And Vijay Says…

First off – I am a big fan of Mr Singh . He has always come across as an honest police officer with impeccable integrity , and with tremendous respect for the rule of law .

And then I saw this news today

http://www.madhyamam.com/en/node/24107

But in the case of the hurried enforcement of the seat belt law – I think he totally jumped the gun . For a guy who has lived in Kerala for decades , he should have known clearly that a rushed enforcement won’t succeed in increasing passenger safety. I hope he doesn’t resign in haste

1. Kerala has no culture of traffic discipline

Every road has lanes drawn on it – yet you will never see anyone sticking to a lane when they drive . Till that lane discipline , speed limits and respect of signals get ingrained , the fundamental cause of accidents won’t get resolved . Also – for putting a seat belt in rear seat , how many cars have seat belts in back seats to begin with ? Not many ! So what exactly is the enforcement going to accomplish ? Not much more than citizens facing harassment from police .

That needs significant education – at big scale . That hasn’t happened yet . There is no enforcement either given police cars don’t follow traffic discipline either

2. Police needs to demonstrate respect for spirit of law before they implement letter of the law

It is illegal to put dark tinted glass on vehicles in Kerala – it should be possible for passengers to be visible from outside . Police cars used by senior officers don’t use tinted glass either . Instead , they use curtains ! When police officers – colleagues of Mr Singh himself – can circumvent the law , where is the moral ground to enforce another traffic law ?

3. Government of the people

Ultimately , police is part of the executive wing . They need to consult with the government before heavily enforcing a law that affects most of the people . Such a consultation would have resulted in a realistic implementation time frame . Political masters don’t always make it easy for able officers like Mr Singh – I totally get that . But that consultation is a necessary part of doing government business .

I also hold the politicians responsible . They could have handled this better without destroying the confidence of a very good police officer . It’s one team that is elected and/or paid for by common man . The citizens don’t get amused when they point fingers at each other

Bottom line – road safety is paramount and at the moment the scenario is terrible in Kerala . It needs a whole sale solution , not fits and starts and certainly not heroics . Police , Government and people need to do this together .

I did not think Vishal will take the job – but I saw the news now.

First off – Congratulations Vishal ! I wish you the very best in the new job. I hope you get to revive the fortunes of infosys and take them to new heights. 

For Vishal, I think this is a good move . He gets to be CEO of one of the biggest brand names in IT. It is a bit of a surprise for me that a guy with his roots in product and technology chose to take the lead of a big services company. I am suspecting this means infosys is going to focus seriously on products going forward. Knowing Vishal’s big thinking abilities, I assumed he won’t go to start ups. He definitely needs a larger canvas – which I guess explains him joining infosys. But what I really expected to see for next few years is to see him be a partner in a top tier VC firm investing in the technologies of tomorrow. Guess that needs to wait.

For infosys, I think this is definitely a benefit – and surely so in short term from an investor’s point of view. Vishal’s forte is innovation – and infosys needs a new strategy. I think investors will reward infosys in near term for scoring such a big brand hire. Long term – we need to wait and see.

Vishal is not a services sales guy, and he is not an operations guy. But he is terrific with customers and he knows the who is who in technology and is close to many CXOs at customers . So yes, this could work very well for Infy if he builds a team around him that knows the services business well, and has operational excellence. It also helps him that most of the current infosys leadership team is stepping down before he takes over. Vishal gets a clean start – much like Bill McDermott got a clean start at SAP with a new(ish) team . Win or lose – its on him now. No pressure, eh? 🙂

But then leadership team can only do so much – it is on the infoscions rank and file to make the shift to an innovation agenda. Vishal moves at a speed that is hard to keep up with, and he is not exactly a process oriented dude – I know that first hand. So my suggestion to infosys employees is to get some rest while you can, and then be ready for a wild ride 🙂

So what about SAP ? this is an interesting development for SAP. Infosys is an important partner for SAP – and infosys has a lot of services business on SAP technologies and products. I imagine the partnership will grow even stronger now. Although Vishal probably can’t poach talent from SAP legally, he has a cult following in some sections of SAP. It would not surprise me to see some of my former colleagues jump from SAP to Infosys soon. 

