A load of crap from an idle brain

Been a while since i updated my equity portfolio.  Some of the stocks were already at their highs; and i felt it was appropriate time for me to liquidate them and invest in others.

Bought the following

Sold the following

Hoping for the markets to correct sharply once the much expected double dip recession hits the US economy.  There would be lots of great bargains out there then.

Above stock price history courtesy:  Yahoo Finance

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Seriously, its high time the government of India paid proper heed to push up the manufacturing industry in the country.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dropped a bombshell at the meeting of the full planning commission on Tuesday when he disclosed that the US computer hardware giant Dell was looking at shifting out of China, and hinted that the company may be looking at India as its sourcing base. Dell, he quoted the company’s chairman as saying, buys $25 billion from China. China’s loss could mean a huge gain for India, he added.

The news comes on the heels of software giant Google shutting down its search engine in mainland China and redirecting Chinese language search traffic to Hong Kong.

The prime minister, in his closing remarks at the plan panel meet, said: “A very important point has been raised regarding development of the hardware sector of information technology. This morning I met the chairman of Dell Corporation. He informed me that they are buying equipment and parts worth $25 billion from China. They would like to shift to safer environment with climate conducive to enterprise with security of legal system. So I think this is an area where there are immense opportunities. I urge the Planning Commission to apply their mind about development of hardware and parts of computer industry.”

Full article here

Google picture courtesy:  Apple Investor

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It was 1997 when i first worked on this product.  It was the version 4.5 and called Lotus Notes. A few months later, it became 4.6 and the server was formally christened as Domino and the client was lotus notes.

On December 7, 2009, Lotus Notes completed 20 years.  At a time when a software or a service hardly goes beyond a few years Lotus with around 150 million licenses sold and with thousands of professionals and a big slice of Fortune 500 companies using the software, its not dead as expected by its rivals.

For years, Microsoft tried every trick in its book to not only diss the product, but also spread mis-information that Lotus Notes is dying, its clumsy, its not user friendly and lots of other accusations.  Some accusations stuck.  The lotus notes client was not user friendly till about version 7.  Thereafter, IBM has really spruced up the client part of the software.

The server as always has been robutst. Its a dream software for the administrators to administer.  To administer a complex and massive Lotus Domino setup you hardly need a few administrators, but to manage the competing Microsoft Exchange, you need an army.  For a product which has hardly has had any virus that has managed to infect the system, it itself is a testament to the robustness of Lotus Notes.  As for Exhchange, Outlook we know how many times its been affected not only by viruses but also the amount of security compromises that have happened with the software.

I downloaded the Lotus Domino 8.5 trial copy and managed to run both the server and client on my PC at home effortlessly.  My PC is a 1.5 GB RAM Opteron processor Compaq machine.  Almost 4 years old.  In spite of that, the software was hardly hogging any memory.  With the Domino server and the lotus client working in the background, i was able to browse the net on my firefox browser (20 tabs open at the same time).  That’s when i realised reading a previous article that Lotus 8.5 was much much faster than Lotus 8.  Surprising isnt it?

When it comes to Micorosoft, every new upgrade means a rip and replace.  You can never run Windows XP on a machine running Windows 98 or a Vista on a XP machine and so on.  Heck, the new version of Microsoft Exchange 2010 is an exclusive 64 bit application and you need a 64 bit hardware to even test it out.  Now beat that.

Today, we look back 20 years and see nearly 150 million licenses sold, tens of millions of applications created, and hundreds of thousands of IT professionals whose careers have involved, or continue to be involved with, the industry that has grown up around Lotus Notes and Domino.

Over these 20 years, people have come and gone.  Technologies have changed.  The market for collaboration software has, in some ways, just hit its stride.  At times criticized as difficult, ugly, or unusable, while at other times running businesses and providing solutions where nothing else could, in its first 20 years, Lotus Notes has been more than just a software product.  It has, through its use in a diverse set of organizations around the world, helped usher in the modern era of information sharing, and continues to set pace in that capacity today.  Despite bad press that has occurred frequently and regularly in that 20 years, Notes/Domino is a huge business today for IBM and 10,000 business partners worldwide — many of whom are continuing to grow their business, and others are just starting up.

Full article here

Here’s wishing another 20 more years for this wonderful software.  More about IBM Lotus here

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What the successor has to manage.  A 140 year old group with….

Turnover – $71 billion

Employees – 357,000

Number of companies under the group – 98

To replace – Ratan Tata

Anyone interested / capable ?

India’s Tata conglomerate is looking around the world for a successor to Ratan Tata, the 71-year old chairman of the sprawling salt-to-steel group said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday.

Local and foreign candidates were being looked at to head the group, which includes Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Power among its 27 listed companies

“We are in the process of formalising a successor to me. We have some outside consultants and a formal search process is on. There are no constraints,” Tata, who has steered the group for nearly two decades, said in the interview.

The successor could be from within the group or outside, Tata said, adding he hoped the person would carry on the growth path that had been set. All but one of the group’s past chairmans have been Tatas, although at the moment no family candidate has been publicly identified to take over the role.

“It would certainly be easier if that candidate were an Indian national. But now that 65 percent of our revenues come from overseas, it could also be an expatriate sitting in that position with justification now,” Tata said.

The group, founded in 1868, runs India’s top vehicle maker, top software services firm, top private sector power producer and the world’s eighth-largest steel maker by output.

Full news here

Finally a tried and tested person at the helm of such a prestigious project.  Hope he gets the time and space to deliver and is not hounded by petty minded politicians.

Nandan Nilekani resigned as Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies and its board on Thursday, following his appointment as Chairman of an IT-driven Government program for providing unique identification numbers to citizens of the country.

“The Board of Directors at Infosys has already accepted Nilekani’s resignation. The resignation would be effective from July 9, 2009,” said the company.

Nilekani will take charge as Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India with the rank of Cabinet Minister.

As co-founder of India’s second-largest software exporting firm, Nilekani served as director on the Infosys board since its inception in 1981.

Between March 2002 and June 2007, he served as the company’s chief executive officer and managing director. He was later re-designated as Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors.

“We are glad that an extraordinary individual like Nandan has got an opportunity to add value to India through this position. As a company that has always put the interest of society ahead of itself, Infosys will accept his absence with a sense of duty to a larger cause,” Infosys Chairman and Mentor N R Narayana Murthy said.

More here.

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