Apple and IBM, a view from the peanut gallery


Apple and IBM are both companies I hold in great esteem – in the top 5 of all companies I care about. I worked at IBM for a long time, and I own a lot of Apple devices. I have small investments in the stocks of both companies . My day job is to make partners successful for my employer MongoDB – so any enterprise alliance news is something I look at as a learning opportunity  Naturally it picked my interest significantly when I heard the announcement . My instinct was to say “Wow Ginnie scored big”. So, here are my thoughts on the alliance – strictly my personal views and not that of current or past employers.

There is very little in common between IBM and Apple to begin with.

1. Apple is a much more prosperous company than IBM – be it Market cap, revenue or margins. And its no secret that Apple is the senior partner in the relationship. IBM’s CEO flew to CA to do the announcement with Apple’s CEO, and not the other way around. If this happened in IBM’s prime years, Tim Cook would have landed in JFK and taken a limo to Armonk 🙂

2. Apple is more prosperous than IBM with MUCH less employees than IBM has. On top of that the IBM internal organization is heavily matrix oriented to take care of its complex business. It would take some Eisenhower-esque leadership to get all the right teams focused on this initiative. (But honestly, I am not all that worried since I know first hand that when it comes to leadership, IBM has some of the best in the corporate world in their ranks.)

3. Apple is extremely focused – it has a much smaller portfolio around which this massive empire has been built. IBM portfolio is like encyclopedia Brittanica in comparison 🙂 . When I looked at the joint announcement first – I smiled thinking “wow you could not have expressed in a more cover-all-bases generic way”. 

4. Apple makes money from hardware and IBM has been steadily divesting hardware business

5. Apple provides a workplace that is cutting edge and has an awesome cafeteria – IBM to my knowledge does not even provide free coffee to its employees . Apple prefers jeans and IBM prefers suits. The impedance mismatch in culture is palpable.

6. Although several employees at IBM use Apple devices in a BYOD mode, the company standard issue has always been a thinkpad laptop, and not a Mac.

Why does this alliance make sense ?

Just like with the law of magnetism in physics – opposite poles attract !

1. Apple is a company that thrives on innovation. But they need something to keep the market happy during the time taken between innovations. IBM opens the doors to the top enterprises – voila, a whole new addressable market delivered on a platter.

2. IBM services is pretty good at production support and maintenance. Many large companies have outsourced support to IBM – and combine Apple care with what they do today, there is a clean new upsell package for IBM GBS and GTS. 

3. People don’t give enough credit for IBM’s design investments. IBM has a solid design team that does an amazing job – the most famous being the public facing sporting events like US Open. So when it comes to creating the 100 apps – design is something that IBM can rely on being a differentiator. Same goes for advertising – IBM makes some pretty impressive ads. I am thoroughly enjoying the ones I am seeing during US Open, although I don’t see any mention of the Apple collaboration in any of them. 

4. IBM has an asset that they don’t seem to be able to use effectively so far – that is IBM Watson. It frustrates me to no end seeing IBM take incremental steps in pushing Watson. I think this partnership is the most fantastic way for Watson team to push its case before the biggest corporations on the planet. A Watson on every iPad ! . In fact I think rather than do the generic announcement they did – I would have preferred to see 100% of the focus on just Watson and Applecare for the enterprise. The rest seem like noise to me

5. IBM has strong alliances with many ISV partners like SAP, Oracle, MongoDB etc. And most enterprises already use solutions from these ISVs. IBM has a great opportunity to further the value of Apple alliance by building apps around what enterprises already have. 

6. IBM has sheer size in its favor . A massive overhaul of enterprise tech landscapes need armies of consultants. Apple does not have that army, and can’t recruit fast enough even if god forbid they want to do it. That is a huge advantage for this alliance. 

And finally, what is the big risk factor ?

This is largely a Global Business Services (GBS) led effort if I understood it correctly from the announcements. GBS is a well managed machine with extremely low bench at any given point. So if a massive investment is needed in headcount , time and budget – it will need to be taken away from billable engagements. That is a really hard thing to do unless another part of IBM can pick up the slack to bring in the money to keep investors happy. The only viable division that can pick up slack is the software group. Since Ginnie did not reset Sam’s 2015 EPS roadmap – IBM cannot take a lot of risk on losing focus on existing revenue and bottom line. That in my mind is what the risk is – there is a significant upside in the long term if everything works out well , but it needs making big bets in rejiggering the existing business for IBM. 

