<b>Online chats may attract service tax </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Consumer Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, which have been offering telephony-like facilities through their messenger software, may soon come into the service tax net, industry sources say.       âWe have been urging the Govt to ban them from providing the service illegally. Now they will at least pay the service tax and 6% of annual gross revenue." - Rajesh Chharia, President (ISPAI).
<b>Skype, an Internet voice call service owned by online auctioneer eBay, and portals Rediff.com, Google, MSN and Yahoo, which have not been paying any levies for providing chats resembling long-distance telephony, provide their service for free. Once required to pay taxes in India, their services may no longer be available for free. </b>
While reviewing the licence norms for Internet service providers (ISPs), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had recommended to the Department of Telecommunications in May this year that multinational service providers that provide telephony in India through their messenger services should be registered in India and be brought under the ambit of the service tax.
âWe have been urging the government to ban them from providing the service illegally. Now they will at least pay the service tax and 6 per cent of annual gross revenue," Rajesh Chharia, President of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), told Hindustan Times.
Sources in Yahoo India told Hindustan Times that the Indian arm of Yahoo did not provide voice-based services through its servers (network computers) in India, and therefore it did not fall within the ambit of service tax and said it had no plans to get registered in India so far. MSN and Google India could not be reached. A spokeswoman for eBay said Skype was not registered in India.
The country's ISPs currently pay 12.36 per cent of their revenues as service tax. âWithout lawful interception and call detail records (of non-Indian Internet firms), <b>we will not be able to control the threat to national security,â </b>said Charria. [brain dead]
The <b>TRAI has also suggested an annual licence fee at 6 per cent of the annual gross revenue subject to a minimum of Rs 50,000 from Category A ISPs, Rs 10,000 from Category B and Rs 5,000 from category C. Category A ISP provide Internet services to the whole of India, Category B in the 20 territorial telecom circles and Category C within local district boundaries</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They are third rated fools.
MOST foreigners visit Mysore to see its many palaces, testaments to bygone royal splendour. But the city, south of Bangalore, is also a good place to observe monuments to India's modern might. One of its suburbs contains a lush campus with a collection of futuristic buildings: the Global Education Centre, one of the world's largest corporate-training facilities, operated by Infosys, a leading Indian information-technology (IT) services firm.
Visiting the centre, you would think that for India's IT businesses, the sky is the limit. Rarely has an industry grown so rapidly for so long. It has boasted annual growth rates of nearly 30% in the past ten years, with revenues now nearing $50 billion, about 5.4% of India's GDP. But some in India are starting to worry that the industry is heading for a fall. At the very least, analysts say, the industry's leading firmsâTata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro, to name only the three largestâneed to do more to adapt their business models as the industry matures.
The âITâ in India's IT industry has always been something of a misnomer. True, most of its more than 1.6m employees sit in front of computers, writing software for Western firms, remotely maintaining their computers and electronically handling some of their operations. But the business is mostly about people and processes. The very essence of India's IT firms is their ability to marshal huge local workforces to supply high-quality services.
One of their biggest innovations has been to borrow ideas from manufacturing and apply them to services, by building a sophisticated human supply-chain, for instance. They have also focused on certification and continuous improvementâa result of having to be, at least initially, better than their Western rivals in order to win business, says Girish Paranjpe, the boss of Wipro's consulting arm. Today more Indian than American firms meet the highest internationally recognised standards for software development.
All this has enabled Indian firms to take advantage of a rare, if not unique, set of market conditions. On the demand side, Western companies needed to cut costs, but their computer systems still required a lot of human labour. On the supply side, there was an army of well trained, English-speaking engineers demanding only a fraction of a Western salary. Fast fibre-optic links brought both sides together and a favourable exchange rate made this global connection even more attractive: customers paid in dollars, and employees were paid in rupees. The result was a âlow-risk, high-margin businessâ, says Kiran Karnik, the outgoing president of Nasscom, the industry's trade group. To increase sales, firms could hire more people without caring too much about productivity, with the result that growth in revenue correlated closely with growth in headcount.
