Identity Crisis – A liberalized India with close to 10% growth, and still socialist?


Fair warning – this has nothing to do with SAP or Enterprise Software !

I very well remember learning in the civics and political science class in the 80s that the Preamble to Indian constitution reads “WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC” . Little did I know then that the word SOCIALIST was added only in 1976, during the emergency rule under Indira Gandhi. I was taught to believe that it is a good thing that government will watch out actively to make sure there is no discrimination based on social  status, and that government will make sure wealth is redistributed amongst the people so every one is an equal. Although not stated explicitly by my teacher, somehow I also got the impression – along with many other friends of similar age – that capitalism is evil.

Indian economy got liberalized in early 90s when I was in college. We used to have endless debates in college to prove it is a terrible idea. And we were mostly wrong, as I know today – barring a few exceptions.

But why did India have such an affinity towards socialism? and then more narrowly on Marxism? I believe that had to happen due to the country being ruled by the British, and the rulers of the princely states who treated the people as slaves for the most part, and depriving them of social and economic opportunities to advance.  And then there was the brutal caste system – where based on the caste you were born, you were tagged for life to certain social and economic status.

Entire generations grew up with that thirst of equality – with many a leader laying down their life for the cause , and so it is not a surprise that all political parties had to pick up on that line of  ideology to establish themselves.  Some of these parties accuse each other of being right winged. It was only after moving to the US, I started realizing that what is called as right wing is still pretty left leaning according to US politics.

India got its independence in 1947. But 65 years later, we are still a socialist state according to the constitution. The supreme court disallowed a petition recently which requested the word socialist to be stricken from the constitution.  I find that even more interesting . Why would India call itself socialist today, with its liberalized economy and close to 10% growth?  The answer I think has more to do with politics than economics or sociology.

A vast portion of the population in India still live under poverty. But they vote ! And the ruling parties cannot afford to do anything that affects that vote bank. Commitment to the betterment poor is mandatory for any political manifesto.  Not sure how many people know this – but you can’t even register a political party in India, unless it explicitly states its allegiance to being “socialist”.

I actually think that is an excellent thing to do as well – the poor in India needs a way to get out of their misery. However, the implementation of policy is where I am not sure if there is any effectiveness to achieve that goal.

One such idea was the system of reservations based on caste that independent India started to have. The wise men who crafted this put a time boundary on it. Little did they know that it will get extended for ever. I have heard from my grand father, the Late Prof. R Easwara Pillai, about horror stories on how caste system was practiced in India. I think that reservation system was created for a good reason.  It was created at a time where there was serious correlation between caste and economic situation of a person. That is not true in 2012. There are plenty of people who are economically leading a splendid life, but still reaping the benefits of reservation by government due to their caste. They effectively decrease the chances of the reservation system helping the less economically privileged people from their own caste, and other castes.  The erstwhile “upper classes” in general seem to be not doing so well on economic front any more.  It might be poetic justice for what people did or did not do several decades ago – but will it ever bring social equality that it was meant to create?

Good and effective governance cannot happen in India without a clear stance on political ideology. In the pre-90s time, it was the government who decided who got a license to do what business. And the incumbent industry leaders did everything they could to make sure government will not let in a new competitor. It changed for the better after the 90s, and now I am not sure which direction it is headed any more.

A good example is the retroactive tax issue with Vodafone in India. If government and its agencies can act in such an arbitrary  manner, what is the incentive for any company to invest in India? And we have an ex-telecom minister and other officials who went to jail (some out on bail too) accused of massive fraud in allocating spectrum.  I will resist my urge to express my

Where else in the world would a minister in ruling coalition have to be sacked for raising rail fares which have not been raised in a decade? It happened only because of the populist ambitions of the leader of his party.  Railways make a lot of revenue, but not profitability. Trains are allocated solely based on political agenda, and with no respect to the availability of funding or infrastructure. Something has to take a hit – and I am afraid it is maintenance and safety that takes a hit.  But government will not privatize railways or even increase fares meaningfully to compensate for rising infrastructure and maintenance and safety costs.

