Indian IT Industry

pradeepe · Post by **pradeepe** » 29 Jan 2009 10:26

Havent heard much about PMC. A quiet operator. A good strategy I assume in these times.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 10:30

pmcs, brcm and citrix are all reporting profits in past qtr.

sum · Post by **sum** » 29 Jan 2009 11:44

IIRC, even Marvell doing very well for itself.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 14:35

day after endless day the merciless red sun beats down on the grassland.
water holes are dry, the earth broken into spider web like cracks, the
birds those who could still fly have departed the lake and only the rotting
flesh of fish and young birds lines the shore now...there is no rain in
sight off in the distance near the mountains.

the herds are being culled on the serengeti.

the small fleet of foot like springbok or thomsons gazelle which are alert, live on less resources and change direction on a dime are going to survive - on a diet. -- (selected startups, small cos but
with wide pools of knowledge)

the elephants/camels with their ageless wisdom, intimidation and stores of energy might make it - after losing weight. (csco,hp,ibm,emc,msft,oracle,adobe,intel)

survivors with unmatched adaptation and metabolic control like tortoises will live on as usual - impervious to the rise and fall of empire.
(desi/chini cos who will cost cut to the bone and then some)

those populating some toxic swamps and bad of teeth and temper + adaptable like crocodiles will live as they have 200 mil years.
(nikon, amat, canon, kla tencor, perkins elmer,tsmc,usmc etc)

a few bear species who learn how to hibernate in summer or lizards who dig deeper in the mud until the rains arrive will live

bushmen of the kalahari and namib desert will again be impervious to
rise and fall of rome. their needs are few and habits frugal.
(govt employees)

scavengers who can burrow into the carcass of fallen beasts and lick the flesh and bone to derive water and nutrition until better times will make it - jackals, foxes, hyena, vultures (lawyers, restructuring cos, bankruptcy holding cos,lobbyists)

"alternatives" who the forest supports as a "strategic check" on the
depredations of the elephants - juniper, AMD, F5

those who are cousins of the forest king will find enough to stay alive (EDS, CA, CSC, accenture...)

however those with high food needs (cat family predators), large
herbivores, reptiles and non-migratory birds are on a short timeline here.

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 16:35

Hi,
This is not exactly my first post on BRF as I did post once or twice 7 or 8 years ago. I do remember the post as I had broken the Golden Rule and posted a link to an article posted over at the Unmentionable Forum

- only to have the post shaheedized by Dr. Shiv - I even got a 'nice' message from him about the same. I was still a silly teenager at the time, so I guess that explains it

. Realized I would learn and gain a lot more by reading the posts by the Heavyweights here than making a fool out of myself - been lurking ever since and I really can lay claim to having grown up with BRF over the years, under the able guidance of all the mighty gurus and mujahids over here!

Now, this post from one of my favourite posters here, finally got me to register again and risk another post...

Singha wrote:broadcom, ZTE & Huawei they have strong lines of credit from chipanda. TI is not gone, just reducing. freescale is much more "gone" in that sense.

industry here is lobbying GOI to put curbs on vendor financing and giveaways that Huawei is indulging in to grab market share in India.
...
...
...

This is something I know a bit about. I can say for sure that they really have their eyes set on the Indian market. Given the current situation, there doesn't seem to be much that other players can do. Just see the RCOM deal where they got the Chinese equivalent of the Exim Bank to finance it. The ultra low prices and credit lines do make for a compelling case in the present scenario, although they still have some way to go in terms of quality. And I had heard that the Chipanda line of credit was as much as US$ 10 billion.

BTW, I saw the post about the Information Security at Snecma India. I think GD/RS/Singha would be quite interested in the IS practices over at the Dragon's Lair in BLR

- may not be tough to get some info about it as I do know for a fact that quite a few of Dragon's former servants now serve the 800 pound Gorilla of the Networking World.

