TiEcon 2012

TiEcon 2012, Day 1 (Part 1)

The morning of Friday, May 18th 2012 dawned brighter and earlier for those of us that were part of the organizing committee of TiEcon 2012. It was a phenomenal experience putting the various pieces of the conference together and seeing it grow from discussions around a table to a full fledged conference with attendees from around the world and a speaker list that would rival any other top notch conference. Given that this is an all volunteer effort, I was amazed to see the incredible amount of passion and energy flowing out of people and the attention to detail. Granted that I was doing this for the first time and some of these folks were "veterans" - having done this a few times. Nevertheless, pulling off a conference of this magnitude without a glitch requires utmost dedication and professionalism - which I saw first hand. Even though the hall was not full and there was a long line of latecomers at Registration waiting to get badged, Kiran Malhotra, Vish Mishra, Jai Rawat and Farhat Ali opened the conference on time (which I really appreciated - having been to several other conferences where the start would be delayed so that the hall can get filled). They sprinkled a few quotes in their opening addresses, including this one by Henry Ford, "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success" - to describe the volunteer effort that helped put the conference together; and this one by a Roman Philosopher, "It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult" - to describe the prevailing spirit of entrepreneurship in the room.

By the time Vishal Sikka was introduced, the keynote hall was not only full, but overflowing. Vishal Sikka's keynote was truly inspiring. The theme for his speech was, "Innovation without Disruption". He began by saying that he wanted to make five observations on the road ahead - his musings based on his experiences of 20+ years at Stanford, Start-ups and SAP.


1. What's Going On


Digital Artifacts are replacing physical artifacts. We are seeing this in music, movies and books. This content ties into our lives in more consumable ways. This results in being able to reach the masses more conveniently. In comparison, Thomas Paine's Commonsense Manifesto that was published 240+ years ago (thanks to the revolution of the Gutenberg Press), reached two-third the population, within a year, and helped seed the birth of America. The connectedness that is accomplished with the digital artifacts creates value and dissolves layers of inefficiency and indirection. He identified the need to understand and evolve complex systems - especially enterprise software - "which is quite primitive," he said.


2. My journey


He identified his journey with three institutions, hosts, paradigms - Stanford, Start ups and SAP. Stanford taught him to learn how to think in an unstructured environment - without boundaries and guidance. He applied this when he was asked by Hasso Plattner to help SAP intellectually renew itself. He treated SAP like a 40-year-old startup while instrumenting this turn-around and did so without  using "processes" or "governance frameworks" - as putting these in place would defeat the purpose of what he was asked to do.


3. Three principles


He used three principles to renew customer landscape without disruption: understanding timeless software constructed around content (application's content, UI, etc.), containers (the runtime) and change (ongoing evolution of the content and the container); systems thinking and evolving systems. These allowed SAP to renew the customer landscape without disruption. The example he provided was SAP HANA that helped simplify enterprise computing and dramatically improve performance thanks to advances in hardware, large amounts of main-memory and massively parallel processing of information. Their 100 TB, 4000 x86 core system is the largest in-memory DataBase system in the world (10x the size of IBM's Watson).


4. Purposeful Work


He urged the audience to take on purposeful projects. Don't waste your time doing things that don't add value. He gave examples of SAP's AppHaus - specifically the RecallGenie iOS app. Another example he gave was Project Charitra - with 10,000+ people here, it is a market for publishing needs and things that one is willing to do.


5. Work Hard. Follow your instinct, your passion and have fun


Vishal quoted the lyrics (by famed poet Gulzar) of a song from a Hindi movie, Kaminey, "Jo bhi soye hai khabron mein, unko jagana nahin" (this is in the song, "Dhan Te Dan". You can listen to the song here - the phrase is at ~ 3:45 mark in the song). The loosely translated meaning of this phrase is - "Don't chase fads. Do your own thing". There are lots of huge, purposeful problems that need to be solved:

• Bring basic payments, banking to 100s of millions of people
• Kidney dialysis is being done by ghastly means. Surely, in this modern age there are betters ways to do this

At the conclusion of Vishal's talk, Robert Guest, Business Editor at the Economist had a conversation with him. He asked Vishal about his experiences while growing up in India and a few other "soft ball" questions that he had prepared before hand - not necessarily from the talk that Vishal had just delivered.

