“All The World Loves A Good Loser.” – Kin Hubbard

The Art & Business Of Grieving

There is no harm in giving oneself time to grieve over a setback, be it social, financial or professional. As a matter of fact, healthy grieving is highly recommended by the majority of experts around the world, as the best way to either get back on the horse or (in some cases) realize that horse-riding is not your thing & so it is time to look for a new life goal.

Case in point: Mrs. Clinton seems to have taken her (second) failure to become U.S. President rather oddly. According to the international media, she believes that had the US Presidential Election been held on October 27 (or was it October 25?), she would have won. The latest official reply from the White House, explaining yet again that elections are run according to set rules, even though very easy to understand, has apparently fallen on deaf ears. Just for the record, the sports metaphor used in the latest White House statement was remarkably effective & intelligent; it could be quite useful to some in Pakistan who regularly try to use sports metaphors in their political speeches, & generally wind up sounding pathetic instead of confident. In effect, it is assumed that Mrs. Clinton’s therapist is responsible for this counter-productive approach to grieving.

But ineffective methods of grieving are not just harmful to the patient, they can have negative effects on many outside parties as well. The unnecessarily-lengthy media debate on whether or not the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers were hacked & by whom – questions that, according to the media, cannot be answered satisfactorily because the official investigative authorities were not allowed to examine the allegedly hacked technology at the correct time – has seemingly had a negative effect on the computer industry.

Take Google: Ever since the twin setbacks of the huge fine levied in Italy & the embarrassing phishing scam globally, have been announced, Alphabet Inc Class A shares on the NASDAQ have begun sliding. IBM is fairing yet worse; its Common Stock on the NYSE has crashed nearly 2.5% in the most recent trading session, with the news that it could not deliver on a promise made to shareholders, followed by Mr. Warren Buffett leading the “Abandon Ship” movement. I would have mentioned Microsoft too, but in all fairness, I don’t think the Windows 10 disaster has much to do with anything other than the fact that Microsoft programmers are just a shadow of what they used to be; it might be a good idea for Mr. Bill Gates to hold off on further Developing World rickshaw rides & try to save the company that made him famous…& I say that with a great deal of affection.

But, there are some companies that could really cash in to the current state-of-affairs. They belong to an obscure sub-field of programming known as “Disaster Recovery Software”. Laying aside the dramatically-ominous label, these companies provide back-up & security software to computers that are unsecured or compromised. Given below is a list of the most well-known brands (courtesy Wikipedia):

1. Acronis International GmbH

Founded: 2003
Founder: Serguei Beloussov, Max Tsypliaev, Ilya Zubarev, Stanislav Protassov
Headquarters: Switzerland
Number of locations: 18
Area served: Worldwide
Key people: Serguei Beloussov (CEO)
Number of employees: 700 (2015)

2. Actifio

Founded: 2009
Headquarters: Massachusetts, United States
Key people: Ash Ashutosh (Founder & CEO)

3. Asigra, Inc.

Founded: 1986
Founder: David Farajun
Headquarters: Canada
Area served: Worldwide
Key people: David Farajun (CEO), Eran Farajun (Executive Vice President)

4. Axcient, Inc.

Founded: 2006
Headquarters: California, United States
Key people: Justin Moore (CEO)
Number of employees: 150

5. Barracuda Networks

Founded: 2003
Founder: Dean Drako, Michael Perone, Zach Levow
Headquarters: California, United States
Key people: BJ Jenkins, (CEO), Michael Perone (CMO), Zach Levow (CTO)
Number of employees: 1000-5000

6. Commvault

Founded: 1996
Headquarters: New Jersey, United States
Area served: Worldwide
Key people: N. Robert Hammer (Chairman, CEO & President), Al Bunte(COO)
Revenue: $595.1 million (FY2016)
Number of employees: 2,379 (FY2016)

7. FalconStor Software

Founded: 2000
Headquarters: New York, United States
Key people: Gary Quinn (President & CEO), Alan Komet (Executive Vice President)

8. Unitrends Corporation

Founded: 1989
Headquarters: Massachusetts, United States
Key people: Paul Brady (CEO), Mark Campbell (CTO)

9. Veeam Software

Founded: 2006
Founder: Ratmir Timashev, Andrei Baronov
Headquarters: Switzerland
Area served: Worldwide
Key people: William H. Largent (CEO), Peter McKay (COO)
Revenue: US$607.4 million (2016)
Number of employees: 2000+ (2015)

10. VMware Inc.

Founded: October 26, 1998
Founder: Diane Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Ellen Wang, Edouard Bugnion
Headquarters: California, United States
Key people: Michael Dell (Chairman), Pat Gelsinger (CEO)
Revenue: US$6.035 billion (2014)
Operating income: US$1.027 billion (2014)
Net income: US$0.86 billion (2014)
Total assets: US$15.216 billion (2014)
Total equity: US$7.586 billion (2014)
Owner: Dell Technologies (81%)
Number of employees: 18,000 (December 31, 2014)

 

“E-Witch Hunt”

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It’s Coming (?)

