Enterprise Architecture, IT Strategy & Others

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  • A dangerous path to seek the ultimate truth!

    What is the ultimate truth? It is one of the most toughest question to explain. Let me try to explain contextually. We live in planet earth, as for we know, we are the only intelligent living being. Planet earth is around 4.54 billion years old. We are part of solar system and sun is our star. There are billions of stars in the Milky way galaxy. There are billions of galaxies like Milky way in the universe. Our universe is around 13 billion years old. Universe was formed by the big bang. There could be billions of universe but we do not know. Who triggered big bang, we do not know, what happened before big bang, we do not know. Why energy released in quanta, we do not know. There are lots of questions we do not know the answers.

    Humans are around for last 30,000 years and only in last 100 years the modern human made a significant progress in understanding few basics in the entire human history. Putting things into perspective, our earth was 4.54 billion years old but human have been living only for last 30,000 years. There is a astronomical variance between our existence and earth formation. Are we the bug fix to the earth system when it failed with dynos. Who architected the whole sysetm, who designed it, who made the error and who fixed it? Lots of questions but no answers. Theologians always have one word answer for every questions listed here.

    So, what is the ultimate truth? It is an understanding of our existence in the system. In my opinion, I do not think any one can answer this simple question, why do we exist? What is the purpose? This is very profound question need enlightenment to find answer for this questions.

    Why do we exist and what is our purpose? I believe ancient people were trying to answer this questions and they might have reached closer to the answer than what we know today. I believe the ancients followed a meditation technique to consciously listen to the inner sub conscious. How a conscious mind can listen to subconscious mind? It may appear as a conflict statement. But I believe, it is possible and ancient followed that technique. (Some of the Monks in Tibet may be following the same technique). Consciously listening to the self (self discovery) is a path to seek the ultimate truth.

    What is the path ?

    Just listen to your self. Do nothing, consciously, attentively watch your mind. Based on number of nodes in each network of your neurons, depth of the network, weight assigned in each node of your network, your conscious mind will slowly fade away and at one point you will attain no mind state. At that state, you (the body) and your spirit (the observer) alone will be there. If you keep doing it, you and your sub conscious mind (spirit) will become integral and the observer will observe the observer. You will find and listen to your inner sub conscious mind (spirit)

    Why it is a dangerous path?

    There are easy answers for difficult questions. Normally, humans tend to find a difficult answer for an easy question. Complication is a necessary evil in an ordinary human life. The moment humans find an easy way out for difficult questions (what is fear, why do we fear, what is sorrow, why sometimes we feel down, etc) there is an extreme joy (bliss) within. That is the first lick of a powerful drug, the first moment of natural bliss. It will become an addiction. You want more. You will find answers for questions like who are you? and what is the purpose of the existence? You will become detached to the materialistic world. You do not need food, you only need water, weather condition does not bother you (you can live on street even if the temperature is below 20), you will become unmotivated, unenthusiastic about any thing (you will realize happiness is also a human problem like fear, sorrow). It is a dangerous path from materialistic world stand point. The moment you enter the gateway, you would not come to the materialistic world.

    The person who found the ultimate truth will not come to materialistic world and the people who claim they found the ultimate truth did not really find it.

  • My Retirement Plan

    I don’t know why retirement plan often comes to my mind frequently. Either I feel I’m close to retirement (mentally feeling old, but quantitatively I have to wait another 20 years easy for my retirement) or since I have been doing strategy work extensively, my sub conscience want to work on a plan for my life after 20-25 years in case if I continue to live that far. If I continue to live for some years after 25 years from now, this is what I’m planning to do (as of today) after retirement..

    • Part time lecturer in near by college to teach engineering physics (quantum mechanics in specific)
    • Maintain a farm (may be of size 25 acres) in my village (mostly with coconut trees)
    • Write a book on
      • South Indian farmer’s natural strategic thinking/thought process ( Some prestigious business school study on strategic planning and I believe the farmers who has 3-5th grade education in the villages thinking almost same or even in some cases better than the prestigious business school educated scholars)
      • How to live after you die?
    • Self discovery (who am I??)
    • Wicket keeping coach (or free wicket keeping training center)


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  • IT Investment Management

    When IT is a cost center to enable and support a core business (like financial services, credit card, etc) the investment decision with in IT requires a clear plan from the office of CIO and the plan is to align to the IT strategy. Investment management plan provides a guidelines to the senior management team of the IT organization to make the decision on projects, technology , people and process. Without the investment management plan, the organization investment and expenditure may not directly support the IT strategy.

    Generally IT budget has the following category. Some of the categories are expenditure not investment.

    • Projects
    • Maintenance & Enhancement
    • Lights on
    • Technology
    • Hosting
    • Internal IT special projects (innovation or cost optimization)

    Projects, technology and internal IT special projects are considered as investment and other categorize are expenditure. IT investment management is a structure and governance for the projects, technology and internal IT special projects.

    Projects

    Projects are major initiative an organization under take for that year to meet the organization goal. The project selection for each year will under go an internal process. The executive team will be part of the process and other key stakeholder (ideally from all the business process area) will participate to select and prioritize the projects and budget for those projects.

    The projects for each year of an organization should be decided based on the current state of the organization and immediate requirements. In this market condition most of the industry segment (may be not oil & gas companies) are looking for the cost efficiency to sustain and continue the operation. For example, the financial industry (like Citi) are looking for funding to run their business. Looking for external investors like Abu Dhabi or Dubai etc and also they may look for innovative ways to bundle the securities to mobilize more funding or look for only a best customers to improve their securitization standards. The projects for this year for Citi will be more focused on this line of business. IT department will adjust their priorities and take this projects to support & enable Citi’s business. The IT projects are driven by the business team based on the current immediate needs. Strategic projects which may not fetch immediate benefits to the organization will be in the list and it will be prioritized accordingly.

    Maintenance & Enhancement

    Minor changes to the existing systems but a project. It is fine tuning the existing systems to continue to support and enable the core businesses. In few cases, regulatory requirements also will come under maintenance & enhancement IT budget bucket. This expenditure generally can not be avoided.

    Lights on

    This bucket is for keeping the system running to support and enable the core business. It is a regular maintenance like ensuring the log files are rotated, database back ups are taken, systems are regularly monitored etc. Some of the maintenance and enhancement may come under lights on. This expenditure can not be avoided.

    Technology

    Technology priority matrix (a different perspective of technology road map) is a list of technology and its priority to the company. For example, for financial service company the top most priority is to secure the systems to protect the consumer data.

    An example of technology priority matrix:

    1. Security Technologies
    2. Business Intelligence
    3. Business Process management
    4. Enterprise systems
    5. Infrastructure technologiesAll the technological investment will be made based on technology priority matrix.

    Hosting

    It is a fixed cost for the running all the systems. It includes hardware, software, network, software license, desktop, system monitoring, mainframe, web environment. Every organization has a hosting cost and it generally it is a majority of the IT cost. It is slowly going to become a commodity and IT organization will not focus primarily on the hosting and focus on the business value augmentation.

    IT special projects

    Most of the organization does not have the IT special project bucket within their IT investment management plan. The purpose of this category to have funding to drive innovation, cost optimization (hosting provider evaluation), sourcing advisory, application portfolio assessment and etc. The special project priority matrix is created in collaboration with the senior and executive management of IT based on the IT strategy and direction. For an example, a special projects priority matrix is given below

    1. Innovation
    2. Cost optimization
    3. Organization alignment


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