Top six technology trends*: and why some of these are just better mousetraps

Corporate Executives continually scan the landscape to stay updated on trends in technology. In my role, that includes EA governance, I have a ringside view of new initiatives being rolled out at a multinational organization. Some of these involve emerging technologies, while most are integration of incremental capabilities; better mousetraps if you can call it that.
Some of these “trends” might indeed usher seismic innovation and changes, while many are just aggregation of existing technologies and techniques – better and incrementally effective mousetraps! Herein lies the risk of reviewing new capabilities, trends and technologies: the risk of being wowed by the buzzwords, and being able to see through The Emperor's New Clothes.

Here is an eclectic list of trends I have been scanning (trends not listed in order of significance):

Trend: Digital and Digitization

Digitization has certainly come beyond buzzword, though there are several schools of thought when it comes to leveraging digital technologies. IT executives and leaders have been living through waves of automation, updates in usability, user self-service, web and mobile enablement and eCommerce. Some of us muse if Digitization is perhaps an uber term used as a combination of some of these: taking the view “Isn't "Digital" just IT done the right way?” Of course, "Digital" isn’t just IT done the right way ! (my earlier post) In many organizations, realizing the promise of digitization is really a challenge of system integration, and visualizing how technologies work in cohesion.

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

• We need to continually explore opportunities to engage business stakeholders, and design “digital services” for our customers. Novel digital use cases include that of a medical Insurance company offering “virtual doctor visit” (to minimize cost of doctor visits), a bank enabling digital deposit tools to minimize the need for customers to visit a branch etc.
• Startups continue to innovate in domain specific areas, some of which can be leveraged by larger enterprises
• Need to continually evaluate the impact of new and emerging digital business models like the sharing economy – uber, airBnb etc - and what it could mean to your business

Trend: Big Data, visualization and Analytics

In a tongue and cheek way, Lisa Arthur wrote in a Forbes article (link)

Big data is new and “ginormous” and scary –very, very scary. No, wait. Big data is just another name for the same old data marketers have always used, and it’s not all that big, and it’s something we should be embracing, not fearing. No, hold on. That’s not it, either. What I meant to say is that big data is as powerful as a tsunami, but it’s a deluge that can be controlled . . . in a positive way, to provide business insights and value. Yes, that’s right, isn’t it?

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

Big data is a term for data sets that are so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate to deal with them.... The term "big data" often refers simply to the use of predictive analytics, user behavior analytics, or certain other advanced data analytics methods that extract value from data, and seldom to a particular size of data set. – Wikipedia
Trends in leveraging Big Data and tools and techniques for visualization and Analytics are already being leveraged by mainstream corporate IT and business users. For an example case study, refer to my earlier post: Digitization in Agriculture: Enabling Data and Analytical Modeling.

 

Trend: Speech and Voice recognition

“Speech recognition (SR) is the inter-disciplinary sub-field of computational linguistics which incorporates knowledge and research in the linguistics, computer science, and electrical engineering fields to develop methodologies and technologies that enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers and computerized devices such as those categorized as smart technologies and robotics. It is also known as "automatic speech recognition" (ASR), "computer speech recognition", or just "speech to text" (STT).” ( link) 

Speech recognition is an area that continues to make strides in both consumer-centric – Siri, Alexa et al – and in business. Call center applications have been at the forefront of speech recognition. When is the last time you were directly connected to a call-center agent of your credit card company or airline? You probably spend a few minutes patiently explaining the “reason for your call” and spelling your first/last-name and account number to a digital prompter before being put on hold for a “live” person to talk to you.

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

Advanced interactive voice response (IVR) technologies, SR and STT are at a very nascent stage of evolution. Consumer centric applications like Siri, Alexa and others continue to push the boundaries. Among the cool tools I continually use include online text-to-voice that I use for proofreading my articles. I find it easier to catch silly errors by having someone – even a digital voice read back my text.
Adoption of SR and STT in business contexts may include a mix of IVR technologies to enhance User Interfaces in ways we haven’t done before.