As the Chinese themselves say, we live in interesting times!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 16:42

welcome back. your figure tallies ejatly what I was told by a senior marketing person at another
vendor. nobody else is in position to offer the vendor financing and giveaways that dragon is
doing - they sense an opportunity and they are taking it strongly. once a huge installed base fills out the inventory, people will be locked in and loathe to shift to another vendor.

not just India, I am sure this is going on all over the world.

btw they have also filed the highest number of "multi national WTO patents" in 2008 among
all cos worldwide beating all the usual suspects like philips, ibm, canon, samsung et al.

so they are rich, smart and ruthless - a lethal combo. whatever space is being vacated by the
collapse of old incumbents like LU or NT they will quickly fill.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 16:45

btw now that you are out of the lair, would you mind sharing if some of the legendary tales of
the work culture & management there are true or not? like whether engineers in shenzhen ghq sleep below their tables after lunch and wake up when a gong sounds to get back to work..?

do they have company paid township for engrs in shenzhen? did code commits by yindu need a approval from a certified panda in shenzhen? no offense meant, just curious.

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 16:53

Thanks!
You don't know how much I have enjoyed reading your posts in particular over the years - I remember some of your posts about Army GSQR requirements for Arjun. That must have been way back when people like Salman etc were regulars here. Incredibly funny!

Also note that they are beginning to make inroads into Western Europe as well. IIRC there was a case in Europe in 2007 where Huawei replaced 3G gear from Alcatel somewhere - they are pretty strong there. They, along with ZTE have practically locked others out of the Mobile Base Station biz...

Yes, the stories about engineers sleeping at the HQ are indeed true - they get to take the nap after lunch. I never personally got to see it as by the time I got an opportunity to go there, it was time for me to leave

I really wanted to see the HQ. It is said to be quite an impressive place, spread over nearly 1.5sq km in Shenzen...

There is indeed a co township in Shenzen, in a place called Baicaoyan (sp?) in the campus itself. Pretty decent facilities with comfy rooms, swimming pool etc. Even internet access is available on request for a small fee. Lot of SDREs will be there at any given time - so much so that the HQ canteen even serves up the good old Curd Rice there!

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 17:07

OK, as far as work culture is concerned, I really don't know what to say. One thing that you notice is the all pervading sense of paranoia there (may be BR 'upbringing' has made me paranoid

).
Incredibly tight IS, restrictions on laptop use etc made one wonder.

One thing that stood out for me in the aftermath of the Credit Crunch was the change in attrition levels there - there used to be a time when it seemed to be like a transit lounge - people would join, spend a couple of years, jump ship to the Gorilla/Juniper/Starent(yes, they got hold of few as well - heard they were offering mouth watering packages for greenhorns!!) and whatnot....But I recently met up with a few old colleagues who told me that not a single guy had quit from my former div in over six months - for me at least, that was shocking!

Regarding the patents part, it is a source of immense pride for them.Back in '06 or '07, they were touting the fact that they were already upto #13 in the all time list. I do not know about the quality of these filings as they are all still 'applications', may be the Telecom gurulog like yourself/Dileep/Tanaji or others can throw some light on it. They were at #4 or #5 in last year's rankings IIRC. After the 2003 controversy involving the Gorilla, they got really serious about IP development I guess. India center alone has over 200 applications actually.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 29 Jan 2009 18:32

Singha wrote:btw now that you are out of the lair, would you mind sharing if some of the legendary tales of
the work culture & management there are true or not? like whether engineers in shenzhen ghq sleep below their tables after lunch and wake up when a gong sounds to get back to work..?

What do you do when you have a tight 8hr training schedule, some 10s of new features to demo , a evening flight to catch and very tight project deadlines, and a group of engineers sleeping at the desk.

GD, that is true.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 18:34

semi-interesting: http://www.danwei.org/bbs/suicide_of_an_engineer.php

more interesting: http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100253

a slide deck on company cultures in prc:
http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/2007/J ... slides.pdf

I have to say GOI should have forced our larger cos (those with say > 10K people at any site)
to invest and use some of the govt rate land they got to build housing complexes for their
workers. instead the IT cos just kept demanding more and more land to build lowrise offices
(why cant they build 20 storey towers?) and trying to cut all extraneous costs to deliver the
high bottomlines meant to enrich their large shareholders and ESOP holders(i.e. themselves).

a typical huawei family living in such a township has all schools, daycare,medical needs, sports,
security and grocery in the township surely, while the INFY/Wipro person spends 3 hrs on the bus everyday scrambling to gain control of his or her life.

all other big employers in India who get land do build townships, it is only IT sector which
has grabbed the land but didnt provide anything else.

interestingly, I think Blr's First Family Patriarch had raised this point sometime back.