Conferences are all about Networking

In my role as co-chair of the TiEConnect program in TiEcon 2012, I posted a guest column on GigaOm. Since there were restrictions on the number of words, etc. I could not include everything that I wanted to say. I am posting a longer version of the blog here. Hope to see many of you in TiEcon next week at Santa Clara Convention Center.

If you were at the Santa Clara Convention Center for TiEcon2011 on May 13th and 14th, 2011, you could not have missed a familiar figure in the registration area for almost the entire duration - talking incessantly to a panoply of people. When I asked Rohit Chandra about his motives, he said, "I registered for the conference to meet people, pitch my idea, find talent, hear other ideas, identify interesting start ups, pick up on the state of the art, etc. I may not get 30 minutes here for a full pitch with Investors. If I can pique their interest to garner a follow up meeting, it was worth it." When I asked him if it was working, he pointed me to a pile of business cards that he had collected.

While Rohit’s case may be an super-charged example of networking at a conference, it goes to show the immense value of meeting a diverse group of people at a single location. TiEcon provides for both structured and unstructured means to connect with leaders who would, otherwise, be unavailable or inaccessible. MentorConnect provides all TiEcon attendees

 provides an opportunity to meet with an industry stalwart in a scheduled session during lunch. Attendees looking to validate their idea, or want to know how to move their ventures forward can avail this program and meet with folks who have been there and done that. InvestorConnect provides access to VCs and Angels on a 1:1 basis to get feedback on your business plan. This program is available to anyone that registers for a TiE Expo booth. This is an unparalleled opportunity to present your business plan to get feedback and/or seek investments. Finally, TiEcon is also offering AttendeeConnect this year to allow for AdHoc interactions at the conference.

Unlike other conferences that cost in excess of $1500, TiEcon costs less than $500. We are able to keep TiEcon prices affordable since it is run entirely by volunteers (yours truly being one of them) in a not-for-profit organization. While the focus of this posting is Networking at TiEcon, there are other benefits to attending this year's conference on May 18th and 19th at Santa Clara Convention Center - outlined in this blog post by Jai Rawat, Convenor, TiEcon 2012. Register now to avoid missing out! You can use the discount code "TIEFOV" to get $75 off the conference price.

Classical Concert by Ananya Ashok

In November 2011, Hemmige and Subhapriya Srivatsan gave a lecture on, "The sense of proportion in Concerts" as part of the VivRti 2011 Fall Festival. They talked about the importance of:

• appropriate rAgam selection
• using songs from different languages
• effective utilization of the percussionists
• timing the various pieces appropriately
• etc.

in order to keep the audience enthralled and engaged for 3+ hours in a concert. They Bay Area is indeed fortunate to have opportunities for such lectures, concerts and "music seasons" (a topic for a future blog post).

Ananya Ashok had this "sense of proportion" in a near perfect Carnatic vocal concert on Saturday, March 31st at the Divine Science Community Center in San Jose. Ananya was ably accompanied by Siva Ramamurthi (student of Delhi P. Sundararajan) on the violin, Vignesh Venkataraman on the mridangam and Ganesh Ramnarayan on the kanjira. Ananya began her concert with the shankarAbharaNam varNam, chalamElA. She followed this with Puliyur Doraisamy Iyengar's Sankrit kritI, sarasIruhAsana priyE in nAtAi. She did an efficient swara kalpanA at the conclusion of this song. Ananya then sang an elaborate AlApanA in madhyamAvatI followed by the Thyagaraja kritI deva srI tapastheertha - which is also a Lalgudi pancharatnam. Before embarking on her major piece, Ananya sang a melodious, short Annamacharya kritI in hamIr kalyANi, yEmana vachUnU.

