Star Member : Interview with Ivan Bayross

ITVidya will highlight some of our members and other invitees who are contributing to the growth of IT industry and making a difference to the careers and business life of IT Professionals.

We will pose a few questions to them to get to know them better, learn from them, understand their future aspirations and contributions they want to make, and also find ways in which the community can contribute to them.

Members are also encouraged to get to know them better by asking them questions, or share about them if they know or have benefitted from the member.

The first in the series of Star Member is Mr. Ivan Bayross.

Ivan Bayross is a veteran in the Indian IT Industry with over 30 years of experience. He studied M.Tech from Manchester University, UK and currently heads a software firm he founded, Silicon Chip Technologies specialising in multi-tier commercial application development.

He also trains at a few management and technical colleges in Mumbai and Pune

His significant contribution to the IT industry has come through his writings, he has authored over 60 books on wide variety of topics such as Oracle, Linux, Unix, Web Technologies, Visual Basic, Java, Ingres, Database Technologies, Project Management etc.

A complete list of his books can be found on his website, http://www.ivanbayross.com

Below is the Q&A session with ITVidya, pls add your questions and Ivan will be happy to address them.

Q1. Ivan, how best do you like to introduce yourself ?

I've fallen passionately in love twice, I'm really one of the lucky ones. The second time was when I discovered computers.

This was what propelled me into doing my M. Tech. with a specialization in DBMS from Manchester U.K.

Following my dreams I went on to build a career in commercial application development using DBMS, RDBMS and O-RDBMS. Today, after multiple man years of using different types of DBMS for commercial application development, I believe I am a domain specialist.

My desire to share the knowledge I acquired over all these years and perhaps partially to keep it available and alive made me author and publish more than 62 books, most of them tightly focused on commercial application development using software tools.

Currently I own a software development house in Mumbai, India.

I'm very comfortable working with:

* The Oracle database engine in its many avatars
* L.A.M.P - A truly amazing development environment
* The .NET 2.0 Framework
* Java - JDK 2.0
* Systems Analysis Design and it's Validation
* Project Management
* User and Technical Documentation

Each year I spend some of my time as visiting faculty teaching postgraduate students in both management and engineering colleges.

I also make very sure that I spend some time in-house, mentoring technical interns, mostly MCA's, taken in from the Engineering colleges in and around Mumbai.

These days, this is what makes me happiest.

Oh! yes ... I have not stopped writing.

Q2. How did your journey begin in IT and subsequently into authoring books ?

My journey in I.T. began is a really strange way. I started earning money as a merchant navy, deck side, officer. I worked with a company called Norwegian Ships Management (NSM) which was head quartered at Norway.

While working on board ship which were very large crude carriers (VLCCs), oil tankers actually but amazingly large, I used a computer constantly.

Having, nothing very special to do on board, as vessels of this size are largely automated, I began to develop various programs in FoxBASE that helped me acquire real time information about the vessels I sailed on. Routine ship board maintenance, inventory of all sorts of supplies on board, bonded store purchase and sales and so on.

This caught the attention of the head office at Norway who found that the monthly reports I sent in to be well formatted and very accurate, and I began to get noticed. I was then offered a real opportunity to head, setup and run their onshore computer department, which I accepted very quickly, truly an opportunity of my life time.

I helped setup the hardware, networking, software development (using FoxBASE of course later converted to Unix based Oracle) that helped the company make its business processes very streamlined. I was well rewarded by the company for these efforts. This of course is ancient history.

I returned to India several years ago, 18 years to be precise, and setup a small business in Vileparle (east) Mumbai. I was supported by my mother who seemed to have tremendous faith in me in those days, (sometimes I used to wonder why ?).

One of the things I did was to train candidates in the use of Ingress and Oracle both being Unix based RDBMS. I believe that even there I unknowingly created a record of sorts. We were the very first PCL/Ingress authorized training centre for Ingress in India.

Regretfully, the training material provided (we were franchisees of PCL/Ingress) was not written for Indian participants. I took it upon myself to re-write the entire training material for Ingress with proper Indianized examples and I added a whole lot more to the material. This got me noticed by Mr. Manish Jain. He owns BpB a publishing house in New Delhi. BpB is India's largest publishers of technical books.

Again, I create a record of sorts, I believe that I was the first and only Indian author in the world to publish two books on Ingress, published by BpB New Delhi. Regretfully these are out of print today and I did not have the wisdom to preserve any copies.

After that there really was no looking back, under the active and personal encouragement of Mr. Manish Jain, owner of BpB New Delhi I began to write and publish books on a number of different I.T. related topics. I am forever indebt to Mr. Manish Jain who took chance on an unknown entity and gave me an opportunity to grow to what I am today as an author.

Till date, I’ve published 62 books totally since I’ve started writing and I have not stopped writing yet.

Q3. What goes into making a successful book ? Which has been your most successful book and Why ?

My most successful books have been those I wrote on Oracle. Till date they have sold over 5lakh copies of these books, anywhere in the world that would have been a record of sorts.

I believe I can author a successful book, when I intimately understand the domain I write for. This means I need to fully identify and understand the needs and mindset of the people I think will benefit most from what I’m writing.

