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Are Tablets really taking over? [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:42:40 +0000

For last couple of years, tablet computers are in vogue. Even in India, tablets have become quite popular (at least the word “tablet”), thanks to “Aakash” by Indian Government. Popularity of tablets can be gauged from the fact that in last year alone close to 100 different tablets were launched by more than 35 different tablet manufacturers.

Although, mobile takes a lead in internet browsing on non-computer devices, Tablets are gaining much ground. Check out this nifty infographic created by Litmus, that gives you an idea about the rise of tablets across the globe.

2010 was the year when Smartphones gained popularity, 2011 was year of Tablets… Which gadget would 2012 remembered for? Any ideas?

How the internet is affecting Indian teens…

Kaushambi — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:09:55 +0000

Notwithstanding the fact that the Internet has changed the world, there is a particular age segment which has been taken by storm – teenagers! Here’s a no-nonsense look into how internet has affected the lives of Indian teenagers.

Knowledge and information

The first thought that comes to mind when thinking about how internet is affecting the Indian teenager is the access to virtually unlimited amount of knowledge and information. Gone are the days when teenagers had to flip through book after book in the library to finish their school projects or when they had to rely on myths and rumors when it came to having access to knowledge about certain sensitive issues like sexuality and teenage development.

This has also brought in the complex dimension of differentiating between authentic, research oriented material and trash that is posted on the Internet. In fact, the way in which libraries and structures and built, is also rapidly changing because of the Internet.

Exposure to different life concepts and cultures

We are not going to argue whether exposure to different life concepts and cultures for Indian teenagers is a good or a bad thing. That’s a separate moral debate best left untouched. The fact is that internet has suddenly left Indian teenagers exposed to different cultures, different ideologies and different concepts on the very basic notion of how to live life. From cultures of the western world to cultures of remote civilizations, the internet has made perception of life in general, extremely individualistic. Even if an average Indian teenager hasn’t been abroad, you wouldn’t really be able to make out from this high level of his/her exposure.

Exposure to vices and ill habits

The internet is a no holds bar information portal that really has no real life restrictions when it comes to filtering out content for teenagers. Let’s consider the typical example of pornography websites. A search in any search engine will arm the Indian teenager with thousands of websites offering pictures, videos and lots more.

Some websites may have a disclaimer which want the user to confirm that they are 18 years or older. But is that really going to stop Indian teenagers from entering the website? Pornography was just an example. Indian teenagers have a free for all access to other information regarding drugs, sexuality and other habits which are condoned by the moral police.

Concept of relationships

1990: A friend was a person who you’d meet regularly and have many real memories to share with. A long distance romantic relationship was about romantic love letters, long distance phone calls and a burning agony of being separated.

Fast forward to 2011: A friend is a person whose profile has been added to your own social networking profile. A long distance relationship isn’t much of an agony because the internet allows you to be in sync with your partner’s whereabouts and activities, minute by minute. And if you miss him/her too much, you can always hop on to have a quick and intimate video chat.

We are not trying to opine on which concept is better or worse, but what we do know is that internet has changed the very basis of the concept of relationships in the mind of the Indian teenager. You really wouldn’t be surprised if a guy in Mumbai told you that he was dating a girl from Madrid, would you? Forget that, these are the times when people are taking cross country music lessons over Skype!

Challenging norms and traditions

Needless to say, the internet challenges the very thought of traditionalism and conventions of a cultural and religious India. In a land where culture, religion and values come before anything else in the world, internet is ruffling quite a few feathers -whether it is challenging traditions of how to build a house, how to use frozen food, how to live a nomadic life by taking backpacking trips or something as absurd as a woman looking up ways of becoming a pilot and a man looking up colleges to study catering.

The power of Internet has made the Indian teenager stand up and question certain norms that have been prevailing in India since time immemorial.

What’s your take?

Is Indian IT sector headed for a slowdown in 2012?

