Business Intelligence Solution for an Insurance Industry

Business Intelligence and It's impacts:

Hello! I am back, after what I realized was my first extended blog break in four years. This time something technical, which is very much relevant to the product which i am currently working on. First of all, what is Business Intelligence?  It is the process, tools and infrastructure for generating insights from raw data is collectively called Business Intelligence.

Every organization generates data as part of its operations. Every organization also has access to some form of external data. But in order to analyze and take informed decisions, the data has to be processed and turned into information, and the information has to be presented in a meaningful way to be able to identify patterns or to see key performance indicators (KPIs), and thereby generate insights out of the information.          

This blog mainly describes the importance of BI in an insurance industry since i have to do my final project  where a BI solution can be used and come up with a solution with a collection of tools.

BI Solution for an Insurance Industry:

With rising globalization and growth, Business intelligence has become important for many firms. Business Intelligence solutions help these firms to transform into a dynamic enterprise through actionable intelligence. One of the important sector in this modern world is the insurance firms. In terms of technology, insurance companies are generally not at the forefront of technology and their systems are way behind. I have taken this domain as my project with some of the open source and commercial business intelligence tools that could help this sector.

The Organization i picked was HNB assurance PLC, it is a leading Sri Lankan Insurance corporation which provides Life Insurance solutions for Sri Lankan citizens.

The following are the Analysis that i have performed on the sample data that i have collected.

Classification of their Customer profiles using Decision tree and plotted in GeoMaps
Sentimental analysis of the company's Facebook Page
Various insights for their Insurance Claims
Sales forecasting – Dashboard

BI Tool that i have used : 

DigIn 

DigIn is the only true end-to-end analytics platform that allows you to easily visualize your structured and unstructured data in one place.Also it has On-demand data ingest capabilities and in-memory caching allows anyone to access data from anywhere at anytime from any device.

Conclusion: 

Use of business intelligence and analytic tool/solution is very vital for any insurance company wanting to succeed in an increasingly competitive industry. The ability to turn large volumes of raw data into actionable insights represents a significant value proposition for these businesses. These insights can be priceless in terms of the limitless opportunities they can unearth across the business with the help of social media analytics. Hope, This BI tool that i have suggested for this organization is a wonder not a
blunder.

You could find the slides that i have used for my presentation Here

DuoSoftware, Not Just another Software Company

Time has gone extremely fast, and I can still recall the day that I joined Duo. I can safely say that Duo is an awesome place to work at since I have had the opportunity to work with awesome, highly motivated people who loves the company. I never had much trouble with work life balance as I only worked more when I felt like it, rather than someone telling me to do. It truly is a different experience working for a Product Company which gives you an environment (Innovation engine) and Core focus on developing cutting-edge components.

Unlike most of the top IT firms in Sri Lanka, Duo gives  much importance to innovation and out of the box thinking. If you have something new and substantial to offer, trust me you are going to go a long way. It is a great place to start your career. Work culture is very positive and is full of energy. Talents are recognized and appreciated. Most importantly, one of the places which gives importance to work life balance!

Why I think it’s a great place to work?

Flat Hierarchy and Freedom of Ideas:

One of the things I love about Duo Software is that there's no sense that management is hiding somewhere making decisions and then condescendingly telling you what to do without listening to input. From CEO to the person who provides tea is constantly asking for input from everyone in the company and is available for discussing where we should go. It is a company, still at a size where you can get to know everybody and things still feel like a family. And it's exciting to watch the company itself evolve and grow.

Great Learning:

Duo Software has a lot of smart, hard-working people. The best engineers I have ever had the privilege of working with. For developers out there it’s a company that uses “GoLang”, a fun new language, as well as Couch Base, Redis, AngularJS and a range of other cool new technologies that will be good to know for the rest of your career.

Here at Duosoftware,

“Developers don't need dress code,

                                          They do write best code!”

Awesome office:

Some heavy metal music to keep you awake, a pool table which is free to be used by the team whenever they like, a reception hall with a pretty receptionist, a group of crazy people from different places belonging to one family. What more  could you ask for?

More Opportunity and Responsibility:

As of my knowledge, DuoSoftware is producing an exciting product that is constantly evolving and exploring the cutting edge, thereby a developer can become a full professional stack developer.

The Best “CEO”:

Last but not the least, one of my inspirations Mr.Muhunthan Canagey. As an aspiring tech entrepreneur, I think his best asset and what led him to success was being optimistic. He sees the problem in many perspectives and he thinks of solving the problem in many dimensions. An outstanding human being, that any employee  would be proud to to have as CEO.

