TechTalk

Job Portal Network

2007-08-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

A string of IT job portals is being planned by 'IT People India,' the human capital solutions provider, across West Asia, China, US and Europe. The company plans to partner with local players in select countries.

The company runs www.itpeopleltd.com which has a database of 100,000 resumes. Employers and recruitment consultants are charged a fee for accessing this database.

The company is hoping to capitalise on the high attrition in IT sector. Around 7,000 people change jobs in IT and ITES industry every month in addition to fresh recruitment of about 14,000-16,000 people per month in the industry.

Mobile Banking in India

2007-08-23T00:54:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

In a report titled,"Mobile Opportunities for the Financial Sector," which was conducted in five countries, the Indian users were found to be more aware of mobile banking than those in other countries. It was found that one of every three Indians, with a bank account, were ready to switch to another bank if offered free mobile banking.

According to the survey, 81 percent of the users surveyed are aware that they can check bank balance on a mobile phone, while 49 percent have used these services in the last three months.

The survey showed that Indian consumers(71 percent) are more aware of the offerings provided by their banks on mobile, as compared to their counterparts in other regions. Almost a half of the Indian respondents checked their bank balance on their mobile phones and 54 percent via internet.

The biggest concern among the Indian users is security while accessing their accounts on mobile phones.

Online Directory for Kolkata

2007-08-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

Kolkata Industries Directory, a web based directory targeted at small and medium entrepreneurs, has been launched by Softweb Information technology Private Limited, a joint venture of Maxworth marketing and Softweb Technology.

The business model of the project is based on the ad revenues. The idea was to give upcoming entrepreneurs a business platform.

Nearly 16,500 entrepreneurs in Kolkata have registered themselves with the site till now and it has earned Rs. 15 lakh till now, even before formally launching the site.

The company has similar projects in Gujrat and Maharashtra which earned Rs 8 crores as profit from advertisements last year.

New mouse to woo gamers

2007-08-22T08:53:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

Microsoft Corp., in an effort to target hardcore computer gamers, is planning to launch a computer mouse specially designed for PC gaming. It allows nearly 5,000 different adjustable settings, including weight, material and touch.

The mouse comes with a small LCD between the thumb and index finger to keep track of game functions and settings.

It has been named SideWinder and will be available from October.

Indian IT firms are immunne to subprime crisis

2007-08-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

Indian IT firms are not going to be hit by the US subprime lending crises due to the limited exposure of the firms to clients in mortgage sector.

The report analyzing the impact of subprime lending on Indian IT services said that majority of the business derived by the Indian companies comes from financial and banking industry, but there are a few clients who are in mortgage processing or subprime business, comprising only about 1 percent of the revenue(as clarified by all large caps companies).

Meanwhile,WNS Holdings Ltd. announced that First magnus Financial Corporation has ended its outsourcing contract with it, which has forced WNS cut its earnings guidance for the fiscal year 2008. Nearly five percent of its revenue comes from US-based First Magnus.

The world is going Wi-Fi

2007-08-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

Wi-Fi Alliance, a non-profit industry association devoted to promoting the growth of wireless local area network, announced that Wipro Technologies will serve as an authorised test laboratory for wi-fi enabled products.

Wipro facility will enable the members of Wi-Fi Alliance to reduce the time-to-market of their product range.

The market for wi-fi devices in India is expected to exceed $744 million by 2012 as more and more consumer products incorporate wi-fi technology.

Career options in hardware/networking

2007-08-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

A hardware professional, with a starting salary of around Rs 2 lakhs per annum, can expect to earn as much as Rs 10 lakh per annum once he has two to three years of experience, depending on his capability.

It is an attractive career option for those with a flair for technology.

A study by MAIT(Manufacturers' Association of Information Technology) forecasts that manpower requirement in the hardware and networking industry would go up to 2 million in 2008, from a couple of thousands right now.

A hardware/networking student can find jobs in hardcore IT companies like Dell or Microsoft, he can also find jobs in various industries like manufacturing, BPO, Retail, Media, Animation and Entertainment.

Gaming companies refine their business models

2007-08-21T23:53:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) company Level Up has decided to change its business model. It has set up an online mall to earn revenues by selling virtual items instead of taking subscription fees for its MMOG and Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing games(MMORPGs) like Ragnarok, Gunz and Ozworld.

Sify has also developed a similar business model around Rakion-Sify's MMORPG. It has also lined up Nostale-an entry level MMORPG around the same business model- for beta testing next month. But it plans to continue with the subscription model for its older MMORPG-A3.

Experts expect a massive shift from subscription model to sale of virtual items.