Viral Dholakia — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:07:57 +0000

It’s been a long tradition now – just like a temple priest flags off a ritual with sound of a conch (shankhnad) during startup; even software bellwether Infosys Technologies is accustomed to kick start the quarterly earnings season in style and panache.

In fact, few years ago, the results and annual guidance provided by this IT jewel used to set the mood rolling in the Indian stock markets and was considered as the most significant event of the financial year. Business news channels used to organize day-long analysis of the Infosys results announcement.

Infosys used to be the barometer of the health of Indian outsourcing industry. But, prior to 2008-recession, this frenzy was bust on the back of steep appreciation in the value of rupee to almost 40 per dollar. This led to huge under-performance of the IT industry amidst strong rupee, while the Indian benchmark indices basked in the glory of their lifetime peaks.

Gradually, the weightage of the software outsourcing industry in the Indian markets have stooped to a low, where it can no longer duress the benchmark indices to dance on its tune. This pin down can be confirmed from the fact that despite Infosys disappointing the street with its earnings and stock price over last many quarters, Indian markets have remained stable.

Here’s one more instance – though Infy reported better than expected numbers in the Q3 FY12 amidst weaker rupee, the company disappointed shareholders with its biggest ever FY12 dollar guidance downer for the fourth quarter.

The outsourcing giant has signaled almost zero growth in revenues for the next quarter, as against its initial forecast to notch 3.2% to 5.2% growth during Q4 FY12. On annual basis too, the company rolled back its guidance from 17-19% to 16.4% in dollar terms.

In the words of Infosys CEO and MD, S. D. Shibulal:

“The environment is very uncertain. There is no definitive answer to the Euro zone crisis at this point. Client confidence is down. Budgets are getting closed; the early indication is that we will be flat with marginal down.”

He further indicated that pessimistic client confidence is very much likely to translate into curbed spending amidst cautious environment. In my opinion, the real pigeon will come out of the hat only during the next quarter, when the IT behemoth will spell down its FY13 guidance.

For sure, it would be the toughest task for Infy management to forecast its full year guidance at a time when its key market, the euro zone, is reeling under the severe debt stress, without showing any signs of the crisis subsiding anytime soon.

Contrary to Infosys, TCS has always remained away from providing earnings guidance, thus leaving lesser scope for equity speculators to lay their fragile bets on. However, even TCS share price fell to two-month lows on concerns of anticipated demand growth slowdown and delay in “discretionary spending” by the US clients going further.

TCS, India’s biggest software services exporter, reported Q3 FY12 numbers that were in-line with Street expectations with net profit up by 21.8% at Rs.2803 crore from the year-ago period, with margin improvement largely driven by forex benefit.

Moreover, brokerage firms have given thumbs down to the TCS – while Emkay Global Financial Services lowered its rating on the software major to ‘Hold’ on missing relatively modest expectations; CLSA is cautious on IT sector and expects TCS to under-perform on lower client confidence.

In a nutshell, Indian IT bigwigs can no longer rest on the laurels of depreciating rupee alone to yield them unexpected forex gains on a constant basis. Finally, it will boil down to outsourcing business prospects and earnings that will seal their fate, once the rupee-dollar equation settle down from volatility.

Do you see Indian IT industry softening up in 2012?

How Amazon cloud drive can help you and your business

Kaushambi — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:35:08 +0000

Cloud storage in simple words, is an online storage facility given to users who want external servers to store or host their data for them. And with the need for larger storage capacities clubbed with mobility, cloud storage is getting very popular.

Amazon’s Cloud Storage bearing the motto “Anything digital, securely stored, available anywhere” is the most popular and widely used cloud service on the web. Let’s take a look at 5 reasons why you should make Amazon Cloud Drive your cloud storage point to help you and your business.

