Indian IT Industry

sum · Post by **sum** » 05 Mar 2009 10:12

Also their PE investor (KKR if I am right?) aint going to exit with fat returns anytime soon. That is the positive, they will continue to hold it and nurse it, or they will have to take huge immediate losses.

That's the only hope....

sarulan · Post by **sarulan** » 05 Mar 2009 11:17

negi wrote:Apologies for my ignorance but are you folks talking about the company based out of land of 'cowboys' and 'Chainsaw massacre' fame ?

I think they are talking about this and its progeny http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy0SrWpfFmA

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 12:25

a good case of disruptive tech that creates too many cost and opex issues for the incumbents.

a csco acquisition was navini who had some product and were running pilot trails between a tower on MG road and Jayanagar.
they continue to be in that office ...

markos · Post by **markos** » 05 Mar 2009 12:28

http://stormdetector.com/essays/IndiaOf ... ilures.pdf

MORE COMPANIES MAY BE USING INDIAN OUTSOURCERS, but they aren’t as happy as
they used to be with their relationships and are actually looking to decrease their spending on
India-based IT services in 2009, according to the results of an InformationWeek Analytics survey
of 628 business technology professionals, 55% of whom have contracted work with
Indian-based IT services companies

DECLINING ENGAGEMENTS
The survey found that 39% plan to decrease their involvement with India this year. On the flip
side, 30% say they’ll do more work with Indian outsourcers. That’s a reversal of last year’s
results, when only 26% of respondents said they’d be decreasing their work with Indian IT
outsourcers, and 43% expected to increase that work volume

Many of the issues that I had highlighted here earlier regarding Indian IT offshorers are echoed in this article(lack of quality when it comes to resources and deliverables, not meeting requirements etc.)

Sachin · Post by **Sachin** » 05 Mar 2009 12:50

markos wrote:Many of the issues that I had highlighted here earlier regarding Indian IT offshorers are echoed in this article(lack of quality when it comes to resources and deliverables, not meeting requirements etc.)

Many of the findings in this report (especially value-adding, incorrect technical skills) seems to be true

.

vina · Post by **vina** » 05 Mar 2009 12:55

Singha wrote:a good case of disruptive tech that creates too many cost and opex issues for the incumbents.

a csco acquisition was navini who had some product and were running pilot trails between a tower on MG road and Jayanagar.
they continue to be in that office ...

Yup Singhaji. WiMax is a perfect case of a "disruptive tech that creates too many cost and opex issues for the incumbents". So if that is the case, why sell it to the incumbents?.

Sell it to the 'el Cheapo Yindoos, africans and other skinflint chislin' misers who don't want to pay the giga bucks for the LTE kind of garbage the incumbents want to dump on the "developed" world and rip them off.

Go to the Airtels of the world and promise them dramatically lowered costs today. Go to the Govermund and tell them about BSNL's "social responsibilities" , tell them you will do most of the WiMax thingy in India if they specify that as a "standard" (like the Oieropeans did with GSM) and then get big roll outs to hundreds of millions of customers. That way, you have huge economies of scale , giving you lower price points, and use that to take it to the global markets, and fight against LTE or whatever and threaten the 'incumbents' that if they dont use this, they will give it to folks who are waiting outside to raid the incumbents!.

Team up with Intel too. The WiMax failed because it was an "Intel" baby and when intel quit wireless, WiMax got orphaned. Now WiFI took off, because, intel put that in it's Centrino chipsets. Intel sold it's chips for notebooks, CSCO cleaned up the access point and networking space.

Similar thing is possible with WiMax. Intel should go with a "Notebook" based strategy /software phone based convergence solution that threatens to remove the office Lan and phone network and put that on a WiMax network. Intel sells more chips for computers and CSCO gets access points and backbone !.

Intel tried fighting on handsets and other devices. That was the mistake in my opinion. Replacing office Lan and phone network should have been the target. There is no "rip" in that "rip and replace" strategy. With a WiMax laptop, all the legacy phone and LAN can be switched off with minimal fuss and transitioned in next to no time.

Get the corporate network in , and then start selling hand phones that work with the WiMax "locally" and also with subscriber networks. Over time, I will bet that you can win over general communications side, esp the equivalent of blackberry kind of use (the high value corporate use)over time.

