IT News :: India

Intel may announce management overhaul today: reports

2009-09-16T19:21:00.003+05:30

New York
The Economic Times
Intel is expected to announce a management shake-up on Monday that will see its core chip business-head Patrick Gelsinger leave the company after 30 years, says a media report.

Attributing to people briefed on the company, The New York Times said, Intel is expected to reveal a sweeping management change on Monday.

Among other changes, the chipmaker would announce that Pat Gelsinger, the senior vice president in charge of Intel's enterprise group, is leaving the company after 30 years performing a variety of roles, the report said citing these people.

Another media report, The Wall Street Journal, said 48-year-old Gelsinger would run computer-storage giant EMC's storage-products operations and some smaller software units, effective immediately.

As Gelsinger departs, Sean Maloney, Intel's head of sales and marketing, would take on an even larger role at the company, the NYT said citing the same people.

All of Intel's major chip businesses, including its PC, graphics and server chips would fall under Maloney, while Dadi Perlmutter, the head of Intel's laptop chips, would now oversee engineering for all the chip divisions.

Maloney, Intel's sales chief, is also considered to be one of the possible successor to Intel CEO Paul Otellini.

Canon to provide multifunction printers to HP

2009-09-16T19:21:00.001+05:30

Tokyo
The Economic Times
Japan's Canon Inc said on Monday that together with Hewlett-Packard they have agreed to jointly market and distribute multifunction office systems.

Canon, which already supplies laser beam printers to HP on an original equipment manufacturer basis, will start providing advanced multifunctional printers to the US company later this year.

Software to help diagnose cardiac infections

2009-09-16T19:20:00.000+05:30

The Times of India (Kolkata edition)
A teachable software, designed to mimic the human brain, may help diagnose cardiac infections in a non-invasive manner, suggests a new research. Endocarditis — an infection involving the valves and sometimes chambers of the heart — can be a problem in patients with implants. It is a serious condition and can be deadly. The mortality rate can be as high as one in five, even with aggressive treatment and removal of the device.

UK woos investment from India in IT sector

2009-09-16T19:18:00.001+05:30

Writankar Mukherjee, Kolkata
The Economic Times (Kolkata edition)
At a time when the global economy is showing signs of bottoming out, the UK government is going all out to attract Indian investment in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. At least 50 Indian ICT companies have shown interest to either set up operations or expand their existing base in the UK, said UK Trade and Investment sector champion (digital technology and content) Dave Gorshkov.

Talking to ET during his visit to Kolkata on Monday, Gorshkov said UK is pitching hard to the Indian companies about its £17-billion worth of annual government ICT tenders.

“The recession has not impacted UK’s spending on IT. In fact, it has gone up by £1-billion since the government is seeing the benefits of e-governance. Equally large opportunities exist in the private sector,” he said.

“India’s leading IT companies like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL and Mastek already work on a significant number of e-governance projects in the UK. National Health Services has the largest IT budget in UK, estimated to be £9-billion alone. We expect such lucrative opportunities will attract several of the Indian companies,” said Gorshkov.

While the US is the largest contributor for FDI in the UK, India currently figures at the second position. “Even in the ICT sector, India is at the second slot for FDI inflows in UK. Some of the big Indian players are already present, but we now want to attract the tier II companies,” Gorshkov said.

Gorshkov said the UK government is also trying to encourage foreign ICT companies to create jobs in the UK. “However, some companies need to outsource jobs to locations like India to be commercially viable. Still, the government tries to ensure that the higher value, senior management and supervisory roles’ positions remain with UK citizens,” he said.

However, Gorshkov added that the cost of talent has also rationalised in the UK due to recession. “As a result, salaries of engineering human resource in the UK is now as attractive as in India. We expect this will also drive local employment in UK by the Indian companies,” he said.

State beats southern peers in IT infra projects

2009-09-16T19:17:00.002+05:30

Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore
Deccan Herald
Recession may have put paid to big-ticket ambitions of global corporations. The economic slowdown, sending majority of them into cost-cutting mode reining in their IT spends. However, closer home, though, global developments have not, in anyway, dented investments in IT & ITeS infrastructure projects by private developers, across southern states of India. And given it’s iconic status as Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore, in particular, & Karnataka, in general, as ever, lead from the front.

Being the most proactive State, and most sought after IT destinations, Karnataka, and Bangalore, have bagged most number of IT & ITeS infrastructure project investments compared to their equally successfully striding southern peers.

According to Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) quarterly update, prepared by ICRA Management Consultancy Services Limited accessed by Deccan Herald, of the 204 IT & ITeS infrastructure projects in Southern India, Karnataka lead with total of 57 projects, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 46, Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry combine 88 and Kerala 13.

While among total 204 projects, 37 percent of these investments are under execution, 30 percent of projects have been completed and 28 percent under planning stage. In Karnataka, from among 57 projects, 16 are under execution, 26 in planning stage, 11 completed as of July 2009. Though investments run into several thousand crore, they have not been declared. What’s more heartening is the State’s plans to push projects into Tier-II cities are bearing results with few lined up in the districts of Mysore & Mandya as well, sources said.

Proposals in play
Those under execution are: Supreme Build Cap’s Rs 222 crore Global Tech Park at Deverabisanahalli. IBC Knowledge Park’s Rs 82.2 crore STP on Bannerghatta Road. Jaypee Group’s Rs 20 crore STP at Electronic City. The Rs 375 crore IT Pritech Park-II at Bellandur by Primal Projects. Bhoruka Group’s Rs 250 crore Bhoruka Tech Park at Whitefield. Upkar Software Facilities Software Development Centre on Hosur Road.

Fortune Builders & Developers STP. Harita Projects IT Park at Electronic City. Tata Group’s Project at Mahadevpura. Immaculate Holdings Immaculate Grands IT Park. Fortuna’s Tech Park at Electronic City. Kaushtubha Project’s IT Park at Devanam Plaza, Bangalore. Pallonji Group’s IT Park at S P Infocity, Mysore. Adarsh Prime Project’s IT Park in Bangalore. Ashtha Infrastructure’s IT Park at Electronic City and India Builders Corp’s Knowledge Park-Tower.

Those proposed are: Sri IT Park. Vaswani Group’s IT Park. Sunil Mantri’s Mantri Axis. Gulf Oil Corporation’s IT Park at Yelahanka. Harita Project’s, Salarpuria Project’s IT Park at Koorgalli. Nova Hamlet Ltd’s Software Park at Mysore. Abharana Infotech’s IT Park at Hebbagodi. SR Constructions IT Park at Mysore. Kalyani Developer’s at Koorgalli. Kruthi Computer Services’ STP at Mysore. Alliance Infrastructure’s STP, Pathak Constructions Pratham Tech Park at Mettagalli. Adarsh Prime Project’s Adarsh IT Park at Whitefield. Team 4ce Friendly Consortium’s IT Park at Mandya and Sita Lodge’s IT park at Bandapur.

New entrepreneurs shifting from IT-Related projects: TIE

2009-09-16T19:17:00.001+05:30

Bhaskar Hazarika, New Delhi
Financial Chronicle
First generation entrepreneurs are now shifting the focus from IT development products to retail, media, education, healthcare and bio-technology. Out of every 10 upcoming entrepreneurs seeking seed funding for projects, six to seven are not associated with IT development or products.

Elaborating on this trend, Saurabh Srivastava, chairman emeritus of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Delhi said that entrepreneurship had matured in India and there was a paradigm shift from traditional IT development to other verticals. ’“Entrepreneurship is changing in India as we see a lot of ideas in the other business segments. Today, retail, biotech, clean tech, education and media are evolving fields”, he said.

TiE helps in funding entrepreneurs through initial investment and also guides them to get funding from venture capitals. “The first generation of entrepreneurs brought in IT-related products and service innovations to the table since the Indian IT industry offered a lot of scope for them. But today, entrepreneurs are diversifying into other business verticals,” Srivastava said.

With the global credit crunch there has been scarcity of seed funding in the US. However, India continues to be an optimistic destination for venture capitalists. Srivastava said the downturn had not impacted the availability of seed funding much. “Financing and entrepreneurs grow hand in hand. Usually, a slowdown is the best time for investing in entrepreneurs. Unlike earlier, today venture capitalists are looking at investing in other business verticals. Entrepreneurship is converting job seekers into job creators,” he added.

Indian scientist invents fastest disk encryption system

2009-09-16T19:16:00.001+05:30

Kolkata
Mint
An Indian scientist has claimed to have developed the fastest internationally known method to encrypt hard disk of a computer so that data remains secure even from attack by hackers.

The new algorithm developed by Palash Sarkar, a professor at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata, is reportedly 30 to 40% faster than the previous ones.

From a practical point of view, the requirement is actually to achieve both speed and security. Otherwise, encryption and decryption may take so much time that softwares which run on computers become unacceptably slow, Sarkar said.

“And, in the current state of the art, this work provides the fastest known algorithm for disk encryption,” Sarkar claimed.

The results of the research will appear in October 2009 issue of the ‘IEEE Transactions on Information Theory’, one of the top research journals in the field of transmission, processing and utilization of information.

Asked how he claims his algorithm to be the ‘fastest’, he replied, “One has to see this in the context of the anonymous and strict review process of the journal ‘IEEE Transactions on Information Theory’.

The reviewers allowed this claim to stand because I could scientifically justify it in the paper. A hollow claim would have been struck down by the reviewers, he added.

The claim of speed improvement in the new scheme is based on hardware implementation carried out by a group of Mexico-based scientists led by Dr Debrup Chakraborty.

“The software implementation of the algorithm is expected to give more speedups compared to that of other methods,” Chakraborty said in an email interview.

Chakraborty and his colleagues have been working on several aspects of disk encryption since past few years at the Center for Advanced Studies and Research of the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico.

The details of the new algorithm involve techniques of computer science, abstract algebra and discrete probability theory, Sarkar said.

Polaris ties up with HK firm for foray into CHINA, MACAU

2009-09-16T19:14:00.001+05:30

Shyamala Seetharamanan, Chennai
Financial Chronicle The Times of India The Hindu
Polaris Software Lab announced its tie up with PCCW Solutions on Monday to jointly market the former’s banking and insurance solutions in Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China. The move is part of Polaris’ strategy to explore new markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

PCCW Solutions is a subsidiary of Hong-Kong-based telecommunications company PCCW. The two companies will leverage Polaris’ flagship product Intellect Universal Global Banking (GUB) 10.0. The partnership will integrate presales and sales operations and solution architects of the two companies to cater to the Chinese market.

Polaris has identified China, Russia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe as the growth markets for the Intellect suite of products, said Arun Jain, chairman and CEO of Polaris. The company entered Vietnam, Chile and Egypt last year. The roadmap for this fiscal includes entry into new markets and setting up of sales forces to aggressively market all of the group’s products such as banking, HR and insurance solutions, he said in a recent interview.

“We will keep looking for newer markets in South and West Asia and Africa and the minimum criterion for choosing a country would be whether it can contribute at least $10 million revenue over three years. We will be spending between Rs 15 crore and Rs 20 crore to enter the new countries this year,” he added.

The strategy is an extension of Polaris’ three-point growth engine, which includes expansion of services offered to tier I organisations; tapping tier II and tier III banks and financial institutions in developed markets, and entering new markets to gain leadership position in the respective countries.

Polaris reported about 79-per-cent increase in net profit to Rs 130.71 crore for the year ended March 31, 2009.

Elitecore eyes RS 100 crore acquisition in network security

2009-09-16T19:13:00.000+05:30

Vinay Umarji, Mumbai/Ahmedabad
Business Standard
In a bid to become a $ 50 million within two years, Elitecore Technologies is mulling to take the inorganic route. The Ahmedabad-based company is looking at Rs 100 crore acquisition in the US or European markets in the network security segment. As an option, the company is also open to technology acquisition from innovators in the country.

"We face a tough competition in the network security segment. Yet, recently we became the only Indian company in network security to feature in Gartner's report titled 'Magic Quadrant for SMB Multifunction Firewalls', along with the likes of CISCO, McAfee and Symantec. However, we would want to grow as quickly as possible and are looking at the inorganic route to do so," said Hemal Patel, chief executive officer of Elitecore Technologies Ltd.

While the company is pushing for revenue of $ 15 million (Rs 72 crore approx.) for the financial year 2009-10, by 2011-12, Elitecore intends to peg a turnover of $ 50 million in the network security segment. "We are primarily looking at a $ 20 million (Rs 100 crore approx.) acquisition of competition in the US or European markets since players there carry a larger footprints and will help us to grow large in a very short time. The good thing is that big companies don't see us as competition, which may help us in future acquisitions. We are also looking at technology acquisition from innovators in network security across the country," said Patel.

Talking further about the technology acquisition, Patel added, "We will create a platform for innovators to showcase their products and if we find a product suitable for our channel, we will either offer the innovator to be our OEM and earn royalties or allow to be acquired and be part of the company."

Meanwhile, the company will be simultaneously investing about $ 2 million (Rs 10 crore approx.) per annum on R&D to boost its network security offering and reach its $ 50 million turnover target earlier. Of the $ 15 million (Rs 72 crore approx.) revenue that Elitecore is targeting for financial year 2009-10, it expects to earn around $ 10 million of it from SMBs and the rest from large enterprises.

IBM logs on to SEWA

2009-09-16T19:12:00.003+05:30

Ahmedabad
The Times of India
Thirty-eight-year-old Kensuke Kobayashi from Japan, an IT architect, is busy developing a user friendly computer application for members of Self Employed Women's Association (Sewa) and will help connect its rural members on a regular basis for their day-to-day needs by creating a database.

Kobayashi is among a group of IBM employees from Brazil, Canada, Ireland and Germany who have voluntarily opted to work in Ahmedabad for a month on various economic and social problems like improving the livelihood of rural tribal community, security of self-employed women, using technology to connect remote locations to centralized information hubs related to disaster warnings, weather reports and others. They all are part of IBM Corporate Services Corp (CSC) launched in year 2008.

Vice-president, Sales India /Sales Asia, IBM India Private Limited, Vanitha Narayanan told TOI, "CSC is a corporate version of the peace corps- where IBM addresses core societal, education and environmental challenges by placing employees in developing countries." She added, "IBM professionals voluntarily travel to developing countries where they will work with local bodies and agencies for capacity building and skill enhancement. Only 100 candidates out of 5,000 were chosen after a rigorous selection process."

Over a period of four months, about 40 global IBMers will partner with nine NGOs in Ahmedabad and Mumbai such as SEWA, IndiCorps, Tribal Development Department of Gujarat, Friends of Women's World Banking, India, Pratham, among others to work on diverse social projects.

Director of SEWA Reema Nanavaty said, "SEWA has over 1.1 million members who have 31,000 micro enterprises in diverse sector. We needed a user friendly and cost-effective technology to increase our operational efficiency. Technical input from IBM will help us develop a multiple marketing strategy for our 'RUDI Ben' project which will generate more employment opportunities for rural women and also improve their livelihood."

SMES take the MES route

2009-09-16T19:12:00.001+05:30

Payal Agrawal
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)
In an increasingly competitive scenario with rapidly fluctuating customer demands, process flexibility and production scheduling is gaining significance for manufacturing industries, particularly the auto components sector.

The Indian automotive components manufacturing industry, largely composed of Tier II and Tier III firms, include original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other components manufacturers from the SME sector. The main problem here is to meet the fluctuating demands of automobile assemblers and fabricators who cater to both the domestic and the export markets. According to Milind Naik, Proprietor, Threa Dwell India, an auto components manufacturing company, “There is a lot of fluctuation in customer demands. In this scenario, automotive component manufacturers, particularly SMEs, need to think along production scheduling lines.”

It is equally essential for SMEs to deploy a system, which can track orders and the production status on a real-time basis. A seamless link has to be established between the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and the manufacturing facility to meet these fluctuating demands. Says Vijay Bhatt, Director, Panorama Automotive Industries, “Demands in this sector have become more dynamic, and often vary in terms of lot size and component specifications. Accommodating these demands requires extensive process flexibility and production scheduling.”

In general, manufacturers, especially SMEs, do not have the technical support to assess such abrupt demand patterns. This has prevented them from achieving sustainable production. According to Manoj Kumar Gala, MD, Precise Auto Ancillaries, “Customer demands in the auto components manufacturing sector have a very fluctuating nature. This has been a hindrance for auto components manufacturers, specially the SMEs in the domain.”

However, industry insiders are of the view that IT solutions and Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) software can be implemented to resolve the issues. “IT solutions such as Manufacturing Execution System (MES) have proved essential to achieve sustainable production in manufacturing industries. SMEs in the domain should make efforts for large-scale implementation of MES,” opined Alok Sharma, CEO, Forge India.

MES is an IT-enabled solution, which manages the overall shop floor operations, and automatically reports production information and online enquiries to the production floor data centre on real-time basis. Some of the industrial tasks that SMEs can perform using MES include order processing, receipt generation, production scheduling, quality control, shipping and maintenance.

As a whole, MES instructs, begins, responds to, and reports on shop floor operations from the beginning of production until the product is finally manufactured. There are several core areas in the auto components manufacturing domain, which must receive greater focus to achieve sustainable production. With the application of MES, SMEs in the sector can successfully target these areas.

Production Scheduling

With the globalisation of auto industry, customer demands have become more versatile in terms of lot size, material and dimensional specifications, and delivery timelines. Production scheduling is a critical shop floor activity and SMEs in the auto components sector must optimise this function for greater benefits. Using MES, information can be delivered to the shop floor facility on a real-time basis, which will improve the production schedule by optimising all the manufacturing phases.

“We have implemented MES, which, along with our ERP setup, enables bidirectional information flow across the supply chain, thus integrating manufacturers and distributors in a seamless manner,” said Sharma.

This would help SMEs quickly take required actions to reschedule the production plan, thus minimising the Work in Process (WIP) and unscheduled downtimes.

A Framework for seamless integration

2009-09-16T19:11:00.001+05:30

(The Economic Times, Delhi edition)
Abicor Binzel Production (India) is an SME providing welding solutions such as automotive welding accessories and robotic peripheral systems for fabricating automobile bodies in India. The company planned to expand its operations in the country. However, it faced some challenges with respect to demand and supply, inventory planning and scheduling. Tracking the quality of automobile welding systems and reporting financial results were other pressing problems.

Earlier, the company had implemented solutions like Tally for finance and Excel for demand and supply planning and other sales activities. However, due to the lack of coordination between financial activities and plantfloor operations, it was difficult to maintain multiple spreadsheets and aggregate the results in monthly or quarterly reports. This resulted in the submission of error-filled financial information. It was also difficult to comply with Indian taxation requirements. Moreover, the manual mode of demand and supply planning made the administration of inventory activities difficult.

Abicor needed a business solution to consolidate its financial operations and achieve quality consistency. Other requirements were to facilitate manufacturing processes and demand and supply planning, and manage the growing business more professionally.

