MARCH 2013
IT & COMMUNICATIONS Staying Competitive in the Indian Economy
SUMMIT
IT Cell of NMIMS
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EDITOR’S NOTE Indian IT sector had witnessed its golden period in the last decade. Despite the challenging global market scenario, Indian IT industry is poised to sustain its growth. Some of the pivotal factors which drive this industry are the business models, organisational efficiencies and services around upcoming technologies like cloud, data analytics, mobility, and social media. With the advent of new technology and innovation in the way of doing business and getting clients, the growth story of the sector is but far from over. Having received overwhelming response from the top B-Schools in the form of articles related to the theme, the task of choosing the best ones was really difficult. Owing to the limitation in terms of space, a selected few have been published. To make the magazine an interesting read, a compilation of brain teasers, interesting facts have been featured in this edition. SummIT’s activities and events throughout the year have also been highlighted. Hope you enjoy reading!
The Editor, SummIT.
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ANNUAL MAGAZINE OF SUMMIT CONTENTS Cloud Computing: The Future for SMEs in India By Ankur Salunke, NMIMS Mumbai Page—5
4G-The Business Game Changer By Arnab Mallick , NMIMS Mumbai Gaurav Bhalerao , NMIMS Mumbai Page—7
At the Competitive Edge By Ganesh Padhi , NMIMS Mumbai Vidhi Shah, NMIMS, Mumbai Page—12
Indian IT Industry: The Next Wave of Growth By Rohit Maloo, IIM Indore Dhruv Shandil , IIM Indore Page—14
What do the “clouds” hold for India? By Abhishek Kumar , NMIMS Mumbai Page—16
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Let ‘IT’ contribute more By Shwetank Sharma , NMIMS Mumbai Page—19
Have we seen IT all yet! By Shubhi Tripathi , IMT Ghaziabad Page—22
Interesting Facts By Vaibhav Jha, NMIMS Mumbai Page—24
Puzzles By Devesh Verma, NMIMS Mumbai Page—27
SummIT 2012-13 Page—28
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Cloud Computing: The Future for SMEs in India SMEs contribute 45% of the industrial output in India and employ nearly 60 million people. Their contribution to the GDP was 17% in 2011 and is expected to touch 22% by 2012. This is a clear indicator of the importance of SMEs in our economy. SMEs have readily embraced technology and account for one third of the IT investment in the country. Most of the SMEs in India have adopted traditional ERP packages quite aggressively and have incurred heavy costs. The major problem that SMEs face with traditional ERPs is that the products offered to them exceed their requirements and the ERP providers are not willing to offer a stripped down version of their package and the SMEs end up over spending for features that they don’t require. The need to maintain dedicated infrastructure and scalability becomes a major issue as the SME grows. Cloud computing mitigates most of the IT issues that
Fig: 1
The benefits shown in Fig 1 certainly make a strong argument for SMEs to adopt cloud computing. Cost cutting and lowering operating costs are of prime importance for SMEs in the highly competitive environment in India. Initial capital expenditure and maintenance costs are transferred to the service provider. Lean IT infrastructure helps in streamlining operations and developing cost effective business models. SMEs can focus on their core business areas and leverage upon the reliable and flexible IT service provided to them. Gradual reforms in sectors such as retail have given SMEs a golden opportunity to reap the benefits of doing business with MNCs. The SMEs would have to align their operations and IT infrastructure with those of the MNCs for generating synergy that would benefit both the parties.
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In India, SMEs primarily look for the quality of the cloud solution that is provided and the after sales services. With a plethora of cloud service providers in the market, quality becomes a differentiating factor. Uninterrupted, efficient and transparent services are what the SMEs expect from the service providers. Indian IT firms like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and global giants like Microsoft, Google and HP are all active in the Cloud Computing services market. Competition in the Indian market is getting heated up. Google and Microsoft engaged in a war of words over cloud computing earlier this year.