Just my thoughts etc..

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Mar 2009 12:59

WiMax is getting scuttled by all the hippos.....motor oil company laid off its wimax folks way back last year. They came out with a new phone recently....have now earnestly started copying rubber boot manufacturer in phone design. Even 2 years back I recall their CEO said publicly they should try copying techniques from rubber boot manufacturer in order to penetrate Indian market better.

Vina, what you mention in last para exists....but hw is fugly.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 13:01

thats true of any large outsourcing contract even within Massa. you think the defence contractors are the model of efficiency? a guy from mitre & raytheon who later shifted to civilian side used to work across the aisle. regaled me at lunch with wild stories of what they did...like someone running a hardware parts business using co lab infra, one guy running a taxi business from work, one jarnail being demoed a panel with blinking lights controlled by sw because the "rest of feature" was unready for demo.

and I think EDS wasnt it who screwed up a massive contract for the IRS?

http://thehill.com/op-eds/from-gulf-coa ... 03-05.html

TFTA > SDRE posturing. Massa is down in the gutter with the rest of us. the "white shoe" goldman sachs level "transparency, accountability, integrity" crap stands exposed for the dung it is.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 13:04

didnt UTstarcom peddle some cheap "PAS" phone in PRC that worked in the way vina talks of. supposedly so cheap even rickshaw pullers had them.

and they issued it to staff to use as a local cell within the office building in NJ. I have/had a lot of spies in utsi to the extent it was tough to manage all the flows of info and get a full pic.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 05 Mar 2009 13:05

Massa defence firms are notorious for paki-level tactics. The blinking lights is a partial urban myth. Its just that some of the inputs were ahem...'simulated'.

Relative works in that industry....people even run realtor businesses from office....one fellow actually owns a dozen homes and 2 office bldgs! Since in these cos, every hr. worked by employee is charged to GOTUS....that partly explains the huge cost overruns!

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 13:15

well they have long periods where there is no work and then some where there is lot of work. very interesting and "practical" work and their lab tech, jugaad and debugging skills are unparalleled.

its in these off periods where people get "entrepreneurial"...idle mind needs something to do.

many tales of bosses 'interacting' with secys bent over the armchair
with their skirts down...(cant post such here)

MA is a big hub - draper labs, mitre, hanscom afb r&d unit, lincoln lab,
raytheon , lockheed martin, sanders (now LM?) in nashua...

a lot of old vets came out of there in the late 1980s meltdown and seeded
the civilian side of things like places like bay networks, csco , bbn, dec etc...

it seems the JSTARS from mitre labs was in a prototype stage during ODS1. there was some kind of all-hands 24x7 thing and "cables being strung down the hallways" to put together a support center as the system flew live over the gulf.

overall, highly jingoistic and fun guys to hang with. people who make
potato cannons or blow things up to see what happens...I like that!

vina · Post by **vina** » 05 Mar 2009 13:51

Raja Bose wrote:Vina, what you mention in last para exists....but hw is fugly.

Hakim Saab, a layman question, might be extremely dumb, pls excuse.

But does the HW have to be so fugly? . For instance, when I was living in the bay area in the late 90s, I decided that I needed internet access at home and so I drove down to Fry's Electronics and bought a modem for my ISA expansion slot on my PC for $20 (US Robotics Modem). I was shocked. I thought the modem would be $100+ minimum (I later discovered that when I needed internet access via dialup on Linux, I had to go and buy the $80 modem).

The story was, it is far easier and cheaper to distribute sofware on floppies/CDS (marginal cost like 10 cents or so, the cost of the CD + cost of burning it , once you have developed the software), rather than mount chips on a board!. So why not do something similar for those multi protocol / maha complex phones ?. Just keep the basic antenna and probably a couple of "radio /analog" basic stuff in hardware and do all the rest in software , with a general processor. Highly scalable in terms of building out future functions, very little marginal cost , you dont need to invest in new hardware for all new features you add in future, just do a Mickey Soft like Paki release of new software and tag it as "all new" .

Also, wasn't Vanu Bose, the son of Amar Bose (of Bose Audio fame) have a software defined radio kind of start up which was much ballyhooed and even got into conflicts with his Alma Mater - MIT on the patents/ licensing part and also made it to NY Times as an leader article?.

