Indian IT Industry

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 09 Aug 2010 15:22

easy targets. no chance of any retaliation either by the victims or indian political class.

Jayram · Post by **Jayram** » 09 Aug 2010 20:21

Satya_anveshi wrote:
“If one of them gets the job, what are the chances the other three stay on? That is the question HP has to deal with,” Abhey Lamba, an analyst at ISI said according to this
If stock falls further 10% tomorrow (total ~20% from Thursday close), it would be a compelling buy.

Printer business seems to be headed by one Mr. Vyomesh Joshi . Hmm..interesting prospect for a desi and let's see if he will find a transparent, color less sheet on the ceiling aka glass ceiling.

HP Predeclared results and beat expectations after this latest snafu. So stock seems to be holding pretty well at ~42.
Re AL she is a candidate but the board is reportedly looking at other candidates outside the company as well including some from IBM. One thing against AL is she that she has health isues in the past most reporttely a kidney transplant which might be a factor. VJ's (the printer head) stock was down during Hurds time so it will be interesting to see what happens now.
The board will decide and folks like Marc Andersson(the netscape guy) are on it and I think they are not about to forclose thier options on just internal candidates for now.

hnair · Post by **hnair** » 09 Aug 2010 21:37

This has to be managed well or has the potential for losing deals

Infosys 'distressed' over 'chop shop' statement

Senator's points has to be addressed and trashed in the most polite fashion within the US system itself.

Or Indian public will see issues with Coca Cola's expansion plans in India.

paramu · Post by **paramu** » 09 Aug 2010 22:35

Jodie Fisher, an actress and reality-show contestant hired as a contractor for H-P, said she never intended for Mark Hurd to lose his job.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 Aug 2010 02:57

The IT companies will have to pass on the fees to their clients. By asking the clients to pay the visa fees if they want the work done. Off course the clients are free to pickup local talent. And Kamalnath should protest to WTO that visa fees are non tariff barrier not allowed by World Trade Org rules.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 Aug 2010 03:12

Businessweek reports :

US Senate targets India Outsourcers

U.S. Senate Targets India Outsourcers

Posted by: Bruce Einhorn on August 8, 2010

How unpopular are Indian outsourcing companies from India in the U.S.? They can manage to unite squabbling Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. With the GOP filibustering most of the time, it’s news when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues manage to get 60 votes to pass anything at all. Getting all 100 Senators to vote unanimously on a bill is near miraculous. On Thursday, though, the Senate unanimously passed a bill sponsored by New York’s Chuck Schumer to increase visa fees on companies that send workers to the U.S. if more than half of their America-based employees use work visas. In other words, Indian IT outsourcing companies. (Companies like Microsoft and Google that bring people to the U.S. on these work visas, too, don’t have to worry since those employees are just a tiny percentage of their U.S. workforce.) The extra money will pay for additional security measures on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In case the message wasn’t clear enough, senators made a point of singling out Indian IT outsourcers. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill said the bill would hit “a handful of foreign-controlled companies that operate in the United States such as Wipro, Tata, Infosys and Satyam,” Indian wire service PTI reported. PTI also quoted Schumer turning up the heat on the Indians. “The emergency border funds will be paid for by assessing fees on foreign companies known as chop shops that outsource good, high-paying American technology jobs to lower wage, temporary immigrant workers from other countries,” Schumer said during debate on the Senate floor. “These are companies such as Infosys.”

Chop shops! I’ve followed the debate about outsourcing for a while, and this is the first time I’ve heard of a top lawmaker likening India’s blue-chip IT services companies to crooks who specialize in taking apart stolen cars. Nasscom, the Indian IT industry’s lobbying group, came out with a statement after the Senate vote pointing out that less that 12 percent of H-1B visas. “But U.S. compnanies, which use the bulk of these visas, would remain unaffected by the legislation,” Nasscom President Som Mittal said in the statement. “This is simply unfair to foreign companies.” For now, the new tax won’t hurt Infosys and other Indian companies too much; Bloomberg News quotes Kaufman Bros. analyst Karl Keirstead saying the new fees will be “relatively innocuous” for a company like Infosys, which earned $1.3 billion in the most recent fiscal year. With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent, though, Infosys and other Indian IT companies should expect more over-the-top attacks from American politicians from both sides of the aisle. They can’t agree on much, but they all know that there’s little downside to beating up on Bangalore.

