Brij Singh's Random Musings

MLODI

Merrill Lynch has come up with a model to track and evaluate the on-demand computing solution adoptions -
From their website :-

"The MLODI will serve as an objective measure designed to reflect the fundamentals of software companies as they make the transition to on-demand business models," Jason Maynard, Merrill Lynch's software analyst, said at the firm's Software and Services Conference, in Santa Monica, California.

MLODI is intended to provide investors with a quarterly tool that tracks both the amount of revenue generated and solutions deployed via the On Demand model. The index will break down the software sector by sub-segments for applications, infrastructure, management and niche markets. MLODI will also utilize cash flow and booking methods in conjunction with traditional metrics so investors can better make relative valuation comparisons between companies that have different models.

The MLODI survey will incorporate results from the leading software companies in the industry, including Mercury Interactive Corporation, Grand Central Communications, and Oracle. The first results of MLODI will be published in early spring. "

I wonder why they are not getting results from other two poster-child of the variable-cost bandwagon - SalesForce.com and IBM. It would be interesting to see how financial community dissects the numbers given to them by both public and private companies without making this a 50000 ft exercise.

Bollywood

Pankaj Mishra on Bollywood -

"Some Bollywood directors see a great opportunity to score over Hollywood. Certainly, the global village seems to need a more complex moral code than that offered by Rambo and the Terminator, and Bollywood, even with all its apparently absurd sentimentality, may be better placed to provide it than the cynically, if slickly, retailed violence of Hollywood."

Amitabh Bachchan blasted on the term first used by some Bombay journalists to define Indian Film Industry as "Bollywood". He really hated this term and I think he showed his anger while talking to NPR last year.
NPR has been consistently covering on this topic.

Cultural collision brought by two large dreamfactories of the world is something worth watching.

Info Mesa

Just started reading Info Mesa, a fascinating story of famous Santa Fe Institue by Ed Regis. Partly driven by my desire to understand all institutionalized models which came up to tackle the problem (and also opportunity) related to information complexity.

From the book : -

"It was precisely the ability to reduce empirical reality to data, to manipulate that data by machines, and then to extract from the output an important new empirical result, that years later underlay the birth of the Info Mesa"

Will post more from this book. I wish I can first finish this book and then do anything else.

What runs in the family isnt success

Socialist Don Conley , also a director of the Center for Advanced Social Science at New York University has come out with some startling findings in his new book - "The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why".

Findings which will generate more debate and interest (and can also affect family planning) : -

- differences between families explain only 25 percent of the nation's income inequality; the remaining 75 percent is explained by differences between siblings

- middle offspring are less likely to receive financial support for their education and may do less well in school than their older and younger siblings. Unlike typical first- and last-borns, he reasons, middle children never experience family life as an only child; instead, they are forced to compete with their siblings for money and attention.

- women are more likely to be as successful as their brothers if their mothers worked outside the home

NYT article on this refers to previous work on the lines of Birth Order theory. Frank J. Sulloway, a historian of science, published the controversial best seller "Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives" (Pantheon, 1996). Book purported to show the Darwinian logic by which firstborns grow up to be rule-abiding conformists and political leaders, while later-borns become rebellious innovators and revolutionaries.

Though Mr. Conley is deeply skeptical of birth order theory, calling it "next after astrological signs as people's favorite folk explanation for why things turn out."

To get an idea how studies like this affect people, hear what Conley has to say about his own family - "thanks in part to his findings on middle-borns, he said, he was no longer considering having a third child".

VC funding by the sector

VC Deals By Industry:

Biotech (113)
Broadband (14)
Consulting (11)
E-Commerce (6)
Internet Services (74)
Nanotechnology (7)
Networking (63)
Optical (16)
Retail (6)
Security (31)
Semiconductor (28)
Software (103)
Telecommunications (14)
Wireless (51)

Security is continuing with its bubble march and many more I know are in the pipeline. Ecommerce sector is surprisingly uninvested considering the creative(read cheap) opportunities available there. Just living off Ebay and Amazon should generate decent number of business plans.

Oblix buying Confluent

Looselycoupled on reasons why Oblix choose Confluent :

Oblix says enterprises get control of identity management before they begin managing web services. It bought Confluent so it can offer both:

-Customers invariably have ID management installed before they look at managing services
-Oblix is gambling that its 130+ customers will be happy to buy Confluent's offering
-Confluent has just 4 live customers. Two-thirds of its staff are to leave

This is continuation of the web services management vendors consolidation. Next in line should be WestGlobal, Infravio and Amberpoint

Investing in restarts

NEA's Peter Morris on how they salvaged Caspian Networks -

We had to cut our losses and accept the fact that we'd failed. Completely. The easiest thing would have been to walk away,But if you believe in it long term, you have to stick with it. It's risky as hell.

Versioning

There are lot of commonalities in the software design methodology and the one used by building architects. Emphasis on aesthetics, coherency, and evolutionary approach are just few of them.

Newyork based architecture design firm SHoP/Sharples Holden has come out with
a new model for architecture practice. Its called Versionining -

"Intent on exploring the computer’s capabilities for changing design processes in the act of making, SHoP uses versioning to describe the significant shift in the way technology is being applied to expand, in time as well as in territory, the potential effects of design. This requires rethinking the design process in terms of procedure and outcome in ways that are totally unprecedented in both the construction industry and conventional design methodologies. It also has far-reaching implications on the entire design process and existing design/production partnerships"

Added this book to my list for 2004