Never worry about losing that portable hard drive again

If you are constantly faced with the situation of carrying sensitive business data on a portable hard disk every time you travel, the Amazon Cloud Drive can be your answer to storing and retrieving data safely. Simply sign up to one of their plans (5 GB is free) and store your data conveniently on their servers. It doesn’t matter if you travel across cities, states or countries, you will always have that vital data for your presentation as long as you have internet connectivity.

You don’t need to specifically make a purchase of any kind to use the Amazon Cloud Drive. Take advantage of 5 GB free cloud storage by signing up. Whether or not you want to upgrade to higher storage capacities, is a call that you can make later. For majority of people though, 5GB should be enough to store all the important data.

Organize your data or mirror your hard disk

Many people are extremely picky and choosy when it comes to organizing their personal or business data. All their portable or non portable data storage devices will have the same folders, directories and data paths. Does this sound like you?

If it does, you will like the Amazon Cloud Storage because it allows you to create folders and sub-folders as per your requirements. Preset top level folders are Documents, Pictures, Music and Videos. If you wish, you can create your own top level folder and organize your data the way you want to.

Ability to recover deleted data from your Amazon Cloud Drive

Yes, we all make mistakes and that’s exactly why we have something called the ‘recycle bin’ in Windows. A similar recovery system exists in the Amazon Cloud Drive too. Your cloud storage drive will contain a ‘deleted items’ section which you can access to recover your deleted data.

You can either recover the items to the same folder where they were deleted from, or move them to another folder of your choice.

Storage plans to suit all needs

At present there are 7 plans that you can take while using the Amazon Cloud Drive. The first plan comes with 5GB free, while the highest plan offers 1000GB for $1,000 per year. Depending on your storage needs and your ability to splurge on the moolah, you can opt for various storage plans.

Point to note: Although you can downgrade your Amazon Cloud Drive storage plan, you should remember that your present plan will continue until the end of your billing cycle. This can really hurt you if you opt for a high storage plan only to find out later that you don’t need that amount of cloud storage space.

Store your Amazon MP3s for free

This is an awesome feature! It can be a big drag to miss out on all your music while you travel, isn’t it? Well that is a thing of the past because with Amazon Cloud Drive, you can store all your Amazon MP3 purchases for free.

A superb benefit of using this service is that all your songs are backed up on your Amazon Cloud Drive for free and they don’t take up any of your storage space. Use the Amazon Cloud Player to store, stream and listen to your music anywhere in the world, as long as you have an internet connection! How cool is that?

Point to note: Remember folks, you can only avail free storage for your Amazon MP3s, which means the music that you buy from Amazon. Don’t expect Amazon to provide free storage for your other music too. And remember, these files must have remained unaltered since you purchased them at Amazon.

If you have not done it as yet, give Amazon Cloud Drive a spin and let us know what you feel!

Infosys Inks Two Year Deal with Pune Football Club

Ankit Agarwal — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 07:51:24 +0000

And here I was thinking that any sponsorship deal involving a domestic team was a monopoly of Sahara. Jokes apart, Infosys has thrown its hat into using sports as a marketing vehicle.

Yes, Infosys has inked a two year deal with Pune FC for an undisclosed amount. Pune FC recently got into limelight by becoming the first domestic club to play against an EPL team – Blackburn Rovers. The deal terms in plain speak are,

Pune FC obviously gets a lumpsum amount in sponsorship money from Infosys. Additionally, Infosys is expected to increase the sponsorship amount by 20% in the second year.

Infosys gets to stick its logo on the jerseys of the Pune FC players as well as advertise on common branding spots. Additionally, Pune FC staff will train Infosys’ football team and also conduct monthly training sessions for the children of Infosys employees

Sweet deal for Infosys, isn’t it! They get an amazing marketing vehicle through jersey logos and wait for it, they make their employees happy. The best of all, Infosys gets amazing press!

Major publications have given this deal a ‘promoting football in India’ spin which might not be entirely wrong but a long stretch for sure. So, all in all a win-win proposition for both parties involved. Pune FC will get resources to develop its team and Infosys- well they don’t make losing bets anyway.