Ananya chose bhaIravI for her major piece - an excellent choice given the wide scope for improvisation in this rAgam. She sang the popular Dixitar kritI bAlagOpAla and did a niraval on the anupallavI, "nIla nIrada sharIra dhIratara". This was followed by a 20-minute thaniAvathanam - executed very well by Vignesh and Ganesh. She followed this with a very fast paced Mysore Vasudevacharya composition paripAhi mAm shrI raghupatE. This perfectly led up to the RTP in shaNmukapriyA. The pallavI that she sang was "sAma gAna lOlE srI bAIE sangIta rasika priyE". In the kalpanaswAras she sang rAgamAlika swarAs in kAnaDA, hamsAnandi, naLinakAnti and kalyANavasantA.

Ananya concluded with a Tamil song thAyum Anavare in pilu and finally Lalgudi Jayaraman's mAnD tillAnA.

While a majority of the credit for this excellent concert must go to Ananya - for her sadhakam, kudos to her guru Anuradha Sridhar. Earlier in the day, I was at Badarikashram for a Ramanavami program by the students of Bay Area music teachers. Rohan and Madhuri, were singing along with Srilaxmi Kolavenu's other students (you can watch them sing rAmachandram bhAvayAmi in vasantaa and sing shObillu sapthaswara in jaganmOhini). Before Srilaxmi's students went on stage, there was a young artiste (probably not more than 18 years old) giving a solo performance (along with a young violin and mridangam player). I don't know their names, but she sang a mesmerizing AlApanA in pUrvi kalyANi and the Dixitar kritI gnanamOsagarAdha. She followed this with a melodious jAnaki ramaNa in kApi. It was later that I learned that the young artiste is a student of Anuradha Sridhar. Of course, singing with such control and have such an imposing stage presence at such a young age takes a lot of sadhakam. It also takes a dedicated guru. It is not surprising that Anuradha Sridhar has won numerous awards and accolades - including "Best Teacher in North America" at the Cleveland Thyagaraja Festival.

Symantec CEO, Enrique Salem's Keynote at RSA 2012

I watched Symantec CEO, Enrique Salem's excellent keynote at the RSA Conference on Tuesday, February 28th. Unlike other boring "product pitch" keynotes, Enrique's keynote was a refreshing perspective on the impact of "The Digital Native" entering the workforce.

His talk can be divided into three parts:

1. Definition. What/Who is this talk about

He talked about the Digital Native Generation (born after 1990 and already starting to enter the workforce). We need to understand how they work, think and interact. These folks are always networked, always sharing, always multitasking. They reach across their networks to seek information and solve problems. Hence, they find faster, more effective ways to do business. "Connected" is the air they breathe. They are effectively redefining multi-tasking.

2. What is the problem - given this new phenomenon in the workplace

The line between "business" and "personal" is blurring.

1. Enterprises need to manage online identities when employees have dozens of them.
2. Enterprises need to keep track of substantially higher volume of online activity
3. Employees' expanded use to public/private clouds implies that we won't know where our data resides
4. Enterprises need to protect information - when the workforce shares freely

This freight train is hurtling towards us. All the ways we conduct business will change. In a sense, we need a "reverse firewall" - that will allow enterprises to keep information in, block when necessary by watching and monitoring outbound flow of data.

3. How do we solve this problem? What are the parameters for the solution?

The easiest thing for an enterprise to do is to "lock down". This will not work because the employees are using these resources to improve productivity.

Any solution will have three components:

1. Authentication
2. Authorization
3. Audit

Need a "Flexible Identity Management" which is established through:

• Credentials
• Geo
• Policy

The system to solve the problem needs to be content aware, intuitive and policy based. Any system needs to work ubiquitously. It has to keep track of who is accessing what, at what level and with what device. All access needs to be recorded - thus monitoring the interaction between people and information. This would create a "Cloud Audit Trail".

Another parameter to consider is that the Administrator's burden should be reduced. They cannot depend on an end user tagging the information. The solution needs to be transparent, but always active - so you always know what information you have and where it is going.

