Some songs I love

John Lennon > Imagine

Awesome lyrics... very relevant to the Indian mindset.

Elvis Presley › A Little Less Conversation

Elvis Rules.. peppy song that you can play to your girl friend any day :D

Yanni > Reflections of Passion

Yanni, the best at Keyboard, a very romantic song.

Now, on the electives..

Here comes the third one in this series on the courses and electives themselves. Again, please read the disclaimer section from the previous post and remember that these are personal one-man opinions and may be totally different for each person. You should consider this among lot other factors (new syllabus, if any, courses that suit your career, etc.) before choosing the electives. But, make no doubt, choosing the electives is the most challenging and important part of the MBA.

Michaelmas term:

You would have all core courses in this term. These are the courses that will help you all through the rest of the course - the Profs in Hilary and Trinity will keep referring to these subjects and will assume that you know all these courses and remember the frameworks. These will also be important from job search point of view; for example, consulting cases will require you to follow Strategy and Economics courses closely; a friend of mine who joined an asset management company had to check the health of a company and value it in 2 hours, the same exercise that Tomo Suzuki will conduct in the class in this term. So overall short message, take extra care to understand these subjects; don’t read them for the sake of exams.

James Taylor teaches Regression among other important topics in Decision Science (aka, statistics). A very good course that should be learnt closely since you will end up using this in some of Trinity electives and sometimes in job (finance jobs - stock analyst, etc).

The only course that might seemed a bit cheesy to me was DEM (Developing effective managers), the first of the organization behavior (OB) courses. Try and attend this course (!?) as much and score in the assignments – an easy one to score distinction. Indeed, it will teach you the psychology behind companies and let you get a new perspective. The Robbins book might be too broad for this course and the course notes might make your life pretty easy.


Hilary Term:

Marketing, a core course, is the top course that will again be very useful in consulting case studies. David Arnold will run the course exceptionally well. The cases and the guest speaker are the best portion of this course. Prepare well for the cases before the class and you would be the best to benefit.

Finance management was the other core subject for us. Eric taught the first 4 classes involving numbers mostly, 5th was a mock exam and Neils Dechow took the rest on some theoirical concepts. The course has some fine concepts like Activity based costing (ABC), Balanced Score card (BSC), etc, but was very badly organized for us. Apparently, the previous class had faired very well in this course, the profs indicated that the exam will be tough. Rather than making it just tough, they made it too lengthy that only 2 CAs managed to complete the whole paper. The whole class went berserk and the administrators had to redo the evaluation (they multiplied all the marks by some factor. The few CAs ended up getting 98s and 95s J. A funny story indeed.

The elective Finance II, taught by Han and one more, is one course that I regret not taking. I was adamant not to pursue a career in Finance for various reasons and decided to skip FII, which seemed like a deep finance course. It indeed is, but is mandatory, in my opinion, for an MBA. This nicely builds on F1 and lays the base for the rest of the finance courses. My sincere advice is to take this elective as one of the two that you will select, irrespective of what career path you plan to pursue post MBA.

Macro Economics, taught by Oren Sussman, is another elective that I regret not taking; but I did go through the whole course material on my own during the Hilary break. This is an important course and gives a good overall perspective to see business on a bigger picture. Oren indeed complicates the course in his own way, but will help well before exams.

Technology and Innovation Strategy (TIS) is a technical elective taught by Victor Seidal, and Marc Ventrasca. A prof from another department teaches just the IP portion (class 6, I suppose). They indeed load the course with tons of frameworks, lecture notes and reading materials. I would suggest to avoid this course, as you will see imminent repetition in ETV and MI (see Trinity). But, this is a better option than DEO, but should be the last but
One.

Developing effective organizations (DEO) is the second in the OB series taught by Tim Morris. Tim comes from LBS and has a knack of running classes. He introduced the concept of teams being evaluated by their presentation and Q&A session, which I appreciated. But I do not see you missing anything big, should you decide to skip this course.

This section is running so long, I’ll have to make another blog for the Trinity electives. Its (very) late Sunday night and I have a long day tomorrow. So Caio, good luck and bye for now.