I have to say, I was initially surprised with Infosys approaching a local team because the branding opportunities are restricted to the domestic market for the most part. Or this might be a precursor to signing bigger sponsorship deal with a much more popular team. Or I might be totally wrong and Infosys only had the noble thought of promoting football!

While it is common for companies in the B2C segment to use sports sponsorship as marketing channels, I have to say IT service company and Sports did seem like an odd match. But Satyam (Mahindra Satyam) kind of initiated the trend by leveraging its IT contract during the Football World Cup in 2010 to advertise in full glory.

Whether it was successful or not can be debated, but it did open up an avenue for IT service companies in India to consider sports sponsorship as a good marketing opportunity. Not a while ago, Wipro discussed its plan for sports sponsorship so there is an increasing traction.

What are your thoughts on Infosys partnering with Pune FC? Do you think similar deals can help make other sports (other than cricket off-course) more popular in India

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IBM To Make Indian Cities ‘Smarter’, Pilot Projects Underway

Ankit Agarwal — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:19:48 +0000

Think of all things government and I don’t think you will be able to associate SMART with any of their actions. Well, if IBM has its way things are going to change for good and government departments will be able to make data driven decisions.

Yes, IBM has started working with government departments and civic bodies in various Indian cities to implement its ‘Smart City’ offering. In plain and simple words,

IBM’s Smart City aims to provide a top level view of information across various city departments and empower officials to take corrective steps based on data-driven intelligence provided by the system

Going by how IBM has been marketing / advertising its Smart City offering, it sure looks something that can make cities efficient and Smarter.

IBM has already started conducting pilot projects with various civic bodies across various cities to implement the Intelligent Operations Center (IOC). Part of the Smart City offering, IOC is sit on top of existing legacy systems used by various government departments, clean and mine huge chunks of data and provide a dashboard view of all the information.

Government departments can use this analytic data to make decisions targeted at improving the various processes and make the cities efficient.

Based on the progress till now, IBM has discovered that traffic management, water management, and emergency responses are the areas where there is a lot of scope for improvement and respective government departments are showing interest in improving the cities abilities across these areas.

I am all for unique and interesting applications of technology in government departments and god knows we can use with more efficiently managed cities but having worked for a few years on Enterprise databases and developing intelligence reports, here is where I think the problem lies

Intelligence!= Action

Have access to the most clean data and then have the most complex analytic tool in the world to give you the best possible intelligence that you need for decision making.

What does it achieve?…… Zero!Nada!Zilch

Until and unless the government departments initiate action and make sure those efficiency initiatives are being implemented, IBM’s Smart City will not achieve what is intended to do.

So, IBM will not only have to work with various departments in Indian cities to get access to good data, implement its software and train the users but also hope that the officials ensure that the data driven intelligence translates into action.

What are your thoughts on IBM’s new initiative with Indian cities? Do you think there is a hope that Indian cities will indeed become SMARTER

HCL has a Blockbuster Quarter, celebrates it with Free equity to Employees!

Ankit Agarwal — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 11:20:46 +0000

Even as IT companies in India are reporting mixed results with a few companies beating industry estimates and few faring poorly, HCL Technologies has hit a home run in its latest quarterly results.

HCL Technologies has had a billion dollar quarter. Announcing its second quarter results (July-Aug-September 2011), HCL reported revenues of $1002 Million!

To get a better sense of HCL Technologies achievement, a comparison with the same quarter in 2008 reveals that the company has doubled its quarterly revenue in 3 years. It is noteworthy that majority of IT companies are battling a tough environment as the economy in the US and Europe continues to be shaky.

HCL Technologies has chosen to celebrate its billion dollar quarter in a rather special way. The company has declared a ‘Milestone Share Program’ for its employees which essentially is HCL’s way of sharing the spoils of a stupendous quarter. HCL shared the details about the ‘Milestone Sharing’ program in an official press release,

Employees who are on the company’s rolls as on Oct 14th, 2011 will receive a minimum amount equivalent of 5 shares* and a maximum amount equivalent of 10 shares based on years of tenure at HCL. The company has budgeted an amount of Rs 25 crores for this initiative.

