eZine August 2009 by Alok Abhijit

August 2009 | eZine by eBiz @ Weschool | +91 97694 88154

[ Volume III, Issue I ]

Better late than never Yes, its clichéd to say “better late than never” and we have no excuses for that. This year’s e-Business magazine is more than one month late to come out so

Contents

let’s just blame this also on the recession or “market saturation”.

Special Interest Articles

We the welingkarites have always been a family and would always remain one,

Better late than never

we would have good times and we would have bad ones but we shall remain

Debate

e101

ePoll of the issue

Living Life at the spur…….

Importance of telecom

Plan for this ezine

together so connect with everyone on this Linkedin group. I would also like to welcome the 2009-11 batch of e-Biz, which is a very promising batch as described by relevant sources that wished not to be named.

D bate

Individual Highlights This section will include an issue which may haunt the readers of this magazine; though the initial thought would be presented here the discussion would continue online in order to reach a valid and acceptable solution. Due to the recession there is a decrease in employment, thus, in order to have a sustainable future should one avoid the "gaddha"? To read more and comment please follow this link.

Gadget

Events & Happenings

The red pill

Ingenuity

ePoll of the issue As future business professionals we need to have market intelligence in order to survive the market and grow. This section thus presents a market situation to the readers and asks for their informed opinion on the same. The results of this poll are then presented in the next issue of the magazine so that as a group we can benefit from the new found knowledge of “how do readers belonging to this segment think?” The poll would be conducted online but the actual question would be raised here. “Is direct monetary investment the only way by which Indian SM&MEs can grow in the near future?” To contribute to this poll kindly click here.

According to an Industry study “Among those responsible for hiring PR and marketing employees, 82% of respondents said mainstream media relations expertise is either important or very important, while more than 80% said knowledge of social networks is either important or very important.

Gadget Digsby is very light and easy to use software that is all of the following:  A multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list.  An email notification tool that alerts you of new email and lets you perform actions such as 'Delete' or 'Report Spam' with just one click. e.g yahoo, hotmail, Gmail, etc.  A social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to. E.g LinkedIn, facebook, etc. So whenever you are online and want to keep in touch with the world you don’t need to open all email ids on the browser nor you have to run all the instant messaging clients on your PC at the same time. Download at: www.digsby.com

e101: Bluetooth Almost everyone on the better side of digital divide is well versed with the term Bluetooth. Many of us may however be surprised to know that the technology, much talked about a it is, was launched only in May, 1998 and it has become the most well known means of communication in the information communication industry. The beginning of the technology is generally attributed to Eriksson whose engineers were looking for a way to enable wireless headsets for mobile phones. On realizing the potential of short range RF technology as an industrial standard Eriksson approached other telephone, mobile computer, and electronics companies about forming an industry group to specify and standardize a general-purpose, short-range, low-power form of wireless communication. This small group became the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). Initially it was a loosely formed group of five companies; Eriksson, IBM, INTEL, Nokia and Toshiba. Gradually more companies started signing up till it became the de facto industry standard. The unusual name of the service, “Bluetooth”, also has a hint of history behind it. The technologists associated with the protocol were inspired by the 10thcentury Danish king Harald Blatand, who is credited with uniting parts of Scandinavia. It is said that a loose translation of his surname to English produces “blue tooth.” The early technologists felt that it could unite the telecommunications and information technology (IT) industries, and hence they referred to it as “Bluetooth,” after King Harald. At that time, Bluetooth was considered a temporary “code name” for the project. However the name struck and is currently a trademarked term. Bluetooth wireless technology uses radio frequency (RF) to accomplish wireless communication. Its operation is in the 2.4-GHz frequency spectrum which allows the Bluetooth devices to be used virtually worldwide without requiring any license for its operation. Bluetooth is intended to operate over short distances (up to a maximum of 100 m, although the optimal range is around 10 m).Communication to short ranges allows for low power consumption, so Bluetooth technology is particularly useful for use with battery-powered devices (mobile, pda’s, headsets, mobile computing etc.) Both voice and data can be carried over Bluetooth communication links. It enables any two devices to talk among themselves without any cables.

