Is it good to stop working to study for an MBA?

Q. I am working for a bank as an Oracle DBA for one year. I have more than four years of experience in this field.

I hold the B.Tech (I.T.) and M.Sc. (Telecommunication) degrees.

What are the career prospects of doing an MBA in ERP (SAP) if I stop working and do the MBA course full-time?

Is it advantageous or disadvantageous to make such a move?

Career advice from Stella Thevarakam, regional HR director of management and technology consulting firm ISS Consulting (M):

An MBA always has more value when it is backed by good years of experience. You have got four years of experience.

Stopping work to do the MBA is not really necessary. Don’t rush with your MBA. Take it at a pace that you are comfortable with.

If you can manage studying and working (most people who do MBA work and study), then that will be the best option as it will add value to your resume and experience.

Stopping work and just concentrating on your MBA may give you more concentration but may reflect not so favourably on some future employers who may think that you cannot handle too much stress. Definitely more value is added if you study whilst working, but this is just an opinion. There are pros and cons.

My opinion would be not to stop working as when I interview candidates and they have periods where they study and work I view them more favourably. It adds on to the quality of the person’s experience and calibre.

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Source: ZDNetAsia

Developers are born brave!

A typical workplace scenario...I agree!

SAP and Oracle's referral programs have different focus

Although their recently launched referral programs are similar, Oracle's is driven by financial gain while SAP's is focused on building relationships with its channel partners, says Ovum.

SAP earlier this month announced the launch of a business referral program targeted at small to midsize businesses (SMBs), in which it will pay for leads for new business. Channel partners will get a 5 percent cut of a deal's net software license value, according to SAP.

Oracle's program pays a similar 5 percent, capped at US$50,000.

Warren Wilson, Ovum research director, said in a statement the programs "should pay a double dividend" in bringing in new business and helping to identify new partners for the two software giants.

The program will offer the opportunity for the two rival companies to evaluate which of the partners will be most productive or can best fill gaps in their market coverage, said Wilson.
However, the differences between the two vendors' programs may be their emphasis, noted Wilson.

"Oracle's lead message is the money," said Wilson, adding that its programs focus on increasing deal volumes.

"SAP, by contrast, emphasizes deep engagement, building long-term relationships and two-way loyalty through co-innovation programs in which the partner helps to define the Web services that will underpin the solution.

"Which method is more effective is a question that the market will take years to answer," said Wilson.

More Links:

• SAP vs Oracle
• Which one to take: SAP ABAP, Oracle DBA or CCNA?
• Career Shift: Which would be the best option: Oracle or SAP?

Source: ZDNetAsia

Intel prepares to close Philippine plant

Rumors have been circulating since 2005 that Intel had already made a decision to pack up and leave the Philippines after the year 2010. The writing on the wall became clearer in 2006 when Intel inaugurated a US$605-million test and assembly plant in Ho Chin Minh City in Vietnam.
During the Vietnam launch, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett said the facility was simply an expansion and would not affect the operations of other plants located in countries such as the Philippines.

However, the telltale signs were obvious. Among the countries in Asia where it has test and assembly plants, the Philippines was the only site in which Intel made no significant plans to invest or expand.

Compared to the Cavite plant which received no part of Intel's US$1 billion investment plan for Asia in 2006, Intel poured a whopping US$270 million to increase the capacity of its Malaysian plants and another US$300 million to expand its facilities in Shanghai and Chengdu in China.
During the media interview, Barrett said the company considers "political stability" as a major factor when making investment decisions and singled out Vietnam as a favorable investment climate.

According to various blogs, Intel had discussed the possibility of moving the factory to an IT park in the neighboring province of Laguna because the current Cavite building is structurally unsound.

But employees dismissed this option, questioning the need to offer staff severance packages if the company had intended only to transfer to another location within the country.

Industry observers have cited high electricity and labor costs as two major reasons why Intel is planning an exit strategy. The Philippines has the second most expensive energy cost in Asia after Japan.

Intel's impending pullout is a huge blow to the Philippines, where the electronics market--which encompasses semiconductors--is the country's largest export earner.

The chipmaker's decision to put up a manufacturing hub was a symbolic vote of confidence that paved the way for other foreign companies such as Texas Instruments, to locate their operations in the country.

In fact, the current Cavite plant was where Intel's mobile processor Centrino was first assembled and shipped to the global market. Pentium 4 chips were also manufactured in the facility.

Aside from making chipsets and processors, the local site also houses a Flash memory design factory. However, employees who specialize in Flash are expected to move to Numonyx, a joint venture set up between Intel and STMicroelectronics.

In 2004, an Intel-commissioned study by University of Asia and the Pacific showed that the chipmaker's investments resulted in US$713 million in direct and indirect export contributions.

The report further noted that Intel accounted for 22 percent of exports in Cavite and was the largest employer in General Trias.



Source: ZDNetasia

Microsoft Should Buy SAP Instead of Yahoo

Randall Stross of the NYT has an excellent idea, one that might save Microsoft from committing the most colossal strategic error in its quarter-century history. If Microsoft is going to buy a big company, Stross suggests, it should buy SAP--a company that actually does what Microsoft does well, which is sell software to corporations.

Stross picks up on the same theme we did in our "Microsoft's colossal strategic error" piece--namely that Microsoft's 13-year pursuit of the consumer Internet business has been a misguided attempt to rule a business it shouldn't be in in the first place: consumer web advertising. Buying a wounded player in that business, a company whose best days are arguably behind it, won't help Microsoft dominate the Internet--it will just further distract it from what it does really well--enterprise software. And it will likely end in disaster.

The heart of the problem, which Microsoft seems congenitally unable to recognize, is that no company, not even Microsoft, can fight and win wars on three brutally competitive fronts at the same time. To wit:

* Oracle, IBM, SAP, et al in enterprise software.
* Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Research in Motion, et al, in consumer gadgets.
* Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Time Warner, et al, in consumer media.

Microsoft is not a conglomerate like GE, and it can't win all of these wars. So here's what it should do instead:

* Swap its consumer Internet business and $10-$15 billion of cash for 51% of Yahoo.
* Consider spinning off its Entertainment and Devices business as a standalone company.
* Consider merging with SAP and really going after Oracle and IBM in the enterprise.

If Microsoft traded its Internet business and a bunch of cash for half of Yahoo, its shareholders would still benefit (by owning stock in a more successful Internet business). For reasons we've described in detail here, a stand-alone Yahoo would be far more likely to succeed than a merger Microsoft-Yahoo that is merely a small Microsoft division.

Microsoft is about to make a huge mistake that will likely define Steve Ballmer's tenure as CEO. We would like to see it not make the mistake (and also not take Yahoo down with it). But we, Stross, and others might as well be shouting down a rain barrel.

Source: AlleyInsider


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