Transformation of IBM in India

IT IS difficult to analyse IBM and its corporate strategies without recourse to superlatives. Samuel Palmisano, Chief Executive of the company, stunned the world when he announced in Bangalore on June 5 that IBM proposed to invest $6 billion in India over the next three years. "I am not going to miss the (India) opportunity,'' he added for good measure.

The surprise to IBM watchers was not the new investment as such but its magnitude. It is three times the investment made by the company in the past and more than the combined investments announced by Microsoft, Intel and Cisco.

For years, IBM was a model that embodied U.S. technology and stock market capitalism. It was a tight fisted monolith which held closely on to its technology and believed more in selling products such as computer hardware than software or services. Globally, it believed in operating through branches or wholly owned subsidiaries primarily to safeguard its technology.

In 1977, when it came to the crunch, the company decided to close its operations in India as it was unwilling to associate resident equity. As it then explained, "It was contrary to its globally orchestrated corporate policy.'' This posture did create bad blood with the Indian authorities. However, over the years, with both sides deciding to forget the past a new synergy has emerged.

End of a saga

The structure of the computer industry was changing and IBM was losing its dominance. It might have pioneered the mainframe computers in the post-war years and the personal computers (PCs) in the 1980s and dominated the market. By early 1990s, it was humbled when companies like Intel and Microsoft came out with their chips and operating systems. IBM was making futile attempts to fine-tune its OS/2 to retain market share.

By 1998, losses forced the company to abandon its PC business. In 2002, it sold its PC factories and began to engage in contract manufacturing with companies outside the group. This was a sad departure for a company that had looked upon in-house manufacture of its requirements as an article of faith. IBM's saga of PC business ended when it sold in 2005 the business to Lenovo, a state-owned Chinese company. When Lou Gerstner took over the reins in 1992, many analysts viewed the company as a crumbling empire or a fossil. Departments were fighting with each other rather than with competitors outside. There was inertia and unwillingness to change. In fact, serious proposals were afoot to break up the company into several operating units.

The turnaround

He set the direction and new priorities by promoting IBM Global Services. By a clever twist, IBM's business units for PCs, servers, software and technical services became "back end'' suppliers to solution sellers, who helped customers assemble complete computer systems. Selling "solutions" rather than products was the new thrust and "on demand solutions'' the new slogan.

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Greatest Paradox

Few centuries ago, a Law teacher came across a student who was willing to learn but as unable to pay the fees. The student struck a deal saying, "I will pay your fee the day I win my first case in the court". Teacher agreed and proceeded with the law course. When the course was finished and teacher started pestering the student to pay up the fee, the student reminded him of the deal and pushed days. Fed up with this, the teacher decided to sue the student in the court of law and both of them decided to argue for themselves.
The teacher put forward his argument saying: "If I win this case, as per the court of law, the student has to pay me as the case is about his non-payment of dues. And if I lose the case, student will still pay me because he would have won his first case. So either way I will have to get the money". Equally brilliant student argued back saying: "If I win the case, as per the court of law, I don't have to pay anything to the teacher as the case is about my non-payment of dues. And if I lose the case, I don't have to pay him because I haven't won my first case yet. So either way, I am not going to pay the teacher anything". This is one of the greatest paradoxes ever recorded in history.

Words That Can Change Life

These are the words I really value the most, A very well said, beautiful word snippet.
CONFIDENCE:
Ones all village people decided to pray for rain.
On the day of prayer all people gathered and only one boy came with an
Umbrella that's confidence...........

TRUST:
Trust should be like the feeling of a one year old baby
when you throw him in the air, he laughs......
Because he knows you will catch him........

HOPE:
A human being can live for
40 days without water
8 minutes without air
But not even 1 second without hope....

SO ALWAYS HAVE CONFIDENCE, TRUST OTHERS AND NEVER LOSE HOPE

Learn before foraying into China Corporates

So, my globetrotting over internet has landed me again on a Wonderful Column. I think, One of most well researched article before coming on paper, beautifully written by Chinmoy Mohanty on Rediff.
Its about google's foray into China, obstacles they faced and challenges ahead. Why Yahoo could not make it big in China, and lessons learnt by google from yahoo. The part which baffled me was about, how and why google was blocked in CHINA by its government, Great Firewall of CHINA. It gives an insight about how CHINA is different from rest of the world, and what should be your modus operandi if you are planning to enter in CHINA. Its a must read, Hope you would like it, it begins with ......

