Indian IT Industry

[pgbhat]

^^

Singha saar looks like you have a house to sell

[vina]

this will also ensure a recovery in blr housing market

Dang!. What will that do to my plans of buying a house eh? No sir. Let the Khans stay there and let the talent vacuum continue. Otherwise the infrastructure here will totally collapse and the traffic will be so clogged that we will not be able to drive 100 ft without running into a traffic jam.

BTW, how is the scene in Strategic Crossroads - Rawalpindi? No that you are working right next door, so have you moved in there pronto ? . Very chankian and strategic and all the rest of it onree saar!

[mnag]

Reported in economic times: Armed with data, India to fight US’ non-tariff barriers at meet

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Eco ... 601445.cms

NEW DELHI: India will take up with the US the issue of non-tariff barriers (NTBs)—or restrictions other than those related to tariffs—being faced by
Indian businesses in exporting to the country at the next bilateral trade meeting. The commerce department is collecting inputs from various sectors on the restrictions they are facing in penetrating the US market, which would be eventually taken up with the US department of trade, a commerce department official said.

“Indian industries in various sectors such as agriculture, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, seafood and vehicles have been complaining about various barriers being faced by them in the US market. We are trying to compile them so that they can be taken up with the US government in a structured manner,” the official told ET.

Now that the new UPA government is in place and the US has a new trade representative, the next round of bilateral trade meeting between India and the US is expected soon, the official added.

Studies carried out by Indian research agencies show that the most frequently applied NTB on Indian goods are technical barriers to trade (TBT), including safety and food safety measures.

For instance, while the US allowed India to export mangoes after long years of negotiations, the high cost of irradiation (ensuring there are no fruit flies) and inspections by US officials increase the cost of operation, rendering Indian mangoes incompetitive.

“There are other regulations too, like product characteristic requirements, marking requirements and labelling requirements which makes the process of exporting to the US extremely tough,” the official said.

The commerce department hopes to conclude the process of compilation of data on non-tariff barriers by August. “We will be in a position to take up our case with the US in August,” the official said.

The US, too, has initiated an investigation to find out how India’s farm trade barriers affect exports from that country.

The US is India’s largest trading partner with bilateral trade touching $44.8 billion in 2008.

Not sure if the visa issue will be discussed.

There was also the discussion regarding repatriation of social security money for those who return to india. Not sure if current govt will discuss that

[Singha]

well vina, PA was bankrupt from jan-may so nothing much got done. but seems to have got another PEACE VECTOR-N bailout pkg from a collection of chinkil sponsors now and deserters (unpaid workers) are said to be filtering back in small lots. they need a batallion of around 1000 people to make it happen.

the most revered housing finance co is said to be the biggest backer. so they would likely not want 100s of crores loss if they pounced and shut the PA down - too big to be allowed to fail and all that. must have coughed up new money to keep them afloat. strategic location
on silk route and oil deposits and all that...

word from inside was that suppliers had stopped all LoCredit and unpaid frontier constabulary had deserted. new deals are being hashed out now - for the housing. the chipanda shangri-la
went belly up long ago...when chipanda finds $$ that part will resume I think.

hopefully I can crawl into my tent sometime before my kid reaches my age

[shyam]

I think Markos and Negi are missing the macro picture, just combine your data points with hiring data you saw.

- Through visa controls, Indian IT companies are going to be screwed
- IBM/Accenture/HP are going to hire loads of IT employees in India. Those companies are not going to face problem to place their Indian employees in massaland.

What is the net effect? The huge IT/Vity muscle created by Wipro/TCS/INFY are going to be hijacked by MNCs, thereby bringing Indian IT under direct control of Uncle Sam. Back to East India Company rule boys.

[Singha]

but the use of L-1 visas to transfer hordes of people (I know for sure MNCs also do that) is also under scrutiny. its being used as a substitute to H1 by opening subsidiaries there.
and the MNCs have so such hangups anyway.

