SDM CET Placement 2012-13: Our Challenge: Eligibility is necessary but not sufficient

Everything in placement starts with Eligibility. In short, the principle of necessary and sufficient conditions says that ”things cannot happen without the conditions required for them to happen”. This is fairly obvious, but when applied to the placement process as a whole, these principles carry grand implications.While eligibility is necessary it is NOT sufficient and does not guarantee job. It is eligibility criteria that opens door for you to appear for campus hiring event. Let me explain the relation between eligibility (necessary) and sufficient ( final placement) as follows.

The Conditions
By way of illustration consider Mutnal , a local gym-rat. He is going to attempt to bench-press 325lbs. However, in order for Mutnal to get the weight up off the rack, he must possess the conditions necessary to do so; that is he must be strong enough to bench-press the weight. This “necessary strength” is considered
the necessary condition ( in our placement context, it is eligibility) . But the weight will not simply rise off the
rack in consequence of Mutnal 's strength.( In our context a job offer will not just come to student due to his eligibility) He must apply his strength to the weight in order for the weight to move. So the “application” of Mutnal 's strength is considered the sufficient condition. (Meaning eligible students must apply themselves for campus hiring process)

It is important to note (albeit obvious) that Mutnal's strength alone will not move the weight off the rack. Likewise if Mutnal is not strong enough to move the weight, then the weight will not move – even if he applies the strength that he does have. Both the necessary condition (adequate strength) and the sufficient condition (application of strength) must be present in order for the weight to be lifted off the rack.

The Potential
The only way Mutnal's strength can be applied is through volition. That is to say, his necessary condition can only become sufficient by a choice. Additionally, only a conscious agent can make a choice. Therefore the potential for Mutnal's necessary condition to become sufficient rests with Mutnal's volition.

Application to the Placement process

Here are the two things to be noted. 1) The necessary conditions that were required to occasion ie placment process must have been present prior to the placement process commencement 2) These pre-existing conditions must have become sufficient. However as seen with Mutnal, these necessary conditions could only become sufficient by the volition of a conscious agent. Therefore, a conscious agent who possessed the ability to get a job offer must have prepared prior to the placement event. And only through the volition of this agent could the "Job offer can be realised" In summary, the most logical conclusion to draw is that whover has got job offer have sone so by means of their consciousness, will and power.

So start working towards converting eligibility into " Job offer reliazed"

Good Luck

Is India's New Cloud Computing Platform A Warning For Non-cloud Users?

There are few other areas of the world as ripe for cloud development as India. Established tech nations such as the United States, Great Britain, or Japan have years of legacy systems and non-cloud standards to clear out while other, less technologically fortunate areas of the world struggle to establish themselves in a new market.

India, meanwhile, has not only a substantive amount of technology-based business thanks to both outsourcing and home-grown startups but a lack of legacy systems to interfere with new-project adoption. Now, the country's first significant cloud computing platform has launched. Is such cloud globalization another sign that companies need to move forward or risk getting left behind? . Here is complete story

Gartner predicts growth in Indian IT infrastructure market, adoption of co-location and cloud services

Consolidation, private Cloud and business agility are the primary growth drivers for IT expenditure. Going forward, Infrastructure-as-a-Service and co-location will propel the managed services market. By Harshal Kallyanpur

At its recent Infrastructure Operations and Data Center Summit, Gartner provided its 2012 outlook for the Indian data center market. The analyst firm estimated that the Indian IT infrastructure market consisting of servers, storage and networking equipment would reach $2.05 billion in 2012, growing 10.3% from 2011. It also predicted that the IT infrastructure market was expected to reach $3.01 billion by 2016.The findings further indicated that storage would have a CAGR of 18.9%.

According to Aman Munglani, Research Director, Gartner, the primary reasons for this growth could be attributed to the fact that enterprise storage requirements were on the rise and that storage capacities were expected to grow by 60-70% in the next five years. The complete story is here

Learning Times: Cloud Computing Using Microsoft Azure

Train the Trainer Workshop

Cloud Computing using Windows Azure

Thursday, 28th June to Saturday, 30th June, 2012

Venue: NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte, Mangalore

I will be attending a three day training program Train the Trainer Workshop, Cloud Computing using Windows Azure.