Won't the IT companies have the work sent overseas as an alternative to the visa fees?

Also read the comments.

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 10 Aug 2010 04:27

Great, this means less expenditure on travel and accommodation. The job will be done in India itself.
No downside? Paakalaam.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 10 Aug 2010 08:45

infy has gone on defensive and saying 'we are not chop shop'

instead its time to mock a bankrupt and nanga emperor who doesnt have the cash to fence his own backyard yet claims to be a moral and miltry leader of the 'free world'

make them the laughing stock in the indian media and wait for indian editions of WSJ types to pick it up.

manish · Post by **manish** » 10 Aug 2010 09:21

^^^
Perhaps make a statement along the lines of "We are committed to US National Secuirty, blah blah " etc and announce a donation of say $1 million towards fencing expenses

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 10 Aug 2010 21:48

Notion Ink Adam delayed, lost some investors along the way

Not good if they have to change manufacturers at this late stage and these investors must be having some shallow pockets coz the fellas look very SDRE onlee and don't seem like the Silly-con Valley cash-burning type. Perhaps some rich BRF jingo can invest?

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 11 Aug 2010 00:07

JE Menon wrote:Great, this means less expenditure on travel and accommodation. The job will be done in India itself.
No downside? Paakalaam.

IMO Indian outsourcing companies will give the customers an option...completely outsource the work to India. All KT work will be done in India I guess. If a customer demands higher onsite presence for whatever reason, they will have to pay bigger dollah.

All in all - More work moves to desh. Return of bodyshopping by small desi companies, as they don't care if the visa fee goes up to 5k from current 2.5k (their employees pay for these fees - directly or indirectly).

In a way it is a good thing. Now we see outsourcing v3. Technology has developed so much that the offshore teams can have 24x7 video chat with the customer/business user if needed.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 11 Aug 2010 02:39

Raja Bose read this NPR story from 9 August 2010 on VCs and start-ups:

Who gets funded?

arun · Post by **arun** » 11 Aug 2010 19:32

Computer scientist Vinay Deolalikar claims to have solved maths riddle of P vs NP

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 12 Aug 2010 06:48

ramana wrote:Raja Bose read this NPR story from 9 August 2010 on VCs and start-ups:

Who gets funded?

Notion Ink fellas have those ingredients they mention but I have a feeling they got a little cocky end of 2009-early 2010 for a product which is going to compete on price point mainly (PixelQi is nice and all but the tech is still not 400% there in terms of wow effect). Regardless of the other antics of God Jobs, one thing he said (or claimed to have said) is true: "Real Artists Ship". In terms of integration, I dont know why they are having such huge issues unless it is a software issue and underlying Android is majorly deficient in some way. The hardware is straight forward which any ODM can handle with ease. Also I dont think the display is an issue as to integrate PixelQi into an existing SBC took less than 3 weeks of work which includes a simple LVDS board and device driver.

markos · Post by **markos** » 16 Aug 2010 11:33

It is interesting to note that even someone like Chuck Schumer who used to be a supporter of H1-B program has finally caught up on how H1-B is abused by Indian offshorers through discriminatory hiring. I bet as long as unemployment remains above 6%, congress will be forced to come up with similar measures. Ranting from the HCL CEO on how he can not hire any americans is not going to help it. Add to that the mafia style practiced by edison based desi chopshops. I think more restrictions will be placed on H1/L1s in the comprehensive immigration reform bill next year.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... source=toc

Interesting part is that many Indians(not all) who reach management levels in US corporations from Indian offshorers continue to practice the same discriminatory policies in hiring(i.e. hire only Indians). I happen to know a company with a desi director(came from a desi offshorer) who used to hire only people from his homestate in India and pushed everyone else out of his team. Somehow HR got wind of the abuses (from other desis themselves) and this guy was recently shown the door. I know this is not an isolated incident and till now many may have gotten a pass because they were "delivering", but expect these type of hiring practices to be under microscope in future.