Living life at the spur of the moment Sometime back, I had received an email forward, which I thought could not be truer. It tells how we spend our whole life waiting and preparing for those phases of life which we think once we enter we will be fully satisfied and life will be ‘happy’ thereafter. What we don’t realize is that those moments will never come; life is not a movie with a ‘happily ever after’ ending. We prepare for entrance exams to get into the top graduation colleges, with the notion that once we get through, life will take care of itself. Then we appear for placements, and wait for the job to start, so that once we start earning, life will be good, and we’ll enjoy. When the job isn’t to our liking, or when we become aware of the social stigma attached to just having a graduation degree, we start preparing for CATs and GRE’s, with the hope that after this last phase of education, life has to be good, right? I mean we’re in the top 5% of the world society, if we don’t have a good life, who else will? So we get in a top b school or so, get a good job (read: a high paying job in a ‘reputed’ MNC which is nowhere close to what we like to do), we wait to get married, get a promotion, have kids and then we realize we’re already 35!, and the time to take risks and live a carefree life is gone! We realize that we’ve just spent our whole life worrying and planning about our future and now we’ve got family responsibilities and old parents whom we did not spend quality time with because we were busy pursuing those goals which they themselves wanted us to achieve. What we don’t realize is that those very precious moments which we had spent worrying were the ones that we were supposed to enjoy, and that life which we comprehend being a destination, was actually supposed to be a journey of sorts. I call this an attempt towards life fixing, wherein every action that we take is an attempt to help us move towards our preset goals. But is this the life we were supposed to live, wherein our life and goals are similar to every fourth colleague of ours? No. I say, why have a goal? Why not take everything as it comes and do things out of interest rather than not doing the same because we think it is not in line with our final career goal, or because there is no guarantee of success in this field, or because our family and friends might look down on it, or because it won’t add value to our CV? Don’t have a goal, don’t plan much in advance, and you won’t have unfulfilled expectations, and you won’t have to worry about trotting the same path for next few years just because you’ve already spent a huge chunk of our life running on that, and that choosing a new path will mean having to start afresh. It’s easy – just go for what interests you RIGHT NOW. We need to realize that the whole “mazaa” of life is the unpredictability and surprises it has in store for us. So friends, we’ve got two options – either to waste our life worrying, planning, and waiting for the next good thing to happen to us, or, enjoy every moment by living life at the spur of the moment. The choice is ours!

events & Happenings This column presents the latest from eBiz. The e-Biz batch of 2008-10 attended two workshops conducted by faculty of foreign universities vis-à-vis International Business by Dr. Stanley Ridgyle and Knowledge Management by Dr. Arkalgud Ramaprasad.

4 In the movie matrix, “which pill would you take the red or the blue?” Illustrates the personal aspect of the decision to live in ignorance (and potential bliss) or what Aristotle called “the examined life”

The red pill At first it was just a little search engine which fetched you whatever you looked for, then came the browser toolbar which helped you to find exactly what you are looking for; the desktop utility gave the power to search content stored on your computer. If that was not enough, you got the entire browser which would help you to do everything as long as you are connected to the internet, which by the way was launched in premature beta version and till now has not evolved. You guessed it right it is indeed Google TM The brand which stands for "Free”, but, have you ever thought that by launching the above mentioned products/services google has made way into your privacy right from being just a website located on an unknown server to the very PC you are using. If you use internet explorer 8 TM and have turned on the blocking mode (the little lock located on the status bar at the bottom of the browser and set it for blocking content which is being shared by more than three sites), then if you take a look at the names of content provider which was blocked, you will notice that almost all the content on the popular web is related to google. Which means that google is tracking your every move. Yes, you have heard this before, but, have you ever imagined the power of this “global automatic market research tool” named google. So, why the new operating system? Just because google wants to further classify its data on the basis of demographics, psychographics etc. How? By indexing the content on your PC, by analyzing your usage behavior………

IMPORTANCE OF TELECOM The terrorists entered CST station without any hurdles and open fired at several innocent people. Many lives were lost on that dreadful night. It was clearly a major security lapse. Is there any solution to this major security flaw? Well a start has been made by the state run company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL). On December 04 2008, they made a novel offering of starting the service of “Mobile video surveillance” by marrying its state-of-art 3G service with the conventional closed circuit TV, so that the security officers can monitor movements while being on the go themselves. The 3G technology will first be introduced in Delhi on 11th December 2008, putting the country on the 3G map. 3G is the buzz word in the Indian telecom market today. 3G is the third generation of standards and technology for mobile networking. So how is it different from what we are using today? 3G networks enable network operators to offer users a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency. It has 14.4 Mbit/s on the downlink and 5.8 Mbit/s on the uplink and trust me, that’s really fast! On the other hand, what we are using now is 2.4G AND 2.75G. It uses EDGE technology (similar to GPRS). EDGE can carry data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s. Well these figures speak for themselves. Apart from 3G, India saw the introduction of Wi-Max IN 2008. Wi-Max, is an acronym for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. In simple words it is wireless broadband connectivity. The main difference between Wi-Fi and Wimax is the large coverage area of Wi-max. Wi-max is used for providing wireless broadband connection and Wi-Fi is used for providing wireless LAN. Well that was about the upcoming technologies in India, but I am also interested in the current market condition keeping in mind the effect of the global economic crisis. Has the economic meltdown affected the telecom industry? Let’s start with some statistics. Department of Telecom (DoT) has said in its annual report for 2007-2008, “Production in telecom equipment has increased from Rs 17,833 crore in 2005-2006 to RS 23,656 crore in 2006-07 and the projected figure for the year 2007-08 is RS 26,253 crore.” Today, there are more than 225 million telecom subscribers in India. Every month, 6-7 million new subscribers are added. This shows that the telecom industry is growing at a great rate. In fact, India has one of the fastest growing telecom sectors in the world and is the second largest mobile market in the world. According to industry experts, the text and voice service for cellular phones has reached its saturation. So what next? The industry sees a huge opportunity of growth in the Value Added Service (VAS) segment. VAS has started contributing nearly 12% of operator gross revenues and it is a big-ticket item so far as getting month-on-month incremental revenue goes.