I think desi or bideshi everyone is out chasing low cost delivery model while retaining a marketing and sales relationship close to wherever the customers are - if its in chile so be it,
they will find someone to work there at least cost.

looking at it solely as a Indo-US bilateral issue is imo flawed. borders are breaking down,
more and more work can be done over a wire and no profession except the law enforcement and military can be considered non-outsourceable.

if the law is indeed followed to the letter there is little to no justification for highly paid
wall street types "shoomzing" with the industry people and analyzing xls sheets when with
100% fair reporting, the same reports can be made available to everyone and analyzed in a slumdawg shack in dharavi.

I would love to see 'storied institutions' like goldman, j p morgan recruit the best of
ivy league insiders and send them to work in low cost locations like dharavi, rio hillside shanties, gritty parts of johanesburg etc.

[shyam]

Do you have any info on US govt. questioning US corporations' use of L-1s? Even if they are questioned, they already have significant number of US citizens employed in massa, so they will be cleared. I'll be surprised to see if US govt. imposes strict guidelines to issue visa to Indian employees of IBM/Accenture/.., for laying off US employees. These layoffs also cause unemployement in US.

Somebody in this forum pointed this out some time back. During EIC rule, they needed a lot of manual laborers and started transporting Indian laborers to their colonies, such as South Africa, Fiji etc. Today's MNCs need brain laborers and they will use Indian IT/Vity and MBAs for that purpose. Once Indian IT/VIty companies effectively fold up, that will be the end of story.

[Suraj]

Free movement of capital has long been a western thrust because of their enormous accumulated capital looking for returns.

Free movement of goods was a thrust borne out of mercantilism, and as long as high value exports from the west was not overwhelmed by low value imports, e.g. the British chant of 'Trade, Not Aid' from the 70s giving way to the current 'Fair Trade!' spiel. An exception is the one whose currency constitutes the medium of trade, giving them ready inward investment.

Free movement of labour was useful for the purpose of filling short term grunt work requirements (e.g. Chinese labour for railroad construction in 19th century), but is a threat to the west where it induces wage depression in high value industries.

All this use of weasel words at Premji, wild unprovable accusations of fraud, and flaming of personalities and practices, is simply politics at play. It is pointless to get worked up about such baiting.

Fundamentally, the US has certain prerogatives, and India has other ones. Both should do what will benefit them, and unapologetically so.

[negi]

I think Markos and Negi are missing the macro picture, just combine your data points with hiring data you saw.

I will be honest and say that I do not know the macro picture nor am I convinced that anyone has a complete grip over this else things would not be falling apart ; doing a post mortem is always easy.

I am merely trying to reply to Markos's questions .

[SK Mody]

...
I checked DOL website on the outlook for Computer related occupations and following was the projected job growth from 2006-2016

http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco1002.htm#comp

Computer Scientists/DBA: 200,000
Programmers: -18,000
Software Engg: 324,000
Support Specialists: 155,000
System Analysts: 146,000

Total: 807,000

This translates to an annual growth rate of 80,000 per year. Considering this estimate was as of 2006, and over 200,000 IT jobs are lost in the last couple of years, the net job growth even at the projected rate could come down to about 60,000 per year, which could be met by the talent from US universities itself, as by Premji's own admission US universities produce around 70,000.

You forgot the number of people that will have to be replaced as older people retire.

[vina]

Hmm. Was looking up Netzilla's "Unified Computing" take on "Virtualization". Basically it is selling bundled network, compute and storage, with the "Technical innovation" (as moi boor YumBeeYea understands it) as being in removing the layers between the three (network, compute and storage) and making that part compact, efficient and engineering wise clean, neat and tidy.

So basically NetZilla is saying, that below the virtualization layer where the software sits next to the metal, that entire layer is virtualized as well and the benefits are for the data center guys in cutting down cabling, hardware etc.

Friends of Netzill --> EMC, Mickey Soft , Linux vendors like Redhat etc.

Enemies --> Yechh Pee, Instant Banana Mousse , OraKill (after SunW acquistion)

I guess the trend in the IT/VITY industry especially in the equipment and software side is to move from horizontal layers where you could mix and match best of breed to integrated pieces reaching down multiple layers.

Now what about Netzilla's traditional Network layer and below business in the new world ? .Yechh Pee will definitely bundle their offerings too like Netzilla (they have the compute and networking and storage pieces, while Netzilla still has to partner for storage) . Oracle/Sun probably will still go with Netzilla in the network, but will be looking out for other partners/acquisition in that space, same scene with IBM. If Netzilla takes off in Unified Computing, expect mating dances with other smaller networking guys to begin in earnest.