Neela · Post by **Neela** » 16 Aug 2010 16:36

Raja Bose wrote:Notion Ink Adam delayed, lost some investors along the way

Not good if they have to change manufacturers at this late stage and these investors must be having some shallow pockets coz the fellas look very SDRE onlee and don't seem like the Silly-con Valley cash-burning type. Perhaps some rich BRF jingo can invest?

Check his updates . More details emerging.
http://notionink.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/inception

Raghavendra · Post by **Raghavendra** » 18 Aug 2010 11:47

'India not taking America's jobs' http://in.news.yahoo.com/241/20100816/1 ... obs_1.html

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 18 Aug 2010 12:40

Neela wrote: Check his updates . More details emerging.
http://notionink.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/inception

I think some behind the scenes arm twisting and hera-pheri is going on in ODM land. If NotionInk can beat the $450.- price point, that would be great.

ArmenT · Post by **ArmenT** » 18 Aug 2010 13:31

Raja Bose wrote: I think some behind the scenes arm twisting and hera-pheri is going on in ODM land. If NotionInk can beat the $450.- price point, that would be great.

One of the interesting things that (I think Bunnie Huang) pointed out was that some smart smaller manufacturers could save a lot by using the same parts that bigger manufacturers use. For instance, say Nokia or Samsung announce they're going to use X microprocessor and Y memory chips, sellers tend to stock up on those chips in advance, thereby dropping the price of those particular parts for the smaller guys.

Picking the cheapest part for a mass-produced hardware design is a tricky exercise; when you leave the realm of buying a few hundred or thousand pieces at a time and move into really high volumes, often times the price of the part has less to do with its design features and more to do with its physical dimensions and who is buying a lot of it. If someone like Nokia is buying millions of a certain part a year, the supply of this part is very stable, lead times are shorter (usually), and the price goes down. So, if you’re a small company and you want to build something cheap, you want to pick parts out of the Nokia supply chain because you indirectly enjoy the benefits of Nokia’s buying power. Thus, these schematics are a good starting point for sourcing cheap parts for production.

manish · Post by **manish** » 18 Aug 2010 14:30

pandyan wrote:There were rumors about Reliance industries investing in notion ink. RIL with its recently won broadband spectrum may have some pricing flexibility in bundling plans with the device. Plus RIL is known for cost cutting thru vertical integration and by gently squeezing the *alls of the suppliers. In the soon to be cut throat world of broadband wireless, price/novelty based differentiation would help in gaining market share.

BTW, the broadband technology selection in india seems to be like a bolloywood masala.
1. wimax lower cost, readily available
2. LTE has major backing from telcom providers
3. mass confusion....hearing grandiose statements like 'dont make a 10 yr strategy based on 6 month competitive advantage'

India decision or more likely Reliance decision would be the key for the long term survival of broadband tech in india.

so, qn for the gurus familiar with the spectrum/vectrum....is wimax more suited for fixed wireless or mobile wireless.

Very well put Pandyan ji. India's choice is essentially RIL's choice. RIL has given enough indications that it is most likely going to be LTE. Their public discussions on the topic have been indicative enough that they prefer LTE over WiMAX.

Even otherwise, given the fact that RIL/Infotel has no legacy eqpt or network infra to speak of, it makes much more sense for them to straightaway invest in a technology that seems to have a more assured growth path going forward, so it seems like it is going to be LTE all the way (IMHO onlee).

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 18 Aug 2010 15:01

isnt this fanboy adulation of adam on that blog ...suspiciously like....ap...

Raja Bose · Post by **Raja Bose** » 18 Aug 2010 20:57

Bunnie is right but it only works for components which are not subject to shortages and have adequate reserve production capacity otherwise you will have the recent AMOLED debacle all over again. Basically HTC got screwed becoz its sourcing/buyers are not as poll-tickly connected as Gumboot's or Moto's.

I am very interested to see the UI they have cooked up for NI. Initially not expecting anything magical or revolutionary but a good well designed UI with some neat tricks should do the job for them. I am kind of skeptical though about the making money out of the eco-system argument that the NI guy has put forward. For the short-term at least they have to rely on hardware and every day they delay launch, the market saturation is happening since the hardware is hardly unique and already has spawned 2 dozen me-too look-alikes by the very same ODMs they rely on. The PixelQi is a unique feature but that tech is not completely mature enough to have a wow effect. And no one expect Google has made any appreciable money out of the Android's ecosystem (as opposed making money off the hardware running Android) so if NI can pull it off, AoA indeed! I hope they come out with a MeeGo tablet too like zis:

Murugan · Post by **Murugan** » 20 Aug 2010 15:51

What is cloud computing in SDRE layman's language?

derkonig · Post by **derkonig** » 20 Aug 2010 16:29

^^^^
vaporware?
condensed hot air ?