Good luck again, V ! 

 

 

 

 

 

Before leaving for the event , I had posted my wish list here https://andvijaysays.com/2014/06/02/an-ex-sap-dudes-wish-list-for-sapphirenow-2014/

It was like a family reunion for me – meeting hundreds of friends in 2 days and hanging out with the sap mentor gang. The event was well organized and I enjoyed the design of the break areas .

Now I am on my way back, and thought I will jot down my impressions after the event

1. Simplicity

Bill’s keynote was themed on simplicity . But 90 mins was a lot of time to explain simplicity . I seriously would urge SAP to consider 30 minute keynotes in future events . That will help sharpen the message a lot. Bill is probably the best speaker at SAP today – and it is an injustice to his talent and stature to lose audience attention because of the length of a keynote .

The length issue was even worse on day 2 – with most of the room empty by the time Bernd got into the meat of his presentation . I felt bad that he didn’t get a fair shot at delivering his message on his first keynote as head of development . And for an American audience , Bernd probably was a tad too formal – but I give him kudos for being his own person, and not trying to be Vishal 2.0 .

Despite the time running long – I did enjoy the customers explaining how their business problems got solved using technology . Maybe one day SAP might try a keynote driven by customers for customers

2. Are aggregates and hierarchies evil ?

Plattner/Christensen keynote spent a lot of time talking about the advantages of lowest level data granularity helping companies and aggregates and hierarchies hurting those companies . I tend to disagree a bit on some of that thinking .

No company including SAP can be run on line item level information . Aggregated information is the only way leaders can work day to day . What Is required on top is an exception alerting framework . If something is out of whack in accounts receivable – systems should smartly highlight the cause and not expect the user to drill down extensively searching for data . Otherwise – line item data is counter productive .

Same deal with hierarchies . Absence of hierarchies is chaos . Look at SAP itself – a well run company with 3 different levels of board , 4 levels of VPs and so on . Can some of it be cut ? You bet . Can it be eliminated ? No way . What might be closer to truth is that companies need to become more project oriented for innovation work – but anything that typically needs continuity and/or scale typically needs a defined structure – and that creates hierarchies.

So – in my view – hierarchies and aggregates are not fundamentally bad . What is bad is rigid IT and org systems that can’t deal with aggregates and hierarchies flexibly.

3. Impressive hana customer numbers

It was heartening to see hana momentum continuing . Steve Lucas and team are continuing to rock it . What is needed now seems to be a doubling down on adoption to close the gap between license sales and live implementations so that the business is long term sustainable .

4. PaaS gets much needed attention

I was thrilled to see how much the Hana cloud platform message was pushed this year at sapphirenow , especially by Steve Lucas . This was a topic very close to my heart when I worked there . I know many of my former colleagues are excited too . There are two things I would urge SAP to consider –

1. First , rename HCP to something else to avoid confusion with HEC. If I were king , I would call it Neo again . But I am sure there are other names that could work too

2. Invest in app deployment from marketplace . If customers can’t deploy apps from marketplace – it won’t get adoption . And this needs commitment to change how products are designed to begin with .

5. SAP should have put its key second line of leaders on spotlight

Rob Enslin , Steve Lucas , Michael Reh, Rodolpho etc are exceptionally talented leaders that customers should hear from – at least briefly . Given SAP is betting its business on Hana – at a minimum I expected Steve to get a small spot on keynote . I would urge SAP to consider something along those lines at Dcode if they can.

6. What about BI , mobility and big data ?

Many thanks to SAP for announcing the collaboration with MongoDB . I hope this is the beginning of a long term strategic partnership http://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/elegantly-visualize-big-data-mongodb-using-sap-lumira .

BI, big data and mobility barely got any keynote love . I understand the attention on Hana and cloud – but after a few years of Hana messaging, isn’t it time now to present a balanced portfolio again ?

SAP needs to leap frog it’s BI completion by some category defining move . The BI team under Michael Reh on engineering and Christian Rodatus under PSG are strong and talented . I am betting on them coming out with something that takes SAP back to the height of their glory days

I am sure I missed many topics – they are boarding the plane , so I need to run . Ciao !