So why the concern? Indian IT faces a host of threats, says Sudin Apte of Forrester Research, a consultancy, who argues that the industry needs to reinvent itself. The most immediate difficulty is the rapid appreciation of the rupee against the dollar in recent months (see article). Since its low in mid-2006, it has gained 16%. This has made a liability out of what had been a big asset for Indian IT firmsâmaking most of their sales in America. The strong rupee has also thrown other structural problems into relief. These fall into three categories.
<b>What goes upâ¦</b>
First come the familiar problems. One is India's clogged and insufficient infrastructure : workers in Bangalore can spend four hours a day in traffic. Then there are the tax breaks that subsidise the industry, some of which expire in 2009. There is also a growing talent shortage. Indian engineering schools award around 200,000 diplomas each year, and produce around 250,000 graduates, but only half are employable by the IT industry. Employees have learnt to switch jobs for better pay, and salaries are going up by 10-15% a year. For senior staff, they will soon reach Western levels.
Second, competitors are starting to emerge. IT industries in other parts of the world, such as Central Europe, may never match India's in size, but they can still pick off valuable contracts. Meanwhile, foreign IT firms have been beefing up their Indian subsidiaries. In 2002 the six biggestâincluding Accenture, IBM and HPâhad fewer than 10,000 employees in total in the country. Their combined Indian workforce now exceeds 150,000. This enables them to rival the Indian firms in scale and cost, while exploiting their stronger brands and international scope.
The third category concerns future threats. In the short term a slowdown in IT spending looms as America's economy weakens. In the longer term Indian firms must keep abreast of technological changes. Many of the services they now provide will eventually be automated; this is already starting to happen, for example, in software testing. Western firms, meanwhile, increasingly want Indian providers to do more than just keep systems running; they want help in developing new solutions to business problemsâsomething few Indian firms are set up to do.
The question is whether the industry's business model can cope with these threats even as the potential for growth in its established markets declines. According to calculations by CLSA, a French-Asian investment bank, Indian IT firms will soon have a share of nearly 20% of their addressable market's value and almost 40% of its volume. They will also struggle to make their existing business more efficient: most fat has already been cut.
Many think that Indian IT firms need to move into new, higher-margin services and to cut the link between revenues and headcount, for instance by offering more consulting, developing more intellectual property and making acquisitions abroad. To be fair, the leading firms are already doing this. Infosys now generates nearly a quarter of its revenues from consulting, says its new boss, S. Gopalakrishnan; and Wipro recently paid $600m for Infocrossing, an American firm, the largest in a series of acquisitions by Indian firms.
But is the industry moving fast enough? Nasscom's Mr Karnik says no, but he thinks there is still time to change things. Partha Iyengar of Gartner, another consultancy, sees more urgency. He expects slower growth and lower margins if the big firms are not making most of their money in consulting and other high-margin areas within three or four years. This will be hard, he says: today's focus on people, processes and profits may keep many firms from reaching the next level. But, he says, India's IT firms have shown before that they can change if they really need to.
Even if the heavyweights stumble, smaller firms are ready to take up the baton. For example, MindTree Consulting was founded 1999 in anticipation of the very threats that have now materialised. However potent these threats prove, they have already demonstrated that for all the talk of the world being flat, economic gravity still applies.
Mumbai-based realty major Raheja group will be investing around Rs 3000 crore for the development of the first information technology (IT) park in Orissa.
Alongside, a 50 Mw power plant, cold storage in the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode and a hotel would also be set up by the group. The group also plans to enter the retail space and set up an IT development centre after surveying the potential.
The park would be christened Mindspace cum Techno-campus Park. The group already has such Mindspace cum techno-campus parks in Hyderabad, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
A detailed presentation of the proposed IT Park was given to Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and senior IT officials of the state government today.
