Me-Online

Group 1 – Amit Jaitly, Amol Deshpande, Mandar Risbud, Michelle Dsouza, Sanmeet Dhokay, Vinod

Maliyekal

Interesting Facts & Analysis

1. SME Company was established in 1955, but performance deteriorated by 1990, almost to bankruptcy

2. New company, SHMEC, was formed in 1998 with private ownership

3. Despite of this, company performance did not improve due to operational & capital inefficiency. Bad debts increased , loss was close to Rmb 100 mn

4. Some reasons of bad performance were:1. Inventory losess2. Lack of monitoring & transparency3. Lack of information capture & sharing4. Slow response to rapid market changes

5. Company initiated social research in year 2000 which suggested building of a B2B platform to address all the issues

Interesting Facts & Analysis (continued)

6. Company had following advantages:1. 40 years of industry experience with complete understanding

of procurement & selling2. Good IT application base

7. Company had following advantages:1. Experienced logistics center2. Established customer & supplier base

8. The new Platform connected suppliers & customers in an automated, transparent & centralized manner

9. New platform removed earlier drawbacks of person-dependent processes, person specific knowledge of customer & problem of inventory & bad debts

10. New platform also carried opportunities of forming a completely new company, extending the Platform to international levels and expanding it to different types of industrial products

a. All the problems:1. Inventory related risk2. No transparency, no effective monitoring, Sales staff

having unlimited rights, giving random credits3. No centralized System of Records4. Speed: Market moved faster, company moved slower

b. Following challenges were addressed:1. Reduced inventory accumulation, total transparency,

centralized all approval processes2. No manual book keeping, 3. Improved logistics

c. New challenges:1. Stakeholders still had traditional mindset2. Online revenue was only 10-20% of total revenue3. Inventory management was “First Come. First Go”4. New platform did not integrate with supplier’s systems5. Profit re-adjustment was not possible in new system6. Arrangement of manpower

Answers to Lead Questions

d. New Opportunities1. Countless opportunities, extend the Platform for exchange

of any industry material2. Extend scope to International manufacturers3. Spin-off the platform as a new Company & extend scope4. Integrate with suppliers’ ERP, thus integrating all aspects

e. Before change, whole business was inventory drive. Inventory accumulation resulted into loss of Rmb 200 mn. Huge dead inventories, resulting into depreciation. No fast movement of goods. New Platform: whole business became Order-driven. Minimum Inventory (to serve routine biz + irregular orders)

f. Yes. Old model - unlimited rights to Sales staff, random credits. New Platform - regulated processes & strict Staff assessment. Payment settlement was a parameter in assessment of Sales staff. Capital cost was also included

g. Old biz - unlimited rights to Sales staff. Staff gave random credits. All tacit knowledge was with people. New Platform brought in transparency, staff showed great resistance & left. Thus, loss of customers & accounts receivables.

h. Earlier flow was inventory driven. Distribution rights were set by individuals. Credit rights were random. Distribution & account receivables was manual and personal specific. On new Platform, the business was order-driven. Procurement & distribution was approval-based & in real-time. Settlement & Acct Receivables, cost of capital was part of approval decision

i. No. The Platform model was still not JIT. It only reduced inventory to great extent. New business catered only to 10-20% of total business. Also, many customers made last min requests & in small quantities, for whom, inventory had to be maintained

j. Promote Rolling Inventory option & mix old inventory in the batch. Arrange auction. Sell inventoried goods to last minute customer requests

k. Before: Function IT = 1, Network IT = 2, Enterprise IT = 2 After: Function IT = 4, Network IT = 4, Enterprise IT = 4l. No much change needed. Employees were already familiar

with basic IT skills.

Facebook

Interesting Facts & Analysis

Started by Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 for Harvard students .Earlier called as Facemash.

Hollywood film ‘Social Network’ is a movie about the story of Facebook.

