All posts by Neil Harwani

Interested in movies, music, history, computer science, software, engineering, management and technology
Education

What is changing in education sector in India?

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  • Autonomy for high ranking colleges & universities
  • Similarity in rules for PhD
  • Education related code of conduct for Ed-Tech
  • Industry professionals can teach without PhD
  • Universities allowed to tie up with Ed-Tech for online education
  • Online education now mainstreamed and regularized
  • New education policy launched
  • UGC & AICTE top management focussed on better outcomes
  • Positive changes in school ecosystems
  • Tie-ups / collaborations increasing in education
  • Multiple focussed universities coming up in various domains
  • 4 years honours degree and direct admission to PhD after 4 years degree possible
  • Credit transfers & multiple entry / exit made possible
  • Online content sourcing now allowed for universities up to 40%

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

IAM-SSO

Keywords for Identity & Access Management plus Single Sign on with links from Liferay ecosystem – Part 1

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Keywords in the identity & access management space along with single sign on:

  • Active Directory
  • LDAP
  • OAuth
  • Kerberos
  • OpenID
  • SAML
  • CAS
  • Seamless login
  • Shibboleth
  • IAM
  • SSO
  • JWT
  • Identity provider
  • Service provider
  • MFA
  • TFA
  • Principal
  • Identity synchronization
  • Identity lifecycle management
  • Entitlement
  • Authorization
  • Authentication
  • Federated identity
  • B2B & B2C

Links from Liferay documentation for above:

  • https://learn.liferay.com/dxp/latest/en/installation-and-upgrades/securing-liferay/configuring-sso.html
  • https://learn.liferay.com/dxp/latest/en/installation-and-upgrades/securing-liferay.html
  • https://learn.liferay.com/dxp/latest/en/headless-delivery/using-oauth2/creating-oauth2-applications.html
  • https://help.liferay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360033738332-Authenticating-Using-SAML
  • https://help.liferay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026505211-Authenticating-with-Kerberos
  • https://www.liferay.com/resources/whitepapers/Identity+Management+in+Liferay+DXP
  • https://help.liferay.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018176491-OAuth-2-0
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_management

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Liferay

Why Liferay & what about my performance? – Part 1

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An unbiased view on why you should adopt a platform like Liferay and what are the benefits in using Liferay:

  • Having implementations in various domains like insurance, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, education, government, intranets, commerce, energy, customer / partner portals and more
  • Open standards based system built with and around Java & specifications from Java community
  • Tooling options built on top of Eclipse, Gradle and Blade
  • Gogo Shell & DevStudio
  • Has been contributing to ecosystem by community as well as enterprise versions regularly plus has cloud options with analytics & commerce
  • Modular architecture built using OSGi
  • Growing marketplace
  • Maturity of 10+ years in terms of having features in fine grained property file entries, IAM/SSO/AD/LDAP, programming & configuration options and similar inbuilt integrations, workflows, content management, system administration and more
  • Commerce, Analytics, Cloud option & Content / horizontal portal in the same ecosystem
  • Evolving features around Cloud, Personalization, CI/CD, Analytics, ML&AI with the trends
  • Large part of documentation is open for public reference
  • Growing community & partner ecosystem
  • Strong features around content, search, collaboration, chat bots, headless and more
  • Many security, clustering, optimization, workflow, content, configuration features are pre-built with past experiences and evolution for over a decade
  • Programmers & technical people love the open standards based understanding of the product ecosystem

How to overcome some of the challenges around implementing Liferay:

  • Read the official documentation, blogs, forums in entirety and refer non Liferay forums across the web, don’t read piecemeal – that does not help
  • If you struggle with SEO / page load performance problems look at various reports from across the web like GTMetrix, Pingdom and more rather than rely on a single tool and single geo based server. Think of functional, technical and other changes across configurations rather than only one area. Good part is as there is transparency with open standards and open forums, it’s easier to decipher what changes need to be made
  • To avoid upgrade problems, follow the official path for customization & configuration in conjunction with Liferay team rather than customize outside the official process. Also, use out of the box features as much as possible

Liferay case studies

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Visualization

Notes from Tableau training taken at Nirma University

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Below are some keywords and notes from my Tableau training for visualization taken at Nirma University, Ahmedabad. Hope it helps you.

