Indians get a Unique Identity

During my recent vacation in India, I had a wonderful opportunity to meet one-on-one with Nandan Nilekani, the Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAD). Nandan is one of the architects of Offshore IT business in India. He founded and evolved Infosys into one of the most innovative and successful IT services provider in the world. I have always admired what he and his team achieved at Infosys.

I had heard about Nandan leaving Infosys in 2009 to lead a government project to provide a Unique Identification number (called Aadhaar number) to each and every Indian. I was intrigued but just did not get around to learning more about the initiative. Aadhaar is the hindi word that for "foundation" or "support". The idea is to create a 21st century equivalent of the US Social Security Number in India. The most attributes of the program in India are:

• Each Aadhaar number is associated with biometric information (retina and fingerprint scans) that uniquely and digitally identifies the person.
• UIAD had developed and runs a simple high-performance web-service for on-line verification of the Aadhaar number and the biometric information associated with it.

The fact that a service provider can validate the identity of a person in real-time opens up the possibility of developing some very unique and valuable services. Further, the fact that the number is tied to unique verifiable information allows the card-holder to retain complete control of all personal information associated with the card. Nandan and I had a long discussion on the possible services that this can enable in financial services, government programs, healthcare, etc. The possibilities are truly unlimited.

Over 12 years ago, I realized that strong identity management is central to secure and seamless access to IT services. We have developed a robust Identity and Access Management for the 30,000+ employees at the Washington Post companies and integrated all our services to one central IAM solution. It was very hard for us to develop a solution that is now broadly utilized across all the IT services provided by my team. The complexity of deploying a solution to support 1.2 billion people is just mind-blowing. The logistical and political challenges are just enormous.

I believe that even if the project delivers only 10% of its true potential, the value to the country and the citizens of India will be huge.

IT as a Service

Information Technology now plays a central role in the functioning of any business. Most, if not all, projects in a modern business have tasks related to technology. As product lifecycles have shortened and more and more business is conducted on-line, the volume of IT work has grown exponentially. IT departments have become a bottleneck in most companies. Business leaders are frustrated by the lack of agility and scalability of IT services and by the constant increase in cost.

Recent advances is Cloud services provide IT with a solution to deploy and scale technology infrastructure quickly and linearly with demand. Further, SAAS solutions like SalesForce and others have demonstrated that high-end technology solutions can be acquired as a subscription and deployed quickly. Further, these solutions are constantly updated with minimal additional cost. Given these experiences with IAAS and SAAS, business now expects internal IT solutions to be delivered in a similar manner. IT as a Service is a hot topic.

Over the past several years, we have developed a model to deliver Enterprise technology solutions as a service. We now have an organizational blueprint and an architecture template that allows us to develop and deliver new services quickly with no capital investment. I will share our experiences over the next several posts.

pic: our backyard, a couple of days ago!

Games @ Work
Over the past six months, I have been thinking about the potential use of gaming within the enterprise. The explosive growth of Zynga and other social gaming companies demonstrates how engaging the combination is. In addition, we humans respond extremely well to rewards: loyalty programs, bonuses, etc. Reward programs are also widely used to incent certain customer and employee behavior.

Recently, I came across a new term for this trend - Gamification. I like the Wikipedia definition: The use of game play mechanics for non-game applications.

Game theory is beginning to be widely used to influence customer engagement, behavior and even employee productivity. This BusinessWeek article has examples of use of game theory at a broad range of companies: SAP, Hilton, Siemens, UPS, Nissan, Target, etc.

Earlier this week, Gartner, jumped on the bandwagon with a bold statement: "over half of innovation will be gamified by 2015". Here is a ZDnet story covering Gartners' report in detail. Gartner is advising that "Enterprise architects, CIOs and IT planners must be aware of, and lead, the business trend of gamification, educate their business counterparts and collaborate in the evaluation of opportunities within the organization".

I am pleased that we at the CTO Roundable of Washington DC sensed the trend early and are putting together our next Summit on "What CTOs should learn from Gaming" in early fall.

