siliconindia

In My Opinion: Sanjay Nayak, Tejas Networks Company Spotlight: TTS

PUBLISHED SINCE 1997

BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA APRIL - 2010 SILICONINDIA.COM

Umesh Vaidyamath
Founder & CEO
Contents April 2010
16 Cover Story
INSZoom
Global
Hassle –Free

in a Jiffy!
Immigration

Umesh Vaidyamath
Founder & CEO | By Vimali Swamy

06 [In My Opinion] 24 [VC Talk] 36 [Technology]

Indian Electronics Products Trends & Tactics for Startup Enterprise SoftwareThe Next
A $100 Billion Opportunity Success Phase Moving to the Cloud
By Sanjay Nayak, Tejas Networks ByAjay Agarwal, Bain Capital By Manav Garg, Eka Software Solutions

08 [Infocus] 26 [Business] 38 iTM Moving Towards

India Telecom Challenges and Intelligent Banking
13 [VC Chakra] Opportunities By Krishna Chaitanya and Sujay
July Systems Raises By Suresh Borkar, Maskara, Wipro Consulting
$7 Million in Series C Funding Illinois Institute of Technology Services
DotNetNuke Secures
28 [Technology] 40 Mobiles Churning a Tech
$8 Millionin Second Round Funding
Everything that can be Revolution for Consumers
14 [CEO Spotlight] Mobile WILL BE By Anupam Arya, Mobera Systems
Opportunities and By Raj Tumuluri, Openstream
42 [CIO Profile]
Challenges for Information It’s the Age of Seamless and
30 Today’s Technology Trends in
Security Companies Collaborative Technology
the Education Sector
Cost efficiencyThe Smart By Vimali Swamy
By Arpan Banerjee,
Trend Gain ing Ground in EDA Innominds Software
New Trends in Architectural 44 [Entrepreneur 101]
Designs Spur EDA 33 [SI Blog] Building A Purposeful
Opportunities Organization
34 [Technology] By Gunjan Sinha
The Internet @ 15 It’s Still
22 [Company Spotlight]
TTS Underlining its Footprint about Performance 46 [SI 20 Profile]
By Anshu Agarwal,
in IT Industry
Keynote Systems
ByEureka Bharali

siliconindia
|3| March 2010
 siliconindia APRIL - 2010
Editorial

W
Publisher
Harvi Sachar
Editor-in-Chief
Pradeep Shankar
Let’s follow ‘Obama Bounce’!
Managing Editor illiam Shakespeare once said, ‘Action is eloquence’ and
Christo Jacob Barack Obama is proving it just right by undermining
Michael Moore’s vision of U.S as a country where big
business ruthlessly exploits the downtrodden poor. Elected as the
Deputy Editors
Jayakishore Bayadi Jaya Smitha Menon
President in 2008, with the hope for a change, he duly made
healthcare his top domestic priority. None of his contenders in
their wildest dreams could have ever imagined that he would make
Editorial Staff
Benny Thomas Eureka Bharali
history with his healthcare reform— a social reform that had been
Ojas Sharma Roshna Sankar
eluding generations of Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Bill
Sikta Samantaray Sudarshan Kumar
Clinton.
Vimali Swamy
Obama’s $871 billion healthcare reform is expected to change
the lives of 32 million poor and emigrant Americans. Kudos to
Raghu Koppal
him, for it would not have been possible without his disciplined
Sr.Visualizer
Suresh Kumar
approach and his continuous fight.
Online Manager
P Magendran
While America celebrates, it’s also a time for Indian IT and
Subscription Manager

BPO companies to rejoice as well. Of the $150 billion allocated to

various healthcare plans,$20 billion has been set apart for IT alone,
mostly to establish Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for all
Mailing Address

Americans by 2014.
SiliconIndia Inc This is bound to open up a vast opportunity for Indian IT serv-
44790 S. Grimmer Blvd ices firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS to plunge into the healthcare
Suite 202, domain. It is also the right time for SMEs and start-ups to time
Fremont, CA 94538 test and prepare their products for this new emerging market. But
in order to maximize the opportunity these players need to be fast
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276 on their heels to establish a reputation for themselves in the fast
evolving space and establish partnerships as Indian companies do
not have much proven track record in healthcare.
Perhaps it is time that Indian entrepreneurs learn from Obama,
a disciplined continuous approach to achieve the goals and re-
member that customer is the key. Infact it would help.....Not only
siliconindia to win over the long battles, but also to create a strong foothold for
April 2010, volume 13-04 (ISSN 1091-9503)
Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc. Indian IT companies in U.S. in the healthcare sector — that is
bound to stay evergreen and resilient, come as many recessions in
the years ahead.
To subscribe to siliconindia
Visit www.siliconindia.com or send email to
subscription@siliconindia.com
Copyright © 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction
in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without writ-
ten permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes Please do share your thoughts with us.
no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustra-
tions. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not neces-
Christo Jacob
sarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by Managing Editor
the publisher thereof.
editor@siliconindia.com
siliconindia’s circulation is audited and certified
by BPA International. siliconindia is available through
mainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, and
Tower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores in
major Indian hot spots across the U.S.The magazine is also dis-
tributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, Internet
World and PC Expo.
 By Sanjay Nayak
The author Co-founder and CEO,
Tejas Networks
in my
opinion
Indian Electronics Products
A $100 Billion
I
Opportunity
ndian companies have gained
significant success over the
last 20 years in the global IT
and ITeS industry. However,
we still don’t have innovation-
driven, globally successful, high-tech
product companies from India; de-
spite the fact that people of Indian
origin have contributed immensely in
building many successful global
high-tech product companies and no
one doubts the technological and en-
trepreneurial caliber of Indians.
According to a recent report by
Ernst & Young, the Indian domestic
demand for electronics products is
expected to reach $125 billion by
2014, up from the current level of $45
billion annually. The primary demand
drivers are sectors like telecom, de-
fence, IT and e-governance, automo-
tive, consumer electronics, and
energy. At these demand levels, un-
less India creates its own electronics
product industry, the imports of such
products will create the single largest
trade deficit item, which would even
be larger than petroleum products. On
the other hand, if this unique oppor-
tunity is utilized, it can create a large
siliconindia
|6|
April 2010
industry catering to domestic con-
sumption, which will help achieve
self reliance in strategic sectors like
telecom and defence, while leading to
large exports.
Most leading countries in the
world have nurtured their domestic
electronic industry that has not only
met their domestic and strategic
needs, but also created successful
businesses that export several billion
dollars worth of products around the
world. For instance, electronic prod-
ucts form an insignificant part of our
GDP, whereas they contribute to over
22 percent of GDP of Israel and over
15 percent for Korea and Taiwan.
Also, as a global player, U.S. has over
40 percent share of global electronic
products markets and China has 15
percent, whereas the share of India is
close to nil.
Today India has the two most im-
portant ingredients that can enable us
build global product companies − a
huge domestic market and a large pool
of highly talented technical and mana-
gerial workforce. In addition, we also
have venture capitalists who have the
financial resources to provide the nec-
Sanjay Nayak
essary funding for capable product
startups. Given these ingredients, what
is missing and why don’t we have the
likes of Cisco, Apple, Nokia, or
Huawei from India?
For building an Indian product in-
dustry, it is important to focus on ac-
tivities that contribute to highest
amount of value-addition and also lie
in the sweet-spot of our core strengths.
The majority of value-addition in elec-
tronic products comes from R&D, IPR
creation, hardware, software, and
product design, and then marketing,
branding, and sales activities. Fortu-
nately, R&D and IPR creation is a
knowledge and people-driven activity,
in which India has a global edge that
we must leverage, and which requires
relatively less capital investments.
Due to sophisticated Electronic De-
sign Automation (EDA) tools and
emergence of high capacity program-
mable devices, even hardware design
has become similar to software devel-
opment, an area in which India has es-
tablished global leadership. The actual
manufacturing that requires huge in-
vestments in basic infrastructure and
logistics can be outsourced to global
Electronic Manufacturing Services
(EMS) companies that have
economies of scale. Once we have In-
dian product companies, it will have a
pull-through effect to create a vibrant
eco-system of EMS, semiconductor,
and component industries in India.
So far the low-cost of Indian tech-
nical workforce has been used as a
cost-arbitrage for building a prof-
itable IT services industry. Indian
product companies can use this cost
advantage to do a lot more R&D and
innovation for the same investments.
This ‘innovation leverage’ is a sus-
tainable competitive advantage for
Indian companies against their peers
in the U.S., Europe, and Japan, who
are facing severe competitive pres-
sure from the Chinese companies,
and are being forced to cut-back on
R&D due to reduced profitability. In
fact, this also creates an opportunity
for Indian companies to partner and
become ‘product developers’ for
global companies who can continue
to leverage their existing brands and
sales channels to provide market ac-
cess to Indian products globally.
For hardware products, unlike
software, a volume-base is required
to become cost competitive, without
which it is impossible for companies
to compete successfully against
global players who are much larger
and have a large volume and cost ad-
vantage. This is where the Indian
government must step in and use the
large domestic market to provide
‘market-pull’ for Indian companies
that develop world-class telecom
products. The government must man-
date that a certain percentage of the
Indian domestic demand is reserved
for Indian product companies that
meet global technical and quality
standards. This volume-base will en-
able Indian companies reduce their
production costs and become glob-
ally competitive. In addition, they
will build credibility with customers
in India who can be used as refer-
ences, when Indian companies start
selling internationally. There are sev-
eral large government projects (on
broadband, rural connectivity, educa-
tion, as well as e-governance) that
are on the anvil and can be used as
incubators for stimulating the devel-
opment of Indian products. The fact
that the Chinese government has suc-
cessfully leveraged their domestic
demand to support the creation of
global product companies from
China, is well documented.
Despite the fact that Indians have contributed
immensely in building many successful global
high-tech product companies, we still don’t have
globally successful, high-tech product
companies from India
While the domestic market will
provide the initial success for Indian
products, it is crucial that they turn
this success into a global one. This
will require a sustained investment
to build the brand for Indian elec-
tronic products in the international
markets. Since this activity requires
deep pockets, a government inter-
vention is required, especially to
promote ‘made-in-India’ electronics
products globally. In addition, the
government should make electronics
product exports a thrust area for bi-
lateral trade. The Chinese govern-
ment has effectively used bi-lateral
trade promotion for their telecom
equipment exports, while the U.S.
and Israel have been using this suc-
cessfully for defence products. An
added advantage for Indian product
companies in the telecom sector is
the fact that many Indian telecom
operators are now becoming global
players, especially after their over-
seas acquisitions, and can become
effective vehicles for globalization
of Indian products and brands.
Electronics being a high-tech sec-
tor with rapid changes in technology,
it requires sustained investment and a
focused policy support to develop
world-class capabilities. While ven-
ture funding is available in India,
most of the funding is going to the
middle and late stage companies.
Lack of adequate early-stage funding
is still an issue for product compa-
nies, especially since many first time
Indian entrepreneurs are unlikely to
have adequate financial resource of
their own to sustain and fund their
companies, even during the proof-of-
concept stage. While the VC and
angel funding mechanism falls into
place, the government should imme-
diately step in to provide R&D fund-
ing to create Indian products and IPR,
especially since India’s investment in
R&D, at less than one percent of
GDP, is amongst the lowest in the de-
veloped and emerging countries.
There are lessons to be learned from
the success of early-stage funding of
R&D in other countries. In particular,
the funding model used in Israel by
the Office of Chief Scientist (OCS)
has played a very vital role in Israel’s
emergence as a global leader in elec-
tronics and security products.
India has been a great success
story in the IT services industry and
we now have a great opportunity to
create our own electronics product in-
dustry, which will help us move up
the value chain and create global
technology brands. We are now at a
threshold of a decisive phase in our
growth where, if the government and
entrepreneurs take concrete steps we
can create a $100 billion electronics
product industry from India in the
next 10 years. si
siliconindia
|7|
April 2010
in
B
R&D Spend Growth Slipped by 5-10 Percent in Two Years
oom or recession, the R&D
spend growth has remained
minimal, with verticals like
software witnessing a downward slip
by 10 percent. Pari Natarajan, CEO,
Zinnov Management Consulting says,
“As the cost pressures continue to
exist, we foresee companies trying to
execute more R&D work at the same
or even lesser budgets as compared to
last year. Companies would be forced
to focus on new growth engines in the
form of emerging markets such as
India and China and newer technolo-
gies like SaaS and cloud. We also see
that this demand for cost control will
indeed force R&D centers in India to
put a check on the salary escalations
Philanthropy?
Global Billionaires
W I
Turn to India
ith an aim to empower the
weaker sections of the coun-
try, a number of global bil-
lionaires are turning to philanthropy in
India. Propelled by their surging
economies, robust currencies, and
globally competitive companies, the
new breed of global billionaires are in-
vesting in the upliftment of those at the
bottom of the country’s pyramid.
In his khadi jacket, sitting in a
south Mumbai five star hotel, Jayant
Sinha does not look any bit of the
hedge fund manager that he was until a
few months ago. As reported by re-
puted news daily today, as the India
Head of Omidyar Network, Sinha is
siliconindia
|8|
April 2010
for the next couple of years.”
Throwing light on how compensa-
tion and benefit are shaping up post
recession and what are the global
changes and their impact on the cen-
ters in India, Zinnov released its re-
cent study on ‘Compensation and
Benefit Study 2010’. The study high-
lights that while companies will be
cutting down on salary increments 6-
10 percent this year, the experience
pool will continue to put lot of pres-
sure on costs. The study also says that
lesser increments could result in a
short term spike in attrition. While the
availability of talent pool will con-
tinue to exist, companies would be
going slow on hiring and rather selec-
looking at various initiatives to im-
prove the lot of those at the bottom of
the pyramid in India. Omidyar Net-
work, an investment firm of Pierre
Omidyar (Founder of Ebay) has al-
ready invested around $45 million in
India and is looking to invest around
$150-200 million in the next couple of
years.
“Philanthropic investors essentially
look for providing financial assistance
and empowering those innovative or-
ganizations that impact the life at the
bottom of the pyramid,” according to
Jayant Sinha, Managing Director and
Country Head of Omidyar Network
India Advisors. Omidyar Network has
tively hire for new positions based on
requirements.
Dwelling on the aspect of future
outlook, the study reads that many of
these R&D subsidiary centers would
also explore opportunities with tier-2
and 3 cities in India to execute some
non-core functions at these ultra low-
cost destinations. Last but not the
least, the study brought to light that
service providers will also play an im-
portant role in the product develop-
ment value chain. These providers
would add significant value in cost
optimization by undertaking non-
core, non-complex functions, thereby
allowing companies to save some
funds for futuristic investments.
invested around $325 million globally
in the US, Europe, and Africa. Most
investments have come into India only
in the past few years.
Others like him include the New
Zealand billionaire Christopher Chan-
dler’s Legatum Ventures, which has
invested around $40 million in the past
few years in the country. Even the in-
vestor George Soros is into philan-
thropic investments in India. These
investors are investing in micro-fi-
nance institutions (MFIs), rural en-
ergy, education, and other areas of
empowerment such as property rights.
Explaining the rationale behind
seeking profits in social development-
oriented investments, Sinha explains,
“One can have huge economic returns
and high social impact at the same
time. Sometimes, one is also open to
sub-par returns. But ultimately, in-
vestments are driven by right opportu-
nity and right innovations. It’s a
unique approach aimed at improving
the base of the pyramid.” si
W
hile Western economies
continue to stutter, a re-
port forecasts that India
will soon return to the high-growth
trajectory it enjoyed before the cri-
sis. At the same time, the new re-
search published in Harvard
Business Review shows that the
heads of India’s biggest companies
have an approach to leadership that
is very different from that of West-
Poor India Creates Millionaires at the Fastest Pace
ndia, with the world’s largest
population of poor people living
on less than a dollar a day, also
created millionaires at the fastest
pace in the world in 2007, though the
world grew such high net worth in-
dividuals (HNWI) at the slowest
pace in four years.
Growing them at a pace of 22.7
percent, India added another 23,000
more millionaires in 2007 to its 2006
tally of 100,000 millionaires meas-
ured in dollars, according to an an-
nual Merrill Lynch Cap Gemini
report. In contrast, developmental
agencies put the number of subsis-
tence level for Indians living on less
Indian CEO’s Better than
Western Counterparts
ern bosses. As the Indian economy is
all set to grow by 7.5 percent this
year, experts are saying that it could
be the best time for Western CEOs to
learn some lessons from their Indian
counterparts.
Peter Cappelli, Professor of man-
agement at Wharton University of
Pennsylvania, was one of the re-
searchers behind the study, and
based on interviews with leaders and
HR departments from 98 of India’s
150 biggest companies he identified
some of the key differences between
Indian and Western bosses.
“In terms of lessons for managers
elsewhere, one of the most important
things is that Indian leaders lead
with a sense of social purpose,” Cap-
pelli says. He opines that every
leader interviewed gave a specific
social purpose as being the goal of
their business. Those purposes
ranged from improving healthcare in
India, to getting cell phones to peo-
than a dollar a day at 350 million and
those living on less than $2 a day at
700 million. In other words, for every
millionaire, India has about 7,000 im-
poverished people.
According to News Daily, while
India’s high net worth individual
(HNWI) saw a growth of 22.7 percent
in 2007 exceeding China’s 20.3 per-
cent and its own 2006 gains of 20.5
percent, it was still way below its
giant neighbor in absolute number of
millionaires. China counted nearly
500,000 HNWIs. Overall, the number
of millionaires (not counting home
values in their assets) in the world
grew at 9.4 percent and crossed the
in
ple who don’t have access to com-
munication tools, and proving to the
international community that Indian
companies can lead in IT.
“Having a social purpose really
motivates workers,” says Cappelli.
“If you can articulate a social pur-
pose for your organization and take
it seriously, it can have real bene-
fits.” Indian firms invest an enor-
mous amount in their employees’
training and development, and IT
firms typically allocate 60 days of
formal training for new hires and
companies often spend months train-
ing even experienced workers hired
from other firms.
The study says that the US firms
have largely stopped investing in
employees, seeing it as a waste if
they leave the business. It adds that
employee turnover is estimated to be
30 percent in India, and investing in
employees ensures the quality of
those who stay at the company.
10 million mark for the first time. The
US, despite its economic woes, leads
the pack with more than three million
millionaires.
The combined wealth of the
globe’s millionaires grew to nearly
$41 trillion last year, which means
their average wealth was more than
$4 million, the highest it’s ever been.
“India led the world in this, driven
by market capitalization growth of
118 percent and real GDP growth of
7.9 percent. Although India’s real
GDP growth decelerated from 9.4
percent in 2006, current levels are
considered more stable and sustain-
able,” the report observes. si
siliconindia
|9|
April 2010
in
T
Will Foreign Varsities Poach IIT,
IIM Professors?
he meagerly paid professors at
the country’s top academic in-
stitutes like IITs and IIMs may
soon be poached by foreign universi-
ties, after the government cleared a
proposal to allow foreign universities
to set up campuses in India. This step
is expected to provide quality educa-
tion in the country and reduce the flow
of Indian students abroad.
The bill, which will now be tabled
in parliament for its approval, has pro-
visions to regulate the entry and oper-
ation of foreign institutions, which
will set up campus and offer degrees
in India. “This is a milestone, which
will enhance choices, increase compe-
tition, and benchmark quality,” said
Union Human Resource Development
Minister Kapil Sibal after a cabinet
I
Foreign Varsities to Help India Save $7.5 Billion
f all the processes go well, the
world’s best universities will
soon be able to set up shop in
India. On March 15, the Foreign Ed-
ucational Institution (Regulation of
Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010, was
cleared by the Union Cabinet
presided by Prime Minister Manmo-
han Singh. The Cabinet clearance
has paved way for its introduction in
the Parliament to regulate the entry
and operation of foreign institutions,
which will set up centers and offer
degrees in India. This would be a
boon, as an enormous amount of
cash outflow will be checked
“This is a milestone which will
enhance choices, increase competi-
tion and benchmark quality,” HRD
siliconindia
|10| April 2010
meeting chaired by Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh.
The Atlanta-based Georgia Tech
University was the first one to take the
initiative to have its own campus in
India. The University bought 250 acres
of land in Hyderabad in the year 2008. It
did something even more astonishing
shortly afterwards: it invited its own fac-
ulty members to quit their jobs and con-
sider moving to India. A professor of the
university who requested for anonymity,
says, “Each one of us got a formal note.
Even more amazingly, he added, all of us
were offered the same salary that we
were getting in Georgia. It was clearly an
offer very few would even think of re-
fusing; given the cost of living in India, it
would straightaway translate into a for-
tune, if not a killing.’’
Minister Kapil Sibal said after the
approval of the bill by Cabinet.
Also, according to the industry body
Assocham, allowing foreign univer-
sities to set up their campuses in
India will help the country save up
to $7.5 billion (about Rs. 34,500
crore) on foreign exchange annually
that students spend on studying
abroad.
Assocham President Swati Pira-
mal says that students going abroad
cost the country a foreign exchange
outflow of $10 billion annually and
foreign universities’ campuses in
India could prevent at least three-
fourths of students from leaving the
country for higher education. “It will
not only dramatically enhance the
With
the government
paving the way for
foreign uni-
versities to
set up
campuses
in India, it can
only mean one thing: poorly-paid aca-
demic superstars of the country’s top in-
stitutes can finally expect to get value for
their work. In other words, lowly-paid
teachers will be poached. The effort is
part of the central government’s contin-
ued focus on education reform. Sibal,
who sounded elated, has been pushing
for this since he took over the ministry
last year. The minister, too, has been in
touch with several top universities in the
US and the UK about such a move.
profile of higher education in India,
but will also help it save outflow of
foreign exchange,” Assocham says.
The industry body says several for-
eign universities have plans to enter
India, especially at places like New
Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Chandi-
garh, Pune, and Mumbai.
The chamber says that over five
lakh students choose to go overseas
every year to obtain higher educa-
tion, which includes professional
courses in engineering, medicine,
and management. Foreign universi-
ties in India would also prevent
brain drain as large number of In-
dian students studying abroad opt to
work overseas rather than returning
home, Swati says. si
I
India 9th in Top 10 Largest Industrialized Economies
ndia is the ninth largest indus-
trial manufacturer in the world,
while China has become the sec-
ond largest. Manufacturing has been
the major driver of overall economic
growth of developing countries in
the last 15 years. During this period,
GDP of developing countries nearly
doubled, but the MVA grew by 2.25
times.
The findings are based on a report
from the United Nations Industrial
Development Organization
(UNIDO), which aims at promoting
industrial growth in developing coun-
tries. The report ‘International Year-
book of Industrial Statistics 2010’
also reveals that manufacturing value
added (MVA) of some major indus-
trial countries dropped by more than
T
here are gaps that exist between
the expectations of the employ-
ers and certain skills of MBA
graduates. The results are based on a
survey conducted to systematically
evaluate if there are gaps in the expec-
tations and performance of newly
hired MBAs in the Indian BFSI sector.
The core topics covered by the
Skills Gap Survey, conducted by
10 percent, while MVA growth of de-
veloping countries was around 2.5
percent. China’s share of the global
manufacturing value was about 15.6
percent, a little higher than Japan
which is 15.4 percent, and the US
stands top at 19 percent. The three
countries of U.S., China, and Japan
produce half of the world’s manufac-
turing output. And according to the
report the effect of the recent finan-
cial crisis on industrial growth was
severe for industrialized countries.
Contribution of manufacturing in
GDP increased to almost 22 percent
in 2009, compared to 18 percent in
1990. Estimates of industrial growth
of newly industrialized countries in-
dicated a marginal decline. This
group comprises 17 developing
MBAs Fail to Meet Firms’
Expectations
Higher Education Forum (HEF) are
the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
employers expect from these new
MBAs and their performance vis-à-vis
these expectations. The research is the
first step in understanding the gaps be-
tween industry expectation and the
performance of newly hired MBAs in
the sector. Only a small sample of the
many, diverse BFSI organizations was
taken up for this study.
“The Skills Gap Survey found that
gaps do exist, particularly in skills
such as listening, teamwork, and col-
laboration; attitudes such as self-moti-
vation, self-discipline, commitment
and dedication; and knowledge such
as understanding the organization and
the process, products, solutions, and
in
economies that have achieved rela-
tively high level of industrialization.
MVA in newly industrialized coun-
tries fell merely by 0.1 percent in
2009, however, the share of these
countries in the world MVA still in-
creased.
In view of geographical distribu-
tion of the global MVA, Asia con-
tributed almost 45 percent in 2009,
out of which the contribution of de-
veloping and industrialized countries
(Japan, Republic of Korea, and Sin-
gapore) was 25 and 20 percent re-
spectively. Despite some increment in
2009, the share of African developing
countries was just above one percent
of the world MVA. Latin American
developing countries saw a slight re-
duction in their share of world MVA.
services; and consumer behavior,”
says Manish Panchal, Director 1SOS
and Vasudha Narayanan, Vice-Presi-
dent, Westat India, who conducted the
survey for HEF.
A purposive sample was compiled
starting with members of HEF and
moving outward from there. In all,
data were collected from 113 individ-
uals from 74 organizations in the
BFSI sector. The survey found that
industry has the highest expectations
from newly hired MBAs in the area
of attitudes, followed by skills, and fi-
nally knowledge. The consensus
view, as shared by one respondent,
was clear, “We hire people for atti-
tude and train them for the skills,”
Panchal adds. si
siliconindia
|11|
April 2010

