2008: Hot circuits

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

Tata Steel Q2 consolidated net loss at Rs 2,719-crForbes names Raju as world’s 4th most outrageous C...Anil Ambani tops pay chart; Mukesh biggest dividen...India says no to legally binding emission cut

: Biggest sizzlers

Moon odyssey

India joined the elite club of five moon-faring nations, when Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) launched its first lunar mission. A manned space mission is also on cards by 2012. India added another feather in its cap, with its 10-satellite launch in one go. We now have the launch capability to put all types of satellites safely into the orbit and this could be done 60-70% cheaper in costs as compared to other nations.

Goodbye to buttons

APPLE’S iPhone might have established mobilephone’s invasion into entertainment devices with music, games and maps. But its sleek touchscreen has left a greater mark on the market. Almost all mobile handset manufacturers came out with their own version of touchscreen phones. Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, LG and others released phones with finger-tapping interface popularised by iPhone combined with high resolution cameras, stereo quality sound and a lot of functionalities.

Hello to 3G

THIRD generation (3G) mobile services finally ring into the booming Indian telecom market, thus allowing users to enjoy fast internet access, games and a host of multimedia content from maps to music on their cellphones. Delhites are the first ones to taste 3G with state-run MTNL’s ‘Jaadu’ or magic service. BSNL is expected to follow in Chennai next month. Private operators like Bharti, Reliance and Vodafone have to wait for spectrum auctions that are expected to kick off in January.

Slim devices

RACE to offer affordable computing took a new turn with lost-cost, internet-centric desktop PCs and ultraportable computing devices. Be it Hewlett-Packard, Acer or Lenovo, or even the home-grown HCL Infosystems which debuted its MiLeap ultraportables, the new range of low-cost offerings heralded a new category of computing devices and opened a wide range of new usage scenarios and application areas.

PCs walk the ramp

PERHAPS inspired by mobile phones, notebooks are making a style statement. Staid old, boring beige box started giving way to a lifestyle product and a fashion statement in 2008. Leading PC vendors are mingling their product lines with fashion. Notebooks made their entry into shows like Wills India Fashion Week and marketing heads of companies like Hewlett-Packard walked the ramp with Serena Williams to show their new designer notebooks. Many others like Lenovo and Dell followed with a myriad of colours, and frameless screens.

Hottest Buzzwords

Cloud computing

THIS is clearly the biggest and the fuzziest computing trend today. The concept of cloud computing is not new and repackages grid and utility computing, that have existed for decades. At the core, it means enabling access to loads of digital data and related applications from any internet-accessible devices, but the term is expanding all the time and has gained significant traction as a concept, with tech bigwigs like IBM, HP and Google pushing it. Analysts are predicting 2009 as a key inflexion point but we are yet to see it become a reality in Indian enterprises in a big way.

Social media

SOCIAL media has taken the world by storm. And it’s not just teens and youngsters on Facebook, MySpace and Youtube, but it has forayed into corporate lives and is now giving shape to citizen journalism. Bloggers across Mumbai, for instance, fed live updates of the action after terrorists launched waves of attacks. With more than 6 million members worldwide, an estimated 80 messages, or ‘tweets,’ were being sent to Twitter.com via SMS every five seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Next-gen virtualisation

VIRTUALISATION solutions have been in play in IT for decades. But, the current trend towards virtualising servers and storage in the data centre is revolutionising IT management and IT economics and is laying groundwork for the next stage in IT and data centres—utility computing.

Unified communications

UNIFIED communications is all about convergence of various communication and collaboration tools and platforms such as VoIP, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Web and video conferencing, enterprise social computing, presence, and IM management.

More with less

DURING the dotcom bust in the early 2000s, IT took a hit as several companies had overbuilt in internet technologies. Today’s IT departments tend to be leaner and much more ROI-focused and offer IT as a lever to cut costs. Most IT leaders are making the case to their chief executives to let them help bring down company costs by using technology to help automate and streamline tasks in the current global recession.

Missed Targets

Offshoring blues

FIRST signs of the slowdown appeared on the country’s IT software services exports in July when Nasscom scaled down its growth projections for FY09 to 21-24% from 23-24% in June. It now expects the industry to grow by 21% this fiscal to generate export revenues of $50 billion. Going by the gloomy outlook and shrinking tech budgets globally, upward revision does not seem likely.

Softening PC demand

PC market reeled under the impact of the rising oil prices, inflation and subsequent economic slowdown. Buyers are now cautious and in all probability, the slowdown appears to be a sign of a deeper, long-term trend in the PC market. About 2.1 million PCs were sold in the second quarter, a growth of about 8% over the same period last year compared to about 10% in the first quarter. Shipment numbers from Intel, which controls a lion’s share of the PC microprocessor market, also show that India might not become world’s fourth largest consumer of PCs by 2012, as expected earlier.

Magic pill

WAIT for the much-touted magic pill for heart patients just got a little longer. The country’s drug regulator is yet to give the go ahead to Dr Reddy’s Laboratories for its four-in-one cardiovascular drug that is to be sold in the country for less than Rs 300 a month. The polypill contains an aspirin, a statin to lower blood pressure and two blood pressure drugs, which are widely used at present. While India-specific trials have already been completed, the wonder drug is all set to enter human trials in London and in six other countries before it gets launched globally in 2010.