The scene is fraught for Netzilla. For YechhPee and Inst. Banana, if they can scale up from their low teens margins in their dabba business to halfway to the lofty 60 to 70% gross margins of Netzilla's networking business, they have everything to gain for in the game, while Netzilla's margins are going to go down only from here for sure. And to think that Netzilla started this war by intruding into the compute space in the data center...

But I guess from Netzilla's side, this is the only way to fight Yecch Pee offesnsively in the networking space in the enterprise. Networking is the core and hence the spiel from the Netzilla ppts on Unified Computing "It is the Network which Makes Virtualization Virtual" . Basically leverage your core strengths and get into adjacent businesses.

Very YumBeeYea strategy onree saar!. No "giant leaps" like lumber company getting into making cell phones onree no ?

[Singha]

search me man, even I havent made much sense of UCS so far. I think they will make up the vision as they go along, depending on what buzzwords need to be said.

[bart]

netzilla's grand strategy is to eat into the market by cutting off fiber channel and replace with ethernet for SAN. that is what this unified computing vision is all about....by doing so, they are reducing cost and reducing the margins for competitors.

having said that, well estabilshed SAN users have already invested heavily on fiber channel for variety of reasons....they wont move over to ethernet. there in lies the challenge for cisco...the segment where margin is highest is not the easiest to crack.

historically, even within fiber channel, companies tend to stick to single vendor because of interop issues.

on pure ethernet based consolidation (non-san), paq paq can very easily canisterize a solution similar to UC

FCOE is about to become a standard, and sounds very promising (unlike iSCSI, which used generic LAN switches and IP networks). The FCOE solution that Cisco is presenting is the Nexus switches that are purpose-built for DCs and unlike traditional LAN switches meet the 0% packet loss and predictable latency requirements of data switches. I think Cisco is very strongly placed and the very problems you mention with traditional storage networks will push people into Cisco's arms.

The other reason for their big push into the server field is to ensure they are not pushed out by virtualization. Earlier you used to have multiple server boxes linked to each other with Cisco hardware, virtualization threatens to put multiple systems on a single server talking over a virtual switch in the hypervisor or system backplane. So Cisco wants to make sure it has a piece of the action there too. They even have a virtual LAN switch software for VMWare though I haven't used it yet.

Of course, their target market for the above is medium to large enterprise datacenters, the really humungous purpose-built datacenters such as Google's or Amazon's generally don't have such expensive traditional enterprise-class hardware from Cisco/IBM/Sun et , choosing instead to have purpose built systems out of commodity hardware. For example Google assembles their own servers which look pretty rudimentary, and don't use RPSes or UPSes, just a 12-volt battery built into each server. When you have 40 servers RPS and cooling in the server chassis, plus backup, redundancy, SAN etc becomes a big deal. When you have 400,000 as Google does you can chose to not bother about individual servers and instead, for example think of cooling in terms of 10,000 sq ft blocks.

[sum]

Seems Brocade is going on a major expansion spree in Bengaluru (atleast the HW side)....

How is the co doing and how does its future look?

[Singha]

AMD is preparing to release a cpu named "magny-cours" next yr with 12 cores and another istanbul with 6 is due out soon. and servers could host upto 8 cpus (sockets). 64GB-128GB of RAM will be common...

nehalem-mki may up the ante to 16 cores...

datacenter-in-a-box anyone ? with a Netapp type filer hosting say 10 TB of HDD over a iScsi link and a ton of VMs (linux, win, android) loaded up inside a man could just get everything done within a single box.

[Tanaji]

Purely naive question:

For the proponents of cloud computing, why should I trust my data to some entity that I hardly know about and have no knowledge of their security policies?

How many of you keep your financial data on Google servers?

[AkshayM]

I'll be damned if I put anything of consequence on google or any other "free" service. The only exception is Yahoo mail and resumes . It might be easy to share every thing using google docs or whatever but I cannot trust them. In fact I wouldn't even put inconsequential data. Most enterprises/corporations would not use any of those cloud computing platforms for security reasons. Someone should ask google if they are willing to store their financial data on <insert cloud compute service> and see if they are willing to do that.