Cant a software radio kind of thing handle all the multiprotocol and function explosion kind of thing more easily ?

Dileep · Post by **Dileep** » 05 Mar 2009 15:21

Vina, a 100GHz D<>A converter with a suitable backend processor can do ANY radio application. That would first go into VLPI radars. At some point of time, that is going to become mainstream.

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 05 Mar 2009 15:23

Cant a software radio kind of thing handle all the multiprotocol and function explosion kind of thing more easily ?

There is already a company that is doing just such a thing. But it is for base stations, I forget the name of the company, but recall reading about it. It could have been http://www.vanu.com, but there are other players as well. Its far easier doing this software bit on the BTS side of things where power consumption and processing is not an issue. On the handset side, no one has done it yet, but I think that would be the next wave. The current Atom and Arm processors are not up to it, but 2-3 years down the line when they scale up to multiple cores, it could be done. That, with advances in battery technology...

Who knows we would have a multi protocol software handset as a service: when you want to go to another country with a different standard, you just download an update pack that you install on the phone and you are up and running. It could even be just valid for 5-7 days depending on your stay. But I dont think we are there yet, we need better processors since DSP thingy in software is resource intensive and also power hungry.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 16:04

well dont forget the desktop IP phone, which uses dhcp to get a IP addr, then contacts the configured call manager server to download its firmware and profile. its screen is very customizable as are the buttons - like the MFD on aircraft..you can call up tabs and pages.

ideal for offices...gorilla and a lot of others no longer have voice phone
ports in the cubes or voice PBXs.

Avaya is a player too.

potentially with that nice colour screen and buttons you could push down
little games or slideshows of supermodels to keep the troops pacified.

vina · Post by **vina** » 05 Mar 2009 16:07

Thanks Dileep & Tanaji.

I have a cousin (a smart IIT B.Tech cookie) who was designing A/D converters in So Cal and then worked for Motor Oil Company designing wireless chips before doing Pee Yecch Dee (and now an Ass Prof at a school where one of BR mod's kids goes/went to School .said mod, pls maintain radio silence). I will ping him and ask him the same question as well.

Tanaji, another question. If I remember what the EE geeks in college used to say and what my cousin said, a DSP is just a processor optimized to do the math calculations for the signal processing very fast,right. So how is it protocol dependent?. Cant you interleave/timeshare a DSP ,just like you make a general processor timeshare and run many programs simultaneously, to process multiple protocols? If you can, no power issues and doing compute intensive tasks via software on a generic processor?.

vina · Post by **vina** » 05 Mar 2009 16:12

Singha wrote:well dont forget the desktop IP phone, which uses dhcp to get a IP addr, then contacts the configured call manager server to download its firmware and profile. its screen is very customizable as are the buttons - like the MFD on aircraft..you can call up tabs and pages.

ideal for offices...gorilla and a lot of others no longer have voice phone
ports in the cubes or voice PBXs.

Yeah, I know. I have the Gorilla phone at my desk. Have seen Nortel phones as well. Gorilla's is more user friendly and nicer. But that can be easily replaced by a wireless WiMax phone of small form factor , that you can seamlessly use outside office as well! .

Gorilla's Telepresence rocks. It is in a room very close to my cabin.

potentially with that nice colour screen and buttons you could push down
little games or slideshows of supermodels to keep the troops pacified.

Ah, a great to have feature. But unfortunately ,the current Gorilla model doesnt have it . Well, you know what to put in the PRD for the next model

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 16:23

I keep trying...

...being user-friendly is part of the goal.

sum · Post by **sum** » 05 Mar 2009 16:27

Which is the motor oil co?

vina · Post by **vina** » 05 Mar 2009 16:28

Sum, of all the people you ?

Who is your daddy ?

Tanaji · Post by **Tanaji** » 05 Mar 2009 16:55

vina wrote:e. its screen is very customizable as are the buttons - like the MFD on aircraft..you can call up tabs and pages.

Actually VoIP phones are already software only. Case in point is the LG Tanjay VoIP phone. It is essentially MS Office communicator in a phone form factor. Everything is touch screen, in fact the phone does not have buttons at all. Looks very very nice.