As per the presentation, in the first phase an incubation centre on 30-40 acres would be developed. The entire IT park would come up over 100 acres.
The plan envisages development of the park within the next 8-10 months, provided land is made available by the Orissa government in the next couple of months.
Blacklisting is no longer sufficient in the changing IT scenario.
Anti-virus and anti-spyware technologies, which are packaged as âblacklistâ solutions, are gradually giving way to what security experts claim is a far more effective IT security technology based on âwhitelistâ solutions.
However, a comprehensive IT security solution would imply that vendors take care of the root cause rather than just specific problems which the lists address, they caution.
Blacklists have always been a significant tool in the security industryâs anti-malware arsenal. A blacklist, for instance, is a list of a particular entity â whether domain names, e-mail addresses or viruses â which are considered dangerous or capable of causing damage.
A website, for instance, can be placed on a blacklist because it is known to be fraudulent or because it exploits browser vulnerabilities to spread spyware or other unwanted software from a userâs machine.
Common examples of traditional blacklist solutions are anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Blacklist software works by blocking known threats.
When a new virus becomes known, the anti-virus companies create a defence against it and provide an update to users. Blacklist solutions provide automatic updates, hence, do not require time-consuming maintenance. Besides, they allow malware to be identified and eliminated.
âHowever, using a blacklist (reactive response to viruses or malware) solution essentially means that users are giving control of their networks to a third-party vendor. âWhitelistâ technology, on the other hand, helps administrations tackle unknown events like malware, etc. Unlike blacklist solutions, this is a proactive response,â explains Shamshad Ahmed, regional director, India and SAARC, Lumension Security.
Surendra Singh, regional director, SAARC and India, Websense, concurs: âThe use of blacklist is reducing since the web is changing. From a security point of view, a whitelist is getting more relevant.â
<b>A âwhitelistâ would compile every known legitimate software program, and add new ones as they are developed. No executable file that is not on the whitelist â such as a chat program, P2P, spyware, or Trojan â would ever get installed or run on a userâs machine.
Whitelist solutions require no virus or spyware definition updates; so, systems are always protected from day-zero virus attacks. Lumension has already installed whitelist solutions in banks like HSBC, Citibank, ABN Amro, and in pharma and IT firms like L&T Infotech.</b>
But are whitelists, then, writing the eulogy for blacklists and anti-virus vendors? âWith Web 2.0, the threat landscape is changing dynamically. More than the blacklist and whitelist approach, the ability to address these issues in real-time will be important,â cautions Singh.
Niraj Kaushik, country manager, Trend Micro India, concurs: âTraditionally, security solutions used the method of blacklist and whitelist to tackle the security issues. But there is a whole grey area that does not fall in this category and needs to be addressed. We have been using a combination of both to address threat levels on email servers as well as on the web. The problem with blacklist or whitelist is that the user needs to define what they want to access and what needs to be blocked.â
âSolutions based on blacklist and whitelist are reducing. Going ahead, solutions providers are creating solutions that take care of the root cause rather than just the problem. Blacklists and whitelists look only into specific problems (worms, virus, etc). But given the interactive nature (Web 2.0 sites) of the web and the increasing threat levels, one cannot expect a user to manually download and upload a blacklist on a daily basis. Hence, their use is bound to decrease,â explains Kartik Shahani, regional director, McAfee India.
McAfeeâs Site Advisor is an example of how security threats need to be tackled, says Shahani. âBased on the kind of malware, site vulnerability, testing of the sites, it gives these sites colour coding. This is ported into all our applications and takes care of the filtering of malicious sites. A user need not upload or download malicious sites manually, it is done in a dynamic manner.â
Some experts, meanwhile, point out that a whitelist would require co-operation and funding from a majority of players in the technology industry.
They further note that the body would have to be neutral, take into consideration open-source software â which are quickly and often modified â and be fast in its approval process.