More than 2.5 Billion Pictures are uploaded to FB every month .More than 500 TB of data is uploaded daily

Recently, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan gave 99% of their shares to charity after the birth of their daughter ‘Maxima’.

Interesting Facts & Analysis (contd.)

Facebook acquired WhatsApp in $19 Billion deal in Feb 2014 and Instagram in April 2012 for $1 Billion.

Facebook has its second largest user base in India after USA.

Facebook’s fastest growing segment in the United States is women 55 years and older.

Internet.org is a partnership between Facebook and six companies to provide affordable access to internet services in less developed countries

a. Stakeholders in Facebook's business model

• Users• Companies (for advertisements)• Game developers• App developers b. What do people do on Facebook?

• Connect with other users• Share information (Photos, Video's) via post• “Like" posts• Form Groups• Create events• Comment on other’s posts

Answers to Lead Questions

c. What made Facebook become so popular, so fast?• Initially created for Harvard Students• Alternative to a printed student directory• Rolled out to >800 colleges across the USA• In 2006 added features like messaging, groups, events,

discussion boards, video sharing and mobile access• Provided perfect way to communicate and stay in touch with

friends and familyd. Business model of Facebook and its robustness.• Ads are FB's highest revenue generator.• Customized Ads on basis of Geography , Language ,Age ,etc.• Ads even on mobile platform as well. Allowed advertisers to

target their client group. • Earn revenue from Social Gaming and Mobile apps. • Attractive to Businesses due to growing user base globally

e. Unmet social needs – Need of Society that Facebook meets• Need to express oneself • Do meaningful work• To love and be loved• To be truly seen and heard and to see and hear other people• To play, explore, and have adventures, • Need for emotional intimacy• Offers a platform to connect with strangers, and also share

experiences others views and life's through posts, video and chats

f. What role do social websites play in building improved relationships among people? Among communities? Do they also destroy existing relationships?• Help people to network quicker • Exchange personal info and establish trust • Identify common interests. • Help communities to come together for festivals celebrations, sports etc. • Can be used knowingly or unwittingly to post/blog/comment information

or opinion that could offend/hurt/inflame sentiments.

g. What are the differences in the norms of interaction in the off-line World and the online World? Formal, Informal?• Real world (offline) - Restriction to behave by a certain

social/traditional norms• Virtual world (online) - Constraints do not apply to the same

degree. • Offline world - the person or group you interact will dictate if it is

formal or informal.  • FB interactions among peer groups - Informal• Professional networking in LinkedIn - Formal

h. How does LinkedIn differentiate itself from Facebook? Compare Twitter and Google+ to Facebook.• LinkedIn - Professional networking using job/business/education

credentials .• Twitter - Interact with almost any other user on its service. Used

by celebrities to connect to large number of people. Users report on social and political events as they unfold.

• Facebook - Allows information sharing only with friends.• Google+ - Offers status updates and picture sharing similar to

FB .Also offers video chatting with groups of more than 10 people.

• Both FB and Google+ - Can be used to restrict the information to be shared. Google+ emphasizes on privacy by using 'Circles' - to divide friends into logical groups

i. What are the similarities and differences between the business models of all of these?• Facebook makes money from Ads, Social Gaming Apps, other

User Apps.• Google+ - Increasing the value of search to users. Personal

endorsement to Ads.• Twitter – Sells promoted ‘tweets’ to Marketers. Earns additional

money through data licensing . Named 4 companies who perform data mining to measure consumer response.

j. How is Wikipedia different from Facebook?• Wikipedia works on the fact that knowledge can be shared

amongst users and they contribute to the posts or topics which are created.

