handle social media in real time are doomed and will stand  out as non-customer fo

As information technology becomes the core engine for Business the Board needs to review their understanding of the Risks posed by your team members. It is clear today that Snowden though a low ranking officer in the NSA he was able to snoop and access classified data by using free ware tools.  When someone does the same to your organizations digital assets it will have grave repercussions on your business and could make it bankrupt.  In one organization a few employees were monitoring email and were aware of management decisions and thoughts exchanged on email by the leadership of  including internal matters relating to finance, human resources and other confidential information. The leadership was clueless about the risk posed to the organization by this simple act of leakage of email.  Who is the Snowden in this turbaned Group ! Most Boards and leadership teams allow the IT team to sit in an ivory tower little understanding their activities, they consider the IT team as

Technology Product Rating for Software Companies As Indian software companies gear up to making technology products for the world as the next growth engine it is important for them to get their products Rated by an independent assessor who understands Technology, Risk and Business. Technology Products need to Blend Business and Technology for their success and product rating needs to be done at the Beta Testing stage or after a few trial runs  rather than after time and effort has been expedited in acquiring customers to use the product.   Rating gives confidence to investors, customers and users of the products and will form an important feature in product selection in the next phase of growth of Indian software companies . A Technology Product could be rated by using rating symbols given in the table below, where AAA is the highest rating for a Technology product and D is the lowest where the product cannot be assessed since it is still in development. Refer to the Techn