Formulating a solution

Tectura, a worldwide business consultancy, provided a solution called Tectura Solution Framework (TSF). TSF, in alignment with Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step Methodology, provided for pre-analysis of Abicor’s business processes, identification of critical processes and evaluated the company’s current status. It also provided predefined templates for data and system migration, by which the data was exported from different legacy systems and imported to Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Tectura provided Abicor Binzel a scalable, flexible and ready-to-use solution spanning its entire range of industrial operations. These operations include procurement, production, inventory management, supply chain planning, sales and marketing, finance and accounting, and business analytics.

LG to re-enter laptop biz with mini notebooks by year end

2009-09-16T19:09:00.000+05:30

New Delhi
The Economic Times Financial Chronicle The Hindu Business Line The Financial Express Business Standard The Times of India

Korean electronics giant LG will re-enter the laptop business in India with plans to launch mini notebooks by the end of this year.

The company had earlier this year in February stopped selling laptops in India due to financial non-viability.

"Notebooks hardly generate profit as big amount of purchase comes only from corporates...We had pulled out but we are thinking of starting again by launching netbooks (mini laptops) and other product line," LG Electronics India Managing Director Moon Bum Shin said.

The company will position the product in the premium segment and is looking at introducing it in the market this year.

"For notebook as compared to HP our base is small. So rather than push the material (volume) we are going to come up with premium marketing, which we are working on," he said.

The company had stopped selling its laptops in India in February this year. It was earlier selling models such as LG P1 Express Dual and LG M1 Express Dual with 15.4 inch wide-screen and 15 inch TFT respectively.

Cypress eyes cheaper solar photovoltaics

2009-09-16T18:58:00.000+05:30

Bangalore
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)
Cypress Semiconductor, a leading technology company, has placed large bets on the solar photovoltaic market in India with the aim of bringing affordable solutions to the end consumer.

Cypress forayed into the Indian solar photovoltaic market during end of 2008 and has few of its technologies already being implemented by a few enterprises.

Rajeev Mehtani, senior VP, Cypress Semiconductor, India said, “We are working in our development centres in Chennai and Bangalore to develop solutions for efficient use of solar energy and make it more affordable to the end users in India.” Some of these examples from Cypress include the intelligent Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) based charge controllers for solar street and home lighting ensuring a 15% reduction in costs or the LED solar lanterns which operates at lower cost. The above solution are based on Cypress’ programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) device technology.

Meanwhile, the company has introduced the PSoC creator, which automates the entire process of designing a chip. Cypress has working with few of its partners in India to develop these solar photovoltaic solutions. Mehtani said, “We are currently working with several companies in India enabling them to develop their own intelligent charge controllers based on Cypress’s Power PSoC technology. We also have customers that have developed dimmable solar LED lanterns using Cypress’s Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC) products.” Solar photovoltaic market has become an important area of focus for Cypress and it has working with solar installation and product companies to requirements of the end consumers.

Windows 7 free ride over on August 20

2009-08-19T19:20:00.001+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: August 20th is the last date to download the "release candidate" version of Windows 7, after which its free downloading will be discontinued. Microsoft, which has been providing free, unlimited downloads of the candidate version till now, plans to put Windows 7 on sale in about two months, reports CNET News.
This is a last chance for users who have failed to upgrade from Beta Build 7000 to the RC Build 7100 bits. Microsoft's announcement to halt the download of Windows 7 RC came during the second half of June 2008.

Windows Communications Manager, Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog posting this week, "After that date, you will still be able to register your product and get registration keys, but the media will no longer be available for download."

However the release candidate will only work through early next year. On June 1st, the software will entirely expire and, starting March 1st, it will begin shutting down every two hours to remind users that the end is near.

A move from the release candidate to the final version requires a clean installation of the operating system, meaning backing up one's data, reinstalling Windows 7, and then restoring the data and reinstalling any applications.

Apple probes iPhone explosion reports, eu says

2009-08-19T19:18:00.002+05:30

Brussels
The Economic Times
Apple Inc is investigating media reports that one or more of the company's iPhones have exploded in Europe, a European Commission spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The spokeswoman for the EU executive, which oversees the safety of consumer products sold in the 27-country bloc, said Apple had described the reported incidents as isolated.

Apple said it was aware of the media reports, which include a case in which a teenager in France said he was slightly injured when his iPhone made a hissing noise and shattered, but did not comment on any contacts with the Commission.

"Apple have come back to us ... and what they've said to us is that they consider these are isolated incidents. They don't consider that there's a general problem," Commission spokeswoman Helen Kearns said.

Microsoft's bing wins share from Google, Yahoo

2009-08-19T19:18:00.001+05:30

Seattle
The Economic Times
Microsoft Corp's Bing search engine continued to make small gains on rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc in the US Internet search market in July, according to the latest data from research firm ComScore.

Microsoft, which launched Bing in early June, racked up 8.9 percent of U.S. Internet searches in July, up 0.5 percentage points from June.

Google, the leader in the market, and Yahoo, the distant No. 2, both lost 0.3 percentage points of market share in July, to 64.7 percent and 19.3 percent, respectively.

Late last month Microsoft and Yahoo finally signed an agreement to cooperate on Internet search advertising, with Bing powering searches on both companies' sites and Yahoo handling the ad sales.

Blackberry is world's fastest growing company: fortune

2009-08-19T19:17:00.001+05:30

Toronto
The Economic Times
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM) tops Fortune magazine's list of the world's 100 fastest-growing companies.

It is the first time that Fortune has opened its list of the top 100 fastest growing companies to businesses from around the world.

Apple, which is BlackBerry makers' main rival in the global smart phone market, is way down the list at 39th spot.

Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc, which is the world's biggest fertiliser company, is another Canadian firm among the top 10 in the Fortune list.

Among the top 10 are also two companies from China- Shanda Interactive Entertainment and a website.

Others in the top 10 are California-based Sigma Designs, Ebix of Atlanta, Texas-based DG Fastchannel, CF Industries of Illinois, Arena Resources of Oklahoma and Massachusetts-based Bruker Corp.

Tech COS, VTU tie up to improve skills

2009-08-19T19:15:00.004+05:30

Peerzada Abrar, Bangalore
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)
While India produces a large number of engineering graduates every year, most transnationals find only 25% of them employable, says a Global Institute study. A recent study by PurpleLeap, an entry-level talent management firm paints an even grim picture — only 6% of the 10,000 students across 150 engineering colleges were found to be employable. To this end, firms like Intel, Bosch and Wipro are collaborating with technical universities like Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) to make these graduates improve their skill-sets.

“Robert Bosch received about a lakh job applications, of which 10,000 were called for an interview while only 1,000 of them were finally hired,” Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions (RBEI) MD Friedhelm Pickhard said. What RBEI, a leading provider of technology and services, has done is to sign a pact with VTU to set up a Bosch Technical Centre in their campus. “It is an effort to bring the industry and academia together. We are forming such partnerships not only with Bosch but with Wipro and Intel too. Similar initiatives are in pipeline with IBM and Australia’s Deakin University,” says Dr HP Kincha, vice-chancellor, VTU. “With Bosch, we will set up an R&D centre for automotive electronics. We want to create innovation centres,” he added.

The world’s largest chipmaker Intel will also set up a research centre in Mysore along with VTU, which will work on multi-core technologies. “A multi-core learning centre will be set up in 2010 in Mysore. Intel has already created one at MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, last month”, said an Intel spokesperson.

Wipro, through its non-profit trust — Mission 10X, will be reaching out to 10,000 faculty members with innovative teaching methods across India to enhance the employability potential of graduating engineers, said Dr Selvan D, senior vice-president for talent transformation at Wipro.

Association for Indian origin IT professionals launched in US

2009-08-19T19:15:00.003+05:30

Silicon Valley
The Economic Times
With an objective to bring Indian origin IT professionals at one platform and give them a common voice, an association of IT professionals has been launched here.

"ITPIO gives an opportunity to all IT professionals and other professionals as well to communicate with each other," Sri Chawla, CEO of US Microtech and a philanthropist in the Silicon Valley said in his inaugural address.

The first chapter of the Association of IT Professionals of Indian Origin (ITPO) was launched in the Silicon Valley on August 15 - India's Independence Day.

"IT professionals from India are well known and perceived for their skills, professionalism and success - yet they do not have an organisation representing their professional interest," Khanderao Kand, founder of ITPIO said.

"ITPIO is a great platform for everyone from entry level to C level with an objective to promote the professional leadership to make an Indian Imprint on the progress of world," Kand added.

Speaking on the difficult times being faced by IT industry, well known CEO and Entrepreneur Coach Dr Prasad Kaipa in his key note address said, "Turbulent times are the appropriate times for positive deviance, for stretching, risk taking and this will show up us as leaders."

Primarily focusing on fostering the leadership and personal development of IT professionals of Indian Origin, ITPIO has also initiated chapters in Denver, Washington, Seattle Hyderabad and Bangalore.

Indian companies aim for green offices

2009-08-19T19:15:00.001+05:30

New Delhi
The Economic Times
With the environment and climate change becoming predominant concerns worldwide, Indian companies are contributing their mite by having building constructed on the principles of ecological balance and energy conservation.

Well-known companies like Wipro, ITC, Patni Computers, Spectral Services and many others have received permission to work on "green buildings" in industrial zones of the National Capital Region (NCR) like Noida and Gurgaon.

Green buildings consultancy company SGS Pvt India Ltd Senior Manager Avinash Kumar said there are about 40 buildings in the country that fall under the green category and at least 10-12 companies are in place that cater for such requirements currently.

"At present Chennai has the most number of green buildings in the company. Mumbai and Hyderabad too have buildings under this category. Wipro, ITC Centre in Gurgaon and Patni College Centre and Spectral Services Consultants Pvt Ltd in Noida are counted among green buildings in the NCR" Kumar said.

In addition to these, L&T Chennai, Hiranandani BG Building in Mumbai, ABN Amro Bank in Ahemedabad, Microsoft Building in Hyderabad, Ashok Leyland in Chennai also fall under this category.

Green building consultancy services company Environment Design Solution Director Tanmay Tathagat said green buildings are constructed in a manner that they make best use of natural light and the people working in that area feel in touch with nature.

Green buildings are constructed in a scientific way whereby water management, natural energy and use of local resources are emphasised.

Govt clears 10 fdi proposals worth Rs 1,123 crore

2009-08-19T19:14:00.003+05:30

New Delhi
Business Standard The Asian Age Deccan Chronicle The Economic Times Deccan Herald
The government today cleared 10 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals worth over Rs 1,123 crore, a major share of which is expected to be brought in by the Essel Group promoted direct-to-home service provider, Dish TV India.

On the recommendation of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the government, however, deferred nine proposals -- that of Taneja Aerospace, Eads Deutchland GmbH and Larsen & Toubro's, Tecnotree Convergence, Devas Multimedia, Exensys Software Solutions, India Rizing Fund, Unitech Wireless (Tamil Nadu), Rish Private Ltd, and ByCell Telecommunication.

Three proposals, of Chennai-based Asha Micro Credit, Cholamandalam DBS Finance, and Cargil & Financial Services India, were rejected.

Dish TV India plans to issue convertible bonds to persons resident outside India to raise up to $150 million (about Rs 750 crore) for investments towards import of capital goods, overseas direct investment in joint ventures, or wholly owned subsidiaries, among others.

The company has the approval to set up a joint venture to produce telecommunication equipment and provide management and marketing of 'agrani' services in the area of satellite communications.

The approved foreign equity participation in the joint venture is 49 percent and the foreign collaborators include Afro-Asian Satellite Communication Ltd, Delgrada Ltd and Lazarus Investment Ltd.

L&T plans to form finance vertical

2009-08-19T19:14:00.001+05:30

Suprotip Ghosh, Mumbai
Hindustan Times
Larsen & Toubro (L&T), India's largest construction company, is considering consolidation of its finance subsidiaries to form a finance vertical. The company's new general insurance business is expected to be a key part of the new vertical.

"A new finance vertical will emerge as one of the four verticals in the group, which will include most finance-related companies that are currently subsidiaries of Larsen & Toubro," said R Shankar Raman, executive vice president, finance, L&T.

The company is reorganising itself into four distinct verticals. These include the parent company, engineering, infotech and finance.

The finance vertical will consist of L&T Finance, L&T Infrastructure Finance and L&T General Insurance.

L&T General Insurance has appointed Joydeep Roy, the chief distribution officer of Tata AIG Life, as its chief executive. The company is not probably going to start operations before another six months, said YM Deosthalee, chief financial officer; L&T. Roy declined to comment.

Cold response to 'FLOOD IT'

2009-08-19T19:13:00.001+05:30

Jitendra Dave, Ahmedabad
DNA
Contrary to its hyper expectations, the Gujarat Urban Co-Operative Banks Federation’s (GUCBF) information technology initiative - 'Flood IT Knowledge Revolution from KG to PG' - could unfortunately elicit a very lukewarm response.

Instead of the envisioned disbursement of loans for around one-lakh desktops and laptops, the GUCBF was able to disburse loans for only 25,000 desktops and laptops despite the extension in the period of the scheme.

However, the federation has termed the initiative a success as it has served its purpose of creating awareness about information technology in rural areas of the state.

The apex body of around 300 urban co-operative banks in Gujarat launched the information technology drive in February 2009. The GUCBF had launched the initiative with great pomp in Gandhinagar in presence of chief minister Narendra Modi.

It expected to disburse loans to around one lakh people under its scheme, which was valid for 100 days. The federation had to extend the scheme up to August 10, 2009 because of lack of response. Under this initiative, the federation provided laptop and desktop computers to the children of the members of urban co-operative banks, district co-operative banks and primary credit societies at reasonable rates. Besides, it also gave loans for up to 70% of the amount at 0% interest.

The federation had collaborated with HP, Acer and HCL to make 14 models of laptop and desktop computer available under this scheme.

Travelocity global acquires travelguru

2009-08-19T19:11:00.001+05:30

Mumbai
Business Standard Mint
Travelocity Global, one of the world’s largest online travel companies, today announced the acquisition of Travelguru, India’s largest hotel distribution network, for an undisclosed sum.

The addition of Travelguru will build on Travelocity’s existing businesses, teams and relationships in India, which include Travelocity India, its online travel agency site, various supplier and redistribution relationships, as well as global support teams in the country. Travelguru distributes a portfolio of more than 4,000 hotels in India, most of which are independent properties, with a strong domestic customer-base.

“Both Travelocity India and Travelguru businesses will aim to work together to bring significant benefits to Indian hotel suppliers, with increased distribution and greater demand, redistribution partners with greater breadth and depth of Indian supplier content, and to Indian travellers with the broadest of choice of travel deals across all products in India”, stated a company release.

Microsoft India to launch new products in 12 months

2009-08-19T19:10:00.003+05:30

Mumbai
The Economic Times The Asian Age DNA
Terming its competition with search giant Google as "healthy", Microsoft India on Tuesday said competition will help spur innovation and that it aims to introduce a range of new products in the next one year.

"There are many competitors in the software business and it is good for healthy competition. Competition brings innovation. We will compete with them (Google) in search and other things," Microsoft India's Managing Director Rajan Anandan said.

"We are coming up with a range of new products in the next 12-months. We have Microsoft Office 2010 coming up in the middle of next year," he added.

"Windows 7 is a huge launch. We are betting big on it," Anandan said.

Microsoft last week joined hands with Finnish handset maker Nokia, which will make available MS Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint to Nokia users.

The deal may help Microsoft counter moves by phone makers to use Google Inc's free Android operating system.

"The deal with Nokia is exciting. It will take Nokia to the next level and help accelerate (sales) numbers," Anandan said.

Financial tech to help define industry standards

2009-08-19T19:10:00.001+05:30

Mumbai
Business Standard
Financial Technologies India Ltd (FTIL) has joined the STAC Benchmark CouncilTM to help define industry standard performance metrics for trading technology solutions.

FTIL is the pioneer in introducing end-to-end STP solutions that support high-density transactions for equity, forex, commodity and derivatives markets. FTIL covers all stages of a trade life cycle — pre-trade, trade and post-trade — to deliver single-point transaction fulfillment.

The STAC Benchmark Council is a global industry body consisting of leading trading organisations and vendors, facilitated by the Securities Technology Analysis Centre (STAC-R). The council develops standard benchmarks for technology used in the capital market. End-user firms such as brokers, hedge funds, exchanges and alternative trading systems control the STAC BenchmarksTM through their votes, keeping the benchmarks tide to real business needs.

As part of the STAC Benchmark Council, FTIL will contribute to these benchmark specifications. Vendor-neutral, customer-driven specifications will allow FTIL to demonstrate the power and performance of its DOME (Distributed Order Matching Engine) trading solutions. DOME is a multi-asset exchange product suite, offering an integrated matching engine, including Order Management & Routing Engine, Risk Management & Surveillance Engine, Data Distribution Engine and various interfaces for clearing and settlement.

With FTIL’s extensive and interactive experience in developing such systems, it will contribute the maximum in terms of standardisation and benchmarking in development of a global exchange technology.

Progress Software to focus on Telecom, Airports

2009-08-19T19:09:00.001+05:30

Chennai/Hyderabad
Business Standard Financial Chronicle
Progress Software India, the India arm of US-based Progress Software Corporation, is looking to tap data integration markets in India, particularly in aviation and telecom sectors. To this effect, the company is already in talks with at least two major telecom players apart from some airports that have announced to upgrade their information technology infrastructure, according to its vice-president (products) and centre head Ramesh Loganathan.

Speaking to the media here, he said the company had set up a sales team to find new clients. The company, which specialises in development of service and data integration solutions, has not fixed any sales target for the current year.

Progress has invested $5 million (about Rs 24 crore) in its Hyderabad development centre under Phase I. It is in the process of increasing its workforce and operations by 50 percent in two years. The company employs 145 people at its Hyderabad centre.

India prepares strictest rules on disposing of e-waste

2009-08-19T19:07:00.000+05:30

New Delhi
The Economic Times
India is close to finalising the world's strictest set of rules on disposing of electronic waste. The rules, framed by electronics equipment manufacturers with the help of NGOs, are now being given the final touch by the ministry of environment and forests.

Under the new 'E-waste (Management & Handling) Rules', each manufacturer of a computer, music system, mobile phone or any other electronic gadget will be "personally" responsible for the final safe disposal of the product when it becomes a piece of e-waste, said Guruswamy Ananthapadmanabhan, programme director of Greenpeace International.

This "personal" responsibility makes it the world's most stringent set of rules for e-waste disposal.

The NGO has worked with India's Manufacturers' Association for Information Technology (MAIT) to prepare the rules that have been submitted to the ministry. Eighteen electronic brands, including Nokia, Wipro, HCL, Acer and Sony Ericsson, have already begun implementing plans on toxic chemical phase-out and take-back of old end-of-life products in India.

Apart from Greenpeace, civil society group Toxicslink and Germany's external aid agency GTZ have worked with MAIT since April 2008 to draft the new set of rules, whose main objectives are:

- To address the specific requirements for e-waste management;

- To put in place an effective mechanism to regulate the generation, collection, storage, transportation, import and export of e-waste; and

- To ensure environmentally sound recycling of e-waste.

"This includes establishment of a collection system, environmentally sound refurbishment and recycling, mandatory provisions for reduction in hazardous substances and producer responsibility," Ananthapadmanabhan said.