The profs.. the good, bad and ugly

Here comes the details on Profs. The best teachers that I saw all came from Michaelmas term. I dunno why. If any of the teachers are reading this, please accept my sincere apologies for breaking many hearts. I just mean to give a honest picture the new ones…and hey, read my disclaimers from the previous post.

Mich term:

The best ones:
Thomas Powell, who teaches Strategy, is the first great teacher I will mention anywhere. Many of us recorded his teaching; I took notes on anything he said. He is great strategist and draws from his personal experiences. I liked the way he started his classed with some Question or something and then kept it under control. James Taylor is a great teacher. As much as Statistics was complicated. He made it very easy and fun to learn. His funny quotes and stats at the footer of presentations were most enjoyed. We made fun o him in class, when he rhymes dome (well there is a case on Dome’s probability on having oil) like a British. Some of us took photos with flash and he never objected. Sweet chap. Tomo Suzuki teaches Financial reporting. For some of us, Accounting is like eating medicine... the inevitable. He makes it very simple with his lemonade store example. He even brings lemon to the class. Great guy, who made our money worth. Alex Guembal is not a basic financial guy, economics I suppose. But he teaches the simple finance clearly. Good teacher for finance dumbos like me.

The okay ones:
Laura taught us Organization behaviour (DEM) – 1 – okay types; I cut most of her classes and never regretted :)


Hilary:

The best ones:
The top name that comes to mind is David Arnold who teaches Marketing... great guy, he taught in Harvard and has now become a consultant... Very good method of case handling. I always thought marketing was the cheesy and softy stuff. He made me rethink; marketing is as much creativity and number crunching as finance or strategy. Go prepared with calculations for his class, otherwise you will not benefit. The Operations Management teachers (2 or 3 of them) were all very good. They were innovative in adding new curriculum on the go (they added some on online advertising logistics, which was very informative for me). They also added a few games which got the point very clearly... I loved those games and the lessons learnt.

The normal ones:
TIS teachers (Victor Siedal and Marc Ventresca) are okay types – not bad, but nothing worth noting. They try to add as much material, text in the presentations and sometimes lack correlation between topics. IBGG teachers – there were three teachers who teach international Business and Eric Thun is the best in the lot; he also will teach Business in China in Trinity. So his examples are very lively. The other profs, Dana Brown and Mari Sako – I have never attended their sessions. I was in Dana’s class and slept the first class. Though this will not work and started attending Eric’s class from the second lecture. The Financial management course teachers (Chris Chapman and Niels Dechow) are alright. Chris teaches the first 4 and Neils the last 3 sessions. 5th was a mock exam to get people hands on the problems – a major waste of time. Both were alright, but nothing was revealing or very interesting. I missed studying macro economics from Oren Sussman, but have heard he is a great teacher. The other elective, Marketing and Culture, was taken by Linda Scott. I didn’t attend her class, but she had invited quite a few practical marketing people from the industry to give a talk. I don’t have other first hand info on her.

Trinity term:

The best:
There were tons of electives and hence profs. I will just talk abt those who come to the top of my mind. Tim Jenkinson taught PE and was applauded by everyone for the way he presented the topic. I attended the restructuring and implementation by Oren Sussman and Duncan Angwin. Oren is a bit complicated and too deep to understand, but is the best in the lot. He simplifies the M&A concepts to simple object game (he loves naming them, A, B C), but it will take a while to like him and appreciate him. Strategic decision making was taken by Brad Killaly, from the US UCI University. Great guy, but he was constrained by quite a lot of Oxford rules. His games and explanations were good. He even spent around an hour and helped me lay my personal career on a Sat. Marketing innovation is taken by Laura cousins from LBS. She is a great teacher and makes learning enjoyable. She included marks for presentation, which I liked very much (and we got the top marks too!).

Now follows the subjects that I didn’t take, but heard from friends. Corporate evaluation was taught by some McKinsey visiting profs and it was very well appreciated all over. Celin rochon took a couple of financial subjects (Risk Mgt and one more). My friends who took the subject, she would basically read fro the presentation and is best skipped. By Trinity you would have your hands full that you need extra time anyways. Entrepreneurial finance was taught by the MBA director (Stephan chambers) and Stephen Duckett – My friends said good things abut these profs too.