in
India Ranks Fourth Among
I
Money Obsessed Nations
t’s the time to be concerned if Indi-
ans become more money conscious.
A survey report says, India has
emerged as one of those nations, which
believe that ‘money talks’ more than
people in other countries.
As the saying goes, money isn’t
everything, but it certainly means more
to people now than before the global fi-
nancial crisis. According to the World
Journal, a public survey launched by
Reuters and Ipsos puts India at the fourth
rank with 78 percent of its people plac-
ing greater value on money after the
global financial crisis.
In the survey, citizens from China,
Japan, and Korea were the most likely
to say money meant more to them. India
is followed by Russia, Turkey, and
Brazil. The survey reveals that the
younger ones put more emphasis on
I
Govt’s Software Detects 160 Corporate Frauds
t was only after the Satyam fiasco
that the government became more
conscious about the corporate
scams. It led the Ministry of Corporate
Affairs in implementing a software
based system to detect corporate scam.
The early warning system (EWS), im-
plemented by the ministry, has now de-
tected irregularities in 160 companies,
out of which 30 are government un-
dertakings. The government has never
detected such corruptions at early
stages before.
The sources say that the EWS has
detected discrepancies like fund diver-
sions in its own subsidiaries as well as
other firms, irregularities in filing bal-
ance sheets and asset liability variance.
“There are some blue-chip companies
against which the EWS has given out
alerts and we are also carrying out in-
siliconindia
|12| April 2010
money and see it as a sign of success.
The respondents from the countries,
which took part in the survey, held the
view ‘money confirms a person’s suc-
cess’ in common. The Chinese and the
Koreans agree, with 69 percent of the re-
spondents, while 67 percent of the Indi-
ans and 63 percent of Japanese support
the view.
Apart from revealing the different at-
titudes of the countries, the survey also
portrayed the mindsets of people of dif-
ferent facets of life. Men and women
were evenly divided on the importance
of money, with 65 percent of men and
64 percent of women agreeing that
money was more important now. and
more men than women, 47 percent to 40
percent, were likely to say money was
the sign of success. Younger people were
more likely to put more emphasis on
spections, both invasive and non-inva-
sive, of their books as per Sections 209
and 234 of the Companies Act,” an of-
ficial source discloses without reveal-
ing the names of the companies.
The Registrar of Companies will
inspect the 130 companies based on the
preliminary findings of the EWS and
the Comptroller and Auditor General
will handle the complaints regarding
the 30 Public Service Undertakings,
says the official.
The software based scam detecting
system incorporated 10 financial pa-
rameters set by the ministry for diag-
nosing problems in companies. The
software focuses on detecting the di-
version of public money by companies
within their own concerns or else-
where. With the early warning system,
unusual developments are looked into
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
money, with 71 percent of those aged
under 35 saying it was more important
now compared to 61 percent of people
aged 35-54 and 52 percent of people
aged 55 or above. People aged under 35
were also likely to see money as the sign
of a person’s success, with 48 percent
believing in that, compared to 40 percent
of people aged 35-54 and 35 percent of
those aged 55 and above.
Conducted in 23 countries, the sur-
vey found that two-thirds of 24,000 peo-
ple questioned, or 65 percent, agreed that
money was more important to them now
than it was previously.
by scrutinizing the quarterly results of
companies, their public announce-
ments, filings with exchanges, tax re-
turns, and media reports among others.
The objective of the EWS is to de-
velop a permanent system for scan-
ning every company. The system
monitors the information, which the
public has the right to know and
which are in the public domain and
can give indications of performance.
The system also monitors people’s
judgment in the market place, says
the official source. The scrutiny
mechanism worked out by the min-
istry will detect non-compliance and
non-disclosure by companies. It also
monitors the utilization of the money
raised by the companies from the
public and assess if the utility
matches with the IPO prospectus. si
July Systems Raises $7
Million in Series C
Funding
A
Rajesh Reddy
shok Narasimhan and Rajesh
Reddy co-founded July Systems
closed its Series C funding of $7
million, led by Intel Capital. Also, the ex-
isting investors Sequoia Capital and
Footprint Ventures participated in this
round of financing. With this round of
funding, the company plans to strengthen
its market leadership by investing in
technology and operations, and catalyze
an ecosystem of publishers, advertisers
and distribution channels to deliver in-
cremental monetization for all stake-
C
holders.
Reddy, who is also the CEO of July
Systems, says, “We chose to raise this
alifornia based DotNetNuke,
owner and maintainer of the
open source web application
framework, has secured $8 million in the
second round of funding, bringing the
total funding to $14 million. The round
led by UV Partners along with the par-
ticipation of August Capital and Sierra
Ventures, would help the company in ac-
celerating product development and ex-
panding marketing and sales.
The financing follows a banner year
for DotNetNuke, which recently signed
500 paying customers, sold over 50,000
add-ons to 15,000 unique customers;
and signed up over 70 reseller partners
following its commercial launch in Feb-
ruary 2009. Commenting on the inter-
est of VCs, Navin Nagiah, President and
CEO, DotNetNuke says that the VC in-
terest is primarily driven because of
three things; large market, phenomenal
and well received product, and excellent
business traction.
new round to drive incremental revenues
into our ecosystem through July-led pro-
grams.” Founded in 2001, Santa Clara
based July Systems, a provider of inte-
grated mobile internet publishing and
monetization solutions for the media en-
tertainment and sports segment, is the
first to launch Mobile 3.0 publishing
platform.
The ‘Mi’ platform launched by the
company, offers innovative features
such as Cross - platform publishing and
distribution, Freemium model based
monetization, and personalized push
based customer relationship manage-
ment. Claiming to be a pioneer in the
mobile internet space across the globe,
DotNetNuke Secures
$8 Million in Second
Round Funding
Navin Nagiah According to
the company, or-
ganizations use DotNetNuke’s technol-
ogy to quickly develop interactive
websites, intranets, extranets and web ap-
plications. Nagiah says, “Any company
with greater than 20 employees that
needs a feature rich website is a prospec-
tive user of our software.”
Having a market size of around $5
billion in four years of its inception, Dot-
NetNuke mainly faces the competition
from Drupal, which is one of the lead-
ing web content management (WCM)
platforms for PHP. “We are doing the
same thing in the Microsoft world that
Joomla and Drupal have done in PHP.
July Systems helps brands publish, dis-
tribute and monetize their mobile inter-
net services.
In the current financial year, the
company has experienced strong
growth, achieving 300 percent increase
in revenues, driven by the exponential
growth in mobile internet consumption
and a rapidly growing customer base.
Also, it has recently added clients like
ESPN Cricinfo, Univision and Discov-
ery Networks. “Over 80 of the premium
media brands in the world are powered
and monetized by July’s Mi platform
and this is the foundation for our
growth,” says Reddy.
With 200 employees under its um-
brella, July Systems currently operates in
the U.S. and India, and now with current
round of funding, the company plans to
further consolidate its position in the
North American and Asia Pacific region.
Also, it plans to strengthen its team by
adding 100 new people by 2010 end.
We are by far the largest and most suc-
cessful open source WCM platform in
the Microsoft ecosystem,” says Nagiah.
With an employee base of 50, Dot-
NetNuke’s online marketplace, Snow-
covered.com, completed nearly 40,000
transactions of third-party software ex-
tensions to almost 15,000 customers in
2009. Now, the company is planning to
focus on delivering ‘instant-on’ func-
tionality to its websites. Nagiah says,
“We will integrate the modules and skins
in our marketplace, Snowcovered.com,
to the DotNetNuke web content man-
agement platform to enable users to add
new functionality dynamically and in
real-time.” si
siliconindia
|13|
April 2010
 CEO SPOTLIGHT