<b>THE ERA OF WHITELISTING HAS BEGUN
# A âwhitelistâ would compile every known legitimate software program, and add new ones as they are developed
# No executable file, that is not on the whitelist â such as a chat program, P2P, spyware, or Trojan â would ever get installed or run on a userâs machine
# Lumension has installed whitelist solutions in banks like HSBC, Citibank, ABN Amro, and in pharma and IT firms like L&T Infotech.</b>
MUMBAI: Tech Reliance, the information technology company being floated by Reliance Communications (RComm), is likely to have an alliance with Accenture, the global consulting firm.
As a vendor, Accenture will handle the consulting assignments of the outsourcing deals struck by Tech Reliance.
âAccenture will be working with us closely,â an RComm official said.
âBut it will be only one of the vendors that will provide us the consulting capability required by our clients,â he said.
The other major vendors for Tech Reliance are Wipro, TCS and IBM.
Recent reports had suggested that RComm was in talks with French technology company Capgemini for an acquisition. But both RComm and Capgemini have denied this.
In a February 15 interview to BusinessWeek, Capgemini CEO Paul Hermelin refuted the speculation that RComm may be in talks to acquire Capgemini, but informed: âReliance closed a major alliance with Accenture. So, if thereâs one Indian company that would never even talk to us, itâs Reliance.â
Accenture dwarfs RComm in revenues, generating net revenues of $19.70 billion for the fiscal year ended August 31, 2007, while RCommâs were $2.55 billion.
Analysts feel subcontracting may be the way to go for Tech Reliance.
The RComm source said Tech Reliance is doing back-end work for growing both organically as well as inorganically.
Its major customers would be all the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group companies.
âIn addition, we would be looking at both the domestic and international market to offer our services,â the source added.
âAn initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore, if not a billion dollars (Rs 4,000 crore),â the source said, âis what Tech Reliance is going ahead with to kickstart operations.â
The verticals in which Tech Reliance would be offering services are financial services, utilities, telecommunications, entertainment and multimedia, healthcare and manufacturing.
The undivided Reliance group was one of the early users of SAP enterprise resource planning software (a core business application used to integrate various business processes, sold by German pioneer SAP AG).
This, too, will be one of the major IT practices at Tech Reliance since SAP ERP usage dominates the ERP space globally.
In India, too, thatâs the case: 57% of the total ERP market uses SAP.
Tech Reliance has already set up units in Gurgaon, Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad and about 4,000 professionals have been recruited to jumpstart operations.
Earlier this month, Gartner, the IT research firm, said in a report that the market segments expected to witness the strongest growth in India are consulting, IT management, and business process management (BPM) services, with five-year growth rate of 28.1%, 23.8% and 27.1%, respectively.
âConsulting revenue, although coming from a small base, grew 30.1% to $340 million in 2006 compared with 2005,â for the sector, Gartner said.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Entrepreneur Rajeev Purnaiya launches IT venture 'hooeey'</b>
Â
Bangalore, Feb 19 (UNI) Entrepreneur Rajeev Purnaiya, the man behind successful 'CyberBazaar, now acquired by WebEx, has launched his second venture -- 'hooeey', an innovative web application to help browsers locate information quickly from previously browsed web pages.
Mr Purnaiya in a release here today said the web application was targeted at internet users who want to keep a track of their history. The web application delinks the browser history from the browser and it adds a social networking layer, allowing one to share specific sites with others, both on the 'hooeey' network, and other social bookmark services.
The services can be accessed for free at 'www.hooeey.com'.
''The net users can easily share interesting web pages with others and use the provided dashboard to manage their browsing time more efficiently,'' he added.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Washington, PTI: The current base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas is "arbitrarily set" and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals, Gates told a House of Representatives Panel on Science and Technology.