The pilots of Air India are on strike here – the ones that fly international routes. To begin with, Air India is a loss making airline that is long overdue for restructuring. Every time I get into a flight – and I try every way to avoid it when I can – I keep praying that it lands without any loss of life and limb. I flew them yesterday, and it was horrible. Delayed for an hour, then wrong gates informed to passengers, then boarding without any sequence which further delayed take off, and the most bumpy landing I have had in 2012. I spent some time talking to a few pilots of AI in Bangalore, at a cafeteria in the airport. Their biggest fear seems to competition to their career advancement. They do not want other pilots trained in the new fleet, so that they can protect their jobs. I was polite to them – after all I was getting into an AI flight in few minutes – but left wondering that there is still a section in the world that can get away with that. I don’t have that luxury in my career, and I don’t know any one else who does personally. If I am not at the top of my game – someone else will take my place.

There is a flip side to this story. When my dad did his engineering degree in 60s- there were 3 colleges in the state. Everyone got a job right after school. When I went to my engineering degree in 90s, there were about 10 colleges in the state, but most of us got a job quickly. It was the liberal arts and pure science majors who did not always get a job at my time in school. I was talking to my cousin yesterday, who teaches at an Engineering College. She was lamenting the drop of quality in the students she gets. And the reason for that is that government opened up the higher education arena, and several colleges sprang up without sufficient quality. There is hardly any competition, and vast numbers of students fail to get a degree. Ironically,  only the most passionate students go for liberal arts and pure science degrees now, and consequently they do well in life.  This makes me wonder if opening up “everything” to private sector is all that bright an idea any more.

Another example is the increase in number of high rises that have spring up in my hometown. I grew up in a neighborhood called Belhaven Gardens, near Kaudiar in Trivandrum. It was a nice, quiet place with reasonably sized lots and houses, and every one knew each other. I drove by that house yesterday and could hardly recognize the area – it has so many high rises now in between the old houses, and hardly any privacy. God forbid if one of the high rises catches fire, I could not figure out how a fire engine can even reach it given there is no space left there between the walls and the buildings.  I swear I even saw a high rise that juts into the main road.  It must be an in-between phase between socialism and capitalism that my country is going through.

In short, there is an identity crisis – at least for me, an Indian who lives and works outside India.  Hopefully I will understand the nuances of how India operates more over time. I am fairly certain that I am not the only confused person on this topic, and I am also sure that there are serious flaws in how I view this situation due to my mixed views of spending parts of my life in different countries.

SAP buys Ariba for $4.3B – rather pricey, but still a good deal


As I was fighting jet lag and lying wide awake on my hotel bed in Bangalore yesterday night, I saw the news on twitter that SAP is going to buy Ariba for $4.3B. When IBM bought Emptoris earlier, there was always a question of who will buy Ariba – and my bet was on Oracle. And I am happy that it is SAP who finally did it. I am not sure why SAP did not announce this at SAPPHIRE last week, but I guess it doesn’t matter really.

Jim Snabe told us at Orlando last week that he envisions SAP to be a big player in business networks. At that point, several acquisition scenarios flashed through my mind, but Ariba was not on that list. As a matter of fact, Ariba hadn’t even crossed my mind for a few years now. They make less than a $500M in revenue,so my first thought was $4.3B was too much of a premium. Now, looking at the market cap – it looks like SAP is paying about 20% above closing price. Given the high multiples companies like SAP are paying for buying cloud companies, I wonder when they will generate real profits.

Ariba’s Calderoni will be a terrific addition to SAP’s board. I absolutely loved his decision to hive off services wing of the company to Accenture some time ago, so that Ariba can focus on what it does best. He was a CFO before he got the big job, and he is on the board of directors of Juniper Networks and KLA-Tencor. SAP could definitely use his experience well.Of course Ariba was not always a cloud company. So there is a learning opportunity for SAP here on how they can transform their big on-premises model into a more cloud enabled organization, by using Ariba’s experience. The one thing I do not understand at the moment is how Lars will lead the whole cloud business unit, and Ariba remains independent. Hopefully some one can provide clarity on this.

It is a bold move from SAP’s side for sure. They just paid more than $3B for SFSF few months ago, and now shelling out another $4.3B for Ariba shows a firm commitment to cloud. And it is consistent with their stated strategy of focusing on customers, vendors, money and people.

As I think more about this – the contrast with SFSF is quite apparent. SFSF is a solution that addresses more people since it is for employees. However, it is only used occasionally during the year due to the nature of the problem it solves. Ariba on the other hand targets much fewer users – but the usage is pretty high since it keeps track of purchases globally. So, SAP now has expertise in both models of cloud solutions.

I have a feeling that my buddy Sameer Patel is excited at the prospects of this acquisition. Ariba, at the heart of what it does – is all about enterprise level collaboration for purchasing/trading, which is close to Sameer’s heart. It makes even more sense now that SAP wisely hired Sameer.