"Probably you guessed it already; yes this is about Google's stance in China. On April 12, 2006, Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Kaifu Lee, vice president of Google China, and Johnny Chou, president of Google China, unveiled the new Chinese-language Google brand name at a press conference in Beijing.

The new brand name 'Gu Ge' or 'Valley Song,' draws on Chinese rural traditions to describe a fruitful and rewarding experience, according to Google. This innovative marketing strategy from Google of gaining popularity in the Chinese market with a Chinese name has not been overly successful as an overwhelming number of Chinese Web browsers ask: "Does the Chinese name for Google "Guge" befit the world's No. 1 search engine?

Some Google fans don't think it does. They have created an online petition called www.noguge.com to get the search engine to change its Chinese name. Reasons cited for the petition are the name is "weird," "unsophisticated" and could damage the "cool" image of Google in China.

"Google, we love you, but we don't love Guge," said the Web site, which has received 16,370 signatures till now and counting. Domestic media were quick to pounce on the "harvesting song," saying the Chinese name reflects the US-based company's lack of understanding of the local psyche. Guge in Chinese also means a valley song or a grain song.

The name Google came from the word "Googol," which denotes the number 1 followed by 100 zeros. "Google gives us an individualistic feel, yet Guge sounds traditional and rustic ... in other words, it's outdated," said a blogger on another Chinese website. Industry analysts also told Shanghai Daily that Google could have picked a better name. But Google China is unfazed by the commotion.

"Guge is not a substitute for Google, rather, it will complement Google," the company said in response to queries from Shanghai Daily.

"Names such as Gougou (dog dog) are unable to fulfill the responsibilities of a corporate, brand or product name, nor do they reflect fully our goals and mission," it said in reference to the more literal suggestions from net users.

A survey conducted last year by the China Internet Network Information Company revealed that more than half of respondents could not correctly spell "Google," a glitch, which the company hopes to rectify with the new Chinese name.

The statement also said the name aims to cater to users unfamiliar with English usage of the search engine. "It would be unfair to ignore their needs," it said.

Baidu vs Google

Google has been trying hard to attract increasing number of users in China and one of the key points in having this Chinese name strategy is to divert users from Bai Du, the most popular Chinese search engine.

For those of you who are not aware, a recent study from Alexa Internet states that Bai Du is the most popular website in the world. Baidu certainly looks like Google. There's an equally sparse white home page, decorated in simple primary colors, and centered on a plain search box.

Even Baidu's name and logo evoke Google. The name 'Baidu' references a line in a classical poem referring to a very large number, echoing Google's creative misspelling of Googol (10 to the power of 100). And in China, the Baidu logo, a dog's paw print, trades on a common local mispronunciation of the word 'Google' - which makes it sound similar to the Chinese for 'dog'.

A recent survey of urban Internet users shows Baidu well ahead of Google in China's Internet search market (with other competitors trailing far behind). But these figures give a misleading impression.

For example, Baidu's usage figures are boosted by searches for pirated mp3s, says Shanghai-based analyst Jim Sun, of Evolution Securities. This does not look like a tenable long-term business, and Baidu has already faced two lawsuits over the service.

Moreover, Google has considerably more high-income and highly-educated users than Baidu in China. This group holds a disproportionate share of wealth, is more likely to be able to buy items online with credit cards, is more likely to be within reach of product distribution networks, and is therefore worth much more to advertisers. While Google has been held back by a lack of local connections, recent deals with local partners have changed that.

Who is Kai-Fu Lee?

For many young people in China, Kai-Fu Lee (vice president of Google China) is a celebrity. Not quite on the level of a movie star like Edison Chen or the singers in the boy band F4, but for a 44-year-old computer scientist who invariably appears in a somber dark suit, he can really draw a crowd.

It is not hard to see why Lee has become a cult figure for China's high-tech youth. He grew up in Taiwan, went to Columbia and Carnegie-Mellon and is fluent in both English and Mandarin. Before joining Google last year, he worked for Apple in California and then for Microsoft in China; he set up Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research-and-development lab in Beijing.

Lee has been with Google since only last summer, but he wears the company's earnest, utopian ethos on his sleeve: when he was hired away from Microsoft, he published a gushingly emotional open letter on his personal Web site, praising Google's mission to bring information to the masses. He concluded with an exuberant equation that translates as "youth + freedom + equality + bottom-up innovation + user focus + don't be evil = The Miracle of Google."

Though Lee claims to be an idealist in his heart yet Google's conduct in China has in recent months seemed considerably less than idealistic

Feeling like Reading MORE "Lessons for Indians from Google China"