Change in the business model is expected to attract more entry level gamers. Level Up has already witnessed a 100 percent increase in the number of players for free.

The MMORPG/MMOG market is witnessing an explosive growth in the number of titles. level Up is planing to launch three more MMOGs/MMORPGs over the next three to six months, Sify is introducing Nostale next month, Kreeda Games is also planning to launch a new title , Zapak.com plans to launch two MMOGs in the next 3-6 months, Mobile2Win is planning to launch its MMOG, City Racer, soon.

The .mobi is still crawling

2007-08-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

The buzz around the domain name, .mobi- which indicates that the site is meant to work on mobile devices, has lost steam, it seems.

Despite billions of mobile users worldwide, and millions in India alone, domain registrars expected to make a killing but are visibly disappointed. Net4India-a domain registrar- expected around 20,000 registrations by 2006 but has managed only 1,000 till date.

To make .mobi successful, we need to develop web sites which are compatible to and specially designed for mobile devices so as to ensure a pleasant viewing experience.

The .mobi domain has experienced moderate success in more developed countries like Korea, Malaysia and other western countries due to their advanced technology

Now computers can understand Hindi

2007-08-18T23:29:00.000-07:00

Source: businessstandard.com

IBM has developed a speech recognition Technology,"The Desktop Hindi Speech Recognition Technology", to help physically challenged and less literate Hindi speakers access information through a variety of applications.

The technology trancribes Hindi speech into text form. It has a capacity to recognize more than 75,000 Hindi words with different dialects, resulting in an accuracy of 90-95 percent.

The technology has many user-friendly features such as a spell checker to correct spoken word errors, a facility to convert text to digits and decimals, date and currency formats, and into fonts which any Windows based application can import.

Prime Technologies to expand offsite capabilities

2007-08-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Source: businessline.in

Prime Technology Group Inc. plans to invest upto $20 million for expanding its operations in India. It currently has its operations in US and Hyderabad.

Company is planning to open three centres in Visakhapatnam, Pune and Gurgaon.

Company does a lot of business onsite for the US enterprises. Now it intends to upgrade its offsite working capabilities.

Company is in talks with a private PE player in US for a possible $50 million deal.

Threats of cyberspace

2007-08-14T05:17:00.000-07:00

Source:Businessline.in

The advent of internet has brought a qualitative change to our lives. Innovations like social networking sites have changed the way we connect to the world.

Now, even without stepping out, we can interact with as many people as we want and be a part of any kind of community. MySpace and Facebook have almost become household names.

But there are flip sides to online networking, as with everything else. Privacy and security are becoming serious issues.

MySpace users were recently subjected to an attack where the victim's sites and computers were used as hosts for phishing scams and viruses. MySpace web pages were seeded with a malicious code capable of exploiting holes in MS Windows and Internet Explorer. MySpace users visiting these pages were redirected to a fake MySpace log-in page where their personal information was stolen.

Networking sites have put children in danger of becoming crime victims as they can be lured to wrongful doings by their predators.

I think users , especially children, should be educated about these issues to check this menace.

Life in web 2.0

2007-08-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

Source: businessline.com

With the newer innovations taking place in the technology sector, the web world is evolving everyday and it is changing the real world too, and for the better.

IBM India showcased at its lab in Bangalore its web 2.0 initiatives. It has built an application where you need to put bits of instruction codes together, add a bit of information and the result will be a web based application which will run itself, collect and process data according to the instruction code fed into it.

QED Wiki

Now, PC users, with very little technical knowledge, can create a web based(without any coding) application to enhance their business apllications by using the information on the internet, with the help of QED wiki.

A warehouse manager can use this tool to keep track of its inventory at different locations(including inventory in transit) and do the inventory planning accordingly by using Google Maps and real time weather information from Accuweather.com, and then supplementing it with internal iventory data.

Who's tops in server software space

2007-08-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Source: businessline.in

As Indians , we have one more reason to feel proud. According to IDC, BEA Systems is the leader in apllication server space. The report by IDC says that BEA Systems which has a 30% market share in Indian application server software, is even ahead of global players in the middleware market.

With customers investing in service-oriented architecture (SOA), company has seen its growth double year-on-year.

BiGAdda- a new place to hang out

2007-08-14T01:10:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

BigAdda, a part of Reliance ADA group, launched its social networking site on Monday.

It has associated with five youth icons in order to develop niche communities to cater to users' varied interests.

Photographer Atul Kasbekar would create a community for users who're interested in mobile photography. Users would be encouraged to shoot and upload photos from their mobile phones and the best photographer will get a chance to work on an assignment with Kasbekar.