• As per its founder , Wikipedia is dependent on the fact that there are more good people than bad people in this world

k. What is the social, political, and economic impact of social websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc ? Do you agree that it is yielding more power in the hands of society?• Politics - Building image of Politicians through social media. • Natural calamities - People reach out/offer help to others.• Definitely gives more power but it can be used for both

Constructive or Destructive purpose.l. What are some of the social problems faced by societies in India? In World? Can these be addressed using Social Networks? How?• Many people are not aware of the important issues that may

directly or indirectly impact their lives. • Simply ignorant or do not access printed or electronic media.• Social networks help in spreading awareness Offering help or

Donations for Natural Calamities like Flood, Earthquakes, etc. due to social media impact are good examples.

CA Technologies: Bringing Cloud to Earth

About CA technologies

• Founded in 1976 by Charles Wang & Russ Artzt founded New York based Computer Associates.

• Business – IT Management Solutions & IT security Solutions • IPO – 1981; Revenues in 2011 - $4.429 billion

a) Briefly describe a. Cloud b. Major Firms providing services in the clouds & their services

– Cloud - It is metaphor for ‘Internet’ & Cloud Computing is an IT service model where computing services are delivered on demand to customers over a network in a self service fashion, independent of device & location

Company ServicesMicrosoft Windows Azure – Cloud operating system PaaSGoogle Cloud connect, SaaSIBM Blue cloud , Consulting service, Smart business EMC VMware (storage & virtualization software)Symantec E-mail archive cloudAmazon Elastic compute cloud , Simple storage systemAT&T Synaptic Hosting, Synaptic storage

b) What is Public , Private, & Hybrid cloud? – Public cloud – is a cloud deployment model. You can share a

computing infrastructure across different users, business units or businesses. Can be made available from a 3rd party service provider via internet eg. Google apps.

– Private cloud – Private cloud offers many benefits of public cloud but is managed within an organization. Provide greater control over cloud infrastructure & often are suitable for large installations.

– Hybrid Cloud – combination of Public & Private cloud. Non critical is outsourced to Public cloud while business critical services & data are kept within the control of organization.

c) What is SaaS, IaaS & PaaS? • SaaS – Software as a Service in which the application runs on cloud,

eliminating the need to install & run the application on client computer. Eg- Gmail, FB, Google Apps

• IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service where computing & storage capabilities are offered as a service. Eg- Amazon’s S3, EC2.

• PaaS – Platform as a Service facilitates the development & deployment of applications without the cost & complexity of buying & managing underlying hardware & software layers eg MS Azure

d)What do you understand by Business Process as a Service? – BPaaS – is a form of BPO that employs a cloud computing service

model. The information & processes can be shared using Public Cloud. BPaaS sit atop on the other 3 foundational cloud services SaaS, PaaS & IaaS.

e) Identify the primary IT/IS technologies that have ruled in each of the 4 decades? Why do you think the revenues from UNIX/Open source platform are not growing so fast?

– Mainframe Computing– Client Server computing– Grid computing– Collaborative computing (Cloud)– Unix/Open source – Tightly coupled system architecture, Significant

switching costs & time required to move to new software model, security & compliance.

f) Briefly compare the traditional (in house) IS Model with Cloud based IS Model on Cost, Hardware update, Maintenance, Applications /Software update/management, accessibility, usage, reliability/uptime & security/safety (of data & information)

Parameters IS Model Cloud based IS Model

Cost High Less due to virtualization

Hardware update & Maintenance

Regular Hardware update & high maintenance due to infrastructure set up

No Hardware update & maintenance cost as it is provided by 3rd party service providers

Applications/Software update/Maintenance

Companies need to buy software license & renew it. Need to rely on Software companies. More cost due to employment of IT engineers

All applications provided by 3rd party service providers. Less costly

Accessibility/Usage Limited accessibility, Server capacity utilization ~6% only

High accessibility & usage

Reliability/Uptime Highly reliable, Can set SLA uptime at 99.99% or higher.

Less reliable. Providers cannot commit High quality of service & availability of Guarantee. Cannot match SLA uptime of 99.99%

Security/Safety of Data & information

Very High Can be compromised, matter of concern for companies.

g) Which system infrastructure, application software & application development, deployment is projected to be rising rapidly? Why do you think so?