[Raja Bose]

datacenter-in-a-box anyone ? with a Netapp type filer hosting say 10 TB of HDD over a iScsi link and a ton of VMs (linux, win, android) loaded up inside a man could just get everything done within a single box.

??

[Prasad]

@^^^

Google’s Android Software to Run Laptops, Taking on Microsoft

[Raja Bose]

^^^hmm....I see. While it is a news making event, I don't see Android displacing Windows anytime soon....Windows is too entrenched - it will have to cut some major deals with laptop/PC manufacturers and their associated vendors and drive adoption in a big way. Android is making pretty good progress on the sw design and development side but even in the smartphone OS space, it will have to struggle with entrenched players such as Symbian and relatively newcomers such as iPhone OS. Google's usual business strategy of commoditizing other people's products is very much at play. We will know in 4-5 years who are the ones who will survive the imminent collision between the regulated mobile industry and the unregulated internet world and who are the ones who will perish.

[Singha]

Tanaji, enterprises are moving into clouds too. they already had datacenters. additing virtualization and virtual desktop infra (VDI) is happening now. and desktop machines are being trimmed down towards thin client model.
with leased circuits and internal networks providing QoS, the VDI model is much easier to deploy in corporate world and infact thats the main market today, not the open public.

[pgbhat]

Citrix is already popular among enterprises for desktop applications.

[Singha]

some cos are going for a hybrid model wherein certain stuff is done via salesforce / amazon type public clouds and rest is kept inhouse. arista networks is an example.


WYSE is another big name in thin clients but 'thin' in sw compared to Citrix, who has also nabbed
Red Hat who owns the open source kvm virtualization sw (qumranet). so each desktop can likely be
done as a virtual machine in the cloud and being a VM it can migrate within the cloud to be near where the user is for optimal QoS.

[mnag]

xposted from India Aus thread.

Source economic times: Aussie banks to move IT projects to India
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Oz- ... 610761.cms

MUMBAI: Even as Australia is making headlines for hostilities towards Indians, Australian banks are set to implement billions of dollars worth of IT
projects and could also outsource many of their functions to India.

Some of its top banks are looking to implement core-banking projects, and the first of these projects from the National Australia Bank has already gone to Oracle Financial Solutions, earlier i-flex Solutions.

These projects could range anywhere from $2-$4 billion, with the software licences alone costing $500 million. Unlike the US, banks in Australia are still very profitable. “Many of these banks are running applications on legacy systems and hardware that may not be supported anymore. They are shifting to core banking applications and awarding contracts

for their implementation,” said Tim Sheedy, senior analyst, Forrester Research. One of Australia’s big four banks, Commonwealth Bank, is also in the midst of a core-banking modernisation programme, while two of the other big four banks are also in similar discussions with vendors. These banks are looking at outsourcing their entire IT to select functions such as monitoring and maintenance, said Mr Sheedy.

The banks are outsourcing out of necessity to cut costs and move from a variable cost model to a more predictable cost model, he said. The findings of a report yet to be released by Forrester, show that the outsourcing is staging a comeback in Australia. “Australia had moved away from outsourcing but now cost is driving them to it again.

Australian banks have never outsourced but are now starting to. The outsourcing contracts that come up could be in hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.

So, although IT budgets in the Asia Pacific are shrinking by an average of 9%, outsourcing has increased. “The banks are doing it to save money. So we will see a considerable offshoring component because price will be a key consideration,” said Mr Sheedy.

[bart]

Purely naive question:

For the proponents of cloud computing, why should I trust my data to some entity that I hardly know about and have no knowledge of their security policies?

How many of you keep your financial data on Google servers?

To start with it will not be critical financial data but commoditized services like e-mail, intranets, IM, etc. That is the area with least risk and complexity and immediate savings.

[Tanaji]

Ah, we have varying definitions of "cloud"... The YumBeeYays of the world are selling us this dream of clouds where you get your computing resources from whoever... so if you suddenly need massive computing resources, you send them off to the cloud. Somebody, somewhere on the planet will have spare cycles that will do the job for you. Sort of like the SETI screensaver, but more formal and dedicated.