<b>The "counterproductive" US immigration policies should be revamped to allow more people to get into the country on H-1B visas aimed at highly-skilled professionals, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has said, arguing that hiring an 'A'-grade student from India creates spin-off employment for 'B' and 'C' American students.</b>
The current base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas is "arbitrarily set" and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals, Gates told a House of Representatives Panel on Science and Technology.
Appearing before the panel at a time when US lawmakers cutting across party lines are hammering away at the "abuses" in the H-1B visas and outsourcing in general, Gates took on Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California who said there is "no excuse" for keeping out "'B' and 'C' American students" just because there was an "A student from India".
In his formal statement to the Committee, Gates made the point that Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born candidates it wished to hire because of too few H-1B visas.
Gates said when companies like Microsoft hire top foreign engineers, they create jobs for 'B and C American students' around them.
The Microsoft founder told lawmakers that the immigration system would have to be revamped in such a fashion so as to allow more number of people to get into America on H-1B visas and it did not make sense for a bright foreign student to be educated using American tax-payers money and then sent home on some immigration requirement.
"It makes no sense to educate people in our universities, often subsidised by US taxpayers, and then insist they return home," Gates said.
"Today, knowledge and expertise are the essential raw materials that companies and countries need in order to be competitive. We live in an economy that depends on the ability of innovative companies to attract and retain the very best talent, regardless of nationality or citizenship.
"Unfortunately, the US immigration system makes attracting and retaining high-skilled immigrants exceptionally challenging for US firms," Gates said.
He said Congress's failure to pass high-skilled immigration reform has exacerbated an "already grave" situation.
"For example, the current base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy's demand for skilled professionals. This situation has caused a serious disruption in the flow of talented graduates to US companies."
Because an H-1B petition generally can be filed only for a person who holds a degree, when May-June 2007 graduates received their degrees, the visa cap for fiscal year 2008 had already been reached, he pointed out.
Accordingly, US firms will be unable to hire those graduates on an H-1B visa until the beginning of fiscal year 2009, or October 2008.
"As a result, many US firms, including Microsoft, have been forced to locate staff in countries that welcome skilled foreign workers to do work that could otherwise have been done in the United States, if it were not for our counterproductive immigration policies," Gates said.
<b>"Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities. Our experience is not unique. A recent study of technology companies in the S&P 500 found that, for every H-1B visa requested, these leading US technology companies increased their overall employment by five workers," Gates maintained.</b>
As Gates is pushing lawmakers to relax the numbers on the H-1B visas, top Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa has asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff what progress has been made toward the Department's reform of the H-1B visa programme.
"The H-1B visa programme was created to serve American employers who need high-tech workers. It was created to fill a void in the labour force. The visa holders were intended to fill jobs for a temporary amount of time while the country invested in American workers to pick up the skills needed," he said.
"The programme may be beneficial to some businesses, but it's even better for companies based outside. The fact is most H-1B visas are going to foreign-based companies," Grassley said in a letter.
"Businesses that need highly skilled workers are getting the short end of the stick. Americans are seeing ruthless tactics by some companies to bring in foreign workers, pay them less, and increase their bottom line," he said.
<b>In his formal statement to the Committee, Gates made the point that Microsoft was unable to hire one-third of the foreign-born candidates it wished to hire because of too few H-1B visas.</b>
<b>Govt planning special IT areas</b> Link
March 21, 2008
Hyderabad : With same benefits as special economic zones (SEZs), these regions will offer best infrastructure to IT companies outside Tier-I cities.
Department of Information Technology Secretary Jainder Singh said the Centre and state governments would jointly develop infrastructure in the proposed IT investment regions, while addressing the Hyderabad IT Summit 2008, which began at International Convention Centre here on Thursday.
<b>Underlining the need for a movement to Tier-II and Tier-III cities, he said cities like Coimbatore, Mysore, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh and Visakhapatnam were already moving ahead. Cities like Kakinada, Vijayawada, Warangal and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh were also growing.