Opportunities and Challenges for Cost efficiency New Trends in Architectural Designs

Information Security Companies
gaps that lead to breaches. And mis-
takes occur as users move between in-
terfaces. On the practical side, the
more products, the more work to train
for, use, and manage them. And for
every different security platform an or-
ganization adopts, there is a need to re-
peat work, whether it is creating
templates for each and every program
or copying the results from one pro-
gram into the next program in the se-
curity lifecycle.
No CIO that I know of is looking
to cobble together a solution set that
will burden his or her team. Nor does
he want to invest dollars in solutions
built for today’s threats, but not to-
morrow’s. Instead, we are recom-
mending, and seeing a good response
to, a more ‘holistic’ approach that
The Smart Trend Gain ing Ground in EDA
Anupam Bakshi is the Founder and CEO at
Agnisys. Agnisys Inc. is a developer of
electronic design automation tools for the
is making big customers go away from
single source providers to multi-vendor
methodology and tools. Reducing cost and
increasing efficiencies is in focus. The im-
portance of Indian outsourcing has gained
momentum, and companies are now cre-
ating strategies to work with the new re-
alities of the ‘flat world’.
In my crystal ball I see innovation lead-
ers emerging from the flat world. The cost
difference that promoted outsourcing will
disappear. Verification and embedded soft-
ware development will continue to play a
central role in system development. Win-
ners will be companies and individuals that
reduce cost by automating and creating ef-
ficiencies through the entire design and de-
velopment process.
For entrepreneurs, challenges and op-
portunities are two sides of the same coin.
M
Spur EDA Opportunities
igration to multi-core proces-
sors and new scopes in archi-
tectural designs are expected
to revamp the EDA sphere where cur-
rently there is a limited scope for large-
scale architectural software
deployment. A lot of systems in aero-
space, mobile computing, and defense
are on the verge of migrating from sin-
gle-core to multi-core processors. How-
ever, much of the software in these
systems is optimized for the maximum
throughput on a single core processor
with a single source of data memory ac-
cess. Introduction of 4, 8, 16, and higher
number of cores in a single processor
promises an arduous task to shift
gears. The software migration process
Deepak Shankar is the CEO of Mirabilis
will not be a mere re-compilation of the
Design. Founded in 2003, Mirabilis De-
code; it demands a substantial change in

G
sign provides systems engineering solu-
design and verification of IP,
manages the flow of sensitive data The economy may go up and down for the code development methodology and
Rajesh K. Parthasarathy is the President tions for performance analysis, power
System-on-Chip(SoC), ASIC and FPGA.
through an enterprise system. some time before it reaches a new plateau. rewriting of the legacy code. Experi-
and CEO of MENTIS Software. estimation and architecture exploration

It’s not easy, of course; multiple Until then the smart entrepreneur will cap- menting with different software design

I
Founded in 2002, MENTIS provides of electronics and real-time software.

information security solutions for
databases and applications.
nformation security is no longer an
IT stepchild but a mission-critical
effort: a data breach has an imme-
diate effect on a company’s bottom
line, on its marketshare, its stock price,
and in some cases, on its ability to sur-
vive the loss of confidence and loss of
contracts. A recent study revealed that
32 percent of customers withdrew
their business from a firm after it suf-
fered a security breach. Add to lost
revenues the cost of responding to a
data breach (averaging several dollars
per record), and a comprehensive and
adaptable security platform pays for it-
self many times over.
Why is a comprehensive approach
an advantage? Most importantly, a
patchwork of software products from a
variety of vendors creates security
platforms in the customer technology
stack legacy systems from obsolete
vendors, and homegrown or custom
databases created with varying
methodologies by different develop-
ers. So security vendors with products
for Oracle databases and applications
will find that their customers may also
have another database or a legacy sys-
tem and will want to extend the same
security functionality to all platforms.
CIOs are looking for solutions that
can share intelligence, reuse work al-
ready done, and adapt to the con-
stantly evolving threat and compliance
landscape . . . and without a lot of ad-
ditional investment of time or money.
Accordingly, we believe that a flexi-
ble and comprehensive approach to
creating a product suite will meet that
need, giving CIOs more security for
their dollar and giving security ven-
dors an advantage in the market.
reater cost of developing new chips
(upward of $100 million) is push-
ing certain trends in the industry.
Verification continues to be a big chal-
lenge. There is more consolidation in
functional verification methodology and
more formal planning and automation for
verification. Among the beneficiaries of
increased chip development cost are the
FPGAs. However, due to increased com-
plexity, here too verification is becoming
more of an issue. Increasing costs in EDA
M&A activity was more than 40
percent higher in the fourth quarter
of 2009 than the average for the
year's first three quarters, indicating
italize either way. When the economy is
going down, concentrate on the internal
workings and operations, make the organi-
zation a lean, mean, cost conscious, highly
innovative machine. And when the econ-
omy picks up, expand and sell to the widest
possible base. We have found that some of
the apparent advantages that the big com-
panies have are actually albatrosses around
their necks, smaller startups don’t carry that
baggage and can be more agile and maneu-
ver well in a troublesome economy.
a further acceleration in 2010,
according to a McKinsey report. On a
sector-by-sector basis, M&A activity
was busier in strong sectors, such as
energy, utilities, health care, and
pharma, than in more troubled ones,
like financial services, real estate,
construction, and basic materials.
approaches is an area where design tools
will be very valuable. It would also be an
extension to the current EDA tools,
which are presently focused on the hard-
ware or verifying the software built on
the hardware.
Knowledge of rocket and launch
technology has been limited, in the past,
to a few countries and a small number of
private corporations. With huge R&D in-
vestments in countries like India and pri-
vate corporations such as SpaceX, new
countries can focus on the less expensive
satellite and instrumentation
design. Countries like India offer afford-
able rocket-on-demand to launch satel-
lites, allowing any country to expand
their communication infrastructure, re-
mote sensing for higher-quality weather
forecasting, and military intelligence.
Aerospace requires a lot of early feasibil-
ity studies, offering scope for new design
companies to sell multiple licenses and
aid in the design process.
Amidst the trends, there is a lack of
knowledge that haunts every firm, as
there are very few people with extensive
experience employed in aerospace
worldwide. This is a boon to EDA en-
trepreneurs who can leverage their in-
tellectual property to start an
organization that supports these new re-
search oriented efforts and provide stan-
dard products that accelerate the
customer specification process. As the
new company begins its service, they
must ensure that the first customer uses
their solution for a concrete project,
which would serve as a testimony to the
solution’s capability. With a success
story and reference in place, one can
plan ahead of achieving the next million
dollars via more client acquisition, while
keeping oneself updated on the different
opportunities unveiled amidst the
changing trends in the ecosystem. si

siliconindia
|14| April 2010 siliconindia
|15|
April 2010
 INSZoom
COVER STORY

Global
Hassle –Free

in a Jiffy!
Immigration

| By Vimali Swamy
On 26 March 2003, a leading banking software product
company, received some surprise visitors in its Dutch office.
So did the company's four Dutch banking clients. The visitors
were from the Department of Social Security, Netherlands, to
investigate the violation of immigration laws by the Indian
software company's 12 employees. The authorities asked the
Indian company's employees to leave the Netherlands pronto.
In addition the Dutch government had also sent an application
to the UK to extradite the CEO of the company. He was
arrested but later released on bail. Though the company
Umesh Vaidyamath maintained that the executives were abroad with all the
Founder & CEO necessary paper work, the fact was that it had missed out on
a few immigration processes.

