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IT matters for Guru Cool
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`IT productivity guru' Dr. Nitin Paranjpe speaks to Rohini Mohan about his award from Microsoft and more...
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WINDOW TO KNOWLEDGE Dr. Nitin Paranjpa. PHOTO R. RAGU
Apparently, Nitin Paranjpe is an "experienced interview subject". Which means he is used to inquisitive journalists, and won't be silly about being featured in a newspaper. Which means he has pat answers to all questions. Even non-techie ones.
Dr. Paranjpe is amongst only 15 professionals worldwide who head IT services companies. He is known as IT Productivity Guru for his ability to highlight the real value of software. He has partnered with Microsoft for many years now, and holds sessions on optimum utility of Microsoft Office at various business houses.
Self taught
A qualified gynaecologist, Dr. Paranjpe is also the founder of a medical systems company. It all began in the hostel room in medical college. "A nine-year course can make you really want to do something else," he says, referring to how he assembled his own computer with a TV as display, "because even a PC with two drives cost Rs. two lakhs then" and taught himself all kinds of software. "As soon as I finished my MD, I started Maestros Medline Systems Ltd., which develops medical equipment that is different from the black boxes MNCs make."
Black boxes are machines that do all inter-related functions as a package, and come at a blanket price.
"It's very proprietary, and cannot be customised; no one knows what's happening inside, so you depend on it completely." His company breaks up the functions of the black box, and provides customisable machines at lower cost. Maestros is one of the few indigenous companies to have a strong market presence among medical electronic biggies.
Dr. Paranjpe is fervently fixated on what he calls "complete knowledge". "Most people who use software know very little of it. How do you expect them to help customers then?" The developer makes the program and leaves. The vendor doesn't care to know it all. The installers know just enough to keep their jobs. And the customer, "you can't blame him", can't understand why he must be charged so much for so little benefit. "It's a vicious cycle of mediocrity that everybody's celebrating."
Award from MS
This year, MS has awarded him with the Most Valuable Professional for MS Office Systems. So he knows every single feature in MS Office? "Yes. And more importantly, I know when to use what. There are about 40 methods to just transfer a file. I know all of them. Of course, I don't expect everyone to know all of them too, but at least don't call everything you don't know `advanced'. It's just an excuse for laziness."
"People at software developer level i.e. the techies think it's below their standard to use MS Office," he says. "But what they don't realise is that there are thousands of features in Office that they're not aware of. Even if they don't use the software, the knowledge of what already exists can only help them in writing better programs in whatever software they prefer."
For someone who didn't approve of MNC black boxes, Dr. Paranjpe's loyalty to market giant Microsoft seems out of place. And if Microsoft had to get someone to teach customised usage to its customers, why didn't they just make customisable software in the first place? A little surprised at the question, he says it could be personalised if you knew where to find what. All right, but it was still a package. "When HP and Siemens make money off packages, they ride on proprietary, guarded information," he says, "Microsoft has the information with all the codes on its website. They're not hiding anything. That's the difference between MS packages and others: openness."
But he admonishes open source technology (software that anybody can write and edit according to their requirements) calling it a great movement, but "only because it is hyped as something different from package software." He offers piracy as an ad hoc quality survey: "Anyway it's going to be cheap, so why do they pirate MS Office? Why not pirate open source or free software? Here you can't say it's the aggressive marketing, no? It's just superior quality."
Whether he's convinced of this himself or not, he has answers for everything. Even when you cross-examine his loyalty. Well, at least the man does "enable technology for you". Not too much of a crime, that.
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