Of course, virtualizing makes perfect sense inside the enterprise within the company. Easy and secure for most part. What I am not so sure about is the YumBeeYay vision as described above. Damned if I will hand over my organisation details to some cluster farm that is managed by redneck in backwoods Alabama driving a red truck with a gun rack

(Hey, if they can make rude stereotypes, so can I!)

[Singha]

relax - dont sweat the small stuff. if you read up on Amazon EC2, they kind of offer remote management access for the renter (for the chunk of cloudland he is renting)...you can add, remove, monitor to the Nth degree...

and with virtualizationa and sophisticated hosting tools, I am sure regulatory rules like "all payroll data of indian cos hosted on clouds need to be physically located inside indian boundary's and never be migrated out" is all just clicks of a few "policy server" buttons.

ofcourse the redneck in alabama could still be the server/network admin, but here again clouds "zones" could
separate out which admin can see what. you'd get someone in india to manage your patch of the wood.

but first lets get a pervasive bband infra and a couple of large national cloud providers in india before
getting into soothing visions.

did you know netz's monthly electric bill just to run the main campus is 70 lakhs? and thats just two garden
variety datacenters there (compared to amazon type stuff) and a few labs.

[negi]

India Feels Less Vulnerable as Outsourcing Presses On

“In most developed economies, the work force is aging,” said Ranjit Tinaikar, a partner with McKinsey, a consulting firm. The health care costs associated with employing those Western workers will continue to increase, he said, creating a “big opportunity” for India.

A decade ago, McKinsey and India’s powerful information technology and outsourcing trade group, Nasscom, predicted that revenue from outsourcing by foreign companies would reach $50 billion in India in 2010. The global economic slowdown has delayed that by three or four quarters — revenue is predicted to reach $47 billion this year.

And in April, Nasscom and McKinsey predicted that by 2020, outsourcing would yield $175 billion in revenue here.

Growth will slow this year at many of India’s biggest outsourcing companies, however, because of the implosion of some of their largest clients: banks, mortgage servicing companies and Wall Street firms. But that does not mean revenue is no longer growing.

“People who have never looked at outsourcing before are saying they have to do it,” said Amitabh Chaudhry, the chief executive of Infosys BPO, the outsourcing arm of one of the largest Indian information technology companies. He expects his unit to grow 25 to 30 percent this year, compared with 40 to 50 percent in the past.

But political pressures are making a difference in how business is done. One growing trend, many outsourcing executives say, is placing more Indian employees in offices in the client’s home country. That way the job, ostensibly, does not move abroad. But over the long term, many are likely to be moved across the globe.

[sum]

All the "cloud talk" has clouded my earlier Q.
IT-vity gurus, please respond...

Seems Brocade is going on a major expansion spree in Bengaluru (atleast the HW side)....

How is the co doing and how does its future look?

[AkshayM]

Brocade is going on a major expansion

I see two buildings being constructed in bay area with temp brocade banner on top. I would presume that is an expansion or move from smaller facility or consolidation.

[Singha]

as predicted, the byelorussian army group center has finally received marching orders and
crossed the vistula river at dawn today .... SS panzer divs HP and IBM await on the flood plains and forests ahead, supported by masses of Krupp 15" guns and the feared Flak88 cannons. as a "embedded coward" riding in the tail of the first tank spearheads, I shall endeavour to keep my a$$ safe and bring you periodic updates. we have some surprises,
so do they...


Cisco announces its first servers, riling rivals
By PETER SVENSSON, The Associated Press

1:07 p.m. March 16, 2009

NEW YORK — Cisco Systems Inc. wants a bigger chunk of the corporate computing market, and plans to start selling servers in competition with old partners like Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp.

The servers are part of a package put together by Cisco and partners like BMC Software and VMware Inc. to harness the power of a recent technology called "virtualization" that lets one computer act like several.

San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco is the world's largest maker of computer networking gear, but Monday's announcement greatly expands its ambitions in the corporate "data center" market. It's moving from selling the switches that allow the computers to talk to each other to selling virtually entire data centers, in conjunction with its partners.

In a videoconference, Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers emphasized that its "Unified Computing System" is not an attempt to move into the commodity server market.

"We have very little interest in the product space," Chambers said. "We're after: `How does it tie together?'"