A few days post the incident, the
company has signed up with IN-
SZoom, a California headquartered
immigration software company to fa-
cilitate in-house processing of immi-
gration and to ensure compliance to
rules and regulations. Founded in 1999
by Umesh Vaidyamath, INSZoom is
the world’s largest immigration soft-
ware company providing solutions for
domestic and global immigration
lawyers based in the US, Canada, Aus-
tralia, and the UK, corporations, uni-
versities, healthcare organizations, and
non-profit groups in 68 countries
around the world.
Hundreds of companies face prob-
lems related to compliance to immi-
gration rules with regard to their
employees every year. Statistics report
that global companies spend nearly
half a billion dollars on immigration
processes annually.
In the wake of the rise in terrorist
activities since the disastrous 9/11 at-
tack, the immigration laws have be-
come stringent, and immigrants are
under constant surveillance. The Im-
migration Department regularly issues
strings of notices requiring companies
in the country to provide information
on their employees who are nationals
of certain countries, landing the
human resource departments of many
corporations in a tight spot. Most de-
partments often do not have sufficient
information on the employee - starting
from the current location of the em-
ployee. The recent economic recession
has only added fuel to the fire. A slip
in even a single regulation could leave
an organization and its employees in a
thick soup.
“Immigration has been and contin-
ues to be one of the top most chal-
lenges for MNCs around the world.
With a large section of employees de-
ployed across different countries, im-
migration management is a complex
and demanding chore that haunts the
HR managers in corporations,” ex-
plains Umesh Vaidyamath, CEO, IN-
siliconindia
|18| April 2010
SZoom. Local laws and confusing in-
terpretations leave this process a
paper-heavy task, requiring much time
and intense attention in managing it -
from the first immigration applications
to various statutes of maintenance,
compliances, and so on.
It is this pain point that INSZoom
has been addressing since the early
part of this decade. Vaidyamath, with
an aim to automate this process,
started with developing a robust Web
based solution that helped attorneys
with Case Management, Case Track-
ing, Immigration Forms Generator,
Management Reports, and an Address
Book. The solution is built on a Dot-
NET platform, adroitly wrapped
around the Adobe PDF for the docu-
mentation management streamflow.
The idea is that the rules and forms are
so generic that once a client creates a
case for one employee, it could be
templated across many cases. Also, the
client may customize the software for
many other visas that he or she may be
processing. With further inputs from
the clients, Vaidyamath took the con-
cept a bit further adding depth in the
immigration laws and interpretations.
Over the past few years, INSZoom
has successfully licensed out the soft-
ware to over 1000 attorneys in the US
alone. This has also led to a very in-
teresting evolution. The attorneys’
clients were piqued by the online man-
agement system and were interested in
deploying some version of it within
their own enterprises.
“Companies are increasingly mov-
ing their employees across the globe,
and this is causing immense stress to
the human resource teams,” Vaidya-
math observes. “It is not just a simple
task of collecting employee informa-
tion and passing them on to the immi-
gration attorneys. The department has
to keep track of all the employees,
their visa status, the various visa com-
pliance issues, availability, and global
visa laws, the list goes on. It is not
their core competence.” The INSZoom
“
team matured the train of thought into
“
a comprehensive list of requirements
and mapped them into an automated
With
process of checklists and alerts.
Thus, when the jet paced MNCs
information
decided to move away from the tradi-
tional law firms and start the immigra-
and updates
tion processing in-house, Vaidyamath
was only too happy to develop an en-
terprise version of his solution kit.
coming in Today, INSZoom offers a full suite of
solutions that help companies improve
from various
their practices and businesses and en-
hance their competitive edge by giv-
sources,
ing them access to the most robust
immigration technology product line
immigration is
available. With the largest online im- management. Companies can have
migration forms library in the world their employees register their infor-
mation and documentation once
still a
that is updated every 24 hours and a
The
complete set of case management, through the Web portal. The process is
client, employee, and HR team man- transparent enough to allow HR Man-
paper-heavy
agers to see what the employee is en-
software
agement, and compliancy solutions,
INSZoom places the latest in technol- tering - enabling them to stop errors
process liable
ogy at its clients’ fingertips. right at the entry level. Once the em-
relieves
What has mainly worked for IN- ployee submits his or her documents,
to errors,
SZoom’s success among the enter- the seamless Web platform runs
companies
prises was the transparency of its checks on the package and shapes it
duplicity,
solution. “Immigration is still a paper- into INS-required format. The case
from the legal
heavy process. With information and now becomes a single item of man-
ageability - clients and attorneys can
miscommuni-
updates coming in from various
tangles that
sources, the paper trail tends to leave update the case status, with mutual no-
many gaps in the process and duplicity tifications. Once the case is processed,
cation, and
the client is left with a neat file of in-
entwine their
and misinterpretation of information is
very common,” he says. formation that can be updated in sync
misinterpretation
For example, an employee from with other HR software like People-
HR
India who has been deployed in New Soft. Since it is a Web based solution,
York for six months is suddenly re- INSZoom also permits the organiza-
departments
quired to be at the company’s offices tion to login from anywhere through
in Sunnyvale for the last two months, the Internet, so if a team member is
with countless
there may still be a few legalities to be traveling or working off-site, the in-
taken care of in terms of immigration formation can still be accessed.
cases related
compliance because laws tend to However, Vaidyamath is not stop-
change from state to state in the U.S. ping at this. The US is only one mar-
ket, but most clients have employees
to compliance
In most cases, the employee is not
aware of this and fails to provide an in other countries, including the Mid-
update to the HR or vice versa. Mis- dle East and Africa, the Far East na-
requirements
communications also happen if there tions, and so on,” he says. The case
are updates being done for two or in this point is one of their top
more people with the same name. clients, a major Japanese automobile
To narrow down this margin of giant. “The auto giant has over 500
human error, INSZoom’s software es- people in various countries traveling
tablishes a single portal of information to other destinations at any point of
siliconindia
|19|
April 2010
“
Many time,” remarks Vaidyamath. After a
bake-off with other products from
of firms like Deloitte and Accenture, it
chose INSZoom for its relevance and
these
immediate applicability. Clients can
use the software in 15 minutes, says
employers are
Vaidyamath, as there are no CDs to
load and install.
not even
The same is the case with IT serv-
ices giant Cognizant. “With our em-
aware that
ployees deployed across 50 different
countries apart from the US, main-
taining the heavy case load was quite
they have a a challenge. We faced a varied set of
problems, ranging from updating the
problem until
visa status miscommunication or late
communication of a change in some
it's too late.
immigration law to a hassle. We have
been deploying INSZoom for some
Vaidyamath
time now and it has really eased the
burden off the HR departments. It
and his team
has not only automated majority of
the processes but the flexibility of the
framework allows us customize and
are dedicated configure the software as the number
of users increase periodically. Over-
to create an
all, it has brought in a disciplined ef-
fect on the usually most nerve
awareness of
wrecking and haphazard process in
the organization,” explains Murali
the issues and
Kakolu, Director and Head – HR and
Immigration, Cognizant Technolo-
provide
gies. The 24/7 support is an added
bonus for the customers, so that they
never have to face any disruption in
solutions that their day-to-day operations.
Though there are numerous other
will help the
solutions available in the market
today, success has come in IN-
corporates
SZoom’s stride because of its first
mover advantage and the end-to-end
immigration solutions it has to offer
for its clients. For Pro-Link, a US
based law firm, the greatest challenge
was simply finding the best way to
maintain full compliance for all its
clients throughout the world. Earlier,
Pro-Link tracked compliance data
manually and through excel spread-
sheets and a calendar program. Infor-
mation was scattered in numerous
software and varied locations; consis-
siliconindia
|20|
April 2010
tency and a core location for data
were direly needed.
“With INSZoom, all our data is in
one place,” says Michele Longley,
GMS, VP Global Business Delivery,
Pro-Link GLOBAL, PA. “It has cer-
tainly increased our efficiency tremen-
dously. We’re able to pull reports and
find assignees in one place. With of-
fices around the world, our consultants
are able to access data in realtime on a
single platform.” INSZoom’s products
gave Pro-Link the power to more ef-
fectively stay on top of all aspects of
client immigration compliance. While
the company’s original system did get
the job done, INSZoom’s case man-
agement helped Pro-Link carry out
that job better, faster, and more effec-
tively. “We’re able to stay on top of
our expiration dates,” says Longley.
“Are the assignees staying in country?
Do we need to review their case?
Being able to provide timely reports
for our clients reassures them of our
commitment to quality service.”
When searching for a case man-
agement solution, Pro-Link tried a
number of companies’ products. “We
tried other companies that were devel-
oping global software and we tried to
create something with other programs,
but INSZoom’s infrastructure was al-
ready established,” says Longley. The
company was able to work with what
INSZoom has and to customize within
that framework. It could create its own
process maps within INSZoom for the
countries it works in and track, main-
tain, and handle all its cases through
INSZoom.
The company also sets itself apart
from competition in terms of number
of customers and revenue. Apart
from the 1000 attorneys in the U.S,
INSZoom also boasts of a varied set
of clients in the enterprise segment
including top firms like Microsoft,
IBM, Wipro, Cognizant, and Patni.
Along with these, the company also
serves small organizations that have
a strength ranging from 50-100.
Currently, the company has opted
to offer the solution on a licensed
model, which seems to be paying off,
as clients are attracted to the low
entry cost. As of today, the company
has managed to extend its services to
over 1,000 law firms and corporate
organizations.
“I have been practicing in the im-
migration arena for over ten years
and have seen INSZoom grow from
its humble beginnings. I've watched
Vaidyamath literally create an indus-
try where none existed before. He
saw the opportunity to provide solu-
tions to a variety of global immigra-
tion and compliance management
concerns faced by companies with
an expat workforce. Many of these
employers are not even aware that
they have a problem until it's too
late. Vaidyamath and his team are
dedicated to create an awareness of
the issues and provide solutions that
will help the corporates proactively
face the growing intensity of immi-
gration enforcement worldwide,”
says Jake Lipman, senior attorney,
Lipman & Wolf, one of the earliest
clients of INSZoom.
As an attorney user of INSZoom,
he has been able to offer his clients a
far higher level of service. The firm
developed its own "version" of IN-
SZoom by creating custom templates
and workflows for each kind of
process that it handles. The software
reminds them what needs to be done
and when. It uses the reporting
function to manage the continual
deadlines that seem to arise and the
communication portal to keep its
clients up to date and to document
each step along the way. “INSZoom
has been an integral part of our
firm's business plan as we realize
that becoming a power user places
us in a dominant position among
other firms who may not see the fu-
ture role that INSZoom will play
within the global mobility market,”
adds Lipman.
Despite a successful run of its so-
lutions amongst the enterprises and
law firms, big and small, Vaidyamath
feels there is more to be done. Re-
gardless of INSZoom having domi-
nated the immigration software space
for a decade now, it is surprising that
enterprise software giants like Oracle
and SAP have still not set their foot
in this arena. “One of the main rea-
sons for this is the ignorance that cor-
porates have in this field. Either the
companies do not know about the
need for compliance or if they know,
they do not give it much importance
and are reluctant to spend on tech-
nology in this space,” says Vaidya-
math. It was just two years back
when several top MNCs in the U.S.
were fined millions of dollars by the
Department of Labor for not being
compliant to LCA (Labor Condition
Application). Hence, the company
has taken it in its hands and in the
past few years it has gone across ge-
ographies holding seminars and con-
ferences to educate the industry folks
about the necessity for compliance.
The company developed a portal,
www.migrantplanet.com that updates
all information in terms of immigra-
tion laws and rules happening across
the geographies. The portal that was
launched last October aims at pro-
viding realtime updates to the com-
pany’s entire customer base, thus
adding value to the existing set of so-
lutions. “My idea is to make this por-
tal a one stop shop for all news and
information on immigration and re-
lated areas,” he says.
For Vaidyamath, the horizon
ahead looks very bright. Amidst or-
ganizations working on increasing
their global presence on the one
hand and governments coming down
hard on legalities on the other, op-
portunities galore. The recent an-
nouncement by the US government
to audit 25,000 companies for com-
pliance reflects an immense oppor-
tunity for its business.
No wonder the company is eager
to spread its presence in several re-
gions like Europe, the Middle East,
and Asia. As of today, the company
offers immigration services in 68
countries and hopes to increase this
number rapidly. It does not end here.
Vaidyamath is also looking forward
to offering consulting services to the
clients. “We already have a strong
network of attorneys in over 60
countries across the world that is al-
ready using our solutions. These are
also firms that offer the best prac-
tices in this space. I’m working on
forging partnerships with these firms
to service the enterprise vertical.
Suppose, a company is eager to send
some of its executives to small and
lesser known countries then we shall
help them connect to the best law
firm there that will help them in han-
dling the entire immigration
process,” he explains. This will be
mutually beneficial.
Other plans in near future include
increasing its head count. With about
150 plus employees placed in offices
in the US, the UK, and India, the
company hopes to add more resources
and open offices in other locations to
maximize business. For the company
that is self-funded from day one, the
risks taken so far have been very
fruitful and it is confident of replicat-
ing a similar growth in years ahead.
Vaidyamath’s desire to rule the
roost in this space has been long
achieved, and at the end of the day
he continues to create a process that
is so simple and efficient that ‘im-
migration’ does not remain a tedious
and painful job any more. “Ten
years in this space and I still feel
there is so much more that requires
to be done. A few years down the
line, I hope to help create a system
where immigrating becomes as sim-
ple as traveling within one’s own
country,” he wishes. That day is not
far, if you go by Vaidyamath’s grit
and determination. si
siliconindia
|21|
April 2010
 TTS
Company Spotlight: ByEureka Bharali
Underlining its
Footprint in IT
Industry
O
utgrown legacy systems
and increased server
maintenance issues were
unexpectedly pressed on
eBioscience, a research
reagent manufacturer, as it worked to
keep pace with its expanding business
needs. The expansion requirements cre-
ated a no-win situation for the company,
with a non-scalable platform baseline,
inadequate IT infrastructure and sub-
standard reporting capabilities. An add
on to these woes, strict compliancy re-
quirements were becoming increasingly
difficult to meet for the IT department.
They needed a new, efficient system to
provide better visibility into shipments,
custom order turnaround time and re-
ceivables. The reagent manufacturer was
not able to settle on any appropriate so-
lution or application to meet these needs.
At this point, they chanced upon Abaris,
a Teledata Technology Solutions’ (TTS)
company, which specializes in the deliv-
ery of Oracle based solutions. Within
four months, eBioscience saw a com-
plete revamp of its business applications
with Oracle’s business application suite.
Today, the company tracks receivables
and the orders of next day shipments in
real-time, with an up-to-date, scalable
platform for any business expansion. In
siliconindia
|22|
April 2010
Anush Ramachandran
2006, TTS was spun off from its incu-
bating company, Teledata Informatics
and is currently an IT consulting firm
with core competencies in Enterprise
Resource Planning, Customer Relation-
ship Management, Business Intelligence
and IT hosting operations.
For a venture to ultimately succeed,
crisis-management is a core competency
requirement and CEO, Anush Ra-
machandran of TTS has learnt this les-
son well. Two years down the line in
2008, when TTS was in the midst of
etching its footprint across the IT service
industry, the Wall Street bubble burst
which brought with it the subsequent
global recession. The global effect on IT
market revenues was a decline for TTS
revenues by over 20 percent, driven
largely by decreases in available busi-
ness, rates and license fees from cus-
tomers. The consulting firm was faced
with not only an absolute decrease in
revenue, but also with an additional chal-
lenge of generating less revenue for the
same amount of effort. The economic
uncertainty did not deter Ramachandran
or David Price, the President of TTS,
who is currently transitioning to the role
of a CEO. The recession presented them
with the platform to confront certain or-
ganizational and operational assump-
tions that had crept into their business
model during the more prosperous times
when the economy was vibrant. They
conducted a major, low level review of
almost every single financial assumption
built into their operating model and ana-
lyzed the manner in which the individ-
ual divisions operated both externally
and internally with each other.
The Strategic Leap
“In many instances, we discovered that
some of our units were delivering rev-
enues using third party companies as op-
posed to utilizing available resources
elsewhere in the company. This was be-
cause the evolution of the business had
not forged the necessary “organizational
wiring” to enable the right flow of infor-
mation as well as the corporate policy
and directives to maximize inter divi-
sional cooperation,” reveals Price. Keep-
ing the discoveries in mind, a new
organizational blueprint was introduced
that has removed the historical bound-
aries within the company and the com-
pany is implementing a global sourcing
and delivery strategy that integrates the
U.S. operations with their other organi-
zations in India.
This new organizational approach
complemented the growth initiatives
The recession presented them the platform
to evaluate the intricacies within the
company. The discoveries helped them to
build a new organizational blueprint that
has removed the historical boundaries
with three elements. First, there is a
growing demand for new solutions to
support the emerging SmartGrid and
Smart Metering Markets, which in turn
is driving a demand for consulting, prod-
ucts and solutions both in the U.S. and
Europe. Hence, they designed a vertical
industry strategy focused on Energy and
Utilities (E&U) market to provide their
enabling data and transaction manage-
ment solutions and contact intelligence
solutions like Call Logic. The latter so-
lution, will be expanded to become Con-
tact Logic by 2011, incorporating new
capabilities to integrate web, email and
chat traffic into the overall contact intel-
ligence solution. “This critical element
in the ongoing success of TTS will also
require quality relationships with key
global vendors to enable the widest de-
ployment of our IP solutions as possi-
ble,” says Ramachandran.
Second, the IT Implementation and
Operations Services Strategy drives a re-
newed focus on the implementation and
support of the Oracle eBusiness Suite,
coupled with implementation and sup-
port services for the Amdocs CRM suite
of products. Their core Oracle Solutions
business as well as the CRM business
have evolved and now deliver the full
service solution packages. The Oracle
business has been particularly success-
ful in converting implementation cus-
tomers into long term support and
consulting relationships. Along with new
solutions, the final ingredient in the re-
invention of the company was the re-
structuring of the corporate management
and global delivery operations processes.
These strategies have already begun to
hit the target, for instance, TTS new ac-
count management approach has yielded
a significant long term IT partnership
contract wherein TTS will assume the
overall role of IT management and op-
erations.
People Strength
The coming year will see the implemen-
tation of a new, more efficient delivery
management framework that will allow
TTS to maximize the efficiency of the
operations around the world. This more
efficient framework will be a key to the
success of their product solutions and
new range of lifecycle solutions for Or-
acle and CRM platforms. TTS’ new
Strategic Account Management Process
(SAM) and operating model to support
better customer relations aims to expand
upon a set of key customer relationships
that the company has maintained for a
number of years. TTS has also launched
an Automated Metering Infrastructure
Technology and Operations solution, to
allow utilities to operationally monitor
and manage the next generation of