Fig: 2
One of the major hindrances to adoption of cloud computing by SMEs in India is the absence of an effective legal and regulatory framework. Issues depicted in Fig 2 are yet to be addressed by the concerned authorities in India. Loss over control of data, licensing and liability in case of a crisis are major concerns. Till such time that these qualms are not erased by bringing in laws to address these issues, migrating to a cloud platform would be like a leap of faith for SMEs. But cloud computing is definitely worth taking the risk. Today IT no longer gives a competitive advantage, but is a necessity. SMEs needs a differentiator more than ever now since there are many opportunities on offer and being an early adopter of cloud computing will help them in getting a head start over competitors like other SMEs and MNCs. References http://www.smechamberofindia.com/About_MSMEs.aspx ( 8:34 AM, 8th August 2012) http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-02-28/news/31107904_1_indian-sme-server -virtualization-emczinnov ( 7:27 PM, 7th August 2012) http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/industry-and-economy/info-tech/article2120897.ece ( 5:04 PM, 7th August 2012)
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4G-The Business Game Changer “A farmer is undergoing an ECG test. A microchip inside the machine connects it to a mobile phone tower, from where the signal is transmitted through an optical fiber network to a team of doctors in Kolkata who observe the data and read out their prognosis” “You are in a video conference with prospective business partners in China, but none of them knows a word of English. Worry not: the service operator will ensure you listen to them in English and they listen to you in Chinese.” Life is all set to change forever with the advent of fourth generation (4G) wireless broadband which offers higher speed and more bandwidth than whatever you have experienced till now. It is not only Life that is going to change but also Businesses, more specifically, its basic fabric. What is 4G? It is the term that we use to refer to the 4th generation of Mobile communication that is the next wave of high speed mobile technologies that will replace the current 2G & 3G networks. These are mainly IP based networks which will offer data speeds 10 times that of 3G based network. In other words it will cause a data avalanche!! The Current Situation... Though in many parts of the world, this has been embraced to a penetration level of above 20%, in India this is yet to happen. As of now only Airtel has launched 4G offerings in Kolkata and Bangalore. Aircel and Reliance are yet to catch on (Licenses already acquired). Early April, Bharti Airtel became the first telecom operator to introduce 4G services in India. The services, launched in Kolkata, not only offer rich content, but also allow superfast access to video streaming, multiple chatting, instant photo uploading, etc. Further, 4G is expected to facilitate provision of services such as e-governance, ehealth and e-education. [Refer Exhibit 1] Airtel, being the 1st mover in this field has been able to latch on to the opportunities that the field provides. Primarily, Airtel’s target consumer base had been retail customers. Since the launch of 4G it has been shifting its base towards corporate
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houses, transportation businesses by offering newer communication and development technologies. Below we discuss some of the new avenues that 4G has opened up for Airtel: Game Development and Application Development –‘Interaction and Involvement’ is the new differentiator Video streaming on the mobile itself can hardly be considered a novelty. However, live streaming of HD content and multi-way HD video chat most certainly can. With 4G, we’re bound to see more comprehensive multimedia experiences and a surge in mobile video consumption as a result of higher quality content that will truly be accessible on-demand. Another aspect of access to higher capacity network is the advent of increased realtime interactivity in a gaming context. Currently, there are titles with multiplayer functionality available, but mostly they are turn-based. When the 4G rollout by operators reaches ubiquitous levels, new game genres, such as multiplayer First Person Shooters, will make their way onto the digital shelves of the various app stores. This has been leveraged by Airtel in its strategic Tie up with Microsoft in introducing a new technology platform that will give Airtel users access to a host of Microsoft Office applications and other multimedia products on their mobile phones. Targeting an estimated 4 million small and medium enterprises (SME) as potential users, the new business solution portfolio with Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 will help Airtel users access MS Office, multimedia functionalities like camera, MP3 and video recording and line up business application like sales-force automation on their mobile phone Mobile Advertising- The Next Big Revenue Churner Improvement in the technology (to 4G) will give higher bandwidth which will mean a huge reduction in the time that a web page takes to load in a mobile. It will also make video and audio streaming easy without a Wi-Fi or hard-wired broadband connection. Advertising Display: Since 4G is faster and more responsive, display advertising is likely to benefit from new formats and more rich media. Brands that invest now in pushing the boundaries in display advertising are likely to be better prepared for the new opportunities that 4G will be offering.
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Better and Larger campaigns: Advertisers will be able to run much bigger mobile campaigns on YouTube, Facebook and similar video channels with richer content. So the brands with better skills in using film and animation to deliver brand messages will gain a competitive advantage. Mobile Focused Websites: Web browsing is likely to dominate 4G mobile usage, which would trigger a renewed vigor for developing mobile-optimized websites. In fact, mobile sites may become the primary customer touch point for a brand. It will become a ‘must-have’ for marketers. With the launching of 4G, Airtel has been able to gain access to this field too. Quoting the President-Consumer Business, Airtel "We are excited to launch our mobile advertising platform. Personalization, sharp segmentation and contextualization are increasingly making this platform an exciting proposition for brands.