âThe movement to Tier-II and Tier-III cities is necessary as infrastructure in metro cities is overloaded. This is also necessary for cost competitiveness, attracting human resources and for spreading benefits of IT to rural areas for balanced regional development in the country,â he observed.
Mr Jainder Singh said IT exports from the country were $31 billion in the last financial year and was expected to reach $40 billion during 2007-08 and $60 billion by 2010.</b>
Incidentally, the Indian IT industry is contributing 5.4 per cent of countryâs GDP and 25 per cent of total exports.
<b>Andhra Pradesh is the Preferred IT hub in India</b> Link
Mar 23, 2008
Hyderabad : The state continues to be a significant contributor towards India's economic growth. <b>Moreover, the AP government is now looking proactively at foraying into sunrise IT sectors such as KPO along with Animation and Gaming.</b>
Proactive initiatives of the Andhra Pradesh government and potential to sustain long term IT growth have transformed Hyderabad to become India's leading IT hub, according to a report released jointly by the Information Technology and Communications Department, Government of Andhra Pradesh and Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj.
The report "Andhra Pradesh - The chosen destination for IT" was released by Chief Minister Rajasekhara Reddy, and Mr Anuj Puri, Chairman and Country Head, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj, at the Hyderabad IT Summit 2008.
<b>The state of Andhra Pradesh earns the fourth largest revenues in IT exports amounting to INR 1.85 billion, accounting for about 15% of the total IT/software exports from India.</b>
The state continues to be a significant contributor towards India's economic growth. Moreover, the AP government is now looking proactively at foraying into sunrise IT sectors such as KPO along with Animation and Gaming.
<b>According to the report, the Indian real estate market is not only growing in terms of pace, but also in scale. The smaller cities are now expected to be the growth drivers over the next decade. More that a dozen Tier III cities compete with each other to attract developers, investors and occupiers. The smaller cities in Andhra Pradesh will have an advantage due to relentless government support.</b>
Anuj Puri, Chairman and Country Head, Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj said, The IT boom has had a significant impact on real estate development in Andhra Pradesh.
The state offers tremendous development potential with Hyderabad at the epicenter of IT growth, followed by emerging cities such as Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada and Tirupati.
The state's initiatives and strategies for infrastructural development, human resource development and policy framework to support and attract investments have helped it become an attractive investment destination for developers and occupiers. From the positive growth momentum built by the government, Andhra Pradesh is steadily placing itself firmly on the global business map."
<b>Other salient points from the report include:</b>
* Andhra Pradesh has the highest number of SEZs approved by the central government for the IT sector (as of 31st December, 2007). It is expected to get a total of 71 SEZs which will create overall jobs for more than 2.5 million people
* Digital Entertainment City is envisaged to be developed as the largest animation and gaming hub in South Asia and will be developed through private-public partnership. The city will have world class in facilities and incubation centers
* With relatively lower rental and commercial values when compared to major cities, Hyderabad is still affordable in terms of real estate costs and living
* A new ICT (2005-2010) is in place to make Andhra Pradesh the most attractive and preferred destination for the IT Companies.
* Overall, the report concludes that buoyed by significant infrastructure development and the emergence of Hyderabad as the prime IT hub of Andhra Pradesh, the government has identified the IT sector as one of the most important economic drivers for the state.
<b>BSNL targets apartments to provide pre-enabled telecom services</b> Link
Mar 23, 2008
Bangalore : It will be âplug and playâ again, when you enter a new apartment. All you have to do is to just choose the tariff package for your telephone, broadband and if needed, the Internet Protocol television (IPTV) connections and start using them immediately.
In its aggressive marketing strategy, the BSNL is tapping all the builders to provide pre-enabled telecom services to the new apartments. The high-end telecom services will be provided through a dedicated Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) to each apartment or group housing layouts.
Already, the BSNL has set up the service in one of the apartment constructed by HM builders and nine more projects are in the pipeline.
A meeting of BSNL senior officials, representatives of Coral Group, which provides equipment for the project and representatives from various construction company was held on Wednesday to promote the project.