Implementing this solution will not be easy. We need a new, secure ecosystem that will deliver on:

1. Advanced, persistent protection
2. Reliable Early Warning System. The state-of-the-art protection will recognize threats without impacting users
3. Fast remediation
4. Effective response plan

Panel on Cloud Security

I had blogged earlier about the TiE Panel on Software Defined Networks. I did not realize that I had not posted a blog after that! I have been really busy :( More on that in a future blog post.

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel on Cloud Security on Thursday, Feb 2nd. 2012. This panel was also very well attended - indicating the popularity of the topic and the opportunities presented to entrepreneurs and large companies thereof.

The basic premise of the problem / challenge / opportunity is that there are well documented data breaches that have taken place. In fact, the OnLine Trust Alliance (OTA) has dubbed 2011 as the "Year of the breach". The 550+ breaches in 2011 cost U.S Businesses alone $6.5b+. The FBI has said that cyber attacks are the top terror threat to the country.

Tim Mather, of KPMG and author of a book on Cloud Security and Privacy led with a provocative commentary on the state of the industry. The slides he used can be seen here. There are typically five kinds of security breaches that take place:

1. Cryptographic key management
2. Data Loss Prevention
3. Data sanitization
4. Federated Identity management
5. Security Incident management

In terms of products that are available that address some of the Cloud Security issues, he highlighted Virtual private SaaS (which was introduced by Navajo Systems - recently acquired by Salesforce.com). The provocative part of his talk came when he talked about the upcoming "food fights" in the industry:

1. Telcos are becoming Cloud Service Providers
2. The initiative led by Viviane Reding to regulate Cloud Computing and update the Data Protection Directive
3. The ITU-T meeting in Dubai in November - attempting to bring ICAAN under UN Control (and regulate cloud computing)
4. Upcoming CALEA II (Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) - which attempts to regulate any messaging over the internet. This will make SOPA and PIPA small in comparison!

The next speaker was Becky Swain. Her slides can be seen here. Given her background in CSA, she spoke about Cloud Security from a regulatory and emerging standards POV. One needs to constantly balance compliance and risk management in the cloud.

Caleb Sima spoke next. His thesis was the, somewhat simplistic, viewpoint that the Cloud is more secure. The surface area for attack is wider if you manage everything on your own. Going to the cloud could potentially mean a "loss of control". While this may be viewed as a vulnerability by some, others (himself included) do not see it that way. However, according to a Ponnemon Institute Survey, ~ 1 in 3 people have not adopted Cloud services because of concerns over security. This IW article states that security concerns is one of the biggest barriers to Cloud adoption among Federal IT professionals.

Ratinder Ahuja of McAfee was the next speaker. His slides can be viewed here. Naturally, his talk focused on how the McAfee Cloud Security Platform helps businesses leverage cloud computing services and solutions securely. The future, Dr. Ahuja said, holds tremendous opportunity in delivering Security as a Service.

Ryan Floyd of Storm Ventures was the final speaker. He said that he agreed with Caleb Sima in that the Cloud is more secure.

When Ryan stated that PCI compliance was the first standard that was adopted by the industry to improve the security of payment transactions, Tim Mather tore that to shreds. "PCI is worthless," Tim said. "It is merely the payment industry shifting the burden to the merchants." They tried implementing SET (Secure Electronic Transactions) first - and that was abandoned due to the onerous cost of implementing it.

Tim went on to say that there is a technology solution proposed by IBM's Craig Gentry - using fully Homomorphic Encryption. It has been debated that this is not ready for prime time. In fact, Microsoft published a paper with a contrarian view point proposing "somewhat homomorphic encryption".

At the end of the panel discussion, it was apparent that there is a lot more that was left unsaid. I expect that we will soon see products coming out in this space that will disrupt how we perceive and interface with security.

Panel on Software Defined Networks

TiE Silicon Valley organized a panel on the next wave in networking - Software Defined Networks (SDN) on Thursday, November 10th. This was well attended (with an audience of over 150) and was easily one of the best panels that I have been to (TiE or otherwise).

Networking has not evolved much in the last 20+ years. Since the first packet switched network in the late 1960s, companies have basically been improving the same architecture and basically improving line speeds and port densities. All that changed with the PhD dissertation of Martin Casado at Stanford in 2007. His thesis was based on the Ethane project, that allows one to build a secure enterprise network with a powerful, yet simple management model. This led to OpenFlow and SDN. Suddenly, there is innovation in networking and there is a lot of excitement around the plain old network!