With the mobile advertising market poised to grow by more than 40% over the next few years, Airtel with its technology, scale and customer intelligence is placed uniquely to leverage this growing medium. Airtel’s m-advertising platform will enable advertisers to land their message in a simple, effective manner in an increasingly complex media environment". Exhibit 1: 2G Vs 3G Vs 4G Source: http://www.deloitte.com/ [Access Time: 6th Aug 2012 14:00]
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The IT and Communication Convergence: VoIP through 4G One of the most interesting developments in terms of VoIP uptake has been the introduction of mobile and tablet apps which allow VoIP calling. Unlike the earlier CDMA networks, there is no separate but parallel network used for voice and data. With 4G, everything is routed through an IP-based core, thereby eliminating the need for a separate voice network. The advantages to an exclusively IP-based network include higher throughput and less inter-cell multiuser interference. This would pave the way for the growth of virtual teams and virtual offices. The travel expenses for a business would go down substantially as also would other infrastructure related expenses that are needed to house teams. Airtel’s offerings in this area too has been in the limelight. With cost effective offerings for Voice and Data plans, Airtel has been able to capture some market share from Tata Tele Services who were the most dominant player in this field. Meanwhile, Airtel is reportedly in talks to buy US-based chipmaker Qualcomm’s 4G spectrum for Rs 60 billion, an acquisition that will facilitate the launch of its 4G services in the key markets of Delhi and Mumbai and thus keep up to its reputation of being the 1st mover in those territories too. Unlike other technological advances that have come along, which tend to drive up costs, 4G might actually have the opposite effect, leading to reduced rates and congestion while improving the telecommunication eco system. Very seldom does something come along which has long term benefits for all kind of businesses and 4G is one such technology!! References: Journals and Whitepapers: http://www.ijric.org/volumes/Vol2/9Vol2.pdf [Access time: 6th Aug 2012 13:25] http://www.wireless2020.com/docs/VOIPServicesWhitePaper.pdf [Access time: 6th Aug 2012 14:00] Internet Articles: http://www.annese.com/media/documents/2012/1/Annese_Article_PBN112.pdf [Access time: 5th Aug 2012 16:45] th
http://www.cnbc.com/id/47293002?__source=fincont&par=fincont [Access time: 5 Aug
2012 17:00]
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/243518/ going_voiponly_do_you_still_need_cellular_voice_service.html [Access time: 5th Aug 2012 17:15] http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/030510-4g-app-development.html [Access time: 5th Aug 2012 18:00] http://www.wirelessdesignmag.com/ [Access time: 6th Aug 2012 22:00] http://www.iab.net/media/file/moble_platform_status_report.pdf [Access time: 7th Aug 2012 13:00] www.airtel.in [Access time:7th Aug 2012 13:00]
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At the Competitive Edge Observing the recent trends in the IT industry at the global level, investors are not willing to invest in the IT sector resulting in an economic slowdown in this sector. In such a situation where the competition is very fierce and the industry is struggling to retain and acquire client contracts, it becomes essential for both the big players and the new emerging companies to strategize on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses. In the financial year 2011-12, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) became the first Indian software exporter to record a revenue of 10 billion dollars with a Year on Year (Y-o-Y) growth of around 18.9%. On the other hand, Infosys could not meet NASSCOM’s expectations of 11-14% Y-o-Y growth and stayed at 5% which was well below expectations. This difference in performance among the big players reflects the importance of being competitive in the IT sector during this period of economic crunch. The Indian IT industry which is “polyopoly”, condition of many players can be explained by red queen effect. With homogenous offering, scope of competitive advantage shortens. Numerical calculations shows that the magic figure of 1.7 obtained from the range distance theory and Lanchester equation remains to be surpassed. IT industry reveals market share of TCS to be 1.42 times that of Infosys and Cognizant much below the magic number (figure 1). Entry of foreign players like IBM and Accenture pose other challenges. Also other emerging software outsourcing sectors of China, Philippines and Russia pose stiff competitions. Strategizing involves various steps of analysing .First, we need to analyse the Economies Of Scale (EOS). EOS in Indian IT industry depends not only on the absolute size of the dominant firm but on the difference between it and its rivals. Major revenues come through repeat business with the existing customers. Customer captivity often becomes a priority. For instance, Infosys faced a heavy blow on the cancellation of major Transformational project in energy and utilities segment in Europe. On the other hand, addition of 29 new clients by TCS safeguarded its position. MindTree also strengthened its place by adding 19 clients in its June quarter. The rule of thumb is thus to remain competitive and become operationally efficient. With greater efficiency red queen effect can be compensated. Second step involves analysing the company’s core competency. Mid-Tier companies like Hexaware, NIIT and Mindtree, have survived by concentrating on specializing areas. For instance, MindTree built capabilities in Bluetooth technology that helped mobile phones interact with wireless ear-plugs. NIIT Technologies offered software solutions for cargo handling and airline systems at airports for Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan.