"The proposed rules would provide enabling policies and procedures that would be legally binding for producers, collection agencies, dismantlers, recyclers, transporters, etc., handling e-waste."

According to a recent report of the UN Environment Programme, 20-50 million tonnes of e-waste is generated annually worldwide. In India, a 2008 estimate by the industry put it at 382,979 tonnes per year, which will go up to 1.6 million tonnes in the next three years.

E-waste now makes up five percent of all municipal solid waste worldwide, more or less the same amount as general plastic waste.

As India piles up more and more junk computers, IT peripherals, music systems and mobile phones, a highly dangerous informal industry in their reprocessing and recycling has sprung up, concentrated on the outskirts of Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.

Smart info signs up oscar winner

2009-08-19T19:06:00.000+05:30

Chennai
The Hindu Business Line
Smart Infocomm, IT hardware and mobile accessories provider, has signed up the Oscar award winner, Resul Pookutty, as its brand ambassador. It will shortly roll out a media campaign even as it plans to make available its products through 25 exclusive experience zones across India.

Yahoo Mail still king, Gmail to catch up soon

2009-08-18T18:24:00.000+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: Yahoo mail continues to be the most popular web mail service, while Google's Gmail which is the fastest growing email service, has surpassed AOL to become the third most visited email service.

As per comScore's latest figures in July, Yahoo added almost 20 million users last year, growing its share of the market by 22 percent from 87.2 million users to 106.2 million users in June. Gmail with its climbing growth rate is on track to pass Windows Live Hotmail, which is the second most widely used email with 47.1 million users, up three percent from last year. In the July 2008 to July 2009 period, Gmail grew at a growth rate of 46 percent with 37 million unique visitors. On the other hand, during the same period AOL's monthly visitor total declined by 19 percent from 45.1 million to 36.4 million.

It's tough competition with all these services stepping up their marketing efforts and making noteworthy upgrades. For instance, Hotmail added the feature of offline access through standard email programmes. Gmail however has been gaining, thanks to its constant upgradation and enhancement. Google apart from getting corporations, organizations and schools to adopt its web services for their own e-mail, scheduling and productivity needs, has also been encouraging businesses to start using Google Apps, which includes Gmail as well as online applications like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Video.

IBM to build next-generation chips with DNA

2009-08-18T18:22:00.000+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: Scientists from IBM and California Institute of Technology are trying to build the next generation chips- smaller and more powerful, with the combination of DNA and nanotechnology. The experimental breakthrough can be a step towards developing a new technique for making smaller microprocessors beyond the traditional manufacturing processes

In the past few years, chipmakers have been able to make tinier and powerful products, but this advancement has pushed the limits of manufacturing techniques. According to IBM, The revolutionary method, developed at its Almaden Research Center in California and the California Institute of Technology, can help it to make computer chips from the molecule, by arranging DNA structures on the surface of manufactured semiconductor material. Microchips are mainly used in computers, mobile phones and a broad range of electronic devices and, as chipmakers compete to develop ever-smaller chips at cheaper prices, designers are struggling to cut costs.

Spike Narayan, Research Manager, IBM said, "The biological structures like DNA actually offer some very reproducible, repetitive kinds of patterns that we can actually leverage in semiconductor processes. The combination of this directed self-assembly with today's fabrication technology for high-resolution positioning of nano-objects eventually can lead to substantial savings in the most expensive and challenging part of the chip making process." This combination can also help processor designers to keep pace with Moore's Law - the 40-plus-year-old prediction by Gordon Moore that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years.

The cost involved in shrinking features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore's Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry. Currently, the semiconductor industry is able to make processors using 22 nanometer manufacturing technology. IBM is also looking for the DNA to act as scaffolds or miniature circuit boards for the highly precise assembly of chip components, like nanotubes, nanowires and nanoparticles. After using this technique, manufacturers are likely to build 'significantly smaller' chips than has been possible with current semiconductor fabrication technology.

In a camera, two screens are better than one

2009-08-18T18:21:00.003+05:30

Financial Chronicle
At last, a fresh and genuinely useful idea. Samsung has announced two cameras with an LCD screen on the front that helps snap-shooters put themselves in their photos. It also includes some nifty features for travellers and simpler ways to delete images inside the camera.

The DualView TL225 and DualView TL220 feature a 1.5-inch LCD screen on the front (in addition to a larger LCD screen on the back) that enables photographers to better frame shots of themselves alone or in groups. Simply tap the front screen and the camera enters portrait mode and will automatically snap a photo when it detects a smiling face — no need to press a shutter button.

The dual-LCD cameras also include a child mode that displays a cartoon animation on the front LCD screen to grab the attention of camera-unaware babies and toddlers. The animation looked a bit small but it should work well for close shots. (No babies participated in a demo by Samsung, so I don’t know for sure.)

For adults who need to know when to smile and not blink, the camera in self-timer mode, will display a preview of the image the front LCD and show a visual countdown to shutter snap. The camera can also take two consecutive shots in this mode.

The $350 TL225 has an expansive 3.5-inch touch-screen LCD on the back (the TL220 has a smaller 3-inch LCD) that enables users to take advantage of an intuitive new smart gesture interface. It’s easy: Draw an X on the screen to delete an image; to rotate, draw a circle. When in playback mode, swipe the screen to advance to the next image. Nice!

Both models have a 12.2-megapixel sensor fronted by a wide-angle 27mm lens with a 4.6X optical zoom. Samsung includes dual image stabilisation and face detection. The cameras can capture high-definition video (720p) at 30 frames a second using the H.264 video format. Samsung also introduced a very well-connected traveller, the $400 CL65, that lets on-the-go users e-mail and upload photos without a computer.

The CL65 connects to e-mail and the web using Wi-Fi. It includes an on-screen Qwerty keyboard to enter addresses for e-mail and uploading to sites like Facebook, YouTube and Picasa. Bluetooth 2.0 allows images to be swapped with cellphones.

It also includes geotagging, which records the latitude and longitude where each image is taken and displays the city name on the camera’s LCD.

The 12.2-megapixel CL65 packs 35mm lens with 5X zoom. It has the same 3.5-inch wide touch-screen LCD as the TL225 and incorporates the Smart Gesture user interface. Like the dual-LCD models, it records video in 720p at 30 frames a second in the H.264 format. All three models arrive in US stores in September.

China mobile opens online store for wireless software

2009-08-18T18:21:00.001+05:30

Hong Kong
The Hindu Business Line
China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest wireless carrier by users, opened an online software store for handset users to boost sales of non-voice services.

The Mobile Market Web site will let users purchase and download software provided by external developers, according to a statement faxed by the Beijing-based company today.

China Mobile, with more subscribers than the combined populations of the US and Japan, aims to promote demand for its third-generation service, which allows faster Web browsing and music downloads on mobile phones.

The company's customer growth has slowed this year as competition from China Telecom Corp. and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. intensifies.

China Telecom and Unicom are both trying to target the higher-spending users with their 3G services, and China Mobile is trying to counter that, said Alex Lee, an analyst at Tai Fook Securities in Hong Kong, who rates the stock hold. The online applications store isn't going to turn into a big contributor immediately, as the 3G user base is still small.

China Mobile fell 5.4 percent to close at HK$84 in Hong Kong trading, trimming its advance this year to 8 percent. China Telecom's shares have jumped 35 percent in the period, while Unicom's stock has gained 15 percent.

Exports set to rebound in december: FICCI

2009-08-18T18:19:00.002+05:30

Ronojoy Banerjee
Financial Chronicle
Despite markets in the West looking far from promising, exporters in India are seeing some signs of a revival. In a survey conducted by Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), majority of respondents said exports were expected to be in positive terrain by December this year.

Orders are finally tricking in, though not at the pace seen previously, said the survey released on Sunday.

The survey, conducted among 316 companies across sectors such as fast moving consumer goods, textiles, handicrafts, metal and metal products, pharmaceuticals and IT, found that year-on-year, the quantum of decline in exports had seen a dip. “There is expected to be an improvement but only in terms of the fall in exports getting smaller,” the survey said, adding that it could be another year before any “reasonable positive growth” is witnessed.

In lieu of this, exporters have sought extension of duty entitlement passbook scheme rates beyond December 31, 2009, simplification of the process under duty free import authorisation scheme, interest subvention extended to all exporting sectors, inclusion of more nations in the focus market scheme, exemption of service tax and temporary reintroduction of exemption under Section 80 HHC of the Income Tax Act, among others. The fast movement in exchange rate in the past six months is also creating problems for exporters. In a similar survey in January, 29 per cent exporters had cited this problem, but now their number has gone up to 61 per cent.

Bharti looks to sell undersea bandwidth

2009-08-18T18:19:00.001+05:30

New Delhi
Bharti Airtel on Monday announced that the company now has the capability and network reach to sell bandwidth or connectivity on its undersea cables to global operators enabling the latter to carry their voice and data traffic across the world, a leap from its earlier practice of offering connectivity largely to and from India.

This means, a Deutsche Telekom or France Telecom in Europe can now buy bandwidth on Bharti’s undersea cables to carry its traffic to Australia or the US. Similarly, a Telstra in Australia can now use Bharti’s cables to carry its voice and data traffic to, say, Japan or Singapore. At present, only Tata Communications and Reliance Communications-owned Flag are the only Indian players that offer global connectivity across countries on their undersea networks. Bharti said it has invested over Rs 2,500 core over the past couple of years to enhance its undersea networks. Undersea cables carry voice and data traffic across the world.

According to Bharti Airtel’s president for enterprise services, David Nishball, the launch of the global wholesale service portfolio is a major step towards the company becoming a global network solutions provider. “From being a regional partner for foreign carriers, Bharti is now uniquely poised to serve global carriers to and from any part of the globe. Over the past few years, we have expanded our global network services portfolio in a manner that complements our investments in existing submarine routes to ensure flexible options for connectivity across all regions of the globe,” he said. Nishball also added that the telco’s undersea networks had a reach of 200,000 kms and could offer connectivity across 200 countries.

On the revenues front, Nishball said that from the second year of operations, the international segment would account for over 20% of the company’s enterprise business. As reported first by ET, Bharti has joined a slew of undersea global cable consortiums, such as Unity North, EIG, IMEWE, EASSy, all of which are currently being built, to enhance its presence in this space. In addition, Bharti’s global network consists of stakes in several other cable systems, such as SMW4, i2i, which is fully-owned, APCN2, c2c, JUCN, TGN, TAT14, Apollo and Hibernia.

Bharti had also inked a deal with Australia-Japan Cable (AJC) to interconnect their current and future networks at the Pacific Island of Guam. The deal will enable Bharti to carry voice and data for telcos in Singapore, the US West Coast and Australia. As per the deal, Bharti will link its assets on the upcoming Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable with AJC, which connects Australia to Guam and Japan. The AAG, being built by a 17-member consortium, is the first submarine cable system linking Southeast Asia directly to the US, and when operational, it will connect 10 locations in eight Asian countries and the US West Coast. Bharti along with five international majors, including Google, is also involved in setting up a separate $300 million sub-sea cable system linking the US and Japan.

Insurance through ATMS

2009-08-18T18:16:00.002+05:30

TE Narasimhan, Chennai
Business Standard
Chennai-based financial services technology company, Polaris Software Lab, has come out with a new technology that would allow insurers to sell their products and collect renewal premium through ATMs. The company is in talks with two insurers for implementing its solution.

SR Ramaswami, executive vice-president and head (insurance), Polaris Software Lab, said the idea was to provide customers the flexibility and convenience to take policies and pay premium in a cost-effective manner.

For instance, if a customer is planning to buy a travel policy, he can walk in to his nearest ATM and key in the policy requirements by using his debit or credit card. An electronic message is sent to the insurance policy system, which in turn will send the confirmation electronic message to the ATM. Once the confirmation is received, the ATM will provide a receipt that will contain details like name of the customer, country to which he/she is travelling, policy start date, end date and policy value and the type of coverage.

If the customer extends his stay abroad, he can top-up the policy by accessing one of the ATMs abroad. Similarly, an insured can renew his policy. Through the new solution, each transaction would cost up to Rs 2 and the maximum time it would take will be around three minutes, he said. Currently, the idea is in the concept stage. European and Australian insurance firms have shown interest in trying this technology, he added.

Nucleus software enters into pact with SISTEMAS ESCO

2009-08-18T18:16:00.001+05:30

Mumbai
The Hindu Business Line
IT services provider Nucleus Software Exports today said it has entered into a partnership with Sistemas Esco, which will be the channel partner for the company in Argentina.

The company is looking to leverage Sistemas Esco's geographical reach and regional expertise to market and distribute its software product solutions across Argentina's Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) market, Nucleus Software said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

“Being associated with channel partners like Sistemas Esco to provide local support will further enhance our offerings and services to our BFSI customers in Argentina,'' Nucleus Software President & Head Global Sales & Marketing Niraj Vedwa said.

Sistemas Esco provides software solutions for the financial market, brokerage and investment funds, the filing added. “This strategic relationship with Nucleus Software represents a significant breakthrough for Sistemas Esco and our channel strategy,'' Sistemas Esco General Manager Cecilia Fernandez de Tormakh said.

Why Sony's like no other

2009-08-18T18:15:00.002+05:30

Amit Ranjan Rai, New Delhi
Business Standard
It's eyeing significant growth focusing on fewer product categories - without targeting the mass market.

Enter the Sony Center, the company’s franchisee outlet, in Delhi’s prime shopping location Connaught Place. Straight on, a bright and huge 62-inch Bravia LCD television will hook your eyes. No, it won’t be playing the regular movie, sports or entertainment channel. Instead, most likely, it will have Street Fighters Dhalsim or Blanka showing off a killer move and calling you for a duel, “Wanna fight?” The fantastic high-definition imagery of the Playstation 3 game on the Bravia will only tempt you to take on the call, “Let’s do it!” Next, you’re on a couch, eyes glued to the screen, palms to the wireless game controller, your thumbs move fast on the buttons to battle out the opponent. If you’re an amateur, an attendant’s ready to guide you through.

Done with the duel, you’re likely to be drawn to a range of sleek, colourful Vaio notebooks on an elevated podium and some of the hippest MP3 players you’ve ever seen displayed round the corner. An attendant may invite you to check on the latest features the Vaios offer, the zipping speed at which you can run applications or surf the Net. He may also connect a notebook to an MP3 Walkman to show how the two work together. That’s not all, perhaps what you’ll find most exciting is a dark theatre room in the outlet with several Bravia LCDs where you can play a movie and experience the home theatre in peace.

Exciting and engaging retailing, isn’t it? That’s what Sony India has been focusing on ever since it renamed its Sony World retail stores to Sony Center in August last year — part of a global initiative to re-align all Sony stores. This was when Sony India Managing Director Masaru Tamagawa rolled out a nationwide refurbishment programme across its network of 240 retail brand stores. “It was an opportunity to take the customer’s retailing experience to a new level. The idea has been to create exciting and engaging store environments with passionate and knowledgeable staff to deliver a compelling hands-on experience,” says Tamagawa. “While the focus earlier was on individual products, now it’s more on demonstrating ‘solutions’ — such as how pictures can be transferred from a digital camera to a notebook or music from a notebook to an MP3 player.”

Revolutionising reading

2009-08-18T18:15:00.001+05:30

Shubhodeep Chakravarty
(Delhi edition)
Pocket a book, and more
With technological advances almost everything is available at the click of a button. Books, were one of the few things, that still needed the human touch. But with eBooks and e-Reader taking the world by storm, this human habit may soon change too. Their ever increasing numbers has opened up a new path for e-readers. Portable and high on storage space, these devices are fast becoming a pocket companion for millions.

Text on the run

E-books are based on two platforms -- e-ink and LCD (TFT). While Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and i-pods make use of the later, the next gen e-book readers have the `e-ink' technology. The device by itself is as easy to use as an external hard disk -- though if you don't know what an EHD is, you're better off without an e-Reader.

One can just install the software that comes with most of these devices and connect to the PC. Some of the devices like the Sony reader can store thousands of PDF files depending on the size. Others like the Cybook Opus and the Hanlin eReader can support picture files as well as play mp3 files.

Apart from Sony, Samsung and Kindle, Plastic Logic plans to unveil its e-Reader by early 2010. Features like camera, Bluetooth, games and WiFi are also being incorporated.

India ready with Chandrayaan-2 design

2009-08-17T19:43:00.000+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: National space agency, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has completed the design of Chandrayaan-2, with the collaboration of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos). Chandrayaan-2 consists of the spacecraft and a landing platform with the moon rover, which can collect samples of the lunar soil and analyze them and send back the data. India will be building the orbital flight vehicle, while the 'Lunar Craft' will be supplied by Russia
On completion of the design, G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO said, "Right now, the design has been completed. We had a joint review with Russian scientists." According to the Bangalore-headquartered space agency, the Chandrayaan-2 mission would have an orbital flight vehicle comprising an Orbital Craft (OC) and a Lunar Craft (LC) that would carry a soft landing system up to Lunar Transfer Trajectory (LTT).

Nair said, "The landing of the rover would be decided after we analyze the data sent by Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Now we are set to build a prototype of Chandrayaan-2 and this would happen next year. We will build upon our success with Chandrayaan-1."

ISRO had gained lot of positives from the first lunar mission and received valuable inputs on heat radiation on the moon's surface. The ISRO Chief said that 95 percent of the scientific objective of Chandrayaan-1 mission had been achieved and the remaining five percent of what was left out would be taken up during the next season starting this October.

"The redundancy factor would be the utmost on the minds of the scientists working on Chandrayaan-2 after their good experience with the first mission," said Nair

4 Hyped technologies of 2009!

2009-08-17T19:42:00.001+05:30

The Times of India
Research firm Gartner Inc recently published its annual `Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies’ report. Like earlier years, the 2009 Hype Cycle Special Report aims to chart out what's hot or not at the cutting edge of hi-tech jargon.

The report evaluates the maturity of 1,650 technologies and trends in 79 technology, topic and industry areas for how likely the terms are to make it into mainstream corporate parlance.

Below are four technologies and trends that are either at the Peak of Inflated Expectations or have just tipped Peak of Inflated Expectations.

Cloud Computing

As enterprises seek to consume their IT services in the most cost-effective way, interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services (for example, computational power, storage and business applications) from the "cloud," rather than from on-premises equipment.

The levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.

E-Book Readers

Sony's e-book reader and Amazon's Kindle have attracted a great deal of attention during 2009. However, the devices still suffer from proprietary file formats and digital rights management technologies, which along with price, are limiting their adoption and will drive them into the Trough of Disillusionment.

Social Software Suites

Awareness of social technology is high because of the popularity of related consumer social software and Web 2.0 services. Within businesses, there is strong and rapidly growing evidence of experimentation and early production deployments. The movement from point tools to integrated suites has brought broader adoption but also high expectations.

Disillusionment is beginning based on the realization that, even with a suite, much work must be done to build an effective social software deployment.

Microblogging

Microblogging, in general, and Twitter, in particular, have exploded in popularity during 2009 to the extent that the inevitable disillusionment around "channel pollution" is beginning.