The Wimax handset again, is already there. Not WiMax, but our regular 802.1b/g interface. It talks to an AP, and from the switch perspective is just another IP phone.

VoIP software phones are the future and I think the big M Microsoft is going to cash in on PBX market very quickly. Their OCS is improving rapidly, and the integration they have is quite good: presence is across all MS applications, including MS Office and they have APIs for third party applications as well. At the moment it lacks certain critical features, but you can bet as time goes on they will eat Cisco's and Avaya's lunch. Nortel has already tied up with them, they integrate well with them, but the writing is on the wall.

On you other question Vina, you are right DSP is just a processor optimised for match calculations such as fast fourier transforms. I am not at all conversant with current phone hardware, but I suspect they would have specific DSPs optimised for the protocol they are running. To be a "true" software phone where you can plug and play with various protocols, the role of DSPs would be done in software, or at the very least, the DSP doing minimal crunching. Which means more workload for the CPU, and hence my comment about needing more powerful multi core processors on the handset.

Dileep · Post by **Dileep** » 05 Mar 2009 17:44

Vina, it all depends upon where you want to do the processing.

SDRE method:

RF comes in.Gets downconverted into a lower frequency. A detector isolates the baseband information signal. An A/D converter converts it into a bit stream. A processor does the processing. That is simple. But the analog side is protocol dependent and not flexible.

TFTA method:

RF comes in. It gets digitized by a TFTA A/D converter. It is decoded by the TFTA DSP into a bit stream. A processor processes it. No analog! So, protocol independent. Just load new software, and you can switch from GSM to CDMA to PMGA to SMMA by a simple software load.

But... You need real TFTA stuff to pull it off. A digital system if orders of magnitude complex than an analog system that does the same job.

negi · Post by **negi** » 05 Mar 2009 19:02

markos wrote: Many of the issues that I had highlighted here earlier regarding Indian IT offshorers are echoed in this article(lack of quality when it comes to resources and deliverables, not meeting requirements etc.)

While people might accuse me of being defensive.. but when it comes to IT I do not understand Indian IT offshorers, in past couple of years likes of IBM, Accenture ,CG ,PWC have been on a recruiting spree in India , majority of their development is done in India so from that pov they are as Indian as Infy and Co.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 21:14

*sigh* another facility in MA closed. Ciena (wavesmith unit)
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=173094

wavesmith were one of few hiring during 2001 bust -- with the
caveat of saying upfront 7 days a week, 80 hrs.

Ciena has a center in gurgaon. were hiring strongly last couple
of years.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 05 Mar 2009 21:21

Vivek Kundra appointed as Obama's CIO.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 05 Mar 2009 21:26

this came in my mailbox today

At Present, We have immediate openings Ciena Gurgaon.

1)TITLE: Senior Engineer

2) TITLE: Module Lead (SVT)

3 )TITLE: Principal Engineer (SVT)

4) TITLE: Senior Engineer SVT

5)TITLE: Manager P&T (SVT)

negi · Post by **negi** » 05 Mar 2009 21:34

GD last I heard Ciena had delegated their existing product operations to Gurgaon center and were supposed to embark on a new product .I believe they were planning to move over from purely OPTICAL backbone NW solutions to Ethernet over SONET stuff.

Kakkaji · Post by **Kakkaji** » 06 Mar 2009 03:07

There is a silver lining in the dark economic clouds for some Indian IT personnel:

Demand down for foreign worker visas

"If you apply for an H-1B this year, there's close to a 100% chance that you'll get it," Udani says.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Mar 2009 03:17

vina wrote: But does the HW have to be so fugly? .
The story was, it is far easier and cheaper to distribute sofware on floppies/CDS (marginal cost like 10 cents or so, the cost of the CD + cost of burning it , once you have developed the software), rather than mount chips on a board!. So why not do something similar for those multi protocol / maha complex phones ?. Just keep the basic antenna and probably a couple of "radio /analog" basic stuff in hardware and do all the rest in software , with a general processor. Highly scalable in terms of building out future functions, very little marginal cost , you dont need to invest in new hardware for all new features you add in future, just do a Mickey Soft like Paki release of new software and tag it as "all new" .
Cant a software radio kind of thing handle all the multiprotocol and function explosion kind of thing more easily ?