The Okay ones:
Doug Holt teaches branding. He is one of those Profs who is great subject matter expert, but cannot run teach proficiently. He calls his course as Branding, but actually it is cultural branding – a weird concept which is his own finding. This is an advanced branding concept and great technique for companies that have money to spend. But, I was looking to learn basic Branding techniques and was greatly disappointed in his class. Most companies appreciate him and laud him; some student did too. I and my friends could not. Enterprenuerial and technology ventures (ETV) was taken by Victor siedal and the comments above (in Hilary) would apply. Eamonn Molloy took the Portfolio subject for us. A nice guy, but is not a great teacher. Well, he is not a teacher at all; he is more into organizing other speakers, games and stuff. But he makes it easy for the students to score marks, which may not be great thing in the long term.

until the next one on the actual electives to take, miss and audit... Ciao.

How to select electives? for future SBS MBA students and probably others too.

Well, I have been meaning to write this blog for a while on the MBA electives. Mates from the new class indicated that the SBS elective presentation pitch happened earlier this week. I hope this blog will benefit some or all of these folks.

A few disclaimer to start with: I am an Indian, had a IT background, did Business development and management for around 5 years, before going into MBA. So, my mind tends to think about technology and company strategy all along while choosing these electives. Moreover, my friends call me geek, although I don’t agree (well, no geek or psycho agrees he is one), so scoring marks was one of the main criteria that made me choose what I choose. I realized this was a wrong strategy well into the end of the MBA. Last but not the least, see, everything is perception. All of these are my hones thoughts. Some of the courses that I didn’t like might just be my perception. It might have been a great course, great teacher, but not for me..

A few pointers towards selecting electives?

• Don’t select something that you already know. Say, if you are marketer, don’t grind the wheel with marketing subjects over and over again.
• On the other hand, choose subjects based on what you want to become. A friend of mine is from legal background and wanted to pursue a career in marketing – she choose many marketing courses.
• Don’t choose for the sake of scoring marks. Marks are alright, important; distinctions are worthy, but learning a new subject altogether is very very important. You will not get another chance to learn a PE or an M&A subject again, that too to this extent. So choose those subjects that you don’t know, not those that are easy to score. Take this scoring marks criteria out the equation. Unless you are really crazy and lousy, you wont fail. Oxford SBS and many other B Schools has a normal distribution methodology, where they place 5% students above 70, and 5% below 50; of the rest, 60% of people will be placed in the 58-65 bucket. So most often, you will get a mark in this bucket and you should be okay. If you are exceptionally well knowledged or well read, or had some cool funda in your final exam/assignment, this will take you to the distinction.
• Consider how well the Profs teach, not their reputation, while choosing the course. I wonder if James Tylor is as famous as Doug Holt, but I place James Tylors teaching way above Doug Holt. So is Tomo Suzuki – great and simple teacher. See profs section for detailed review on the profs.
• Finance subjects are not scary. I used to run away from Finance subjects from most part of the course and take tech related courses. If you don’t know ABCs of finance, this is a good time to take. Many of these are not entirely number crunching, but involves heavy strategy component – example, Finance II in Hilary, Private Equity, restructuring and implementation (M&A) are should-never-miss kinda courses.
• Don’t take repeating themes. For example, technology and innocation strategy in Hilary and Enterprenuelria and Technology ventures in Trinity are 60% reptetitive. So are derivatives and risk management (I think, I didn’t take both tehse, but my friends say so); so are Strategic decision making and negotiation skills. If you take two of these, you just wasted tons of precious money and time.

Hey, I gotta go… I willcontinue this topic with details on the individual profs and courses as another post.. probably after hours Mon. Cheers and good luck choosing electives.

MBA and Job Update

Well, well, well… I cannot blv it has been a few months since I wrote a blog. The first term in MBA was quite okay (and I thought that was the toughest).. it only got worse. We had to manage classes, projects, assignments – all at once. The days ran into 18 hours and that is when you cut down your chats and blogs.