Top golfer Irina Brar will create a community focusing on girls in sports. Madhur Bhandarkar will build a community for video category and encourage users to share their scripts and video stories.

Cyber Security

2007-08-13T01:04:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

In today's world, the intangible assets of a company play a far more important role as compared to tangible assets.

The dependence on automated systems to manage the "intagibles" is increasing by the day and it has led to risks of information theft and disruption of business processes.

There is a greater need to focus on cyber security arrangements.

At a symposium on cyber security organized by CII, the experts suggested that attracting experienced talent, specialization in security at educational institutions, tie-ups at private sector and strngthening infrastructure and establishment of cyber security ventures by the government are the steps which could help to counter these threats.

Wipro expands in US

2007-08-13T00:21:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

Wipro is planning to open a centre in Atlanta, US and plans to hire about 500 people locally.

The company plans to open the centre in three months. Wipro is also planning to have facilities at Raleigh, NC, Austin, Texas and Richmond, Virginia. About 1,000 people are expected to be hired for these centres.

The nature if IT services business and the newer contracts, the need to address security and IP issues are making it necessary for the companies to have a global presence. And local people are perceived to be better equipped to deal with situations in terms of language and culture.

Bluetooth Headset Market Rocks

2007-08-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

According to a market survey, the Indian bluetooth headset market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 74 %. It is expected to grow to 8 million units from the current 9,00,000 units.

The main drivers for this growth are contact centres and enterprise segment. Contact centre business is growing 25% y-o-y in India and enterprise segment is also witnessing a good growth. IP telephony is also expected to contribute to the growth of bluetooth headset market.

An outsourcer outsources hiring

2007-08-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

In view of the increasing hiring costs, Wipro BPO has outsourced its recruitment function to skills assessment company MeritTrac. The company expects to save about 15-20% by outsourcing the recruitment process.

Wipro BPO hires about 2,000 employees every month after scanning 20,000 applications.

Crackle Inc. ties up with Ozone Media

2007-08-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

Source: Economictimes.com

In a bid to create awareness among the growing number of internet users in India, Sony picture group company Cracle Inc. has joined hands with internet advertising network, Ozone Media.

Crackle entertainment network is dedicated to discovering, promoting and distributing emerging video-creators to Indian audiences.

IT firms take steps to tackle Re rise

2007-08-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

Source:economictimes.com

The IT sector is tackling a stronger rupee with stern measures. Most firms in the IT and ITeS industry are looking at cutting down on staff, reducing the bench strength and hiring more professionals with lesser experience to keep salary costs under control.

Besides, the companies are also looking at improving operational efficiency, productivity and focusing on multitasking. Further, on the outsourcing front, the IT industry is planning to pass on the difference in rupee appreciation to their clients.

For small and medium-sized companies, the problem is much more than just measures. The companies are slashing workforce, increasing working hours and working days to reduce the billing cycle and asking employees to start gaining other expertise.
However, what could be a major concern for the industry is the fact that IT companies are now taking more people with an average experience of three years.

“Of the total employee strength, around 45% of them have an average work experience of three years in 2007 compared to only 35% in 2005. This helps us in bringing down the cost per employee,” said a Wipro spokesperson.

Wipro is also taking steps on pricing, utilisation, recruitment and reducing additional workforce to fight the impact. The company will increase billing rates by 2% to 3% for their new clients as a measure to tackle rupee appreciation.

For its new businesses, the $187-million Hexaware Technologies has increased billing rates. As a measure to increase operational efficiencies, the company is increasing utilisation and productivity, particularly with respect to fixed-price projects. It is also training people on more than one platform to increase productivity and reduce cost.

“While improving operational efficiencies is an ongoing process, there is an increased pressure to improve efficiencies faster,” said Hexaware chairman Atul Nishar. Despite following a prudent hedging policy to derisk rupee appreciation ($200 million at an average price of Rs 41.40), Hexaware is negotiating with airlines to provide better prices. Apart from this, it will reduce the number of people on the bench over a period of time.

By improving the operational efficiencies, companies can reduce cost by up to 4%. According to KPMG, companies with more than $100 million turnover are looking at improving operational efficiencies.

According to KPMG’s global head, sourcing advisory, Pradeep Udhas, “Currency impact has been felt across the board, be it small, medium or big IT/ITeS companies. However, some bigger companies have hedged their funds and are able to minimise the impact.”

Infosys Technologies is focusing on creating industry-specific solutions. It is changing the business mix to high revenue productivity businesses to minimise the impact of an appreciating rupee.

