Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Rajan Nagarajan, CIO, Mahindra Satyam (Part 1)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

In one of the most thought-stirring interviews with Rajan Nagarajan CIO, Mahindra Satyam, Sramana discusses cloud computing adoption from the point of view of large systems integrators such as Mahindra Satyam. In addition to talking about how big consulting companies are leveraging clouds, Sramana and Rajan have a thought-provoking exchange about open opportunities in cloud computing for entrepreneurs, a discussion which has whetted my appetite for more and raised the bar for idea-churning discussions as part of this series, Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing (TLCC). >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 7)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What else is going on in the broader market right now? Is e-commerce is really starting to come alive again? I have seen some statistics; 20,000 e-commerce stores are coming online every week. My point is, whatever category you are a supplier or supplier group in, if that category lends itself to e-commerce – and almost every category, at least in America, lends itself to e-commerce – and if you have to cater to such a fragmented set of electronic stores, the standardization of taxonomy for that industry segment becomes vital, right? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 6)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Next in our discussion, I would like to explore entrepreneurial opportunities from your point of view in the supply chain domain. I am talking about the supply chain in general, and it sounds like you are reasonable experts in this domain. Where do you see entrepreneurial opportunities for starting new companies to solve open problems leveraging the cloud architecture? >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 5)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Can you talk to me about the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) models?

SS: The SCOR people have a relationship with the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA), and we are close to AMR, which is now part of Gartner. The AMR people think we can help to create that SCOR model for the supply chain. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 4)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What is the response from the industry? There are a large number of players on the AAIA board; what is their response to architecture such as yours, and what is their interest in getting on board? >>>

Boundaries Between HPC And Cloud Computing Vanishing

By guest author Shaloo Shalini

High-performance computing (HPC) just might be on the verge of a colossal shift in paradigm in terms of both technology and market aspects. The erstwhile islands of large-scale supercomputing facilities may soon become outdated thanks to inroads made by cloud computing into HPC territory in addressing the issues of scale, access, and affordability. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 3)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: What you delivered to the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association was a metadata structure of sorts?

JP: Yes, exactly.

SS: In terms of business model, we built ours on the reverse market adoption model. Once we realized that the legacy messed up this process and that making it work is really based on the classic enterprise application integration (EAI) approach, which is a problematic approach, we decided to get the super spec done. Having realized this early on, we went to a data-driven model, and for the data-driven model to work we have to canonize the data. Therefore, Jason’s point was to re-create the super spec. An important approach we took here is that we donated the super spec to the industry, which then created a board of directors from all across the industry including buyers, retailers, sellers, system providers, and ERP providers, and those people sit at the table and are driving the super spec adoption. We maintain the super spec for this board. That has allowed us to drive this approach forward because we have such a large ecosystem. These people are evangelizing around Jason’s super spec and the canonization of that data and the metadata. We already have the market adoption for this data-driven model. We maintain the business rules but the architecture, the super specification, we have donated to the industry. >>>

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Steven Smith, President And CEO, Gcommerce Inc. (Part 2)

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

SM: Let me drill down a bit more into some of the things you said. What is the total number of parts that you mentioned are in the automobile aftermarket industry?

SS: Three million are highly active ones out of 10 million parts. >>>