vina saar,

Being a pure software/firmware abdul I had the same question initially. The fact is that based on current hw/sw capabilities, we are looking at a tradeoff between performance (hw based solution) vs. customizability (sw based solution). The pure hw based solutions are usually streamlined, tailored and optimized for a specific function but that is the only thing they do....you cannot change them without sacrificing a few goats. The pure sw based solutions provide flexibility, customization and all the fun stuff but in order to enable that you have to add some abstraction layer/framework between hw and sw...more layers...more overhead...more cycles...lower performance in general. Let me give you 2 examples from current practices: If you open up most smart phones in the market you will find that they are essentially two separate pieces of hardware - the cellphone and the hw which runs your fun stuff such as email, youtube, browser etc. The design philosophy being that cellphone performance has priority over general app performance. Both of them don't talk to each other at API level and any interaction is low-level. Same thing with iDEN phones from Motor Oil Company....the reason they resembled Jayalalitha amma in form factor and size was becoz they had 2 different hw pieces - one of which was a cellphone and the other was the PTT(push-to-talk). That was the reason they were able to hold Qcom and Qchat at bay for years becoz having pure hw solution for PTT and that too separate from the cellphone allowed blazing fast connect times of the order of millisecs while Qchat could at best do 1-2 secs. Only last 2 years or so Qcom caught up and halaled entire div of Motor Oil Co. (which then shifted to WiMax and then got final sendoff to jannat last year).

The problem is the above philosophy (mainly driven by EEs who look disdainfully look upon all sw as piles of useless processes/dung) puts paid to any effort towards dynamic reconfigurability and interoperability, so one ended up with all this fugly hw mess. So the way forward is something in between with generic capability requirements getting hw implemented as different modules with software layer on top deciding on the composition (think of it as logical glue binding the physical). We are moving towards some convergence of generic hw capability requirements as mobiles start vying for high-end entertainment, such as GPU with hw OpenGL ES support (currently most are sw implementations with lower performance), kick-ass Audio processor, HD capability etc.

DSP cores are already integrated with generic processor cores under one hood....for example Chainsaw massacre instrumentation which provides the OMAP. As we are moving towards multi-core and programmable GPU/DSPs and what-nots, we will see more customizable software based solutions which will enable multiple fun stuff to run on generic hardware where the hardware is agnostic of specific protocols etc. One particular interesting advance I see is the use of GPUs as on-demand generic processors providing extra cores as and when required.

Since you mentioned it, SW defined radio and associated research is a hot topic in many places including rubber gumboot/wood pulp manufacturing company and chipzilla to name some.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 06 Mar 2009 03:20

Kakkaji wrote:There is a silver lining in the dark economic clouds for some Indian IT personnel:

Demand down for foreign worker visas

"If you apply for an H-1B this year, there's close to a 100% chance that you'll get it," Udani says.

I had same perception...which definitely helps abduls/ayeshas who got their advanced degree from massa madrassas. In fact, praying above happens for my GHQ's sake...I escaped with O-1 leaving her stranded in the H1B puddle like true ghazi

.

hshukla · Post by **hshukla** » 06 Mar 2009 13:55

vina wrote:
Singha wrote:a good case of disruptive tech that creates too many cost and opex issues for the incumbents.

a csco acquisition was navini who had some product and were running pilot trails between a tower on MG road and Jayanagar.
they continue to be in that office ...
Yup Singhaji. WiMax is a perfect case of a "disruptive tech that creates too many cost and opex issues for the incumbents". So if that is the case, why sell it to the incumbents?.

Sell it to the 'el Cheapo Yindoos, africans and other skinflint chislin' misers who don't want to pay the giga bucks for the LTE kind of garbage the incumbents want to dump on the "developed" world and rip them off.

Govmt of India not releasing spectrum....Wimax needs atleast 30Mhz for good performance but rumours are that at best GoI will release just 20Mhz....however this is also enough to get around 20Mbps downlink ..dedicated.

Go to the Airtels of the world and promise them dramatically lowered costs today. Go to the Govermund and tell them about BSNL's "social responsibilities" , tell them you will do most of the WiMax thingy in India if they specify that as a "standard" (like the Oieropeans did with GSM) and then get big roll outs to hundreds of millions of customers.