If IBM won’t take that risk ( and I REALLY hope that they will take the risk, and convince investors to cut them some slack) – then it will be business as usual for both companies, and this will be yet another partnership announcement that did not pan out. 

 

Six Reasons Why Kerala’s Proposal For Prohibition Will Not Work


Kerala wants to be a dry state http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/kerala-to-close-down-700-bars-sundays-to-be-dry-114082101171_1.html 

It is ironic that I have to write this blog post against it – as a guy who has seen the evil effects of alcoholism at close quarters and with every bit of my soul, I wish this menace went away for good. But as I read more about the proposal by the ruling coalition (ironically called United Democratic Front – given there is very rarely any unity or democracy in how they function ), the more I think this is absolutely misguided, and has no real chance of succeeding. 

1. It is not a well thought through decision

The decision was taken over a few days – with no meaningful public debate. And because of its populist nature with women voters, no political party in Kerala can afford to raise a contrarian view.

2, It was not done for the right reasons

The decision was made mostly for the Chief Minister Chandy to convince the world that he is holier than the already “holier than thou” leader of KPCC V.M Sudheeran. They waged a war for political image and took a short term populist decision – with no sufficient thought to consequences. The other alleged reason is the political pressure from Muslim League and Church leaders. This is no better (if true) – as church and state hardly ever mixes well to make good policies. 

3. There is no practical way to enforce this

When prohibition leads to bootlegging and plenty of flow of illicit alcohol from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, it will be up on the Excise department to curb that. This is a department that is already at just  20% of the needed headcount . There is no way they can staff quickly enough to enforce prohibition

4. When and where did banning alcohol work ?Never

India – including Kerala – has seen what happens when alcohol gets banned . It does not work. It did not work in USA either and they learned the lesson and changed it, and did not go back to prohibition. Alcohol is freely available in USA and you do not need to stand in line to get a bottle of your favorite spirit like you need to do outside a beverages corp outlet in Kerala. Yet, there is rarely a regular public spectacle of drunken people like we see in Kerala. 

5. If the decision was pure in its intentions, why was  government owned beverages corporation given 10 years to close shop while private bars have to be closed right away?

Clearly the government needs revenue from alcohol sales – but does not mind the private sector losing their business. Alcohol sales is probably the leading revenue earner for the state, along with tourism and NRI inflow. Without a doubt prohibition will decrease tourism. So its a double whammy for government revenue. And remember, this is a government that functions on borrowed money and has no fiscal discipline ( look at the plight of  KSRTC for example).

6. Demand and Supply situation will drive up alcohol prices, and worsen the social menace

The social menace arises from the behavior of several men to use money they can ill afford to buy liquor. Now that competition from private bars will be eliminated, beverages corp and 5 star hotels can increase liquor prices to any extent. What this means is that the men who want to drink will now pay a lot more (travelling farther to drink, paying more for that drink, and most likely higher medical expenses incurred by consuming bad quality liquor ) and hence will put their families through even greater pain to cater to their addiction. 

What would have been a better way to handle this situation?

1. Better and continuous education and awareness generation amongst public to enjoy their drink responsibly, and how to get help for those who are addicted.

2. Increase the standards required to run bars and its enforcement, and aggressively close down any that don’t meet the high standards. 

3. Provide government funded counseling and medical treatment for alcoholism. 

4. Make laws that let abused families to get justice, and help get their abusive family members checked into institutions that offer help.

5. Improve enforcement – by modernizing the police force, excise etc. 

6. Decrease alcohol concentration in domestic liquor – especially in beer.

All of this can and should be funded by beverage corp revenue. Alcoholism is a social menace that needs resolution – and government has an important role to play. But it needs to be done in a well thought through way – not in the hasty and populist way it is attempted now. 

