Apple should invest money in the US economy

Apple now has more cash than the US Government!

This sums up the problem in US or Global economy and missing point in immigration and outsourcing debate.

Outsourcing has moved many jobs abroad and immigration is challenging the remaining jobs . While this is happening, only top companies and top 1% of the population is making money.

See this video

Since 1980 US economy has doubled in size but average wages have remain flat.

All the gains have gone to super riches

• Top 1% used to have 10 % share in income in 1980 which has now grown to 20% income.
• Now super riches have share of 20% income but 40% share of wealth.

Thats the twin effect of outsourcing and immigration.

Its time the top 1% of the companies and individuals give it back to society and invest in new jobs in their countries.

What kind of jobs is the question of another debate !

Will Nepal, Bhutan and Mongolia emerge as data center outsourcing locations?

The two mega trends this decade are cloud computing and mobile broadband. Both will generate vast amount of data and will require out of box data center solutions.

The biggest component of data center cost is energy head and in energy cost the biggest component is the cooling.

The race to green and economical data center solutions is driving companies to solve cooling problem in the innovative ways.

There is an emerging trend to locate data centers in cool climates like Scandinavian countries for non critical application and hence decrease the cooling requirements and save cost.

If data centers can be located in cool European countries then why not in Asia ?

Apart from cooling savings, Real estate and labor cost will be cheap in Asia ( Though that is not significant cost for data center and cannot be a major factor in location choice but every dollar counts !)

Which are cool ( cold) countries in Asia which will be willing to promote themselves as attractive data center locations?

West Asia ( Afghanistan, Pakistan) and Kashmir in India are out of question because of security and geopolitics.

The other cold countries in Asia are China, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Bhutan and Mongolia.

China, Korea, Japan - Already lot is going on there in terms of opportunities and they might not be interested in promoting them selves as Data Center location

Will Nepal, Bhutan and Mongolia be interested?

The above three are landlocked countries surrounded by big Asian powers such as India and China. As these countries were landlocked they were not able to develop themselves as trading destinations and economic boom has eluded them so far.

Will their cold weather help them now?

Interestingly middle east had no economic development till the oil was discovered . Will mother nature contribute similarly to development of Nepal , Bhutan and Mongolia ?

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Little bit of information of my new book:

"WHO IS THAT LADY?" 

Website/ Where to buy - http://www.whoisthatlady.com

Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/WhoIsThatLady

A Business Fiction book - "Who is that lady?"

The book is about an idea that is converted into a billion dollar business, about a belief that an idea can be implemented and about formulating right strategy for converting an idea into a business. The plot harmoniously weaves around complex business fundamentals, required to set up, run and make a business successful, presented in lucid, easy to understand style. The novel is about implementation, about challenges that can be overcome, about success, about friendship, about passion, and about fun above all! All in all a hilarious and inspiring story on entrepreneurship and idea possibilities!

The book has got good and encouraging reviews from readers so far.

Dr. T. R. Madanmohan ( Ex Associate Professor IIM Bangalore ) says, “Reading ‘Who is that lady?’ brought vividly the moments of celebration and anguish of "identification of business opportunity", validation and construction of business model and implementation. A wonderful, written as a novel, that should be read by all current and future business leaders. Wish the book was available around 2005 for my class of Managing Technology led business at IIM Bangalore. I am sure the class would have devoured and gained much more from the book.” 

Sathish Sheshadri ( Management Consultant at IBM) says, “India is renowned for using stories to convey great life lessons. Who is that Lady could well become such a legendary story on the topic of innovation and entrepreneurship. Everyone from students to CEOs will find a lot to reflect on, from the pearls of wisdom that the authors have shared through the protagonist, Pratik.”

Major Pooja Gupta says, “The book makes you think... if there is anything in this world which is impossible.”

Subir Dhar (Principal Consultant at Infosys) says, “This book will inspire India’s restless youth to take up entrepreneurship.”

Neerav Nimesh (Entrepreneur) says, “An entertaining book, which is not only a good novel but also a very good book on management. The author has been able to explain the fundamentals of every aspect of business whether marketing, planning, strategy, organizational structure, H.R., lines of communication, team work, goal setting etc and has done so without appearing to dispense "gyan".