highly complex revenue data manage-
ment solutions. To maintain the momen-
tum of these strategic steps, the
consulting firm understands the need to
have a technologically savvy team. So,
the firm is working on better manage-
ment and leadership approaches to attain
new levels of clarity with their employ-
ees, to enhance communication within
the business and foster a faster delivery
process. This will be enhanced further by
the introduction of TTS’ Global Deliv-
ery Model that aims to transform not
only their core solutions delivery and
David Price
product development processes, but also
how they can bring in new talent and fos-
ter their employees’ development.
Expansion Goals
TTS rebranded and consolidated itself
over a two-year period following ac-
quisition of businesses and divisions
like LogicaCMG’s Detroit unit, Al-
phasoft Services Corporation and
Abaris to attain its current set of capa-
bilities as a business. With 800 em-
ployees around the world, TTS is set
to venture in new geographies while
raising additional capital for both or-
ganic and inorganic growth through
acquisitions in key markets.
Their strategic thrust in the coming
years will be a focus on building on their
existing successes and capabilities in the
Energy and Utilities Market, and ex-
panding their solutions footprint in this
space. “This is a key initiative for us in
the next three years with new industry
requirements driving unprecedented lev-
els of market spending in the next gen-
eration of IT solutions and physical
assets to support a more efficient energy
grid. We intend to place our company at
the heart of key developments in this
arena,”says Ramachandran. Price con-
cludes, “The overall result we seek is to
make the company a sound investment
for our shareholders, a good partner to
do business with and a rewarding place
to work in the years to come”. si
siliconindia
|23|
April 2010
VC Talk: ByAjay Agarwal
The author is Managing Director, Bain Capital
Trends & Tactics
for Startup
Success
M
ore and more successful com-
panies are taking a holistic ap-
proach to serve specific market
niches or verticals. Instead of
offering a broad-based hori-
zontal solution that may service a larger market,
but require more customization and will likely in-
volve competition from larger players, these com-
panies are finding success ‘below the radar’ by
staying focused on a narrower segment.
siliconindia
|24|
April 2010
Ajay Agarwal
These companies are also moving be-
yond simply selling software….. they
are inclined towards integrated solu-
tions that they can sell to a seg-
ment. For example, this may involve
software and outsourced call centers,
a specialization in apps on the mobile
phone plus a website, all working in
concert to help solve a problem in the
insurance industry, automotive indus-
try, healthcare vertical, and so on. By
offering a highly specific solution to
the vertical, these companies can scale
faster, require less capital, have shorter
sales cycles, and also dramatically re-
duce implementation times.
A second interesting trend is the
blending of the consumer and enter-
prise spaces. Some of the most excit-
ing young companies are the ones
that ultimately make money from en-
terprises but also have a very strong
consumer value proposition. For in-
stance, LinkedIn (a Bain Capital Ven-
tures portfolio company) whose
service facilitates business network-
ing, while simultaneously providing
an invaluable service to enterprises
that are trying to find and attract tal-
ent. I believe that we will see more
and more companies that take advan-
tage of the consumer trends of social
networking, mobile, location apps,
and ultimately use them to sell a busi-
ness oriented solution.
By offering highly specific
solutions to verticals, startups
can scale faster, require less
capital, have shorter sales cycles,
and also dramatically reduce
implementation times
These trends have lured many to
don the entrepreneur role, and the ad-
vice to these entrepreneurs comes not
only from my observations as a ven-
ture capitalist but also from my eight
years at Trilogy Software, a success-
ful venture backed company in
Texas. First, it is important for one
to be a domain expert – make sure
you know more about the ecosystem
that you are playing in than anyone
The latest report from market
research firm Gartner
suggests that mobile apps are
big business, and that
business should only grow in
the next few years. According
to Gartner's numbers and
those reported by Apple,
Apple completely owns this
market, likely grabbing
almost every bit of the $4.2
billion spent on mobile apps
in 2009. Based on Gartner's
estimates, Apple could hold
on to at least two-thirds of
the market if current sales
trends hold for 2010.
else. Once, you are aware of the sys-
tem, invest in building a strong cul-
ture early on – people should want to
work hard and be at the office all
weekend for reasons other than mon-
etary benefits. Many companies
don’t have this foundation and, as a
result, when the startup hits a rough
patch (which inevitably all startups
do), it becomes tough to retain talent.
Second, while building the
team hire ‘generalist athletes’ early
on and functional experts later. In
the early days of a startup, a busi-
ness goes through much itera-
tion. You don’t know exactly what
skill sets you will need and therefore
a startup is much better off hiring
people who can wear lots of hats
and get things done. When one
scales and the business becomes
more focused, one will be in a better
position to identify and hire specific
functional experts. Third, set stretch
goals. This was a technique we used
often at Trilogy. It’s amazing how a
startup can get bogged down in con-
ventional thinking and incremental
changes. The best startups have
ridiculous goals, many of which are
never achieved, but the process of
setting and trying to achieve crazy
goals can unlock out-of-the-box
ideas and drive quantum leaps in
performance. si
siliconindia
|25|
April 2010
Business: By Suresh Borkar
The author is Faculty, Illinois Institute of Technology
India Telecom
G
Challenges and Opportunities
lobal telecom services
continuum includes
basic communications,
universal and afford-
able mobile broad-
band, and user managed multimedia
capabilities. This is part of the fixed-
mobile-convergence with unified
voice, data, and video applications
on a single mobile handset.
In India, we are still in the first
stage of this service continuum. The
wireless voice network has grown
phenomenally over the last decade.
However, broadband mobile tele-
com, a key enabler for India’s cease-
less march towards becoming a
global leader, requires critical atten-
tion. This article addresses the major
challenges and opportunities relating
siliconindia
|26|
April 2010
to universal broadband access, cost
effective technology path, expedient
spectrum allocation, and technology
leadership.
Challenges and Opportunities
It is estimated that in terms of
contribution to the overall national
economic growth, the increase in
broadband access provides an order
of magnitude increase compared to
the corresponding voice tele-density
increase. For a developing country
like India, providing mobile broad-
band services is not just an option but
an imperative. Current relentless
focus on providing basic voice serv-
ices needs to be balanced with accel-
erated availability of high bandwidth
wireless access capabilities.
We need to focus on value
added services and
applications consistent
with India’s needs,
especially tailored to the
vast rural population
We need to focus on value added
services and applications consistent with
India’s needs, especially tailored to the
vast rural population. Affordable broad-
band access is particularly important in
the areas of distance education, quality
health services, market access, and pro-
ductivity improvements. It will help
close the digital divide between the met-
ros, tier-2 cities, and rural areas and will
support inclusive growth.
For broadband, affordability is a
major issue for a significant section of
India’s population, both in rural and
urban areas. For reaching out to the ma-
jority of the population, the government
needs to look at multi-tiered broadband
telecom as a critical infrastructure in-
vestment. It requires an active financial
intervention by the government. Spec-
trum allocation needs to be looked at as
a major and critical infrastructure in-
vestment instead of a short term money
making proposition by the government.
In India, mobile handsets are cur-
rently bought by consumers from inde-
pendent channels with pre-paid service
payment agreements with the service
providers. This does not allow vertical
integration and longer range relationship
between the customer and the service
providers. This also has an impact on in-
troduction of new technologies and does
not allow the service providers to subsi-
dize the handset cost or be able to put
emphasis on a long range vision. Also,
it compromises on the availability of the
smart and advanced handsets, except for
a select segment of the population. The
government needs to make cyber cafes
and kiosks universally available as part
of the strategy to provide clustered and
community oriented facilities and make
investments for this purpose.
For localized coverage, the ubiqui-
tous WiFi is a preferred technology. It
does have issues of lack of mobility,
quality of service (QoS) management,
and security. The competing architectural
option, pico or femto cells, provides for
single mode user unit and to handover to
the external micro or macro cell based
cellular network. Both require a backhaul
network from the customer’s premise for
carrying the resulting traffic.
For Broadband Wireless Access
(BWA) in its currently defined spectrum,
WiMAX, in its Time Division Duplex
(TDD) incarnation, is the appropriate
‘4G’ technology. It is also assumed that
when 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE)
becomes available in the marketplace,
cost effective dual mode mobile handsets
will be available as well.
For wide area mobile coverage, in-
troduction of 3G mobile systems needs
to be expedited. We need to avoid tech-
nology fragmentation and focus on the
3GPP family of standards, i.e., applica-
tion of WCDMA and HSPA and its evo-
lution to LTE. 3G will efficiently expand
the voice capacity and will be a good so-
lution for multi-tiered data services.
WiMAX 802.16m based mesh net-
works could be an attractive architectural
option at a later time because of the
multi-carrier capabilities, enhanced cov-
erage, and reconfiguration advantages.
WiMAX is also a strong candidate as a
backhaul for India’s telecom needs, in-
cluding application as a backhaul for
WiFi networks, WiMAX networks, and
cellular networks.
The introduction of 3G or Broadband
Wireless Access (BWA) technologies has
been stymied till date due to the inordi-
nate delays in the spectrum auction. The
latest indicators are that it is currently
rescheduled to September 2010. This
will not allow 3G or BWA services be
available prior to mid 2011. The 3G and
the BWA auctions need to be held expe-
ditiously and decoupled from each other.
The spectrum allocation blocks for
the licensees are very small and sub-
stantially lower than the global average.
This implies limited potential for pro-
viding high bandwidth services and
cost effective procurement, operations,
and management. Use of lower carrier
frequencies in the 700/800 MHz range
should be expedited to allow cost ef-
fective cellular deployments.
Spectrum allocation needs
to be looked at as a major
and critical infrastructure
investment instead of a
short term money making
proposition by the
government
The service sector is quite frag-
mented with over ten service providers
vying for marketshare. India operators
are entering the consolidation phase
and several mergers and acquisitions
(M&A) are expected. Consolidation is
inevitable since the small number of
subscribers, fragmented spectrum allo-
cations, facilities overheads, and inef-
ficiencies associated with disparate
network management make a viable
business plan impractical. Another
complex issue the service providers
have to deal with is number portability.
Multimedia services will require
moving from the comparatively deter-
ministic era of circuit switched net-
works to the statistical packet transport
networks. As we migrate to a packet
transport environment, the associated
expertise needs to be developed in op-
erations and management, quality of
service (QoS), security, and revenue re-
alization, e.g., content based billing,
and so on. From the technology per-
spective, India’s academia and research
organizations need to drive towards
technology leadership, especially in the
wireless access domain including soft-
ware defined, cognitive radios, multi-
access techniques, and multi-input
multi-output (MIMO) antenna systems.
Concluding Remarks
The two basic tenets for India’s tele-
com are a) timely universal availabil-
ity and affordability of wireless,
mobile broadband and b) maximizing
frequency and spectrum efficiency.
The first one entails low cost handsets
(limit number of modes and subsi-
dized handsets), economy of scale,
fast spectrum allocation, simplified
rules and regulations, and minimizing
technology fragmentation. Frequency
or spectrum efficiency implies low fre-
quency of operation, comparatively
larger spectrum blocks, and advanced
modulation and access techniques.
From the technology perspective,
introduction of 3GPP WCDMA and
HSPA is an economic and levelizing
imperative. WiFi is an architectural im-
perative, primarily for localized and no-
madic access, but pico or femto cell is
a competing option. WiMAX is a tacti-
cal broadband decision. LTE is a tech-
nology decision for future.
Incorporation of microcells with their
smaller footprints is a business decision
for a selected geographic coverage.
3GPP2 CDMA2000 standards are not
effective technology solutions for
India’s needs.
For the urban and rural masses, af-
fordability is a pre-requisite for access
to the broadband telecom services they
need. The Indian environment requires
a pro-active lead by the government to
consider telecom as a critical infra-
structure investment and make broad-
band access universally accessible and
affordable. Telecom facilitates eco-
nomic progress, fast and efficient dis-
tance learning, effective governance,
and affordable and accessible health
services to all people. With improved
quality of life, the general public will
have the spare time to indulge in the fa-
vorite national pastimes of watching
TV shows, cricket, and Bollywood
movies as well. si
siliconindia
|27|
April 2010
Technology: By Raj Tumuluri
The author is CEO, Openstream
Everything that can be
Mobile
T
Top Ten Things to
consider while choosing
your mobile solutions
he power of mobile usabil-
ity has brought success to
AppStores of various mo-
bile device manufacturers.
Now, it is time to focus on
the enterprise mobility imperative in the
changing landscape of mobile device
evolution.
Early enterprise mobile solutions were
by and large, custom applications devel-
oped for mobile devices that suited a sec-
tion of mobile users in an enterprise with
specific need(s), with little or no ability
to enhance or run them on newer de-
vices, without incurring the cost of a
major re-write of those applications.
The evolution of feature-rich mobile
devices has accelerated the rapid adop-
tion of newer devices by enterprise-
users, often rendering the archaic
non-portable mobile solutions useless,
stressing the need for the development
of an enterprise-wide strategy for mobile
application development/deployment.
Enumerated below are the top 10 cri-
teria as per several recent studies that
every enterprise should consider today,
in order to ensure successful deployment
of their enterprise-wide mobile solutions.
1. Point Solution Vs. Platform-based:
Point solutions are typical mobile-exten-
sions provided by traditional back-office
siliconindia
|28|
April 2010
WILL BE
software vendors that enable use of their
back-end application(s) on mobile de-
vices. Usually, these solutions provide a
quick path to mobile to enable a back-
end application of a vendor while offer-
ing no flexibility to aggregate several
back-office applications, which may be
required for meaningful transactions in
the field. Field-users often have the need
to interact with more than one enterprise-
back-end-application/data. So, there is a
greater need for a platform-based solu-
tion, which besides offering the ability to
aggregate and enhance several back-of-
fice applications/data for mobile-users,
provides the flexibility to make field ap-
plication(s) independent of the back-of-
fice software applications. Thus, giving
enterprise the ability to control the fea-
tures and evolution of field-applications
based solely on its needs, and not limited
by any back-office application.
2. Multi-platform availability:
The need for device-features may some-
what vary within the user-groups of an
enterprise. E.g. some users may need
rugged devices with sensory features like
bar-codes scanner or RFID, while others
may prefer their devices to be small and
sleek, while both having the need to ac-
cess similar application/functionality.
Given the rapid evolution of feature-rich
mobile devices today, it is conceivable
that having the ability to run application
on many types of mobile devices contin-
ues to be a requirement for meaningful
adoption of enterprise applications in the
field.
3. Offline/Online Operation:
One of the biggest lessons learnt from
field-deployment of early enterprise so-
lutions has been that the solutions that
depended on always-on connectivity
were often rendered useless, due to lack
of network connectivity at the points of
use. In spite of recent advances in the
WWAN/WLAN coverage offered by
various wireless network operators, there
will always be gaps in coverage at points
of use for foreseeable future. Thus a
given mobile-application-platform must
architecturally provide the ability to de-
sign/develop applications that can still
function in both offline and online
modes with robust synchronization sup-
port with disparate back-end data-
sources.
4. Portable peripheral access:
Most newer mobile devices pack func-
tionality like built-in Camera, GPS,
Media Player, Barcode/RFID scanner
etc. that can greatly enhance the qual-
ity of data captured in the field. How-
Courtesy: Dave Raggett W3C
The ability to run an application on many
types of mobile devices is a requirement for
meaningful adoption of enterprise
applications in the field
ever, leveraging these features on dis-
parate devices using conventional de-
vice-specific API from within an
application often makes them non-
portable across various popular mobile
devices. A good enterprise-mobile-
application-platform should shield ap-
plication developers from such
nuances, offering them portable way to
leverage these rich features from
within their mobile applications.
5. Network Portability:
Mobile users today move in and out of
their offices, often roaming from an en-
terprise WLAN environment to WWAN
outside the four-walls of the enterprise.
The platform therefore must accommo-
date such frequent switching of networks
by users seamlessly.
6. Security & Encryption:
Providing data/application access out-
side the four-walls of an enterprise has
always been a cause for concern for peo-
ple implementing enterprise-security.
Conventional user-id/password mecha-
nism does not adequately establish users’
identity when they are mobile. There-
fore, enterprises should seek to augment
that method with a platform that supports
two-or-more factors of authentication (
which would be the case, if the employee
were to gain physical-access to the sys-
tems within the four-walls of the enter-
prise) such as security certificates/tokens
on the device, biometric verification etc.
Further, the platform must also keep any
temporary data stored on the device en-
crypted in accordance with enterprise
policies for such data storage with an
ability to lock and/or destroy should the
device be lost/stolen.
7. Usability:
The success of any deployed mobile so-
lution largely depends on how-usable it
is. Users-on-the-move often need hands-
free access, while driving or using while
performing other job-functions in the
field. Thus, a good enterprise mobile-
platform today must provide for easy in-
corporation of speech and multimodal
interaction in to mobile applications
seamlessly, without compromising any
portability needs.
8. Open Data Format:
In order to achieve true scalability and
inter-operability, the platform must en-
able collection and maintenance of all
data captured using open-data-formats,
allowing applications to share data
across multiple back-end systems. Open-
data-format allows enterprises to choose
from a range of data-adaptors/transfor-
mations as their needs for enterprise-in-
tegration evolve over time.
9. Device & Application Management:
Having the ability to remotely update
and manage applications in the field,
without requiring users to bring-in the
devices to back-office greatly enhances
the RoI (return on investment) for any
mobile solution. Therefore, choosing de-
velopment-platform(s) that facilitates re-
motely managing applications on
disparate devices in the field using open-
standards would protect the investment
on the platform across device/application
upgrade-cycles.
10. Performance Metrics Data
Collection:
One way to achieve greater adoption of
the mobile applications is to constantly
monitor mobile accesses to the applica-
tions. The pattern of usage by users and
device-classes provides invaluable help
in improving user-experience. The mo-
bile application platform must therefore,
support collection of various attributes of
data/information accesses from the field.
In summary, choosing open-stan-
dards based platform that would enable
development of highly usable multi-
modal applications, which can be easily
deployed and managed on a variety of
mobile devices and networks would en-
sure great return-on-investment and re-
duce total-cost-of-ownership. si
siliconindia
|29|
April 2010
Technology: By Arpan Banerjee
The author is VP, Business Development, Innominds Software
Sooner, students who have forgotten to
bring an assignment to class can use their
cell phone to access the completed work
on their home computer and show it to
their professor. Mobile applications such
as Twitter and CitySense help students
schedule meetings or study dates re-
motely. Mobile learning is also on the
rise that uses PDAs and smartphones to
The delivery of content has
evolved dramatically, as
professors opt to post all
class material, including
audio and or video
recordings of lectures, on
more content and student collaboration.
Virtual meeting place tools like
Webex, Dimdim, and Gotomeeting are
efficient Web based collaboration solu-
tions that help improve productivity and
decrease communication gaps and
travel. These tools simulate the visual
communications that occur between
students and teachers in the traditional