Trend: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and cognitive technologies

An ideal "intelligent" machine (computer) is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal. The authors of "State of Enterprise Machine Learning" defines it as "software that extracts high-value knowledge from data with little or no human supervision.”
The field of AI and machine learning periodically receives media attention when platforms like Watson beats Chess grandmasters, Jeopardy and Go champions; and also when thinkers like Stephen Hawking warn about dangers of AI or machines going rogue.

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

The promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been touted by computer scientists and researchers for the past few decades. While some of the prophecies are yet to come true, expert systems and deep-learning frameworks are already being leveraged for data and predictive analytics in Financial, medical research, chat-bots and other areas. Some of the AI and machine learning tools and techniques are also being leveraged to enhance corporate platforms like ERP (link) and CRM systems, which means these technologies are entering the corporate world without a lot of fanfare.

Trend: Blockchain

At its core, blockchain is a globally distributed ledger of all the information pertaining to a digital transaction. Despite the wild swing of new-age currency – Bitcoin - blockchain and distributed databases pioneered by it has been receiving a lot of attention. It runs on millions of devices, is open to anyone and can be used to securely move and store anything of value, including money, art, intellectual property and even votes.

As the Harvard Business Review put it, “it’s the first native digital medium for value, just as the internet was the first native digital medium for information.” - Forbes

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

Blockchain use-cases include smart contracts, secure medical records, secure sharing of intellectual property like music among others are already being pioneered. Organizations continue to evolve other scenarios using blockchain technologies to digitally authenticate users and to securely store measurable value.

Trend: eCommerce

Electronic commerce, commonly written as e-commerce or eCommerce, is the trading or facilitation of trading in products or services using computer networks, such as the Internet or online social networks. - wikipedia

Why should corporate executives pay attention?

A corporate eCommerce initiative may feel like “a better mousetrap,” especially for those of us who have been engaged in corporate digitization, B2B or B2C initiatives. (link to my case study) However, eCommerce tools and technologies to enable consumer centric and business-to-business electronic commerce continue to mature.
Emerging technologies in the eCommerce space include enhanced payment gateways, supply chain and third party logistics management platforms, combined with social customer engagement (SMAC)  and use of Big Data. Multi-channel customer engagement and a strong eCommerce framework is among the key enablers of a digital strategy. While technologies and skilled resources exist in the marketplace, integrating them into one's existing corporate ecosystem continues to be a challenge.

Other trends to add to a watch-list:

• Virtual Reality and gaming
  • Why? Advances in IOT, wearable devices, gaming, animation and other technologies have enterprise use cases too.
• Robotics, automation and Internet of Things (IOT)
  • Why? Obvious uses in manufacturing, and consumer electronics and entertainment. Other scenarios continue to emerge
• 3-D printing
  • Why? Use-cases include modelling, prototyping and visualization and in manufacturing and entertainment. Other scenarios continue to emerge
• Self-Driving Cars
  • Why? Technologies - including robotics, sensors, AI - that are being integrated to enable self-driving cars may be applicable in other scenarios

Are we likely to see a broad adoption of these technologies across enterprises and industries? Probably not; at least not in all cases. Some organizations are going to be early adopters, trying new techniques and failing fast before moving on, while others are going to be fast-followers after they see signs of technology maturity.
Note: I have not listed some of the more obvious technologies, including widespread adoption of SaaS, Cloud, virtualization, in-memory computing, SMAC etc as some of these are already appearing in implementation roadmaps.
* Analysts and consultants have already started publishing “predictions for 2017”

• IDC Reveals Worldwide CIO Agenda 2017 Predictions
• Gartner: Top Strategic Predictions for 2017 and Beyond
• Forrester's 2017 Predictions For CIOs
• ZDNet : Predictions 2017: A year of action

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Repost from my Linkedin Pulse article 
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Thanks for reading! Please click on Like, Share or Comment below to continue this conversation and ping back with your forecasts.

Return to India Musings: when a home becomes a golden egg

The first thing that hits one after landing back from a stint abroad is the abundance of people. This mass of humanity is visible right outside the exit gates of the swanky Bangalore international airport and carries through on the ride out on the highway where the airport traffic merges with commuters and is magnified as one approaches Hebbal flyover into the city.