As microblogging becomes a standard feature in enterprise social software platforms, it is earning its place alongside other channels (for example, e-mail, blogging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges

India inc resumes hiring drive amid recovery signals

2009-08-17T19:41:00.005+05:30

New Delhi
The Economic Times
The Economic Times Financial Chronicle Mint The Statesman Business Standard The Financial Express The Times of India

In a major relief for jobseekers, India Inc's hiring activities are picking up once again as economic conditions are looking up considerably, experts say.

Most of the Indian companies, which had frozen hiring due to the downturn, have started to look at fresh recruitments now with indications of an economic recovery becoming visible across the world, according to HR experts.

"Hiring trends are picking up with companies opening up again for fresh recruitments ... the days of downturn seem to be over and an upswing has begun.

"The resume posting activity is picking up again as people are testing the waters for changing their jobs," International Management Institute (IMI) Director C S Venkata Ratnam said.

Global consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers Executive Director R Sankar said the hiring conditions were turning for the better even as a long way remains for companies to regain their previous year's levels.

"The job scene has improved but is still to reach the levels of euphoria we were accustomed to in earlier years. We don't see a 'flurry of resumes ' but cherry picking of key talent continues to happen," Sankar said.

"Much would depend on the pace of the economic recovery. The green shots are springing up but the poor monsoon is cause for concern," he added.

Venkata Ratnam also said that retail and realty sectors are the ones to pick up strongly in the coming months, while IT sector will continue to suffer as it is not driven by domestic demand.

"In any event, sectors such as FMCG, pharma, telecoms etc which have been relatively less affected by the slowdown will continue to hire, albeit cautiously," Sankar pointed out.

In June, corporate India's hiring activity had surged significantly with recruitment in banking and financial services sector increasing 22 percent in the month, according to a survey by a job portal.

"The economy has pulled out of the stagnancy in hiring. Although, there is an uptrend in hiring, this may be only indicative of replacement hiring," Info Edge National Head - Marketing and Communications Sumeet Singh said.

The job trends in Indian companies' is in line with their global peers and a recent survey by Deloitte revealed HR executives globally now have new concerns about building up of a 'resume tsunami' which may be ready to hit once the economy turns and employees begin to consider new opportunities.

"Once recovery begins to take hold, business executives and talent leaders can expect a 'resume tsunami' as voluntary turnover rises with leaders and workers with critical skills seeking new opportunities," Deloitte LLP Consulting Principal (Human Capital) Jeff Schwartz said.

B-School grads choose to go solo as jobs go missing

2009-08-17T19:41:00.003+05:30

Peerzada Abrar, Bangalore, August 17, 2009
The Economic Times
With the wait for jobs getting longer, the number of B-school graduates turning to start-ups is also increasing. A first-year student at IIM Bangalore launched a start-up called NextGen this year, which deals in clean technology.

NextGen recently bagged clean technology projects from the ministry of renewable energy and Yes Bank and companies like Intel, Infosys, MindTree, and now boasts of presence in Singapore and Portugal.

“There is a lot of pressure on companies to go green and reduce the carbon footprint. We are now working on a biogas plant based on food wastes to produce fuel. IISc is helping us in this and we are setting up a pilot project in BITS Pilani and on the Intel campus,” said the 22-year-old student. “Although the primary objective is to make money, there is also the need to create sustainable sources of energy for rural areas.”

Eximus, an entrepreneurship summit held in IIM Bangalore, which focussed on start-ups this year, saw around 1,500 registrations. Some 300 IIM students applied for business plans and some 25 venture capitalists showed interest to participate. Close to 120 IIM students applied to get live projects from start-ups, said Sabyasachi Senapati, senior co-ordinator, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell, and an IIM-B student.

Start-ups like 8KMiles are willing to give live projects dealing in cost-effective and secure outsourcing of software done online to prospective entrepreneurs while Justbooks, which promotes e-books, is willing to award projects to understand the impact of digitisation of music and film industry and draw parallels to digitisation of books.

Chip off the new block

2009-08-17T19:41:00.001+05:30

Sushila Ravindranath
The Financial Express
There is a quiet revolution-taking place in many of India’s states. Computerisation is slowly creeping in. Its pace can be much faster, but it is happening nevertheless. Which is why it was quite incredible when the Samajwadi party announced its election manifesto in April this year: it spoke of reducing the use of computers to generate more jobs! Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav also vowed to abolish ‘expensive education in English’. Sure enough, he backtracked very soon and claimed that he was not against computers or English. Remember even Laloo Prasad Yadav used to be sceptical about the benefits of information technology. He might have changed his mind later.

According to a new survey by TCS, 71% of students in Indian metropolitan areas say they use personal computers. And 66% of students in Bangalore say they are active on blogging and social networking sites, compared with 39% nationally. The survey of nearly 14,000 kids studying in English-medium schools in 12 major cities in India shows schoolchildren have embraced technology and the Internet, with Google and Wikipedia overtaking the library as the most trusted source of information. Some 63% of children surveyed said they spent more than an hour each day on the Internet; 41% of schoolchildren surveyed chose Google as a source of information, while 46% said they use online sources to access news. The politicians who belong to the 20th century will realise sooner than later that young people in semi-urban places and villages are no different from their city-bred counterparts.

In fact the countryside is embracing computerisation with great fervour. Says PWC Davidar, secretary, Information Technology in Tamil Nadu: “We are working on applications which will benefit the common man… We need a proper base for e-governance applications. We have a fully functioning state data centre of our own. With the central government releasing more funds for e-governance, we can function effectively for many more years. We have two mainframes in place. The Tamil Nadu statewide area network (TNSWAN) is one among the core e-government infrastructures to create government to government and government to citizen initiatives.”

With the arrival of worldwide web (which is only 20 years old), many governments started deploying IT in the nineties. This powerful tool suddenly made governments think about good governance. IT-enabled governance would make efficiency, transparency, accountability and citizen-orientation possible. Take the case of Tamil Nadu’s TNSWAN network, which has two-tier architecture. Tier 1 is from state to district level and Tier2 is from district headquarters to the revenue division. TNSWAN interconnects the state headquarters with district headquarters and each district headquarter with block headquarters using the 2Mbps free bandwidth availed from public private communication providers. The total number of points of presence of the network is 708. Very soon the state government is planning to launch tools of e-governance in several areas through TNSWAN. This will enable people to access information on land records (an area in which Tamil Nadu has lagged behind), transport facilities, encumbrance certificates, municipal services and food and civil supplies from any part of the state.

The state is launching its programme in five handpicked e-districts. “Once we figure out what all services can be rolled out, we will go to all the 30 districts,” says Davidar. The IT department has identified 124 services that will have maximum impact on the people, and has picked 62 out of them. “There are two stages, AS IS and TO BE. The AS IS stage has been completed. We are developing applications for revenue, OBC, SC and social welfare departments. We have big plans for agriculture. We want to give information on fertiliser application, new equipment, sudden pest attacks, weather forecasts and so on. We have e-teams in each place. The ownership is with each department,” says Davidar. A team of committed bureaucrats (yes, they do exist) from various departments is working on several initiatives and the IT minister Dr Poongothai is fully supportive and wants to speed things up. “In four months hopefully you will see the results of our work,” says Davidar.

SEZ units want tax sops with retrospective effect

2009-08-17T19:39:00.002+05:30

Nayanima Basu
Financial Chronicle
The commerce and industry ministry has written a letter to the finance ministry urging that tax exemption provided under Section 10AA of the Income-tax Act be given retrospectively and not on a prospective basis to units located in special economic zones (SEZs). The issue has been hanging fire for over three years now and the move could trigger a fresh row between the two ministries.

Recognising the anomaly, the finance minister had said in February that it would be corrected as it had resulted in “discriminatory treatment of an assessee having units located both in SEZs and the domestic tariff area (DTA) vis-à-vis an assessee having units located only within SEZs.”

It has been proposed that the changes would be effective from April 1, 2010, whereas the companies have demanded that this be applicable retrospectively, from February 10, 2006, when the SEZ Act came into effect.

Due to this provision, companies, especially IT firms that have units in DTA are not getting any benefit as it limits the benefits of getting a tax exemption. IT biggies such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro and HCL are not able to avail the full benefit.

“Tax exemption has been categorically provided in the SEZ Act. Even though the anomaly had been removed, it should be done retrospectively, else the firms would not be able to get benefits,” said LB Singhal, director-general, export promotion council for EOUs and SEZs.

Bengal SEZ builders seek more time

2009-08-17T19:39:00.001+05:30

Sounak Mitra, Calcutta
The Telegraph
Many developers of SEZs in Bengal, which have received in-principle approval from the commerce ministry, have either shelved their plans or want more time to acquire land.

Among them are Purnendu Chatterjee-led The Chatterjee Group, Venugopal Dhoot’s Videocon and a city-based Rahul Saraf-headed consortium.

A proposed SEZ first gets in-principle approval, when the developer is yet to get land. After the developer acquires land, the SEZ gets formal approval. Following the formal approval, an SEZ is notified by the central government.

The Chatterjee Group — which had obtained in-principle approval for an IT SEZ on 494 acres in Siliguri — has dropped its plans because of land acquisition problems. A few months back, DLF had sought a denotification for a proposed IT SEZ over 10.12 hectares at Rajarhat.

At present, there are three SEZs in the state— Falta, Manikanchan and Wipro. Till March 2009, the government has given in-principle approval to 14 proposals in the state, formal approval to 14 and notified 9.

Ust global's Kerala strategy clicks; continues to invest in clients

2009-08-17T19:38:00.003+05:30

Niranjana Ramesh, Chennai
The Economic Times
"We are keen on exploring the European and Asian markets, and will be looking out for acquisitions in the knowledge management and business analytics space mainly besides in ERP and CRM." UST Global recently acquired a testing company in Canada and an e-commerce company in the US. It plans to leverage the Canadien technical expertise in its end-to-end IT solutions, and e-commerce capabilities in its retail vertical, the second largest for the company, contributing to 20% of its revenues. Its largest vertical is healthcare, garnering 40% of revenues.

The company's strategy has so far been on saving costs by setting up its development centres in Kerala, which still remains a low cost destination compared to Chennai and other major cities "The Kerala government, through the downturn, has been strict that there should be no layoffs. But, they have been providing us other sops," Sudheendra said. "The cost arbitrage in this state is nearly 25% more compared to the more industrious states of the country." The company has 4800 of its 6000 strong global workforce in India, of which 3500 are in Trivandrum, 1000 in Chennai and 250 in Kochi.

MIcrosoft to take the channel route for Windows 7 marketing in India from oct

2009-08-17T19:38:00.001+05:30

Ranjana Kaushal, New Delhi
Mail Today
Despite the economic slowdown pinching the IT budgets of corporates, Microsoft India is hopeful that its latest product Windows 7, scheduled to be launched in October, will attract a huge number of small and medium businesses and retail customers. To make the product a success, the company is adopting a new marketing strategy, which entails promoting the product through channel partners. The idea is to create excitement among partners and showcasing the upgradation opportunities.

To begin with, the company is planning a 16- city partner roadshow in October. During August to September the company will reach out to over 1,800 partners across several cities including Ahmedabad, Cochin, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Guwahati, Hyderabad and Indore besides the five metros. During the course of the drive, Microsoft will educate partners, provide demos and highlight the potential opportunities. G. Ramesh, director ( Windows client), Microsoft India, said, “ The roadshow will help showcase the product to partners. We are targeting SMBs as a big business opportunity for the product and through our 350 partners we plan to penetrate this segment.

The idea is to get maximum trails through all initiatives and convert leads into business.”

MoserBaer uses mobile vans to sell CDS, DVDS

2009-08-17T19:37:00.001+05:30

Kirtika Suneja, New Delhi
Business Standard
Moser Baer Entertainment Ltd (MBEL), the wholly owned subsidiary of optical disc maker Moser Baer, has found an innovative way of distributing its film CDs and DVDs in small cities and rural areas. It has introduced mobile vans in six states to distribute these discs directly in such places.

“Moser Baer does not have a big presence in small cities, so we need to play the price card and take it directly to villages. Film discs will be carried directly by these mobile vans. As of now, there are around six vans in each state,” Harish Dayani, chief executive (Entertainment Division), Moser Baer said

The company plans to have around 100 vans in 25 states in the next two months. Each van will have a capacity of 4,000-5,000, dominated by its Super DVD brand. Super DVDs, currently priced at Rs 45, have three films on one DVD and are available in more than 1,000 stores across the country.

The company recently reduced the Super DVD’s price to Rs 30 and plans to reduce it further to Rs 25. “For rural areas, we are looking at more delightful price points of Rs 22, 25 and 27, depending on the price realities of a particular place and the strength of piracy,” added Dayani.

Japanese delegation explores opportunities in semiconductor sector

2009-08-17T19:35:00.000+05:30

M. Soundariya Preetha, Coimbatore
The Hindu
An eight-member Japanese trade delegation was here on Thursday and Friday to explore investment and business opportunities in the semi-conductor sector.

The delegation preferred a combination of investment and off-shore supply.

Members of the delegation included representatives of the Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO), the Kyushu Economic Research Centre, the Fukuoka City Government and the Asia Semiconductor Trading Support Association (ASTSA).

The delegates told The Hindu on Friday that 30 percent of the $ 350 billion global semiconductor industry was in Japan. And, nearly one-third of the Japanese production came from the Kyushu island.

With the car manufacturers in Japan stepping up the annual production, the demand for embedded software was also increasing. Japan required skilled manpower for this. It was also looking at companies and suppliers for the electro control units used in automobiles. The cooperation in this field could be investments in Japan, joint ventures or trade. It was also looking at opportunities in all electronic-related sectors such as equipment and machinery.

Microsoft, Nokia to take on RIM

2009-08-13T18:11:00.001+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: Microsoft and Nokia have formed an alliance to bring Microsoft (MS) software applications on the Nokia phones and to counter the dominance of the Research in Motion's (RIM)Blackberry. This is for the first time that Microsoft will make Office applications for non-Windows mobile phones

The latest versions of the Microsoft's Office applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and messaging, will be available on the Nokia phones, which makes up 45 percent of the global smartphone market with 200 million users. The companies expect to offer Nokia phones running on the Symbian operating system and having Office sometime in the next year, initially targeting enterprise customers integrated into Nokia's E Series phones.

"This is giving some of our competitors; let's spell it out, RIM, a run for their money. I don't think BlackBerry has seen the kind of competition we can provide them now." said Robert Andersson, Executive Vice President, Nokia.

Research in Motion's BlackBerry has created the market for mobile e-mail, and has a dominant position in the corporate sector, especially in North America.

"RIM should be reasonably safe in the near-term because Nokia's presence in the U.S. is relatively small. Partnering more closely with Microsoft will help to raise Nokia's profile in the U.S." said Neil Mawston, Strategy Analytics.

The alliance is also looking to counter Google recent move into free online software, targeted at Microsoft's business customers and the growing popularity of Apple's iPhone device.

Microsoft's new Office suite of applications could be available to large numbers of users as compared to the users of Windows Mobile phones, which make up nine percent of the smartphone market

college e-textbooks go to class in iPhones

2009-08-13T18:10:00.001+05:30

San Francisco
The Economic Times
US and Canadian college students can pack textbooks into their pockets instead of spine-bending backpacks courtesy of an iPhone application released by CourseSmart.

The northern California supplier of electronic textbooks on Tuesday released free software that makes digitized forms of college textbooks available on Apple's ubiquitous iPhone or iPod Touch devices.

"We've seen significant demand from student customers for the ability to get required textbook content in electronic form on an iPhone or iPod Touch," said CourseSmart executive vice president Frank Lyman.

"We see incredible potential for iPhone and iPod Touch applications in education." Students that buy "eTextbooks" from CourseSmart can view them from any Internet-linked computers and are able to print out pages or copy sections into custom study guides.

Instead of lugging old-fashioned ink and paper books to classes, students can use iPhones of iPod Touch devices to access textbooks online for reference during classes.

"It's important to students to be able to access textbook content in color with the same page layout as a printed textbook and now the eTextbooks App allows them to do that," Lyman said.

CourseSmart began offering eTextbooks in 2007 and as of Tuesday had reportedly sold copies to students in slightly more than 5,900 schools.

DELL unveils nickelodeon PC for kids

2009-08-13T18:09:00.002+05:30

San Francisco
The Economic Times
Dell Inc on Tuesday unveiled a line of Nickelodeon co-branded personal computer for children, the first in a series of branding deals intended to galvanize its consumer business.

Dell's move is the latest example of PC makers using design and targeting particular demographies to stand apart from rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co and Acer Inc in an increasingly commoditized industry. The Dell Inspiron Mini Nickelodeon Edition will come clad in the Viacom Inc channel's trademark "green slime" design, with additional designs based on programs such as "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "iCarly."

The 10-inch netbook has wireless Internet access, weighs less than 3 pounds and comes loaded with entertainment and educational content. It will also feature a personalized user interface with Nickelodeon-branded desktop wallpaper and icons, and easy access to the channel's online content.

Michael Tatelman, vice president of global consumer sales and marketing for Dell, said the Nickelodeon netbook is just the start of its co-branding effort as it pushes into areas such as college students and pro sports. "The PC, like the smartphone, has become a 21st century symbol of self-expression. People are identified by what they carry, and people identify with what they carry," he said.

Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer products, said the "sweet spot" for the PC was the so-called "tween" market. "This really is not a toy. This is the real deal," she said. The world's No. 2 PC maker did not announce pricing for the netbook, which will be available in October in the United States through Dell's online store, and at Wal-Mart Stores Inc outlets and Walmart.com. The Nickelodeon PC is based on Dell's Inspiron Mini 10v, which starts at $300.

Google working on new version

2009-08-13T18:09:00.001+05:30

London
The Hindu Business Line
Google Inc is working on a new test version of its search engine, which the company claims will be faster and more relevant than before. The company has dubbed the new search engine Caffeine. The new search engine doesn't appear different, but its developers hope that the technology will noticeably index new content faster. Google engineers are said to have invited Web developers to test the new search engine and give feedback.

Matt Cutts, a principal engineer at Google, and Sitaram Iyer, a staff software engineer, have posted an entry on the company's webmaster central blog, appealing to developers to try the newly improved service and send them some feedback. ''The new infrastructure sits 'under the hood' of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback,'' they said.

Nokia's kallasvuo heads panel for ET awards for corporate excellence 2009

2009-08-13T18:08:00.001+05:30

Mumbai
The Economic Times
Nokia folklore has it that in the early 1990s, when the Finnish mobile phone giant’s board was deliberating whether to set up operations in India or China, the then CFO of Nokia Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo insisted that it was not an either-or decision—Nokia needed both markets.

So the company set up operations in India in 1995. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today, Nokia boasts of a Rs 24,200-crore business in India with 70 percent-plus marketshare in mobile handsets. And on August 20, the 56-year-old Finn will have to take similar decisive calls.

As the chairman of the jury for the ET Awards for Corporate Excellence, he will head an eight-member grand jury that will change the lives of a chosen few in India Inc—doing no less than inducting them into India Inc’s Hall of Fame.