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Thirdly, Indian IT companies apart from organic growth, must also pursue the mode of inorganic growth. The trend has already started with few acquisitions been made by the biggies in the recent past as that of TCS acquiring Citi Global Services limited in 2008. With industry maturing, there would be more cases to be witnessed. In such a case, only few players will concentrate the market. Thus the above strategies can help Indian IT industries to achieve or surmount the last fiscal year CAGR mark of 18%. Unique power can attract large projects undertaking and acquiring the small players in the segment whereas unique ability will lead to specialisation in a domain which will ensure the firms sustainability in the current economic scenario.
References: 1.
[http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-12/news/32648740_1_bfsi-bigdata-tcs {03/08/2012 , 6:30 pm}
2.
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-29/news/31887907_1_capabilitiesin-bluetooth-technology-mid-tier-mindtree {03/08/2012, 7:15 pm}
3.
http://www.chillibreeze.com/articles_various/IT-Industry.asp {04/08/2012, 6:30 pm}
4.
http://www.cognizant.com/recenthighlights/corporate_fact_sheet.pdf {07/08/2012, 9:15 pm}
5.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/software-services/Tech-Mahindra-revenueup-3/articleshow/13447068.cms {06/08/2012, 8:35 pm}
6.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/companies/article3351868.ece {06/08/2012, 7:30 pm}
7.
http://www.mindtree.com/downloads/MindTree-Q1-FY2013_Earnings_Release.pdf {05/08/2012, 11:45 am}
8.
http://barandbench.com/brief/3/2407/issues-in-the-acquisitions-of-technology-companies {04/08/2012, 10:30 pm}
9.
http://www.nasscom.org/it-services {08/08/2012, 7:00 pm}
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Indian IT Industry: The Next Wave of Growth The Indian IT Industry-post liberalization and economic reforms unleashed a new wave of growth and saw the emergence of companies such as Infosys, HCL and Wipro that would take the lead roles for the next decade also. There are several challenges that have to be overcome for the sector to take the next big leap. Indian IT services firms are quite active on the lower end of the IT services value chain, here the margins are less. The higher end of the value chain which consists of consulting services, product development and R&D has till now eluded the Indian IT firms. This part of the value chain is currently dominated by global players such as IBM, HP and Accenture. By being value chain integrators, these firms have acquired the competitive advantage that has led businesses to see them as “essential partners”. In contrast, the Indian IT firms are still seen in the role of vendors rather than business partners. Given the rate at which the top 4 Indian IT firms are growing, the employee count is likely to cross 800,000 over the next few years. Managing this kind of employee levels is neither possible nor profitable and the Indian IT firms have to move to nonlinear growth models. There are 6 key areas that can help the industry achieve non-linear growth–
Cloud Computing: Its characteristics of flexibility, scalability and the “pay per use” model have already made it popular among companies looking to cut down capital expenditure which would be extremely lucrative to the SMEs in India. Product Development and R&D: This is one area which they should vigorously pursue in order to achieve non-linear growth. An example is Finnacle, which currently contributes to about 4% of Infosys’ total revenues, which is a substantial amount for a single product. Platform BPO’s: This bundles technology, consulting and BPO to give an
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integrated business solution over a common business platform. The cost savings and the shorter deployment time help small and midsized businesses tremendously.
Mergers and Acquisitions: By pursuing inorganic growth, Indian IT firms can hope to build capabilities that would take years to develop internally. Indian IT firms have invested in acquisitions only to enhance existing capabilities, but not for acquiring new ones.