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 18:59

Singha wrote:semi-interesting: http://www.danwei.org/bbs/suicide_of_an_engineer.php

a interesting slide deck on company cultures in prc:
http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/2007/J ... slides.pdf

Interesting. There is something called as Huawei University in Shenzen where some of the trainings mentioned are provided. No such thing for SDREs. Induction etc are/were similar to that of Indian IT cos.

Other than the furore with the '37th', there was another problem in China last year. The CCP changed/announced some changes to certain labour laws and some companies, including Huawei tried to pre-empt the move by forcing many permanent employees to resign and rejoin with a new temporary contract. I don't recall what came of it though. They had tried to enforce it on all employees who had completed a tenure of 8 years or more.

http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/231046.htm
This wasn't applicable to the overseas employees though.

Singha wrote: ...
I have to say GOI should have forced our larger cos (those with say > 10K people at any site)
to invest and use some of the govt rate land they got to build housing complexes for their
workers. instead the IT cos just kept demanding more and more land to build lowrise offices
(why cant they build 20 storey towers?) and trying to cut all extraneous costs to deliver the
high bottomlines meant to enrich their large shareholders and ESOP holders(i.e. themselves).
....
..

all other big employers in India who get land do build townships, it is only IT sector which
has grabbed the land but didnt provide anything else.

interestingly, I think Blr's First Family Patriarch had raised this point sometime back.

Infy is halfway through the commissioning of its new 311 acre campus in Mangalore - may be someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall hearing/reading about any moves to put up aforementioned facilities there.

vina · Post by **vina** » 29 Jan 2009 19:14

Singha wrote:a slide deck on company cultures in prc:
http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/2007/J ... slides.pdf

Hilarious!

. I think it would be 'interesting' to work /visit china from "cultural interactions" wise. The Engrish stuff is absolutely cracks me up

I have to say GOI should have forced our larger cos (those with say > 10K people at any site)
to invest and use some of the govt rate land they got to build housing complexes for their
workers. instead the IT cos just kept demanding more and more land to build lowrise offices
(why cant they build 20 storey towers?) and trying to cut all extraneous costs to deliver the
high bottomlines meant to enrich their large shareholders and ESOP holders(i.e. themselves).

a typical huawei family living in such a township has all schools, daycare,medical needs, sports,
security and grocery in the township surely, while the INFY/Wipro person spends 3 hrs on the bus everyday scrambling to gain control of his or her life.

all other big employers in India who get land do build townships, it is only IT sector which
has grabbed the land but didnt provide anything else.

I lived in probably the best "company" town there is in India - Jamshedpur and it quickly gets boring and sterile. Not a good idea and a terrible way to spread prosperity around. You cross the boundaries of the city (while entering from the Govt - railway side or exiting through anyother side), it immediately transitions from 1st world to 4th world (atleast used to, dont know how it is now).

Plus the entire model is different. IT/Vity companies bootstrapped from being scrappy start ups to the global giants today and even they themselves didnt imagine that they would be where they are today 20 years ago. Their aims and everything else were very modest. Infy/TCS/Wipro all ran in rented /govt provided facilities for a long time and they are all urban based. It is impossible to buy land on a "city building scale" anywhere close by and anyways, they never imagined they would be the "city scale" size anyways.

The land taken up by the IT/Vity types is miniscule. For eg the entire Electronics city would be a small corner of even a medium sized steel plant .. Thank goodness for the IT/Vity guys not going for that model. Or else, you would be not a part of any city community or anything , but live in a sterile walled off environment and the govt , which anyways does nothing, would have totally washed it's hands off , while taxing you just as heavily all the same.

All this "city" gigantism is a classic Commie/ Planned economy kind of thing like the old soviet union and the PSU institutions that imitated them (in all steel cities, you had all the things infra things you talked about , financed by the company and just for the employees and a few token others). But what happens if that particular industry collapes , like what happened in much of USSR. You immediately get ghost towns with the entire economic base gutted.

Yeah, in Chipanda model, Hauwei wont be allowed to go down. But what if it really did because of of fundamentally new thing or unknown thing and no one needs Huawei product anymore and the new thing (even of Huawei gets into it) does need the same sort of resources in terms of manpower?

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 19:40

vina wrote:
Singha wrote:a slide deck on company cultures in prc:
http://www.uts.edu.au/new/speaks/2007/J ... slides.pdf
Hilarious! . I think it would be 'interesting' to work /visit china from "cultural interactions" wise. The Engrish stuff is absolutely cracks me up
...