Chambers called the unified computing product the biggest step for Cisco since it added switches to its original router products through the acquisition of Crescendo Communications Inc. in 1993.

Since then, the company has used the cash generated by its enormously successful computer networking gear – it had $29.5 billion on hand in its last quarterly report – to buy up numerous companies, adding consumer gadgets and cable-TV equipment to its portfolio. This time, however, it's not diversifying through an acquisition, but by building its own products.

IDC analyst Michelle Bailey said Cisco isn't trying to take on HP and IBM in the broader market for servers, but rather is focusing on a certain set of very large customers. Their data centers, for instance, keep track of customer accounts, run large Web sites or deliver movies to PCs or cell phones. That's a $20 billion business annually.

Through virtualization, servers can quickly be shifted between different tasks, reducing the number that are needed. Cisco said the new system can reduce the capital cost of a data center by 20 percent, and operating expenses by 30 percent.

"Every customer we're talking to around the world is looking to save money," said Rob Lloyd, Cisco's senior vice president for the U.S., Canada and Japan.

It's because Cisco wanted to make the most of virtualization that it decided to produce its own servers, said Mario Mazzola, senior vice president of the server access and virtualization business unit.

Monday's announcement, though widely expected, was light on specifics, and Cisco didn't say when the new system would be available.

It is clear that the server will be "blades" – thin devices that will be powered by Intel Corp.'s latest chips. HP dominates that market now, followed by IBM.

Other companies support the launch included software providers Microsoft Corp., Red Hat Inc., consultant Accenture Ltd. and EMC Corp., a maker of data storage systems and the majority owner of VMware.

HP, which not only makes servers but competes with Cisco in networking gear, said it's already providing its own equivalent of Unified Computing, which it calls Adaptive Infrastructure.

"The vision they paint for tomorrow is one we're already delivering for today," said Jim Ganthier, vice president of marketing for enterprise servers and storage at HP.

He also said that making servers isn't as easy as it seems, requiring a long-term commitment to development and continuous investment.

"It may have looked like a really great idea on paper, but as they start to wade into the water they may find out that there are some things in the water that they don't like," Ganthier said.

Cisco's shares fell 6 cents to close at $15.45.

[Neela]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/04 ... tax_obama/
Ballmer clashes with Obama over US tax rules

Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has threatened to move more US jobs overseas if President Barack Obama refuses to change his stance on ending tax breaks on foreign earnings.

Big Steve told Bloomberg yesterday that US tax rates made jobs “more expensive.”

"We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the US as opposed to keeping them inside the US," he said.

Will we be seeing more "aliens" ?

[vina]

Hmm . Need a slightly different narrative Singhaji. It is not a numerically and physically stronger force going against a smaller (though more feisty guy) on the defensive.

The battle of the Bulge would be a better narrative.

The weather has been absolutely abominable and there is a total "white out". The control of the skies which the allied air forces have , has been nullified for the next few foreseeable days. The launch of the offensive couldnt have been better timed. The Panzers and the Panzer grenadiers are out of their laagers early on cold morning and shivering, and the rumble of the Tigers and Panthers and is muffled in the falling snow. Visibility is close to zero.

The offensive is an audacious gamble and the drive to the French coasts, if it succeed would drive a wedge between the British and American forces and squeeze them into small pockets. However, the deep losses in the east , the lack of supplies and shortage of everything and the total lack of air cover means that the force is ill equipped not upto full strenght, the men have had no rest for the past 11/2 years. The element of surprise and the initial momentum and the ground conditions saw the offensive get off to a decent start, taking the American grunts on the ground by surprise.

[Singha]

there is no shortage of fuel, ammo or bodies to throw at this problem sire.

a lot of smaller detached army groups tooling around south in the crimea and north around lake ladoga have been brought into the army grp center.

[Vipul]

Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in drowning accident.

A much-loved Stanford University professor from India who mentored and backed such sparkling and now storied Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Paypal died in a freak drowning accident at his Bay area home on Friday, sending the tech community into gloom.

Rajeev Motwani, who was born in Jammu, grew up in Delhi, and graduated from IIT Kanpur, was found in the backyard swimming pool of his Palo Alto home he purchased three years ago. There was no official word about the cause of death, but friends and local reports said he did not know how to swim and may have drowned accidentally.

