Born Again - Chapter 6

“Think we are very slow and need to increase our speed. What I am trying to say is that at our current efficiency levels it’s gonna take us three times the manpower to keep up with our growth rate. You’ll need to do something to increase the output from the staff.” – AB was talking to his team of Ravi Singhal (CTO & VP Technology), Revati K (CHRO & VP HR), and Ashok Shah (VP Operations). They were having a meeting to discuss productivity levels, somewhere AB didn’t seem to be very impressed with the current levels of Employee productivity while others didn’t seem to agree

“Well AB, our delivery is on track we are up with our schedule and in addition to this we have kept bench strength of 10% in case any emergency arrives.” Ashok paused for breath and continued “We have just delivered the first cut solution to NBC and I’d just like to take you through this slide which shows the progress on each project. I think we’ve got it all covered. As per my stats, none of the projects seem behind the deadline.”

AB waved his hand in disagreement, what it also meant was that he had heard enough.

“The point is that life in IT is much beyond services. I am no longer interested in the services business. While I am not saying that we will not focus on our services business, of course, we will continue to do so, but it’s about time we give the world something of our own. I and Ravi have been working on the development of a prototype of a chip……Ravi would like to take it forward.” He gestured Ravi to proceed

Ravi stood and walked across to the projector screen where he opened a presentation.

“Sure AB, friends I and AB have been working on the development of a prototype of a chip that enables WiFi like connectivity between two workstations without having the need to manually connect them, let me tell you how this works”

He flipped through the Slide and a new slide opened.

“Normally it is very easy to connect PCs through LAN, WAN, etc. Our chip has two things GPS tracking device and an IP Address detector. We call it GIPD. The GPS device detects the location of a computer by employing a simple search of Lat/Long Google, of course, it is much more than the simple search that it does, he said with a smile. And puts an IP trace on that system, this IP trace traces and keeps track of all the IPs this computer has been connected with and updates it in the database even if the IP Address allocation is dynamic each time a new IP is used a new entry of that system is created in our DB.”

“This device can be used in many areas of Defense, Peer-2-Peer Connectivity; it can also be inbuilt in the motherboard/chipset board of a computer or a laptop along with the WiFi chipset.” – AB said just to clarify the commercial viability of this project

“Oh, My My” exclaimed Ashok who couldn’t hide his astonishment and excitement “This would revolutionize the manner in which data is transferred from a PC to PC, this seems even better than the cloud. We sure have a winner here.”

Ashok seemed to be very excited about the project.

“But AB”, Revati who was silent all this while spoke up “Don’t you think that there can be a misuse of this i.e. can't it be used in hacking, there are no control mechanisms, is this database central or would it be localized for the buyer? There are different rules in different countries regarding data management”

“Yes Revati”, AB said and continued “You are right the chances are that there might be a misuse of this technology, but so have mobile phones with Cameras, Google earth, etc. This should not hold us back from bringing new technology into this world. This makes us more responsible to make this a very safe solution, because if we don’t tomorrow someone else will and we are planning to do different levels of customizations at the application level so that we deliver a completely safe and secure solution to our customers. Also, one must remember that a system has to be switched on and connected to the internet in order to hack into it and all the more chances that a system connected is system monitored, and hence any unauthorized intrusion will anyways be taken care of.” Ravi said

“How does this device bypass the firewall and other defenders etc?” Ashok Asked

“This device does not connect via the internet and hence the question of bypassing the firewall etc does not arise. This device places your device in the network of your target device and enables you to take access of the target system much similar to what you do in a remote desktop connection.” Ravi clarified

“OKAY Folks, the reason I have called all of you here is to give you heads up on this and the fact that we are going to need a lot of manpower in order to get this product developed, customized, and marketed and I am not sure how much funds are there with us to arrange for additional resources. Hence, I would request each one of you to stretch as much as you can so that we can have resources working on this project. I am going to run this through Sanjay and see how much extra we can get. Till then plz push as hard as you can.” AB said with the Air of finality and got up signaling the end of their meeting

"Leaving Early Boss!!" Ashok asked as he saw AB stand up

"Yes, I have right some wrongs," AB said walking out of the meeting room.

“It’s kinda nice to home once in a while, isn’t it,” Bhumi remarked as she entered the Bedroom in their Solanki Mansion.

“Yes but today it’s kinda different, I have some reading to be done, please go to sleep I may take long,” Sanjay replied from his reading table reading the report that AB had given him today evening. He was so engrossed in reading the report that he didn’t even bother to lift his face and see her.

“What is it” Bhumi Inquired

“Something related to a new product development project that Anubhav wants to undertake sounds exciting as well as dangerous, the bloody bugger left early today and gave me tons of work!!.” Sanjay replied

Bhumi: “Why?”

Sanjay: "Well he said and I quote: "Have to right some wrongs :)" and left, I didn't meet him today but Ashok informed, he even left this report with him to give it to me" replied smiling, he very well knew where he had gone and whom he was meeting.

Bhumi: "Ok, I meant why does it sound dangerous"

Sanjay: “Well remember, during our college days he used to talk about Global computing and how it was possible to transferring data from one system to another even if the system isn't actively connected to your network!!! This one seems to like that”

Bhumi: “Wow!! can't comment on it till the time I have read the report, but hey it's AB, I really don't think he would even in his wildest dreams have thought about its misuses because he is too naive to even figure it out, for him, it's just that it's a new technology and we should do it.”

Sanjay: “I agree, I think I will talk to investors tomorrow”