LS Filter Coffee

I visited the Starbucks at Hiranandani Powai  and found it packed to the gills, there was a person at the door to welcome me and told me I could sit anywhere I liked and there were no reservations.  The Americano coffee large was good and nice and affordable and hot. [caption id="attachment_119" align="aligncenter" width="225"] There was comfort and sanctuary in the kaka tea shop like shade from a tall tree.[/caption] It brought back memories in the early 1980's of the Kaka tea shop at Wheeler Road, Cox Town in Bangalore a favourite haunt late in the night for a cup of tea. Kaka is a term used for a  specific community from Kerala who specialise in setting up tea stalls and provide snacks at an affordable rate. Some of the most exciting debates and discussions were at the Kaka shop whether it be politics, philosophy, science or anything under the SUN, there was always an opinion and everyone pretended to be the master. There was not internet or search...

Banking Technology Security Business : Banking on Digital Money, Cloud Computing & Mobil... : Abstract : When the world decides to Bank on Digital Money we will Go Green and change the way we handle Money! Will Banks change to Digit...

I was in a  meeting today and when my turn came to speak I spoke of the business school aiming to be better then the best business school in the world There was stunned silence in the group and it was the I realized that I had raised the bar beyond  then the grasp of the audience.    When we set targets in our why not aim for  the loftiest goals, why do we settle for the second best and keep our targets in our comfort zone. Until I raised the bar it was all challenges from local schools, when the bar went global there was a HUSH.  What is there to fear in Raising the Bar, When you raise the Bar you start seeing life in a new perspective and have a better world view and your horizons expand.  Are you ready to raise your the Bar  ? 

Manufacturing in an earlier era led to management thinking and also automation of processes, courtesy the efforts of great management gurus like Alfred Sloan, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Michael Porter, Tom Peters, and Michael Hammer and C.K. Prahalad.  Manufacturing can benefit from Cloud Computing ! For the preceding decades, the financial markets sucked the best and the brightest minds to drive greed and make profits in investment banking and financial markets. This era fortunately is slowing down and the regulators and economists of the world have realized the futility of driving financial markets without underlying security provided by manufacturing. Engineers who were trained and equipped for manufacturing, migrated to a coveted MBA degree lured by the offer of huge starting salaries coupled with even bigger annual bonus. They drove an invisible economy driven by paper bonds and other instruments and created more complex instruments all based on an economy, which was created by...

In a recent cloud conference they were two Senior Technology Professionals who spoke in the conference and the general consensus of the participants was all they did was to Rave, Rant and Spit Venom at Cloud Computing. People who attended their session were wondering how they had reached such Senior roles in Information Technology Leadership with so much bias and attitude against emerging technologies like cloud computing. Raise the Bar not degrade yourself and the cloud  These these two personalities were able to bring about a pall of gloom and disbelief  among the participants in this cloud conference. Many wondered if  they had such strong views against cloud computing why they were invited by the organizers ? Why did they take time off to use the forum at the conference to belittle the participants in the cloud conference and also show how petty minded they were.. Cloud Detractors Need to be Kept Away from Cloud Computing Conferences as speakers ! As a cloud evangelis...

Recently Forrester stated that 70% of "private clouds" aren't really clouds at all http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/022613-forrester-private-clouds-267108.html Therein lies a tale of deceit, misinformation and false gratification of many organizations believing they have a cloud in place.  To get the facts right we need to revisit the definition of cloud computing as defined by NIST which in may opinion is the final authority on cloud computing standards and is followed by the industry and professionals.  http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared  pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that  can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.  This cloud model is composed of five essential characteristics, three service ...

Banks scurry to meet compliance requirements; many have a team of professionals whose job is to meet compliance requirements and also convince the auditors that the Bank is Compliant. A lot of energy is expedited in ensuring SOX, ISO 27 K +++, Basel compliance, the regulators long compliance which banks need to comply with. Let us focus on Security, many banks have an annual audit and some of them may have a bi- annual audit, Audits cost time and money and the financial risk management is more demanding then information security; technology is secure, we have a firewall and anti virus and anyways it is not a Board Item in many banks. Banks need to be able to Crow about their Security  In the old days information security in banks was bracketed under operational risk, but as banks rely more on technology, information risk management has come out of its own and the banks appoint a CSO, CISO,  GRC Team etc. Many Banks follow a prudent policy of separating IT Risk Management from ...

I suddenly have a flurry of people thanking me for what I have done for them ages ago, I am quite surprised and did not realize that being gratuitous was a rare virtue. There were more then four people in the last ten days thanking me in person or phone stating that they are where they are because of the heads up I gave them in their career or personal life. The more I think about these favors, they were done to help people who were competent, confident and had fire in their belly to succeed. My role was that of a catalyst, though I had been firm with some of them in convincing them to make the transition. In a changing world receiving gratitude for past gratuitous deeds is indeed refreshing and is a joy which money may not be able to buy.  If someone has been gratuitous to you in your life, maybe now is the time to reach out to them and thank them, if may cost you nothing, but for the recipient is it is pure joy and happiness. Go ahead and pick up the phone and dial up someone today a...

This is the reproduction of an article published in Information Week today . http://www.informationweek.in/cloud_computing/13-07-02/why_the_cloud_can_come_down_to_earth_in_india.aspx The author illustrates how the network and infrastructure can be the differentiator between success and failure in deployment of real time technology solutions like exchanges and cloud computing applications In 1991, I was a key member of the team to build the first automated stock exchange in India known as the OTC Exchange of India on dial up telephone lines and subsequently an overlay network network on an Government built X.25 backbone with an X.28 dial up connectivity. The internet was unheard of those days, though a few Software Technology Parks (STPI) did have this connectivity and I remember the slow browser which connected me to the Harvard facility from the STPI in Hyderabad. We had limitations because we could operate only in 26 cities in India with dialup connections, because the rest of the ci...