And Vijay Says…

After spending two days at MongoDB – I am pretty happily convinced that my instincts about both the company and the product were not off base . It’s just very different from what I am used to .

Although I was hired to run the global channels organization here , I am an engineer first (and I am not very good at reading manuals) . So the first thing I did (even before I started my first day in office ) was to instal and write a hello world .

I Kid you not – installation of MongoDB was the fastest thing I have ever seen in my SW experience . I signed up online and hit download and clicked install – and it did . If anything trumped my excitement of installing the software – that was when I saw the list of drivers available . There is a driver for every popular programming environment including C , which is my first preference coding language . Not having to learn a new language to try MongoDB – that made me believe “Bring Your Own Language” is indeed a reality . In essence – it took next to no time to instal and code a small program . Forget databases – I have never been productive this fast on any software in my life . It will be an understatement to say I am excited .

Then there is the onboarding – in less than an hour , I filled the paperwork for government stuff, insurance etc and got all the systems I need access to .

This week, I am going through a five day bootcamp with colleagues from all over the world . It’s both informative and fun – and it’s abundantly clear the company has good quality control in its hiring process . And the content delivered in the bootcamp is not a pile of PowerPoint – it is on whiteboard . For someone like me who hates PPT with a passion, this is close to nirvana.

It’s a startup in every sense . People use skateboards and ping pong tables all the time – and what is best, I can’t find any trace of a corporate hierarchy . The CEO, CTO and head of sales are as approachable as the developers and sales people . I am used to seeing people with those titles walking along typically with an entourage – and I haven’t seen it here yet . I am totally counting on it staying that way 🙂

I love our social media policy – which is to remain peaceful and not get into mudslinging even if competitors try to sling mud on us . The team is as competitive if not more competitive than any I know of . But they like to compete directly in front of customers – not in shadow matches in social media . I went back some time in twitter to see and I think this has held true from the sample I checked .

As an aside , this was in fact the reason behind my April Fool’s joke today on twitter and Facebook that I took over as VP of Social Media in MongoDB. It was a reasonably successful prank given the number of congratulations I got 🙂 (My original idea was to say I am now VP of facilities management – but started having doubts if anyone will believe to begin with)

What about customers ? I was thrilled to see a nearly unending list of customer stories with many big names that I recognize readily . I am looking forward to talking to them directly to make sure I get some first hand feedback too . There are many examples of volume, variety and velocity being handled well by MongoDB , enabling customers and partners to build apps that give them BIG VALUE.

The one I especially liked was a project that MetLife did on MongoDB . After spending 2 years and several million dollars trying to get a 360 degree view of their millions of customers – they were not successful . And then they did that in just three months with MongoDB – consolidating information stored in 70 or so policy management system . It’s pretty clear that the ability to handle schemas dynamically is key in making such a solution – I can’t imagine trying to design a classic relational database solution to combine the 70 systems . If you don’t believe me – just look at your automobile and life insurance policies side by side and decide how much is in common . There is a good chance that you will not even have policy numbers across the two that look alike – let alone the attributes for each policy . Today with the 360 degree view – a MetLife call center agent knows almost everything there is to know about a customer . Isn’t that transformational ?

Many friends have asked since I announced I am moving to MongoDB if MongoDB is competitive with Hadoop . I learned today that it is not the case and the two are quite complimentary . In fact there is a Hadoop connector from MongoDB that is capable of MapReduce functionality to be triggered in Hadoop side and it lets the results be written back to MongoDB. You can use MongoDB as the online transactional engine and Hadoop as an analytical engine side by side . That is pretty neat .

I haven’t figured out a whole lot about the ops side of devops – but if I understood the roadmap correctly , the 2.6 version being released shortly will make the ops functionality pretty sophisticated and it gets even more better in future releases . More on that as I learn more about the product.

Sorry for the rather long post – I got a little carried away with all my excitement 🙂

Those who know me well know how much I care for my dogs . For all intents and purposes – Boss, Hobo and Ollie are treated as our kids by my wife and I .

And today morning all three of them disappeared – on my watch !

My dogs have a tendency to lock me out of the house . They did that today too – while I was in the backyard , Ollie knocked the latch from inside . So I went around to the front of the house and my wife let me in. In the process, I forgot to latch the gate from the yard to the street .

My wife left for her work, and my daughter went to school – and the dogs and I were in the house by ourselves. Then came the handyman to help me with some odd jobs . To let him in – I left the dogs in the backyard. About five minutes later – I went back to get them in, and they had disappeared . All three of them had gone some place – and left no trace.