Quite a few of my friends pinged me and asked for update.. here it goes. The course was completed successfully :D on Sep 15, 2007. As a part of the program, a team of four, we did a 2-month consulting project in Intel at Portland, US. It was a great experience going back to US and analyzing strategy for a company that big. And I returned to India for a 2-week break. From Oct 1, I have joined the Cognizant London office, report to the VP/Country manager, and look after business strategy.

Well, the first two weeks have been quite busy, and I suppose this will continue.. But I ill try to write more… until then stay warm. Its getting colder here in London.

Advertising at the best

Why do good companies go bad?

Recently, the Charles H Kellstadt professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, Jagdish Sheth has written a book "The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies'. He talks about why good companies fail? after having all the good initial momentum. Here is his interview excert from http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/12inter.htm

"I would put arrogance at the top of the list. Success, especially extraordinary or unexpected success, tends to boost the egos of companies, just as it does of individuals. These companies tend to be highly feted and their reputations exaggerated by the media, and that's bad news. There are enough write-ups on the rise of arrogance at Enron and Worldcomm, for instance.

Next would be complacency. When companies owe their success to monopoly situations, they stand in danger of taking their success for granted - like Hindustan Lever [Get Quote], until recently, for instance.

This is also true of monopolies of distribution - as in DeBeers - monopolies of regulation - Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd - or when the government owns the business - Air India. When you become complacent, you allow competitors to identify niche areas where they can establish themselves, and from there, take on the whole market. In such cases, your success breeds failure.

The third common bad habit is turf wars. As companies grow bigger, there is an increasing danger of internal battles. Whether it is dissension between divisions, as in General Electric, or family feuds as seen in so many Indian companies, the result must inevitably be suboptimal.

Number four on my list is volume obsession. This is a common problem with successful companies - they compromise on margins for the sake of further growth. Typically, value addition by a company accounts for about 30 per cent of the cost - 10 per cent each as the cost of management, labour and capital. The remaining 70 per cent is procurement costs.

So, when you increase volumes at the cost of your margins, you are actually helping your input providers (your suppliers) grow: they are making money at your expense. For instance, in the PC business, the value addition is only 11 per cent; 89 per cent is all procurement, of which 79 per cent goes to Intel and Microsoft who are making fat profits while the PC assemblers, including IBM, HP and Dell, struggle."

These topics and failures have been analyzed and written manytimes in business literature, but still companies and executives fail to capture the learning! A mystery indeed.

Godfather in M&A

From investopedia.. funny, isn't it?

Godfather Offer: An irrefutable takeover offer made to a target company by an acquiring company. Typically, the acquisition price's premium is extemely generous compared to the prevailing market price. Therefore, if the target company's management refuses the offer,
shareholders may initiate lawsuits or other forms of revolt against the target company for not performing their fidiciary duty of looking out for the best interests of the shareholders.

Similar to the famous Godfather in the trilogy of movies, the bidding company is essentially making an offer the target company cannot afford to refuse.

Stay hungry, stay foolish

I happened to hear a wonderful speech recently. The commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered at Stanford Univ. For those of you who do not know -

Together with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Jobs helped popularize the personal computer in the late '70s. In the early '80s, still at Apple, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs was fired from Apple Computer and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets. NeXT's subsequent 1997 buyout by Apple brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded. He staged a great comeback and was promoted to the CEO position. He has served as its chief executive officer since his return. Now that is a fairy tale story.

One of my friend suggested the book - iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business - try it out.

Do I Challenge myself?

An imaginative story that I read somewhere - A businessman once had so much failure in his business, he went to a beach in the evening. He sat there lamenting his errors and how rich he used to be all night. All along, he was throwing the small stones that were spread near him. Just when the sun rose, he had the last stone in his hand. Much to his surprise, he realized it was a diamond stone. He had been throwing diamond stones that were left behind by some theives. Imaginative story alright, but most of our lives are like this.

Instead of thinking about what needs to be done, we care much about how good we were and how we could replicate those again. In this ever-changing world, is this sustainable? We often lack the will to learn and adapt changes that happen around us.