Now, employees being awarded company stock is not entirely new and Infosys did a similar exercise on completing its 30 years and gifted its employees company stock.

What is interesting and commendable about HCL Technologies program is that it has chosen to do the same centered around quarterly performance. Some way to hold on to the bold ‘Employees First’ image the company has chosen to build its brand on.

What are your thoughts on HCL’s gesture to celebrate a blockbuster quarter by rewarding its employees?

Want a Job at Google? Here’s what it takes [Infographic]

Arun Prabhudesai — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 04:31:04 +0000

Did you know that in the past Google has sometimes used upto 29 interviews to screen a single candidate?

Here is a nifty infographic released by Job Network portal Jobvine, which presents some interesting facts about how Google hires it’s employees!

Google gets over one million resumes a year and only about 4k to 6k people are hired out of those. Can’t imagine sifting through so many resumes and going to insane number of interviews to hire candidates!

But that’s the reason why Google is…well…Google!

What does it take to get a job at Google

via

[Note: If you are unable to view this graphic in your RSS Reader or Email, please click on the title link or go to blog to view it!]

Buzzing News: Infosys Results, PSLV-C18, August IIP & Sept Exports data & Apple iOS 5 launch date!

Viral Dholakia — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:47:59 +0000

The month of October has been buzzing with lots of latest news and niche updates, which we would like to cover as a small newsletter for our readers. Most heart wrenching news among them is passing away of Gazal singer Jagjit Singh and Apple Inc co-founder Steve Jobs – both were true legends in their field of profession.

Infosys cheers market by Q2 numbers

This time around, IT bellwether Infosys announced above-expectation earnings at Rs.1906 crore, up 9.72%, to completely stump the street estimates, despite deteriorating macroeconomic scenario globally. India’s No.2 software service exporter also announced an interim dividend of Rs.15 per share. The company has revised its FY12 guidance to Rs.33501-34088 crore in rupee terms.

PSLV-C18 launches 4 satellites!

ISRO launched its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)-C18 satellite along with 4 other spacecrafts, including an Indo-French satellite Megha-Tropiques aimed at monitoring weather and climate conditions in tropical regions.

Among the remaining three nano satellites, SRMSat was built by students of SRM University and the 3-kg light remote-sensing Jugnu was built by IIT-Kanpur student. All the satellites were aimed to hit the orbit with multi-functional purposes.

August IIP data at 4.1%

India’s August IIP data came in at a weaker 4.1% from the year-ago levels led by disappointing manufacturing output data and slowdown in mining output. Further, the July IIP figures were revised from a dismal 3.3% to 3.84% on statistical correction. Mining output for August 2011 came lower at 3.4%, followed by slower growth in capital goods index to 3.9% for the given period.

India’s Exports up 36% in September

India’s exports for September 2011 saw a growth of 36% year-on-year to $24.8 billion, as against the country’s higher consumption in terms of overseas goods and services at $34.6 billion. Thus, India’s trade deficit summed up to $9.8 billion for the month of September. Exports for the second quarter of the fiscal grew by 52.1% to $160 billion.

Official Facebook App for iPad users

Facebook has released its iPad application on popular demand, to allow the tablet users to connect with its social network in a tablet-friendly version of the website. The newly launched software will enable users to navigate through high-resolution photos, games, chat with friends and update their status without any systemic hiccups.

Apple’s iOS 5 launch on Oct 12

iPhone’s iOS 5 new operating system launch date is set on October 12, that will be made available on popular Apple devices such as iPhone 4, iPad and next-generation iPod Touch music players. Moreover, even iCloud, Apple’s cloud-based service offering, will also be made available for download for users on the same day.