Cloud computing embodies the essence of India

Technology adoption is not an absolute. It takes on a different shape, size and scope in different geographical and industrial segments. There are a few things that differentiate Indian adoption of technology from the rest of the world and the most prominent of all characteristics is “Best Affordable Innovation”. In a country where diversity is ingrained in all aspects of economy, this is one characteristic that stands out. Cloud computing is one of such technologies that fit into the pulse of the Indian culture. Here is complete story from Hindu

Cloud Computing in India and Emerging Markets

Cloud Computing in India and Emerging Markets

“The change created by the cloud ecosystem will be manifested 20% in the realm of technology and the remainder through social change.”, Industry Participant, New Delhi Workshop, November 2010

The World Economic Forum held a workshop in New Delhi on 23 November 2010, convening over 30 leading Indian decision-makers, including service providers, users, government representatives and academia. The goals of the workshop were to identify the potential benefits and opportunities of cloud computing in India and other emerging economies; address the unique challenges to its implementation in emerging markets; and explore in which areas emerging markets could take the lead in cloud development.

Market Potential

Small and medium-sized companies with limited resources and access to IT are expected to be the greatest beneficiaries in India from the efficiency gains promised by cloud computing. For these companies, participants expect cloud to facilitate more efficient delivery of services to “bottom of the pyramid” consumers – one of the key future market potentials in emerging economies. Similar efficiency gains could also improve public services in India. Some government representatives argued that cloud service models could, in fact, be the only means of delivering certain essential services (such as microtransaction banking, micro-insurance and healthcare) given the vastness of the country, with large remote and poor populations. Other areas of public service that could benefit from the cloud include disaster management and the agricultural sector.More broadly, providing access to data and computing power to people who would normally be deprived of such resources could unleash significant new innovation.

Specific Challenges in India

The lack of economic returns represents one of the key challenges for the development of the domestic cloud market in India. While many IT companies are engaged in the cloud business, they feel that currently there are insufficient incentives to offer economically sensible cloud models and services to the domestic market, particularly those targeting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Hurdles to the adoption of cloud include the limited availability of digitized data and the need to deal with requirements of 28 different states.

In addition, limited and/or unreliable wired and wireless broadband infrastructure hinders access to, and hence development of, cloud services in India. This calls for greater engagement from the government to provide a fertile environment for domestic cloud markets and to engage in public-private partnerships on cloud development. In terms of regulation, while privacy and personal data protection are not widely established in Indian law, IT companies that export services are keen to have Indian regulation align with European and US data protection frameworks. The development of such a framework in India would assist the industry in competing on an international scale.

Additional implications for Emerging Markets
Overcoming connectivity challenges is critical. The development of mobile-based access in India and other emerging markets will drive the adoption and growth of cloud computing. Access management is another area in which India is developing promising initiatives. Given the large population base and the huge number of potential cloud users, identification and access management poses unique challenges. India’s Unique Identification Card (UID Card) project, which relies on cloud technologies, could be seen as a model case.

Source: Advancing Cloud Computing: What To Do Now?

Advancing Cloud Computing: What to do Now?

http://www.weforum.org/reports/advancing-cloud-computing-what-do-now

Advancing Cloud Computing: What To Do Now? | World Economic Forum - Advancing Cloud Computing: What To Do Now? via kwout

Here is the thinking of World Econmic Forums thinking on Cloud Computing in the days to come

Linux in cloud environments: Independent experts weigh the options

Research projects that by 2020, most data will reside in the cloud. Although Linux is a logical operating system choice for running cloud services, there are still certain precautions you need to take before you integrate these technologies.
Access tips, news, blogs, and interviews for information on how Linux fits into cloud initiatives, a comparison of the vendor offerings available, and advice to help you successfully navigate the transition.
Explore the latest open source cloud trends and gain insight into:

Find out everything you need to know about Linux in the cloud with these essential resources now.

Call for participation International Conference on Advanced Cloud Computing - ACC2012

An interesting Cloud Computing Conference in Bangalore

Public Engagement: Inaguarating DTP Training

Public Engagement

Today I was invited to inagurate a 45 days workshop on Desktop publishing(DTP) for unemplyed youth at RUDSETI, Dharwad.