Talk about learning, Tom Peters talks about "forgetting organizations". He writes, "Peter Senge's brilliant insight 10 years ago was that companies need to be learning organizations. My campaign: Companies need to be forgetting organizations to be innovative." Peters' idea presents a challenge to many business leaders - particularly those seasoned ones who've been around some - who are usually completely "wedded" to what they know - what they've done before that got them great results. He also indicates that this phenomenon is most found in many newly graduated MBAs. Would we have the guts to forget? and not be "wedded" to our knowledge?

Certainly, this does not mean that we forget our core competencies (now, Hamel and Prahalad won't be happy). But, being attached to what we know and how we've done things in the past can be a huge barrier to staying flexible, spontaneous and agile in this dynamic world.

VJ is a renowned Strategy prof at Tuck. He talks about three boxes (See video below) with respect to strategy - Thinking of past, Concerned of present and plannig for future; he suggests only planning for future relates to strategy. I beleive the same can be applied to professionals as well.


I have seen this phenomenon in many of my friends (myself included) - both before MBA and in my MBA class. We often tend to dwelve in our warm area - where we know how things are done, where we know how to excel, and where we are praised. Rather, we should challenge ourselves by raising the bar. Now, if you hear someone say that you are the best in what you do, think again, it may be time to "challenge yourselves".

Done with 'Hell'ary

Well, the second term is at last over. In Oxford, they have a name for the terms and for the second term, it’s Hillary or.. 'Hell'ary, as my friend puts it. It seemed so long and so tough, it felt like a year. Yeah, yeah, this is what we signed up for, so I shouldn't complain.

Take away? Well, marketing was a revelation. It was more strategic than I thought it would be. In that enthusiasm, I have taken two more related electives for the third term - 'Branding and communication' and 'Marketing communication'. Marketing is now an integral part of everything you do as a business man, and I believe it makes a smart business man; so I don’t fret I too 3 marketing subjects out of the 18. You just don’t see where strategy ends and marketing starts; they are so inter-related.

Technology Strategy elective was alright, but the cases were very good. One case study that will stay in my memory for long is the Nintendo case, where the Japan management plays with other actors in the market to attain a superior position out of nowhere (Game theory).

Operations elective was very good for the way it was taught. The prof taught us more of underlying concepts and cultural differences between US, EU and Asian countries that made up what these countries today are.

We had tons of cases/readings, loads of assignments, and on top, entrepreneurial project work. I am happy it’s all over now. The third term, Trinity as they call here, should be alright, since I have only one exam – in ‘Restructuring and implementation’ elective. This elective sounds like M&A, but for some reason they have changed the topic. I will get to know when I attend.

A computer without mouse and keyboard

Talk about disruptive technology, you should take a look at the innovation from Jeff Han. Mind bogling.



I cannot stop watching the third one - particularly the one where his friend reads Wikipedia. The computer hardware companies will have a very hard time adjusting their operations to this innovation. Software companies will have refine their UI and usability principles. As Jeff says, this technology is not new, but just their application and interface is new.

And so a new generation of computer engineers will be born. We will one day say to our kids, "In our times, there used to be small accesories called mouse and keyboard.". "Mouse? Why would you name such an electronic device as mouse? More than that, why would you need to seperate that control from the screen where the objects are shown?" "Why in the hell would you need a physical keyboard? Would it get stuck and wear?" Hmm... I cannot find a reply to these questions from my future kids.

More SBS questions?

I got a few more questions today. If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email at Sampath.Narayanan@gmail.com and I'll help you as much as I can.

Regarding the placement, a few of my friends who came directly from India had this wrong notion. Seems like our anonymous friend also had this wrong impression that B Schools will arrange for a campus placement since they invest so much.

Myth #1: Companies pick 10s and 20s of people.
Reality: For starters, it is very different from the way our software companies wait in Engg colleges to pick 30s and 40s of candidates. Here (US/UK) the placement is very selected - many of my friends went through 8-10 interviews and still have a long way to go - There are multiple rounds with Dir, VP, MD, etc. and a variety of interviews.