After making annual trips back to my hometown from my adopted homeland in America, I recently took a conscious decision to spend an extended period of time in Bangalore. My family story is not atypical of that of scores of other NRIs – aging parents unable to manage on their own due to flailing health, yearning for their offspring’s to be around. Rather than contributing to the emerging market of “old age” homes in India by coaxing my parents to spend their sunset years in one such institution, I thought spending quality time with them was more valuable. Thus my wife, son and I find ourselves back in the bedroom in a home where I spent college years.

Welcome back to the concrete jungle that Bangalore has become, I thought to myself after landing back recently. This feeling begun to grow on me during the past few weeks in which I have enjoyed all modes of transportation starting with local autos, using my iPhone to hail Ola cabs, the extremely efficient, but overcrowded namma-metro from MG road to Majestic and even took a ride on BMTC bus before managing to maneuver my dad’s old Maruti 800 on the congested four-kilometer drive to Malleshwaram and back. 

My parents live in a house my dad build on a rather nice corner plot nearly three decades ago. Located close to the popular Ramiah Hospital and college complex, my parents continued to live here as “empty nesters” after my brother and I migrated abroad. And over the years the house continued to be a sanctuary during my relocations across the globe; a place I would come back for periodic R&R.

During my annual trips, I began encountering gradual changes around the neighborhood – a new multistory flat next door, the multi-story girl’s hostel opposite and a series restaurants café and pubs on the main road behind our house. At some point in the recent past, motorists driving from the congested New BEL road a block away to the 80-feet road behind our house realized that the side-road was a nice “bypass” from the signal light, which could speed up their commute by a few minutes. And thus the quiet road in front of the house became a noisy thoroughfare.

What about zoning regulations? I naively mused with my dad the other day and he began laughing. “Welcome back to India, the land of zone-less urban development” my dad joked. He explained that years ago when the first-multistory hostel was being built across the road, a few neighbors petitioned the local city councilor to intervene. For obvious reasons, the petition went nowhere. And soon, the neighbors got wise to the power of money: the land they were living on was appreciating, thanks to the rapid commercialization around and they began selling out to cash-in.

As far as my parents go, they have managed to cope with all the changes and developments around the best they can. At one level it feels like being the proverbial frog in a warming kettle that may soon come to a boil. With rapid commercialization and increasing buildup of traffic and haphazard parking around

the corner house, it is hard to even back out the family car from the driveway without a dozen cars, bikes and autos honking around. Behind our house on the main road there is now a “high end” liquor store that brings a steady assortment of drunks and wannabe drunks, some of whom recklessly pee on our boundary wall with gay abandon. Note to self: do an ROI of hiring a security guard to ward off drunks pissing on the walls nearby, vs just tolerating it.

Having lived in western cities for scores of years where zoning and dictates of city planners are respected, I am conflicted about our future in a zone-less neighborhood rapidly losing a livable feel. Having spent the good part of the past three decades in this neighborhood, my parents may not adapt to change that comes with moving into a soulless apartment in a gated community.

On one hand, I feel that I should let them enjoy the sunset years in the “home” with the background noise and din. On the other hand, I also feel that I need to work hard to ward off the prying eyes of commercial vultures circling around the “golden egg”. Just the other day, a cab driver who dropped me back home gave a bit of unsolicited advice: “why not tear down this old house and build a multi-story complex and earn some neat income, sir?”

(Repost from my Quora blog post)

Evaluating SaaS solutions for an Enterprise Architecture ? Watch for these 5 challenges

CIOs at large and small organizations have embraced the trend of moving their application portfolios to the cloud, many with stated “cloud first” and “SaaS first” principles. Keeping pace with this demand, Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor offerings also continue to mature at an exceptional rate.


Corporate users are increasingly aware of vendor offerings in their business verticals. In many cases, vendors are reaching out directly to business users and “selling” their SaaS offerings; which is not necessarily a bad thing. More power to users!


In my role of an Enterprise Architect for a multinational, I routinely engage with corporate stakeholders to evaluate new solutions, and generally come away impressed with the maturity of their SaaS offerings. Many times, however, these evaluation sessions turn out to be knowledge sharing exercises where I end up having to educate and guide business sponsors and users, and even SaaS vendors on aspects of our corporate ecosystem.