Kallasvuo, now president and CEO of the E51.05-billion Nokia is looking forward to the challenge. “It’s an honour. It’s also a great opportunity to meet some of the architects of the new Indian business powerhouses,” he says. “It’s a big event for me personally. India is not an emerging economy now but it’s in full bloom—taking into account the significance, the size, the importance of the nation.”

Over the years, the jury has been chaired by a range of diverse personalities - from Infosys’ NR Narayana Murthy, to HDFC’s Deepak Parekh, to Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi and ArcelorMittal’s LN Mittal. They brought their individual styles to the collective decision-making process: some were consensus builders, some wanted time-bound quick decisions, some allowed long debates and even agreed to disagree with the members. Kallasvuo sees himself as a consensus builder. “Nokia’s culture is very collaborative and equitable. But I guess, it’s also about finding the right balance,” he says.

Tata’s Corus acquisition, HCL’s Axon buy, the acquisition of LandRover and Jaguar, all of these reflect India’s growing role in the comity of nations,” he expands. The winners of The Economic Times Awards, like Infosys, Tata Steel, Bharti, HDFC Bank, Ranbaxy Laboratories and TCS have helped the India story go further and also done their bit in nation-building. Kallasvuo’s jury will take it a step further.

The ET Awards are presented by Raymond in association with Trident, Nariman Point, Mumbai and the television partners are ET NOW and Times NOW.

IT companies may take time for non-linear growth

2009-08-13T18:07:00.002+05:30

Shivani Shinde, Mumbai
Business Standard
Indian information technology services providers may have seen a dip in net hiring this financial year. However, the drop is more due to the slowdown in the business environment rather than a shift towards non-linear growth. Experts believe it will take another three to five years for Indian IT firms to move to a non-linear business model.

Non-linear growth does not measure improvement on the basis of headcount growth, which most stock market analysts do. Instead, organisations measure growth by the number of value-added services they offer to customers, by introducing non-linear or non-headcount related services like platform-based solutions or invest in creating intellectual property (IP) rather than focus on just pure application development and maintenance (ADM) work.

Sudin Apte, senior analyst, Forrester, believes the move towards non-linear business growth was initiated by top IT firms even before the slowdown began. “Currently, just about 3 to 4 percent of business that Indian IT firms get are on non-linear pricing. It will take at least three to five years for Indian IT firms to get on to the non-linear business model,” added Apte. He said a change in client mindset is also important.

Agrees Sidharth Pai of TPI: “Achieving non-linear growth is a long process. This reduction in headcount is a direct impact of the softness in the market. on subdued price realisationOf course, outcome-based pricing and platform-based service offerings are some of the components of non-linear growth. But these are still a small part of the revenue.”

A recent Edelweiss Securities’ report says the correlation between headcount growth and revenue is beginning to break, as firms deploy a shared services model. “Shared services means using fungible resources across multiple projects simultaneously. This requires non-intrusive, yet collaborative, infrastructure to be put in place along with client approvals. As companies use more shared services in their delivery, we could see realisations hold up despite pressures on rack/coupon rates with customers,” said Viju George in his report.

Global players like IBM or Accenture are much ahead of Indian IT players on offering non-linear services. However, analysts feel a comparison is not fair. “The IBM and Accentures of the world also have other business, a different asset that allows them to bundle their services offering,” opined Pai. Besides, says Apte, a large chunk of the work the MNCs do is onsite. “The consulting business of all these firms are big,” he said.

Swine flu fear spreads across the Indian IT Industry

2009-08-13T18:07:00.001+05:30

Pradeesh Chandran & N V Vijayakumar, Bangalore
Deccan Herald
If it be the global recession that impacted IT sector for the last two years, it is all going to be gripped by an impending outbreak of swine flu.

While many IT companies in the country have imposed travel restriction on their employees, few others are circulating information on swine flu internally to sensitise employees. Few companies also embarked upon cooling off period for those who returned from overseas stint. According to TCS sources, the company started mailing employees to take precautionary measures in the event of singe or large outbreak of the disease. Even though the outbreak of the disease hasn’t affected its overseas operation, TCS Mexican centre had to be closed for five days because of local government directive.

Few TCS employees said the circular cautions them to restrict hugging and even unwanted spitting. TCS also tied up with few hospitals for getting them checked. Infosys has already started educating employees by sending health bulletins for taking necessary precautions. Medical teams at the company’s various development centres are on high alert and in constant touch with public authorities to ensure safety of employees and continuity of operations. Infosys also reduced all inbound and outbound travel to Pune Development Centre and limited it to essential business travel. It has 20,000 strong workforce at the Pune centre.

Wipro Chief Information Officer Laxman Badiga said “in addition to existing pandemic response plan, we have intensified our efforts at employee health and safety measures.

We are communicating with our employees to exercise extreme caution and avoid unnecessary travel.”

Symphony Services Corporation has told its employees who have travelled to the UK, Mexico, the US and parts of Europe recently, to go through a cooling off period. Executive Vice-President & Chief People Officer C Mahalingam said the cooling off period entails working from home for four-five days and getting back to office after employees show no signs of having contracted the disease. “Our wellness partners are doing all necessary checks and issuing communication on the disease to all staff,” he added.

Mask purchasing spree
Cognizant, which has over 7,500 employees in Pune, has issued an advisory to their associates asking them to undertake only essential travel and defer all other types of travel to locations worldwide affected by swine flu.

Few of MNC companies working in the sector have also started purchasing spree of masks and other gadgets to counter the spread of swine flu at their centres in the country. In another development, Nasscom has also postponed its engineering services outsourcing summit scheduled to be held in Pune on August 19 to November 18.

IT Companies' answer to SWINE FLU

2009-08-13T18:06:00.003+05:30

The Times of India
The swine flu fear has reached India Inc too. The steady rise in the cases of flu has made Business India take preventive steps, though not many are talking about widespread shutdown in the face of a pandemic. There are doctors visiting offices, restrictions on travel, event cancellations, office advice of flu precautions and stay-home advisories to workers returning from flu-hit areas as companies look to keep the virus from impacting their businesses.

Companies are also checking their disaster recovery and business continuity plans, just in case things go out of hands. Here's looking into what IT companies are doing to contain flu.

Cooling off period

Many IT companies across the country have asked their `recently travelled' employees to go through a mandatory Cooling Off period of four to five days. During this Cooling Off period employees are asked to work from home and get back to office after mandatory four-five days only in case they show no signs of having contracted the disease.

Employees who have recently travelled to US, Mexico, UK and some parts of Europe have to go through this Cooling period. Bangalore-based IT company Wipro has introduced a 4-days Cooling period for its employees.

Travel advisory

Most IT companies have issued an advisory to their employees. Infosys Technologies has restricted travel among its nine development centres across the India. Perot Systems has temporarily banned travel between its Chennai and Coimbatore offices. All communication is being done through videoconferencing.

"Employees returning from swine flu-hit areas have to go through a compulsory medical check. Also, each of our development centers has a doctor and any employee can go for a swine flu check anytime," says an Infosys spokeswoman. The company has also asked its employees who recently travelled to US to get themselves examined before joining office. Infosys has about 20,000 employees at its Pune centre.

Most technology companies have also issued an advisory to their employees to avoid travelling to Mumbai and Pune unless extremely urgent.

Masks compulsory

US-based Perot Systems has reportedly made it compulsory for every individual to wear a mask inside the company campus. The company has one lakh masks in stock. It is also said to be procuring a temperature scanner as a precautionary measure.

Many other IT companies too are said to be in the process of procuring masks for their employees. Fumigation of campuses too is being done in most IT companies.

No handshakes please!

India's largest IT company TCS has asked employees to avoid shaking hands and to wash hands frequently through an advisory. It is also counselling staff to avoid panic.

Chief HR officer of Tata Tele Services (TTSL), CN Nagakumar, has sent out a health advisory "to enable the employees to understand, appreciate and take preventive and curative measures to effectively handle any eventuality of H1N1 currently spreading in the country"

The company has also ensured a round-the-clock doctor. TTSL officials who will visit Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh on work are even contemplating wearing masks on the flight.

Paid leave

BPO company Syntel Inc has reportedly asked all its employees returning from high-risk countries such as the US and Mexico to compulsorily go on a two-day paid leave. The employees have been asked to go for a checkup from a company doctor.

Several IT companies like TCS and CapGemini have reportedly given their employees in Mumbai and Pune the option to work from home.

The country's largest software exporter TCS which also has considerable presence in Pune has issued detailed internal mails with relevant information about the pandemic and known safeguards against it.

NASSCOM summit postponed

Nasscom has postponed its two-day global engineering summit in Pune from August to November. About 300 people from across India and outside were expected to attend the summit.

“It is not about Pune but the fact that attendees will be coming from different places that could present a danger,” said a Nasscom official, who did not wish to be named.

Doctor on call

Most of the IT companies have made doctors available on call. Some IT offices have also set up a central control room. US-based Congnizant, which has its second largest global delivery center in Pune employing 7,500, has doctor visiting each floor of its office to conduct sessions on proactive precautions.

Many companies have also set up a toll free number to support employees and their families.

IT, BPO firms postpone events

2009-08-13T18:06:00.001+05:30

Pune
The Indian Express
With the city witnessing five swine flu fatalities, the IT-BPO sectors too are taking no chances and cancelling their events.

NASSCOM has postponed its two-day global engineering summit, which was to be held in the city on August 18 and 19. Around 300 people from across the country and abroad`d were expected to attend the summit. According to a press note from NASSCOM, the event is being rescheduled following the government decision to shut down schools, colleges, multiplexes and so on. It will now be held in November, the note said.

Many companies have issued directives and those who have even the slightest fever and cough symptoms have been asked to work from home, while others are spreading awareness among employees about swine flu through office email. An IBM employee said FAQs on swine flu and updates on preventive measures are being given to personnel.

Govt nod for three new SEZ plans

2009-08-13T18:04:00.001+05:30

New Delhi
Deccan Herald The Indian Express Business Standard
The Centre, on Tuesday, approved three new proposals for setting up Special Economic Zones (SEZ) including two in Karnataka in the Information Technology (IT) sector.

These were cleared by the Board of Approval (BOA) at it meeting chaired by Commerce Secretary Rahul Khullar.

The BOA approved the proposal of Brooke Bond Real Estates Private Limited to set up a SEZ in the IT/ITES sector in Bangalore.

It also cleared Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation Limited proposal to set up a SEZ at Shimoga also in the IT sector.

It gave in-principle approval to proposal of Lanco Solar Private limited to set up a solar SEZ in Orissa.

Four IT majors shortlisted for army logistics solutions

2009-08-13T18:03:00.003+05:30

Surabhi Agarwal, New Delhi
The Financial Express
In a significant deal in the domestic IT space, which is currently abuzz with several big ticket IT projects from the public sector and government agencies, the country’s top software outsourcing firms — TCS, Wipro Technologies, L&T Infotech and Siemens Information Systems Ltd (SISL), have been shortlisted by the Indian Army for its Computerised Inventory Control Project (CICP) in the second round of bidding.

According to sources close to the development, the Indian Army is now expected to come out with a limited tender, where only these companies will be invited to submit their bids. The final contract is expected to be awarded by March 2010.

Industry experts put the worth of the contract anywhere between Rs 400 to 700 crore. The project will require automation, procurement and deployment of management solutions for logistics of the Indian Army. While some of the top names of the Indian IT industry like Infosys, Wipro, Mahindra Satyam, SISL, L&T Infotech, BAeHAL, IBM and Cap Gemini had submitted Expression of Interest (EoI) for the deal, only four players, most of them offering SAP-based products, have been selected by the Army.

According to experts, the project will be critical to the war-readiness of the country. The CICP envisions providing responsive operational logistic support to the army in a completely integrated and automated environment, utilising modern inventory management techniques with real time sharing of information within and outside the army ordnance corps.

In simple terms, it will include inventory management of wide-ranged items such as clothing, armament from small arms to guns and related spares, wireless equipment, nuclear biological and chemical equipment, ski and mountaineering equipment, ammunition, missiles, explosives and related non-explosive stores, vehicles and even aircraft.

According to sources, while SISL, L&T's software services arm L&T Infotech and India's third largest software firm Wipro have bid along with SAP; the country's largest software company TCS has offered both SAP and Oracle products.

However, at the final tender stage, the system integrators will bid only with one product. Mahindra Satyam and BAeHAL had software products from IFS India in their portfolio.

The Indian Army's CICP is one of the several public sector deals that are currently floating in the domestic market and are being actively pursued by software majors. The country’s defence sector is considered to be one of the biggest spenders on IT, with Indian Airforce already launching an e-maintenance project worth Rs 2,500 crore for its entire fleet of aircraft, radars and missiles. There are several other projects underway at the defence forces, however they are either being done in-house or carried out secretly due to the security issues involved.

Computerisation of accounts office welcomed

2009-08-13T18:03:00.001+05:30

Allahabad
The Times of India
North Central Railway general manager Sudesh Kumar inaugurated AFRES the software in Traffic Accounts Office on Tuesday.

Kumar congratulated the officers and staff of Traffic Accounts Office and said that computerisation of the office will not only lead to prompt and accurate accounts preparation but also to uniformity in procedures and clean working environment.

On the occasion, FA & CAO North Central Railway, Vandana Singhal, also lauded the efforts of the team of officers for successful implementation of the project. She said that NCR is the first zone of Indian Railway where AFRES in Traffic Accounts has been implemented fully up to the final preparation of earnings accounts. All the earnings of the zone are compiled and accounted for in Traffic Accounts. She said that with its implementation, the traffic accounts office has been fully computerised with all the allied statements being generated by this software Module AFRES.

BRAND LAUNCHES

2009-08-13T18:01:00.000+05:30

The Economic Times
Style Book: ACER launched Aspire one 10.1” netbook in India. It features one mail software, Messenger, Skype and comes in red, black and blue colours.

AMD eyes bigger mkt pie in India

2009-08-13T18:00:00.000+05:30

Rachana Khanzode, Mumbai
The Financial Express
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is scouting for a bigger share in the Indian market. Facing challenges from the leader of global chipmaker, Intel, in the domestic market too. AMD is working on a renewed market strategy, focusing on ramping up its product R&D, working aggressively with major OEMs like HP and Acer, and targeting local government tenders.

According to a global research firm, AMD has an overall market share of 14%. It enjoys a 19% market share in desktops and 4% in notebooks. Intel continues to enjoy the lion’s share of 86% of the overall market share with 81% in desktops and 96% in notebooks.

According to Gartner, India had witnessed a shipment of 9.2 million units at the end of December 2008 and similar shipments are expected this year. Ramkumar Subramanian, vice-president, sales & marketing, India and SAARC, AMD, said: “We continue to invest in our R&D and are also scouting for local government contracts. We have come up with some new programmes with system integrators and regional distributors.” The firm is now providing some incentives to the re-seller community for pushing the AMD products.

According to AMD, it has been facing challenges in various markets including India as a result of Intel’s monopoly. The firm had filed an anti-trust complaint against Intel Corporation way back in 2005 claiming damages. The case is still pending with the US federal district court of Delaware.

Currently, Intel and AMD have their product lines across HP, Dell, HCL and Acer. Intel is also present with Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony and Apple. Analysts point out that besides lack of large product lines, AMD has been largely behind of Intel owing to lack of marketing and advertising initiatives. Diptarup Chakraborti, principal research analyst, Gartner, said: “AMD needs to create interest and awareness about its products among consumers and therefore it needs to invest into branding activities.”

Google CEO quits Apple board

2009-08-04T18:08:00.001+05:30

Cupertino (California)
The Hindu Business Line
The Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has resigned from Apple's board of directors as the Internet search leader increasingly develops products that compete with Apple's core businesses, including the popular iPhone.

The Apple Inc CEO, Steve Jobs, said Schmidt would have had to excuse himself from large portions of the company's board meetings to avoid potential conflicts of interest. ''Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple's Board,'' Jobs said in a statement.

Yahoo to focus on display ad, content businesses: bartz

2009-08-04T18:07:00.002+05:30

The Economic Times
Yahoo Inc, which last week announced a Web search deal with Microsoft Corp, will invest money from reduced marketing and infrastructure costs into its display ad, content and mobile services technology, its chief executive Carol Bartz told the New York Times in an interview.

Bartz told the paper she went ahead with the search deal as Yahoo found it difficult to match the level of investment that Google Inc and Microsoft were making in the search business.

"My first reaction when I got here was that I wouldn't even do a search deal," Bartz told the paper, "until I looked at our expense structure and our actual options and looked at what our prime job was, which is to grow audience."

Bartz told the paper that the core of the company was intact. "We haven't eviscerated the company."

Yahoo and Microsoft signed a 10-year pact last week under which Microsoft will power search queries on Yahoo's sites and Yahoo's sales force will be responsible for selling premium search ads to big buyers for both companies.

For some pc users, move to windows 7 will be tough

2009-08-04T18:07:00.001+05:30

Mint
On October 22, Microsoft will finally release a new version of Windows that will be as good as the deeply disappointing Windows Vista should have been when it came out in January 2007. The new edition, called Windows 7, is a big improvement over both Vista and the sturdy, 2001-vintage Windows XP still widely in use. It will give Apple's longsuperior Mac OS X operating system a run for its money (though Apple might maintain its edge with a new version, called Snow Leopard, due in September).

But how will Windows users transition their current computers to the new Windows 7?

While this latest operating system stresses simplicity, the upgrade process will be anything but simple for the huge base of average consumers still using XP, who likely outnumber Vista users. It will be frustrating, tedious and labor-intensive.

In fact, the process will be so painful that, for many XP users, the easiest solution may be to buy a new PC preloaded with Windows 7, if they can afford such a purchase in these dire economic times. In fact, that's the option Microsoft recommends for XP users. (Conveniently, this option also helps Microsoft's partners that make PCs.) By contrast, if you're using Vista, the upgrade to Windows 7 should be a fairly easy, straightforward process. Because the new version shares most of the underlying guts of Vista, it installs itself on your current machine relatively quickly and smoothly, preserving all your files, folders, settings and programs. In a test of this process earlier this year, using a pre-release version of Windows 7, I upgraded a Vista laptop with no problems and little effort in about an hour.

But Windows XP users, including the millions who have recently snapped up cheap, XP-powered netbooks, will first have to wipe out everything on their hard disks in order to install Windows 7. on their current machines. In fact, Microsoft doesn't even call migrating to Windows 7 from XP an "upgrade." It refers to it as a "clean install," or a "custom installation." This disk wipeout can be performed manually, or automatically during the Windows 7 installation process.

Storing success for SMES

2009-08-04T18:06:00.003+05:30

Payal Agarwal
The Economic Times
In this age of industrialisation, manufacturing activities are constantly expanding, thanks to the ever-growing demand for products. In this scenario, warehousing has gained tremendous importance in the supply chain. The warehouse is a crucial link between a manufacturing facility and its suppliers, as it governs the flow of materials and ultimately affects productivity. As a result, the development of high-tech goods warehousing has emerged as the prime method for both large players as well as small and medium enterprises to boost their manufacturing operations and supply chain management (SCM).