Myth #2: I got into a top school. I will get to buy a Ferrari when I graduate.
Reality: By getting into the top B school, I would say you have got into trouble. This is the first step of 99 more steps that you have to cover before you reach the Ferrari-dom. I am not discouraging folks, but want to make sure that road doesn't end when you get an offer from Oxford.

Myth #3: The campus placement comittee will get jobs for all.
Reality: Campus placement center will arrange for companies to come and present in the campus. They brand the school and relentlessly look to support the candiate (sector consultants, et al). Almost NO companies accept resume or conduct interviews in campus. The companies come, present their company and requirement, you can ask questions and thats it. After that you apply thru their website along with the 100s outside your school. Most often companies select people just for the Oxford brand name and call for interview. It is upto the candidates to make or break the case from thereon.

I hope this clarifies some of the doubts of propsects atleast. These are just my thoughts and I, as you can guess, do not get paid for raising the Oxford brand.


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Kill me, kill me.. I have to write so many assignments and here I am, writing this blog... I should really reduce the blog time. Its bye for a week I guess.

Martil Sorrell, CEO of WPP

There is a guy called Sir Martin Sorrell. And why am I telling you about him? Well, he was here at Oxford yesterday to give a speech, and a good speech it was.

Who is Sir Martin Sorrell?
He is Chief executive of WPP, one of the world's largest communications services groups. More on him below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Sorrell
http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/2005/time100/builders/100sorrell.html
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2005/12/08/stories/2005120800200100.htm
And why is he special?
Starting as wire basket (?!) company, the company is now one the largest communications (?!)group... the man is all about all M&A... Just see the list of companies here, and you should have you mouth open..
From Time - "Advertising legend David Ogilvy didn't mince words, so when Martin Sorrell's WPP, a London-based former manufacturer of wire baskets, launched a hostile takeover of Ogilvy & Mather in 1989, Ogilvy denounced CEO Sorrell as an "odious little jerk."

How was the speech?
http://www.science-enterprise.ox.ac.uk/html/activities_event_details.asp?eventid=221
Well, the topic was "Why making money is about a lot more than making money?".. Now why wouldn't I attend this lecture? The room was overflowing; somehow everyone does the same research that I do...hmmm. The speech was fast and breezy; the room was at pin-drop silence all along.
He talked about everything, from Media wars in China to Indian IT companies to growing markets in India/China. He also covered the nowadays-most-famous topic - Corporate Social Responsibility. Not surprisingly, the MBA folks had tons of questions; if not for the facilitator's intervention, he would have gone for long. A great guy to listen to anyday.

I learnt somewhere that he paid quite a lot of money (nearly $54m) for his divorced wife as alimony. Hmm, I hope my would-be wife is so rich.. ;) not that I will divorce for money ;))

How is Oxford SBS?

Well, someone anonymously left a comment requesting for more info on Oxford SBS..

"Sam How is placement so far from the last SBS batch?I am very interested in knowing how indians faired so far?What is your opinion of classes so far? Style/content/etc.Mind posting a response?"

I wish they had introduced themselves... anyways, here goes.

Placement for SBS: the last year SBS batch results aren't out yet... mostly to accomodate people who took the 15-month (they finished in Dec, 2006/Jan 2007).. From what I know personally the placement has been very good. Still SBS is focussed on Finance and Entrepreneurship as its focus.. Consultancy and High tech follows in placement counts... every year, we hear of someone starting their new company (I met someone in india who started an energy conversion company).. many folks here are sponsored by their company too, so they go back to their respective companies.. Overall: Trend is good.

Classes: Diversity and intellectual discussions are plus points. There are a few world class lecturers.. Moreover the admin is trying relentlessly to learn and excel; I read somewhere the dean saying that SBS will try to compete with HBS... good to aim high, huh? The number of Indians this year was a tad high; nevertheless, it was diff countries (like US citizens, UK citizens, singapore indians, etc.).. with 1B+ population, Indians and chinese are everywhere anyways ;)

Style/Content: I would say 60% of classes are taught in case basis.. the exam model is still the medieval Oxford way (with Sub fusc and double corrections)... we are now in the second term and we have to read atleast 2 cases and 2 reading material a day before going to the class... its a lot of work, but you've to do it, otherwise you will be the only one blinking in the class. Notable mention is the number of electives - 30+ electives to choose from (we have to choose 6).. ranges from private equity to real estate to networked media.. By networked media, I mean the blogs, wikis and facebooks - how cool is that to read abt a trend that has just emerged.. however I did not elect to that topic since I had strategy preferences...