BSNL has some 20Mhz spectrum and they are launching it in Gujarat...things have started rolling.

That way, you have huge economies of scale , giving you lower price points, and use that to take it to the global markets, and fight against LTE or whatever and threaten the 'incumbents' that if they dont use this, they will give it to folks who are waiting outside to raid the incumbents!.

Team up with Intel too. The WiMax failed because it was an "Intel" baby and when intel quit wireless, WiMax got orphaned. Now WiFI took off, because, intel put that in it's Centrino chipsets. Intel sold it's chips for notebooks, CSCO cleaned up the access point and networking space.

Similar thing is possible with WiMax. Intel should go with a "Notebook" based strategy /software phone based convergence solution that threatens to remove the office Lan and phone network and put that on a WiMax network. Intel sells more chips for computers and CSCO gets access points and backbone !.

Intel tried fighting on handsets and other devices. That was the mistake in my opinion. Replacing office Lan and phone network should have been the target. There is no "rip" in that "rip and replace" strategy. With a WiMax laptop, all the legacy phone and LAN can be switched off with minimal fuss and transitioned in next to no time.

Intel,Asus and AMD have already/about to launch laptops/netbook with Wimax inbuilt.
You will be getting some phones also with Wimax enabled...Nokia launched it but rolled back since they got converted to the dark side by the recession....doesnt make much sense investing in a technology in which a newbie could beat the s#$% out of you...better to be in the safe haven of tried and trusted business model. Well only time will tell.

Get the corporate network in , and then start selling hand phones that work with the WiMax "locally" and also with subscriber networks. Over time, I will bet that you can win over general communications side, esp the equivalent of blackberry kind of use (the high value corporate use)over time.

Just my thoughts etc..

Vina saar as I have seen over my days in BR...you are rarely off the mark in your analysis...but will insist that all is not yet lost for Wimax.
Singha saar Telsima was struggling big time in Wimax...didnt get entry into any of the big markets of US[Sprint/Clearwire] neither in Japan[KDDI/UQ] and nor with small market players like Alvarion/ALU. I have heard that they were sold 2X their annual revenues.

Tatas and Reliance fellows have been selling some wireless sh$% branding it as Wimax but they have miniscule bandwidth right now[which they saved from earlier allocations] and using 802.16d standard[2004 standard for Wimax which doesnt support even mobility]...hoping for GoI to release new Spectrum for Wimax and the real games will begin then

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 06 Mar 2009 20:38

IT majors sign new deals at a discount.

Top Indian tech firms such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and HCL are signing new outsourcing contracts at 15-20% lower billing rates than last Nine trends for IT in 2009 year, as customers including BT, Bank of America and Citibank renegotiate existing contracts and award new projects at much lower rates.

Over the past two quarters, customers such as Visa, Best Buy, Applied Materials, Nissan, Citibank and Bank of America have been in discussions with India-based service providers, asking them to help these companies cope with lower information technology budgets.

“The biggest fall has happened for high-end services such as consulting, from over $60 per hour earlier to around $40-45 on an average,” said Sabyasachi S Sathyaparasad of Mindplex Consulting, an outsourcing advisory firm. “The rates could fall by up to 20% in the coming few months, but should get stabilised after that,” he added.

Outsourcing customers are using the downturn as an opportunity to question high margins of Indian service providers. Top five Indian software companies renegotiated almost $1.5 billion worth of outsourcing contracts since September last year at around 15% lower rates.

“Some customers are asking us to let go on our high margins and take offshore projects for as low as $15-20 hourly billing rates,” said an official of an India-based offshore provider.

sum · Post by **sum** » 07 Mar 2009 11:27

TCS to start the axing

BANGALORE: Employees working in the country’s largest software services firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) have the spectre of retrenchment looming large over them.

An internal communication, posted on its secure website, confirmed their worst fears: as part of “across-the-board optimisation” the management would lay off workers, increase working hours and continue to defer promotions.

The e-mail warns that there will be “some involuntary attrition,” a software industry euphemism for plain layoff. This unusual phrase ominously comes at the end of a rather long list of cost-cutting measures.