Best memories you would have when you are at Duosoftware:


*Yes at Duo Software we don’t miss an opportunity to celebrate whether it's a birthday or it’s someone's first salary in office.Duo Software boasts of an overloaded fridge to provide drinks (only cool) at work, and a pool table to use and to a take your mind off work and colleagues do much more than computer games to relax and bond.Late night working  with colleagues during critical times is always a fun experience and takes the stress away from pressure situations.

There is a saying “Love your job but don't love your company, because you may not know when your company stops loving you” which exactly tells the current corporate world. But if you are at Duo Software, you will never stop loving the Company as it is a company that gives you so much more than mere work experience in return.

Finally, my journey with Duo Software is remarkable, and I hope the upcoming days will be equally fulfilling and challenging, towards my next goal. I hope this blog will also serve some help to new members of team Duo  or laterals willing to join Duo Software.   

          

Tips to become a good Coder/Programmer

I am not a great programmer, but i love coding and trying my best to become a good coder, there are few things i got to know when i made a research on how to become an efficient programmer.

1. Search for a problem that's really annoying you that's tractable to being solved by some way of automation.

 2. Made a Google search for programmatic solutions to these kind of problems. Make a research on which languages are most commonly used and scalable to satisfy your wider needs. In all ways.

  3. Start trying to solve the problem by breaking down the problem down into smaller and smaller chunks and trying to find ways of implementing a solution in the language which you have chosen from the above step

4 .Code all the time, continuous practice whenever you have time. Keep trying to solve your problem- where you get stuck, follow people who seem to know what they're doing on github,stackoverflow and post their solutions. Ask whatever questions may be even if its not practical on stack overflow(If you don’t care about vote downs). Buy and read lot of books. Get over the "monkey-see-monkey-do" approach, especially when getting issues. Learn from your issues  by going fixing the immediate issue  to learning what class of conditions the error deals with.

5. Subscribe to online education sites like Codecademy, Peepcode, Udemy, CodeSchool. Copy, imitate, fail, bang and scream the desk. Smash your keyboard if code you wrote does not work, try again. Feel the elation of getting a small chunk right.  

6. Every problem has (n+1) solutions,where n is the number of solutions that we try and 1 is that we have not tried. Every developer love that feeling when they’ve been coding something for a while, and it finally works. Yes, it is daunting. Yes, the learning curve is ridiculously steep. But you will only learn by doing and not being afraid to get it wrong.Whenever you write code always try to comment, so that other users who use your code will have an idea on what have already written. When you find a technique that works  or solve your problem generalize it and keep your own utility library.This makes yourlife and others easy.

 7. Learn to refactor your code.Whenever you get time try to improve the code.Whenever you Get confused with all your changes,  pick up git,tfs,svn or another version control system. Collaborate on others projects. Refactor again with what you've learned.  

I’ll finish with two quotes:

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”- Brian Kernighan

“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.”- Rick Osborne

SQL 2012 Built In Functions

Well, i have decided to write on technologies finally, it was one of the good sessions from SQL meetup  which was held at Microsoft srilanka on this month. I learnt some useful and simple sql functions which is present in sql server 2012.

SQL Server 2012 introduces many new rich built-in functions that offer more solutions to common T-SQL challenges.Some of the main functions which am going to write about are,

Conversion functions

• PARSE (Transact-SQL)
• TRY_PARSE (Transact-SQL)
• TRY_CONVERT (Transact-SQL)

Date and time functions

• DATEFROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• DATETIMEFROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• DATETIME2FROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• TIMEFROMPARTS (Transact-SQL)
• EOMONTH (Transact-SQL)

Logical functions

• CHOOSE (Transact-SQL)
• IIF (Transact-SQL)

String functions

• CONCAT (Transact-SQL)
• FORMAT (Transact-SQL)

In sql 2008 , in order to find a trend we were using CTE functions,  For example to find the trend in 2008,

WITH CTE AS (
SELECT rownum = ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by WorkOrderID),OrderQtyFROM
[AdventureWorks].[Production].[WorkOrder])
SELECT CASEWHEN CTE.OrderQty-PREVCTE.OrderQty >0 THEN 'UP'
 WHEN CTE.OrderQty-PREVCTE.OrderQty <0 p="" then="">  ELSE 'NA'
  END AS Trand
FROM CTELEFT OUTER JOIN CTE AS PREVCTE ON PREVCTE.rownum = CTE.rownum – 1

but SQL 2012 made it more easier, I have used AdventureWorkds2012 database,

LAG and LEAD

No longer need to use a self-join or CTE.