Paramedics were called when his body was found, and he was pronounced dead at the scene at 12:28 pm, according to the San Mateo County coroner’s office. Motwani, who was only 47 and in the prime of his academic and professional life, leaves behind his wife, Asha Jadeja, and daughters Naitri and Anya.

News of Motwani’s death stunned the close-knit and well-networked Silicon Valley tech community. Messages sped through emails, blogs, Facebook entries, and Twitter feeds, as scores of techies and gearheads who had thrived under his tutelage, mentorship, and affection, opened their hearts.

Among the first to record a tribute was Sergei Brin of Google, who along with his co-founder Larry Page, were Motwani’s students in grad school at Stanford and worked closely with him as they founded Google. In his first blog entry in nine months, Brin recalled Motwani’s ''big role in my research, education, and professional development.''

"In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile,'' Brin wrote, in a condolence that ended with a stirring epitaph: ''Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.''

Brin recalled that when his interest turned to data mining, Rajeev, who had specialized in the field, helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. ''Later, when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us and guide us through challenges, both technical and organizational. Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since." he wrote.

Motwani moved to the US in the mid-1980s, taking the familiar route from IIT (Kanpur) to University of California (Berkeley), where he earned his doctorate, before moving to Stanford University. As a Stanford professor, he also served as the director of graduate studies for the computer science department and founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), positions from which he mentored many start-ups and was a major catalysts in the Silicon Valley eco-system.

Although he was primarily a theoretician, Silicon Valley gurus credit Motwani with having a profound impact on products and companies. Michael Arrington, a serial entrepreneur and founder of the blog TechCrunch said Brin and Page always gave Motwani significant credit for helping them create what would eventually become Google.

In fact, Arrington recalled, it was a 1998 paper called ''What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket'' by Brin, Motwani, Page and Terry Winograd that became the basis for Google. In the paper, the quartet said they intended to ''take advantage of the link structure of the Web to produce a global 'importance' ranking of every web page.'' They said this ranking, called PageRank, helps search engines and users quickly make sense of the vast heterogeneity of the World Wide Web.

But early search engines that were off the blocks before Google scoffed at the idea. AltaVista, the leading search engine at the time, turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million, saying spam would make PageRank useless. Yahoo also declined to purchase Google, supposedly because they didn’t want to focus on search, which only sent users away from Yahoo.com. In the end, Google ate them for lunch.

[Yogi_G]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

TCS fattens top official pay package by over rs 1 crore

And this given that the pay of employees has not had a significant hike in the last 3 years....no promotion no zilch....

[pgbhat]

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

TCS fattens top official pay package by over rs 1 crore

And this given that the pay of employees has not had a significant hike in the last 3 years....no promotion no zilch....

Are foreign MNCs treating aam abduls better or worse??

[Raja Bose]

Google mentor Rajeev Motwani dies in drowning accident.

This is sad just yesterday we were talking about this very same topic that lot of desis are buying pools without learning to swim and were joking that we would never venture beyond 3-4ft. It was very shocking to read this news in the morning. RIP.

Everybody was quite shocked to get the news....totally unexpected ofcourse. It looks like it was a freak accident and he fell in with nobody around. Really sad end to such a brilliant and good man. He lived just next to Palo Alto iirc (in one of the posh of poshest neighborhoods). Last met him in 2008.

[Singha]

but arent backyard pool just around 5 feet deep? must have been a more full sized pool to
swallow the man. @5 feet depth, a non-swimmer who doesnt panic can stand and walk out calmly. but someone who has never lost his footing in the water will panic the first few times.
had my share of scary moments in college swim pool.

[Jayram]

This is really sad. My wifes extended family lost one of ours this memorial day weekend under very similiar circumstances. The extended family went to a resort with a pool and some how one cousin lost his footing. He was a great loss - a brillliant young cardiologist who did not know how to swim. His 2 other Brother in laws in the pool with him did not know how to swim either...
I have a pool too and we have taken the usual precuations of a fence etc, a pole to grab on to etc, but I try to never leave my kids unattended. They know how to swim and so do I but my wife does not... Pools can be great source of enjoyment but they require supervison at all times for the young and the old who do not swim very well..
--Jayram