I really labor over this, I define age group, qualifications, life experience, technical domain space, English communication skills, programming problems faced by such candidates so on and so forth.

Teaching in a few B. Tech / Engineering colleges keeps me close to such candidates.

Mentoring several technical interns in our office as well as for a few other select companies also helps a really great deal.

Very few (if any one at all) of these candidates really understands exactly how much I’m being educated while I am teaching them. I am truly blessed, because of these candidates.

I always keep my target audience in sharp, clear, focus when I’m writing any manuscript for publishing. I ensure that the examples and the English used to explain concepts are bound almost completely to the focus audience.

Do I make mistakes? Of course I do, I’m certainly not perfect.

Here, I’m grown and changed by the many people who contact me via my website http://www.ivanbayross.com and point out the mistakes I’ve made, (which I always correct in the next edition of the book). Who ask specific questions that make me scratch my head when I have to answer and some questions I just cannot answer, each person who takes the trouble to contact me, grows me and perfects me in a way nothing else can.

Just a quick recap:

* Stay within a technical domain that you are a specialist in
* Be intimate and understand the domain that the manuscript is targeted for
* Keep the language grammatically correct and as simple as is possible
* Use sensible, topical, and Indianized examples
* Always listen to feed back whether its Good, Variable or down right Bad, its really an educative experience

Q4. What is you vision and long-term plan for your company ?

The long term plans I have for my company as of April 2006 are:

* Identify a good candidate (I think I’ve already completed this step)
* Mentor, such a candidate to take over my business responsibilities one day in the foreseeable future
(Today there are times when I’m not sure whose mentoring whom)
* Identify one or two business avenues that will provide the company a constant, steady stream of work
* Identify all the resources I’d need to fully exploit these avenues
* Ensure that these resources are available to my company
* Constantly monitor the business avenues the company is involved in to ensure that the returns available are always adequate and satisfying
(After all business is about profit)
* Delegate responsibility and authority to sensible, select candidates so that the company’s management hierarchy will flourish and stabilize
* Gradually, move away from mainstream (day to day business) management
* Give the business managers as free a hand as their skills and experience can handle, assist only if requested or required
* Retire to my out of town home and play with my golden retrievers (this is still being implemented but I will be there very shortly)
* Let the company grow and flourish, driven now by the dreams and aspirations of the next level of business managers
* Definitely, play with any grandchildren I’m blessed with and my dog(s)

Q5. Who do you most admire in the IT industry and outside ?

I admire N. C. Vittal and Narayana Murthy from the IT industry the most.

I’d consider that I was a truly privileged person, singularly blessed by the almighty, to be able to achieve one thousandth of what these men have achieved.

I quote: http://www.karnataka.com/personalities/narayana-murthy/

Mr. Narayana Murthy is undoubtedly one of the most famous persons from Karnataka. He is known not just for building the biggest IT empire in India but also for his simplicity.

Almost every important dignitary visits the Infosys campus. The beauty about his family is that they believe in sharing their wealth with the needy.

He feels we need to review our reservation policy. He expressed this on Aug 11, 2001 during the convocation address at IIT, Delhi. He says perhaps we are the only nation in the world were people fight to be called backward rather than forward.

We thank him for bringing India on the world's IT map and providing jobs to thousands. UnQuote:

I quote: http://cvc.nic.in/vscvc/cvcspeeches/sp14apr02.pdf

BETTER GOVERNANCE THROUGH BETTER ACCOUNTABILITY (Paper for the Special Number of the Journal of The Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies)

N Vittal, Central Vigilance Commissioner

Accountability means responsibility for performance. Administration is the function of implementing policies and programmes so that objectives behind the policies and programmes are achieved. In our country, we find that we have perhaps the best articulated policies and programmes.

When it comes to implementation, we generally find that: (a) policies are not implemented at all, (b) if they are implemented, they have totally counterproductive results, (c) even if they are implemented, there is great inefficiency and grace in implementation UnQuote

These are Men who have been unafraid to speak their minds, and who have complete courage in their convictions – Truly amazing people.

Outside the I.T. industry:

I believe that I do not really have a life there, I have a few minor opinions maybe but definitely not a life, therefore I decline to comment – Ivan Bayross.

Q6. What is your advice to the geeks of tomorrow ?

Each day - Listen quietly and very very carefully to your heart.

Then follow it to wherever it leads.

You most certainly do not need anyone to show you the way.

You have the guidebook within you – Just Believe, I did and I’ve never ever regretted it.

The collateral you build along that way will last long after you’ve gone

Q7. What is the most significant contribution you want to make in future to the IT community and society at large ?

I really wonder if I can answer such a question.

I believe

That by:

* My simply living honestly
* Never being convoluted
* Always being upfront and caring
* Reaching out with compassion and understanding to anyone who asks
* Being strictly non-judgmental
* Always striving to understand the other’s perspective

Being able to understand:

* Anger coming from hurt and Anger coming for the sake of anger

I’m already constantly making considerable and significant contributions to the future of the IT community and society at large.