In sheer panic, the handyman and I started driving around the neighborhood but we couldn’t find them. My wife came home to help me search but no result . I sent her back to office and started systematic scanning of every route we have walked the dogs before – but no luck.

I posted on twitter and Facebook that my dogs are missing – and my friends amplified it quite a bit . I also got a ton of great advice on how to find them. I ran back home and printed flyers to put up on every place I could tape one on in the neighborhood.

I advertised in Craigslist and also reported the incident to the county animal control . A volunteer of an online forum in Facebook for list pets in AZ helped me put an announcement in their page. Still no dice . I came back home dejected fearing the worst and thoroughly angry at myself .

Few minutes later , my pal Mani Sreenivasan pinged me to say he saw an online ad saying a dog was found in my zip code . I checked out the link and was shocked (in a good way) to see Ollie’s photo. He looked like he was having a good time too. I called the number on the ad – and a guy picked up immediately . And after checking details – he confirmed he has all three of the dogs

Apparently he was walking back from the bus stop seeing off his fourth grader daughter when he saw my three guys roaming the street . He took them home and let them play in his backyard and pool with his two Goldens . Apparently from 9 AM to 5 PM – while I was within an inch of having a heart attack , my three fur kids were having “the best Friday ever” playing non stop with new friends 🙂

My daughter and I went to pick up the dogs and after thanking Rich and his family as much as we could – we got the guys home. All three are tired , and Hobo seems sore from all the hard playing he must have done today. But everyone is happy now and tucked in. It will take a lot longer for me to calm down – and even longer for me to forgive myself for not being careful with the gate when I let them out

It is amazing how much social media – or in general, internet – helped me in getting my boys back. Google, Facebook, Fidofinder.com and twitter came together to connect many different people to eventually trace my guys . The irony is that the guy who found my dogs lived about 3 minutes away from our house and his kid and mine go to the same school .

There is only one villain in this story – that is me . But there are two Heros – my buddy Mani, who checked online a thousand times tirelessly till he got the link to the advertisement , and Rich and family who found and took great care of my fur kids all day. They are not just Heros – they are angels in human form. They have my eternal gratitude.

And a huge thanks to my many friends on Facebook and twitter who helped me by spreading the word, keeping me focused and finally celebrated with me when we found the guys . Many of them are physically thousands of miles away from AZ – some stayed awake through midnight to give me support. I can’t thank them all enough.

All is well that ends well – and thankfully, it did end well this time. But I will be a lot more careful in future – I don’t have it in me to face this nightmare a second time .

As I picked up my phone today morning , the first thing I saw online was
this http://global12.sap.com/news-reader/index.epx?category=ALL&articleID=22589&searchmode=C&page=1&pageSize=10

I think it is a pretty good move for SAP.
Here are my initial thoughts

Managing Contingent Workers – and the vendors that represent them – is a big pain for every client I have had in my career . I have seen SAP, non SAP and 100% custom built solutions used for CW management and never seen a customer that thought they had a firm grip on the matter .

The difficulty I have seen is not in core functionality – it’s always in integration. CW information is needed by a lot of parts of the company – like HR, finance , legal, compliance , procurement ,AP and so on . For every stand alone CE system – we have had to build many interfaces and reports to make it work.

If SAP cracks the code on integration quickly – they have access to a HUGE market . Practically all of its install base will buy if integration pain is taken off the table . The exact opposite will be the result if they suspect this is yet another massive integration project .

Given SAP’s investment in Ariba (power of networks – CW and procurement is a potent combination) , SFSF (one cloud for all HR) , Hana ( conquering world hunger and all that 🙂 ) and BOBJ ( mobile analytics , predictive) – there is plenty of opportunity to take Fieldglass to a higher level and highly differentiated solution .

Jonathan Becher’s challenge as CMO will be to choose which of the hundred possible messages his team will focus on . That is a good problem to have 🙂

Product management and Engineering – that is the side of the house that needs to burn the midnight oil now. Arriving at a comprehensive roadmap is not trivial . But knowing the team – I am sure they will come up with some good stuff .

If SAP wants to bet on cloud – I think HR is the best possible domain to bet on. I would even go on a limb and say SAP should sacrifice CRM in favor of HR in terms of new investments. Workday is a real threat for SAP and such acquisitions will give SAP something to out flank them rather than just try to out run them .

Good luck to Shawn Price and team !