Bucking slowdown

Mobile mania

INDIA’S love affair with mobile phones is continuing to blossom. Mobile mania not only continued to sweep across the country, the craze for newer gadgets escalated with renewed vigour. The ever-increasing cellular subscriber base along with the rapidly expanding mobile-services market and availability of entry level handsets is proving to be a windfall for handset manufacturers. Analysts believe some 10,000 mobile phones are sold across the country every hour. In future too, prospects are bright as India could double its number of mobile subscribers by 2012 to 650 million.

Booster dose

If you thought the prevailing slowdown could dampen the prospects for Indian generics majors, think again. The likes of Glenmark, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Lupin, Dr Reddy’s, Ranbaxy and Zydus Cadila evolved a unique strategy of warding off slowdown fears. They are tapping niche segments like dermatology, ophthalmology, oncology, anti-asthmatic and anti-allergic, cardiology, diabetology and gastroenterology, where demand for products is extremely high in the developed markets like the US, Europe and Japan.

Pharma chases low cost

WOES of the Big Pharma transformed into a $73 billion opportunity for the Indian pharma and biotech industry. Global pharma biggies like Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, GlaxosmithKline, Novartis and Wyeth accelerated relocation of manufacturing and research operations to low-cost destinations like India. Remarkably, Indian contract research organisations (CROs) demonstrated their ability to deliver high quality yet low-cost work. They have also expanded their portfolios to include pre-clinical trials, Phase I-IV trials, data management and site management.

Hall of fame

Nandan Nilekani
On national stage

INFOSYS co-founder and co-chairman, Nandan Nilekani is making waves with much-talked about book— ‘Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century’. At the forefront of India’s transformation into a global leader in information technology, he has inspired best sellers like Thomas Friedman’s ‘The World is Flat’. In this much-heralded book, he elaborates on familiar issues like ICT, India’s changing attitude to English language and the demographic advantage, and also forays into new territories—democracy, school education, urbanisation and infrastructure. Will this launch him on national stage and catapult Banglaore and the burgeoning IT population into a new power centre?

Arun Sarin
In demand

ARUN Sarin has scaled global charts as Vodafone Group CEO for long. He created a stir by bringing the Vodafone brand to India. But that was short-lived and soon, the Vodafone Group CEO of five years walked out of the company this year. He came back again into the limelight with his name being considered for the top job at beleaguered internet major, Yahoo. Last heard, he has decided not to pursue the Yahoo CEO post.

Maran VS Raja
In and out

INTERNAL politics of DMK ousted Dayanidhi Maran from the job of Union IT and telecom minister and put in the hot seat his party colleague A Raja. But both faced the swirling policy imbroglios with respect to issues like spectrum allocation in the telecom sector. At one stage, Raja even threatened to resign over spectrum allocation to telecom operators under the existing 2G policy.

Hall Of Shame

India—Top spam sender

IT is a distinction that would not make anyone proud of. A Trend Micro study accorded India the dubious distinction of topping the list of spam sending countries in Asia, accounting for more than 4% of the total global spam. India left behind China (3.39%), Republic of Korea (2.57%) and Thailand (2.04%) in the list of Asian spammers.

Breach menace

YOU couldn’t miss the security drill while entering the premises of any BPO majors. All boasted of state-of-the-art systems to monitor phone conversations, mails and every move of their employees. Yet, the tentacles of breach menace plagued several financial BPOs whose clients are extremely sensitive about confidential information relating to financial data, health data, corporate information and trade secrets. Short-term data loss is not the only thing that worries the BPO firms. It is the loss of competitive advantage, loss of business and damage to company’s information that kept them on their toes throughout the year.

Data cable snap

Damage to three major undersea cables—the SEA ME WE 4, SEA ME WE3, and FLAG—disrupted more than half of internet and phone services between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, with India, Qatar and the UAE the worst affected.In February too, a submarine cable in the Middle East had been snapped which added to Net problems caused by breaks in two lines under the Mediterranean. Smaller BPO units generally get badly affected. The larger ones have built-in redundancy that does not make them vulnerable.

Under Scanner

Blackberry—Too secure?

EVEN before the Mumbai terror attacks, security agencies started tightening their screws on Blackberry from Research in Motion (RIM). The bone of contention was security concerns—government wanted RIM to provide access to algorithms to decrypt messages, or face a termination of the service. Specifically, security agencies raised concerns that the service posed a risk as emails sent using it could not be traced or intercepted. However, Blackberry users in the country heaved a sigh of relief after a series of dialogues between the service providers and government officials saved the day for them and threats of ban disappeared gradually.

Terror imprint

NEW-AGE terror came knocking down on Indian soil when terrorists in Mumbai used satellite phones, GPS navigation devices, Blackberries, Google satellite photos and maps to cause mayhem in the country’s commercial capital. When Ratan Tata spoke of setting up his own anti-terrorism mechanism with “invisible forms of deterring this, containing them or thwarting their efforts”, he was not alone. Hotels, banks and other corporate bigwigs alike seem to be scouting for technologies to thwart terror attacks and an entirely new set of security tech is in demand.