Vina saar, it must be my lucky day that on the very first day that I re-started posting here, I am getting to interact with some of the heavy hitters that I have been only reading over the years.

We used to get more than enough of the 'Engrish' stuff and "Cultural Interactions" at work

. The finest moments came while trying to solve problems arising at commercial deployments - young low level trench warfare mujahids like me typed replies to queries with trembling fingers hoping that we weren't going to cause a system crash at the site since The Dragon always had people from the Middle Kingdom as part of the support teams on site. Communication was always an issue.

vina wrote: ...
...
Yeah, in Chipanda model, Hauwei wont be allowed to go down. But what if it really did because of of fundamentally new thing or unknown thing and no one needs Huawei product anymore and the new thing (even of Huawei gets into it) does need the same sort of resources in terms of manpower?

Ah, this has always intrigued me - claimed contract sales of US$ 23.3 billion last year, but an ownership structure that was and still remains incredibly opaque? The co. always claimed that the employees owned 100% of the shares, but I have never ever met/heard of an employee who had ESOPs. I do know that there are behemoths like Cargill and Koch that are still privately held, but at least they have a more culturally/ethnically diverse group of people in their management teams unlike Huawei where there is no sign of any non-Chinese in the upper layers of management. Will this be sustainable? Or do you think the CCP does not want outside 'interference' in one of its 'National Champions'?

Does any one of the Learned Maulanas of the forum have any thoughts on this?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 19:42

engrish is I think based mainly on japan. the slide creator stole a few items to better illustrate his points. there is a A rated section also.
http://adult.engrish.com/

manish · Post by **manish** » 29 Jan 2009 19:47

Singha wrote:engrish is I think based mainly on japan. the slide creator stole a few items to better illustrate his points.

No kidding. Here's a message that used to appear in one of the most popular commercially deployed products:

"finish installing.waiting please..............."

krishnan · Post by **krishnan** » 29 Jan 2009 19:58

Singha wrote:engrish is I think based mainly on japan. the slide creator stole a few items to better illustrate his points. there is a A rated section also.
http://adult.engrish.com/

http://www.engrish.com/wp-content/uploa ... n-room.jpg

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 20:10

univ succeeds in controlling live flying beetle with a backpack & electrodes
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 28/164717/

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 29 Jan 2009 21:50

this one is for Vina - "all your base are belong to us"

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=170983

seriously, the bescom bill of The Hive on ORR is said to be astonishing 70 lakhs/month
per a workplace resources guy who gave the penny tour on day1. they are trying to
curtail that to 35/month with all these tricks.

amirkhan and its wasteful shops/homes/offices does need it badly.

Yogi_G · Post by **Yogi_G** » 30 Jan 2009 06:53

pandyan wrote:how is the e-traffic monitored between hq and b'lore? do they have any restrictions around what can be emailed out of hq to b'lore or indian restrictions on what can go out? massa cmpy I know promptly sends a warning email any time one send an email to a person in dragon land...always wondered what the logic was....the warning should come before email is sent...

In my work place when you hit the send button in outlook you get the message "This message will be monitored and stored", for the first few times everyone had an uneasy feeling hitting the Ok button but now its just another message

Raghav K · Post by **Raghav K** » 30 Jan 2009 07:06

Singha wrote:univ succeeds in controlling live flying beetle with a backpack & electrodes
http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NE ... 28/164717/

This is the guy working on this project. He was formally at Michigan and now moved to Berkeley.
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/maharbiz/index.html

He has a very smart Japanese post-doc working on it.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Jan 2009 07:13

the exposure that BSE students get working in such groups of older more accomplished people
from an early stage is priceless.

Dileep · Post by **Dileep** » 30 Jan 2009 08:36

Hmm, IT Cos building housing? In Commie's own Kerala, that is strictly forbidden. The land shall be utilized only for IT related activities, so you can't legally build park benches there.