LAG: Access data from previous rows in the result set.

LEAD: Access data from future rows in the result set

Advantage:

Increase in performance

Paging Data:

Again in order to do paging with sql 2008 we have to write a cte function, for example to get the first 20 rows from a table, the function will be as follows,

Start with 0, Page Size:20

WITH Paging_CTE AS ( SELECT TransactionID , ProductID , TransactionDate , Quantity , ActualCost , ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY TransactionDate DESC) AS RowNumber FROM Production.TransactionHistory ) SELECT TransactionID , ProductID , TransactionDate , Quantity , ActualCost FROM Paging_CTE WHERE RowNumber > 0 AND RowNumber <= 20

SQL 2012

OFFSET & FETCH

OFFSET provides a starting row from which to display the result set.

FETCH instructs the query to display the number of rows you want in your result set from the OFFSET point

FIRST_VALUE and LAST_VALUE

FIRST_VALUE: Retrieves the first value in a partition.

LAST_VALUE: Retrieves the last value in a partition.

PARSE:
Parse a value and returns the result of an expression, translated to specified data type. It will raise error if translation isn’t possible. Since this  function relies on CLR. It has better performance.

Syntax:

PARSE ( string_value AS data_type [ USING culture ] )

PARSE(), expects three parameters,

string_value – String value to parse into the specified data type.

data_type – Return data type, numeric or datetime type

culture – A language (English, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, French etc.) which will used by SQL Server to interpret data.

example 

SELECT PARSE('18/02/2014' AS datetime2 USING 'en-GB') AS [Using PARSE Function]

GO

OUTPUT

2012-02-18 00:00:00.000

TRY_PARSE   – TRY_PARSE() function is similar to PARSE() with only difference is that it returns NULL if the conversion is not possible.

Syntax:

TRY_PARSE ( string_value AS data_type [ USING culture ] )

TRY_PARSE(), expects three parameters,

string_value – String value to parse into the specified data type.

data_type – Return data type, numeric or datetime type

culture – A language (English, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, French etc.) which will used by SQL Server to interpret data.

SELECT TRY_PARSE(’10.30′ AS INT) AS [Using TRY_PARSE Function]

GO

OUPUT:
NULL
Since 10.20 is not an integer value PARSE() fails, and TRY_PARSE() returns NULL.

TRY_CONVERT – Checks whether conversion from one type to other is possible or not. It transforms the source data into the target type if the conversion is possible. Returns NULL if the conversion is not possible.

Syntax:

TRY_CONVERT ( data_type [ ( length ) ], expression [, style ] )

TRY_CONVERT(), expects three parameters,

data_type – The data type into which to cast expression.

expression – The value to be cast.

style – Optional integer expression that specifies how the TRY_CONVERT function is to translate expression.

Example,

SELECT TRY_CONVERT(datetime2, ’02/18/2012′, 103) AS [Using TRY_CONVERT Function];

GO

OUTPUT:

NULL

As you can see the both queries fail conversion but only first query that is using COVERT function throws error whereas query that is using TRY_CONVERT returns NULL indicating that conversion fails.

Date and time functions

These functions are mainly to manipulate data related to dates.

DATEFROMPARTS – The DATEFROMPARTS function, returns a date value with the date part set to the specified year, specified month and the specified day, and the time portion set to the default.

DATEFROMPARTS ( year, month, day )

DATEFROMPARTS(), expects three parameters,

Year – Integer expression specifying a year.

Month – Integer expression specifying a month, from 1 to 12.

Day – Integer expression specifying a day.

DATETIMEFROMPARTS – The DATETIMEFROMPARTS function, returns full datetime value with the date time part set to the specified year, specified month, specified day, specified hour, specified minute, specified second and the specified milliseconds.

Syntax:

DATETIMEFROMPARTS ( year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds, milliseconds )

DATETIMEFROMPARTS – The DATETIMEFROMPARTS function, returns full datetime value with the date time part set to the specified year, specified month, specified day, specified hour, specified minute, specified second and the specified milliseconds.

Syntax:

DATETIMEFROMPARTS ( year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds, milliseconds )

DATETIMEFROMPARTS(), expects seven parameters,

Year – Integer expression specifying a year.

