It’s not often that two people talking about the weather makes for interesting conversation (well, unless you’re in the UK or from Bengaluru). But it turned out to be one of the most entertaining portions of a press conference last week, addressed by IBM CEO Arvind Krishna and Tech Mahindra CEO CP Gurnani. “Are you snowed under, Arvind? What’s happening in your part of the world?”, Gurnani asked. US-based Krishna replied, “There is a lot of work to be done in Big Data. The predictions were warm winter and dry winter. Instead we have one of the coldest winters, we had four storms already. So, between snow and ice, we are having a proper winter.” It was a bait Gurnani couldn’t resist. He immediately quipped, “So, Arvind, I’m not going to ask you who owns the weather channel.” (IBM bought the Weather Company’s product and tech assets a few years ago!) Krishna took it in his stride. “Short-term predictions are always very, very accurate. It’s 50 percent accurate for up to 2 weeks. But get up to a month, forget it!” We would have loved to hear some more riposte but, sigh, the press conference had to begin.