Satya_anveshi · Post by **Satya_anveshi** » 30 Jan 2009 08:53

I don't know how many of you are aware that integrated housing /workplace was a fashionable concept in almost all big name IT companies. INFY, WIP, Satyam, and several other companies including multinationals. Those plans were shared with employees and some even showed PPT of the plans (buildings literally). Some are still pursuing it I guess or could have changed their plans to merely working out corporate discounts with famous builders. Nothing new there.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Jan 2009 09:13

"mixed use" complexes, walkable neighbourhoods are concepts in new urbanist movement as well. the anti-Mcsuburbia if you will. our
gleaming industrial townships are good example except that the "plant" is a bit off for safety reasons.

anything will do, even noidaish sectors with wide roads anything but the disgrace we have now of gramathana and panchayat lands gradually taken over by BBMP as the city expands and the same old mud roads being paved over (11' wide onree) because hordes of people had already built homes and shops long before the "infra train" arrived on the platform.

infra has to come first, then people...here infra lags behind settlements by years causing this mess. BDA has been all talk and
no action in last decade .... after HSR have they managed to
open the vast number of new layouts the city needs.

even a fullup BDA layout like HSR didnt have electricity in many homes in early 1990s. my friend recalls no electricity for two years and they held dharna on sarjapura road to get bescom to lay the lines.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 30 Jan 2009 10:02

Ex Fannie Mae Worker charged with planting computer virus

A fired Fannie Mae contract employee allegedly placed a virus in the mortgage giant’s software that could have shut the company down for at least a week and caused millions of dollars in damage, prosecutors say.

Rajendrasinh Makwana, an Indian citizen, was indicted Tuesday on computer intrusion charges. The former Gaithersburg resident is out on $100,000 bail, court documents said.

Makwana was fired from his contract position at Fannie Mae on Oct. 24 for changing computer settings without permission from his supervisor, FBI agent Jessica Nye wrote in a sworn statement. He had worked at Fannie Mae for three years as a computer engineer at the Urbana offices, where he had full access to all of the federally created mortgage company’s 4,000 servers. Before leaving work Oct. 24, Makwana allegedly tried to hide a code in server software that was set to activate the morning of Jan. 31, the agent wrote.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 30 Jan 2009 13:34

nortel exits the wimax business to focus on LTE.

LTE (4G) seems to have gathered backing from the largest carriers
while Wimax is uh hum in small scale pilots.

is the battle is over and wimax lost ?
http://gigaom.com/2008/03/05/a-little-4 ... g-rivalry/

If WiMax is the hippie, grass-roots parents on Family Ties, LTE is closer to Alex P. Keaton. The players determining the LTE standard through the 3GPP are comprised of carriers and equipment vendors who have been buying and selling the same proprietary boxes for years. The open, standards-based way of doing business isnt exactly their modus operandi.

Fred Wright, an SVP that handles 4G networks for Motorola, believes LTE will be the standard chosen by 80 percent of the carriers in the world good news for vendors such as such as Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, who have opted to stick with LTE. Of course, as GSM is the dominant mobile standard today, such a prediction isnt all that surprising.

hshukla · Post by **hshukla** » 30 Jan 2009 14:42

Singha wrote:nortel exits the wimax business to focus on LTE.

LTE (4G) seems to have gathered backing from the largest carriers
while Wimax is uh hum in small scale pilots.

is the battle is over and wimax lost ?
http://gigaom.com/2008/03/05/a-little-4 ... g-rivalry/

If WiMax is the hippie, grass-roots parents on Family Ties, LTE is closer to Alex P. Keaton. The players determining the LTE standard through the 3GPP are comprised of carriers and equipment vendors who have been buying and selling the same proprietary boxes for years. The open, standards-based way of doing business isnt exactly their modus operandi.

Fred Wright, an SVP that handles 4G networks for Motorola, believes LTE will be the standard chosen by 80 percent of the carriers in the world good news for vendors such as such as Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, who have opted to stick with LTE. Of course, as GSM is the dominant mobile standard today, such a prediction isnt all that surprising.

Nortel exited Wimax arround 3 months back [thats quite a long time for such technologies]. Besides given the state of Nortel which technology they support is a non-issue.
Many big guys are supporting LTE since LTE uses lots of patents which overlap with GSM patents and its not easy for startups to beat these lazy gorillaz. Wimax being an open ended technology with its patent pooling infra provides for startups to gain leverage and beat these big guys with their single minded focus. ZTE/Huawei will be the ones on the BS side giving competition to Ericcson/Mot etc....does anyone know of a startup in LTE domain?