Month – Integer expression specifying a month, from 1 to 12.

Day – Integer expression specifying a day.

Hour – Integer expression specifying hours.

Minute – Integer expression specifying minutes.

Seconds – Integer expression specifying seconds.

Milliseconds – Integer expression specifying milliseconds.

DATETIME2FROMPARTS – The DATETIME2FROMPARTS function, returns full datetime2 value with the date time part set to the specified year, specified month, specified day, specified hour, specified minute, specified second and the specified precision.

Syntax:

DATETIME2FROMPARTS ( year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds, fractions, precision )

DATETIME2FROMPARTS(), expects eight parameters,

Year – Integer expression specifying a year.

Month – Integer expression specifying a month, from 1 to 12.

Day – Integer expression specifying a day.

Hour – Integer expression specifying hours.

Minute – Integer expression specifying minutes.

Seconds – Integer expression specifying seconds.

Fractions – Integer expression specifying fractions.

Precision – Integer literal specifying the precision of the datetime2 value to be returned.

SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS – The SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS function, returns full datetime value with the date time part set to the specified year, specified month, specified day, specified hour and the specified minute.

Syntax:

SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS ( year, month, day, hour, minute )

SMALLDATETIMEFROMPARTS(), expects five parameters,

Year – Integer expression specifying a year.

Month – Integer expression specifying a month, from 1 to 12.

Day – Integer expression specifying a day.

Hour – Integer expression specifying hours.

Minute – Integer expression specifying minutes.

DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS – The DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS function returns a full datetimeoffset. The OFFSET argument is basically used to represent the time zone offset value hour and minutes.

Syntax:

DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS ( year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds, fractions, hour_offset, minute_offset, precision )

DATETIMEOFFSETFROMPARTS(), expects ten parameters,

Year – Integer expression specifying a year.

Month – Integer expression specifying a month, from 1 to 12.

Day – Integer expression specifying a day.

Hour – Integer expression specifying hours.

Minute – Integer expression specifying minutes.

Seconds – Integer expression specifying seconds.

Fractions – Integer expression specifying fractions.

Hour_offset – Integer expression specifying the hour portion of the time zone offset.

Minute_offset – Integer expression specifying the minute portion of the time zone offset.

Precision – Integer literal specifying the precision of the datetimeoffset value to be returned.

TIMEFROMPARTS – The TIMEFROMPARTS function, returns a full time value as shown in the below query result. It is important to note that the fractions argument actually depends on the precision argument.

When fractions have a value of 5 and precision has a value of 1, then the value of fractions represents 5/10 of a second. When fractions have a value of 50 and precision has a value of 2, then the value of fractions represents 50/100 of a second. When fractions have a value of 500 and precision has a value of 3, then the value of fractions represents 500/1000 of a second.

Syntax:

TIMEFROMPARTS ( hour, minute, seconds, fractions, precision )

TIMEFROMPARTS(), expects five parameters,

Hour – Integer expression specifying hours.

Minute – Integer expression specifying minutes.

Seconds – Integer expression specifying seconds.

Fractions – Integer expression specifying fractions.

Precision – Integer literal specifying the precision of the time value to be returned.

EOMONTH –

This is very handy function with sql server 2012. This function takes two parameters first being start_date which is mandatory and the second one is Month_to_add which is optional. This function will return the last day of the month (also termed as EOM or end of the month) for the given date.

EOMONTH ( start_date [, month_to_add ] )

EOMONTH(), expects two parameters,

Start_date – Date expression specifying the date for which to return the last day of the month.

Month_to_add – Optional integer expression specifying the number of months to add to start_date.

Example:

Execute the following:

DECLARE @STARTDATE DATETIME = GETDATE()

SELECT EOMONTH (@STARTDATE, 1) AS [Using EOMONTH Function]

GO

Here is the result set:

Using EOMONTH Function

2014-02-28

Logical Functions:

CHOOSE – This function can be used to return the value out of a list based on its index number (Note: Index no. here starts from 1).

Syntax:

CHOOSE ( index, val_1, val_2 [, val_n ] )

CHOOSE(), expects two parameters,

Index – Is an integer expression that represents a 1-based index into the list of the items following it.

Value – List of values of any data type.

IIF – Conditional function which will return the value based on the condition you specified as the first argument. This is similar to SSRS IIF expression.