According to a senior BSNL official, the apartment owners need not spend anything to set up the infrastructure.
Setting up of MSAN needs around 200 sq feet land within the apartment premises, which BSNL is planning to take up on rent basis.
The copper cable will be restricted to within the building premises, which will ensure trouble free lines. Since power supply is irregular in the outskirts, where the new apartments are being constructed, a battery back lasting over 12 hours will be set up, he said.
Besides, BSNL has a bouquet of offers, including special discount tariff plans, no installation charges, free centrex, free calls for utilities and intercom system within the group.
âThis will meet the high end demand of telecom services, which include high speed broad band and all the Value Added Services in basic telephony,â he said.
For better after sale services, BSNL is planning to set up a separate `one point' customer care centre to these group connections. âWhen there is a problem, the customer should not be made to run around different people for different problem. They will be provided with one-point solution for all their problems,â another senior official noted.
<b>How it works: While an apartment is being constructed, the BSNL will set up an Optical Fibre Ring (OFR) between nearby Main Telephone Exchange and the apartment premises. Through the OFR, a MSAN will be set up, through which lines will be drawn to individual houses.
The occupants of the house have to just contact the BSNL and get their line activated.</b>
<!--emo&:thumbsup--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumbup.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='thumbup.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Indore is emerging as a strong tier-II offshore development centre in central India. IT Services companies like Computer Sciences Corporation and BPO companies like MphasiS, Firstsource and Teleperformance are located in the city. http://nri.in.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-do...id=1429545
<b>IT professionals form union to hold on to jobs</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Das Kapital would probably not be on their reading lists, yet in their hour of crisis, <b>India's information technology professionals have turned to collective bargaining techniques that Marx would laud.</b>
....
A group of top officials from the global union is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi on December 5 to meet Nasscom officials and Indian ministers to talk about how best the sector can safeguard employee's interests. After these discussions, office bearers of the Indian union will tour the country, talking to company managements about alternatives to firing employees.
....
The Indian union, which has about 15,000 members from top firms such as IBM and Infosys, estimates that firms in the sector have axed 10,000 jobs in the past three months. The Indian union may, however, be defying a long-standing diktat by the industry's umbrella body, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, that IT professionals must not get involved in trade unionism.
âWe donât need intermediaries,â Ganesh Natarajan told HT. âThe industry is very transparent.â The global union does not agree.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now commies will kill IT in India.
<b>World Bank bars Satyam for 8 years</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The World Bank has barred Satyam Computer Services [Get Quote] from doing any business with it for the next eight years even as the share prices of India's fourth-largest IT <b>firm tanked 13.5 per cent on rumours that B Ramalinga Raju, founder and chairman, has resigned. </b>
Speculation was also high on news that Wipro [Get Quote] Technologies, India's third-largest IT firm, might acquire Satyam, something both companies denied.
Foxnews.com on Tuesday reported that the World Bank ban started in September this year "due to alleged malpractice's including bribery". The news report said the <b>World Bank debarment -- the harshest sanction ever made by the bank since 2004 -- was meted out for 'improper benefit to bank staff' and 'lack of documentation on invoices'</b>.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I am not surprised, they bribe Executives in Silicon Valley. I hope IRS will watch them.
In a letter to the board, Raju has given balance sheet details. In a shocking revelation, he has said that the balance sheet details over the years was fictitious. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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<b>Satyam Chairman Resigns After Falsifying Accounts </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->âThis is a black day for India, the software sector and corporate governance claims,â Arun Kejriwal, founder of Kejriwal Research & Investment Services, said in Mumbai. âIf at all thereâs an event that could be the biggest setback for corporate India, it is this.â
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, and Credit Suisse Group AG suspended coverage of Satyam, which slumped a record 78 percent in Mumbai. The National Stock Exchange removed Satyam from its main Nifty index after the benchmark slumped 6.2 percent.
