Ethernet Switch Market Share - Is HP Second

At Hewlett-Packard I was told "HP is second in terms of market share in Ethernet Switch Industry" . I was surprised , to be honest I was like "Is It , when did this happen" . I never thought of HP as a significant player in switching industry.

I did some quick read up  and the truth is , yes HP is second in terms of market share. But the difference between 1st and 2nd is very huge , Cisco is 7 times bigger than HP in terms of market share.  Cisco has 63% , HP has 9.3% , and next top 3 players are Alcatel - Lucent (3%) , Juniper ( 2.7%) and Brocade (2.4%).

Seriously  Cisco has such huge dominance in Switching gears industry and this is really outstanding. I think competitors such as HP need to do something very different to beat Cisco and gain  substantial market share.

For consumers it is always good if there are multiple big vendors than having a monopoly , as monopoly reduces the consumer bargaining power drastically.

I have copy pasted the sector graph provided by the IDC report of Nov 2012 for Switch market share. 

One Year Full Time MBA in India at Reputed B Schools

Its long time since I jotted down. Its  pretty sad that 2012 year passed away without even one article. I intended to write about so many things but then the laziness overpowered :) . 

In India one year full time MBA is a recent phenomena, may be they surfaced around 10 years ago. I would say this form of MBA suits for folks with at least 3 year work Ex with an aspiration to move into management roles in their existing industry. Drastic career change is not impossible though.

Please refer the link below for detailed description on 1 year Full time MBA programs in India.

Let me quickly give list of reputed colleges in India that offer 1 year Full Time MBA along with average exp required for admission .

All colleges below are very reputed and definitely they are good , I am listing down the colleges based on my knowledge and  in the order of my personal preference. All of them admit students through GMAT and a  few give additional options of CAT and XAT.

1. ISB - Indian School of Business -  Average Work Ex 5 years.
2. IIM Ahemdabad - Average Work Ex 10 years .
3. IIM Calcutta - Average Work Ex 8.8 years .
4. XLRI Jameshedpur - Average Work Ex 7 years .
5. IIM Bangalore  - Average Work Ex  9.6 Years .
6. IIM Lucknow -  Average Work Ex 7 years .
7. IIM Indore -  Average Work Ex 7 years .
8. SP Jain Global MBA-  Average Work Ex 4 Years .
9. Great Lakes Institute of Management  - Average Work Ex  4 Years .
10. SP Jain IMR -Average Work Ex  7 Years .
11. IMT Ghazibad -Average Work Ex  7.5 Years
12. Agesis - Average Work Ex  - Not Very Sure
13. Myra School of Business Average Work Ex 5 Years.

If there are any queries let me know I will try my best to answer. The best place to get detailed info regarding one year full time MBA program is  the respective colleges website.

Paramathma - The movie could have been better

Today I had been to the movie "Paramathma". I was eagerly waiting to watch this movie from quite sometime. I am great fan of Yograj Bhat from the time I saw Mungarumale and then Pancharangi made me his die hard fan.

The story of Paramathma basically revolves around a guy and  his friends. The hero of the movie has a pure heart and he follows his heart. The hero falls in love with a Gal and follows her everywhere even to her native. This is where most part of the movie is shot. Among the hero's friends one gal likes him a lot and she tries to convince the hero also to like her.But Punit marries his love and then they have a baby, 1 year after baby the heroine dies. Even after her death hero feels that she is alive and lives his life with her memories.To show that hero follows his heart Bhatru has shown many things like hero climbing Mt.Everest , doing several Business , Learning Kum Fu at China , goes in search of God and then finally taking up agriculture.

Let me start with good things in the movie, the strong point of the movie are its songs, the songs are brilliantly choreographed  the lyrics are great , the music is very catchy and Punit has danced awesomely. In most of Yogaraj Bhat's movie songs are really good (lyrics and music) so is the case with Paramathma . The dialogues are funny ,witty and meaningful . The movie is picturized in beautiful places , mostly in and around  South Canara.

The weakness of the movie is its story , it looks quite messed up.Director has tried to show too many things. In many places the story does not seem to be complete,many situations remain unanswered. Two fight sequences (kumfu and betting fight ) were completey unnecessary. I think director has tried to to show too many concepts like: following ones heart , love, friendship, death of a loved one,emotion of a dad towards his son , emotion of a dad towards his daughter , differences between culture of people from South Canara and Bangalore , education system etc.... and this is the thing which has messed up the movie. Even the "Life Estene" movie which was one of the outcome of Yograj production , seemed to be quite messy .

I truly feel this movie could have been definitely better with a better filtered script .For me both Life Estene and Paramathma were disappointing . This is because of the expectations I have with Yograj  Bhat's movie and the above two movies were below my expectations. 

Aarakshan - Reservation

After Rajneethi, Prakash Jha as tried to direct another catchy, fast paced, political, dialogue centered, and character oriented movie. The first half of the movie is great, the dialogues are superb, particularly the dialogues delivered by Saif Ali Khan. I should say Saif has acted brilliantly; it seems that he is made for the role he plays.