I have a whole new appreciation of Business Intelligence now


As many of you know, I grew up as a BI and Data warehousing guy – I have implemented BI for a lot of users across the world . I have collected requirements from shipping clerks as well as CXOs , and in at least a dozen different languages. I have spent countless hours thinking and rethinking data models, how best to transform data and how best to present data to my users.

Along the way, I became a manager and then an executive, and thus became an active consumer of BI myself. But in the big companies like IBM and SAP that I worked at – I learned to live with someone else’s BI design. As far as I can remember, I never had to create significant new requirements . These were rather stable businesses that could be run with minor tweaks to existing BI capabilities. 

And then few months ago, I joined MongoDB and my whole perspective on BI changed. We are for the most part still a startup. We don’t have a huge IT arm that can cater to endless requirements from me and other leaders of the business. Our IT landscape is almost completely SaaS based. If we can hire one more person – we would rather hire to fill a front line technical role to make the product and customer experience better,  or a sales or channel type role to make the business better. For foreseeable future, I don’t expect that to change either.  

We are a global business – and we are growing incredibly fast. And to keep that pace – we need good data, especially when it comes to customer facing business whether it is direct sales or channels (which I run) . Having grown up as a programmer and then a BI guy after that, I have a great affinity for making decisions by numbers. With the speed at which we grow and our lean policies, I don’t really have a lot of time to wait for information to see how things are going – which essentially means I need good quality operational BI at all times. 

We use Salesforce.com for our CRM. I am a first time user of this solution – which might surprise a lot of people. My past experience with CRM has all been in Seibel and SAP CRM. The best part of salesforce.com was that I did not need any training to use it – none at all. My past experience was almost immediately transferable to use the system as a non-expert. My primary use is not as a transactional user who creates or updates opportunities etc. My main goal is that of gaining quick visibility into the aggregate opportunity to order process for channel business, with the ability to drill down into details as needed.

Once I got settled in my new role, and got to know my team better – my immediate priority was to get a full view of the global business. I mocked up initial requirements into spreadsheets and discussed it on phone with my partner manager Guillaume in Dublin, who is an experienced salesforce user. From my past consultant life – I estimated the effort required as a few months in the technologies I grew up with (assuming I got the most skilled people I could find). Next day morning, I saw Guillaume already had 3 dashboards ready for me which showed most of the information I needed. And then in 2 more daily scrums – I had the 6 dashboards I needed to view the business from every dimension I care about. That is much less than the time it would have taken me to write a proposal for a customer for this work in my past life. 

What did I learn from this experience ?

A lot of good things for sure

1. Business users like Guillaume (and Luca, his boss who runs channels in EMEA for MongoDB) are better BI consultants than anyone I could have ever hired from outside. He not only knew the technology well, he knew my business well and could challenge my assumptions and give me new ideas. It has convinced me that rest of my team including me should step up our skills in salesforce.

2. The technology to build operational reports should be extremely simple so that business teams can iterate quickly. Till I saw it with my own eyes, I did not believe that it could be this easy.

3. From prior life as a programmer and a BI guy, I am well aware of the limitations in reporting – so I can minimize the churn in requirements gathering and make good compromises on what needs to be measured.

4. The simplicity of reports and the report writing technology – and my big time aversion to any transformations (having seen how data loses meaning way too many times) – helps us stay nimble and make changes on the fly. 

There are also some areas of improvement of technology , which I am sure Alex Dayon and team will fix at some point, hopefully soon .

1. Charting and visualization is very limited – so when multiple graphs are put next to each other it is quite a strain to discern information quickly. Granted, the ease of changing things on the fly is more important to me than flashy reports.

2. Only 20 controls possible in a dashboard. I can compromise on it for now, but as business grows – this is a pretty serious limitation for me to get a global view across everything I need to monitor and act on. 

3. Reporting across objects looks limited – but this could just be my lack of experience.

4. Operational reporting does not replace the need for a data warehouse . I still need some other place to combine the lead to order process with information from from Finance, HR etc. For my current purposes, I have work arounds – but if all the SaaS vendors for CRM, Finance, HR co-operated and built a BI solution to seamlessly provide me with integrated data – I will swipe my credit card happily to buy it.