Image: Pacman by Preeti

CES 2010
I really enjoyed my trip to CES after 2 years.

What I loved:

• 3D Plasma TVs from Panasonic; 6.9 mm thin LED TV from LG (I did not manage to check-out Sony's 3D TVs)
• 3D movies (clip from How to train a Dragon from Dreamworks)
• real-time 3D movie editing on Intel platforms
• Project Natal (coverage on cnet) at Microsoft (human body as game controller)
• Nokia's approach to impacting the lives of the poorest while building a very successful global company (Project Progress with lonely planet has some excellent stories and videos)

What I Liked:

• Netbook from Nokia
• Netbook from Sony
• Blackberry Presenter
• Flo TV from Qualcomm
  
• New Intel processors
• Ford's approach towards building automobile technology

So What?

• Microsoft Windows 7 and Zune HD
• Intel Appup
• CE companies have suddenly turned green
• PCs and TVs will seamlessly inter-connect and that is useful

Big Disappointments:

• No Apple, Google, Dell, HP, etc.
  
• Lack of tablet PCs
• eReaders
• Lack of Mobile Software Companies at CES
• Power outage before the first keynote

Cool Geek Toys

• Parrot AR.Drone controlled by an iPhone
• Cool Robots from Japan (mainly toys)

I also tweeted from the conference.

How do Innovators Think?
Interesting blog-post on HBR. Key takeaway:

You might summarize all of the skills we've noted in one word: "inquisitiveness." I spent 20 years studying great global leaders, and that was the big common denominator. It's the same kind of inquisitiveness you see in small children.

In addition, makes life interesting!

Hi-speed Robot
The dexterity of this robot is incredible. It is just amazing what it can do.


Check out more on the web-site of Ishikawa Komuro Lab in Japan.

Jeff Besos on Innovation
I have read a couple of articles about Steve Levy's interviewing Jeff Besos at the Wired Conference: Om Malik, Tim O'Reilly. Jeff is very insightful and crisp in his thoughts. A few things that are easily forgotten:

• Celebrate small innovations
• Innovate backwards from customer requirements and forwards from internal strengths
  
• Over-communicate with employees during tough times
• Worry about errors of omission over errors of commission
• Carefully decide when you need to be stubborn and when you need to be flexible
  

John Seely Brown interview on CIO.com
I fully agree with John (he ran Xerox PARC). The downturn presents an opportunity to innovate. My key takeaway is the following question and answer:

What do you mean by "edge" innovation? Edges are where the action is. There's the generational edge, where kids come up with all kinds of new ideas. They have very different work practices. How can your company leverage those practices rather than just assume they should accept your work practices? Then, at the industry level, you have edge players, often the start-ups. What are they doing that you haven't thought of? Which ones are growing shockingly fast? So, there are generational edges, the company edge, the industry edge, the market edge. And we have geographic edges, like India, and also intellectual or discipline edges. Many breakthroughs today come between disciplines, where multiple disciplines work together.

These edges are all sources of uncertainty. They are risky because they don't have road maps, and yet that's where most of the action is. You can get early detectors of new ideas by paying attention to the edges.

I am starting to pay more attention to what is going on the Edge. My current focus is on Cloud Computing and Open Source, but, I need to broaden that.

Google - Android Developer Challenge
Winners and finalists in this competition for cool mobile apps developed for the Android platform.

Delivering Mobile Apps
Apple iPhone has unleashed a huge amount of developer activity for mobile apps. However, Apple's key to success is the AppStore on iTunes. AppStore makes mobile apps accessible. My top pick from innovations at Apple is iTunes.

Let us see what Google does in this space. I don't know what Microsoft has done for app delivery on the Windows Mobile platform or Nokia on Symbian (need to do some research here!). Post a comment if you know.

UPDATE (9/2/08: 2 PM EST): I just read this article on Infoworld suggesting that Microsoft is planning to build an iTunes-like Apps store! Their current solution is the Windows Mobile Catalog.