Sources in the company told The Hindu that rumours were afloat of “right-sizing”, cutting bench ranks — those not employed on projects — and laying off at least 5,000 of its 1,30,000 strong workforce. A mid-level executive says that with several development projects being deferred, number of “non-billable” staff had increased. “As for existing projects, with an increase in work hours they are likely to look at further trimming the teams. Hundreds in the middle ranks stand to lose their jobs,” he explained. However, official sources refuse to term it as “layoff” and peg this number around 1,300.

The e-mail also announces that deferment of promotions (already enforced in the last financial year) will be extended for now. It also declared complete freeze in lateral recruiting and offshore-movement. Last week, TCS reportedly fired employees in its U.K. office. “There will be off-shore movement of people who are currently located on-site,” it states.

Ameet · Post by **Ameet** » 07 Mar 2009 12:01

IBM reportedly interested in in buying Satyam

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ibd/20090307 ... 0306tech01

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Mar 2009 12:40

most of the services cos are reducing the variable pay or imposing paycuts for those on bench. in extreme cases people on bench are given some limited time to find internal work or take severance pkgs.

if the big, cash rich cos are suffering, the status of the small IT cos in all corners of the land must not be good because often they get subcontracts
from the big guys and do not have direct major clients.

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Mar 2009 12:45

Hersh wrote: Vina saar as I have seen over my days in BR...you are rarely off the mark in your analysis...but will insist that all is not yet lost for Wimax.

I dont like to shower needless praise on someone (being a true paki in that matter) but I have seen vina hit the nail on the head so many times even on new tech developments that sometimes I have the sneakiest suspicion that somehow he is able to look through my screen at some of the stuff I am working on and having lying around my desk, while I surf B-R in my office!

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 07 Mar 2009 12:48

Singha wrote:in extreme cases people on bench are given some limited time to find internal work or take severance pkgs.

This according to some unhappy mujahids is the most admired company's way! Can some jingo from interior ministry confirm?

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Mar 2009 13:27

Vina is probably a product manager in a tech co in ORR but pretends modestly to be a much hunted old YemBeeYea for his own JTF/Inver Brass reasons.

his intimate knowledge of the gorilla's cracks and corners is disconcerting

to the extent I secretly wonder if he and I shelter under the same roof

vina · Post by **vina** » 07 Mar 2009 18:34

Singha wrote:Vina is probably a product manager in a tech co in ORR but pretends modestly to be a much hunted old YemBeeYea for his own JTF/Inver Brass reasons.

his intimate knowledge of the gorilla's cracks and corners is disconcerting to the extent I secretly wonder if he and I shelter under the same roof

Singhaji, Hakim Bose Saab,

Moi poor karporate strategy type onree, who does crystal ball gazing and arm chair jarnailing as a "rear admirar" onree. No front line phything Mujahid like Product Manager /Line Manager/Yingineer / Line Weepy types saar.

Gazing at industry dynamics and spotting possible opportunities/cracks where I can ask the company to "jump in" or rather "poond" (in college lingo) and get ahead of the curve and help the uber jarnails and field marshals make correct strategy calls when they put money and Mushrraf behind something , is my day job. I am paid for that and that is what I get my salary for.

Also I do khareedna/ becchna & sangam/milan kind of things phor the company. So I get to read pitch books and get from all the hot shot Yum Bee Yeas from banks and consulting companies and have access to the reports of all the banks and analysts. That is how I can point out stuff like Exhibit 35 of a particular report.

So as a good "rear admirar" , I always like to feel around for "cracks and corners" of friend and foe and potential foe and friend , asuras and devas, Pakis and NaPakis and everyone. I have no idea who /what "JTF/Inver Brass" is are , but me a poor Yum Bee Yea too.

Point is when it comes to credit, no one , esp the front line mujahid is going to come and say that it was said "rear admirar" who told me to be at this place at this time and ordered the maneuver to pounce on the unsuspecting Paki from the flanks and rear

. Then all the success is all because of the "tactical brilliance" and the TFTA fighting abilities onree saar.. What to do. Such is life.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Mar 2009 22:49

Inver Brass was a super secret org in some robert ludlum novels. able to hack in and out of all govt computers at will. a sort of personification of master yoda + skynet + omniscient Cloud rolled in one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Icarus_Agenda

JTF - joint task force. a very secret arm of GoI.