But, I wonder for how much more time the industries can sustain this growth. Several companies have slowed down their growth. The telecom companies have not yet started firing people but have reduced hiring as well. A UK based Telecom major British Telecom Group (BTG) Thursday announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs at home and overseas, but said this would not affect the Indian operations of the company. “The Indian operations would not see any retrenchment. The majority of the job cuts are UK based. It is too early to know country specific job cuts”, a company spokesperson said. British Telecom has about 1000 employees in India. AT&T has had a similar situation like many other telecom giants which are going through job cuts but are not majorly affected in India. As per a report by TRAI published on 1st December 2008, "The current global financial crisis is, of course, now one of the major constraints on the pace of economic reform, but the Indian telecom sector, because of its innate strength and resilience, is perhaps one of the few sectors that have remained almost unaffected by this adverse global trend," said Mr. Nripendra Misra, Chairman, Telecom Authority of India (TRAI). The reason for this is the ability of India to absorb the services due to its large population. In fact, Mr. Nripendra Misra went on to say, “It should be noted that the Indian economy has recorded GDP growth of over 8 percent for 12 Successive quarters since 2005. The telecom sector is expected to perform even better; its contribution to the nation's GDP is expected to increase from 2% in 2006 to an estimated 3.6% in 2010”. So, as of now, there is no such bad news in the telecom industry.

Ingenuity

A Memorable Dream! Once upon a time When life was lovely & fine; My heart reminded me about That Memorable Dream of mine. People, I saw, were confident; And something sparkling there, A special feeling, a precious moment It clearly meant, they care! They knew their purpose in life, And perfectly knew it all; They strived, day and night, so hard; To make the mountain fall. Oh! The Mountain! That I specified there, Like terrorism, poverty & corruption; Symbolized that was all unfair. A mountain of pain and unjust, As wide as the sea-shore; Doesn't help India be proud of herself, How could she expect more? So, wake up friends, my dear friends, We have a long way to seek, With love, diligence & respect, We will make it to the peak! Battles come & battles go, Not always to the faster man; Though I realize, we have to win My Heart says, 'Together, WE CAN!' As now my dream is growing; And it is growing large. I wish that this little piece; Inspires all our hearts!! I feel my dream's realizing, And mature like lovely wine; Remains close to my heart always, That Memorable dream of mine!

eZine by eBiz @ Weschool Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research +91 97694 88154 ankitgupta.in@gmail.com A Magazine Of, By & For e-Biz Find us on the Web: Welingkar eBiz Linkedin Blog ebiz.samwad@gmail.com Please feel free to email us any time (for praises, complains, suggestions or any other matter related to our efforts)

The writers: “Importance of telecom” Mr. Vrajesh Parekh vrajeshdparekh@gmail.com 9892604548

e101: Bluetooth Mr. Alok Abhijit alok.abhijit@gmail.com 9868563796

Ingenuity: “A Memorable Dream” Ms. Aekta Mahtani aekta.mahtani@gmail.com 9821929427

Gadget & Red Pill: Mr. Ankit Gupta ankitgupta.in@gmail.com 9769488154

“Living Life at the spur of the moment” Mr. Akshay Aggarwal akkiaggarwal@gmail.com 9920150081.

The Team: Mr. Alok Abhijit Mr. Akshay Aggarwal Mr. Ankit Gupta Design, concept, editing and copyright by and of e-Biz Samwad Council Our Special thanks to Mr. Vaibhav Tamhane, vaibhavtamhane@gmail.com; for sharing the invaluable photograph of e-Biz batch 2008-10.

The Plan Phase I: Publish the magazine; target audience being current ebusiness students. Phase II: Extend the target audience to the ebusiness alumni. Phase III: Further include future ebusiness students. Phase IV: Finally cater to all business professionals. Phase V: Find opportunities to generate revenue. The important aspect would be to pass the baton early to the junior batches to take lead in the publication of the ezine.