“We are also applying other operational levers to minimise the impact. For instance, we have set up a payroll desk and a travel desk for the entire organisation in India. So, onsite payroll is also processed out of here through a single desk,” said Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan.

“Companies are aggressively looking at bringing in more operational efficiency to sustain in the market. The appreciation of rupee is taking place too fast and too soon,” said Nasscom VP Ameet Nivsarkar. Nasscom has already approached the government on the volatility issue.

For small and medium-sized companies, the problem is much more than just measures. The companies are slashing workforce, increasing working hours and working days to reduce the billing cycle and asking employees to start gaining other expertise.

Vadodara-based Rishabh Software has retrenched around 20 employees in order to reduce cost. The company officials, however, said that the employees did not have the expertise on the project and hence they were asked to leave. “IT companies can no more continue spending lavishly. It’s time to take stock of the situation. Until now, IT companies didn’t know cost-cutting, but now everyone is talking about it,” said Hi-Tech Exports’ Pranit Banthia.

As KPMG’s Udhas aptly put it “The IT industry has accumulated a lot of fat over the years. It’s time to lose some. Though luxuries are still far from over, they have seen the writing on the wall.”

Cheap mobile calls via net

2007-08-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

Source: economictimes.com

So you thought VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) was irritating? First, you’d have to download special software on your PC, get used to the headset , and then of course you'd have to be around your PC to make calls. It would be better to use your cellphone and pay a few rupees extra, right? Wrong, because now you can make free calls from your desk or mobile phone—with no software downloads, special headsets, or even a broadband internet connection. All thanks to a recently launched service by a company called Jajah (www.jajah.com).

How does it work

Let’s say you are here in India and want to speak to your project head in San Jose (US). You do nothing more than create your account on Jajah .com. Once that's done, enter your mobile number and that of your project head at Jajah.com and simply click the ‘Call’ button. First Jajah will make a connection to your phone. So you pick up the call when your mobile rings, and a voice (heavily accented currently, mind you) will explain that Jajah is connecting the call.

Next, the phone in San Jose will ring and your project head picks up the call, and the two of you can speak for a price as low as Rs 3 per minute. They currently have similar discount rates for all over the world. In fact, calls to the US and Europe will soon be made free of cost for users, claims the company.

What are they doing right

What seems to be working for Jajah world wide is the fact that they have entered into deals with many telecoms for access to cheap local ‘lastmile ’ connections. That means that only the long-distance part of the call goes over the internet. So, say you are a Hutch customer here in India. The last bit of your call will come through on your Hutch network. This is a big advantage, simply because calls received over regular phones are generally of good voice qualityunlike other VoIP service providers such as Skype where you typically receive calls over a computer where the call quality can suffer.

Getting rid of the computer

Interestingly this way Jajah also avoids firewall troubles that many other VOIP services are riddled with, as their calls are not solely over the internet . Ultimately, Jajah claims that they will take the computer completely out of the picture, because most people will be able to access the internet via their phone. So Jajah customers won’t even need a computer to input the initial call—they would do it direct from their cellphone.

Jajah also comes with special tools customised for companies and individuals. For instance, there's a tool that integrates with Outlook as well as your browser and lets you dial numbers from within the application itself. They also let you schedule calls in advance, which means that once you set up your call at a particular time, you needn’t be anywhere near the computer—the service will connect automatically at the designated time.

Companies have already started reaping the benefits for this service. Public relations firm 20:20 Media, for instance, has set up accounts for all its employees using this service. “We have saved about 60% on our calls using Jajah. And these days we never miss call timings thanks to Jajah's auto dialling facility,” says a spokesperson at 20:20 Media, Delhi.

New search engine for researchers

2007-08-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

Source: the hindubussinessline.com

Scientists and research scholars have to dredge a huge volume of scientific literature to arrive at the information they need. Conventional search engines look for words rather than ideas.

For example, a part of the literature may say that drug A has a particular effect (say, increase the secretion) on a body chemical B. Some other document may show that B has an inhibiting effect on bacteria C. A search engine cannot throw up the effect on A on B.

Search engines work on semantics but it would help the scientific community if software were available for unearthing hidden trends and connections buried in the literature.

This literature is huge. For example, Pubmed is a depository of about 16 million articles. A researcher spends half his research time in culling out what he wants. Another example is the information with various patent offices.

The Chennai-based bio-informatics company Brainwave Biosolutions Ltd has come up with a tool, which it calls Gene Minerva, to help researchers shorten their search time. Gene Minerva is a `text mining product', developed mainly to help drug discovery researchers look for hidden patterns from unstructured literature data.