Business stakeholders are often surprised to learn that even “service on the cloud” need additional design and integration before they can be seamlessly used in our corporate setting. An analogy is perhaps that of water or electric utility providing service to a large manufacturing plant. The utility provides the “service” for the electric wires with power to come coming up-to the plant. The plant’s Engineers and electricians need to draw a blueprint, design for the conduits, wires, switches etc down to individual rooms, workstations and equipment. Only after that can the users flick a switch.

(Image source)

Drawing from the same analogy, if we think of the SaaS as yet another “utility,” providing a new service at the manufacturing plant, one still needs the internal architecture and design - wiring and conduits - to ensure that the proposed SaaS platforms co-exist, and operate seamlessly with other capabilities that business users expect from the organization. The themes that seem to recur in SaaS conversations include:


#1. Configurations and customizations can add to cost and complexity

• SaaS solutions are like a Swiss army knife - designed for many scenarios, but require to be configured before they can work for complex and global business functions. In the analogy, the utility company might supply an agreed “standard” - units of Volts and Watts - that will need to be transformed for specific needs and machines in the plant.
• Most SaaS solutions support configurations; like changes to UI templates, basic workflows, role based authorization and authentication etc. However, even seemingly small configurations done together might cascade into a considerable piece of work.
• SaaS platforms for complex business needs – like CRM, Financial Services, Supply Chains, HR, Talent Management, Legal matter management, Contract Management etc. - rarely work out-of-the-box (OOTB), especially given the requirements for larger companies with hundreds of users spread across geographies.
• Configurations need to be done by product experts with the right functional and technical skills, and knowledge of corporate ecosystem. (In our analogy, one would need an electrician - not a plumber or carpenter – with the plant’s wiring diagram to do the wiring.)
• The technical and functional skills required to configure SaaS solution may need to be sourced at a premium. Just try searching for “workday consultant” or “salesforce project manager” on LinkedIn jobs section and see the number of hits. Technology consulting firms have sensed an opportunity, and developed entire practice areas with armies of consultants focused on specific SaaS solution.

#2. Synchronizing upgrade calendars

• SaaS solutions continually undergo change as vendors enhance capabilities and offerings. Such changes are generally kept transparent to end users, which is really attractive to IS executives.
• Vendors try to manage most of the changes to SaaS solutions “behind the scenes” but some changes may need end-user communication - for instance, they may need to be informed that on Monday morning the screens may look and feel a bit different after the weekend’s software upgrade! (in the utility analogy, the electric utility might notify the plant manager if a transformer is being upgraded in their neighborhood; and the plant supervisor will plan tests with machines prior to the following shift.)
• SaaS solutions that integrate with other corporate applications will need to be tested after major upgrades. This is typically done as User Acceptance Tests (UATs). Before planning such upgrades, the organizations’ IS team will also verify upgrade calendars. The calendars also track business seasonality, peak sales periods, financial account closing etc. System changes and upgrades are generally “frozen” and disallowed during such periods. Such business driven calendars need to be orchestrated with the SaaS vendor’s upgrade calendars.
• Back to our analogy, the manufacturing plant might subscribe to several utilities – power, water and sewage, network phone etc. In the same way, organizations continue to consume SaaS services for critical functions - e.g hypothetical MyCorp in Figure-1. The challenge in tracking upgrade calendars of all service providers, synchronized with internal calendar is not a trivial one.

( Figure-1: MyCorp integrating SaaS)

#3. Don’t underestimate integration complexity

• Technology solutions designed to enable complex business functions will require corporate data from different sources before they can provide consistent and meaningful results to business users.
• SaaS services for such functions will also require such corporate data and information from the “backend” corporate platforms. Depending on the existing technology landscape, such interfaces and integrations may not be trivial or cheap to implement.
• The promise of Service oriented Architectures (SOA), when done right should help mitigate the impact of ongoing changes, but will still require testing and validations. [Point #2 above]