Clinical trials

IT was the death of 49 infants during clinical trials at the country’s apex medical research institute, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) that brought into focus the issue of trials going awry. A series of failed clinical trials thereafter prompted pharmaceutical majors to bring in greater levels of transparency and new safety management practices. Yet, much is desired and at stake too lest we squander away the billion dollar opportunity that is expected to come our way.

Whip in drug making

THE US drug regulator, US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) showed no let up in censoring Indian drug companies for shortcoming in their manufacturing operations. After Ranbaxy and Sun Pharmaceuticals, Lupin was the one to draw USFDA’s ire. The cudgels were soon picked up by our own drug regulator, which cracked a whip on domestic drug companies in order to ensure that quality is not compromised in the pharmaceuticals industry.

Policy Push

Obama effect

WHILE the US president-elect Obama harnessed Web 2.0 technologies during his campaign, outsourcing foes were less than thrilled with his rhetoric about protecting jobs and punishing companies that shipped jobs offshore. IT majors, however, are now optimistic and believe offshoring makes economic sense. Indian generic companies too could see a significant demand for their low-cost generic offerings.

Carry your number

ALONG with setting auction date for 3G spectrum in January, mobile number portability is on cards next year. With decks cleared on the policy front, department of telecom has put up a mobile number portability tender document online inviting bids. The bids will be opened on February 5, 2009. Indian telecom sector has a unique distinction of being the fastest growing telecom sector in the world, with addition of over eight million subscribers per month, and the second largest wireless network in the world after China, surpassing the US.

Cyber terrorism

IN the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attack, there is now a renewed interest on cyber laws legislation, which is aimed at defending the nation against all forms of terrorism. Amendments to the Information Technology Act, 2000 have been introduced in Parliament, which will enable the government to effectively deal with online data security, data privacy, identity theft, cyber-terrorism, child pornography, spam, phishing and other online frauds. It now appears that under the shadow of the terror attacks, the amendments will be pushed through on a priority.

Quality drugs

THE move to have in place a Central Drugs Authority on the lines of USFDA could soon be a reality. Revamp of the country’s drug regulatory framework has been set rolling and the Drugs and Cosmetics (Amendment) Bill, 2007, has been introduced in the Parliament. Pharma industry is hopeful the overall objective of product quality, safety and efficacy would not be compromised.

Big Deals

HP scoops up EDS

BY any yardstick, the acquisition of Electronic Data Systems by US technology giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) for over $13 billion was the largest deal in the global technology space in recent times. But its impact goes far beyond the cost as it has serious ramifications for the IT services industry. It would double HP’s services business—from less than $20 billion to nearly $40 billion and position HP as the second largest services provider in the world—and revive EDS’ position as a leader in global technology services.

HCL’s gateway to Europe

ACQUISITION of the UK’s Axon Group by HCL Technologies for £440 million stirred the Indian outsourcing M&A landscape into action. HCL Technologies spoilt fellow Indian software firm Infosys’ party by bidding a higher amount—HCL’s bid was at 650 pence a share or 8.3% higher than Infosys’ bid of 600 pence a share—for SAP consultant Axon Group. HCL is now looking to grab market share from European rivals such as UK-based Deloitte and Logica, and France’s Cap Gemini in the market to integrate SAP software. The 2,000-man Axon Group provides SAP consultancy services to MNCs and has offices in the UK, North America, Malaysia and Australia.

TCS bails out Citi

INDIA’S largest IT company TCS pipped Infosys and IBM among others, when it acquired the captive business processing outsourcing (BPO) arm of Citigroup in India, for $505 million in an all-cash deal. This would enable TCS to provide process outsourcing services worth $2.5 billion to Citi and its affiliates over nine-and-a-half years. In an economic meltdown, the deal certainly brought cheers to the IT sector.

Ranbaxy sells out

INDIAN pharma industry was astounded by the magnitude of the drug deal between India’s generic manufacturer Ranbaxy Laboratories and Japan’s second largest pharma major, Daiichi Sankyo. Investors were certain something was cooking between the two drug majors, and that a sale of the strategic stake of 10% or so to shore up an alliance between the two companies was in the offing. But Malvinder Singh shocked industry circles by selling his family’s 34.8% take. Expect this deal to be talked about in the times to come.

Deal Mess

Satyam in line of fire

IT was a deal announced and called off within a space of 24 hours. The Satyam-Maytas deal drew an outcry from the investor community, forcing Satyam to back-track. Questions are now being raised with respect to corporate governance and professionalism. Though the controversial deal has been called off, regaining investor confidence will be an uphill task.

Bitter taste for Sun

AFTER a series of ups and down, the sun finally did not set on Israeli pharma major Taro Pharmaceuticals. Sun Pharmaceutical’s $454-million deal to acquire Israeli firm Taro Pharmaceuticals fell through with the latter terminating the merger agreement due to differences in financial valuation.

MSN-Yahoo cat and mouse game