Warehouse automation is an upcoming technology in India. However, implementation of this technology is limited to the large players, while most SMEs in India have yet to adopt it. According to BV Iyer, President, Indian Institute of Materials Management, “SMEs generally do not have long-term plans, and hence look for immediate results from their investments. Warehouse automation requires considerable investment in the beginning, while the benefits are only realised after a while. SMEs generally do not work with such business models.” However, as the need for efficient warehousing and traceability grows, even smaller warehouses are being compelled to introduce some degree of automation into their processes. Over the past few years, several types of automation systems and modules have been developed for warehouses.

Automated Storage Retrieval System (AS/RS)

AS/RS is an automation system with high-rise racks that are loaded and unloaded using automatic storage machines within the aisle.

Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs)

These can be used to transport, store and retrieve loads for warehouses, which are mainly associated with the manufacturing and shipping industries.

Carousels

Automated carousels are used in warehouses to move loads to a pick-and-drop station.

Real-time Warehouse Control Systems (RTWCS)

RTWCS integrates materials handling, data management, and human resources to achieve Computer Integrated Warehousing (CIW).

Advantages of Warehouse Automation for SMEs

Warehouse automation can offer several advantages for SMEs, which usually have limited floor space. For instance, warehouse automation systems AS/RS ensures high-density material storage by optimising the use of the available cubic space. SMEs can also save the costs spent on managing inventory, as warehouse automation systems enhance inventory control through computerisation. Anup Wadhwa, Director, Automation Industry Association, says, “With warehouse automation, both SMEs and larger players can ensure higher accuracy and efficiency in their inventory tasks. This ultimately leads to cost optimisation for the firms.” BCH Electric Ltd, an SME, uses ManCon Warehouse Management System for its warehousing and post warehousing (distribution) operations. The solution has given it a single-window data visibility for all warehousing operations.

AS/RS integrate the storage system with the manufacturing and distribution systems through computer control logic. This enhances material security, system performance and thus the bottomline. Warehouse automation is an important tool for saving on the costs incurred in material replacement and manpower. Automation can thus help both larger players and SMEs save on manpower-related direct costs.

Ramesh Nair, MD, Warehousing and Logistics Solutions, says, “Automating warehouse operations can be an attractive supply chain option for many businesses, offering the benefits of low-staffing requirements, efficient logistics operations and accurate service delivery. Warehouse automation also helps in reducing costs, improving productivity and accuracy, while giving complete visibility of the inventory data.”

Conclusion

Industries in India, especially SMEs, need to realise the significance of warehouse automation to survive amid growing competition. With economic liberalisation in India, sectors such as manufacturing have grown tremendously, as has the need for efficient warehousing. Through automating their warehouses, Indian SMEs can improve their inventory accuracy and save significantly on labour costs.

FM assures new direct tax code, 9 percent growth

2009-08-04T18:06:00.001+05:30

Mahima Puri, New Delhi
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday assured industry leaders that the economy will return to a growth rate of over 9 percent in 2011-12 after expanding at 7 percent this fiscal, said an industrialist who attended the minister’s address to over 80 industry leaders here.

Mukherjee also assured business leaders at the national council meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that the government will come out with a new direct tax code by August 20, said another industry representative.

Industry captains, including Godrej Industries chairman Adi Godrej, Hero Honda CEO and MD Pawan Munjal, Bajaj Auto chairman Rahul Bajaj, Religare Enterprises chairman Malvinder Singh, Eicher Group chairman S Sandilya, HSBC group general manager and country head Naina Lal Kidwai, SAIL chairman S Roongta and Nasscom president Som Mittal attended the meeting, according to the source.

“The finance ministry has prepared the direct tax code, as outlined in the Budget speech last month. It will be available for consultation in the next couple of weeks,” said an industry executive, who attended the meeting but did not wish to be identified.

Mukherjee also reportedly said although the Indian economy was showing signs of recovery, the global outlook still remains a concern. The Indian economy is not isolated hence a cautious approach is required. The FM also hinted that the government was taking a relook at the proposals for a bill on land acquisition, participants at the meeting said.

New CAT format for IIMS to cost HRD Ministry $40 million

2009-08-04T18:05:00.002+05:30

Seethalakshmi S, Bangalore
The Economic Times
Guess what the 2009 CAT for admissions to IIMs will cost the HRD ministry? A whopping $40 million dollars!

Prometric, a leading provider of technology-enabled testing and assessment services, has bagged the contract to computerise the test from this year. Nearly 2.5 lakh students take the test for a mere 1,500 seats in the seven IIMs.

After following the paper-pencil format for 33 years, the Common Admission Test (CAT), touted as one of the toughest entrance tests for entry into IIMs, is said to be the most expensive test too.

Confirming that Prometric had bagged the CAT contract, Ramesh Nava, vice-president and general manager, Asia Pacific, Japan and Africa said: “We’ve bagged an exclusive $40-million contract. We currently employ 200 people in India. For CAT 2009, we’ll add resources including dedicated test development team.”

Unlike in the past, the test this year will not be a one-day affair. It’ll be held over 10 days towards the end of November. Till 2008, CAT was held only on the third Sunday of November every year. “We’re working on test design and construction, application development and processing, test registration/scheduling, centre preparations, test administration, scoring and reporting,” Nava said.

Not surprisingly, the IIMs are possessive about CAT. “The test is ours. We are only using their delivery channel. The whole idea is to provide flexibility to students. That is why the test spans ten days,” says IIM-Bangalore director Pankaj Chandra.

Maintaining that the difficulty level and number of attempts for students will remain unchanged, Chandra said all IIMs are involved in the conduct of CAT. “Since this is first time after three decades that the way it’s conducted is changed, there will be no fresh changes. All conditions will be the same. It’ll be held in 23 cities. If it stabilises, we may think of taking it to more cities.”

10 most confusing tech jargons

2009-08-04T18:05:00.001+05:30

The Times of India
Those tech jargons confuse you often? You are not alone. A recent survey reveals that aimed at breaking the walls of `techno babble' shows that many technology words perplex users leaving them scratching their heads.

The survey, conducted by Gadget Helpline, reveals top 10 most confusing technological terms.

Dongle

One of the commonly used word which often confuses many users is Dongle. A Dongle is like a small USB drive that connects to a computer to run a software in a secured manner. It is used as a high-end form of security to prevent the unauthorised copying of software.

Today's dongle technology makes use of a computer's USB port, plugging in just like a portable flash drive. The software then sends an encrypted request to the dongle for a validation key, which is also encrypted. This means that in order to crack the dongle, one must first crack the encryption. Doogle was used in 1980 for the first time on Wordcraft programme.

Cookie

Cookie is another term which baffles people. Cookies are defined as small pieces of text stored on a computer's web browser. They basically store user's settings, shopping cart contents, or other data used by the websites.

In simple terms, it is a message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.

WAP

Another common and confusing term is WAP. An abbreviation for Wireless Application Protocol, WAP allows users to access information via handheld wireless devices such as mobile phones, pagers, two-way radios, smartphones and communicators. In simple terms, its main use is to enable access to the Internet (HTTP) from a mobile phone or PDA.

WAP supports most wireless networks including CDPD, CDMA, GSM, PDC, PHS, TDMA, FLEX, ReFLEX, iDEN, TETRA, DECT, DataTAC, and Mobite. It also supports all major OSes.

Phone jack

A telephone plug or phone jack is a connector used to connect a telephone to the telephone wiring in a home or business, and then in turn to a local telephone network.

The plug is inserted into a telephone jack fixed to a wall or baseboard. The standard for telephone plugs varies from country to country. However, RJ11 modular connector is the most common type used in most countries.

(Nokia) Navi Key

The Navi Key is a concept which significantly reduces the number of keys on the phone's keypad. Nokia was the first company to launch a handset featuring a Navi Key in the year 1997.

The user interface of the phone is designed to follow the intuitive logic of the user. The phones equipped with the Navi Key can perform most of the function by just pressing the Navi Key.

Time shifting

Another most confusing tech jargon is Time shifting. It is a process of recording and storing data for later viewing, listening, or reading. In television, time shifting can be done with a device called a personal video recorder (PVR) or a computer with a TV tuner card.

But now with the advent of the digital video recorder (DVR) the process has become much easier by using a electronic programme guide and recording shows onto a hard disk.

Ethernet

Ethernet is the local area network (LAN) technology. The technology was originally developed by Xerox for the Palo Alto Research Center Aloha network and later developed further by Xerox, DEC and Intel.

The most commonly installed Ethernet systems are called 10BASE-T and provide transmission speeds up to 10 Mbps. Devices are connected to the cable and compete for access using a Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) protocol. Ethernet is also used in wireless LANs.

PC Suite

Another jargon that often stumps people is PC Suite. Wikipedia defines PC Suite as a software package used to establish an interface between Nokia mobile devices and computers that run Microsoft Windows operating system.

It can be used to transfer music, photos and applications. It can also be used to send Short Message Service (SMS) messages or act as a modem to connect the computer to the Internet. Nokia PC Suite is a proprietary software item and is required to access certain aspects of Nokia handsets.

Second IT boom on cards

2009-08-04T18:03:00.001+05:30

Subrahmanyan Viswanath, Bangalore
Deccan Herald
Karnataka, which has been in the forefront of setting a model for other states in the new economy sectors, is all set to usher in a second IT revolution.

The move follows the State’s bid to give shape to an Information Technology Investment Regions (ITIRs) policy mooted by the Union Ministry of Information Technology & Communications.

The State government through its nodal agency—Karnataka Electronics Corporation (Keonics)—has identified five corridors for setting up the proposed ITIRs.

The ITIR policy is aimed at promoting investment in IT, ITeS and electronic hardware manufacturing (EHM) sectors. The corridors identified for ITIRs are Hubli-Dharwad-Belgaum, Bangalore-BIAL-Devanahalli, Mangalore-Surathkal-Udupi, Shimoga - Bhadravathi and Bangalore - Tumkur regions.

However, how far the new move would lure investors into ITIRs is debatable given that some of the IT parks in State’s Tier-II cities have elicited only muted response.

Official sources told Deccan Herald that each ITIR is expected to be in a 40-sq km area covering 10,000 acres in each region. The ITIRs would boast of excellent infrastructure so that prospective investors can reap the benefits of networking and greater efficiency through common infrastructure and support services. Such a complex would also help boost exports and generate employment.

Sources said Keonics had invited expression of interest (EoI) from consultants to prepare a techno-economic pre-feasibility report (TER), in the first phase, for the Hubli-Dharwar-Belgaum ITIR. Of the three consultants—PriceWaterhouse Coopers Pvt Ltd (PWC), IL&FS and Mott MacDonald—shortlisted for giving technical presentation, PWC and Mott MacDonald were chosen. The two would undertake necessary survey and submit a techno-feasibility report (TFR) which will go into the identification of government and private land available for acquisition, water availability and power. Since undertaking the TFR, to be submitted in 60 days, would cost over Rs 30 lakh to Rs 3 crore, the proposal has been set for financial clearance. The government is keen to take up an ITIR in the Bangalore-BIAL-Devanahalli region as well simultaneously; EoI has been invited from consultants for TFR.

The ITIRs would also host processing facilities where IT, ITeS and EHMs would be located and non-processing areas, which will include residential, commercial and other social and institutional infrastructure. The minimum processing area for ITIR will be about 40 percent of the total designated area. The ITIRs may include SEZs, industrial parks, free trade and warehousing zones and export-oriented units. To be developed on public-private partnership, the centres will ensure external physical infrastructure linkages—roads, airports, and rail. Each ITIR will have large IT/ITeS/EHM units. While ITIRs will be built and managed by developers, other facilities would be provided by the Centre and State government

Globallogic in pact with movius

2009-08-04T18:02:00.003+05:30

Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line The Financial Express
GlobalLogic, software products company, said on Monday, that it has signed a master service agreement with Movius Interactive Corporation, provider of messaging and interactive mobile media solutions. As part of this agreement, GlobalLogic has acquired Movius' captive development centre here, a GlobalLogic release said. ''Through this relationship, Movius will be able to accelerate product innovation and shorten time to market, by leveraging GlobalLogic's product development expertise, velocity platform and distributed agile method'', it said.

OCAC Kicks off Punarbas project for land oustees

2009-08-04T18:02:00.001+05:30

Jayajit Dash, Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar
Business Standard
The Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC), the technical directorate of the Orissa IT department, has set in motion its Punarbas project aimed at automation of land acquisition process and ensuring effective monitoring of the Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) activities in the state.

The project is to be implemented on a pilot basis for the proposed ventures of Jindal Steel & Power Limited (JSPL) at Angul, Aditya Aluminium Limited (AAL) at Sambalpur and Lower Indra Irrigation project at Nuapada.

Based on the successful implementation of these pilot trials, Punarbas would be extended to other industrial projects in the state. Punarbas is a software application developed by CSM Technologies, a city-based IT firm.

OCAC has kicked off the process of collating data pertaining to land records as well as R&R activities in the villages affected by JSPL and AAL.

“We expect to collect all the relevant data relating to the size of the land and its ownership in at least one village affected by JSPL and AAL by the end of this month. The entire process of data collection and its subsequent automation in 35 affected villages of AAL and 45 villages of JSPL is set to be completed within six months”, PK Rout, principal consultant (programme management unit), OCAC said.

OCAC is going ahead aggressively with the pilot trials on the projects of JSPL and AAL and the status of land acquisition as well as R&R activities is being reviewed constantly, he added.

The Punarbas project is being implemented at cost of Rs 1.5 core of which Rs one crore is funded by the state government and the balance Rs 50 lakh by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Apart from providing financial assistance, UNDP is also monitoring the progress of work on the collection of data related to land acquisition and R&R activities in the affected villages of JSPL and AAL. The work of data collection on the land records of the affected villages of the Lower Indira Irrigation project at Nuapada is set to commence after six months.

The Punarbas project is expected to ensure faster valuation of land as well as expedite the process of acquisition and handing over of land to the industries so that land acquisition process is completed in a time bound manner.

The project would also establish a responsive grievance redressal system for speedy disposal of grievances relating to land acquisition and R&R issues.

First Android phone packs a big punch

2009-08-04T18:01:00.000+05:30

Bhaskar Hazarika
Financial Chronicle
It’s called HTC Magic. The first phone with Android software from Google has hit the Indian market. And it packs a strong punch. Offering Google’s suite of services such as Gmail, Search, YouTube and Maps, the device is looking to make a mark for itself. Although it’s the second Android-based phone globally, Magic is the first device available to Indian subscribers.

It is light weight and has a sleek, curvy design. The swipe feature — left and right from the home screen is easy and the icons can be dragged and dropped just by long pressing them. Recently downloaded applications and menu functions, sorted alphabetically, can be dragged up from the bottom. The manufacturer has given us a one-touch clutter free handset. It’s 3G capable, and hopefully once the third generation networks start working in India, the phone will be able to automatically work with them.

Turning the phone to a landscape mode brings up the virtual Qwerty keyboard with large keys and predictive text. Email set up is simple since the phone is powered by Google and adding a new account involves just entering an email address and password.

The browsing experience is smooth. Entering a new web address (which also doubles as a search bar, with auto-complete feature) takes you to a large screen version of the site, which you can either zoom out of using the on screen zoom buttons, or hit the magnifying pane to see the whole page. The YouTube video experience is decent. The camera on the HTC Magic, though, has not received much appreciation despite being a 3.2 megapixel sensor without flash.

Optimistic about the market, Andy Rubin, senior director for mobile platforms for Google had earlier announced that around 18 phones based on the Android operating system would be available worldwide by the year-end. For the Indian market, two more operators are in line for Android handsets — Samsung and Motorola. A Motorola spokesperson said, “we will be shipping Android products this year and are excited about the upcoming portfolio.”

Other features in the phone include stereo Bluetooth, seamless integration with Google apps, Wi-Fi and quick access to music. A negative, though, is its lack of full Outlook syncing support and the standard 3.5-millimetre headset jack. Also, the camera editing and personal organiser options are slim, and the landscape keyboard is unavailable in some applications. It is a little high priced at Rs 30,000.

Satnav partners retail chains

2009-08-04T17:58:00.000+05:30

New Delhi
The Hindu Business Line
GPS navigation devices maker SatNav Technologies said it has partnered with HCL Digilife, Reliance Autozone and Reliance Digital for making available its devices at these stores. With the increase in consumer touch points, the company looks to double growth this fiscal, it added.

Hacked Company: Breach exposes nearly 6,00,000

2009-07-28T18:02:00.000+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: Hosting company and domain registrar Network Solutions has disclosed the data security breach of nearly 6,00,000 credit card holders by malware on a server. The company has notified 4,343 of its nearly 10,000 e-commerce merchant customers about the breach, said Roy Dunbar, Chairman and CEO of Network Solutions.
As reported by CNET News, Network Solutions is investigating this breach that may have led to the theft of credit card data of 5,73,928 people, who made purchases on Web sites hosted by the company. It affects 573,928 cardholders whose name, address, and credit card number were exposed between March 12 and June 8, said Susan Wade, a spokeswoman for Network Solutions.

Network Solutions informed the merchant customers in an e-mail that the credit card transactions were intentionally diverted by an unknown source from certain Network Solutions servers to servers outside. "Mysterious code was discovered in early June on servers hosting e-commerce customer sites during routine maintenance," Susan said. The company called in a third-party forensics team to help with the investigation, and the team was able to crack some of the code on July 13, determining that it could be related to credit card data, she added. According to Susan, it is unknown how the malicious code got onto the system and where it came from.

The hackers left behind malicious code, which allowed them to intercept personal and financial information for people who made purchases at the stores hosted on those servers, said Susan. "So we have notified law enforcement and began the process of notifying our customers. At this point, we don't have a reason to believe that (the data) has been used, but we are working with the credit card companies," she added.

According to the Network Solutions, "Assuring the security and reliability of our services to customers is our most important priority. We store credit card data in an encrypted manner and we are PCI compliant. Unfortunately, any company operating in our business could have become a victim of this type of invasion. In this situation, the unauthorized code appears to have transmitted information about credit card transactions as they were being completed; it did not involve vulnerability in the way we store data in our systems."

But in a prepared statement,Bob Russo, General Manager of the PCI Security Standards Council urged the company to be more cautious about its statements regarding PCI compliance until an investigation is completed. "Until a forensics investigation is completed, an organization cannot comment accurately on its compliance status," Russo said.

However, with this breach of Network Solutions' servers, an unanswered question revolves in the consumers' mind asking, "Do you think it is safe to make transaction on the Internet?"

Can Mozilla face the browser onslaught from Google, Microsoft

2009-07-28T17:55:00.001+05:30

Mountain View
The Economic Times
Boxes lined the cubicles and hallways in the offices of Mozilla on a recent afternoon, and its chief executive, John Lilly, seemed a bit disoriented as he looked for a place to sit. Mozilla, which makes the Firefox Web browser, had just moved from one end of this city to the other, mainly to gain more space for its growing work force.