#4. Do not underestimate the need for a “service” to manage the SaaS service

• Corporate technology consumers and users are promised a certain service level to ensure their productivity. The manager at the manufacturing plant expects his lights to turn on, his phones to work and perhaps also coffee in the break-room. All these utility “services” are orchestrated and managed with well-defined service levels (SLAs/OLAs). Likewise, organizations design internal help-desk and support organizations to provide consistent “service” and user experience. If there issues with the power or phone, the plant worker knows to call the corporate help desk and not the utility directly.
• A SaaS solution introduced in a corporate environment will require a service “wrapper,” for example designed into the existing help-desk to make the support experience seamless.    
• Service management is generally not free. SaaS Service providers offer corporate users a variety of service levels that sound like frequent flyer program’s tiers - Bronze/Silver/Gold, Standard/Enhanced/Premium etc. The tier come at increasing cost with distinct implications on service levels, support hours and terms, which may not be obvious at the outset. A business group signing up for “Bronze” service might think of “Support hours: 8 hrs/ day” as reasonable, not realizing that the “service” will be required to support colleagues across three-four time-zones in the US alone, not to mention Europe and Asia! (ref example in the chart below)

(Figure 2: Illustrative SaaS Support model)

#5. Watchout for the TCO

• At the outset, SaaS service and licensing costs may seem inexpensive. There is perhaps a grain of truth to it, since SaaS offerings are cheaper and perhaps faster to deploy than solutions developed by in-house teams. However, the business stakeholders sold on the promise of no-touch deployments and “light” service models need to be informed and educated of the total cost of the solution deployed – this may include configurations, customizations, integration, integrating service model etc.

SaaS offerings continue to mature and are being positioned as traditional “utilities.” Vendors and consultants continue to enhance pre-built templates and accelerators to minimize the need for configurations. However, just like we still have to design for the consumption of utility services at our manufacturing plants, there is work to be done before a SaaS service is consumed by corporate users. There are few shortcuts.


Bottomline: Corporate users need to be aware of incremental hidden costs!


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Repost from my LinkedIn Pulse post

Yet another Climate change story? Chinese to cut meat consumption by 50%

As an Enterprise Architect for a multinational Agribusiness company, food and the business of food is at the center of many of our discussions. 'Feeding over 7 billion people' in a sustainable way is a perennial topic of discussion in the media. National Geographic dedicated several cover stories on this last year. (link)

Large agri-business firms have also embarked on corporate social initiatives: like the “good growth plan” from Syngenta (my employer), or Monsanto's “growing better together” campaign.
Agribusiness companies are, rightly, focused on trying to address the problems in improving crop yields, farm production, wastage and supply-chains. In a sense, the business world is really focused on meeting consumer demand and has limited influence when it comes to shaping global food consumption and tastes. One aspect of consumer demand directly impacting the global food production is the increase in meat consumption. For example, a recent article in The Guardian states how “Meat has gone from rare treat to a regular staple for many Chinese people. In 1982, the average Chinese person ate just 13kg of meat a year and beef was nicknamed “millionaire’s meat” due to its scarcity.”

This trend is not unique to China and is increasingly common in other developing nations like India and Brazil where meat consumption has gone up too. And why does this matter? An article in AJCN Journal (link) “Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment” explains how “producing 1 kg of fresh beef may require about 13 kg of grain and 30 kg of hay. This much forage and grain requires about 100 000 L of water to produce the 100 kg of hay, and 5400 L for the 4 kg of grain.”

Figure below shows the layers of agriculture production before consumers get meat on their table

It is interesting how the Chinese have decided to tackle this problem head on. Recent news headlines proclaim “The Chinese government has outlined a plan to reduce its citizens’ meat consumption by 50%, in a move that climate campaigners hope will provide major heft in the effort to avoid runaway global warming.” (link: guardian.com)



So what will this move by Chinese government do? Consuming more grains and less meat by humans will cut an entire layer from food-production-supply-chain! (figure below)
This is certainly a big deal since “Globally, 14.5% of planet-warming emissions emanate from the keeping and eating of cows, chickens, pigs and other animals – more than the emissions from the entire transport sector.”  (link: guardian.com)

For those wondering where the billion-plus Chinese will get their “protein” when they cutback on meat consumption, refer to my recent blog: Musing on Food, Protein and Vegetarianism)
I wonder if governments in western nations where meat is a staple diet, and other developing countries – eg. India with a billion-plus population – where meat consumption is on the rise, have the political and social will to follow suit?!