Muppalla · Post by **Muppalla** » 20 Aug 2010 18:41

Cloud computing is not vaporware. I will not underestimate. All the big companies like starting from Microsoft, IBM etc. are spending a subtantial portions of their budgets on Cloud computing and the hardware ones like Intel, HP etc. on virtualization. These two concepts will change the computing scene and potentillay the IT market. I would not take this lightly.

Regarding Cloud computing in layman terms - Instead of buying expensive software, you can use the software hosted on some service center by paying the usage costs. Lowest level examples - Google docs and Microsoft Office Live. With virtualization and improvements in processors speeds, one can potentially have all what you do on your desktop/laptop on a remote machine in some server hosted by some data center. In simple terms just remote into that machine and use all you want.

Corporates are betting big on Cloud computing. Some agencies who have paranoid-style security concerns are thinking cloud computing as blessing in disguise. They want to create a private-cloud and return to the old days of dumb-terminal. Have all servers and let users have their space on the servers and not allow any software on their desktops.

A lot of ideas are going on.

negi · Post by **negi** » 20 Aug 2010 19:02

Cloud computing has really picked up , SFDC is already making inroads into the market currently being dominated by likes of Oracle and SAP its an attractive route for companies who have little investment in IT infra or are contemplating to leverage the cloud concept for 'ostensibly' reducing costs

. Dow Jones maintains its entire master data in a cloud hosted by SFDC.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 20 Aug 2010 19:53

its all about creating the Next $200b opportunity for cos to target, engineers to earn salaries, trainers and consultants to earn fees, IT admins to make hay...cost will be about the same or more than dedicated facilities in the end, but for now it suits everyone to play down the cost as lesser/greener/cooler.

I would say cloud_computing=pakistan. it has some many self-interested sponsors at various levels, its bound to survive no matter how badly it screws up now and then.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 20 Aug 2010 22:31

In the dinosaur days, there was cloud computing, except the cloud was just next door as a big farm of servers and a lot of dumb terminals on the desks connected to it. It was like that in the early 90s in research labs, at least the one I worked. Then came the desktop fad and with linux we worked on a loosely based cluster of machines with at least one sitting under one's desk. Now it is back to the old fad but on steroids, with the 'computer' nowhere close to where one is physically located ... in the cuckoo cloud. Same dish being served in different garb. No new invention will come out of all this. Just more IT-Vity work which will keep the Abduls happy. Good for Indians in general. Will keep food on the table for another decade or two before the pony show is over.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 21 Aug 2010 05:21

Murugan wrote:What is cloud computing in SDRE layman's language?

A better way to invoice the customer, and get a predictable revenue stream for the vendor.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 21 Aug 2010 07:45

What is being touted as cloud computing these days, hasn't it existed in one form or another for a long time?
We had grid computing, ASPs, heck even dumb (paki?

) terminals of the Unix age. All of them essentially did the same thing - centralize resources and provide a lean/leaner access point - all of them touted the same benefits, easy to maintain, lower cost, ityadi. Only thing cloud has added is that the information is delivered over the internet. Big deal. Lots of people have jumped into this bandwagon - thereby obliterating the definition of cloud computing.

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 21 Aug 2010 07:49

Cloud computing is not revolutionary but evolutionary technology. I consider virtualization as revolutionary technology. People started with moving dev/QA environments to virtual servers initially but today its ubiquitous. Are there any companies today who havent implemented virtualization.

same stands true for cloud computing...

Most of the corporations will move to private cloud or hybrid models (for burst capacity or few apps intially) first before the clouds are consolidated and eventually everything will be public. Big vendors are already moving to that model with most of the apps they provide but it will take time for organizations to hive off the end user computing apps to the third party cloud. At the end of the day apps has to be hosted somewhere in a datacenter and user have to access them through some device (and thats why people say it sound familiar) but the whole model in between will change in terms of provisioning, delivery and billing/chargeback.

for non believers look at growing list of salesforce.com clients in India. The world will move to cloud ..its the future ...ignore it at your own peril.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 21 Aug 2010 08:00

CC has two main constraints - legal and lack of commitments/orders from large customers.