Hub and Spoke Model: The ‘Hub & Spoke’ model provides flexibility in service delivery in a way that vendors can scale up or down operations based on client requirements. The Indian IT-BPO industry could learn lessons from the success stories of Hub and Spoke model implemented in other industries like manufacturing - automobiles, electronics, consumer goods and aerospace.
I believe that by focusing on these areas, the industry can maintain its growth through non-linear models and provide direct competition to the global firms at the higher end of the value chain.
References: KPMG-CII Report on Non Linear Growth models of Indian IT-BPO industry KPMG- Hub and Spoke operating model, A new business paradigm for the Indian IT-BPO Industry Crisil Research data on IT Services
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What do the “clouds” hold for India? There has been a lot of hoopla about cloud computing lately. Every organization wants to jump on the “cloud”. Many have already made the change and others are keenly looking at it to solve their Information Technology related problems. So, what’s cloud? Cloud is a new IT service delivery model. Today, we will look at Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery through cloud computing and leave Infrastructure as a Service & Platform as a Service delivery for another day. Previously, organizations hosted their critical applications like ERP, e-mail etc. on their own servers (on-premise model). This generally meant having dedicated workforce for maintaining these servers 24X7 because if these servers went down, the organization would typically come to standstill (e.g my previous organization hosted outlook mail on its own servers and one fine day when these servers went down, employees couldn’t work for the whole day!) Contrast this with the cloud model where the critical applications are hosted on the cloud ( server farms maintained by dedicated companies with expertise and the organization using the service is connected to it through a dedicated). All complications of keeping the services up and running is transferred to the partner, our organization gets a guaranteed minimum performance level through SLAs and the best part is it pays only for the amount of resources it uses (“pay as you use” model). So, what if my previous organization had hosted its email service on the cloud? First, it wouldn’t need to buy and maintain servers in which it had no expertise, as a result the failures would be less and as it paid on pay by use model, there w o u l d b e g r e a t c o s t s a v i n g s ! How can it help Indian companies to gain competitive advantage? While the cloud model of IT service delivery has several advantages for all types of organizations in India - large or small in several contexts. The service delivery is important for companies using SaaS to deliver outsourced services of MNCs from India. The service consumption is specially relevant for Indian SMEs, where the IT budget and expertise is limited.
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Delivering SaaS
Fig. Cloud Computing potential in India(source:IDC) For example, using SaaS model , a firm based out of Bangalore can provide digital publishing solutions to digital publication houses in USA. This has opened up entirely new revenue streams for Indian outsourcing providers who can provide expert services to clients at low cost. The Indian IT biggies are already offering SaaS as a part of their portfolio( Infosys offers several SaaS platforms like iEngage, CommerceEdge, SocialEdge etc.), even SMEs are successfully using it for novel services, some examples:
Impelsys Inc offered its SaaS-based flagship iPublishCentral solutions to Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in Lithuania. iPublishCentral helped the university offer over 300 eBooks to its readers, through the portal. TravelCarma, a small firm based in Gujarat, offers travel solutions in Frankfurt.
Consuming Saas For Indian SMEs low on IT budget and expertise, cloud offers a cost-efficient way to use enterprise grade IT services: Microsoft Office enterprise edition costs almost Rs. 18k per license and Sharepoint server which enables collaboration features like email, calendar, messenger, office documents etc costs lakhs plus the cost of hardware and maintenance. Google Apps provides all these services( Gmail+Google Docs+Google Calendar and much more on on custom domain) as SaaS with a 99.9% uptime at a cost of $5/user/month or $50/user/month. All the SME needs to maintain and pay on ongoing basis is a good internet connection, everything else is taken care of.
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The collaboration features allows employees to work more productively and cuts down travel costs, giving a huge competitive advantage. Though an ERP package makes a good case for an SME to help solve its accounting headaches or keep track of huge number of raw materials and finished goods going in and out, an ERP package is generally too costly for SMEs along with the headache of maintaining servers and all. However with SaaS offerings from the leaders of ERP like SAP, Oracle and even the smaller players like Tally and Ramco, SMEs can pay on per user basis at very low prices, thus getting a competitive edge in managing inventory and greater transparency and insight into business accounts. To Conclude And these are only some perspectives on how SaaS is helping Indian organizations gain competitive edge and at the same time increase market base and gain new revenue streams. Cloud computing is a paradigm changing shift which is going to impact organizations in several ways. It must form a part of the IT strategy of companies big and small.
References: 1.
http://indiatechonline.com/idc-indian-cloud-computing-market-report-2010-366.php 2nd August, 11:00 am
2.