(repost form LinkedinPulse)

Book Review: Modern medicine and Mortality 101

My #bookReview of "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End" by Atul Gawande

I have been a fan of Mr. Gawande’s writing, and had read his earlier bestseller “complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect” and other articles in New Yorker. I like the lucid, narrative style in which he explores medical topics which many of us laymen might find hard to comprehend.  I picked up “Being Mortal” for another practical reason: I happen to be an Indian-American, with aging parents living in the old country, and a father who is undergoing treatment for an advanced prostate growth.

As humans, we are confronted with death, dying and mortality of life that sometimes comes with old age and disease but also confronts us at the most unexpected of times. Most of us look to prolong life, in many cases blinded by the promise of technical advances in modern medicine, but disregard or ignore the risks and side- effects such practices can have on quality of life.

Based on extensive research, interviews and review of several case studies, Atul Gawande’s though provoking book is not just topical, but for some, may also be a timely read.  What makes this book especially readable is the ‘life’ Atul brings to a rather morbid topic (sic!)

In the first few chapters, Atul starts by building a case for medical care professionals to be aware of geriatrics:

“most doctors treat disease and figure that the rest will take care of itself. And if it doesn’t – if a patient is becoming infirm and heading toward a nursing home – well, that isn’t really a medical problem, is it?”

Grounded in extensive research and analysis, Atul also opens himself up by exploring the experiences of his wife's grandmother and his own father as they and their family come to grips with mortality. He also lucidly describes how his family prepared for their death with dignity, at their own terms:

“The neck pain remained annoying …. But they also knew what mattered to him and left well enough alone. This was, I remember thinking, just the way I ought to make decisions with my own patients – the way we all ought to in medicine.”

Even his narratives on diseases and death, while exploring scores of case studies are expressive, and tend to stay away from clinical text; for instance, when he summarizes “no matter how much one has seen, nature refuses predictability”

Being Mortal is a very readable book that explores a demanding topic that can be deeply personal.

Cross posted from Amazon.com

Vendor-Driven Technical Debt: Why It Matters and What to Do About It

IT Leaders continually strive to balance the diverging needs of the organization, trying to address the “innovate vs sustain” challenge. They need to ensure that the limited resources support the existing investments in technologies, systems and processes while also enabling innovative techniques.
One of the key challenges in sustaining technology landscape is to ensure “technical debts” are paid off.


The term technical debt is generally used to describe the burden created by decisions to cut corners during design and coding software. The catchy metaphor is attributed to Ward Cunningham, who helped us think about how quick-and-dirty solutions set us up for debt that has to be paid back with interest. Technical debt driven by software vendors is a less frequently discussed, but significant variation on the theme.

In a recently published article in Cutter IT Journal, I try to broaden the conversation around technical debt to include the challenges of keeping up with software vendors’ lifecycles. Such vendor-driven technical debt requires the continual attention of CIOs and technology executives who need to balance limited budgets to address the issue.


This seems to be a persistent challenge fellow Enterprise Architects face in other organizations too. For instance, a query in a recent EA forum generated nearly a dozen responses in a span of a few days.  Damien Malone’s queries on tracking technical debt - How do I track? What do I track? - yielded a range of ideas.

Crux of the problem

Enterprises of all sizes buy or license software products, solutions, and tools from vendors. These products range from small investments in worker productivity tools to large investments in ERPs, CRM, databases, and specialized solutions designed to meet specific functional needs. The decision to implement a version of the software  — for example, Oracle Database 12c Release 1 or SQL Server 2008 R2 or SAP ERP 6.0, EP 4 — is generally a strategic one, requiring considerable analysis, planning, and resources. Such decisions are taken at a point in time, while considering the organization’s business needs and constraints in the technology landscape.


Software vendors and solution providers continually upgrade their product offerings, promising newer technical and functional capabilities. In order to provide support, vendors expect clients to keep up with their upgrade cycles. Upgrading to a newer version of software recommended by the vendor requires deliberate impact assessment to understand the potential impact to systems upstream or downstream. Such an upgrade may have to be orchestrated with changes in the rest of the landscape; for example, during a large pre-scheduled program.


