Could Turing imagine?

Alan Turing, the Turing in the famed 'Turing machine', considered the father of modern computer science, would have become 99 this 23rd June, had the British Government not treated him the way it did. On 8th June, 1954, when he committed suicide, did he or could he imagine that his work created a whole new technology that would propel a multi-billion dollar industry in just fifty years?  Had he not decided to curtail his life at 41, he could have been the first billionaire of the software industry.

But that is one sad truth of human journey of civilization. Many of the history makers were persecuted in their lifetime by the society du jour and it surely did not start with Socrates.
So how big is the software industry today, really? To find an answer I looked at Gartner's latest news flashes. What I found is mind-boggling.

This year worldwide enterprise software revenue would be around $267 billion [US]. The software services revenue in 2010 was whooping $739 billion!  I have provided a chart here that shows what Gartner has projected for next couple of years. As the chart shows, after  negative growth of 2.5% in 2009, industry is growing at around 8-9% Y-to-Y. 

"The market for enterprise software continues to recover well following the 2009 downturn, with signs of ongoing growth on the horizon," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner. "Economic recovery is evident across all regions.” 

Gartner says that Enterprise infrastructure software spending is on pace to a $153.3 billion total in 2011, a 9 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $140.6 billion. The market is led by the operating systems (OS) segment in which revenue is projected to reach $32.6 billion in 2011, followed by database management systems (DBMSs) revenue at $25.5 billion.

In fact Microsoft riding on the success of Windows 7 is leading the OS segment [please note that Apple did not figure in this list because they sell combined hardware-software product]. Here is a table from Gartner that provides relative position of worldwide top 5 enterprise software vendors (in Millions of US dollars):

	2010 Revenue	2010 Market Share (%)	2009 Revenue	2009 Market Share (%)	2009-2010 Growth (%)
Microsoft	54,711	22.4	48,650	21.6	12.5
IBM	25,436	10.4	24,073	10.7	5.7
Oracle	23,918	9.8	20,037	8.9	19.4
SAP	12,979	5.3	11,390	5.1	13.9
Symantec	5,655	2.3	5,513	2.4	2.6
Other Vendors	121,945	49.8	115,842	51.3	5.3
Total	244,644	100.0	225,505	100.0	8.5

Source: Gartner (May 2011)

Now if you consider top 25 vendors instead, VMware leads the group with more than 41% growth in 2010, followed by Adobe with more than 29 percent and salesforce.com with more than 28 percent growth. The top 25 vendors, ranked by total 2010 software revenue, grew more than 11.5 percent overall. These vendors accounted for nearly 68 percent share, or more than $165 billion, of the overall software market.

Worldwide enterprise application software spending is forecast to total $114.4 billion in 2011, a 10.2 percent increase from 2010 spending of $103.8 billion. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the largest segment within the enterprise application software market. ERP revenue is expected to reach $23.3 billion, followed by office suites with $15.7 billion.

Ms. Correia said. "We have identified a strong correlation between GDP growth and enterprise software spending growth, where software tends to grow 4 to 6 percent above GDP in normal market conditions. However, we do have concerns about the rising cost of commodities, including oil, and its impact on certain regional and country economies."

In contrast , IT services spending grew 3.1 percent to $793 billion in 2010, with IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu taking the top three market share berths. 3.1 percen is definitely alarmingly low, however that is lot better compared to the 5.1 percent drop seen during 2009, according to Gartner. 

Wouldn't you be curious about how the Indian software services companies fare in this list? India’s top 10 software services companies, including the biggest Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) and second biggest Infosys Technologies Ltd, grew nearly 20% last year, outpacing the 5.8% revenue growth of the world’s top 10 companies, according to Gartner. Still, the global market share of the nation’s top 10 software companies, which account for about half the local information industry’s revenue, stood at just 3.6%, highlighting the technology (IT) potential for continued growth, Gartner said.