  • Dataset understanding – Functional analysis
  • Data cleaning in CSV
  • Data cleaning / formatting in Tableau
  • Clustering – Automatic & Manual
  • Geographical visualization
  • Filters
  • Tooltips
  • Details
  • Dashboard
  • Constant Line
  • Average Line
  • Median
  • Totals
  • Bar chart with cluster
  • Story building
  • Exclude
  • Explain data
  • Create set
  • Group
  • Cleaned with data interpreter

Reference Links:

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Liferay

Keywords to search on Liferay – Part 1

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Searching these keywords on Liferay will keep you updated on what’s happening in the ecosystem. Add “Liferay” in-front of these keywords & search the same. It’s a mix of technical & functional / product feature topics. This is Part-1 of the series.

  • Module loader
  • MVC portlet
  • Logging
  • Upgrade
  • Patch tool
  • Search filter
  • Hot fixes
  • Service packs
  • Search experiences
  • Objects
  • Commerce
  • Service Builder
  • Headless delivery
  • Extension
  • Clustering
  • Automated Live chat connector
  • SSO / IAM / Authentication & Authorization
  • Catalogs
  • Products
  • Store administration
  • Order fulfilment
  • Docusign integration
  • Workflows / Process automation
  • Themes
  • Templates
  • Database upgrade
  • Scheduler
  • DXP Cloud
  • Checkout
  • Search blueprint
  • Solutions
  • JavaAPIs
  • REST / JSON APIs
  • DevStudio
  • Performance tuning & optimization
  • REST builder
  • TagLib
  • Portlet filter
  • Custom search facet
  • Custom search filter
  • Workspace
  • Theme generator
  • JS generator
  • Open graph
  • Blade
  • GraphQL
  • Elastic Search
  • Users and permissions
  • Virtual instances
  • Public & private pages
  • Content authoring
  • CI/CD/Docker/Kubernetes
  • Collaboration & Social
  • Editors
  • Maven
  • Gradle
  • Gradle tasks
  • File storage
  • Bundles
  • Organizations
  • Search boosting
  • Search results rankings
  • Portal-ext.properties
  • System.properties
  • Redirection

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Engineering

Civil engineering for 21st century in Tier 2/3 colleges & universities in India

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Civil engineering was among the first core engineering disciplines started in the engineering areas. Over time many other disciplines have evolved like computer engineering, instrumentation, bio-technology, mechatronics, electronics, communications, quantum, systems engineering and so on – on top of the other two core disciplines of mechanical & electrical. But even with so much evolution of engineering over the decades and years, Tier 2/3 colleges face a challenge of placing civil engineering pass outs in management & technology areas. Bridge courses do exist if pass outs join technology firms but these placements are few and far in-between with a steep learning curve. Trends for empty seats in engineering in Tier 2 / 3 colleges in last few years indicate similar points as mentioned in this blog.

Problems for civil engineers in Tier 2 / 3 colleges / universities in terms of employability include:

  • Super-specialized Master of Technology / Master of Engineering which are highly isolated from other disciplines like mechanical, electrical, electronics among others.
  • Bachelor of Technology being heavily focussed on core areas of civil with less skills being developed for collaborative working in management & technology areas.
  • Outside of design and super-specialization, civil engineers find employment in maintenance of bridges, buildings and so on other than construction management which is largely dependent on economy and thus, not always a good, long term, stable employment option.

Subjects in civil engineering especially in Tier 2 / 3 colleges in India fall into below categories:

  • Year 1 – Introductory courses of mathematics, physics, chemistry, mechanical, electrical & electronics engineering, engineering labs along with mechanics, engineering drawing and so on
  • Year 2 / 3 / 4 – Subjects from structural / earthquake / computer based design theories and engineering, environmental engineering, transportation, soil & foundation engineering, water / irrigation / hydraulics engineering, geology, surveying, town planning, basics of remote sensing, advanced mathematics and high level basics of programming and construction management

Persistent problem with above course structure is the lack of skills related to digital, technology, modern management and inter-disciplinary subjects. Employment & startup world in 21st century has shifted to technology, modern management, bio-technology, advanced applied engineering and similar areas over time. Core civil engineering jobs exist with good salaries as well but they lock engineers into those areas without an option to easily switch to other areas. Changes from civil engineering into MSc Computer Science and such are still not very popular though allowed now in India in recent years.

