Show Me the Money

A great deal of activity is happening around opensource – not just in the software but through overall forces of – collaboration, openness, sharing and networking. These principles are not new to the mankind. They have been used in the context of social development, education and research in many ways.

But the key difference this time is that these principles are being leveraged for businesses. Whole new businesses have come up and entirely new concepts of doing businesses are shaping the industry. eg. Wikipedia, social networking, Innovation Exchange, Red Hat etc…

Right in the middle of our own businesses in IT industry, open source software such as Linux, JBoss, KVM, Alfresco, SugarCRM are making impact on the our customer businesses. These software offer great value to the customers at the same time pricing, packaging, promotion are significantly different from what they are used to be with proprietary software.

While on one hand open source software is a growing trend and becoming all pervasive in customer’s infrastructure, it throws up interesting questions for the resellers and solution providers as to how to leverage this opportunity – given that open source is considered free or low cost. Can it increase the % margin, can it help get net new customers, does it need more investments, what kind of skill sets required, are the promoters of these software companies – RH, Novell, IBM doing enough to support the partner eco system. What kind of changes do we have to bring about in our business practices to leverage these trends.

While some questions would require to be dealt in the context of specific software and promoters, the common areas through which partners can leverage open source software are :

Acquire new customers

Acquiring new customers is the most difficult part of the business, more so in the proprietary software space. In the growing market of open source software and solutions there is a great demand for the suppliers. There is a tremendous pull from the market. Grab this opportunity to grow your business. It is relatively low cost way.

Gain customer mindshare :

If you don’t talk about open source software and solutions, some one else is going to. Apart from this, open source software is on customer’s mind. So you better be the first one to acknowledge it and garner customer’s mindshare which leads to garnering wallet share.

Additional opportunities

When customers try one set of open source software (eg. Linux) they are ready to adopt other software also. Partners should proactively tap into these opportunities and get grow its business.

Annuity business

Most commercial open source software are sold on annual subscription basis. It is important to keep in mind that these subscription are not the AMC of proprietary software. The subscription renewal business is a good opportunity in terms of $$ value as well for forging better relationship with the customer.

Uplift your profile

Every partner has an aspiration to move to next step of value chain from box pushers to solutions vendors. You can leverage open source software opportunity to bring about that transformation as the cost of acquiring technology is very low and number of customers are embarking upon the adoption cycle are still growing at a healthy rate.

Tap into services opportunities

Depending upon your plans, tap into the services business opportunity that open source software offers. This is equally true for existing hardware partners as well as software partners. There are many areas of services that each partner can tap into. For example – Hardware provider can get into infrastructure / implementation services of OS, the packaged software provider can get into customisation and implementation of software solutions. But these areas need to be based on individual partner’s plans.

One area to be mindful of :

Expectations about margins :

I have seen many partners take up to selling opensource software just because the margins on selling traditional software are falling. If you look at the $ value of margins on open source software, very often it turns out to be lower. So one must be clear about the expectations of why it is getting into this business. As mentioned above, the advantages are many, one needs right alignment of the business.

Tiger and The King…. New learning

The other day I was telling a story (as usual, making it on the fly) and when I ended the story, I was surprised at the way I ended it.

Once upon a time, there was a King, one day he went for hunting in the jungle. There he saw a tiger. But the tiger was lying down and not moving, his eyes were open. King looked into Tiger’s eyes. King felt that the Tiger was asking for help. So he got down from his horse and went near the Tiger. He found one arrow pierced into Tiger’s body. He went near to him and took out the arrow and cleaned the wound. Tiger started feeling better. When Tiger tried to stand on his feet, King helped him a bit. Tiger stood up, stretched his legs and felt better. King was standing there, looking down upon the tiger, feeling proud that he helped a tiger and was happy with himself. Tiger roared and before King realised jumped upon him, putting him on the ground. King was surprised.
He said ” Hey, I saved your life and now you are going to kill me?”

” Thank you for saving and I appreciate your efforts.” The Tiger said, “saving other’s life is your Dharma (your nature, your duty), you felt good about it, you felt proud about it. You got your returns. My Dharma is to kill and eat. You did you Dharma and now I am doing my Dharma, If I don’t eat you, I would starve and I would die”.
And Tiger killed the King.

Moral this story for me is that before you decide to help someone you should know his “Dharma” or nature and be prepared to face it. Helping with just good heart is not good enough, you need to know that other person/ animal does not have the same heart as yours.

Contrast this with what my grandmother or mother or even I myself would have ended this story just 5 years back. I would have ended up telling that the Tiger and the King became friends forever etc – very similar to Lion and the Mouse story I have heard since childhood.