The other digital delivery solution I am very impressed with is from Amazon for the Kindle!

What a cool Idea: PlantSense
Just saw an article about this product that can be used to determine if a plant will survive in a location or not. Read more about it on their website!

The product is a small, oblong object that a gardener plunges about halfway into the soil. While the lower half gauges the quality of the soil, the upper portion gathers information on light, heat, weather patterns and other factors that spell life or death to a plant.

Bio-materials in Electronics
Cool article in BusinessWeek on the potential use of biomatrials in electronic devices. It is about time that we start seeing some malleability in the rigid "blocky" forms of our computing devices. Should allow for some interesting innovation in User Experience. Am not sure if any these concepts will see the light of day in anytime soon.

Pic: A Nokia Eco Sensor concept phone that senses your environment. The design does look cool but not that malleable.

Something is up at Microsoft!
The blogosphere is abuzz with an upcoming announcement from Microsoft on Feb 27th.

• Scobleizer (seems to have real insight that he cannot disclose)
  
• TechCrunch (mostly a re-hash of the above article)
• iStartedSomething (lots of guesswork and retractions)
  

I usually do not subscribe to rumors, but this one seems to have some legs!

Guy Kawasaki's Alltop
Interesting way to launch a new site: article on web strategist. Another blog post on the topic. Reader comments are interesting!

Update: another link, and a quote:

.. Our market is people who don’t know what NetVibes and iGoogle or My Yahoo are ...

Technology development has become simple enough for an interesting idea to be launched in just a few hours. What will the future be like?

Here Comes another Bubble :-)

Innovation @ Nokia
I am amazed at how Nokia continues to be the largest and wildly profitable handset maker in the world, while Motorola, their main competitor, stumbled terribly. Here is a great example of why:

Nokia has announced a couple of new low end phones (1209 and 2600) for emerging (high growth) markets deliver what the customer wants: phone sharing (address book for 5 users with cost tracking), because users share phones; low cost: $50 and $90; FM radio, VGA cam. More details on MobileMentalism.

It is impressive that a company with 130,000 employees continues to launch innovative handsets that very effectively address the needs of each of their customers.

Everex Cloudbook - Another Linux Ultra-Mobile PC (UPMC)
Just read about another Linux-based internet browsing device Think Cloudbook from Everex - similar to the Asus EEE I saw at CES.

Not much in common between the two devices besides the 7" VGA LCD Screen and the price ($399). Cloudbook has a 30 GB Hard Disk whereas the Asus has 4 GB solid-state storage. Here is a nice article comparing the two on LinuxDevices.com.

Retro Is In - NComputing (Terminals circa 2008!)

NComputing makes hardware and software for virtual desktop computing. They just raised $28 million in its Series B round led by Menlo Ventures raising their valuation to over $100 million.

Contrary to its competition, NComputing sells its products to educational institutions in the U.S. and abroad, and in emerging markets.

NComputing devices allow up to 30 users to run OS and other applications from a single computer (reminds me of mainframes in the 70s). The device costs between $70 and $200 per user. Over the last 18 months the company has deployed over 500,000 units, including a 180,000-unit deployment in schools throughout Macedonia. The product has also been deployed in schools in Bangladesh, Turkey, Lewisville, Texas, and 19 different school districts in North Carolina. Microsoft products seem to be the biggest cost of their service. Microsoft sells their products at a much lower rate in these markets, thus reducing the cost of the NComputing product.

I believe that these are the kinds of products where Linux-based desktop solutions make a lot of sense.

Coolest gadgets / technology @ CES 2008 (my list)

• OLED TVs from Sony and Samsung
• Camera with real-time translation capability (Intel Keynote)
• Real time music / video collaboration on the web (Intel Keynote)
• Aseus Linux Internet laptop
• 3M mobile projector
• Nokia 810

Paul Otellini, CEO Intel @ CES

I was not planning to go for this keynote as I wanted to spend more time on the show floor. However, I just wanted to sit down as my feet were killing me after having walked for 6 hours. I was pleased that I did go for the keynote. Bill Gates looked tired and

Paul started with a video with new words and images for the 80s song: "Video killed the radio star" ... that went "Internet killed ... CDs, Video, etc, etc".
The key messages from his speech was that the "Go to" internet will become an "internet comes to us" and far beyond push media, rss, etc to an environment that really understands context, needs and preferences. Everyone agrees on this (Bill did too!) and there is a lot of innovation in that direction.