"The software will help the computer understand sentences as we do," Dr Shome Nath Mitra, Chief Scientific Officer, Brainwave, told a press conference here.

The tool, that took four years and Rs 2.2 crore to develop, uses `natural language processing technology' to achieve this.

After being tested at Bio Alma, Spain, the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Punjab, and a US company, Gene Minerva has just been launched in the market. Brainwave intends to charge $1,800 as annual licence fee, but the company is open to discussing packages and short-term usage rates.

Dr Mitra said that the product competes with others such as Ariadne Genomics, Cognia, Reel Two, Clear Forest and Temis. He claimed that Gene Minerva was found to be more efficacious, in tests.

Gene Minerva is the first major product of Brainwave Biosolutions, a company founded by Ms Valli Arun, daughter of Mr A.C. Muthiah, Chairman of SPIC Group of companies. The company targets 2,000 customers in two years.

Brands fail to make inroads into PC market

2007-08-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Source: Businessstandard.com

The PC assembling segment has held firm despite stiff competition from branded players.

Ever since the PC revolution, a common query in the minds of personal computer (PC) buyers in India has been: Which is better? An assembled machine or a branded one.

The Indian PC market crossed 5 million units last year. A growth of 25 per cent year-on-year in unit shipments over the previous year.

According to IDC, a markets analyst firm, the share of assembled desktops, also known as ‘white box’, shipments has declined from 41 per cent in the third quarter of calendar year (CY) 2005 to 32.7 per cent in the first quarter of CY 2007.

However, the dip in the numbers has to be co-related to the fact that the desktop PC market has had a flat growth for two years.

Diptarup Chakraborti, principle analyst, global IT research and advisory firm Gartner, says: "Though the year-on-year growth of the assembled PC has been flat, it has not lost its market share of close to 40 per cent of the over all desktop PC in India. The desktop market is anyway not moving even for the branded computers.”

Agrees Piyush Pushkal, manager, computing products research, IDC India, ‘White box’ desktop PC makers have retained an edge over branded PC vendors due to their proximity to the end-customer and the personalised services, they often provide. It is precisely due to this reason that the assembled market is sustaining itself despite stiff competition and attractive offerings from branded PC players."

Buying the ‘white box’ is always cheaper than purchasing a branded PC. The price difference of a normal low-end PC will be just about 5 per cent, but in a high-end PC it can be as much as 15 per cent to 20 per cent. This is because assemblers do not have to account for the marketing and branding costs.

The other reason for the assembled PC market sustaining itself is the ease of upgradation, which most branded PC vendors do not readily offer. Assembled PC providers are also perceived to offer better service support. Most of the branded PCs do not give an option to mix and match components of the PC due to compatibility issue.

Rajesh Gupta, director sales and marketing group, Intel says, "These channels have a unique advantage of using customised solution and configuration and support system. People in tier II and III still prefer to buy PCs from the assembler."

Intel’s strategy to rope in these dealers is a good example of the growth and the potential of this market. Intel’s ‘Genuine Intel Dealer’ programme which caters to the white box market has a three-tier approach to sell its products.

The first tier consisting of traders, who simply trade the components, are in the number of 8,000-10,000. The second tier, of associates or systems integrator (SI) have grown to 3,500. Those who have moved away from being just SIs and become solution providers to small and medium enterprises number 100.

Gupta, however, points to a very important aspect of the assembled market, “The assembled players are extremely fast moving especially when it comes to technology change. Crucially, they bring this to the buyer without any incremental cost.”

ASSEMBLING BENEFITS

Cheap compared to branded PCs
Sport cutting-edge processors
Can be customised
Assemblers give better service and replace parts faster
Extremely fast moving especially when it comes to technology change
Customer is spared the incremental cost of technology

2007-08-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

Source: Businessstandard.com

KPO company Dexterity has opened its second facility in Chennai on an investment of $1.5 million. The facility will accommodate a headcount of 250.

The new facility at Mogappair will host process outsourcing services for the market research and analytics (R&A) space.

With this, Dexterity has also signalled its intentions to double headcount by March next year from the 300 people on its rolls presently. The additional resources will be spread across voice and data services that cover areas like computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), scripting, analytics and reporting, the company said.

“IT services for the R&A domain is a $0.6 billion market, while KPO for this niche is a $2.2 billion market. The second facility is part of our aggressive growth plans to tap niche R&A opportunities,” Palanivel Kuppusamy, executive chairman, Dexterity Group, said.

The company’s first facility in Chennai is at Ambattur