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/saas-unleashes-indian-smestechprowess/440432/ 2nd August, 11:00 am http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html 2nd August, 11:00 am http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-in/buy/Pages/Licensing-Details.aspx 2nd August, 11:00 am
3. 4.
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Let ‘IT’ contribute more HPCL is one of the major players in Oil & Gas Sector. Being a public sector company it enjoys certain benefits in a competitive and developing economy like India. Therefore, it gets imperative for a $38 Billion limited company to take initiatives which justify the tax payers money. In the current competition & the ‘technologydriven’ field, it is no longer sufficient to provide services or products at minimal pricing. In fact, to stay abreast with the changing times a company needs to work towards providing value to the consumers and charge better premiums for services/ products.
Cooking gas in India faces a major problem of Black Markets. Cooking gas has a market in domestic households and Restaurants. As applicable in other industries like Power Distribution (Electricity) the Commercial usage is charged more than the domestic usage. Black Market takes advantage of this difference of Price. Illegal agents book the cylinders from Domestic connections and then circulate them for Commercial usage. Because there is no absolute tracking involved HPCL cannot ascertain if the cylinder unit returning is the same which was delivered to a household.
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Solutions to this problem can be: Marking the cylinders every time they are distributed to the house holds Repercussion: This is a tedious and time consuming job owing to the humongous network which is to be catered to; increase in labour resulting in increased costs. Limiting the no. of cylinders booked by a household in a month Repercussions: Though already implemented, this is not a very viable option in the Indian market. Cooking gas is the first requirement for a Meal preparation and limiting the number affects household’s prime need. Especially during the festival season or Social Functions, such a limit can encourage black markets to function. Due to the rapid development and relatively unorganized food sector, it is difficult to track down the Black Market agents. HPCL realized the need for an inclusion of a smart system to eradicate the problem of LPG cylinders’ black market. Instead of only chasing the agents which operated this, HPCL focussed on its system’s loop holes to implement a robust system which encounters the issue. Owing to the kind of finished goods (Filled LPG cylinder) it manufactures, the company was convinced with the application of an RFID technology. HPCL implemented RFID solution with a leading multinational Infrastructure & Technology Services Company. The solution contains tagging cylinder units with RFID tags enabling HPCL to track down the location of every cylinder in the warehouse, dispatch details and its re-entry to the system when it is returned by a consumer after usage. Based upon this information, the system can detect the delay in a cylinder unit’s return to the filling station. Also, if a cylinder exits and enters the filling station via a different vendor it is detected and reported by the system. Though such measures can always be implemented manually, the edge given by the instantaneous detection of the system is unachievable. It saves the time of HPCL and not to mention drives down the manual labour cost. RFID implementation in such environments, where Unit tracking is significant, brings a lot of value to the entire system. Not only does it check the seepages, it also empowers the company’s operations to work on the Supply Chain efficiency.
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References: The references are dated in 2008. HPCL announced in September 2008 about the implementation. http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/ HPCL_partners_with_IBM_to_deploy_RFID_solution-nid-46155-cid2.html >> Saturday, 06 September 2008, 10:38 IST http://www-304.ibm.com/jct03001c/press/us/en/pressrelease/25041.wss >> IBM Press Release http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/ibm-implements-lpg-cylindertracking-solution-for-hpcl/46016/on >> Press Trust of India / Bangalore Sep 04, 2008, 18:48 IST
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Have we seen IT all yet! If we visualize the Indian economy as a gloomy child then the only candy that could cheer him up would be the IT sector. It is worthwhile to be dependent on IT sector exports to take the economy out of its gloom. With intensified competition and fluctuation in the outputs of the global economies, the IT sector is having a tough time handling the tremors of recession along with living up to the expectations of it being the profit generating machine for the Indian Economy. This is prominent by the mixed Q1 performance results by the IT majors of India. Infosys, for the first time, has missed its revenue target. It has low future expectations of 8-10 % for growth, as compared to Nasscom’s guidance of 11-14 %. The downward trends predicted for the next quarter by Cognizant is a source of agony making us wonder “Whether is it the time when the Indian IT sector has come to a saturation level?” The global markets have realized that IT is always an enabler not the driver of business. Hence at this time of slouch, the companies are restricting their IT budgets and new cash flows are not getting allocated, leading to the renegotiation of IT contracts only as per the business needs and no new service is being asked for. The weak rupee against the dollar has minimized this huge adverse effect on the Indian IT industry. Only the IT giant TCS is adding a fresh face to the current grave scenario, by cracking new deals and increasing its long term competitiveness. Its 23% volume growth and 37% profit increase came as a ray of hope in the dark night of India. TCS brought 29 new deals in its basket and maintains high employee utilization rates of 81.8%. This should act as reference point for other IT companies. There is also a constant need of an innovation strategy by the Indian IT industry so that they continue to provide profound offerings for future businesses to key
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emerging markets to remain competitive. The tier-two IT companies are also progressing by targeting niche segments thereby generating revenues from smaller businesses. There is a need to identify new technologies and platforms (like cloud computing) for the implementation of a more secure service. The future outlook by Fitch has been declared as “stable” because the increase in hiring by IT majors is taken as a sign of anticipation of expected future growth. It has been a fuelling factor in increase in standard of living, employment and investment opportunity in India. With high cash balances, the IT companies should focus more on mergers and acquisitions across geographies. It is a tough time for the economy to come out of the most feared stagflation state. A $225 billion industry, as predicted, by 2020 the IT industry now stands no separate from the nature law of “Survival of the fittest”. The one that survives will be the best innovator.