Caring for the listeners – human side of Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar

Last week, I had an opportunity to attend Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar’s music program once more, this time organised by Maharashtra Mandal Singapore. Listening to him on the stage takes you way above the world of music. His explanations and providing the context of the song or poem makes you truly enjoy the whole experience. He is a gifted singer and composer. Despite remaining very selective about the songs and poems he has made the world of music rich through his 60 years of contribution. He has received many awards not just from the government but from the public, peers and Shankaracharya.

This time I discovered one more noble quality in him as a human being.

It so happened that the program was to start at 5 pm, but it started at 6.10pm. This was not enough, the microphone was found to be not working the moment Panditji started talking. It was such an embarrassment. Then the interval + the sponsor felicitation took almost 40 min and as per the rules of the auditorium Panditji had to stop the program just when it was reaching its peak. This was robbing of music lovers the joy of listening to Panditji.

What I liked in the whole process was Panditji’s attitude. He expressed his grief not just at the state of the organisers, but also the fact that listeners did not get enough value from the program. He showed the sensitivity that not many artist show these days. Mostly the artist are concerned about the fees, stay, travel etc. But caring about the music lovers and thinking from their point of view is the ultimate sign of a great performer and great human being. I salute Panditji for this.

Book Review : The Post-American World

The Post American World When I saw the tile and name of the author I thought this seems to be yet another book which is going to paint a depressing picture of (decline of ) America and rosy picture of (rise of) Asian countries. It is a fad, in thing to be anti-American these days. Or to do the crystal gazing about bright and beautiful picture for BRIC countries. However when I read the blurb and brief information about the author, I realised he is journalist with wide exposure. Hence I bought it.

This book is written in a journalistic style. It is not a management or crystal gazing style. The author has put the “dots” on a very large canvas. The author gives lot of comparisons and lessons in the history – dating back to Roman empire. Most of the time, author has refrained from giving his opinion and has just put across the picture in multi-dimensional way.

Few of the aspects that I liked most are :

The compelling arguments about importance of economic and financial power. How good financial condition of the country has helped countries to achieve social progress as well. I liked the comparison of British Empire (of the 19th and 20th Century) and today’s America. It was interesting to read effect of political power Vs Economic power. How British Empire during its financial decline in 1900s continued to have its clout through strong political leadership (especially during Churchill and post WW II days.) But this political leadership did no take it far enough in terms of success. At the same time how economic, trade and financial power has helped America to remain a superpower even during bad political leadership (From 1980s onwards).

Also interesting read is Author’s attempt to throw light on the distinction between Westernization and Modernization. Those who oppose Westernization should understand that every modernization is not westernisation. And in modernisation lies lot of westernisation. It is a complex issue and delicate balance. Again here the author has attempted to put the “dots” and not just give opinion nor he is preaching.

Though the rise of the rest is a catchy phrase and I was looking for more about it, I found a lot is written about America’s cause of decline yet how its fundamental strengths are still intact and how it can come up with some good political leadership.

Overall a good read to specially those who want to understand the contemporary history.

When Cactus Smiles

Scene 1 : Hindi Movie – Hero is very sad, singing a sad song, all around him are Cactus plants. Camera is showing cactus plants every now and then. Director wants to convey deep sorrow and sadness in hero’s life.

Scene 2 : Ramoji Film City, Hyderbad – We are taking the guided the tour. The guide is showing various landscape gardens. Beautiful gardens based on various themes. And then he makes special announcement. “Look on your right side. This is the sad garden.” Garden and sad? Screamed my heart inside. The guide went on to tell, “see the Cactus plants all over. This is the place where all sad songs, sad scenes are picturised.”

My mind was not into the names of the movies that he was rattling that had picturised the songs and scenes in those gardens.

My heart was thinking about Cactus. Why one type of plant is associated with sadness. What that plant must be thinking about such association. As a living thing it also has emotions and it also must be going through happiness, sadness, joy all kinds of feelings.

I found myself standing in front of one of the Cactus plants. That plant understood my question, my thinking. It was talking to me.

“Sachin, when the mankind associated me with sadness, I went to the God. I asked God, Why Oh God, why? Why you chose me to represent sadness in the world.” God looked at me and gave me a smile. I felt even more sad. I Thought even God is giving me sarcastic smile. But I listened further.

God said, “man has to face both happiness and sadness in life. One appreciates the happiness in life when one encounters the pain of life. I want man to just look at you and understand the pain, sadness and thus appreciate the joy in life. This way I hope he would learn to be more happy without actually having to feel the pain. So my dear Cactus you have a special task to do. I have made you to remind people of sorrow and sadness. You are doing an important work. You end up making man happy. “

And I saw Cactus was smiling with satisfaction.