He went on to demo a Mobile device that translates road signs from Chinese to English and even acts as an interpreter, reads restaurant signs and streams restaurant ads. Very cool! Paul described it as a Total Immersion Technology that understands our needs based on context. We get what we need when we need it and how best we can consume it.

He then demoed Everyscape, real views of a location. I think there are several projects underway in this space to take maps to the next level with real images for a true experience of a location before we get there.

Key Obstacles
- processing power (after all, it was an Intel presentation)
- pervasive access to broadband
- natural User Interfaces
- security and privacy

1. Processing Power
Intel (and others) have continued to make chips smaller and more efficient ... Moore's law lives on (twice the transistors on a chip in 2 years). More and more functionality (audio, video, wireless internet) is being delivered in SOC (System On Chip) packaging. Smaller and smaller chips put more and more functionality in mobile devices.

2. Wireless broadband everywhere
Wimax, 3g, 4g, etc. promise to deliver higher and higher bandwidth to mobile devices.

3. User Interface
Bill also pointed out that we are now moving beyond keyboard, muse and joysticks to wands, gestures, etc.

Paul and others then brought on the coolest demo of the presentation. It described in detail in this Wired article and in this AllthingsD blog post. The companies that participated:
- eJamming: Paul thinks that social networking does not offer social interaction. This will change in the next few years.

E-jamming: Allows band members at remote locations to play together. WOW! Very Impressive! They plan to launch technology to "Jamcast" live performances by bands at dispersed locations on the internet.

Big stage: Allows you to easily create a life-like avatar from 3 photos and instantly integrate it (yourself) into movie / TV scenes, music videos, virtual worlds, still images, emails, social networks, etc.

Organic motion: motion-capture system that requires no specialized suits, just an array of cameras.

Smash Mouth then performed the first-ever virtual song: Steve Harwell (lead singer) performed in the Organic Motion booth and the band live over the Internet. Everyone was on the screen as avatars. Very cool. Intel surpassed Microsoft in a software demo!

Bill Gates - Last Keynote @ CES
It was interesting to attend the last keynote by Bill. It is hard to believe that he will no longer be actively working in technology. He started just a few years before I did. I am not even close to affording a retirement.

I started my programming career with Microsoft Pascal on DOS on an IBM PC XT. It has been a love / hate relationship with Microsoft (and Bill). I admired Microsoft in the 80s but as they grew big and powerful, I moved over the the other side in the 90s. They have become much less relevant in this decade. Interesting to note that Google is following the Microsoft trajectory, only much faster. I have the same feelings for Google in 5-6 year slots. The cycle is turning much faster.

Bill expects:

• HD will be everywhere, PCs, TVs and even small devices
• All devices will be always connected to broadband internet. We will have easy access to our digital memories. Devices will know and use context (location, personal / work, etc.) to simplify navigation
• Mouse / Keyboard will no longer be the primary interface. Devices and gadgets will have a lot more use of pen, touch, voice, visual (camera driven), gesture, etc as input.
  

Bill and his team talked about how well they were doing with Vista, Microsoft Live and Microsoft Mobile. Does not ring true. Less than 10% of people I know use these technologies. I think that they are doing well in games and we are planning to embrace Office 2007.

The Microsoft team displayed Surface PC, Silverlight and the Sync product in Ford cars. Of these, I am most interested in trying the Sync feature. They also showed mobile navigation using building recognition in pictures. Very cool!

Finally, advertising is a big focus for Microsoft as they are trying to compete with Google.

All in all, Microsoft just does not excite the geek in me as it did in the 80s.