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The Wide World Of Ifs

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DQI Bureau
New Update

Hypothesizing is always fun. It does not

cost, and is always out of the realms of what is possible. You damned well know it.

Trouble is, so does everybody else. During the endless 'blue-sky thinking' (that is what

goofing-off is being referred to of late) that we did for this special issue, some of the

young 'uns came up with hypotheses clearly preposterous, until somebody asked for the

classical 'emperor's clothes'. All hell broke loose and some semblance of order was

restored only after we decided to institutionalize the chaos. When we sat down, the

inevitable question was what if...We said enough was enough...let us think aloud and share

with our readers some of the history's many quirks...and were there?

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John Sculley Had Stuck To Selling Sugar Water




Surely two things would not have happened. One, Apple might not have become such a runaway
hit that it became and neither would it have dropped so low. If anything, it was Sculley,

who ran Apple and successful at that. So much so he was able to retain that mystique of

romance that Apple had and created armies of macolytes who lapped up everything that the

company had to offer. However, if Sculley had stuck to Pepsi, possibly Apple might have

found somebody else, who might not have been so romantic, but would have created a solid

organization with structures and leaders, and not scores of tech-crazy, cyber-junkies who

probably had little experience in running companies. Also mistakes such as Mike Spindler

might have been averted and Steve Jobs might not have had to do his Sir Galahad act again,

something that he probably enjoys but his customers may not. Another blasphemy that Apple

might have averted is the $ 150 million dole from their 'evil empire' Microsoft and its

monarch Bill Gates. Is not this similar to Russia going to America for aid? Oh, yes, one

last laugh. Had Sculley spurned jobs at the beginning, the latter might not have been

jobless later.

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Microsoft Had Continued The Joint O/S Development With IBM




Dave Cutler and his NT might have remained a dream. Better still-depending upon whose side
you are on- Microsoft might not have got such a bearhug on the global computing scenario.

Bill might still have become a billionaire, but some of the famed arrogance might have

taken time to emerge. Imagine a world where there is no Win95 or NT, no shouts of Mac '88

from Redmond-baiters. However, on the flip side, there is also no justice department

investigations, no FTC probe, an emotionally unemployed Scott McNealy and Larry Ellison,

and horror of horrors, the view from Redmond is without Windows till you are Blue in the

face...Stop smiling!

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Sanjay Gandhi Had Not Died




The 'Gentleman' might have replaced Rajiv Gandhi as India's first tech-savvy Prime
Minister who understood the importance of IT. And perhaps, would have been instrumental in

giving the Indian IT industry its first policy statement on infotech which his brother

did, something that this industry still cherishes. More: he would have made Maruti the

major IT user than anyone else. But then Suzuki's contention would not have been on

Bhaskarendu's appointment as Maruti MD but on the appointment of Maruti's IT division

head.

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Vinay Bharat Ram's Sony Deal Had Not Been Canceled By The Indian Government




The original IT entrepreneur, Vinay Bharat Ram, clinched the major deal to manufacture
electronic calculators in a tie-up with Sony, the license for which was suddenly canceled

by GoI. Miffed, Bharat Ram, created DCM Data Products, which went on to create India's

first indigenous computers-the Galaxy series. Prior to that what was more important was a

precocious twenty-something who saw an opportunity to fulfill his dream and took off from

DCM to create another computer company. Shiv Nadar might have realized his dream elsewhere

but for the GoI's instrangience. Even today, the industry is peppered with ex-DCMers who

found their grounding in the old warrior.

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Rochester Had Not Been In Minnesota But California




Story has it that Rochester Minnesota is generally cold and the honchos from Watson's days
at IBM HQ never wanted to go to the Rochester labs. As a result of this, Frank Soltis,

decided to work on a revolutionary new architecture for a medium-range system. Due to

relative independence from the Blue suits, the architecture and the system built around

that went on to create history, and continue to do so. There are many in the Rochester

labs, who still believe that AS/400 might have been 'too revolutionary' for Watson's

brigade and might have died a premature death had it been located in the cradle of

technology 'Silicon Valley'.

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FC Kohli Had Stuck To Power Industry




At heart he still considers himself a power engineer. This grand old man of Indian
industry has been responsible for guiding the destiny of one of the India's largest

software companies. More importantly, he is the wise man in an industry of youngsters. Had

he not shifted into TCS from Tata Power in 1968, Indian software might have lost out on

the initial kickstart. Software's loss would have been power industry's gain.

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Sukh Ram Had Been Animal Husbandry Minister




Hawala at Delhi might have been followed by Gawala, extending the impact to Bihar. Look at
it this way. The telecom reforms might have happened faster. Vittal might have stuck

around for some more time and HFCL might have turned in a sober bid for the Basic

services. One thing is sure, several companies might not have got their order book filled

from DoT and we might have opened out fodder and cowdung for participation from MNCs.

