McAfee Artemis is Awesome

I am learning about the variuous MFE technologies as we interact with various groups. I recently met with Jeff Green and Rahul from the Artemis group. The architecture and design of the Artemis backend is very very clever. I would pointificate that this is and will become MFE’s biggest asset in the security space.

Mergers and Acqusitions

As some of you might have noticed Solidcore got acquired by McAfee. I have transitioned into a CTO/VP Technology role for the Risk & Compliance Business Unit.  My wife’s company got sold to Cisco a month earlier, so its been quite a few months for us. It was also interesting to go through both acquisitions simultaneously giving one the opportunity to compare and contrast the best practices for assimilating the new set of employees, products, cultures into the organization. Both MFE and CSCO have a large number of acqusitions over the last ten years.

On a personal note I was very impressed with MFE. It reminds me a lot of MSFT in the mid-90s. MSFT in that era was a force to be reconned with. You would go to meetings and there would be these really smart people, all of whom had made money and were fearless. And you would sit there and say holy smokes I can’t compete with this. MFE is not quite the same as it has gone through several iterations as a company, but it reminds me of that. The top couple of layers of management are really smart, communicate heavily, are organized for efficiency.

It is an interesting journey for me personally. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I view companies like children. You give them birth, but as soon as they are born they become their own person. Over time they develop their own personalities and go through their teenage years (my kids haven’t hit those yet, so I my experiences are viacarious ). Solidcore is one more child to graduate from college, the technology just like those of Vxtreme, Teros, GreenBorder will have far reaching impact and it was a good outcome for everyone at the company.

Amazon is a big boon for Xen

I am working with a startup which is pitching a Xen based solution to enterprises and telco’s. In the past years it was difficult to answer the question whether Xen was as good as vmware. This startup answers this questions by saying “It is good enough for Amazon”. 9 times out of 10 that silences most of the critics in the room. This will only get easier.

Symantec is also embedding Xen with their volume manager and storage products to create a competitor to virtual infrastructure.  It is also rumored that Xen should do 10s of million kind of revenue this year for Citrix. Which is small compared to vmware, but a 10-20 fold increase over last year.  The rate of change is more interesting.

All we own is time

It is my belief that all we own in this world is time. And we can chose how to spend it and with whom to spend it. All of us to varyiing degree have control over some portion of our time. I am sure this is not an original thought. Different people have said the same thing in different ways. I remember vaguely Steve Jobs saying that death makes decisions really simple, would you spend your remaining time doing what you are doing today.

My other realization perhaps a bit late is that time can’t be averaged. Take kids for example, you can’t say that instead of spending 1 hr everyday with them you will take 20 days off and spend every waking hour with them. It’s not the same. You can’t average it out with kids or with yourself also. 20s is the time to do some things, 30s to do other things, 60s something else. The slice of time over which you average has to be really small for it to have meaning … a week is the maximum I would say.

One is lucky if one can spend time with people they want to, and not get bogged down in providing for essentials or chasing one’s own tail.

Children are not a “Porfolio”

My dad once told me that “Children are not a portfolio”. It is not if one does well and one doesn’t you feel good. I now have 3 daughters and am begining to understand the meaning of the words.

How to attain happiness … thanks Rahul for the link

Google Tech Talks March 15, 2007 ABSTRACT If happiness is an inner state, influenced by external conditions but not dependent on them, how can we achieve it? Ricard will examine the inner and outer factors that increase or diminish our sense of well-being, dissect the underlying mechanisms of happiness, and lead us to a way of looking at the mind itself based on his book, Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill and from the research in neuroscience on the effect of mind-training on the brain. Speaker Bio: Matthieu Ricard, a gifted scientist turned Buddhist monk, is a best selling author, translator, and photographer. He has lived and studied in the Himalayas for the last 35 years where he currently works on humanitarian projects. He is an active participant in the current scientific research on meditation and the brain.«

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1424079446171087119

in pursuit of happiness

I had a sales VP couple of years ago. we used to debate a lot about life and stuff. He asked me why I drive a beetle. I told him my philosophy is to not buy a car above 20K. He was apalled I think to have a CEO who would think like that. One of our perpetual debates was what should be done for our kids.

I explained to him my philosophy is that we are happy if reality exceeds our expectation. as a child our expectations are set on the income of our parents (and unless you have a huge inheritance), reality is set by your own income. So if you come from a wealthy family and then have to struggle you would be very unhappy. So I want to grow up my kids middle class and they will be happier the rest of their life.

He thought this was all BS. He said you are ruining your life and also of your kids. You should live life extravangantly and then your kids will aspire for the same and this will make them more successful than you.

Eaither point of view had merits. We ofcourse agreed to dis-agree and discussed this constantly.

Goal of Life

We all reach a point in our lives, where we stop and ask why? Why am I doing what I am doing? It can happen on a vacation or on due to the loss of someone close to you? Or it just hits you….

I dont remember the dicrete moment when I began thinking about this, but several conversations helped me to find this answer. The first was with a “guru” who was visiting canada. I was visiting my sister (first cousin) who lives in Surrey. The guru was visiting from India and I liked him, unlike most other people I had seen he was not interested in taking money … but seemed very genuine. So I asked him “what is the goal of life” And he replied the “goal of life is happiness”.

That started the thread in my mind. I agree with him that the goal of life is happiness. But in addition life is about balancing happiness today with happiness in the future. A drug addict is happy in the present but has given up on the future.  The balance is different for different people, and you know when you have it. the question is if you dont have it, how do you get there?

Life without a smart phone

Like every other tech executive in the valley I got hooked to email on the phone about 4 years ago.  I used for varying periods a treo, samsung i600, blackberry and then the blackjack. About 3 months back I gave up my Blackjack. Went to Fry’s and bought a 10$ go phone which can only make calls and has a phenomenal battery life.

My wife was not sure if this was temporary or permanent. I have just transitioned at work from a CEO to CTO role and she thinks i am looking for change everywhere.  Maybe true but this is a great one.

I have to admit it has not been easy. we are so addicted to being constantly interrupted that the urge to check email or read the news is so strong, when there is a quiet moment. It is almost as bad as the urge to smoke (although I have never tried that … so am speaking metaphorically).

I had a moment of weakness at VmWorld last month. I was awaiting something important and gave in … putting the sim card back into my black jack. It did not have enough battery and did not run last enough to get any email.  At lunch other people check email atleast 5 times if not more.

Another big change because of this is that I actually have to carve out time to read email. Earlier I would read it as it was coming in. Now I have to sit down and read it systematically. I miss some of the emails … and take longer to reply to others. Steve Dow at Sevin Rosen Funds once said to me we are not doctors, someone won’t die if we dont read and answer email. It is true although very hard to do.

Why did I do it?

I have 3 daughters and more often than not, I found myself reading email when driving.  It occurred to me doing this was stupid, It will only take a moment to lose everything. So I stopped.

FW: Solidcore News — Webinar with Trustwave

 

Solidcore Hosts Web Seminar on PCI DSS Auditing and File Integrity Monitoring Requirements

Trustwave Speaker to Discuss Managing Compliance with PCI DSS Section 11.5

CUPERTINO, Calif., June 25, 2008 – On Thursday, June 26, 2008, Solidcore® Systems, Inc., the leading provider of software to detect and prevent unwanted change, will host a Web seminar to provide expert guidance on the difficult auditing and file integrity monitoring requirements within the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).  The Webinar will help companies better understand the current PCI DSS compliance challenges, and will provide best-practices and a solution for overcoming them. 

http://www.solidcore.com/