References: 1.
Nasscom, The Indian BPO industry outlook 2012
2. The Economic Times, “TCS Q1 FY13 profit at Rs 3280 crore, up 37% Y-o-Y”, August 6th 2012 , 7 pm 3. The Economic Times, “Outlook for Indian IT services sector in 2012 stable: Fitch”, August 6th 2012 , 7:10 pm 4. MarketResearch.com, “IT Sector in India: Strategic Review (Budget 2012-13)”, August 6th 2012 , 7: 15 m 5.
Ajay Srinivasan ,The Hindu, “Uncertain times ahead for Indian IT sector”, Au-
gust 6th 2012 , 7:22 pm
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INTERESTING FACTS 1. The well known “˜Don’t be evil’ is actually an informal motto of Google. It is a reference to their corporate philosophy which says that you can make money without being evil. It was coined by Paul Buchheit , the man behind Gmail.
2. Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn’t know too much about HTML. That’s why the first homepage had a very bare bones design. The simple design caused people to just sit there looking at the screen during initial tests. Test users were actually waiting for the “rest of the page to load”. To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was added as a line as an end of page marker.
3. Just so you know: “˜to google’ became a verb in 2006 when both Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary as well as the Oxford English Dictionary recognized it. It of course means – to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.
4. Users can search for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth’s orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface if they decide to make contact one day.
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5. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin assembled their first server to test the PageRank code, they housed ten 4 Gigabyte HDD in a cabinet made of Lego bricks .
6. Google’s core search engine ranking system is called PageRank. Each page is assigned a rank that determines its ranking in the search engine results. But the term is not taken from its function; it’s actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page. In the early days it was called BackRub .
7. How much energy does a single Google Search take up? Google says it’s about 1KJ (Kilo Joules). In green terms, it’s approximately equal to .2g of CO2 emitted per search. See it compared against everyday activities.
8. The first Operation System Microsoft coded was Xenix, which was a version of UNIX under a different name. But it was MS-DOS made for IBM PCs that gave it a foothold in the software market. 9. Did you know that you can’t create a folder named “˜con’ in Windows? 10. The name of its search engine “˜Bing’ has its origins in Bingo. Just like the game, it was meant to suggest that something looked for has been found or realized. “˜Bang’ was also proposed because it was memorable, short, and easy to spell. Finally, Bing was chosen for the same reasons.
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11. The original Apple logo had Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. It was replaced by the one we are more familiar with. To differentiate the silhouette of the apple from a cherry, the “˜bite’ was put in.
References 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language 2. http://www.royalbikaz.com/amazing-facts-about-google/ 3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_be_evil 4. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/google 5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
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PUZZLES
1. A snippet of a strange multiple choice exam Q1. Which is the first question where c) is the correct answer a) Q3 b) Q4 c) Q1 d) Q2 Q2. Which is the first question where a) is the correct answer a) Q4 b) Q2 c) Q3 d) Q1 Q3. Which is the first question where d) is the correct answer a) Q1 b) Q2 c) Q4 d) Q3 Q4. Which is the first question where b) is the correct answer a) Q2 b) Q4 c) Q3 d) Q1 2.. Five pirates have obtained 100 gold coins and have to divide up the loot. The pirates are all extremely intelligent, treacherous and selfish ->especially the captain. The captain always proposes a distribution of the loot. All pirates vote on the proposal, and if half the crew or more go "Aye", the loot is divided as proposed, as no pirate would be willing to take on the captain without superior force on their side. If the captain fails to obtain support of at least half his crew (which includes himself), he faces a mutiny, and all pirates will turn against him and make him walk the plank. The pirates start over again with the next senior pirate as captain. What is the maximum number of coins the captain can keep without risking his life?
