And Vijay Says…

This is a story from my childhood that was popular in India . For some reason , this week that passed us by reminded me of this story after many years .

Once up on a time , in a land far far away….

There was this guy in a remote village – a big name street wrestler . His whole game is in terrorizing the common folk of the village farmers market . He would charge a premium for whatever his family was selling , and if anyone challenges his price – he will bully them . Every day, he would walk around the market shouting “is anyone feeling strong enough today to wrestle with me ?”. And of course no one would raise their hand .

This went on for years and years . His wares were not bad , and there was enough demand – so he prospered . But the guy he employed as his “muscle” started getting the idea that maybe he can do the same too – but he did not have much money to start on his own. So he took a personal loan from his boss and a few others and started selling at a corner of the market. He was careful not to compete with his former boss .

Since he was taught well by his former master , he employed more or less the same techniques of playing down his fellow vendors . Over a period of time – he also became pretty strong and big and rich . And pretty soon he started telling his friends that he doesn’t care much for his old boss and that he is way more rich and strong than the old man.

And then one day when the old wrestler walked around shouting the usual “is anyone feeling strong enough today to wrestle with me ?” , the younger man stood tall and said “Yes, I can take you on “. The older man was taken aback for a little bit – and then he walked menacingly towards the young guy, sizing him up with each step.

As he reached him – he turned around and put his arms around the younger man with a big smile on his face and said “Ok, so who feels strong enough today to wrestle the two of us? ”

That is the story – I have heard an extension of this too where before he hugged the young man, he whispered into his ears “I will marry my daughter to you , and you should take over my shop too when I am done “.

Growing up in India , I had no concept of what “mind your own business” meant – none at all. That was not our thing . My mom always knew the grades of every kid in the neighborhood , the family next door knew exactly how much is my dad’s salary and all of that . If you really wanted to be a social outcast in my hometown , all you needed to say was “mind your own business ” in response to some deeply personal question . I should also add that if someone had a problem – there was usually no shortage of help , be it free food, unsecured personal loans etc. It is a mixed bag – you have to see it and live it to believe it.

With an entire society knowing your life like an open book – you can imagine the number of people who will mess with your every decision . Single parents – unless their spouse passed away or something – were frowned on and often could not even rent a house. The first time I knew about LGBT was when I read an article in college – and the first time I saw a movie in Malayalam about a gay hero was 2 weeks ago .

And then I moved to USA and started living here – and you can imagine the culture shock , especially on the “mind your own business ” dimension 🙂

Here is something I recently read on Facebook that might explain my situation when I moved here . A kid was riding a taxi and munching one chocolate after another . The driver asked him “Don’t you know this is bad for you?”. Kid said “My grandpa lived to be 130 years old”. Driver curiously asked “by eating a lot of chocolate ?” And the kid replied “no, by keeping his mouth shut and minding his own business”.

In short , I had a lot of adjustment to do when I started living here . And many years later – I have kind of a hybrid view on where to draw the line , which satisfies neither my American friends nor my Indian friends 🙂

Yesterday night, I was fascinated by what was happening in Austin,TX in their senate meeting . I simply could not believe my eyes – and now I am a HUGE fan of Senator Wendy Davis .

I firmly believe that Individuals should decide what works for them and what does not , and as long as it doesn’t harm others – society and government should stay away from dictating to individuals .

At the core of the issue for me is the concept of equality . It is 2013 now – the world should stop treating people differently . I have neither a left nor a right leaning politically , but I do expect everyone to be able to choose what they want to do with their life without worrying about the belief system of others . Most of us should have learned in school about separation of church and state – it is time to put it in action .

I am not pro or anti abortion – I am not a woman and consequently cannot claim to know what makes a woman choose one way or another . All I am saying is that just like a man can choose to do what he wants with his body – a woman should too . A woman should have exactly the same freedom to do what she wants with her body like any man – another man (or woman) shouldn’t dictate what she can or cannot do. Not all women think or act alike – so allow them to choose what they want as individuals rather than creating a one size fits all framework .

Instead of futile political bickering , I wish we spent the time, energy and money in educating people so that they can take better decisions and lead better lives . This country spends a lot of resources on wars , and put a lot of soldiers’ life at risk – cant we stop some wars and spend the resources instead on healthcare and education that will help many generations to come ?