Here are my suggestions for Tier 2 / 3 colleges for civil engineering:

  • Year 2 / 3 / 4 should include more subjects of mechanical & electrical engineering
  • Many of the subjects around building & construction management should be converted to lesser credit workshop or practical mode and some credits should be saved from there. These credits should be switched to technology & modern management.
  • Multiple subjects around hydraulics, structural engineering, advanced mathematics, soil & foundation engineering and similar should be consolidated into 1 or maximum 2 subjects in each of these areas to make way for mechanical, electrical, technology & modern management subjects.
  • Geo-informatics & remote sensing should be taught in more detail including overlapping subjects with electronics like micro-processors / controllers & communications / networks.
  • Many courses like transportation should have a much larger component of practical, simulations, case studies, design software included in them.

Such changes would make the civil engineering course more relevant to modern 21st century job / startup / business / collaborative world. Also, switching from Bachelor of Technology / Engineering to Master of Science in Computer Science in post graduation should be encouraged. As of now students do shift from Civil engineering to MBA but other options as described in my blog also need to be considered.

Would be keen to hear thoughts of fellow civil engineers. Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Yearly Review

My 2021 calendar year review

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I haven’t written any reviews for my years in the past. So this year I am writing a brief review for 2021, the year that just went by. Here is a list of things that happened in the year 2021.

  1. Year started with vaccinations starting worldwide and a sense of victory over COVID and hopefully we/all thought the COVID time was gone. Turned out challenges were far greater than initial victories in vaccine science & creation, namely – trials, approvals, supply chain, number of vaccinations applied worldwide, delivery, manufacturing and more – it turned out to be a worldwide exercise which ultimately ecosystem of vaccines was able to conquer. Vaccine delivery to people was outmatched by new infections initially although over time during the year vaccines became available and people readily got vaccinated leading to better outcomes. Scientists and all associated with vaccines brought down the vaccine creation and production cycle from 10 years in the past to approximately one year which in itself is an unmatched feat till now. Positive thing has been newer types of vaccines, collaboration in science across the world and the fact that the lockdowns or restrictions brought us closer to family members and network where the commute time got converted to time spent with family and network either digitally or in person. We could use the extra time to build better habits of reading and much more. It taught us to value small things and things that we have in a realistic manner rather than focus on other things.
  2. In the first quarter, I decided to move out of services to a technology product company which also supported me in forming my own private limited firm. Turned out to be a good journey of learning, exploration and working in a new area – “Customer Success”. It was an area which I had not been actively working on in the last 8-10 years but as the year progressed I could pick up with the company’s help and move ahead.
  3. Teaching wise I consolidated from teaching at 3-5 universities / colleges / platforms to only one university. I have been teaching at Nirma University now for 3+ years as a visiting faculty where I now have focus on subjects – Python & R programming, Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, BigData & Hadoop, Business Process Re-engineering and taking few other lectures in co-teach mode related to information systems, programming, operations & data science at institute of management. Support from both places in terms of good mentors and colleagues where I work resulted in good quality output throughout the year.
  4. I could write about 11 blog posts in the year which is approximately 1 per month in varied areas. Lot of my past / current students or colleagues either in teaching world or industry or people in my network have triggered many of these discussions or the thoughts have come to me while randomly analysing many of these things. Overall I am looking for my network’s suggestions on similar topics continuously.
  5. Later, in spite of COVID and all the problems around it, Ahmedabad University and UCSD helped us to complete our GEMBA in online mode. All credit to them for running a top class program and keeping the same level of high quality delivery so that the whole batch could finish the program on time. I got a chance to do a 4 week certification on digitization of supply chains from NITIE and got admission to BITS Pilani for MTech in Software Systems as well – so time well spent.
  6. Looking forward to the new year – I hope everyone gets to put COVID behind and have a happy new year where people can spend time with family and network in a positive way plus have a career / job / business / startup / teaching / research area / spend time in a way that suits them.

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Career Building, Experience

Career switches – Perpetual query (Grass looks greener on the other side – reality check) – Part 1

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Being a visiting faculty for the last few years, I hear this one question many times. Is my current role, industry and job something I can spend my career in, I am not sure whether I will make it here. With time spent in this one area & increasing age what happens to me in long term.