Unifying all these cloud solutions – some acquired, some home grown into one consistent architecture and UX, is a complex task. But who better than Vishal Sikka to take that on? I think Ariba will have tremendous use of HANA compared to SFSF. SAP also can derive some synergy with BW and BOBJ in the context of what Ariba does for enterprises.

SAP has its strength in some of the atomic processes in Source to Pay, and Ariba has in some. And there is plenty of overlap between SAP and Ariba for now – and I am sure that will get rationalized over time. With the combined force of SAP and Ariba, Source to Pay could see some real innovation (Source to Pay is one of the most frequently outsourced business process, mostly due to manual steps) in business process. Combined with HANA – I am sure we will see a lot of change in SAP’s and Ariba’s user base.

In general, but for the heavy premium they paid, I am a big fan of this acquisition by SAP. And If I am wrong – I will blame it on jetlag 🙂

Some random thoughts on SAP’s cloud strategy


As I am flying to Bangalore, I have been thinking of SAP’s cloud strategy – or at least what I understood as their strategy – a fair bit. In general, they did not blow me away. However, I do think they have a lot of things done right. So here are some random thoughts for what it is worth.

SAP is targetting 4 groups – Customers, Employees/People, Money and Vendors. I like that – that covers a lot of the enterprise.But if being everything to everyone was a successful strategy, Business By Design would have scaled greater heights by now, which obviously has not happened. So somethings need to be prioritized over others. The big players in cloud – like SFDC, targeted specific segments and did not try to be everything to everyone. And in general – including SFSF – they have attracted more customers and users than SAP ever did.

I have often raised the opinion that SAP should run cloud as a separate business so that they are not burdened financially or bureaucratically by the larger legacy organization. So I was thrilled to see that SAP allowed Lars to operate cloud as an independent business. And he brings tremendous energy and passion to the table, which is also something SAP could do well with. So organizationally – I think SAP is well set.  If there is one question in my mind on this front – it is whether there will be consistency of engineering across SAP anymore if cloud is a separate organization. But given Lars and Vishal seem to be best buddies, I guess it will work out just fine.

SAP will also  offer parts of BByD as loosely coupled apps – like finance for example. This might work out ok – except, I think Finance in itself is more of a necessary evil, than a true innovation. Without financial postings – the rest of SAP won’t work very well . I am not sure how many will buy the finance solution just to run their GL. A few will for sure – but I don’t see it as a growth engine yet.

SAP derives most of its money from the on-premises world. This poses two challenges. One – if SAP takes a suite approach on cloud, they will have to cannibalize some parts of on-premises solutions. And two – they have to integrate cloud with on-premises world. Neither is an easy challenge to overcome.

First about trying to reinvent the business suite on the cloud. Don’t get me wrong – I do think eventually suite needs to run on cloud. What I am not convinced is the need to do it now, since that is not a path of least resistance within or outside SAP. I think SAP would find it much easier to create apps that solve specific problems that on-prem cannot solve easily. For example – on-prem does Accounts Receivables very well, but not Collections and Disputes management because those users typically are not on-premises. So, instead of moving AR to cloud – why not just move collections and disputes management to cloud? And once that is successful – there will be very little reasons for resistance to move rest of AR, and eventually all of GL to cloud, even for big companies.

And about the loosely coupled thing – I am not exactly buying into the idea of “out of the box” integration of cloud to on-premises systems. One – SAP is not considered a leader when it comes to integration technology. And two – on premises world is heavily customized, so nothing really works out of the box there. I made a living as a programmer primarily because nothing integrates in standard. For SAP to have a credible integration story – they should probably buy TIBCO or something ( ok, sorry to my friends who have heard me say this a million times). But given the high valuation, it might not be feasible.

On the social aspects of cloud, I like what they are doing. Combining Jam and Streamwork makes total sense for customers. And I applaud SAP for their stance that “Business” is the better part of “Social business”.

HANA is a perfect DB/platform for cloud. It will be a safe bet for customers and SAP since HANA can evolve and mature much faster in an environment that SAP has full control over.

One last thought before I have to shut my PC off. What is SAP’s data center story? Cloud needs significant data center efficiency. I think I heard SFSF has its own data centers. If SAP is serious about cloud in a big way – I think it is in their best interests to tell the world more about their strategy on data centers. And to extend that thought – they might even have to buy a hardware company at some point.

I am out of here before the flight attendant of this AI flight will shut my laptop down for me herself. Let me know what you think.