Yet it was hard not to read symbolism into the move. Mozilla’s old offices were next door to Google’s sprawling headquarters. For several years, Google has been Mozilla’s biggest ally and patron. But in September, it also became Mozilla’s competitor when it unveiled its own Web browser, Chrome.

So it seemed only natural for Mozilla to move out from under Google’s shadow.

"We’ve learned how to compete with Microsoft and Apple," says Lilly, a soft-spoken, earnest 38-year-old. "Google is a giant, of course, and competing with them means we are competing with another giant, which is a little tiring."

Those big companies weren’t giving much thought to browsers when Firefox was released in 2004, and neither were most ordinary Web users. A browser was just a window onto the Web, and people often used whatever was already installed on a computer. Usually that meant Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Since then, Firefox has captured nearly a quarter of the browser market by focusing on speed, security and innovation. Its success is all the more remarkable because it was built and marketed by a far-flung community of programmers, testers and fans - mostly volunteers - coordinated by a nonprofit foundation. It is a shining example of the potential of open-source software, which anyone can modify and improve, and its ascent is one of Silicon Valley’s most unusual success stories. In short, Mozilla showed the world that browsers matter. Now the challenge is to keep proving that Mozilla matters.

The rise of Firefox unleashed a new wave of innovation and competition among browser makers. Microsoft, which make Internet Explorer, and Apple, which makes the Safari browser, have narrowed the gap with recent upgrades. That makes it less likely that people will take the trouble to seek out and install Firefox.

At the same time, the Web has been expanding accessibility from PCs to powerful mobile phones like the iPhone. Firefox won’t have a mobile version ready until later this year.

And then there is Google. After introducing Chrome, a lightning-fast browser designed to run increasingly complex Web applications, Google upped the ante. This month it said it would put Chrome at the center of a new operating system - the software that handles the most basic functions of a PC.

"Google, Apple and Microsoft can all throw a lot of resources toward improving their browsers. Mozilla, not so much," says Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. "When it was them against Microsoft, it wasn’t such a big problem. Now that there are other alternatives, it becomes harder for them to retain relevance."

Animated Film works the net

2009-07-28T17:53:00.001+05:30

The Financial Express
And the Oscar for the best-animated short film goes to ... an Internet community? That teaser, posted last fall on Facebook by the upstart company Mass Animation, kicked off a project many people in Hollywood thought was laughable: making a five-minute animated film using the Wikipedia model, with animators from around the world contributing shots, and Facebook users voting on their favourites.

But it worked. The completed short, “Live Music,” has been deemed of high enough quality by Sony Pictures Entertainment to warrant a theatrical run.

Sony will bring the tale of star-crossed love involving an electric guitar and a violin to the multiplex masses on November 20 as an opener for its animated feature “Planet 51.”

“Social networks can operate like automated talent scouts, helping the cream rise more quickly to the top, and that’s what happened with ‘Live Music,”’ said Michael Lynton, chairman and chief executive of Sony’s entertainment division. “While creativity has been pretty evenly distributed in society, it hasn’t always been easy to tap.”

Few expect “Live Music” to win an Academy Award or even be nominated for one. But even Pixar started somewhere, and Sony’s enthusiasm for the short underscores the potential power of social networking in creating high-quality content.

The marketplace—advertising, gaming and, of course, Hollywood —is hungry for content, animated in particular, that is done in a faster, cheaper way. “Live Music” was made for about $1 million and took about six months to complete. Intel, hoping to peddle its new Core i7 processor to animation geeks, was the principal backer.

The finished film is made up of scenes submitted by 51 people, who received $500 per scene and a film credit for their efforts.

Orissa small IT Firms seek sops

2009-07-28T17:51:00.001+05:30

Jayajit Dash, Bhubaneswar
Business Standard
Small and medium information technology enterprises in Orissa have sought a host of enabling measures from the newly elected government in the state to remain competitive during the ongoing recession.

These measures include complete exemption from VAT (value added tax) on hardware procurement by the units, investment subsidy and employment subsidy as well as ‘plug and pay’ office space for upcoming units.

“IT SMEs in the state have been hit hard by the economic meltdown and are finding it increasingly difficult to bag new orders. In such a scenario, these units should enjoy a complete waiver of VAT on hardware procurement and also be given other facilities like investment and employment subsidies which are provided by other IT-friendly states in the country,” a senior official of the Confederation of Information Technology Enterprises (CITE), Orissa said.

VAT on IT hardware currently ranges from 4 percent to 12.5 percent.

The official said the state government needs to introduce a focused ICT (information and communication technology) policy which provides an investment subsidy of 15-20 percent on a capital cost of up to Rs 20 lakh for upcoming IT units.

This apart, IT SMEs have called for other facilities like provisions for cheap land, uninterrupted supply of power and the setting up of more Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) centres in the state.

We offer high-end cloud services to small businesses

2009-07-28T17:50:00.001+05:30

Shilpa Shree
Financial Chronicle
NaviSite, a Nasdaq-listed data centre service provider, has over 1,500 customers worldwide. The company has several Indian customers spread across sectors such as fast moving consumer goods, retail, healthcare and pharma, IT, banking and advertising. The company's managing director, Sumit Sabharwal, spoke on NaviSite's India plans.

What is the kind of infrastructure NaviSite has?

We provide enterprise hosting and application solutions with over 1,500 customers depending on us for managed application services and development, implementation and management of its web infrastructure platforms. We have 15 state-of-the-art data centres, which are supported by more than 650 professionals.

How does cloud computing help your customers?

Cloud computing combines software as a service, Web 2.0, server virtualisation, hardware as a service and other recent, well-known technology trends, with a more common concept -- relying on the internet for satisfying the computing needs of a company. Cloud hosting is an on demand, scalable service which includes tools for customers to develop, manage and deliver new web-based services to their clients. The core advantage of a cloud model is that it offers flexibility while introducing a different paradigm of charging for infrastructure -- one that is based on usage. Service offerings like our virtual dedicated servers are a subscription based service, which can add or subtract capacity, random memory and storage in near real time without having to forecast needs upfront.

But does cloud computing cut costs?

Yes, cloud computing enables companies to do more with less. With a cloud hosting product companies can pay for what they use -- and consolidate several servers and applications in one environment. It does not require any capex for server hardware and networking equipment. During this recession, savings in capex and the lack of a need for a loan, helps small businesses conserve cash while upgrading their IT. Cloud computing can also open the door to administration savings. Fewer employee hours are needed to manage and maintain applications and solutions hosted in the cloud. Cost savings are realised on both the capital expense (higher asset utilisation and longer asset life) as well as the operating expenses by only paying for what is used.

Do you plan to expand in India?

We do not have a data centre in India. We have leveraged Indian operations to provide a consolidated set of services for small and medium businesses (SMBs), both in India and more broadly across the globe.

By combining our data centres and employees globally, we are able to provide expertise that small businesses truly need to run their IT infrastructure in a reliable model without having to stretch their wallet. In difficult economic times like this, a turnkey hosted model like NaviSite's has broad appeal. We look to build upon this in the India market while bringing newer technologies like virtualisation and making them a reality for growing and emerging businesses in India.

Extension of sunset clause for industrial parks hailed

2009-07-28T17:49:00.001+05:30

Ronojoy Banerjee, Saahil Anant, New Delhi
Financial Chronicle
India Inc on Monday welcomed finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s measure to extend the sunset clause for industrial parks by 2 more years up to March 31, 2011.

Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of IT firm Zensar Technologies, said, “Exporters will get a big relief. The slowdown had made life very difficult for most of them and hence the move is welcome.”

"There was a compelling case for the extension of tax holiday for industrial parks as IT spending is going down and the industry is facing challenges. This would help the IT industry as the STPI scheme is expiring and the only alternative left was SEZs," said Jai Mavani, executive director (infrastructure and government practices), KPMG.

"There was a demand for the extension. This comes as a major stimulus for India Inc from the government," a senior commerce and industry ministry official who did not want to be named said.

Web spiders picks 51% stake in netwings info

2009-07-28T17:48:00.001+05:30

Kolkata
Business Standard
Web Spiders (India) Pvt Ltd, a Kolkata-based software consulting firm, has acquired 51 percent stake in Netwings Infotech Pvt Ltd (NIPL), which is engaged in delivering fibre optic networking and GIS solutions.

The development marks the company’s entry into systems integration, which was earlier only into manufacturing and software development. Another company, Supreme & Co Pvt Ltd, manufacturer of fibre optic, telecom and power equipment, has a 50 percent shareholding in Web Spiders.

Siddharth Jhunjhunwala, CEO, Web Spiders, explained, “With this acquisition, we have created a synergistic end-to-end platform from manufacturing to software and systems integration for our customers”. He, however, declined to give the value of the 51 percent stake. Jhunjhunwala added that the Rs250 crore Group is now bullish on the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts in the power sector, together with e-Governance and large activity projects in Geographic Information System (GIS) and weather services and fibre optic backbone for industrial automation.

Netwings, for example, has already worked with Reliance Big FM's Mumbai station for weather updates and forecasts, D Mallick, CEO of the company informed. The group targets to grow by 45-50 percent in terms of revenue this fiscal. The Group is also looking at overseas acquisitions in areas of web-based software development and has set aside around $ 5 million for the same.

IDS Softwares eyes govt tourism projects

2009-07-28T17:47:00.002+05:30

Shahani Fatima, Chennai
Business Standard
Bangalore-based hospitality software solutions firm IDS Softwares Private Limited is targeting government tourism projects to boost growth.

During the first quarter, the company added Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Development Corporation (Citco) as clients. “Around 40 hotels under the Madhya Pradesh tourism department and Citco were centralised using our software and we are in talks with tourism departments of eastern states as well,” said Sivaprasad G, deputy general manager, IDS Softwares.

This apart, the two-decade-old company is eyeing an addition of 500 more hotels this fiscal. “There is a huge opportunity for managed services as the automated system will feed complaints and queries from different rooms in the hotel to a central server and will reduce the dependence on manual labour,” he said. Of the 50-odd hotel chains that use IDS products now, only 27 use managed services like ‘quality management’ softwares.

According to Sivaprasad, expansion in existing markets like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Costa Rica is fuelled by the company’s strategy of adding mid-level hotel chains. “The volume growth in this category is more than the high-end hotel chains. In the present economic scenario, volume growth is critical for niche software players like us,” he said.

The company offers its solutions to around 1,700 hotels apart from clubs, restaurants and resorts globally and has a presence in West Asia, south Asia and Africa. Of the 1,700, only around 100 hotels are in the five-star level.

The company is also expanding its service portfolio and has subscribed to GDS interface systems like Galileo to update on net the room vacancies in its client hotels. “There is a 40 percent shift to web-based hotel reservations globally. So we are keen to provide exposure to our clients by interacting with the GDS interface systems,” he said. The GDS interface systems provide data on hotels and room vacancies to various travel portals.

Apart from this, the company has launched the French version of its software to add customers in French-speaking nations like Senegal and also to foray into the European market.

Emotions’ security solution for Metro Rail

2009-07-28T17:47:00.001+05:30

Ritwik Mukherjee, Kolkata
Financial Chronicle
Kolkata-based technology startup eMotions Infomedia, jointly with Jadavpur University, has come up with four security solutions focused on public transportation system, especially for the Metro railways.

Partha Das Chowdhury, CEO, eMotions Infomedia, said, “We had formally teamed up with the Centre for Microprocessor Application, Training, Education & research (CMATER), Jadavpur University and have been working on these ‘Intelligent Surveillance Solutions’ for little more than one year now.”

“We are now ready with at least four solutions —Approaching Danger Zone-Yellow Line, Unattended Baggage Detection (UBD), Events in a Zone (EIZ) and Commuter Face Detection (CFD). With the railway ministry committed to expansion and extension of Metro Railway networks across the country, we are confident that these research-based products will have immense utility,” Das Chowdhury added.

The city-based company has already started taking up these solutions with the concerned authorities.

Global IT cos expect Indian PC market to rebound in H2

2009-07-28T17:46:00.001+05:30

Writankar Mukherjee, Kolkata
The Economic Times
With computer sales in India expected to revive in the second half of 2009, PC makers and chip manufacturers alike are planning to provide a thrust to their game plan in the country.

While Intel and AMD are adopting multiple initiatives to target the first-time users and lower PC prices in the market, PC vendors such as Dell and Acer are looking at ways to grow the market by tapping the huge potential in government projects and growing consumer sentiments.

For starters, AMD has just rolled out a new entry-level processor in India priced at $35. “With this, we have reduced the entry-level processor prices by nearly $5. This is part of our strategy to do whatever we can to grow the market. We also plan to grow our retail distribution network,” AMD India VP (marketing and sales) Ramkumar Subramanian said.

According to AMD India, PC sales slid by nearly 10-15 percent in the first half of 2009. Arch rival Intel feels PC sales have bottomed out during the first half in India and the industry can now expect a sizeable recovery. Both the chip makers are working with OEM and trade partners to grow adoption of their latest platforms in this subdued market.

“While 2009 started with a lull in government purchases, there is now a healthy ICT tender pipeline. Enquires from the enterprise segment are also rising as they want to refresh their PC infrastructure to control costs. After all, the latest range of PCs significantly cut down power and operating costs,” Intel South Asia director (marketing) Prakash Bagri said.

Intel expects newer form factors like ultra-slim notebooks will drive PC sales in the top-end of the market. The chip giant is also betting on its Atom processors to drive growth in value computing through netbooks and nettops. “With Atom, we expect to create a range of devices for the first time users in India. We are also packing more features like WiMAX capabilities to increase its performance,” said Bagri.

PC vendor Acer is refreshing its product line big time in India. “We plan to undertake a lot of ground level activity in the second half with the festivity season round the corner. The netbook is also gaining acceptance in India as the sub-Rs 20,000 price point is becoming a big draw,” said Acer India chief marketing officer S Rajendran.

Dell India country general manager Sameer Garde said the company is also expanding its product portfolio and distribution channel to grow the business in second half. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is tapping the rural turf to drive growth in line with increasing broadband penetration. HP has adopted the FMCG approach in smaller markets and is setting up a service network before initiating actual sales.

A latest study by MAIT, the apex body of IT hardware firms, estimated the total PC sales in India dipped by 7 percent in 2008-09 but is likely to grow by 7 percent in 2009-10 with total sales expected to cross 7.3 million units.

Browse the web on your TV

2009-07-28T17:44:00.000+05:30

Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)
Vu (pronounced `view') has unveiled its Gem collection of three 22-inch PC monitors. It also has a DPF (Digital Photo Frame) printer, which allows connect to your external memory device via a USB port and print images at a cost of 35 images for Rs 500.

The Intelligent TV, Vu's latest release, stands out from all its other products. It is a 46-inch, flat-screen, full HD, PCcum-TV with a number of ports on the back which, along with your usual cable wire, give you the option to connect a USB broadband device. So you can switch between watching TV and browsing the Net, and even split up the screen to do both at the same time.

Bangalore techies settle for low-paying jobs

2009-07-27T19:21:00.002+05:30

Silicon India
Bangalore: Till a few months ago, IT professional T.V. George was earning Rs.70,000 per month, plus perks. But after losing his high-paying job, and being unemployed for three months, George, 31, has started giving tuitions in mathematics and physics to aspiring engineering students in his neighbourhood
"Now, I am earning Rs.15,000 per month. It's been hard. I got married only a few months before losing my job. So, when I lost my job, I was in a difficult position. Thankfully, I had some savings. With the savings, I am paying my rent and for a few other necessities," George, who was employed with a top U.S. IT company, told IANS.

"After losing my job, I tried my best to get a new job. But I remained unlucky. So to help run my home, I decided to give coaching classes to aspiring engineering students."

George is not alone. Recession has hit the IT sector in Bangalore, with scores of techies losing their jobs. Some have been forced to take up low-paying jobs as they wait to bounce back when the recession ends.

Dipankar Dutta, 27, working with an Indian IT company as software engineer, lost his job almost eight months ago.

Today he has a job, but as a content writer in a tech firm.

"Thankfully, writing has been my forte. So, I landed this job of a content writer. Otherwise I would have been in a soup. Since I cannot afford to stay in Bangalore without a job, I compromised and settled for the new job with a much lower pay package," said Dutta.

Scores of IT and ITES professionals in Bangalore have lost their jobs in recent times, an effect of the global economic meltdown. But there is no precise count of the numbers.

According to the latest employment and business outlook report by Bangalore-based staffing firm Teamlease, at 23 percent the attrition rate in this city is higher than in any other city in India.

The report was based on interviews with HR heads, CEOs and senior executives of 495 companies in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune.

"The city accounted for the highest attrition rate. IT accounts for over 80 percent of the city's total labour pool. The attrition rate was 23 percent in the last quarter, against the previous quarter's 16 percent. Much of the attrition could be involuntary attrition (or layoffs)," Teamlease General Manager Surabhi Mathur-Gandhi said.

India's Silicon Valley has seen thousands of people getting pink slips in recent months. And many more are under the threat of losing their jobs.

"It's painful to lose your job, in today's expensive world. Those who have lost their jobs are desperate now, thus they are settling for low paying jobs," Karthik Shekhar, General Secretary of UNITES-Professionals, an unrecognised union of IT/Call Centre/BPO employees, told IANS.

"Every day we meet young men and women who have lost their IT jobs recently. All they want is a job. But getting a job in the IT sector is very difficult. So, they have no option but to settle for jobs outside their fields and that too with low paying packages," Shekhar added.

"It's encouraging that today's youths are ready to move ahead in their lives. Instead of waiting for the economy to revive, IT professionals have started exploring other fields and this is a positive sign," said B.N. Gangadhar, professor of psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans), Bangalore

Mohammed Khan, a trained software engineer, told IANS: "Initially it was difficult, but I am happy with my choice. After losing my job with an IT firm, now I am working as a sales executive. I am hoping the economy will recover soon and all the techies who have lost their jobs will get new jobs in their field."

Ericsson to buy Nortel's wireless biz for $1.13 billion

2009-07-27T19:20:00.001+05:30

Toronto, July 26, 2009
Business Standard
Ericsson is all set to acquire a major part of Nortel's North American wireless business for $1.13 billion, after the Swedish firm emerged as the successful bidder for the bankrupt Canadian company's CDMA and LTE technologies.

The purchase is structured as an asset sale at a cash purchase price of $1.13 billion on a cash and debt free basis, the two companies said in separate statements.

The acquisition significantly expands Ericsson's footprint in North America and also provides Nortel's customers with a strong and reliable supplier for the future, many of which have expressed support for this acquisition.

"Acquiring Nortel's North American CDMA business allows us to serve this important region better as we build relationships for the future migration to LTE," Ericsson President and CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said.

Svanberg further said, "By adding some 2,500 highly skilled employees, of which about 400 are focused on LTE research and development, Ericsson reinforces and expands a long-term commitment to North America."

On July 25, Ericsson entered into an asset purchase agreement to acquire the parts of the Carrier Networks division of Nortel relating to CDMA and LTE technology in North America.

As part of this agreement, a minimum of 2,500 Nortel employees supporting the CDMA and LTE Access business will receive offers of employment from Ericsson.