While I seriously doubt any country can legislate its way to glory, I am not anti legislation either – it can actually be a useful tool . As many of you know, India had (probably still have) a problem with female feticide . They had to pass a legislation that doctors cannot disclose gender of the foetus before delivery to anyone including parents. And it worked – at least in my home state Kerala, there are now more women than men in the population . And that makes me proud , along with the fact that the state has 100% literacy which also happened in a large part (not fully though) because of effective government legislative action .

Growing up in India , I am well aware of the evil of discrimination – I have seen parts of this movie before.

A couple of generations ago ( and some of it still prevails) , based on caste, color of skin, social and economical status – a vast number of people never got a fair shot at leading a decent life in India. The country as a whole suffered as a result – and continues to carry the weight of that even today. It is no doubt a lot better now than in my grandfather’s generation – and India is now growing to be a global power . Knowing that history – it worries me all the more that US will make similar mistakes that India did instead of learning from it.

Can’t we all get along better and mind our own business more , and stop trying to mess with the life of fellow human beings ? Or is that too much to wish for ?

Right upfront – this post is just a personal view and has nothing to do with my employer’s opinion . I am just typing this up on my phone while watching my daughter hitting tennis balls with her friends .

Oracle CEO said he was going to reshape cloud computing last week during their earnings call . That was a pretty big claim , and naturally I was interested in what he had to say this week . I have great respect for the guy – despite missing a few very critical turns (cloud, in-memory computing etc) recently, he has done admirably well for himself and the companies he founded and invested in . Plus it is always fun to speculate if there will be any attempt to revise history 🙂

Larry never loses an opportunity to snipe at his competitors – often in what looks like pretty silly ways to me. In recent years , he has made fun of the leaders of SFDC, SAP, IBM etc . And almost in all cases , it is interpreted by external world as an endorsement of what the competition is doing. Enterprise Software is a funny world to be in 🙂

So the first positive I saw in this week’s announcement is that with this partnership – there is a decent chance that Larry will reduce sniping at SFDC and MS a little .

Oracle is a big fan of engineered systems – controlling all (or most) layers of the “stack”. The partnership with MS to put Oracle DB on Azure and get MS to license java looks like a change in strategy (or is it philosophy?) to me . Looks like Oracle is slowly recognizing the importance of working with an ecosystem . My feeling is that MS gained more than Oracle in this deal – with java giving additional flexibility to developers who so far could only play with .Net . On the flip side, MS might be indirectly be admitting that SQL server can’t quite match Oracle in DB . Or maybe MS is taking a view that it is a good thing to give more DB choices to customers .

What also caught my eye was that Oracle is exposing not just DB but also the old BEA app server via Azure. I had a smile on my face when I read this – since unlike SAP Hana which has an inbuilt App server ( XS Engine) , Oracle needs a separate app server to make use of its DB server in an application . This is not innovation – just repackaging. At least customers have the consolation of license mobility .

What about the SFDC partnership ? From what I heard so far – the deal is a good tactical sales opportunity for Oracle After their horrible quarter end. 9 years of recurring revenue is awesome for any company. Plus if SFDC – as rumored – was planning to ditch Oracle as their DB, this is a good “PR save” as well by getting their long term commitment . I can’t imagine SFDC changing their application level multi tenancy to a database level multi tenancy on an unproven 12C platform. Too much risk and disruption – but would be great to see if they do. Maybe new extensions on force.com or something might use 12C – and I will be keeping an eye out for that for technology curiosity sake.

Also interesting is the question whether this means Oracle treats SFDC CRM solutions as superior to products in their own catalog. Same is true for SFDC – would they stop working on HCM and take a view that Oracle is better at it ?

Is there a competitive angle to either announcement ? It can be argued in theory that Amazon, Workday, SAP etc need to take notice . In reality, I don’t see any short to medium term impact to any of these competitors .

Between the big $$ from SFDC and the chance to push exadata boxes to SFDC and maybe MS too – the deal probably makes good financial sense for Oracle . But from a tech perspective, I don’t think the world has changed much this week . But hey – if this means we see less public fights between Ellison and Benioff , that is still a good thing