Leisurely Thoughts

The campus is so peaceful, so quiet. I am sitting in the library and it’s so calm, so serene – the sun rays streaming through the windows, gentling landing on the empty tables and chairs and providing natural warmth to the ambience; the books, so full of knowledge and wisdom, sleeping in their racks. The only sounds I hear are my laptop’s muffled hum of the fan, my typing and the occasional footsteps (slow, leisurely, wandering footsteps). Ah, the campus is such a calming, beautiful place during the term break!

There’s no line at the cafeteria during lunch time. In fact, yesterday, he took our order token with him to the kitchen and our order was brought to our table! No shouting of “token number 7!” What a luxury! No line at Sipz (the new juice bar). I tried another interesting concoction there – carrot, orange, honey and flaxseeds. It was pretty good actually. You bump into the odd one or two students loitering around. What are you doing on campus? I ask. It’s either the Marketing Research project, or the exams which extended till Friday (Global Operations) for them, giving them hardly any time to travel, so they stuck around.

My son had a field day yesterday. He was running around in the Atrium, in the hallways – all that clean, empty space for himself, shouting out and listening to his echo. I wonder if we adults would also do the same when we see open spaces but for our conditioned behavior! My cousins visited me yesterday, and as expected, they were greatly impressed by the ISB campus (it never fails!) I tell them, somewhat woefully, that yes, ISB has all the facilities in the world, just no time to enjoy them!

Term-6 is beginning tomorrow. Wow, term-6! And then only 2 more terms to go after that! These days, I’ve already started to visualize April 3rd (our graduation day!). But there’s so much more to accomplish before then; much more to enjoy, much more to internalize. I am fully aware that this type of extended freedom that I am having at ISB (freedom from work, from the mundane outside world) is something that I will never again have until I retire! And so yet again, I vow to myself to enjoy this freedom, one day at a time, till April 3rd. Amen!

The beginning of the end is here – Term 5!

I don’t know about you, but this is how my mind works – say I board the A.P.Express going from Hyderabad to Delhi. Until about the half-way point, I am thinking about Hyderabad (the place I left) while I make myself comfortable in the train compartment. But once the train crosses the mid-way point, my mind automatically switches to Delhi! I no longer think of Hyderabad and start thinking about Delhi and about what I’d be doing once I get there. The half-way point in a journey is when the mind automatically switches from thinking about the past to thinking about the future! Well, that’s what’s happening to me in Term-5. And that’s why I called it the ‘beginning of the end’ Term!

Out of your comfort-zone: Term-5 is so very different from the core terms. It is very challenging in terms of orienting yourself to it. Different classmates, different timings and different study groups, it’s all very disconcerting! (The first 4 terms are standardized and starting Term-5, you choose your classes/electives). It took me a few days just to figure out which class has what deliverables and what study group am I in! And ‘a few days’ in ISB is 1/3^rd of the term, so imagine the pace! (How come we were not adequately warned about this term!?) The classes are great though. And since you choose your classes, you’ll mostly enjoy them (at least I do!).

Placements fever: Alums have always been telling us that the most stressful part of ISB will be the placement season, and I can begin to sense it. The placements season is starting off, with international companies posting jobs, students getting into placement preparation mode. The pre-placement talks (PPTs) are beginning to happen, where in companies come to talk about themselves and their job openings. So, while you are taking your specialized courses and orienting yourself, you simultaneously start preparing for placements (which is a whole different ball game!).

And more: There are several other important ISB events that are happening this season. Recently, we had a Business Technology Conclave and next week we have Ikshaa, which is the Marketing Club’s flagship event. So, we have all these important industry events going on, new classes where we continue to learn new things and new classmates/study groups we adjust to, placement preparation, and of course, socializing (or networking, if you prefer)!

Wow! And how do we manage all this?! I don’t know, we somehow do!