5 Reasons Educators Should Blog

Here is an interesting blog on " Why educator should consider Blogging?

Once a week, a new to-do pops up on my productivity software client that alerts me that it’s time to do a blog entry. Most of the time I admire the line and proceed to complete a dozen other tasks that, if not completed, will affect my job performance. Yet, I am fully aware that I am a part-time Web 2.0 evangelist like many of you. Here are a few reasons why educators should blog: more details here

What does Facebook looks for in new recruit?

A Research Engineer at Facebook narrates the expectations in new potential recruit.

This is from Serverside Magazine

First and foremost, the ideal Facebook engineering candidate should be good at coding. I know this sounds silly, but a surprising fraction of the people we interview could improve their coding skills instead of focusing on mastering specific languages or technologies. We look for good generalists able to move freely within the organization.
Feel free to choose your favorite programming language when interviewing. The typical Facebook interviewer accepts a choice of 3 – 6 languages, subject to the ones she’s comfortable assessing coding ability in.

The candidates I personally interviewed used Java, C, C++, C#, Javascript, Python, Ruby, PHP, Pascal, and even pseudo-code. (I recall I recommended “hire” for the pseudo-code guy.)
We do care about one’s ability to code; code is quintessential for us, for engineers from front-end to back-end to system configurators to researchers. You know how you figure someone can play basketball, or act, in a mere few seconds? Same goes about coding – you can tell whether one can code by seeing how they approach implementing some simple algorithm.
Consider for example someone chooses C or C++. Then a good warmup question I might ask is “Implement strstr()”. It has a simple spec (so we don’t waste time with explanations) and allows the candidate to show they can code.
Just do a clean implementation of the brute force algorithm – no need to memorize Boyer-Moore and others. The canonical solution looks somewhat like this:

char* strstr(char* haystack, char* needle) {
    for (;; ++haystack) {
        char* h = haystack;
        for (char* n = needle;; ++n, ++h) {
            if (!*n) return haystack;
            if (*h != *n) break;
        }
        if (!*h) return NULL;
    }
}

Using indexes is fine, too, as are myriads of alternatives. Ten people implement it in eleven ways, which is fine as long as things don’t get too complicated or plain broken. The code above is a good baseline because it’s simple – no special casing for “the empty string is a substring of any string including the empty string”, “a longer string cannot be a substring of a shorter string” etc.
The function organizes computation systematically towards achieving the result. Compare with e.g. the more complex solutions at http://goo.gl/U4poN (the short function above implements the optimized algorithm given there).
This question is a Facebook interview classic, known all over the Net (http://goo.gl/glnAz). I ask much more complicated questions when interviewing (some I don’t even know the answer for), but a candidate unable to lift strstr (or similar) off the ground cannot be a Facebook engineer. It is surprising how many fail at it or get it wrong.
I focused above on the coding part because it’s a gating factor. We have other important criteria, such as cultural fit and design / architectural abilities. Even specialists (in e.g. machine learning) must impress when it comes to coding and other general skills, in addition to being great at their specialty (our recruiters pair such candidates with engineers particularly strong in the same area).

The ideal Facebook engineer is a great hacker, a strong generalist (and in addition possibly exceptional depth in some area), and an adaptable person comfortable working in small, fluid teams.

Regarding degrees, Sean Murphy, lead recruiter with Facebook said :
“It’s helpful to have a strong CS background but not a requirement. We have many engineers who are doing really well with degrees in math/physics/symbolic systems and other areas or no degree at all. We have some really smart people and some really creative people with no CS background. For foreign candidates, its much easier to get a work visa with a degree but we’ve hired some engineers with stellar experience and no degree.“

Building Blocks of Cloud Computing : Data Centre

Data Centre is fundamental in the cloud computing context and is pivotal both for service providers and end user. For service providers data centre is the infrastructure that they need to build and maintain and for end users it the source of all applications ( SaaS) and home of all their data.

Wikipedia defines " A data center or data centre or computer centre (also datacenter or datacentre) is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices.

Given the importance of data centre in the context of cloud computing, here is separate blog dedicated to the topic of data centre. It covers trends, basics, books and a custom search engine.