Well, I hope that clarifies. I hope it was a MBA prospoect who was willing to learn more - All the best!

A few software terms

As a Engagement manager, I have used the below terms quite frequently, but not being a core techie, I had not known the clear text book definition ;). Here they are (thanks to wikipedia):

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERPs) integrate (or attempt to integrate) all data and processes of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) [pronounced "sō-uh" or "es-ō-ā"] expresses a perspective of software architecture that defines the use of loosely coupled software services to support the requirements of the business processes and software users. Resources on a network[1] in an SOA environment are made available as independent services that can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation.[1]

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is defined as the uses of software and computer systems architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.

Three-tier is a client-server architecture in which the user interface, functional process logic ("business rules"), data storage and data access are developed and maintained as independent modules, most often on separate platforms.

Distributed computing is a method of computer processing in which different parts of a program run simultaneously on two or more computers that are communicating with each other over a network. Distributed computing is a type of parallel processing. But the latter term is most commonly used to refer to processing in which different parts of a program run simultaneously on two or more processors that are part of the same computer.

Web service[1] is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Web services are frequently just application programming interfaces (API) that can be accessed over a network, such as the Internet, and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services.

Impressionism and Pointillism

I am sure that title would have had you puzzled. Well, these are painting techniques.

I used to be a small-time painter during my school days. There was a next door girl (6 years older J) who used to my Guru. Mostly I imitated her and other’s paintings. I had to fight with my parents to buy different types of brushes; I saw oil paint only when she gifted to me her set when they left town. I remember some drawings still – some rajastani traditional women, goddess Lakshmi with a tilted head ;) et al. But given the nomads we were (my dad worked in Tamil Nadu government), we lost all the 20 some drawings in transfer between homes. Then came the 10th standard which dropped a full stop to all my creative activities.

Why do I suddenly remember this?
Hmmm… I was off to London last week to visit the Cognizant London office and the Country manager. I had a quick presentation/discussion with him for an hour in the morning, after which I had the day to spend in London before I returned to Oxford. I was roaming around and stumbled upon the National art gallery near Leicester Square, Central London.

I was very happy I visited this place. It had hundreds of art works (I mean, real art works, not miniatures/replicas) arranged in sections 1500-1600, 1600-1700, etc. I had known and appreciated modern artists (1900+). When I visited this section it was a real learning experience, you could really appreciate these artists, their thought process and their painting techniques only when you see the picture so near.

Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists. In impressionism, short, thick strokes of paint are used to quickly capture the essence of the subject, rather than its details. Rather than drawing it all, it gives an “impression” to the viewer.

You could see the difference in the pictures below. The first one (Art name: WishtleJacket) is a conventional painting and the second (Artist: Edgar) is painted using impressionist technique.

A few famous arts I explored are from world-famous artists including Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

Pointillism
Pointillism is a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary colors. For example, instead of using green paint, they would drop two dots of yellow and blue together - and you get the "impression". The result is sometimes described as brighter or purer since the eye does the mixing and not the brush. (Brilliant, isn't it?)

You could see the difference in the picture below (artist: Seurat). This one is painted using Pointillism technique.

The gallery also had a long sequence of Vincent van Gogh pictures. Well, it was a great experience and I spent an unplanned 4 hours there before my stomach pushed me to go home. I would say, even if you do not know much, go to such exhibitions and galleries; you would slowly be able to appreciate their techniques.

Wines - White or red?

Well, here goes the next puzzle..

You have two urns. One is filled with red wine and the other is filled with white wine. You take a cup, fill it from the red wine urn, and tip it into the white wine urn. You allow the wines in the white wine urn to mix completely so they are fully diffused in the urn. You then take a cup of this mixture from the white wine urn and transfer it to the red wine urn. Is there now more red wine in the white wine urn or white wine in the red wine urn?