Internet 2.0 will drive productivity growth

2009-07-27T19:19:00.002+05:30

California, July 27, 2009
Mint
John Chambers/CISCO The crash has hit Silicon Valley as hard as anywhere else. The only consolation is that this time, at least, it didn't start here. But while other firms are hunkering down and trying to survive, networking giant Cisco Systems ($130 billion market value, $40 billion in annual sales) continues to stride forward.

"Even in this downturn," says chairman and CEO John Chambers, sitting at the table in his modest, mementocrammed office, "We intend to be the most aggressive we've ever been."

A decade ago Cisco was known for building the switching systems (called routers) that find the most efficient path for information on the Internet. These days it has a presence in just about every corner of the Web's infrastructure--from networking hardware (switches, gateways and the like) to network management software (CiscoWorks) to the Linksys router that runs the wireless network in your home.

As much as three-quarters of the world's digital data now passes through Cisco equipment, the company estimates.

This massive expansion has come not merely by internal growth, but through one of the biggest (and most successful) merger-and-acquisition programs in high-tech history.

Despite taking the same hit as the rest of the computer industry earlier this year, Cisco's stock is climbing (up 17% to more than $21.50 in the last month), the company has cut an incredible $1.5 billion in operating expenses, and earned an upgrade this week to "outperform" from Credit Suisse. It has also announced a major sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

How deleted email can come back

2009-07-27T19:19:00.001+05:30

Washington, July 27, 2009
The Times of India
Beware, emails or Facebook posts or pictures can resurface months after they are deleted -- in the wrong hands or at the wrong time, according to researchers.

"If you care about privacy, the internet today is a very scary place," said University of Washington (UW) computer scientist Tadayoshi Kohno. "If people understood the implications of where and how their email is stored, they might be more careful or not use it as often."

For instance, a lost cell phone can expose personal photos or text messages. A legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating, inconvenient or just embarrassing details from the past.

The team of UW computer scientists developed a prototype system called Vanish that can place a time limit on text uploaded to any web service through a web browser. After a set time text written using Vanish will, in essence, self-destruct.

Job drought could end soon; recruitment agencies see pick-up in hiring

2009-07-27T19:18:00.003+05:30

Kirtika Suneja & Seema Sindhu, New Delhi, July 26, 2009
Business Standard
The job market has begun to show signs of a revival led by sectors like telecommunication, pharmaceutical, life sciences and financial services. Human resource firms claim there are more vacancies now than a year ago when the slowdown first set in, though these are way below past peaks.

TeamLease Services Managing Director Ashok Reddy said that the demand for temporary employees had gone up nearly 100 percent from the earlier levels.

“On an average, we have over 3,000 vacancies now, against the peak of 8,000 to 10,000 in 2005 and allow of 1,400 some months ago. Sectors like telecommunication, financial services, fast-moving consumer goods and IT to some extent have enough openings that need to be filled.” “There’s a marginal improvement in the job market. But since larger job markets like the US and Europe are still under pressure (several large employers are headquartered there), it’s too early to say anything,” Ma Foi Management Consultants CEO and Director EBalaji added.

He attributed the marginal improvement in demand to opportunities in sectors like pharmaceutical, life sciences, healthcare and power which have not borne the brunt of the slowdown.

With the government-sponsored stimulus in place, employers expect the economic environment to improve and have therefore begun to hire. Several of them had cut their rolls sharply at the first sign of the slowdown. And low salary expectations have helped.

“Organisations are looking at it as the right opportunity to get the right people at the right cost. While hiring is not back to normal, strategic hiring for special skills is going on across the sectors,” said Hewitt Associates Practice Leader Sandeep Chaudhary.

Job portals like Monster.com and Naukri.com affirmed the observation.

“Between March and December 2008, there was a 30 percent fall in total opportunities, while January-March 2009 was stable. However, now there has been almost 10 percent growth in opportunities available on the website in terms of job listings,” said Monster.com (India, West Asia and Southeast Asia) Managing Director Sanjay Modi.

The company said it expected this trend to continue and had registered 45,000 users now, up from 38,000 in December last year. “Jobs in information technology, business process outsourcing and telecommunication have come back and we expect education to remain the largest employer this year,” Modi added.

“We perceive a positive sentiment among recruiters. Most companies are now doing replacement hiring,” said Info Edge (which runs Naukri.com) National Head (marketing and communications) Sumeet Singh.

A new survey by Naukri.com, specific to Mumbai, found that hiring activity in the city picked up by 13 percent in June 2009 as compared to May 2009.

Banking and financial services saw an increase of 22 percent in June as compared to May. Hiring for information technology professionals was also back in action with an increase of 12 percent in June.

On a national level, the Naukri.com JobSpeak index at 718 showed an uptrend in hiring activity by 8.1 percent as compared to 664 in May 2009.

It is the highest upward movement since July 2008, indicating the return of the hiring sentiment.

However, human resource experts said one should exert caution before uncorking the champagne. They said it would be clear in another two quarters if the trend would hold in the long run.

Companies are looking at greater fitments for any open position and not willing to just about take anyone for the job.

Managed services spell big IT Business

2009-07-27T19:18:00.001+05:30

Peerzada Abrar, Bangalore, July 27, 2009
The Economic Times
As global recessionary pressures increase, enterprises are looking at ways to capitalise their existing IT infrastructure, with many of them adopting the managed services business model.

Telecom IT companies such as products company Subex and Netmagic Solutions, an IT services provider that count on customers such as AT&T, BT and Vodafone, have adopted this model.

Subex is going to change its business strategy for the next five years by focusing more on managed services rather than follow the old licence-fee model. “Telecos are now demanding that they share risks with their product companies,” Subex founder chairman, managing director and chief executive Subash Menon said.

“People will ask for platform and managed services by the next decade. Telecom players want to have platforms and not point solutions.”

Subex has gained 24 customers in managed services, including BT and a few customers from the US, and is bidding for large contracts with telcos, which will adopt the managed route rather than licence sale.

“We achieved 11 percent of our revenue from managed services, which was zero three years back,” Menon said. He added that the acquisition of Azure has given them domain and operational expertise to create a managed services platform.

Insight Research predicts that revenue associated with the managed services market will grow from $30 billion in 2008 to nearly $43 billion by 2013. Netmagic Solutions, which clocked growth of over 50 percent last year, expects a growth of 70 percent for the financial year 2009-2010.

Netmagic, which has a virtual data centre in the US has launched cloud computing in addition to its managed services. “Our cloud-computing services help companies cut costs by 25-30 percent and now 95 percent of our customers have some element of managed services,” Netmagic chief executive and managing director Sharad Sanghi said.

IDC expects global spending on IT cloud services alone to grow almost threefold in the next five years, touching $42 billion by 2012. “We allow customers freedom to focus on their core competency. Service providers have realised that the managed services improves their margins. Managed services is already in place in the US and now the trend is picking up in India,” Sanghi said.

Netmagic, which has 350 employees, is looking to employ 500 employees in the next six months and build data centres in Chennai and Delhi.

‘SOCIAL’ Technologies in education

2009-07-27T19:17:00.000+05:30

D. Murali, July 27, 2009
The Hindu Business Line
The IT boom did many things, and one of its significant effects was to cause a shift in the conversation from only `employment' to `employability' and `scale,' observes Vaidya Nathan, Founder and CEO, Classle Knowledge Pvt Ltd, Chennai (www.classle.net).

The speed at which it hit the education system, India's most `regulated' sector, caught everybody unawares, he continues, during a lunch-hour interaction with eWorld.

"With solutions being looked at every level starting from policy and governance downwards, can the wonderful capabilities of IT solve education's woes? Innovative start-up companies such as Classle, EduComp, Everonn, say `Yes'."

Excerpts:

What are the innovations that can help in education?

Many of the concepts and technologies used in Internet services share the attributes of our problem. The newer and popular phenomena such as `social media' (Wikipedia, YouTube, Podcast, and so on), `social networking' (Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn), `social bookmarking' (del.ico.us, digg, etc.), and micro-blogging (twitter), handle large size, a wider audience, are viral, accessible, and free.

So far, they have been looked at and used from an informational and entertainment perspective. But as a capability, they are potent and have the attributes required to solve the concerns of education.

Thankfully, the newer companies in education have identified these capabilities and combined them with other insights and innovations to directly address the issues of education. Even the principle of `social enterprise' is available as a business model.

What's more, from an adoption point of view, the youth, who are the target consumers, take to these concepts and technologies quite naturally.

We have the pieces, so what do we do next?

All the pieces are available to address different aspects of the education issue. What is now required are the `system integration' principles which are very common in IT. Interestingly, most of these tools are available at a level that is extremely economical.

We are really looking at a scenario where IT-driven innovation can dramatically alter the academic and professional quality of education, especially higher education and research.

While technology can set the stage, the actual actors have to enact the play. That is, all hands have to join together to solve the problems in education with these technologies. Let us not forget that all the tools, which form a part of the solution are `social' in nature. This will succeed only when `society' is involved and engaged in the exercise.

That is, everybody, including the academic institutions, instruction staff, industry, students and even parents, have to be a part of the solution. The good news is that the technologies make the effort involved in participating in the solution small. All that is required is to make that behavioural change.

How do you see IT impacting research?

Research is also another area where there are serious imbalances. The low preference for research is only a symptom. Actually, the students who prefer to do research go out to other countries.

There are many structural and policy changes, which are required to improve the condition. Some of the issues are the time taken for the research degree process, the relevance of problem statements, and the availability of collaborators, referees and mentors. If the transparency, reach and collaboration, which come easily with IT, are factored in, and the process redesigned accordingly, that would be a necessary first step to give a boost to research. Our research should be able to make technology more democratic, more localised, a lot more sustainable and definitely more people-friendly. IT, by bridging the islands of academia, industry and society, can certainly bring about a positive change.

Shriram properties to invest rs 4,900 crore in 3 years

2009-07-27T19:16:00.001+05:30

T E Narasimhan, Chennai, July 27, 2009
Business Standard
Shriram Properties, part of Chennai-headquartered diversified Shriram Group, is planning to invest around Rs 4,900 crore in various residential and commercial projects.

Shriram Properties managing director M Murali said that the company had set a target to become Rs 1,000 crore company over the next three years from the present Rs 450 crore.

Speaking about commercial projects, Murali said that so far the company was promoting IT/ITeS projects and delivered one million sq.ft. currently construction is going on at eight lakh sq.ft of land near Chennai. The company also got an approval to pro-mote a special economic zone for IT/TeS in Kolkata. Total investment in the proposed project would be around Rs 1,200 crore.

Helipads, Skywalks planned at Mukesh Ambani promoted SEZS

2009-07-27T19:15:00.000+05:30

New Delhi, July 27, 2009
The Economic Times Business Standard
Mukesh Ambani-promoted Navi Mumbai SEZ Private Ltd has sought government permission to set up helipads and skywalks at its Special Economic Zones on the outskirts of the metropolis.

The SEZ firm co-promoted by Ambani's close associate Anand Jain has plans to build helipad at four and skywalks at five of its Special Economic Zones at Navi Mumbai.

As per the proposals submitted before the BoA, the helipads will come up in the "non-processing" areas of the three SEZs for IT and ITES, and one for the multi-services.

Three of these are located at Ulwe, and one at Kalamboli -- both in the Navi Mumbai area.

Bill Gates urges India to move from low-cost to R&D

2009-07-27T19:14:00.002+05:30

New Delhi, July 26, 2009
The Economic Times
Billionaire Bill Gates urged India to move away from low-cost labour toward high-end research and development to keep its giant IT sector competitive.

On a visit to New Delhi, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp called on the Indian government to speed up its commitment to R&D and to boost low number of home-grown PhD students.

Gates told a panel discussion that India's "IT success story" should strive to add value and move away from low-cost labour as other developing countries play catch-up.

"At first some of that (IT boom) was built on low-cost labour. And, of course, as time goes on, you don't want to have that as the only differentiator and it's not a sustainable thing, because others can come along with that as well," Gates said.

India's R&D sector has made strides in recent years and attracted some big foreign hitters, including Microsoft, in keeping with its IT- and service-driven economic boom.

But hampered by structural problems and a lack of government commitment, India's R&D still lags behind the United States and Asian rival China. China has more than 1,100 R&D centres compared to less than 800 in India.

"Leading companies here are contributing a lot of ideas and techniques. Even more of that has to happen and bring it to its full potential," Gates said.

"You've got to get the government, universities ... and companies like Microsoft to deepen their commitment to R&D."

India produces 100 computer-science PhDs a year -- a fraction of China or the U.S -- even as it exports a large number of students abroad. While English-speaking India is cheaper than China for R&D, New Delhi gives few incentives to researchers.

Beijing offers incentives like tax breaks for R&D centres, and special economic zones provide infrastructure for hi-tech and R&D industries.

MS wants to be part of Unique Identity project

2009-07-27T19:14:00.001+05:30

TK Arun, Shelley Singh & Shubham Mukherjee, July 27, 2009
The Economic Times
Coming to slowdown, the US is erecting barriers in terms of tightening visas and forcing companies to create jobs locally. Is that the answer to cope with a slowdown?

Of course not. Immigration restriction in the US didn’t really emerge out of the recession. We have had some difficulty and unfriendliness in our immigration system, limits in H1B visas, difficulty in green cards. We have had these for quite some time. The recession may have made it even more difficult politically to get the system changed, but my personal voice and Microsoft’s voice very strongly is that system is bad for lots of individuals, bad for the US, bad for the country and so we will do our best to try and get that changed. Some countries don’t have restrictions like that. India lets people come in, Canada is good on it. That is a political debate...the current answer (to erect barriers) is not the best one.

Coming to Internet with all its hype and growth it’s reached about 1.5 billion people. Will the Internet ever reach the 6 billion plus global population?

Sure. Low cost PCs, low costs cell phones, community kiosks, computers in schools, computers in libraries, WiMax, wireless connectivity, breakthroughs in satellite connectivity will help and it takes many pieces to do it. People using Internet don’t understand all the innovation underneath it. Just like when they plug something in the electric system they don’t understand how is it continuously maintained at a particular voltage.

The Internet has very complicated networks underneath. The advances in Internet plumbing are there all the time and they are trying to bring the costs down and accessibility up. If you look at it a year ahead it may appear not to be moving fast, but if you look at a 5-10 year time frame big things are happening.

What’s the next big thing for Microsoft?

We are big -- we work for business customers, video games, cell phones, data centers -- its not a single thing. The general trend is this natural interface -- where speech, ink and vision make the computing experience far more pervasive and as you move between devices its kind of seamless that you are using your phone, PC, car, TV, all those things are connected to the internet, sharing information, connected to the cloud...making the cloud complimentary to all your different devices. Those are two big thrusts (cloud and new interfaces) that Microsoft is getting into.

Any products you have in mind you would like to get into...

We do software for cell phone and that lets us work for the bunch of hardware makers like we do in the PC market and that’s the strategy that is the best -- its different from Apple or RIM (Research In Motion--makers of BlackBerry). We will write software where it can be used, like TV sets never been a software intensive application and we are doing some great work there. We are doing IPTV -- you can watch anything, it’s interactive, its a breakthrough in TV and a decade from now you won’t think of TV as just one way but an interactive device.

Microsoft became big before the Internet became mainstream. There’s a sense that you took time to adjust with the post Internet world, while other companies came along. How far has Microsoft adapted to the changed world and enable customers to fully utilise the benefits of Internet?

The Internet is always changing. We put the browser into Windows in 1995 and what was the Internet then. We didn’t have search, we didn’t have video. Internet will continue to change. Video is a new scenario. In education space Internet is going to be phenomenal.

The world’s going to get lectures online. My favourite scientist Richard Fenyman’s lectures are now up for free, anybody can benefit from his brilliant way in explaining science and that wouldn’t have been possible before. So Internet keeps changing.

I worked on the Internet in 1973, before there was a Microsoft, before there was a Google or a Netscape or anything. The amazing thing is it took a while to get critical mass and then it just exploded in the mid-1990s. Every company has been a beneficiary of that and we all contributed. It made computing all the more important and it will become more and more important. The next decade will be a great period to be in the software business.

Will Bing become the dominant search engine?

Not anytime soon, but there are people at Microsoft who dream of such glory. They are brilliant people, who work hard, they make that space competitive. I spend little bit of time and help out. They are doing great work, after all Google needs some competition and who the heck else is going to do it but Microsoft.

What’s the future of software?

Very bright. What is the most interesting field in terms of innovation? It’s software. When people talk of robots they are talking about software not the motor or metals or cameras that are interesting and go to make a robot. When we talk about modelling drugs so you can figure out in advance what drug is going to work, that’s software. When you look at designing cars knowing how it will react to a crash, how eco friendly it is, you do it with software. Software has more headroom in terms of what it will do than any other business. There was no software before Microsoft came along. We decided there should be this big industry with high volume, low cost. The Widows platform allowed this rich ecosystem to grow and that created lot of jobs. It’s a very vibrant business.

iPhone: a lifeline for small Indian Software firms

2009-07-27T19:13:00.002+05:30

Samanth Subramanian, New Delhi, July 27, 2009
Mint
Last July, when Apple Inc. threw open the doors of its iPhone App Store to third-party developers, a Silicon Valley start-up immediately contacted Net Solutions India, a Chandigarh-based software shop. “This was one of our regular clients, and he was very excited,” says Maninder Bains, chief technology officer of Net Solutions. “But even if he hadn’t said so himself, we’d already realized that iPhone applications would be big.”

Bains was right. The iPhone’s applications—or “apps”, essentially small programs of utilitarian or novelty value designed for the iPhone—have spread with epidemic efficiency in the US. But they have also held out a slim lifeline for small and mid-range software firms in India, at a time when other outsourced projects have succumbed to the slowdown.

“The recession has had its effect, and we’ve all seen some decline,” Bains admits. “But as I told my boss just the other day, there are three things that are making money for us. The first is iPhone apps. The second is also iPhone apps. The third is Facebook apps.”

This month, Apple’s App Store turns a healthy one year old. The store has now grown to include at least 65,000 apps, which have collectively been downloaded 1.5 billion times. Its growth has been meteoric; as recently as April, the Store listed 25,000 apps. Many of these apps are free, but of the paid apps, Apple stands to earn $150 million (Rs726 crore) a year via its 30% commission, according to an analyst recently quoted in The Wall Street Journal.

As if the iPhone’s cult status were insufficient, the apps have given Apple an even keener competitive edge over other smart-phone brands. Research in Motion’s catalogue of apps for its BlackBerry phones includes just over 2,000 programs; Google’s Android Market offers around 6,300. So, not surprisingly, advertisements for the iPhone now regularly pitch its gigantic app factory as part of—or even all of— their hard sell.

That first product Bains developed was, in fact, not an app; named Mobclix, it was a product that helped monetize and analyse traffic for other apps. Since then, Net Solutions has created Landmark Locator—which, in locating landmarks around iPhone users, does precisely what its name suggests. Another app, promisingly titled Hook Up, scours the immediate vicinity for other people to “connect” with; a sample screenshot on the Net Solutions website, for instance, introduces us to the intriguing “Angela, 21… Love to have fun and play with my cat”.