Syntax:

IIF ( boolean_expression, true_value, false_value )

IIF(), expects three parameters,

Boolean_expression – A valid Boolean expression.

True_value – Value to return if boolean_expression evaluates to true.

False_value – Value to return if boolean_expression evaluates to false.

String Functions:

CONCAT – It’s the same concatenate function that we use in excel, it will concatenate two or more strings to make it single string. It implicitly converts all arguments to string types.

example,

select CONCAT(NULL,'Yahoo') AS NullYahoo

FORMAT – Function for locale-aware formatting of date/time and number values as strings.

Syntax:

FORMAT ( value, format [, culture ] )

FORMAT(), expects at three parameters,

Value – Expression of a supported data type to format.

Format – nvarchar format pattern.

Culture – Optional nvarchar argument specifying a culture.

THROW -

Raises an exception and transfers execution to a CATCH block of a try/catch statement.
Reduces the need to use RAISERROR in TRY/CATCH blocks.

Can provide custom error messages.

Example,

BEGIN TRY

   SELECT CONVERT(INT,'A1000')

END TRY

BEGIN CATCH

THROW 51000, 'Can not convert this string(Throw an error by Asanka)', 1;

END CATCH;

These are the various SQL built in functions that are quite useful for any SQL lovers!

Love your Job ! But.. Not your Company!

Well, I am back here after a year, reasons why i have chose this topics are many. One of the reason could be One fine day i got a call from my childhood friend who was working for a reputed company in India and was shocked to hear that he was fired from the company. He was frustrated , but i was laughing and asking myself "is this guy kidding me?" because he was such an asset to any company. But after one year of his resignation he was not able to find a job. absolutely, sometime you are doing better than others but company throw you for any other reason, "boss is always right" try to break this rule & you will find yourself out of the company very soon without proper reason, while your sales is good, your working is good, your relation with other is good.

When i made a  call to mind about this incident, i decided to write a post on this.

Yes, Especially in India where job changeovers across segments despite talent.It takes two hands to clap! What then happens really depends on the confidence and ability of the organisation's leadership to embrace and mold differences. It takes a keen leader to successfully manage different personalities and abilities and knit these into a very successful and performing team.Loving your job helps you perform better and enjoy whatever task you are assigned to do! Loving your company motivates you and fuels the love you have for your job.

These days with global market, relationship and interest that companies have for global market, it is hard to predict how your employer would react to such fluctuating market! For them designing a work-force that can produce more profit is a big agenda. Some companies consider you as important asset to reach that goal, but many others feel you are replaceable. It all comes to one principle, find a right company if you can and be smart when you apply for a job. Once you find the right company be loyal to them, help them grow and be a part of their journey.

In today's environment where restructuring is seen as part of doing business, howsoever effective, loyal or honest you may be, it comes down heavy when the company wants to get the organization in shape. Loyalty has become a rare quality in this day and age. Having said that, one should still remain as loyal as possible while with an organisation, but it never hurts to keep feelers out. One can wind up on the sidewalk in an awful rush.

Love yourself first. Love what you do. Propose your ideas to the Company. Make a few friends, or not, with your co workers. Completely choose to separate your business life/personal life, it's up to you. Isn't it better when your Happy with who you are? There will be people, in our lives, that bring us down. Ultimately, you have the power to love, be loved and to choose your path. We all need POSITIVE in our lives, as our world leaders are confronted, with these exact feelings. It has saturated, the persons, in charge of our great world. So I say, "Love Yourself, Love Who You Are, Be the Best You can Be. But, remember you too can be replaced, at any given time.



Here's a non-sugar-coated, not touchy-feely, un-politically-correct, not evolved, non-progressive perspective:

Companies are neither good nor bad. They simply are a collection of people recruited to deliver value to shareholders. Let that sink in a moment before continuing. The people in companies create the culture. The culture fits for the individual or it doesn't. If it doesn't, the individual can:
1) Leave (easiest option)
2) Change to fit the culture (a big task)
3) Change the culture (usually impossible).

Managers have personalities / styles. If the employee does not fit with the manager's personality or style, there choices mirror the three in the paragraph above. None of this makes the company good or bad. You fit your culture and can work with your manager's style, or you don't. Quit whining, make your choice, and get on with it. If you really think the company is plotting against you with nefarious intent, you have delusions of grandeur. Fact is, you just are not that important. You, like everybody else

 will, be replaced when the value you deliver falls below what the company can receive from a competitor (somebody else who wants your job).