The first speaker was Stanford's Guru Parulkar. He defined the problem - how networks are vertically integrated, complex, closed and proprietary. By separating the data plane and control plane and having a protocol between the OS and the forwarding devices, it is possible to build network control management applications. He waxed eloquent about the talk given by Verizon's Stu Elby at the Open Networking Summit on Service Provider Networks.

Dan Wendlandt of Nicira spoke next. Dan provided his perspective on SDN - how it is possible to describe high level policies that the system "compiles" down to individual devices. So, a VM can migrate all through the data center and have the security policies follow it.

The next speaker was Anshul Sadana, VP Customer Engineering at Arista Networks. Anshul spoke about OpenStack. He also talked about how virtualization sets networking back one step and how Arista's VMTracer bridges the gap between physical and virtual networks, thus simplifying network operations.

Stuart Bailey of Infoblox was the next speaker. He likened the value (in networking) moving from custom hardware to software to the end of the mainframe era. We are, indeed, at a huge inflection point in the evolution of networking. Infoblox solves the problem of managing pervasive networks.

The final speaker was the host of the evening - Allwyn Sequeira of VMWare. He talked about the trends driving the evolution of the DataCenter:

• New Application architectures - stateless and scaling out
• Lower Hardware costs
• Virtualization of all Hardware components (by 2014, an average server will run 320 VMs)

There is a need to enable dynamic, workload aware networks that has

• Forwarding plane
• Control plane
• Management plane - which abstracts the network and presents the abstraction to the upper layer for logical networks

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the session. Each speaker on the panel was an expert and has deep knowledge in their subject matter.

An Auditory Feast

Denizens of the Bay Area were treated to an Auditory Feast last Saturday morning (October 8th) when Ananya Ashok (student of Anuradha Sridhar) gave a Carnatic Vocal concert at Sivamani mama's house in Sunnyvale. Due to a soccer commitment, I was a bit late in getting there. She was singing sarasIruhAsana priyE in nAtAi as I reached. Even as I was settling down, I was very impressed by the ensemble of Lakshmi Balasubramanya on the violin and Vignesh Venkatraman (student of Umayalpuram Sivaraman) on the mridangam. There must have been a varnam before this. Could someone who was at the concert post the details on the varnam as a comment to this blog.

Ananya followed this with a shlOkam in Ananda-bhaIravi and the Dixitar kriti kamalAmbA. She then sang a beautiful alApanA in valaji and the Harikesa Muthiah Bhagavatar kriti jAlandharA supeetha. Valaji is a simple rAgam with Sa Ga Pa Dha Ni swarAs. Ananya chose to perform an exquisite neraval around "bhavarOga nivArinE, bhaktajana paripAlinE".

As this concert was part of the navarAtrI series, Ananya sang a song on dEvi, shrI chakrarAja simhAsanEshwari. This is a raagamalika in shenjuruTTI, punnagavaraLi, naadanaamakriyaa and sindhu bhairavi.

After this short piece, Ananya sang an alApanA in hEmavatI. Being a mElakarthA rAgA, hEmavatI has a lot of scope for being selected as the major item in a concert. Ananya did justice to this and sang Dixitar's srI kAntImatIm. It included a swara kalpanA, which was followed by a thaniAvarthanam.

Ananya concluded by singing three short numbers - Shyama Shastri's kanaka shaila in punnagavaraLi, Dixitar's annapoornE vishAlAskI in sAmA and Lalgudi Jayaraman's Thillana in mAnd.

Short of having a rAgam-thAnam-pallavI, this was a complete concert. Perhaps she did not include an RTP since she was given just two hours.

I would have liked her to sing a magaLam at the end of her concert. Again, it is likely that she did not include it because this was not the final concert of the day.

I certainly look forward to listening to additional concerts by Ananya. She has immense potential to reach the heights of other eminent students of the Lalgudi bAni.