SRoy · Post by **SRoy** » 30 Jan 2009 22:50

Singha wrote: the herds are being culled on the serengeti.

the small fleet of foot like springbok or thomsons gazelle which are alert, live on less resources and change direction on a dime are going to survive - on a diet. -- (selected startups, small cos but
with wide pools of knowledge)

the elephants/camels with their ageless wisdom, intimidation and stores of energy might make it - after losing weight. (csco,hp,ibm,emc,msft,oracle,adobe,intel)

survivors with unmatched adaptation and metabolic control like tortoises will live on as usual - impervious to the rise and fall of empire.
(desi/chini cos who will cost cut to the bone and then some)

those populating some toxic swamps and bad of teeth and temper + adaptable like crocodiles will live as they have 200 mil years.
(nikon, amat, canon, kla tencor, perkins elmer,tsmc,usmc etc)

a few bear species who learn how to hibernate in summer or lizards who dig deeper in the mud until the rains arrive will live

bushmen of the kalahari and namib desert will again be impervious to
rise and fall of rome. their needs are few and habits frugal.
(govt employees)

scavengers who can burrow into the carcass of fallen beasts and lick the flesh and bone to derive water and nutrition until better times will make it - jackals, foxes, hyena, vultures (lawyers, restructuring cos, bankruptcy holding cos,lobbyists)

"alternatives" who the forest supports as a "strategic check" on the
depredations of the elephants - juniper, AMD, F5

those who are cousins of the forest king will find enough to stay alive (EDS, CA, CSC, accenture...)

however those with high food needs (cat family predators), large
herbivores, reptiles and non-migratory birds are on a short timeline here.

Spot on.

the elephants/camels with their ageless wisdom, intimidation and stores of energy might make it - after losing weight. (csco,hp,ibm,emc,msft,oracle,adobe,intel)

Seeing this in effect...

Just had the closure of annual appraisal. All due promotions awarded. Hikes in "good double digits". Got the 100% of performance/variable pay. My project is closing on with target + 60 % EBIT. 3 year AMC half way through.

CEO's presentation indicates we will meet extended targets well in time.

>>

Must add though that
- The middle management layer was ruthlessly slashed for last two years.
- A call was taken to get ourselves rated at CMMi Level 3 capable and along with that numerous QA process Nazis with obscene pay were thrown out.
- A developer staying late meant his /her manager was answerable the next day. Saved on taxi and dinner bills. On small projects they made the loss or profit difference.
- Travel budget slashed. High flying sales chaps were refused travel without approved and budgeted business plans
- "Pricey" IT vendors shown the door.
- All project manager given revnue targets, small low risk projects within acceptable profit margins are picked up to maintain billable head counts.
- Pre-sales has been given targets for RFP turnarounds.
- Loss making (anything running below -5%) projects are closed left and right, after fulfilling exit clauses.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 31 Jan 2009 01:04

MphasiS serves pink slips to 200 at Bangalore centre.

Jayram · Post by **Jayram** » 01 Feb 2009 12:58

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/0 ... fforecast/
An article predicting the end of IT in the West due to google provided software as a service on the front end and India provided back end operations on the other. Throw in overpaid IT staff who excel in break fix type of work instead of true innovation in a depession like economy and you get the end of the IT dept as per this author.
Who knows ... may even come true

Just about every major company funds a junkyard of application systems and technologies attached to them. Few have had the incentive to fix this, much to the consternation of corporate IT departments. Remember the IT cost justification for that ERP system - all those systems that it would replace, but somehow never did. And recognize the fact that this residue of junkyard legacy counts for a big part of the IT budget, and generates lots of operational inefficiency.

This part I know is bang on having lived thu it believe it or not the past 3 years at my company except . We did it much before the current downturn as a major house cleaning operation due to new mgmt. So major that my company is going to market with its own example as a business case. This operation resulted in IT strength reducing by more that 50% and the number of datacenters worldwide came down from > 200 to just 3 all of them in the US (and no complaints about network latency either!)
The authors conclusions may be a little extreme but he does provide an explanation of underlying forces present today that will become more excaberated as the economy keeps getting more and more screwed...

--Jayram

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Feb 2009 14:24

used to the case when IT admins & support (desktop and datacenter) used to be very secure jobs. both the R&D and the "suits" needed them to keep things up.

now with SaaS delivered over a simple fat pipe from a third party managed datacenter....

bart · Post by **bart** » 01 Feb 2009 17:29

What is happening with SAAS is nothing but certain infrastructure becoming a commodity, mixed with consolidation that can now be done with cheaper bandwidth and more powerful processors that area also energy efficient enough to be run in high density. This is nothing new, it has been happening for decades.