Legal angle says that the lack of transparency about ownership and physical location of the data creates complication should the need to fix responsibility arise. Say, if some data is located in caribbean islands, for a dispute between a US and non-US company, can a US court ask for access to those records.

Lack of commitments and orders from large companies is because such firms have already made considerable investments for similar apps. Hence, they do not need to buy CC apps, expect for peripheral functions. OTOH, CC is great for bringing sophisticated apps to middle sized and SOHO firms.

abhischekcc · Post by **abhischekcc** » 21 Aug 2010 08:02

Bill Gates had once remarked that CC will be the end of Indian IT outsourcing. BS.

The fact that CC resources are designed for remote monitoring/maintenance and even data access means that India can be a strong force, and outsourcing will become stronger.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 21 Aug 2010 22:25

For Indian IT, cloud computing can be the next step in the evolution of delivering services entirely out of India. But the challenge is that it takes a massive amount of investment to build out the infrastructure necessary for cloud computing.

CalvinH · Post by **CalvinH** » 21 Aug 2010 22:54

abhischekcc wrote:Bill Gates had once remarked that CC will be the end of Indian IT outsourcing. BS.

The fact that CC resources are designed for remote monitoring/maintenance and even data access means that India can be a strong force, and outsourcing will become stronger.

He may not be entirely wrong and it all depends on what changes a disrputive event like CC will eventually have on the way IT is provisioned for the business. If CC lead to consolidation/standardization in application space as well as more automation then it will definitely have an impact. The cost benefit that can be attained through shared services for apps and infrastructure (provided by the cloud operator) would mean that one will be able to serve a large customer base with very few resources which dont need to be in India ( to derive large financial benefits)

I dont think we can provide infrastructures to build host and operate large clouds from India. A lot needs to be done for this enablement and most of the US/Europe based organizations will vary of hosting business data in a foregin country like India.

Indian IT services companies cannot afford to keep the app hosting and app maintenance piece separate anymore as CC is going to blur that boundary in terms of service. It will all be in a single package with Infra cost built into the app usuage and maintenance cost. Unfortunately most of them are aligning themselves to become a service operator in private clouds which is a short term strategy as most of the corporations are using move to private clouds as a intermediate steps to move to a bigger public cloud eventually. They should start putting things in place to become a large cloud operator themselves in 5-10 years.

shyam · Post by **shyam** » 22 Aug 2010 00:23

vera_k wrote:For Indian IT, cloud computing can be the next step in the evolution of delivering services entirely out of India. But the challenge is that it takes a massive amount of investment to build out the infrastructure necessary for cloud computing.

I don't think the GOTUS will allow this, due to security concerns. They will demand that entire CC be build in US while DOOs can login from India.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 22 Aug 2010 02:55

shyam wrote:
vera_k wrote:For Indian IT, cloud computing can be the next step in the evolution of delivering services entirely out of India. But the challenge is that it takes a massive amount of investment to build out the infrastructure necessary for cloud computing.
I don't think the GOTUS will allow this, due to security concerns. They will demand that entire CC be build in US while DOOs can login from India.

I am involved in a company which is already doing this. They will mirror data/streams across many regions to make sure that the customers get the best QOS

Guddu · Post by **Guddu** » 28 Aug 2010 19:04

Guys, dont know if this is the right place to post this...in recent months, I have lost the ability to click on the brf videos and view them. Right clicking on the video picture suggests it may be something to do with Adobe Flash, but playing with the settings does not help. If I go to youtube, I can always play the video, but not when the youtube videos are clicked direct from BRF.

thanks,

Raghavendra · Post by **Raghavendra** » 28 Aug 2010 19:11

^ Update flash http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Guddu wrote:If I go to youtube, I can always play the video, but not when the youtube videos are clicked direct from BRF. If any mujahid wants to advise

Which browser do u use? Chrome is my guess

negi · Post by **negi** » 29 Aug 2010 01:07

Some videos have embedding disabled.