Satyamâs American depositary receipts fell $8.42, or 90 percent, to 93 cents at 9:14 a.m. in early New York trading.
âDeep Shockâ
âWeâre in a deep state of shock by whatâs been announced and weâre fairly happy that we sold when we did,â said Greg Kuhnert, a fund manager at Investec Asset Management Ltd. in London, which manages about $10 billion and sold its 0.15 percent stake in Satyam last month. âWhen we look at further investments in the country, weâll have to get out a magnifying glass and really examine every bit very closely.â
Satyam maintains computer networks and provides outsourcing services for clients including Citigroup, Nissan Motor Co. and Qantas Airways Ltd. The company employs about 53,000 people in Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad and competes with Infosys Technologies Ltd., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Wipro Ltd.
âThis quarter will be tumultuous for us,â interim Chief Executive Officer Ram Mynampati said in an e-mailed statement. âRumors will abound and it would be fair to assume that competition will try to leverage it to their advantage.â
<b>Infosys, Indiaâs second-largest software exporter, called the incident âdeplorable.â</b>
<b>Accounting scandal at Satyam could be India's Enron</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"I think there is no future for this stock. This case for India is similar to what happened to Enron in the U.S.," said Jigar Shah, senior vice-president at Kim Eng Securities.
"It will not stop at Satyam. Many more companies will come into scrutiny like that. There is a strong possibility investments in India will be affected."
The scandal set off a wave of condemnation from Indian market regulators and government officials, and prompted banker Merrill Lynch to terminate its engagement with Satyam.
"It's going to impact the Indian outsourcing industry. Customers are going to be concerned about offshoring firms in India," said Sudin Apte, country head of Forrester in the western city of Pune
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This will have long term impact.
I have serious doubt about Infosys and Wipro account books.
Mastech now called as iGate had same problem.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Investor confidence shaken</b>
Navin Upadhyay | New Delhi
pioneer.com
A study by well-known international brokerage firm CLSA on the state of corporate <b>governance in 20 countries across Asia showed that India stood among the top three in terms of regulation. In one stroke, the Satyam scandal threatened to erode the credibility of the country's corporate governance, </b>and that too, at a critical juncture when India was desperately hoping for the return of global investors.
When the murky Satyam saga first erupted last month following uproar over the company's attempt to buy out the family-floated Maytas Infrastructure, it invited worldwide uproar and Satyam share crashed both at New York Stock Exchange and domestic bourses. But over the weeks, hopes that some major investor would acquire controlling stakes in Satyam and revive its fortune, brought interests back in the company. Its share opened at Rs 184 on Wednesday after touching the low of Rs 120 in the third week of December. But as the scam unfolded, it closed at Rs 39.95<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Satyam may axe 10,000 employees next month: Headhunters</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"It is most likely that Satyam will cut 10,000 jobs next month as the company is left with no cash to pay the salaries. The current fiasco is likely to put pressure on salaries, which may reduce by 10 per cent due to the surplus of about 20,000 people in the jobs market," Headhunters India CEO Kris Lakshmikanth told PTI.
.........
The uncertainty about jobs is killingly painful for the 53,000 employees of Satyam, especially when the industry is going slow on recruitment<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This company is gone now. IT salary will come down in India, surplus supply of manpower.
<b>The rise and fall of a dot.con</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Says an ex-employee of Satyam Infoway, who did not want to be identified: <b>âFor Raju, family, caste and those who could speak Telugu came first. I am not saying he was not a professional but other things being equal, he would look at things in that order.â</b>
To some extent this was true. His brother Rama Raju was the MD of the company and till 2000, Chinta Srinivasa Raju, known as Srini Raju, who was married to his wifeâs sister, used to head one of the key divisions. A lot of senior management professionals also hailed from Andhra. Says another industry veteran who also did not want to be identified, âAt one point of time there were so many Rajus (in the company) that it would be difficult to identify who was who.â
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