T
sites like iTunes U and
deliver courseware, field data, short tu- classroom setting.
Today’s Technology Trends torials, and even classroom polls.
YouTube
Social networking and communities: Education and Entertainment
in the Education Sector New Technology Adoption – a Trend Popular social networks like Facebook, Higher education content and entertain-
in Itself Orkut, and LinkedIn used to build an on- ment (edutainment) share a common
Some of the biggest trends of today in- line community of users that shares in- footprint these days. Teachers combine
clude the emergence of Web 2.0 and so- terests and or activities. the two using various videos that have
oday’s students are growing up in a digital world that pro- cial networking phenomena, such as A combination of these tools is trans- both educational and entertainment
vides a variety of hi-tech tools, from computers and video blogs and wikis as well as new online forming learning environments to be so- value in podcasts and post course con-
games to increasingly sophisticated mobile devices. The video repository and delivery websites cial and personalized. While traditional tent on education channels. Television
schools and universities are following suit, integrating a such as YouTube, iTunes U, and Big Learning Management Systems (LMS) broadcasting companies such as the
range of technologies both in and outside the classrooms. Branding Think. The emergence of smartphones, like Blackboard or Web CT are course BBC, MTV, NBC, and ABC are quickly
Let us look at some exciting trends in today’s education sector. Today, the Internet is a viable way to market academic such as the iPhone and other intelligent centered and driven by the faculty, the developing methods to integrate broad-
programs to prospective students while enhancing the devices, has enhanced mobile learning new approach is to create a ‘learner cen- cast media with higher education. This
Globalization school’s brand. Universities are also establishing on- (referred to as m-learning). These tech- tric’ system. trend supports the marked increase in
The demand for higher education globally has increased and will con- line parties and networking websites for newly admit- nologies create new channels for content Universities continue to examine the use of multimedia devices on col-
tinue to grow. New campuses are being built, and existing campuses ted freshmen, allowing them to interact virtually with delivery, online video expansion, and ways in which they can integrate these lege campuses where content is acces-
are expanding. Universities are competing internationally for resources, campus services and the campus community before podcasting. Also, the adoption of virtual tools to further enhance the campus and sible not only through computers, but
faculty, the best students, and education funding. they start school. The presence of schools in virtual on- reality websites such as Second Life has learning experience and improve pro- also through TVs and smartphones.
Overseas expansion creates opportunities for students and faculty line communities such as Second Life helps enhance provided the institutions of higher edu- ductivity through flexible learning envi- In conclusion, technology is all set
in terms of exchange programs and expanded campus environments. the brand. YouTube’s education channels and Apple’s cation with new venues for class gather- ronments. Many universities view to play an increasing role in higher ed-
India, China, and the Middle East have quickly become key areas for iTunes U are effective not only for teaching and learn- ings and learning. technology as a key asset that helps them ucation of this century. Learning tech-
widespread campus growth. The learning model varies by country and ing, but also for marketing a university. To attract Some popular Web 2.0 tools are: create an intellectually vibrant and rele- nology of today is being shaped with the
institution, ranging from replicating the home campus to building local prospective students, universities develop student blog- Blogs: Short for ‘Weblog’, a blog is an vant campus to attract the best students help of tools to create a social, highly
capacity to participating in faculty exchanges. ger programs, where current students blog about their online journal, which has an owner (a and faculty. collaborative, and personalized envi-
These global learning environments give students an opportunity student lives. Some universities also have respective person or oragnization) and readers serve ronment. Institutions will adopt innova-
to expand their portfolios to include experience that is valued in today’s ‘fan pages’ on Facebook to enable communication as contributors and commenters that Learning and Collaboration tive solutions that will change the way
workforce. Universities, in turn, use their foreign campuses to attract with incoming freshmen. shape the dialogue. A typical blog com- The education process has evolved over students learn, communicate, produce,
top research talent and build international relationships, establishing a bines text, images, and links to other a period of time to collaborative learn- collaborate, and study both on and off
global presence and helping to develop local capacity. Mobility blogs, Web pages, and other media re- ing. Web 2.0 and social networking campus. Creating innovative services
Students depend heavily on their mobile phones and lated to its topic. tools such as blogs, wikis, and online from current and future technologies re-
Information Literacy PDAs these days. With the proliferation of mobile Wikis: The best way to describe a social gathering websites like Flickr are quires a powerful, reliable, expandable,
Enhancing technical literacy and creating a culture that encourages phones on campus, colleges everywhere are com- wiki is by giving the classic example of enhancing and facilitating collaborative and secure IT infrastructure that has ad-
faculty to use computers, smart devices, and other innovative tools in pelled to capitalize on feature-rich phones that are ca- Wikipedia, which is an online ency- learning and are being used widely on equate bandwidth, quality of service,
their curricula is becoming a top agenda of the colleges. From the per- pable of much more than just voice calls. Adoption of clopaedia generated, validated, and many campuses. The delivery of con- and storage. Many colleges and univer-
spective of students, while they are device-savvy, they may not neces- the BlackBerry, iPhone, and other smart devices that maintained by users. tent has evolved dramatically, as many sities have already developed plans to
sarily be information savvy. In spite of growing up with technology, have Internet access allows students and faculty per- Podcasts: Series of digital media files professors opt to post all class material, ensure success in meeting their current
many students have not learned how to use technology for academic form a wide range of assignments. Tasks like admin- that can be both audio and video. including complete audio and or video and future needs. Educators, manage-
purposes. Universities are addressing this, through a variety of meth- istration, sharing class notes, downloading lectures, Mashups: Similar to a portal, mashup recordings of lectures, on sites like ments, and administrators who are
ods and are creating a technology culture through an array of programs and instant messaging are possible anywhere with a is a newer, loosely defined Web 2.0 tech- iTunes U and YouTube. Open source proactive in embracing the trends with
such as support desks and student employment programs. The bot- cell phone service. nique for content aggregation. Examples course management systems such as the help of the right technology partners
tomline is to ensure that students are viable candidates and are com- Mobile phones are also being used to access com- of popular consumer mashups are Moodle and similar systems on Face- are in a position to create significant
petitive in the global workplace. puter files from a remote location. With services like Google maps and Diggs. book are some applications that support competitive advantages. si