The movie revolves around two important concepts, reservation in education system and money minting tuition business. First half of the movie talks about reservation and second half concentrates on tuition. This is one of the weak points of the movie, it would be better if the director had to concentrate only on the first concept of reservation. The main character of the movie is played by Amitabh Bachan, who has given a solid performance. He is the principal of one of the leading institutes of the city and he is poor pro, who believes in inclusive growth of the society. Saif, who is from the backward community is one of Amitabh’s favorite student and is also the topper of the university. Some of the scenes and songs in which Saif’s and Deepika’s affection is shown are brilliantly shot, so is the friendship between Saif, Deepika and Prateek shown.

The film takes turn when reservation system is introduced, due to Manadal commission report and Supreme courts approval for the same. There starts the rift between Saif, Amitabh and Prateek. Circumstances force Amitabh to resign from the college he built, and Manoj Bajpai who is full time into tuition business becomes the principal. Manoj Bajpai has the support of some of the dishonest members in the College Board as well as some culprit ministers. Due to unforeseen circumstances Amitabh is forced to stay out of his own house, which will be in procession of Manaoj Bajpai. To get back the house as well as to teach the tuition mafia a lesson Amitabh starts a free tuition class in a cow shed just opposite to Bajpai’s class. Here starts the showdown between Amitabh and Bajpyee. The film gets little boring here, may be for another half an hour. Finally the film ends happily, with Amitabh’s tuition class surpassing the results of Bajpai’s expensive tuition class and he is made the principal of the college again.

After seeing the movie, I felt the reservation system for economically backward people is required. May be I had this thought earlier itself but I never bothered to ponder about it. It is definitely not easy for a student from poor family background to match the scores of students who come from sound families. They have so many issues to face and problems to sort out rather than just studying. They do not have anyone to look up-to for guidance. The reservation system if utilized properly for bringing up social justice is one of the best things that can happen. After all our country cannot become developed nation because of only rich people, it will happen only if inclusive growth takes place , and for this to happen we need to give special support for students who come from difficult backgrounds and have an urge to do something in life.

In one liner this movie is definitely one time watchable, but may not be as good as Rajneethi. For me the movie gave a concept to think about and made my thoughts a bit clear on reservation system.

ICFAI - Part Time MBA



This Picture is taken from ICFAI webpage



ICFAI University Tripura is one of the universities in India that provides Distance/Part-Time MBA.  Large numbers of students from all over India enroll to this part time MBA program. I seriously doubt if at-least 50% of the students enrolled clear the first phase of the MBA (Diploma in Business in Management, now this is second stage I guess first stage being Certificate in Business Management). And I do not think even 25% students enrolled complete their MBA.

I joined the ICFAI part time MBA course in January 2008 and I completed my PG Diploma in Business Management recently in July 2011. I could not take some quarterly exams due to my onsite trips and due to office commitments. The ICFAI university guys advertise saying one can complete the MBA in 2 or 2.5 years, according to me this is not at all possible. One requires atleast 3 years to 4 years to complete this MBA. The subjects are really vast, and all papers till PG diploma in business management are objective and most of the answers look very similar. Most the subjects in MBA are theoretical, and this makes life more difficult as we need to remember many things to answer objective questions correctly.

If one is ready to spend somewhere around 15 hours per week then he/she will be able to clear all the papers with good marks and some understanding of management subjects. But I am very sure if one goes to exams without any preparation then he will flunk, particularly in the objective papers.

ICFAI University is very regular in sending of the text books, study guides and work books. Each subject will have a text book, a study guide and work book. If one revises the study guide or text book once or twice and is confident about the questions in work book then, he can be sure of clearing the papers. Only thing I want to say is "one cannot take the exams of ICFAI very lightly".

ICFAI MBA is suited for people looking for extra MBA degree with some understanding of management topics. The ICFAI MBA degree is not so easy to obtain so it has some value in industry, particularly it is useful if one wants to move up the ladder in one existing organization. It is definitely of no use if a person wishes to make a career change from one domain to another. Also MBA is all about study of case studies and class room discussions; definitely ICFAI part time MBA lacks all of these.

According to me there are several other good certifications that one can take up to get some basic understanding of management topics like CBM , ABM from APBM organization or PMP, CAPM from PMI institute, then we have Management Development Programs which run from 3-4 days at reputed B schools like IIM's, ISB and XLRI . Even IISC and IIT's have some very good training programs for Project management in IT industry.

Also there are part time MBA programs offered by IIM-B, IIM-K, IIM-C which are definitely more worth also more helpful to understand the intricacy of management topics.

I d'nt think ICFAI part time MBA is a bad option but I would definitely say there are many other good options to get sound knowledge of management topics. One needs to analyze all options available and get to know their pros and cons before joining any part time MBA program. Also we should join part time MBA programs only if we are serious about it and we are sure of devoting at-least 15-20 hours every week, else it would be very difficult to complete the course also it will be mere waste of valuable money.