Here is what I tell them:

  1. Think of your career as climbing a 100 floor building. You can’t climb 100+ floors in a short period of time like Will Smith generally, he is more of an exception. The elevator is not available many times – you have to take the stairs and climb 5-10 floors per year and in 8 to 15 years you will be where you want. Patience & persistence is what is needed.
  2. Competition & stress is everywhere – marketing, engineering, medicine, human capital management, finance, operations, art, sciences, computer science, investing, government and more. There is no free lunch generally. Running away from something you like only because of competition is not always the right approach.
  3. Go step by step – changing your path mid way is ok if you realize you genuinely don’t want to do something that you are doing currently.
  4. Try and avoid crazy shortcuts, smart work is welcome but crazy short cuts generally land us into trouble. Optimization like finding a new shorter, smarter way of doing an old thing or inventing a new area is good too but an abrupt shortcut that you know is not really the right way is not preferable.
  5. Build your own niche, network and talk to people, get into habit of reading and writing, interact with people and learn things that you want to learn by short courses, certifications and so on. That tells you where the market is going and what you want to do.
  6. Grass is always greener on the other side – what we do looks tough and what others do looks easier, the common thinking many have. Marketing & sales feels finance is easier, finance feels human capital work is easier, engineering feels management is easier and so on. In reality to succeed you need to work hard / smart in all areas and statistically very few get things by pure luck like a lottery – if they get it, its good but generally for majority of us, it’s going to be your smart / hard work with experience that will get you to success.
  7. Be open to various types of roles and experiences across cultures in your initial 2-5 years of career as that will tell you what you really like and where you can excel / innovate / build / research and work.
  8. Create opportunities out of whatever limited resources you have. Internet is a great leveller, you can build opportunities where none exist. Use it to learn, interact, write and read or to experiment.
  9. Cultivate your interests and hobbies.
  10. I have seen people switching after significant experience from banking to information technology, information technology to management, information technology to various types of businesses / startups, operations to human capital management, engineering to management, routine 9 to 5 jobs to teaching, engineering to acting and so on. If you pay attention to people around you, you will see many examples like these.
  11. Just because you are different and others are not doing something you want / can / are doing does not mean you should stop – maybe they don’t understand you yet!!! Rather it could be the start of something that is better than many other current models – that’s how many of the best things have started sometimes.

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Education

Ways of learning in modern education – Part 1

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  • Case studies
  • Field visits
  • Discussions
  • Practical
  • Simulations
  • Work integrated learning
  • Experiments
  • Guided learning
  • Experiential learning
  • Group assignments
  • Individual assignments
  • Quizzes
  • Critical analysis of news and articles
  • Case writing
  • Workshops
  • Paper / article / research writing
  • Whitepaper writing
  • Research / teaching assistantships
  • Thesis
  • Industry projects & reports driven by students
  • Internships
  • Survey and analysis of market data
  • Market research
  • Competitive events between institutions
  • Participating in standards / products / service creation
  • Industry and academic collaboration at faculty level
  • Games
  • Social experiments

Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in

Culture, Social Media

The other perspective – Social Media – Part 1

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Have you realized below points when you don’t find people interested in your social media posts and activities? Its not always lack of interest or dislike that causes someone to be un-interested in your posts.

  • Is your post showing up on their activity feed or wall?
  • Are your interests and likes similar?
  • Does the other person have time for social media?
  • Is the other person active on social media? Is s/he searching for things completely different from you?
  • All social media runs on algorithms, optimizations and matching – is the algorithm correctly able to decipher where your & other person’s interests are?
  • Many people have profiles which are not exactly what they really are – either for interest of their privacy or other reasons causing more mis-match to happen
  • We get to see more and more of what we tend to like and follow, post and so on which may not be exactly in agreement with your network
  • Mathematically the permutations & combinations for even a network of 1,000 people connected to one person with 10s of likes and posts / activities per person builds such a vast set of events which is not humanely possible to track for one person
  • Probability of we seeing something that other person in our network wants us to see is very low
  • Before we judge why people have not been in touch with us, do realize some of the points above. Larger your social network in terms of physical world & virtual world – lower the chances of you observing activities, posts, likes and more from individuals in your network that they want you to see unless the matching algorithms are intuitive
  • These are some of the reasons why we keep seeing warnings about why we should not be judgemental about things on social media
  • Email me: Neil@HarwaniSystems.in