siliconindia
|30| April 2010 siliconindia
|31|
April 2010
Advertorial
AiTO
Facilitating a Royal Journey
from B’lore to Goa
C
ountries worldwide may
have committed billions
of dollars for operating
high-speed trains to en-
courage tourism, yet it
seems that for people in the UK there
is more excitement in luxury than in
speed. It shows in the growing popu-
larity of the luxury trains, offering the
comforts of an upscale hotel, fine din-
ing, and extras such as massages and
onboard lectures, especially among the
tourists. The trend seems to be spread-
ing faster in India, the country which is
expected to remain the hotspot for
tourists from 2009-2018, as asserted by
World Travel and Tourism Council.
The grandeur of the Mysore palace, the
Lotus temple, the exciting wildlife
sanctuaries, enchanting botanical gar-
dens, and the tranquil boat rides pres-
ent a luscious adventure for tourists
siliconindia
|32| April 2010
hungry for variety in their palette. Trav-
eling and exploring such a variety is a
perpetual work-in-progress, and a con-
venient and comfortable way is to em-
bark on a packaged train journey, which
includes a royal treat. The Association
of Independent Tour Operators (AITO)
has realized the opportunity that lies in
this sector and has designed a 10 day
tour from Bangalore to Goa on the
Golden Chariot, the train that sees most
of it’s traction from the UK and the US.
Calling themselves the specialists
of holidays, Derek Moore, Chairman of
AITO, says, “We have packaged the 10
day Bangalore to Goa trip from No-
vember 19 to 29, with attractions for
tourists with diverse interests. The ad-
venturers can satiate their interests
through the safari rides of the Nagar-
hole National Park, while places like
the Jain pilgrimage centers and the dif-
ferent temples offer the taste of the tra-
ditions and beliefs of historical India.
Be it adventure, tranquility, romance, or
religion, the trip would offer it all.”
AITO represents some of Britain’s spe-
cialist tour operators like All Ways Pa-
cific, 1st Class Holidays, and Baltic
Holidays.
If the ‘palace on wheels’ seems to
be a reverie to one, then this 10-day
trip, priced at £3,590 (Rs. 245,520),
will turn it into a reality. The delicate
carvings embellishing the ceiling, the
wall panels, and furniture in this grand
train, the skillfully crafted coaches
with plush air conditioned cabins, and
the soul stirring classical tunes played
by the musicians inside the Golden
Chariot present an unforgettable expe-
rience. And if one is a food buff and is
skeptic about the food in a train, then
the special fine dining in the train at
the two restaurants whose interiors
represent the timeless aesthetics of
Hampi and Halebid, will banish all
such qualms. This tour will be led by
Denis Moriarty MA (Oxon), a lecturer
and former television producer with
the BBC where he specialized in pro-
ducing documentaries on art, architec-
ture, and cultural history. He asserts
that the journey will ensure the best of
the satisfaction for every tourist.
“Everyone travelling with an AITO
tour operator is encouraged to fill out
and return a Customer Satisfaction
Questionnaire (CSQ). Responses are
audited and evaluated by AITO head-
quarters. The results of the 2008 CSQ
survey showed that 94 percent of cus-
tomers rated AITO members either as
excellent or good,” he enlightens. The
journey spans across historical monu-
ments, rich natural reserves, splendid
architecture, awe-inspiring rock sculp-
tures, and the beautiful fortresses of a
bygone era, to name just a few. To any-
one who expects to rejuvenate his or
her monotonous lifecycle with a break,
this vacation in the South Asian region,
filled with the royal grandeur, is just
worthwhile.
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/markbaker/
Developing a Mindset to Help You Make
W
the Most of Challenging Times
ith all of the current uncer-
tainty in this unprecedented
situation that we find our-
selves in, I thought it would be the right
time to share some tools and ideas with
you that are used and understood by the
world’s most effective people.
What I will share with you now is not
about positive thinking or looking at your
world through rose-colored glasses, it’s
about using the power of your mind in
the most effective way so that you can
deal with the issues and challenges that
life invariably throws at us on an ever-in-
creasing frequency.
Have you ever bought a car of your
special choice, and as you drove it
away from the showroom you suddenly
saw the same make and model every-
where, you didn’t notice these cars at
all till the previous day, yet all of a sud-
den you see this car everywhere - next
to you on the road, in magazines, and
in newspapers, and yet just yesterday
there didn’t seem to be any around, and
actually this was part of the reason why
you chose to purchase this vehicle. So
what happened suddenly?
We have, as part of our brain, some-
thing called the reticular activating sys-
tem, this part of your brains responds to
your input by way of your thoughts pri-
marily, what you are focusing on at any
given time, hence you tell yourself that
a shiny new BMW is important to you,
and lo and behold all of a sudden they
are everywhere.
As a human being you are bom-
barded with approx two million bits of
information per second through all of
Author: Mark Baker
your senses, now you can’t possibly
process two million bits of information
as you would suffer sensory overload; in
fact, you are only able to effectively
process seven plus or minus two pieces
of information per second, which equates
to approximately one hundred and thirty
four bits of information per second. Now
there is a massive difference between
two million bits of information and one
hundred and thirty four bits, so how does
your brain differentiate on what’s rele-
vant and what’s irrelevant to you?
Train yourself to focus with intensity on positive
aspects because the emotion that you attach to
your thoughts creates an immense amount of
power within you
Imagine that your mind is the World
Wide Web, if that is the case what hap-
pens if you type in ‘poverty’? Well, if
you type in ‘poverty’ you will get
55,700,000 pieces of information re-
garding ‘poverty’, not one reference for
‘prosperity’, and this is exactly how your
mind works, what you focus on grows
with intensity .
With this in mind, it is extremely
important that you monitor your
thoughts and regulate what you focus
on, but even more importantly you
must train yourself to focus with in-
tensity because the emotion that you
attach to your thoughts creates an im-
mense amount of power within you.
So let’s try that now, simply ask your
self the question, ‘if it is true that the rich
get richer and the poor get poorer, why is
Blog
http://blogs.siliconindia.com/
CEO
that’? If your automatic response was
along the lines of ‘because wealthy peo-
ple are mean’ then you have developed a
negative belief about money, which
means that for you to have money you
need to be a mean person, likewise if
your automatic response was ‘because
wealthy people tend to leverage their
money to make better investments’, then
you would have a belief that money is a
positive force, which you can use to mul-
tiply your wealth.
The whole point is that whatever we
focus on, we are sure to bring more of
that into our lives, and it is extremely im-
portant that during these challenging
times we don’t allow our point of focus
to become negative and most of this can
be achieved by asking ourselves a better
quality question.
So, we should ask ourselves things
because we always answer when we ask
ourselves a question, and so we need to
be very careful while asking the ques-
tions. If you ask yourself ‘how can I best
increase and protect my income during
this period’ you will get a totally different
answer than if you asked the question
‘Why am I always broke’. I think that the
guiding principle here is simply to realize
that you don’t always get what you want
out of life but you always get what you
expect. Think about it.
siliconindia
|33|
April 2010
Technology: By Anshu Agarwal
The Internet @ 15
T
It’s Still about Performance
here have been a lot of 15
year commemorations
lately. 1995 was sort of
the start of the commer-
cial Internet as it’s the
year in which Yahoo, Amazon, and
eBay were all founded and the Inter-
net Explorer came to life (Netscape
Navigator came out the year before).
Another company was also founded
right about this time; a company cre-
ated to test and measure the perform-
ance of Websites. The name of that
company is Keynote. For 15 years
we’ve worked with all of the Internet
giants, and also those that would like
to become giants one day, helping
them to understand how fast Web
pages and online transaction load and
how often their online properties are
unavailable to their customers. We
monitor thousands of businesses
from 240 locations around the world.
On any given day we take close to
400 million Internet and mobile
measurements.
We’ve seen a lot in the wild wild
west that is the Internet. And if you
think that all the bugs and kinks have
been worked out I’m here to tell you
that performance isn’t one of them.
You experience it every day and you
can see how leading companies, in
practically every industry, are doing
on our indices (www.keynote.com/in-
dices). In any given week, you’ll see
siliconindia
|34|
April 2010
leading retailers range in response
time from 3 seconds to 30 seconds and
banks from 5 seconds to 25 seconds.
Where do the performance problems
on the Internet today come from?
Well, from a myriad of sources to be
sure, but Cisco’s recent announcement
of a router capable of 322 terabits per
second will not do much to change the
problems we see everyday. Among
Web operations teams, the widely used
rule of thumb popularized by Google’s
Steve Souders is that on an average 75
percent of bottlenecks happen on the
front-end, in the browser.
Most of the times the problem resides in the way Web
applications are built and presented in the browser and
not in the speed of the Internet connection
When you switched from IE 6 to
FireFox and felt like things were mov-
ing faster, you were right. Every sub-
sequent version of FireFox has gotten
faster and its rivals IE and Chrome
have been battling over who’s faster in
executing all the things you encounter
on a Web page today when you update
Facebook, reserve your weekend get-
away at Zipcar, or collaborate on
Google Wave.
No doubt, we’ve come a long way
since dial-up, and many of us take
wireless for granted. But network
speed only gets you so far. First, not
all applications are data intensive and
most bandwidth is used by a small per-
centage of users. Second, depending
on what you are doing on your com-
puter it will account for less than 25
percent of improvement according to
a research by Souders. The real im-
provement has to come from how Web
applications are built and presented in
the browser and that’s where the prob-
lem resides – more on that later.
And I think things may actually get
a little worse in the not too distant fu-
ture; the culprit is cloud computing. To
be fair, it isn’t an entirely new phe-
nomenon; after all, colos and hosting
facilities were practically birthed si-
multaneously with Web browsers. But
rather than just renting rack-space or
boxes, companies are moving their en-
tire IT stack to someone else’s envi-
ronment; everything from application
servers to network engineering to stor-
age. It’s no mean feat to handle one in-
stance of say a travel site at a
wholly-owned data center; now imag-
ine a single company having to handle
multiple businesses.
Outages happen; it’s just the na-
ture of being on the Web. Most inter-
nal Web teams are extraordinarily
adroit at responding quickly. But,
when outsourcing your entire data
center to a third party, your ability to
respond is severely mitigated. I re-
cently read about the CEO of a small
company lamenting about the amount
of time it takes to get a response from
her SaaS vendor who took the place
of her internal exchange team. While
companies are switching to cloud
computing for cost and staffing rea-
sons, the longer-term impact of this
decision will be based on customer
satisfaction and that means response
time of Web transactions and avail-
ability of online portals.
So this brings me to why more
isn’t being done at the front end, or
at the browser level. The answer is
fairly straightforward: many compa-
nies don’t know what the end-user
is experiencing and the engineering
staff that is building the applications
isn’t part of the Web operations
group that measures the perform-
ance. Let’s take each one of these
separately.
So why don’t companies know
what their customers are experienc-
(SLA) and monitor the performance.
And make sure that SLA has teeth.
While talking with Ben Pring, an an-
alyst with Gartner last month, he said
“We’re pointing out to people that
without a penalty structure, the SLA
isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
Specifically, here are three keys to
getting SaaS or cloud computing
right for your organization:
First, make sure that the SaaS
provider defines what they are using
to monitor the performance and the
uptime of the applications. Ask them
to show you exactly how and what
they monitor.
Next, have the vendor walk you
through their internal alerting, esca-
lation, and communications process.
Brad DeSent, president of Buffalo
Grove, Illinois based Apex Consult-
ing Group says, “Specifically ask the
provider, tell me about an outage that
ing? The answer is because they are
you had and how you reacted to it
measuring performance from inside
and how you were communicating
their data center. An accurate real-
with your clients during that period.”
world view requires monitoring a
Last but not least, be certain that
Web page or transaction from geo-
they have a recovery plan for their
graphically dispersed locations
systems when an outage occurs be-
around the globe – where customers
cause, inevitably, they will occur.
reside. (Ask your own Web opera-
“Know what they are going to do
tions team how they are getting the
for you,” DeSent says. “This can be
outside-in picture.)
as simple as a one-page description
Next, the apps-ops divide is a
of how the SaaS provider deals with
very real problem when it comes to
the problem.”
Web performance. The nature of Web
So while the Web might be an
application development means that
oldster in Internet time, it’s actually
real world performance testing only
still very much an adolescent and
happens after being deployed into
measuring and monitoring connected
production. And because Web app
and wireless site performance from
changes happen so quickly, perform-
the outside in will remain an impor-
ance monitoring and testing lag be-
tant issue in the foreseeable future.
hind and often drag on until the issue
And implementing ironclad SLAs
comes to a head. This has famously
with your SaaS and cloud providers
happened at companies such as
is the latest management challenge
Friendster and Twitter. In the case of
that must be addressed. si
the former, it cost them the lead and
ultimately a lot more.
If you are getting ready to move About Author
your online business to the cloud or Anshu Agarwal,
swap an on-premise application for a Vice President – Marketing,
SaaS vendor, it’s critical that you put Keynote Systems
in place a service level agreement
siliconindia
|35|
April 2010
Technology: By Manav Garg
The author is Founder and CEO, Eka Software Solutions
Concerns Against On-demand Soft-
ware – How Relevant are These
Today?
Before we speak about the benefits of
on-demand software, let’s take a look at
some of the traditional concerns against
on-demand software. While on-demand
always seemed like a compelling eco-
nomic argument with lower upfront cap-
ital expenditure, companies have always
been wary of data and applications
hosted on external infrastructure due to
concerns on data security, lack of con-
A
trol, and user experience.
But I see that changing, and chang-
ing fast, even in the most traditional
markets. Besides economic and compet-
itive compulsions, the emergence of
Web 2.0 technologies and better broad-
band penetration have, in general, made
the Web a better platform to operate
s we all know, firms across the globe have
from. On the consumer front, data and
been using enterprise software for decades
communication have moved online in a
now, that serve very well the requirements of
major way through free hosted email,
functions such as accounting, ERP, banking,
and HR. The delivery mechanism of such
software has typically been ‘on-premises’, which involves
installing the software on customer infrastructure.
Enterprise social networking sites, and applications
provided by companies such as Google.
Let’s consider some of the key de-
velopments related to this.
However, over the last few years, concepts such as cloud
computing, on-demand software, and Software-as-a-
Service (SaaS) have been gaining ground as alternatives to
on-premises deployment, and such software is being suc-
Software Security: When you consider security,
there are many factors that help boost
customer confidence.
cessfully offered for functions such as CRM (customer rela-
There are auditing standards, strong
tionship management), accounting, and even ERP.
Changing Trends
On-demand software, in fact, has gone from being an inter-
The Next built-in authentication mechanisms, se-
cure messaging, and data encryption, all
of which help increase trust.
esting concept to a real option that most enterprises consider
User experience: Newer technologies
seriously. For instance, Gartner has named cloud computing
in the number one position in its list of top 10 technology
trends for 2010. When considering software purchase, a
Phase are allowing vendors to provide richness
to GUIs – we now see applications that
present excellent graphical representa-
strong factor to consider is the economic downturn and re-
tions, drag and drop features, ad hoc
sultant pressure on companies to stay competitive, while
keeping costs under tight control. In such a situation, it’s dif-
ficult for companies to justify high capital expenditures on
implementing traditional on-premises enterprise software.
Moving to customization, and reporting options, at
speeds and capabilities that blur the dif-
ference between desktop and hosted ap-
SaaS or on-demand software, on the other hand, become far plications.
more viable options for organizations to consider. In my re-
cent interactions with CEOs and CIOs of firms across vari-
ous segments, sizes, and markets, I found a noticeable shift
in attitudes. There is more willingness, acceptance, and open-
the Cloud Control: A key concern with software
being housed externally is that enter-
prises have little control over perform-
ance and reliability of the solution. They
ness to consider such an alternative; in fact, in some cases,
need to depend completely on the ven-
there exists a preference to implement on-demand solutions.
Economic and competitive
compulsions apart, the
emergence of Web 2.0
technologies and better
broadband penetration
have, in general, made the
Web a better platform to
operate from
dor to ensure smooth operations. But if
we just take a look at the infrastructure
capabilities that data centers today have
– backup capabilities, virus protection,
disaster recovery, and the cost at which
these services are provided, it’s not so
easy any more to justify having on-
premises setups. As a worst case, hosting
applications on vendor infrastructure can
be as safe or as unsafe as hosting it on
the customer side.
Integration with other systems:
Sometimes a valid concern, but ven-
dors are now providing solutions and
technology options that enable much of
this possible, either through standard
adaptors and APIs, or through tradi-
tional interfacing methodologies in-
cluding partnerships with SIs.
Why so many companies are re-
assessing their IT strategies, or why on-
demand software makes sense? There
are many reasons, and all of these are
closely intertwined with an organiza-
tion’s business strategy in difficult mar-
ket conditions such as today’s. With
more product options available, organ-
izations now have the flexibility to se-
lect what works best for them.
Costs: High upfront capital expendi-
ture matched by shrinking IT budg-
ets clearly ranks high on the list.
On-demand solutions provide an ef-
fective way to turn enterprise soft-
ware into an operating expense
instead of a capital expense.
Ease of use: Another key factor is the
ease of use. With global, 24x7 complex
markets, users require the flexibility to
be able to use their software anytime,
anywhere, with lower training require-
ments. SaaS applications are generally
easier to learn, use, and manage.
Scalability: From a longer term per-
spective, on-demand solutions allow
enterprises scale up or scale down as
required by the business. They can de-
ploy the software as per their needs at
any given point, making it easier to ac-
count for the expenditure.
Maintainability and lower running
expenses: Upgrades and regular main-
tenance processes are painless. There
is virtually zero user interference re-
quired during this process. This results
in considerable saving of time and re-
sources, lowering IT administration
and hardware costs, faster deployment,
and more efficient use of computing
resources. Having data at a centralized
location makes it easy to backup.
Caveats
So, while all this sounds well and
fine, there are caveats that companies
need to consider before selecting a
SaaS vendor. Sufficient knowledge
about the vendor and proper attention
in preparing the service agreement
are quite important, whether consid-
ering uptime guarantees, hidden
costs, escalation clauses, data owner-
ship and segregation, and exit
clauses.
The bottom line
On-demand software applications are
here to stay, and will be considered
more and more by companies seeking
to be competitive in increasingly dif-
ficult market conditions. While stan-
dardization of processes has already
enabled large opportunities in certain
segments such as CRM, I expect
more and more business functions to
fall under its purview. si
siliconindia
|37|
April 2010
Technology: By Krishna Chaitanya and Sujay Maskara
Krishna Chaitanya and Sujay Maskara, Consultants at Global Research Centre for
Consulting (GRCC), Wipro Consulting Services. They can be reached at
krishna.chaitanya5@wipro.com and sujay.maskara@wipro.com
iTM
T
oday, banks need a solu-
tion that could provide
banking services at an af-
fordable cost to the huge
unbanked population and
allow the rural populace to manage
their finances better and more se-
curely. The enigma lies in choosing
the right channel, as every channel
comes tagged with an incremental
cost. With satisfied self-service cus-
tomers, cost-effective cash depositing,
and staff spending more time creating
revenue rather than handling cash, a
bank can gain many benefits from its
siliconindia
|38| April 2010
Moving Towards
Intelligent Banking
long-term use of self-service channels.
Now, having been armed with innova-
tive technologies like voice biometrics
and video banking, intelligent teller
machines or iTMs will revolutionize
customers’ outlook towards self serv-
ice banking.
The relative transactional cost ad-
vantage offered by self-service chan-
nels augmented with enhanced
customer service experience and lower
transaction costs has served as a cata-
lyst in the evolution of self-service
channels. The ubiquitous ATM, with a
global installed base of 2.039 million
(2009) and incremental cost benefits
as compared to branches, emerges as
a panacea. Many institutions are pilot-
ing or deploying advanced technolo-
gies like mobile banking, video
banking, WAP banking (mostly in Eu-
rope), and I-mode (specially devel-
oped by DoCoMo in Asia) in an effort
to woo customers. One self-service
channel that stands out with respect to
acceptance and penetration is the ubiq-
uitous ATM.
An iTM is a technology that would
transform cash dispensing ATMs into a
preferred choice for customers’ complete
With satisfied
self-service
customers,
cost-effective
cash depositing,
and staff
spending more
time creating
revenue rather
than handling
cash, a bank can
gain many
benefits from its
long-term use of
self-service
channels
banking needs. An iTM, the latest
pedestal in the service delivery inno-
vation, comes armed with an array of
futuristic service support technologies.
An iTM will enable banks achieve the
much sought after financial inclusion
and penetrate into regions where set-
ting up of branches was difficult, thus
helping them significantly increase
their customer base.
iTMs can help banks reach out to
untapped markets, saving investments
in traditional brick and mortar
branches. It would also reduce the
physical infrastructure costs, operating
costs in terms of number of personnel
required, savings in terms of systems
cost, and other facilities that ought to
be provided to a branch channel. Hav-
ing a multilingual video support, an
iTM would make it easier for the rural
people to follow the instructions given
in their language and in executing their
banking transactions. This would
guarantee tapping into the unbanked
populace and converting customers
from the bottom of the pyramid. Also,
the ever-demanding global village
consumer is quick to shift loyalties if
one or more of his or her banking
needs are not being met by a particular
bank. An iTM, with its 24x7 audio and
video assistance, would augment the
banking experience by acknowledging
and attending to the banking needs of
these customers. Cash-handling ac-
counts for about 20 percent of a bank’s
total annual cost and iTM acceptabil-
ity will reduce this manifold.
Biometrics and high end transac-
tion and deposit systems will provide
unsurpassed security features that
guarantee safer transactions, which is