Data Centre Blog

The 4th IEEE Conference on Technology for Education (T4E2012)

Dear Sir/Madam,

The 4th IEEE Conference on Technology for Education (T4E2012) is being organized by EnhanceEdu at IIIT Hyderabad between July 18-20.Two days of pre-conference tutorials by renowned experts such as Dr. Shailey Minocha will be held on Monday July 16 and an overview of NMEICT projects will be held on Tuesday July 17. One day of post-conference workshop will be held on July 21.

This conference will have several international speakers deliver keynote addresses and conduct workshops and tutorials. More details are available at http://t4e.iiit.ac.in

We invite you to take advantage of this golden opportunity by registering as many members of your staff as well as students to the conference. Early bird registration ends on June 18, 2012. Call for participation poster is being attached for your kind perusal.

We look forward to your enthusiastic participation in the upcoming conference.

Thanking you,

Warm regards,
Sandhya Kode
General Chair T4E 2012
Chief Mentor & Director, EnhanceEdu
Director(Training & Development), CETLS(Center for Education, Technology and Learning Sciences)
International Institute of information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H)
Gachibowli, Hyderabad 500032
Email: skodev@iiit.ac.in
Tel.no: +91 40 6653 1357/6
Website: http://enhanceedu.iiit.ac.in

Successful career is a trinity of Interest, Skill and Values

As I recommend

Upon asking for career advice , I often hear people- parents and well wishers say " Go by u r interest , u will succeed". That is cliche and is too dangerous to heed. Interest after all is personal and has no social meaning. If interest were to make someone successful, then every kid going to cricket summer camp will end up in Indian national team or every student in a dancing school would become a dancing exponent.

A successful career needs at least three components: Interest, skill and value system. Interest of course is needed but sufficient. The best that interest can give u is "satisfaction". But skill is what gives social meaning, contribution and of course economic value to an individual. Skill also gives u the edge in time of competition. Finally value system that which makes the individual to enjoy if not tolerate the mundane part of the work. Unless NR Murthy had fully accepted the value of his work in building Infosys, he would not have enjoyed the otherwise boring - millions of miles of air travel.

So before u take up a career check the following

1. do have interest- gives u satisfaction
2. do u have skills - makes u productive
3. do have value system- gives u happiness to remember and relish

Cloud Connect 2012- A session on Private Cloud

Introducing a New Course- Engineering Side of Network

Both Facebook and Google are engineering marvels. In their ambition to build a planetary scale enterprises- web search by Google and social network by Facebook- they have taken engineering enterprise to new heights and dimensions. Understanding then building and working of these modern day engineering wonders is desirable by every engineering students. Hence is the new course that In introducing the upcoming semester.

The course titled- Industry oriented practices will cover the following topics

The Engineering side of Google
The Engineering side of Facebook
Google Tools for Personal and Professional Use
Facebook Tools for Personal and Professional Use
The meaning and purpose of Big Data

I request you to help me refine, expand the above course theme. You are also requested to suggest recommendations, comments and references

Opportunities are Plenty, Preparation is Empty

Placement is one of my recent responsibilities. When I took over this assignment, one of my feelings was that students are not getting enough opportunities because a good number of companies are not for campus hiring.

When the placement activities started happening, I started getting new insights. One of the persistent objections by students is that " don't allow already selected students" for further campus hiring events. I went by the general wisdom that already selected students if allowed to appear for more companies, they are "snatching" jobs from others. To verify I did an experiment. For the last company that visited for campus hiring, I allowed only 80+ students who had not got single offer in previous events. In others words, this was chance to grab their first job. My thinking was that " since no selected student is in the race, many will get the job"

When the written results were announced, only 16 of 80 students who appeared for the test cleared it. What is more startling was that the cutoff percentage in written test was just 40% ( 16 out of 40 marks). The company actually wanted more people and had hoped to conduct interviews for two days. However they were disappointed because of the conversion.

The myth was busted. The real barrier for students not getting through is not the other "placed" students. Instead, it was their "ill" preparation. Who prevented them from scoring more than 40% in written test. It is time for students to make "real" preparation and see that they can clear any written test. They should be bothered about other students- either already selected or not- taking part in the selection process

AbbudA! India

Abbuda