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SummIT 2012-13 — Date: July, 2012 It is an online treasure hunt where the participants have to cross the different levels. The clues to the next level are present in the existing level and one might have to change the url, click an item or answer questions or explore the map page. The person completing all the levels earliest is the winner. Around 100 teams participated in the event in teams of 2.
— Date: 6th Nov – 8th Nov, 2012 SummIT, the IT & Consultancy cell at NMIMS, Mumbai conducted “KHOJ 2012” as a part of the annual college fest, “Paragana”. “KHOJ” is an Online Treasure Hunt competition. This year the event was organized in two phases, where in the registered teams could participate in the quiz on 2 days. The event saw a participation of approximately 350 teams across the major Bschools as well as engineering schools in India. The quiz was a potpourri of audio, visual as well as video questions with hints hidden in the webpage, url, source code etc. After two days of intense action the treasure hunt came to an end with team from NITIE emerging as winners, followed by MICA and NMIMS teams. Cash Prizes worth Rs. 25,00 were distributed.
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— Date: 9th March, 2013 SummIT, the IT & Consultancy cell at NMIMS, Mumbai conducted Eluminate the BPlan Competition as a part of the annual cultural fest, “Euphoria”. 12 teams participated in the B-Plan contest, with team from IIM Indore emerging as the winners.
— Date: 9th March, 2013 SummIT organized the stand-up comedy show by Deepak Gopalakrishnan of Pagalguy fame as part of Euphoria the annual cultural fest. Deepak Gopalakrishnan, who calls himself Chuck for some strange reason made an amazing performance and left the audience rolling with laughter. His humour revolved around MBA life, Indian quirks, engineering idiosyncrasies. His take on IT satire, politics was very well appreciated by the audience.
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— Date: 14th March, 2013 The SummIT project vertical though is in nascent state have generated good amount of work on different topics from the Systems domain. Five projects were completed by the students of 1st year under the guidance of the faculty. The project topics mainly dealt with upcoming technologies like cloud, data analytics, mobility, social media. The report of their findings were presented before a panel of teachers and also the same has been published as the ‘Knowledge Series’. This initiative have formed a strong foothold for the projects vertical which can be leveraged for getting corporate projects in the IT & consultancy domains.
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ANSWERS Answer 1: 98 The captain says he will take 98 coins, and will give one coin to the third most senior pirate and another coin to the most junior pirate. He then explains his decision in a manner like this... If there were 2 pirates, pirate 2 being the most senior, he would just vote for himself and that would be 50% of the vote, so he's obviously going to keep all the money for himself. If there were 3 pirates, pirate 3 has to convince at least one other person to join in his plan. Pirate 3 would take 99 gold coins and give 1 coin to pirate 1. Pirate 1 knows if he does not vote for pirate 3, then he gets nothing, so obviously is going to vote for this plan. If there were 4 pirates, pirate 4 would give 1 coin to pirate 2, and pirate 2 knows if he does not vote for pirate 4, then he gets nothing, so obviously is going to vote for this plan. As there are 5 pirates, pirates 1 & 3 had obviously better vote for the captain, or they face choosing nothing or risking death.
Answer 2: 1. d) 2. c) 3. a) 4. b) Looking at the questions, only Q2 has an answer that doesn't reference itself directly. For example Q1 asks about c) as an answer, but its answer c) is Q1. So it's easiest to look at Q2 first. Q2's answer can't be b), so Q4's answer can't be a), so Q2's answer can't be a). Q2 can therefore be either c) or d). If Q2's answer was d), then Q1's answer would be a), so Q3's answer would be c), so Q4's answer would be d), so Q1's answer would be b). However this now contradicts itself, so Q2's answer can't be d). Therefore Q2's answer must be c). Making Q3's answer a), making Q1's answer d), confirming Q2's answer is c). Leaving Q4's answer as b).
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