Facebook has opened a new datacenter in Oregon and revealed its design online. They have designed their own servers, back up, power supply to increase efficiency and computing power while cutting down overall consumption. The design breaks data center convention by forgoing air conditioning and making use of Oregon’s climate to keep the powerful servers cool inside.

Secrets like these have never been given away by a business entity of this size. Competitors like Google and Microsoft have never ventured anywhere close to revealing information about their server infrastructure. Facebook has taken an entirely different route by dropping the traditional business practice. But the question here is—what  triggered this interesting move??

Probably, facebook wants to give away enough information based on which people can eventually come up with something better. Or, this move might have been taken in order to gain the confidence of web users. An interesting fact to be noted here is that the facebook servers rely on free or open source software.

The answers can’t be that simple, or can they? I think facebook is spinning its already-spent resources for marketing purposes.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Ashok Soota, former chairman Mindtree announced his next venture today- Happiest Minds! While the name is unusual for an IT company, the services are far from unusual- in fact, its business lines include IT services, R&D services, product engineering services, RIM, consulting and testing. A feeling of dejavu? Hang on.

Soota also says that his company will hit the USD 100 M mark within 5 years- perhaps to break the Mindtree record of being the company to hit the 100M mark in 6 years!

Only time will tell whether Happiest Minds will actually stay true to its name- that will entirely depend on how they create a distinctive customer experience- even if their offerings and approach seem to be far from it, at least from what one can make out from the news report.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Now the next time, I get a feedback form, I will be sure to fill it out diligently. Sorry, Rohan – you cannot scribble any more

Popularity: 13% [?]

Be it the planned ICC Worldcup in our immediate backyard happening now or the unplanned Middle-east uprising in the land of black gold every event planned or unplanned, good or bad, relevant or distant makes the marketers of 21st century to stay on the toes cutting across boundaries, nations, geographies, cultures as to how it will impact their product, service or brand positioning in the eyes, hearts and minds of the consumer, customer, client and offcourse the Citizen all stakeholders in their own right.

First two months of 2011 presented and continues to present, with such a challenge to the world from middle east to companies, countries and communities who have been directly or indirectly impacted by the crisis, possibly an opportunity in disguise for marketers.

The crisis is essentially an opportunity to establish the relevance of brand identity, equity and clarity be it the reach and relevance of Social Media Platform like Twitters of the world in today’s context or Global organisations like United Nations of yes’day in shaping the society of tomorrow in how well they respond to the event.

Same is the case with independent nations, international banks, individual leaders, institutions of higher learning as to what position, message and conviction they choose to convey during such demanding scenarios sets the credibility, which inturn creates the visibility for the respective “Brand” during & post crisis.

Will US Pres go beyond talking the walk to walking the talk on universal rights, how will Swiss law evaluate the need for human rights in comparison to personal privacy, will the london school acknowledge the need for Principle before accepting the seed money of Patrons, will Global banks help decode the abusive tyrant’s money trail, in helping build a better society beyond the text book lip service from yes’day’s complusions.

This is not just a time for free marketing campaign but also a place for brand positioning in history beyond the freedom which it will help achieve ; along with providing an opportunity to connect & communicate beyond a traditional stakeholder constituency for the marketers behind the Brand.

Thanks!

Popularity: 16% [?]

A bunch of techie co-workers had queued up at the coffee vending machine. Well, coffee early in the day definitely works wonders. All in their 20s, giggling as they shared stories of their respective flat-mates.

One of them asked her friends, “Do you know when the Open House is and at which location?” The only guy in the bunch of girls frowned and said, “No idea. Don’t think anyone really reads mails from the Communications team.”

I was part of the same team. I felt hurt. Can I generalize the statement and share the feedback with boss, I wondered? Isn’t it ironical that some days back at lunch, our team was discussing how satisfied everyone was with the regular communication that is going out from us in a more structured manner?

The obvious question that came to my mind then was, so who was really satisfied? Is it management? Is it some layer below management? Is it the communications team and its head? Or is it the audience to whom the communication was addressed?

Who were we writing for? Was our objective to make the management happy about the visibility we created for them? Or was it really aimed for the techies who were more than half the population and help them understand where the organization was heading?

I realized the problem was more in the way the communication was delivered. I am sure the communications team did a wonderful job of putting across the message, but we did not realize that there could be other associated activities to pull people to the message. Would it have been better if the mail had gone from the leader’s desk than just another mail from the communications team? Did we need a regular feedback mechanism by which we got to know what our audience wanted from us? Well, we can continue debating.

Ultimately, if the message does not reach the desired audience, the communication fails. Trash the brownie points! What do you say?

Popularity: 13% [?]

As I was reading the ET today, there were two news items that caught my attention – one was Accenture hiring Avinash Vashishta of NeoIT fame to take over their India operations and the other one was an article about Indian firms being shy about acquiring local companies (reference to the iGate-Patni deal). Now, if you think about it, both are connected.

We know that while Indian companies are trying to go up the value chain, the non-Indian counterparts are trying to establish a sound offshore presence – yes, this has been discussed before. While few Indian companies have made the right moves and are climbing the value chain gradually, similarly there are very few non-Indian companies that have been successful in setting up a scalable offshore organization. Looks like this is still continuing.

One name that immediately comes to mind when you think of companies adapting to the offshore concept is IBM which has done a great job surely. Accenture on the other hand has been really slow on this front – they have around 50000 people in India split almost equally between BPO and IT services. Part of this is due to the company culture itself – it is still partner led and we hear that the Indian operations have little access to the client. Clearly, Accenture is taking a long time to change from a consulting, partner-led approach to an outsourcing approach which requires a more decentralized approach. Obviously, setting up India operations is not sufficient – the organizational culture is key to making it work. It remains to be seen how a person like Avinash Vashishta, someone very familiar with outsourcing can make the change. Mr. Vashishta comes from a background where he has been on the other side – helping buyers identify the right vendor and working with both sides on the deal. Today, the IT services business and the offshoring scenario has evolved quite a bit and Mr. Vasishtha has a hard job ahead.

Moving on to the article which said that Indian IT companies should seriously consider acquiring local companies – it discussed the scenario where if Wipro had picked up Patni, it would have helped Wipro widen the gap with Cognizant which is close at its heels. Agree that in a sense, it will be easier to acquire local firms in terms of integration effort and compatibility and so on. However, we need to remember that Indian firms are looking to go up the value chain – the Tier 1 players at least have a scalable organization more or less. They need to be looking at growth that is not dependent on headcount – the much talked about non-linear initiatives. Acquiring a Patni or a Satyam (when it was up for sale) is a short term fix for growth and will not really address challenges such as attrition, HR issues, higher end services and so on. Many of the Tier 1 players are serious about non-linear growth and the recent TCS results was proof of that. A Patni or a Satyam purchase makes sense for a iGate or TechMahindra as this helped them scale quickly as opposed to a longer organic route. Our view is that Indian companies should look to acquire only those companies that will help them deliver higher value services or nudge then in the direction of non-linearity– they are more than equipped to handle the regular IT services business.

What do you think? Do you agree that the efforts from Indian IT services companies as well as MNC players are continuing in the same way?

Popularity: 15% [?]