– 1992-2008 was characterized by Network Computing– Distributed servers handled an Enterprise’s departmental & other

workloads emulating Mainframe functions– Rise & maturation of distributed computing allowed core IT functions

to expand beyond mainframe. – Enterprise IT capabilities became more complex as Internet & e-com

software enterprise applications into sales & purchase process over web.

• The main reason is ‘Virtualization’ which was becoming increasingly important in distributed computing environment as well as in three forms (system, platform & hardware).

System(CAGR% 2009-2014)

Infrastructure Application software Application development

LINUX 22.4 22.4 23.5

Windows 32 & 64 8.8 9.2 9.2

h) Why did CAT change name to CA Inc in 2006? Why did it change the name back?

– Founder Wang stepped down as CEO in 2000– 2001 – Earnings were reported inaccurately using various accounting

practices which led to investigation (Accounting scam) – 2003 – Investigation found that some contracts were backdated – As it’s brand name was hit; new CEO John Swainson launched a new

global branding program ‘Believe Again’ – As part of re-branding & to emphasis the firm’s differentiator – Ability to

unify elements of IT & simplify complex IT management it changed its name to CA Inc in 2006.

– By 2010 CA Inc had 13500 employees, Revenues Inflow (55% Domestic, 45% International). CA intended to change the revenue inflow (55% international & 45% domestic) by entering into new geographies & selling to new accounts in 3 years.

– So, CA Inc changed its name to CA Technologies under new management & dedicated $200 mio in marketing to support rebranding & reorganization effort.

i) What are the advantages of using Clouds that Adam Famularo & David Dobson can project to convince their clients (the prominent CEO’s, CIO’s & CTO’s)? – Advantages of using cloud – – Through Virtualization management, Service assurance, Security – Immediate access to Hardware resources with no upfront capital

investments for its clients. – For start ups Cloud can dramatically reduce the upfront cost in corporate

computing – Cloud computing will make it easier for clients to scale their services as

the computing resources are managed through software & they can be deployed very fast as new requirements arise.

– Cloud computing will help its clients to respond in real time to information by using new class of application – eg mobile interactive applications.

– Clients can use clouds for Business analytics that use vast amount of computer resources to understand customer buying behavior from voluminous amount of data

– Extension of computer intensive desktop applications that can offload the data crunching to the cloud leaving only the rendering of processed data at the front end for it’s clients.

j. What are the likely disadvantages going to be pointed by CEO/CIO/CTO’S?

– Difficulty in shifting the applications– Significant switching cost and time – Security and Compliance

k) Address doubts regarding the confidentiality of data – By Advocating Fully private Cloud Service – Highlighting a dedicated vertical for the security– SaaS

i) Challenges in adopting Cloud Technology by CA– Ensure dominance in Main frame – Integration of the acquired company with CA – Reorganization of the company – Aligning of the internal team with the line of business – Addressing the User Interface

m) Changes to structure– Individual responsible for the following pillars

• Grow the Main ware• Develop SaaS• Lead Security • Develop Virtualization Products

– Reflecting Customer Facing approach– Integration of the new acquired business (incubation time)– Shift from geographic to product perspective

n) New Knowledge/Skills/Talents necessary in team – adaptation , alignment towards the goal– New management integration platform catalyst

o) Purpose of Acquisitions – Capability Based Acquisition – Difficult to move company from its core strength – Large companies don’t easily innovate– Integrate from start ups – Build on existing platform and make it stronger

p) Private cloud or not ? – Private cloud is secure has dedicated resources for the company– Expensive compared with hybrid/public cloud– In case of private cloud – agility can be issue , difficult to upgrade

q) One stop single point solution - Large companies were focused on providing their core competence - Cloud computing yet to evolve - Regulatory, Security issues - High switching cost - New partnerships may bring opportunities along with risks - Yet to develop standards - Manageability is an issue