In the early 90s managing PC hardware, assembling, fixing cards etc was a big business and considered critical. Now hardly anyone repairs PC hardware and most companies buy branded PCs. This means there are less number of PC techs needed but they basically move up the value chain to other things. Around the time PCs became commodity, e-mail/Lotus Notes/Exchange etc became the next big thing and people went on to focus on that. Now that e-mail is becoming a standardized commodity there are other areas of focus that will open up.

Unless you are a 100% sales/marketing type organization or a very small company, a google/salesforce type SAAS can typically meet just 10% of your application needs, most else is either too customized or too secure to be outsourced to a SAAS provider. E-mail/webex/live communications/IM/VoIP/Shared project management dashboards etc work as a SAAS as they are very standardized and can be comoditized, plus the ROI has now become cheaper with hosted SAAS as opposed to in-house. Even for that, expect large corporations to have a hybrid setup where the lowly footsoldiers are expected to be happy with web based SAAS services while critical divisions, management etc get inhouse dedicated services.

Once companies deploy SAAS, somebody still has to manage the pipe that is required for SAAS ensure the uptime, extra demands of redundancy, compiance, integration of the SAAS authentication with inhouse directory/authentication servers, account management, security etc, that will still require inhouse staff. So the IT department will not go away, its just that its focus shifts.

BTW, even better than Google apps is an Indian company called zoho.com, based out of Chennai. Its free for individuals and up to 10 business users, check them out.

SAAS does present a serious threat to open source or 'free' software, ironic since most SAAS is based on open source building blocks.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Feb 2009 18:41

I got a mail from recruitment firm which claims open reqs in following:
HP Bangalore, Microsoft Hyderabad, Juniper Bangalore, Huawei Bangalore and Emerson Hyderabad, Matisse Networks Hyderabad

Muppalla · Post by **Muppalla** » 01 Feb 2009 18:55

SaaS or it's structured version called as Cloud Computing is the next thing to happen in IT. Huge investments are being made by Microsoft, Google and IBM etc. This seems to be promising for the future and I bet most of the changes and operations will be milked by Indian companies. This is the new innovation at a nacent stage and is the derivative of the virtualization technology.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 01 Feb 2009 23:52

some cos like Desktone are offering virtual desktops as DaaS hooking into the centralized SaaS/Cloud model. quite promising for enterprise segment imo. the ubiquitous "vnc" us rats use from windows pc to setup persistent desktops on back end unix machines is also a crude form of virtual desktop...though the real
thing will run on a thin client and not a fat pc.

VinodTK · Post by **VinodTK** » 02 Feb 2009 00:43

From: Telegraph.co.uk

India to launch £7 laptop for poor

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 02 Feb 2009 17:28

ceo is flying in on feb12 to announce Q3 gorilla results from ORR. hopefully it wont be to announce cutbacks on the side.

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 02 Feb 2009 18:41

Excerpts from this latest Indian revolution.Congrats to all concerned with it!

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/b ... 639463.ece

India set to follow cheap car with £7 laptop

The government-developed computer prototype will assist in bridging the 'digital divide' between rich and poorRhys Blakely in Mumbai
India is poised to unveil the ultimate in credit-crunch computing: a 500 rupee (£7) laptop.

A government-developed prototype, due to be shown for the first time tomorrow, will mark the most ambitious attempt yet to bring computers to the developing world and to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor.

It is also the latest example of ultra-cheap engineering to emerge from the sub-continent. India has already given the world a 100,000 rupee (£1,420) car, the Tata Nano, and a super-basic £10 phone — goods that are now expected to find favour among relatively affluent Westerners as the global economic downturn bites

An Indian government official confirmed that the 500 rupee laptop plans will be announced tomorrow but refused to give further details.

Officials had previously said that the cost of the machine was currently working out at about £14 each, but would come down if the product was mass produced.

Plans to cut the price to the bone appear to hinge on the use of domestic technology. The laptop is the result of cooperation between several of India's elite technology institutions, including the Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Semiconductor Laboratory, a part of India's Space Department.

SwamyG · Post by **SwamyG** » 03 Feb 2009 02:18

Atanu Dey on the Indian $10: http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/02/01/the-indian-10-laptop/

In some quarters it is already being questioned as a souped-up calculator. It is not going to have any hard disk. 2GB memory and internet connectivity.

Hopefully, they pull this off cleanly without any giant government subsidy.