1-By Laksh, ET, Movies

Crimson Tide

Awsome movie!!

Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington are just brilliant in this Tony Scott’s film. While Gene Hackman plays a man who has earned his stripes in the battle, Denzel is smooth talking, Harvard educated tough soldier.

Set in a submarine, that is used to fire a nuclear missile, the movie exploits the best in acting talents of Denzel and Hackman. They battle it out, first in words, later in actions.  
The key aspect about this movie is a great and consistent characterization…once the shades are revealed, they continue till the end. For instance, the cocky demeanour of Gene Hackman is retained till the titles roll….
Spirituality

Truth=Realization=Happiness/Unhappiness=I((I(….)))=I(I(mu-I))= I(I in relation to the rest of the world)

 Please note that this realization could be as simple as knowing that fire burns..to the so called ‘one with God’ etc.

Let us leave this aside for a moment, and look at the rest of the equation.

Happiness/Unhappiness=I(I)=I(I(mu-I))= I(I in relation to the rest of the world) –Mu being the entire universe (Job, family, friends, work, stars, underground, mars, venus, love, thirst etc).

So, if you are ‘aware’ of your ‘relation’ to the universe…’aware’ of what goes on inside you in relation to the universe or ‘aware’ of the ‘perception’ that you create about yourself

As these two words–‘aware’ and ‘perception’ get finer and finer, larger and larger, higher and higher…when there is nothing else to be ‘aware’ of and the ‘perception’ melts, we can call such a state, i.e, if at all it exists, as supreme realization or the real ‘awareness’ or ‘enlightenment’.

Even if we do not believe in or aim for such a state, just being conscious of this equation, and stepping back from ‘I’ and look at I(…), the perception, produces interesting results..and sometimes even the so called miracles.

The above, is the essence of all the paths–Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Gnana Yoga or Bhakti Yoga.

Each one is a path to set yourself free from the perception…and promises you the ‘ultimate realization’ shamelessly like any ‘self-help’ book…except for the time period.

There is no ‘Be the real you in 21 days’  here. Instead, the goal is spread over ages…countless years and may be lives….but the realization is there for your taking that could be achieved in the next instant or in your 20th incarnation from the current one.

Which is the easiest of all?

I would say Karma Yoga…but, why?

Because ordinary mortals like us are tuned and trained to ‘work’ right from our childhood from “why are you idle beta, go and read” to ” we pay you the best man-hour rate’…we are tuned to like ‘activity’…

There are some who might say Bhakti yoga is easy too…but who can understand devotion as a complete surrender to God in the midst of so many activities and ‘trading’ of activities….?

So, if we agree Karma Yoga is the way to go…the first step is to set yourself to a) find and b) do something you really like….something that ‘dissolves’ the ‘I’ and ‘perception’.

Something that slowly makes you ‘feel’ more about ‘yourself’ rather than the bulge of your purse.Something that makes you even carry the cross, and do it all over again, just for the sake of doing it.

Once a and b are done, there will be no activity that will be mundane for you…no work an unpleasant chore…no object mean or menial…and once the ‘I’ is silent all the time, in any work you do, there comes a stage where you can really ‘see’…to ‘see’ that anything esle that comes out of work as incidentals–both carrots and sticks. (The ‘real’ thing that comes out of work will always remain with you and no one can see it…rest, only helps in show-off, a shade of luster, of all the gold you had accumulated inside you.)

And, the perception finally melts… to quote Jiddu Krishnamurthi ‘…You will find truth…that is, if it exists.’

Enterprise, IT

BPM Vs BI

Often ‘Business Performance Management’, ‘Business Intelligence’ and ‘Corporate Performance Management’ are used inter changeably.

So, how is ‘Business Performance Management’ and ‘Business Intelligence’ are presented by various sofware vendors like Cognos, Hyperion, Informatica, Ascential, Pervasive Software. Let’s take a look through their software offerings.

To begin with, the term “business performance management” is more for the senior management and strategy oriented. It is typcially being projected as a level above ‘business intelligence’.

Here’s what Hyperion has to say “Business performance management is a category of software that enables companies to translate strategies into plans, monitor execution, and provide insight to manage and improve both financial and operational performance. BPM provides individuals with business intelligence plus business rules, business content and business processes that support collaboration across the organization and a shared approach to managing and improving performance”

So, a company like Hyperion that is touting ‘BPM’ or Cognos promoting  ‘Corporate performance management’, talk about their tools for BI contributing to BPM…and try to make a distinction between the two.

For instance, Cognos has Metrics manager, Scorecards and BI–as a part of its BPM suite. Its BI suite includes tools for Reporting, Analysis, Data Visualization and dashboarding, Event management, Data integration and Data applications.

Cognos has enterprise planning, enterprise monitoring and enterprise business intelligence as a part of its performance suite.

At times they also use the words interchangeably as Hyperion does here.
“Hyperion’s BI platform is the only platform that supports entire spectrum of Business performance management—from query and reporting to analytics, planning, budgeting, forecasting, modeling, financial consolidation and end to end financial and operational reporting”

Cognos is a little guarded, though

“Business intelligence (BI) takes the volume of data your organization collects and stores, and turns it into meaningful information that people can use in their day-to-day activities. With information in accessible reports and analysis, you can make better and timelier business decisions. You have the means to understand the “Why” behind your business performance.”

Companies like Pervasive are purey data oriented, but they seem to address only a little of the BI space. In the case of Pervasive, data warehousing is almost equivalent to BI!!
“In today’s competitive business environment, data warehousing is not just for the large enterprise. In fact, almost every organization, regardless of size, can sharpen its competitive edge with business intelligence-accurate, timely information that is consolidated, analyzed, and managed in data marts and warehouses.”

Informatica uses BAM—business activity monitoring–instead of BI.
“Just as EAI and data integration are essential to enterprise integration, business intelligence, EAI, network systems management, and data warehousing all need to converge and interoperate in a BAM environment. Until now, there has been no single solution that addressed all these domains in a truly best-of-breed fashion”

Out of its product suite Power analyzer is for BI and its focus is more on data-integration once again.

Now, let’s make things simple. 
Business intelligence helps an organization to ‘act’ from ‘historic’ or ‘what has happened even a second before’ while ‘business performance management’, if at all it exists, helps businesses to become ‘proactive’ and ‘preempt’ certain unnecessary actions right from planning stage—in short BPM is about developing an insight that is very specific to the organization. Most of the suites available have some alignment with a management guru or a set of defined stategic principles.

ET, IT…and the rest