Notes from the Business Technology Conclave

Every day you learn something at ISB. And yesterday was a particularly fruitful day for me as I attended the Technology Conclave. It was truly an enriching experience. Details:
The Business Technology Club (BTC) of ISB hosted the annual Business Technology Conclave on 23rd October 2009. The theme of the conclave was ‘Riding the Asian elephant – Emerging opportunities in the Asian Technology Landscape’. The conclave featured two panel discussions focusing on the Telecom and IT sectors.
Mr. V K Menon, Director of Career Advancement Services at ISB delivered the welcome address. He pointed out an interesting fact that there is an impending huge manpower shortfall in developed countries in the next few decades and several Asian countries (particularly India) are well-positioned to fulfill this shortage.

Telecom Panel Discussion:
The panel discussion on the Telecom Industry was titled “Improving the bottom-line: Next generation business models”. The discussion was moderated by an ISB alumnus from the batch of 2002 – Venkata Ramanan, Telecom Business Head from 3i Infotech.
The Indian mobile market is different from others in that the subscriber base is predominantly pre-paid (more than 90%). Mangesh Kulkarni from Nokia Siemens Network felt that mobile internet is the way forward and methods have to be devised for monetization of the online presence of subscribers.
Kapil Bansal from Alcatel-Lucent spoke on the emerging challenges in the Telecom industry with the falling ARPU and increasing subscriber base. “Active and passive sharing, revenue sharing, hosted services and managed services should all be viable business options for Telecom players in this atmosphere”, he said.
NV Subbarao from Tata Docomo talked about the coming era of Data. He said that the trend is definitely towards convergence, and data traffic is going towards a Yottabyte and how Technology Management, Customer Adoption and simplified pricing are all going to be very important to manage his humungous growth.
Dr. Manoj Kanagalu from Nortel foresees future business models being based on managed services, rental model and revenue sharing. Mohan Moghe from Verizon gave a view of US markets and the various challenges therein. “The US mobile market is saturated and the focus is more on innovations and applications for the end user”, he said. Vinay Goel from Google spoke on the importance of a full browser in a mobile along with a flat data plan to enhance the user experience.
Anshoo Gaur from Amdocs spoke about his company’s vision of ‘Tera Play’ and the continuous movement towards that vision wherein smart devices offer a connected digital lifestyle. “The new business models will focus on managing and charging for personalized and contextual experiences across multiple devices”, he said.

IT Panel Discussion:
Post-lunch, Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar Technologies, started the second panel discussion on “Asian Markets: New hotspots for IT companies” by saying that India continues to be the great IT centre. He said that there has been a positive shift in the focus of the IT industry – it is beginning to think of how IT can be leveraged in India in the key areas of Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, SME and Telecom.
Abhay Gupte from Logica said that there are three things that will play a significant role in taking our IT industry to the next level – innovation, product automation & deployment and location/geographic challenges.
NV Tyagarajan from Genpact said that the wireless industry in India, from being technologically behind, has leapfrogged to be one of the best-in-the-world. “IT in India needs to deliver value that goes beyond labor arbitrage. We feel that the exciting journey of innovation is coming into India over the next 10 years”, he said.
Haragopal M, who heads Finacle at Infosys said that products are a clear opportunity in this part of the world. “Products are an excellent transition to take IT to the next level. We now have global attention and global respect. We need to continue to launch new offerings, new products”, he said.
Amit Sircar, head of Microsoft Global Services India, spoke about how Microsoft India went through a strategic shift in order to think of India not just in terms of a consumer market or a resource but as an export-centric market.
Suresh Hosakoppal from Yahoo! warned about the risks that the offshore R&D industry in India is facing at the cross roads today that could affect the growth in the years to come. We need to address these risks to get India back on track; Innovation and Productivity are big tickets items to address these risks.

Finally, Srini Komanduri from Deloitte talked about where the IT demand is going to come from in the future other than the usual outsourcing route. Two big areas he pointed to are the Indian industries (which are continuing to invest in IT) and the government (Healthcare, Transport and e-governance)
Ganesh Natarajan, who moderated the discussion excellently concluded by remarking that Asia is definitely the hub to the future of IT industry both from the market perspective and from providing collaborative solutions perspective.