It's healthy and good for your emotional and professional well-being to love the work, and respect the company, but not expect the company to love or protect you back. I think all of us have been there, especially those of us who are over 23. We put a lot of passion and creativity in our work, and then the company makes a switchback, and you are no longer so loved. You then become marginalized, which is the neon sign that you should be on your way to another position. It's also natural to feel betrayed and angry, and those feelings shouldn't sandbag you, they should prompt you to get moving.a

Software Piracy - boon or a bane?

In general, this is not so much a Sri Lankan only issue as it is a global one. But the fact is this: piracy in Sri Lanka is increasing at an alarming rate. You have huge shops selling pirated software, movies, music and games. This commercialization is something that is primarily an Asia-only issue. The excuses people have given for buying pirated stuff are: we don’t have the money, the original is not available in Asia yet and it doesn’t really harm anyone. 

The problem is that piracy existed all along and is rampant even in the west, where laws are strict about it. But we are one of the few countries where it is commercialized and is now a source of income for many. The fact is, with more companies coming to Sri Lanka, the originals are available, though still heavily priced. It does harm the creator of that software, game, movie and music, which took  up time and effort to develop because the money he should get for selling his creation, is not being given to him. And not having the money doesn’t justify stealing. Since we call ourselves one of the better countries in Asia, isn’t it time that the anti-piracy laws be implemented heavily? Because this surely is going to harm the economy as Sri Lanka takes on the world IT market.

As a student of software development, it hurts people when they don’t get the money we deserve. How many people put how much time in developing MS WINDOWS  that we talk of? It takes years. Suppose we make something and spend 10 hours a day, for 2 years, and then some guy steals it, People give excuses like “it’s too expensive”. Well, if you want to use it, you have to buy it, just because you cannot afford it doesn’t give you the right to steal it. Would you steal a car if you weren’t able to afford it and chances of being caught were minimal? What does that make you, a thief? Companies are not cheating you. A guy who works for EA games, the company which made the FIFA series, Usually it takes them 2-3 years of hard work to get one game out. Thousands of people work on it, the money the company is making is due to the fact that they earned it. If the cost is too much, don’t buy it, no one's forcing you to. 

Piracy is one of the evils facing businesses and is one that causes losses to government and organizations. But, before saying anything further against piracy:

1) It is right that cost of developing any software is high. But when thousands of copies of it are sold, costs must come down, for example the cost of software like windows etc. is hardly in hundreds. For which they charge in thousands - is that right?

2) Because Windows and other Microsoft software are used extensively. there is virtual monopoly and because of this reason they are free to charge anything which they want.

Companies themselves are more responsible for encouraging piracy. To stop piracy is not only in hands of customers but major steps are required from companies also 

Apart from others views, what are my opinions of the rights and wrongs of  software piracy?

I often hear people say that software piracy is illegal. You can go to jail if you are caught. Great! But does that mean software piracy is wrong just because it is illegal? In fact, legality of a thing has nothing to do with its being right or wrong. 

Let's not forget India's major reason for success is IT sector. Now what made IT a success in India? It's the cheap supply of pirated software to every nook and corner of the country. An original copy of Windows XP costs somewhere between 10,000 to 12,000 Rupees (approximately). A pirated costs around 100 Rupees. The same is the case with Microsoft office, Photoshop etc. Now if all the copies were original and cost the computer owner a fortune, do you think computing would have reached the grass root level as it has reached today? 

Also some people argue that piracy leads to loss of revenue to companies. I disagree. In fact, piracy actually earns the company more money. When free copies of software, say a computer game is available for free, countless numbers of people will become aware of a product when otherwise they would have simply looked past it. 

This talk is known as "buzz" and it drives up the interest in the product from people who don't have their copies yet. Think about stuff you've bought. Aren't you more likely to buy something that everyone's talking about? 

Whatever we are today is only because of piracy. Obviously if good/ bad piracy had not been there, we wouldn't have become software professionals as all these software like Oracle which we used to get for Rs. 50 and practice used to costs hundreds of thousands with license.

Suppose the game was popular enough to spread twenty million copies through both sales and piracy. If the game was not pirated, only the people who saw the game in the store, ads, or reviews would have bought the game. Because there are fewer people with the game, there is not nearly as much buzz, leading most people to overlook it. In the end, the game sells 20,000 copies. Compare this to the original scenario, with 20 million copies. Even with the piracy, the game still sold a million copies. That's quite a difference, I believe.

Long live Piracy!!!