Agreed that the share of wallet that Indian companies muster is not something that would cheer you up a lot. There could be some upside though. Given that almost all US players from world top 10 list have sizeable presence in India, India's overall share to global software services industry would definitely be more than double the figure quoted by Gartner, although it is quite likely to remain within single digit. That in fact supports Gartner's optimism about Indian software industry: the potential for continued growth. Fact that they show better growth rate, compared to Top 10, is definitely heartening but smaller size of their operation and almost non-existent product-based services portfolio are significant hurdles for them to scale in big way. 
However we must not forget that absolutely none can predict the future absolutely, as sad end of Alan Turing exemplifies. Let us, therefore, just raise our glass and say, "Cheers!" to Gartner's optimism.

What's your type?

What is your type?
I suspect that randomly asked, in eighty percent of cases, the answer to this question would be one of the twelve zodiac signs, with exception of few asking back, "in what sense?". Most of us are so used to typify people based on one's zodiac that one hardly ever recognizes that in effect one is hard-fitting a complete personality into a box using a speculative typification which is based on just one data: the day of a month, the person was born. I can bet there are many who would swear by Linda Goodman's book! Few months back a news portal flashed a news that present zodiac chart is inaccurate and as per star positions, we have a new zodiac sign called Ophiuchus. Since the number of months and days in a year did not change, mapping between zodiac signs and days of the year needed to be remapped. As a fallout, this would make many scorpios, libras and so forth. As soon as the news was out, it drew angry reactions from many quarters. I remember one lady from US tweeted that she did not care what people say, she and her daughter were capricorn and will remain capricorn no matter what changes are brought in the chart! Evidently she saw it as a personal attack to her identity even if that identity is shared with million others.
Fact is the need to belong is almost instinctive. Standing on one's own without the psychological support of clannish or type identity is scary for most of us. Most of the ancient religious texts said something in the effect that every creature is created uniquely by GOD. Even for those who are not GOD-fearing, science has enough proof that each individual is unique. Before geneticists came, we learned that each individual has unique fingerprint and retina-print. After geneticists came, they proved beyond doubt that DNA fingerprint can uniquely identify every human being that ever lived on this planet. That, however does not change our inclination to look for 'types'!
Medical Scientists have been trying to find types for many decades. There is no denying that we all fall into only few blood groups. But blood-groups do not describe your persona. So there was a need to psychologically classify people. We want to know what is inside a person! The approach that medical scientists took for classifying blood groups, evidently could not be used here given the unbelievable complexity of human brain and shallowness of objective knowledge about human mind.
Birth of psychological classification
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology though laid the foundation for modern psychoanalysis, it was his mentee (till they fell apart) Carl G. Jung who actually started the process of defining psychological archetypes. Jung believed that people are intrinsically either introvert or extrovert and introvert people behave differently than the extrovert [although Jungians use the word extravert] people. In his model of human psyche, psyche is an apparatus for adaptation [to environment stimulii] and orientation and it expresses through a set of psychological functions that underlie one's behavioural disposition. He identified following functions:
Rational functions: Thinking as opposed to Feeling
Irrational functions: Sensing [conscious perceiving] as opposed to Intuiting [unconscious perceiving]
Behaviour is essentially an expression of these functions operated through one's intrinsic disposition of extroversion/introversion.
This model first published in 1921 in his seminal book, Psychological Types, is still the basic conceptual framework for many of the psychometric tests that are in vogue today. Most notable of the lot is Myer-Brigg-Type-Indicator [MBTI] Test which is used in many corporate setup even today.
MBTI Psychometric Types
         During the World-war II when women joined industry workforce in mass-scale, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers set forth to create a personality inventory in order that a candidate could find the job that matches her personal preference. Using Jungian Type model, they came up with their Psychometric Tests which became popular as MBTI test. They defined four independent ranges that could describe one's psychological characteristics. The ranges or to use their word, dichotomies, come in four pair:
  I -E [Introversion - Extraversion]
 N-S [iNtuition - Sensing]
 T-F [Thinking - Feeling]
J-P [Judging - Perceiving]
If you notice, they took the implicit judgement attribute out of Jung's type model and separated them as fourth parameters. J-P defines your style preference between judging and perceiving , T-F assesses your judging function whereas N-S assesses your perceiving function.
Based on the answers to the MBTI questionnaire, one gets a score that pegs them in the four dimensional space and that becomes one's type indicator. For example, ESTJ category of people are predominantly Extrovert with Judgmental predisposition and prefers to use Sensing and Thinking functions. Based on the huge sampling that they got, they went on further describing each type and even today if you take the test, you are likely to match the description to your category. In case you are interested, I have provided few references, at the end of this post, that allow you to take online free test without needing to disclose your personal credentials. In a team setup, it often helps to be aware of your co-worker types and a healthy team should have good mix rather than a predominantly single type. In some organizations, this is also used for career development.
DISC
MBTI is not the only test, in fact there are more than a handful different psychometric tests; each designed with specific goal in mind. Of all the different types of tests that I have undergone [or I was made to undergo!] beside MBTI, one I remember well is DISC. This test unlike the MBTI, tries to rate you in four different dimensions of behaviour: Drive,Influence,Steadiness and Compliance. The 24-question test tries to assess where you stand in these four dimensions. Since your psychological traits manifest in your behvaiour, it is expected that behavioural assessment gives you relatively fixed coordinates about your own psyche, unless you lie to the tests!