After a few cycles of not upgrading, the software may fall behind the vendor’s support cycles, and the vendor may demand a penalty for supporting older versions. Some vendors call this “extended support,” and it can be expensive.  In some cases, after adequate notice, vendors may stop support of versions going back several generations.


Note: a more detailed analysis of this topic and techniques to address and repay technical debt are in my Cutter IT Journal article “Vendor-Driven Technical Debt: Why It Matters and What to Do About It (link).”


Cross post from my LinkedIn Pulse article

Musing on Food, Protein and Vegetarianism

My journey into the complex and fascinating business of agriculture started a little more than four years ago when I took on a role of Enterprise Architect with a multinational Agribusiness company. Learning about the “business” is critical for EA’s, given the role we play in bridging the IT-business divide. One could argue many of us – even urbane city dwellers - are not too far removed from food, and the business of getting food to the table. While my day job primarily focuses on Business Processes and services enabled by Technology, I try and keep abreast of the business of food. A recent book by Dr. Garth Davis’s “Proteinaholic: How Our Obsession with Meat Is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It” caught my attention.

In the nearly two decades that I have spent living in the west - in North America and Europe - as a vegetarian, I have been fascinated by the westerners’ penchant for protein in their diets. This has defined modern food habits and the central role meat and meat based entrée play in our daily lives. I am often asked by colleagues and friends about my protein intake and where vegetarians get this “much needed” nutrient. Rather than getting into a debate on my dietary preference, I downplay my vegetarianism or just deflect the questions. I realized that Dr. Davis’s book, although intended for a meat-eating audience, also offers tips that vegetarians can use to explain the benefits of their dietary preferences.

The well-researched book written in a folksy narrative style addresses some of the very same topics I had been observing, and reflecting on, much of it empirically. In the book, Dr. Davis takes us through a journey of his discovery and research on diet, after his flailing health acts as a call-to-action. Chapter after chapter, he refers to data and research to emphasize why excess protein (and meat) consumption by humans is neither necessary nor beneficial to the health and sustenance. He starts by explaining the major fallacy of modern medicine and how he “had come to view human body as a kind of expensive, unreliable car – something that was always breaking down and needing to be repaired. I was totally focused on treating disease – prevention hadn’t really entered my mind as a possibility.” 

I read the book with much interest; however, I am left shaking my head on whether it will make a dent in meat-centric diets that the western readers are used to. I am willing to bet that most, if not all Americans reading the book aren’t going to share the same epiphany as Dr. Davis, or the enthusiasm to convert to vegetarianism. Just a few reasons why:

• Food is an acquired taste. One grows up eating comfort food at home and school and with family and friends. Preferences and attitudes towards food, taste and diet that one acquires at an early age are hard to change. For instance, even after having lived in the west for most of my adult life, I still find a plate of rice or rotis and lentil soup (Dhal), the Indian staple I grew-up on to be my comfort-food. Likewise, an American growing up on Burger-and-fries or pepperoni-Pizza is not going to easily acquire a taste for lentil-soup and rice or other vegetarian foods.
• Western penchant for meat is exported as a subculture. In their quest to ‘globalize,’ newly affluent Chinese and Indian middle-class is taking to meat and poultry like duck to water. This trend is not likely to reverse anytime soon; and is likely to amplify as the next generation that is growing up on a diet of meat is going to look to it as comfort food.
• Don’t under-estimate the power of food industry resistant to change. An entire multi-billion dollar industry thrives on converting grains, corn and soyabeans into cattle and poultry that in turn are slaughtered and processed into burgers and meat. This industry is likely to work hard to ensure status-quo, and continue to dictate consumer tastes in meat.
• Doctor heal-thyself – in the first few chapters of the book, the author makes a point of emphasizing how modern medicine is focused more on cure, and less on prevention; and how diet receives minimal attention in modern medicine.  It would take scores of western doctors like Dr. Davis to have an epiphany, and a change in mindset, before they get to a point where they can prescribe a change to the rest of us.

Bottomline: Views and habits, especially when it comes to food are going to be especially hard to change. But for those looking to firm up their views on Protein in our diets, this book is a good reference

(Cross post from LinkedIn Pulse)