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Narayana Murthy Had Trekked The Other Way




Infosys Founder and Indian software's most celebrated entrepreneur trekked all the way
from France to India. Imagine if he had trekked... but the other way... Silicon valley

would have been the gainer and it might have been an NRI Murthy who would be addressing

seminars on how Indian software 'should' enter the US market. Instead, this unpretentious

Mr Ethics founded Infosys in Bangalore and set up a welfare company which is also a blue

chip at the stock market. The in-house wag is only questioning one thing: Did Murthy trek

the right way or the wrong way?

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George Fernandes Had Been A Capitalist




Two other capitalists would have been happier-the late Roberto Gouizeuto of Coke and John
Akers of IBM. On the other hand, many IBMers might not have sauntered into the Indian IT

the way they did, like Prem Shivdasani, Shashi Ullal etc. The biggest loser might have

been Ratan Tata, whose IBM joint venture might never have happened. And IBM might just

have been the largest IT company in the DQ Top 20 ranking.

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Pradeep Gupta Had Stuck To Writing Software In HCL




You might not be reading this piece. Twenty-seven-year-old Gupta was approached for advice
by a friend for a magazine on livestock and realized "if there can be a magazine for

a thousand bulls, why not for bits and bytes." Birth of DATAQUEST.

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Rajendra Pawar Had Not Taken The Summer Break In Mussorie In 1981




NIIT was born out of Pawar's solo trek to this hill station when he tried to crack the
problem of how Hindustan Computers Ltd and the Indian industry would continue to get IT

manpower. Interestingly, if Pawar had not gone to Mussorie, neither would Aptech, arch

rival, been there, as the man who made Aptech was originally in NIIT.

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World War II Had Not Taken Place




IT revolution would not have taken place until World War III. As the basic stimulus to
computing initiated and sustained the effort in the World War II. It produced the ENIAC

(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer)-the world's first electronic digital

computer. One of the extraordinarily important tasks which devolved once the war started

was the preparation of firing and bombing tables for the Army. As the war intensified and

new types of weapons were being churned out from the allied war factories at a very fast

pace, the computing group at Aberdeen just could not keep pace with the demand for

detailed firing and bombing tables for each type of gun. To overcome this problem, the

Group had to turn to a machine and thus was intensified the need to build ENIAC. If this

need had not arose the ENIAC project would have died out due to lack of funds at its

parent the Morse laboratory. And maybe the death of the project would have resulted in the

computing industry itself which was still being born!

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The Big Brother Ad Had Failed? Or George Orwell Had Never Written 1984?




The book that foresaw the Newspeak omen of Communist hegemony actually turned out to be a
dramatic marketing coup of all time. IBM was the Big Brother that controlled all computing

mankind and Apple was the rebel. The rebel that finally emerges the winner. The ad went a

long way in establishing the legend around the Mac...an image that still endures in

certain die-hard pockets. What if the ad would not have been created or would have failed.

One thing is certain if the ad would have failed, it would have certainly resulted in the

creation of Windows being delayed.

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The Millennium Bugs Would Not Have Been Conceived




The millennium bug which considered one of India's biggest export opportunities, would
have made India lose its share from the total global market estimated at over $ 12

billion. Analysts say it will suck up most of the expenditure to be made in IT by the big

firms in the next couple of years. The magnitude of the problem is such that the whole

industry has come up around the bug. All this would not have been possible but for the

miserliness of the early-day COBOL programmers.

In an effort to save precious memory the

COBOL programmers of yore simply settled on the last two characters of the year. That is

why early programs had the mm/dd/yy format. The early programmers saved a couple of

thousand dollars on the cost of memory. But the same thing has heavily come back to hound

those companies. However, nevertheless, in the process has created a multi-billion dollar

industry.

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Apple Had Licensed Its Technology:




Apple Computers is today fighting to survive in a world dominated by the Wintel
juggernaut. Ironically, Apple has to share at least a part of the blame for creating this

monolith that has today all but swallowed up the company. For Apple, was the first one to

come out with a GUI-based front-end. In those days, PCs were clumsy machines running on

the pretty boring DOS interface. The company made the computing world far more interesting

by launching the GUI front-end in 1984. The Macintosh was an instant hit and the company

sat back to roll in it. But somewhere down the line, the company did not go the Intel way

of freely licensing out its technology to other firms. So the only option for other PC

manufacturers was to get onto the Intel bandwagon and supply the very slow and very cludgy

Windows 1.0 GUI interface from Microsoft. Windows was no match to Apple, but the key lie

in the numbers. Windows, because of its larger number of vendors, won a greater

marketshare and had more application developers developing programs on it. By the time

Apple woke up to the licensing fact, it was already too late.

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