    There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the last several months about the Pakistan Government’s controversial “Cyber Crime Bill 2015” & its possible implications on free speech (particularly in terms of blogs & texts), should it get officially signed into law. It appears that the time has come to introduce a little clarity & perspective into the debate.

    Firstly, it seems that some of the opponents of the Bill are forgetting that new legislation can’t nullify what is already part of the law; therefore, as long as the Fundamental Rights in the Pakistan Constitution & the United Nations Universal Declaration Of Human Rights are alive & well, there is little cause for concern. On the other hand, if someone attempts to violate these laws, a felony can’t very well be legitimized no matter how many new bills are floated.

    Secondly, there is a story in Pakistan from the 80s: General Zia-ul-Haq reportedly began to have a sneaking suspicion that the Pakistani people don’t feel as affectionate towards him as he believed they should. It became such a worry that he was certain they were bad-mouthing him behind his back. There were no blogs or texts to worry about back then, so he wracked his brains & finally came up with an explanation: He thought people would voluntarily spend their evenings thinking & saying insulting things about him. So he ordered all power stations to turn off the electricity practically all night, in order to sabotage these malicious gatherings. In reality, hardly anyone attempts to outline business strategy when fatigued; what people actually do is relax (or party). Consequently, people simply rescheduled their R&R – & the poor dude, for all his efforts, wound up getting incinerated in a tragic accident.

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The Financial Effect

    But simply because the Bill is unlikely to have much of an effect on basic physical safety, doesn’t mean that it will not have a serious effect on the business of the Internet. Feeling jumpy about what to say or not say generally has a negative effect on the intellect & often leads to writer’s block (among other things). There may be several parties that could benefit from triggering performance issues in Internet entrepreneurs, but the sector that stands to gain the most is cable TV.

    When it was first introduced in Pakistan, cable TV offered a glimpse into a whole new world. Granted that the arrival of dish antennas several years earlier meant that foreign TV channels were nothing new, but cable brought foreign channels to the masses (instead of only to people who could not only afford to buy a dish antenna but also had a place to put it where the neighbors wouldn’t maul it out of spite). However, over the years, genuinely interesting shows began to get crowded out by poorly-written soap operas & boring interviews. Foreign channels were blocked & unblocked at will, ruining the experience of watching a specific show at a specific time on a specific day. It became the TV version of Russian Roulette.

    Meanwhile, the Internet was getting increasingly popular; bandwidth & signal strength was improving (mostly), interesting videos from news reports to movies were available & even rural area residents were getting the hang of how to navigate the Web. It is said that cable ran the movie rental business out of the market; at this point in time, it seems as though the Internet is going to run cable out of the market. All because the Cable Service Providers & the Government can’t come to a consensus about what the public needs to see versus what it wants to see – for example, just a short while ago, there was a fearful ruckus about who gets to tell people things they don’t care to hear, on PTV!

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Just Business

    Some seem to have misunderstood the purpose behind the Cyber Crime Bill 2015. They believe that it is an attempt to give carte blanche to the law enforcement agencies – even though the missing person cases currently flooding both Pakistani & international courts would indicate that law enforcement top brass have enough on their plate trying to explain what their personnel were doing kidnapping or torturing innocent citizens during the last decade alone, without complicating their position by making the insane move of encouraging further criminal acts, the penalty for which this Bill can’t nullify.

    This legislation seems as financial in nature as the Pakistani Finance Minister’s failed PIA Privatization Bill, which was designed to shift various commercial advantages from some parties to other parties. Merely financial shenanigans, for lack of a better word. The Cyber Crime Bill 2015 has been wandering up & down the corridors of power since last year, without being outrightly accepted or rejected; perhaps, there would be a greater chance of a logical resolution to the debate if it were represented as what it is: A commercial strategy rather than a political one.

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Implementation: Trickier Than It Looks

    It is one thing to say that the authorities are going to police the Internet & quite another to actually accomplish that. In reality, the Big Brother business model is a lot more expensive than Orwell made it look in his classic work “1984”. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has already unequivocally demonstrated that it doesn’t have the resources to get even a single act of regulation implemented in less than several years.

    Just look at the YouTube fiasco: All the PTA needed to do is design an appropriate software application to act as a filter that would block specific varieties of material ruled as objectionable by the Pakistan Supreme Court. The ban went into effect on February 22, 2008, pending the successful launch of a Pakistan-specific version of YouTube; people thought it would take 6 months, tops. In reality, the Pakistan-specific version launched on January 18, 2016 – nearly a decade later! And, as if that alone wasn’t sobering enough, the situation becomes even more demoralizing once one realizes that no other hot-shot security concern could design anything useful either.

    Bottom line: In order for the people & the authorities of Pakistan to get a thorough understanding of the implications of implementing the Cyber Crime Bill 2015, it would be more logical to analyse it as a financial investment than a threat to human rights.