Website/ Where to buy - http://www.whoisthatlady.com

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Telecom Vertical Integration : Ericsson's interest in acquiring a telecom operator

I wrote about the emerging trend of vertical integration across technology industries

http://pareekhjain.blogspot.com/2009/09/vertical-integration-and-rise-of.html

Similar to that thought, interesting developments are happening in telecom sector

Telecom equipment providers ( Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Alcatel Lucent, Huawei, ZTE and others) are slowly moving up the value chain and increasing their scope of offerings to operators.

Earlier telecom equipment providers used to supply only the equipments but now they are offering services also along with the equipments, thus taking over some of the activities which telecom operators used to perform in house ( Managed Services)

Now Ericsson is moving one step ahead and along with a partner is bidding for a telecom operator in Nigeria

http://wirelessfederation.com/news/83958-ericsson-to-pitch-in-as-technical-partner-as-part-of-telco-acquisition-nigeria/

Should telecom operators of the world need to worry ?

Larger implications for firms is that their outsourcing vendor can be their competitor in future. Imagine a technology provider to a bank (such as IBM or Accenture) in future shows interest in acquiring that bank !! This is extreme danger of outsourcing !!

Telecom Innovation : Virtual Subway Shopping

I wrote in my post about innovation opportunities

Killing Time on Subway and Airports

Virtual Shopping Opportunity in Remote Areas

http://pareekhjain.blogspot.com/2010/07/50-telecom-and-technology-innovations.html

Looks Tesco has applied both of the above innovation opportunities and introduced Virtual Subway Store in Korea. ( See the video below)

I am not surprised as it is introduced in Korea, which is next big thing in Telecom

http://pareekhjain.blogspot.com/2010/06/south-korea-next-big-thing-in-telecom.html

Telecom Corruption China vs India: Execution

India and China , Telecom's two largest and fastest growing markets are suffering from corruption scandals lately.

India has recently showed some action by arresting the accused minister, politicians, bureaucrats and corporate honchos ( Though this is not enough but even skeptics will agree that this is significant action by India's standards!)

But China has beaten India in the action. China Mobile executive is sentenced to death over bribes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/business/global/china-mobile-executive-sentenced-to-death-over-bribes.html

India can't beat China's EXECUTION record !!

BFSI Search Engine: Business Case from Google AdWords Data

Word Stream has published data on Top 20 most expensive keywords categories in Google Adwords and their respective search volume.

http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2011/07/18/most-expensive-google-adwords-keywords

It is interesting that top 3 search keywords by volume for Google's Adwords revenue are Insurance, Loan and Mortgage respectively. Credit keyword is fifth in the list

These 4 key words : Insurance, Loan, Mortgage and Credit comes in BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance ) category.

Together above four key words account for 49% of google's revenue generating search volume

Word Stream has give data for Top 20 keywords which account for 70% of revenue generating search volume.

If assume this 70% search volume gives 80% of revenue than four BFSI keywords ( Insurance, Loan, Mortgage and Credit) will generate 59% of revenue.

So a search engine can be made exclusively for BFSI ads, which could potentially have 60% of Google's revenue and only 50% of the cost ( Yes it will be more profitable!!)

In dollar terms, the revenue of this hypothetical BFSI search engine could be around $ 20 Billion annually!

What could be features of this exclusive BFSI search engine?

• Focus on target users who are searching for BFSI products
• Provide relevant information to users cutting across noise and comparing different BFSI products of different companies
• Rating of BFSI products and companies across regions
• Data and statistics on BFSI product usage and availability
• Analysis of current macro information and its impact on BFSI products
• BFSI consumer behavior and analytics
• Legal and other consumer's hidden risks related to BFSI products
• Lead generation to BFSI companies

Challenge:

It requires participation of major BFSI companies and their voluntary sharing of product and consumer usage data

Reward:

For BFSI companies, it will create leads of target audience at much economical rate

Why there is no big BFSI search engine yet ? Or better question to ask is why the current BFSI search engines are not that successful?

Will Google Plus succeed ?