None of these tests are without their critical lacunae. However applicability is driven by the sampling that each test has covered. Even though MBTI is criticized for leaving vagueness in actionable aspects of its type indicator, it is most widely adopted test as of today [total sampling has crossed more than 300 millions]
OCEAN or Big-5 personality Test
Since MBTI came up, analytical psychology covered some distances and newly acquired knowledge helped people to understand and define more elaborate tests that expect to identify psychological types with more clarity. The most notable of the lot is OCEAN or big-5 personality model. OCEAN model originated in the 60's but it was not until 90's that psychologists accepted this as a better model. A lot of its success could be attributed to its approval from geneticist who after all genome studies, came in a big way in researching about heritability of human personality. OCEAN unlike other models, used a broad-based research across races and regions and then categorization to come up with five primary traits that is supposed to encompass all personality definitions.
OCEAN stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
Each trait define a dimension of human personality.
Openness refers to the dimension ranging from liberal, imaginative, curiousness, interested in new experiences to conservative, traditional, and conforming.  Like all of these five traits, people will fall somewhere on a continuum, with most falling somewhere in the middle.
Conscientiousness dimension ranges from organized, careful, and determined to careless, and weak-minded.  Those on the high end of this factor may be seen as stoic, cold, and methodical.  Those on the low end may be seen as gullible, followers, or may see the needs of others as always superseding their own.
Extraversion refers to the qualities ranging from outgoing, extrovert, energetic, party-loving to reserved, solitary, closed.
Agreeableness ranges from qualities like friendly, compassionate, helpful, kind to unkind, suspicious, cold.
 Neuroticism refers to traits that range from anxiety, anger, controlling, nervousness to calm,self-assured, secure, confident disposition.
OCEAN personality test provides a score on each dimension. For example 57-49-54-42-48 means the person falls in 57th percentile in the Openness dimension, 49th percentile in Conscientiousness dimension and so forth. Although this is the one model that seem to gathered blessing from most of the scientific community, it is not without criticism. There are studies that argue that there are personalities that the scale cannot include. Compared to Jung type model, OCEAN is more a bottom-up approach and therefore more objective, like blood-groups. What it tells about the person and how it helps is a domain of psychologists and very specific to the person.

However more often than not you hear less about these types and more about Type-A, Type -B personality or Alpha male/female type. These types were loosely coined by cardiologist [again medical professionals] in the 50s to describe people with high risk for heart diseases. The Type-A or [Alpha type] people are described as aggressive, ambitious, control-freak [kind of bull-dog Boss type] and therefore stress-prone and therefore with higher risk to heart diseases. These, as you can understand, have little merits or rigour and therefore not worthy of your attention.

Online Tests
I compiled few online free tests that are available today, in case you want to try yourself:
1. MBTI free offline test
2. MBTI online test  Please note that this test is not free.
3. DISC free online test
4. OCEAN free online test