IBM logs on to SEWA

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

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

(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.

Microsoft India to launch new products in 12 months

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

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

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.

Insurance through ATMS

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

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.

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

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

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.”

Four IT majors shortlisted for army logistics solutions

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

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.

OCAC Kicks off Punarbas project for land oustees

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

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.

IDS Softwares eyes govt tourism projects

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

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.

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

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

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

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”.

Customers want to buy value

Shamik Paul/Vishwanath Kulkarni, July 27, 2009
The Hindu Business Line
Wipro Ltd, looking to strengthen the sales organisation for its global IT business, recently appointed a global sales head. Martha Bejar, the former head of communications sector at Microsoft Corp, joined India’s third largest software exporter to lead its sales initiatives.

eWorld caught up with Bejar, who is currently in Bangalore to understand the company and the people steering its operations.

Excerpts:

After having worked in product companies, do you see a drastic shift in the work profile?

In Microsoft it was a lot about software. In Nortel it was a lot about infrastructure, software and big turnkey projects that included a lot of services.

Here it is very focused on the business side of customers as well. But there is an absolute market trend in that direction.

To be part of that trend, to be part of that transition, is a dream come true for me.

At the end of the day, whether you are selling a car or a book or services, customers want to buy value, and that does not change from industry to industry.

And that is what we are doing here. We are trying to get closer to the customer, understand what value we can add to them and how we are going to address their business challenges.

What do the Wipro bosses expect from you?

My responsibility would be around the evolution of the sales organisation. The aim is to have a world-class selling team. But a transformation is not something that is going to happen overnight.

The execution of it has to do with the sales team, but the verticals have a bit to do with it, and my bosses have a bit to do with it. This is something that our company will have to work closely together.

What kind of sales strategy would work in this market?

Customers are taking a little longer to decide where they want to make investments. They want the return on investment to be quicker, and are a lot more demanding in terms of solutions that are tightly packed to their businesses, and how we can make their businesses stronger.

It is very important to let customers know that you care about their business. To let that sincerity become real, you have to have a good understanding of their business. That has to be the approach now as the purse gets tighter.