I wrote few months about lack of individual and group privacy in current social networks ( Idea 31)

http://pareekhjain.blogspot.com/2010/07/50-telecom-and-technology-innovations.html

Google Plus has implemented the individual and group privacy with circles concept. This is evolutionary development in social networking and should be successful.

Comments from Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner is that there is place for only three social networks and his three networks are Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. He feels there is no place for any other social network.

http://www.slashgear.com/linkedin-ceo-says-google-cant-coexist-with-facebook-and-twitter-19165917/

If you look at email space, Hotmail and Yahoo were established players when Gmail was launched. There was no need for new email services but Gmail proved to be successful because it was better ( at least for some) than existing email services.

Few users made Gmail id and eventually started using it as their primary email id. Few users saw no value in another email services and they still continue to use either their Yahoo or Hotmail or even Aol mail service.

By similar analogy, many users will make ids on Google Plus and few who like it better than Facebook will eventually make Google Plus as their first preference. Few will move back to Facebook as their first preference. Few users will not bother for Google Plus or any other new social network for that matter.

So Google Plus should be successful and both Facebook and Google Plus can coexist.

( By the way, Facebook users are showing signs of fatigue as recent reports shows that Facebook active users are going down in mature US and Canadian market.

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/12/facebook-sees-big-traffic-drops-in-us-and-canada-as-it-nears-700-million-users-worldwide/

So a new social network is not a bad thing !")

How Cisco is being beaten by rivals with SME strategies??

Cisco , once darling of stock market is in news for wrong reasons. How come a company which was considered as unbeatable has been outsmart by rivals?

I wrote about how small businesses can beat MNC's and it looks Cisco's rivals though not small businesses are using these strategies successfully to beat Cisco.

http://pareekhjain.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-smes-and-startups-can-beat-mnc.html

Strategies discussed were - Focus on Low Pricing, Focus on Rival's Existing Accounts, Focus on Rival's Existing Businesses, Flexibility and Faster Response Time, Focus on Services, Focus on Bundling.

Cisco has taken its dominance on its core market for granted and its focus has been on new markets. John Chambers have earlier talked about in 2008 about focusing on 30 new adjacent market each with potential of $ 1 Billion business. While the new markets have not delivered, Cisco begin loosing share in its existing markets.

Cisco's rivals have undercut pricing by over 40% in Cisco's core market. The effect is more seen in price sensitive emerging markets where Cisco is loosing its market share faster.

Innovating deals by rivals combining different solutions, services , financing is providing them competitive edge over Cisco.

The information is not in public domain but my guess is Cisco's focus might have been more on generating business from new accounts but their old accounts might be the ones tempted by low pricing and better service of rivals.

Cisco had lost its flexibility and response time with new complex organization structure created in 2007 of overlapping nine management councils, which rightly have now been reduced to three councils.

In short Cisco, who was considered unbeatable, have been beaten ( temporarily though !).

Not only SME's can beat MNC's even big companies can beat MNC's by acting like SME's and deploying above strategies !!

Celebrity Investment: Road to Silicon Valley in India

When will India have its own Silicon Valley? This question baffles many. Not only in India but across the world, many governments want to replicate Silicon Valley phenomena.

While the physical infrastructure and the support network is easy to observe and replicate, one area, which is difficult to understand and even more difficult to replicate, is the culture of Silicon Valley.

One cannot define the culture of Silicon Valley in exact words but one interesting observation worth discussing- Lady Gaga invested in a startup in June 2011.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/05/lady-gaga-and-eric-schmidt-invest-in-a-startup/

In a way it sums it up the Silicon Valley culture. It is fashionable for even celebrities to start, work and associate with startups!

India has long way to go to achieve this kind of phenomena when celebrities will find fashionable to invest in startups. Imagine Shahrukh Khan investing in a next generation cloud computing firm!

Its not that Indian celebrities are not investing in business ventures, but they not investing in technology startups.

Where are celebrities investing in India? Well celebrities have invested in IPL Cricket teams and see how successful IPL has become in a short span.

I don’t know whether celebrity investing in startups is cause or effect of Silicon Valley phenomena. But I am sure whenever India reaches that stage of celebrity investment in startups, it will be fashionable to start, invest and associate with startup and India will be on the way of developing its own Silicon Valley. Shahrukh and others, please invest soon!