most sought after by customers. The
integrated format augments cross sell-
ing and upselling of other financial
products, making symbiotic conver-
gence easier. Banks will be able to
track the buying preferences of cus-
Demand for Pay-per-Use
Software Pricing Will Force a
Reassessment of the
Industry's Value Framework.
The expansion of software as
a service (SaaS) offerings and
the advent of cloud
computing are accelerating
the trend of pay-per-use. A
recent software pricing
survey by IDC shows that
customers want software
pricing models that allow
them to pay only for what
they use while maintaining
an even distribution of costs
over time.
tomers and bundle their offerings ac-
cordingly. Studying these behaviors
also open up revenue doors for the al-
lied industries, like insurance.
iTM is a powerful channel that
would enable mutual reduction of
costs and enhanced financial inclusion
at the same time. Unprecedented secu-
rity features will address the most
pressing need of a secure transaction
channel and will amplify customers’
acceptance of iTM. iTM will bring
about the genesis of a new self-service
channel where customers can execute
all their banking needs - be it account
servicing, loan application services,
and check or cash deposit or with-
drawal facilities. This will eliminate
paperwork, unfreeze human resources,
and reduce customers’ reliance on
costlier channels, saving millions to
the bank.
The banking industry is reviving
itself from the aftermath of the recent
financial crisis. Cost attenuation,
banks acknowledge, have to be tack-
led with utmost prudence and invest-
ment in self-service channels warrant
the same. The next logical evolution
in self-service banking is the intelli-
gent teller machines or the iTMs. The
upgradation of existing ATMs and the
implementation will be critical. How-
ever, it ought to be dealt with as a
onetime outlay. The imperative con-
cern will be of the infrastructure ca-
pability of the respective banks in
terms of the new and existing data-
bases, integration of new applications
with the existing IT backbone, modi-
fications to the existing IT strategy,
and the banks’ Information Security
Management System along with con-
tinual maintenance from a BCP
(Business Continuity Planning)
standpoint. Implementation has to be
taken as a transformation event for
the entire business and not in silos as
a single process initiative. Costs, un-
deniably, will be a concern but the ap-
parent benefits will definitely
outweigh it. si
siliconindia
|39|
April 2010
Business: By Anupam Arya
The author is CEO, Mobera Systems
Mobiles Churning a
Tech Revolution for
J
Consumers
ust a decade ago, in India,
mobile phone was a status
symbol in the hands of the
chosen few. Many aspired for
it but could not afford it. A
few enterprising mobile-user-
wannabees, well-versed in the good
old Indian jugaad (a locally con-
trived motor vehicle used as a means
of low cost transportation in rural
areas) even put together mobile-
look-alike shells to serve this need.
The proud shell owners were not shy
about pulling out their ‘handsets’
with flourish and displaying them at
prominent locations to impress the
unsuspecting audience.
siliconindia
|40|
April 2010
Fast forward a few years, and a
popular television advertisement
shows a busy intersection, in what ap-
pears to be a tier-3 town in India. A
phone rings and everyone takes out
their handsets to check, but then, they
all realize that the ringing phone be-
longs to the paan-wallah’s mundu
(assistant of the betel leaf seller). The
advertisement goes on to show the as-
sistant talking to his family in the vil-
lage, enquiring about his cousin’s
marriage. The difference today is that
the paan-wallah and his buddies are
not just talking with folks back home
but are also using ‘missed-calls’ ef-
fectively to communicate with their
customers and bosses. One ring
means the chauffeur has arrived, two
means that he is delayed, and for
more elaborate communication the
boss knows that he has to call-back.
The Short Message Service
(SMS) messages are not just for keep-
ing up with friends, but are a valuable
link into the world of television and
can be used effectively to vote for
changing the end sequence of popu-
lar TV soaps, to determine compati-
bility with the significant ‘other’ half,
or to participate in various contests.
SMS contests have become extremely
popular in India, and interestingly
more women have participated in
these contests than men.
Today a young engineer discards
his student-days handset just as soon
as he gets a job and goes on to buy a
new model every six months. Quite
often the latest purchase costs twice
as much as the monthly income, but
it’s a luxury he is willing to splurge
on. At the workplace he may not
openly demand (as yet) that both his
handset and desktop environments
should give him equal mobility and
flexibility of operation but he is very
aware of how to juggle both plat-
forms to instant message with per-
sonal and professional friends with
equal ease.
So what is the outlook for the next
decade? Pundits declare that prepaid
mobile is expected to continue to
dominate with over 90 percent mar-
ket share. The mobile tele-density is
expected to rise from the current 39
percent to over 80 percent by 2014.
In some metros, surprisingly the
number of mobile subscribers is
greater than the recorded population.
But in rural India where 70 percent of
the population resides mobile tele-
density hovers below 30 percent. Ac-
cording to the Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI), and the
next 100 million subscribers are ex-
pected to come from rural markets.
Compared to the UK or even the
U.S., a significantly large percentage
of Indian radio listeners recall adver-
tisements on radio on mobile. Even
the low end handsets costing around
$20 have the radio as a feature. The
mobile advertisements segment is ex-
pected to grow rapidly.
Compared to the rest of India, the
states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh,
and Kerala have higher rural mobile
penetration. A study funded by Voda-
fone has concluded that Indian states
with higher mobile penetration can be
expected to grow faster, with a
‘growth rate 1.2 percent higher for
every 10 percent increase in the mo-
bile penetration rate.’ This is an inter-
esting empirical data that emphasizes
that speed of information through ef-
ficient communication channels ac-
celerates economic development. The
rural usage is expected to increase in
telemedicine, mandi (wholesale depot
for agricultural produce) information,
virtual marketplace, and e-learning
applications.
Mobile value added services
(VAS) is already dominated by P2P
SMS, Caller Ringback tones, and
Ringtones. According to a study by
the research firm Vital Analytics,
more than 50 percent of the users in
the VAS SMS category use the serv-
ice for exchanging jokes and getting
their astrology forecasts. Of the big
Indian cities, Delhi tops the list of
users accessing social networking
sites via mobile phones, nearly three
times more than Bangalore. In spite
of low Average Revenue per User
(ARPU), mobile VAS already ac-
counts for upwards of 10 percent of
carrier revenue. This number is ex-
pected to grow exponentially as pen-
etration rates increase and the
proliferation of services adapts to the
needs of the growing market seg-
ments. Recharging pre-paid cards,
paying phone bills, and buying movie
tickets are the top mobile commerce
The business
model of the
Indian telecom
carriers is touted
as the model for
the future and is
being studied
and adapted for
other markets
activities at the moment. According
to the FICCI, mobile VAS is expected
to account for nearly 30 percent of the
operator revenue in the next five
years. Mobile payments and m-com-
merce will remain all time favorites.
Demand for Pay-per-Use
Software Pricing Will Force a
Reassessment of the
Industry's Value Framework.
The expansion of software as
a service (SaaS) offerings and
the advent of cloud
computing are accelerating
the trend of pay-per-use. A
recent software pricing
survey by IDC shows that
customers want software
pricing models that allow
them to pay only for what
they use while maintaining
an even distribution of costs
over time.
The users in urban India and the en-
terprises can expect an increase in
broadband service offerings such as
video calls, video messaging on 3G,
and higher networks.
The enterprise market in India is
also witnessing some interesting
trends. PBX, Centrex, single number,
data, and enhanced services are de-
livered to a geographically distributed
enterprise in a creative bundle of
wireless and wireline services. This
commercial convergence of wireless
and wireline to deliver a unique bou-
quet of services is a testament to both
the maturity and willingness to ex-
periment.
In India the ARPU is low com-
pared to the markets in developed
countries and is expected to fall fur-
ther, yet the Indian service providers
have managed to keep profitability
high. In the last 15 years or so the
size of the Indian market for telecom
equipments and applications has
grown from a negligible level to the
top 3 markets globally; the business
model of the Indian carriers, espe-
cially around equipment capex, in-
troduction of new services, and
margin or yield management is
touted as the model for the future and
is being studied and adapted for other
markets. We are also seeing the
emergence of global aspirations.
What started as a goal to build inter-
national capacity and network oper-
ating centers is now moving towards
ownership of consumers. In the next
few years we will see the first of the
truly global Indian carriers.
In a very short period of time, the
mobile eco-system in India has
evolved from being virtually non-ex-
istent into a vibrant vertical. With the
top service providers stepping onto
the global arena, the Indian users
have much to look for, beyond en-
joying live Indian Premier League
(IPL) matches from YouTube on their
handsets. si
siliconindia
|41|
April 2010
CIO Profile: By Vimali Swamy
‘S
eamless collaboration
of technology and
openness in its adop-
tion’ is what Laxman
Kumar Badiga is bet-
ting on in near future. As the CIO of
Wipro Technologies, he is trying his best
to drive these initiatives within the or-
ganization. “The next big thing to hap-
pen to the IT industry according to me is
collaboration with all the technologies
coming in place and being seamlessly
adopted across all verticals,” says
Badiga. Exemplifying his thoughts, he
talks about mobility and cloud comput-
ing, the current buzz in the industry.
Cloud computing, today, is not per-
vasive as every vendor has his inde-
pendent way of deploying it. But in the
long run he is looking forward to the
setting up of standards so that it can be
deployed uniformly by all vendors. And
it would be the winning companies who
would be driving this than others. Sim-
ilarly, compared to ten years back, what
mobile was and what one can do today
with it while on the move is completely
different. People everywhere can access
uninterrupted computing via mobile de-
vices and laptops. Collaborating mobil-
ity with technologies like cloud
siliconindia
|42|
April 2010
computing will result in adding a whole
new perspective to one’s business and
enable companies to seamlessly stay
connected to their clients, and add value
to them. Similarly, there are several
things one can do with new technolo-
gies, especially in the services area, and
CIOs are seeing the beginning of it.
Over the past decade there has been
tremendous growth in the technology
sector and the greatest challenge for
CIOs globally is to observe the various
evolving technologies and methodolo-
gies and see what can be applied within
the organization to leverage business.
There are always best practices
across industry and it is important to re-
alize how we can pick one of them and
apply it efficiently in the industry. “At
Wipro, we have three main businesses -
consumer care, developing hydraulic and
pneumatic cylinders, and IT services
(this being the largest of the three). Being
in the IT industry and having serviced
numerous customers, we observe what is
driving our customers and adopt suitable
procedures and technologies to add value
to them and also within our company. Si-
multaneously, we observe what is hap-
pening in other industries and spot the
best practices in the industry and inte-
Cloud computing is
now not pervasive as
every vendor has his
independent way of
deploying it, and
setting up of stan-
dards will make it
possible to deploy it
uniformly in future
grate them in our business,” says Badiga.
The simplest example he gives is of Toy-
ota. When Toyota started with lean man-
ufacturing nobody thought that it could
be applied for software too.
“Wipro was probably one of the ear-
liest services companies to drive the
adoption of lean manufacturing
processes in software. We not only used
it to improve our own software delivery
process globally and succeeded but also
passed it on to our customers as well,” he
reminisces. Similarly, shared services
with BPO perspective were created. The
team figured out how one could create a
Laxman Kumar Badiga
factory model to provide shared services
to multiple customers. Both these initia-
tives were duly recognized and awarded
by NASSCOM. On the same note, even
technologies can be adopted from other
industries.
Badiga also talks about RFID tech-
nology which is best used by the retail in-
dustry for inventory tracking and
management in stores. He believes that
RFID can be adeptly used in the services
industry as well to improve security, to
track the movement of employees who
travel to client locations, and more. There
is so much happening across verticals
and it is such out-of–the-box thinking
and learning from peers that reflects a
CIO’s forte, he says.
But probably the biggest challenge
that the CIOs all around have faced and
continue to face till date is ‘security’.
“As one of the top service providers in
the country, we serve a multitude of
clients across various geographies and
security is a huge problem that we face.
Being a global company, several thou-
sand employees of ours who work at
client locations have problems as the
client network is not open to them,”
Badiga explains. Customers tend to de-
velop closed networks and are weary
about allowing others to connect to
them. This may be good in terms of se-
curity perspective but in the broader per-
spective like seamless connectivity to
the onsite employees, this is challenging.
Thus, one of the top priorities for Badiga
is to continue to drive the development
of seamless connectivity between their
and the client’s networks without com-
promising on the security factor.
Similarly, another thing that nags him
is social computing and the openness it
allows - not from the usability but from
the security perspective. How does an or-
ganization include it in its network with-
out risking security? While it is good for
employee satisfaction measure, how can
one control the security for both the
clients and the organization? These are
two challenges that Badiga is striving to
get a solution for.
With the recession formally having
coming to an end, there are several things
that Badiga is raring to do within Wipro.
One of these is driving the concept of
‘Green IT’. He has been driving a lot of
processes within the organization for re-
duction in carbon emission and usage of
renewable sources as much as possible.
“Our main priority is to deliver infra-
structure services — including facilities
with automation — to drive energy sav-
ings and improve the environment. This
includes building management systems,
LEED (Leaders in Energy Efficient De-
sign) certifications for facilities, access
management, consolidation of datacen-
ters, and virtualization,” he explains.
Currently, the company has managed to
achieve 30-35 percent reduction in
power consumption and carbon emis-
sion. He is also striving to make the of-
fice as much paperless as possible. Other
steps in this stride include converting
food waste into biogas, using wind and
solar power wherever possible, and
more. Their goal is to reduce our carbon
intensity by half by 2015
What irks Badiga often is how he
could use IT to maximize the green cam-
paign. An added dimension to this is
using IT to drive the green campaign. At
present he is insisting on the use of uni-
fied communication, such as video con-
ferencing, to avoid global traveling and
create an efficient transport system that
can reduce the transport costs per em-
ployee. At present, Wipro has managed
to reduce the transportation costs by 30
percent by using efficient systems to
schedule and route the paths for trans-
port. “This not only reduces cost but also
reflects on our green charter,” he smiles.
With close to 27 years in Wipro,
Badiga has climbed the corporate ladder
steadily to rise to his current role as a
CIO four years ago; and there has been a
lot that he has accomplished. But look-
ing back, the most cherished achieve-
ment he remembers is the time when he
headed the development and launch of
the first packaged software from India in
the 1980s at Wipro. Within three months’
time, the product was the most sought
after one. “Also, when I joined the com-
pany it was horizontally focused, and I
began to push Wipro into service verti-
cals. I provided a global team of more
than 90,000 with IT infrastructure, with
consistent delivery management solu-
tions for global delivery, and now we’re
able to scale up to an additional 20,000
employees every year,” he beams.
Before he concludes, he talks
about the three golden rules a CIO
must bear in mind:
Be aware of what your customer
wants and how we can effectively
give them that in the best possible
way.
With different technologies evolv-
ing, observe what will drive the fu-
ture, spot what the trends are, loom
out for standards, and bet on them.
Spot the trends early and see how you
can make it work for you.
Be close to the industry and ob-
serve what the dynamics are and see
what you can do to drive towards
what you are doing.
But one mantra he swears by and
offers as an advice to others is ‘Cus-
tomer Service and Satisfaction’. At
the end of the day, everything re-
volves around these three words. si
siliconindia
|43|
April 2010
Entrepreneur 101: By Gunjan Sinha
The author is the Chairman of SiliconIndia.com and MetricStream. An internet pioneer, he was
the co-founder and President of WhoWhere? Inc., a Internet directory services company acquired
by Lycos in 1998 as well as eGain, an online customer service company. Sinha can be reached
at gunjan@metricstream.com
A
Building
lot has been written and discussed
about having a clear vision and mis-
A Purposeful
sion for successful startups. Startups
Organization
that transition to become truly great
organizations, beyond having a great
vision and mission, often have a well articulated
‘purpose’. In this article I want to share my thoughts
on how to think about the deeper issue of organiza-
tional purpose. Organizational purpose is something
which provides a deeper meaning to the very
essence of the organization. It provides a funda-
mental reason for the organizations to exist – it of-
fers idealistic motivations beyond just making
money. John Doerr, the legendary venture investor
from Kleiner Perkins, often says that he is looking
to back entrepreneurs who are missionaries not mer-
cenaries. Making money is important, but it is not
the end all and be all.
Successful sales people have a
passion and a deeper instinct and
demonstrate what they stand for
and influence the world in a
manner that helps them make a
difference
Entrepreneurs and business leaders spend con-
siderable time and effort to identify a rallying pur-
pose for the very existence of their organizations.
‘Purpose’ is a definitive statement about the dif-
ference that you as an entrepreneur are trying to
make to the world. This is not just a sales or mar-
keting idea to help add meaning to your brand, but
is the genuine reason why employees, customers,
and stakeholders must get passionately involved
in the formation and growth of the organization –
delivering greater impact to solve a deeper prob-
lem in the world.
siliconindia
|44|
April 2010
Purpose Generates Passion
Successful sales people sell on pas-
sion and a deeper instinct that they
are making a difference in the world.
They demonstrate what they stand
for, and influence the world in a
manner that helps them achieve their
goals. Successful entrepreneurs also
know the power of passion – the pas-
sion behind their ideas, their innova-
tions. They attach a deeper purpose
to their existence. For example,
BMW touts themselves as an ‘ideas’
company. They are not just making
cars, but are helping spread the ‘joy’
of driving. It adds a level of excite-
ment and infectious energy that
transmits throughout their value
chain. At SiliconIndia, while the vi-
sion is to create a professional media
company, the deeper purpose is to
build a ‘smarter’ India, helping India
grow through the power of innova-
tions and ideas. MetricStream, a
leading provider of corporate gover-
nance and risk management soft-
ware, is also passionately involved in
bridging the governments and the
businesses; helping businesses to
better align with the governments
around the world. I am closely in-
volved with both MetricStream and
SiliconIndia startups – and can see
the difference and the deeper sense
of commitment from all stakeholders
that a higher level of purpose creates.
Of course, these businesses are try-
ing to grow and improve their prof-
its, but they are also as passionate
about making an impact in the world.
It is important that entrepreneurs and
business leaders think about the or-
ganizational purpose early on in the
life of the organization and work to
develop the common purpose that
binds people across their value chain
together. At Starbucks, the purpose
is to create a meeting place for peo-
ple around the world, helping them
to interact with each other in a nice
setting. Of course, they also sell a
nice cup of coffee with that. Simi-
At SiliconIndia,
while the vision is to
create a professional
media company, the
deeper purpose is to
build a ‘smarter’ India
powered by innovations
and ideas
larly Walmart has been passionate
about really making things afford-
able for common people. At Charles
Schwab there is a passion about giv-
ing the power back to the individual
investors so that they can manage
their money.
Purpose fosters visionary ideas
and meaningful innovations. Organi-
zations and employees are able to
rally behind the purpose and are able
to come up with ideas that help them
achieve their purpose.
Purpose Provides Stability in
Times of Turbulence
When things are down, markets are
rough, going is difficult, and self-
doubt is prevalent, the organizational
purpose plays a critical role in pro-
viding a sense of stability and guid-
ing force. This deeper conviction and
motivation offers a sense of faith that
eventually things will turn around for
the good. You stick to what you stand
for, and the organization is able to
weather the toughest of the storms.
On the contrary, organizations which
do not have a deeper purpose might
find themselves in a much tougher
spot during such difficult times. They
may not develop the resilience to sur-
vive these storms. The organizational
purpose provides courage in tough
times and spur all stakeholders keep
their continued commitments and
focus; eventually leading them to be-
come a great surviving organization.
I know of a number of startups who
were on the verge of extinction dur-
ing the tough times and whose
deeper commitment and purpose
kept them afloat. Back in the 1980’s
Intuit was down and under, and were
ready to fold, but they stuck together
on the passion of building a great
‘user friendly’ product. The rest is
history, as today Intuit is known
worldwide for its awesome user ex-
perience, and for how it builds great
software products.
Purpose Provides Energy
Startups thrive on energy. You are
trying to create something out of
nothing. With a small amount of ven-
ture capital or in many cases with
bootstrap funds, you are probably
trying to take down a well en-
trenched large company who is not
serving the market needs to the best.
Organizational energy is needed to
move mountains and achieve the un-
thinkable. A great organizational pur-
pose helps you hire the right people,
who are passionate about your pur-
pose, which in turn gives them the
extra dose of excitement and passion
that makes the difference between a
good company and a ‘great’ one.
Entrepreneurs and business leaders
must take a hard look at the world
around them; they must listen to their
inner calling, search their heart, and
look for a deeper meaning towards
which they can be passionate. You
look for something so important that
you think is vitally needed in the
world, and something so noteworthy
that the world needs you to rally peo-
ple around that. It is not just enough
to have a good business idea to build
a great company; you also must feel
a deeper sense of purpose and the de-
sire to impact the world. Entrepre-
neurs who nicely marry great ideas
and vision with a deeper purpose are
eventually able to thrive in their en-
trepreneurial journey through the ups
and downs and are able to build lega-
cies for the future. si
siliconindia
|45|
April 2010
 siTech20 siliconindia
U.S INDEX
Index of the top tech public companies in U.S founded
Stock Price
(US$)Closing
52 Week
HIGH
52 Week
LOW
% CHANGE IN PRICE
4 Weeks 52 Weeks
CAPITALIZATION
In $ Millions
and managed by Indians 03.26.2010
RANK COMPANY
1 Juniper Networks JNPR 31 31 15 10 88 16020 From high profile columnists to Innovations in busi-
2 Cognizant Tech. CTSH 51 53 19 7 136 15310
3 Microchip Tech MCHP 29 30 20 5 31
ness siliconindia gives you relevant information that
5250
4 SanDisk Corporation SNDK 35 36 35 23 161 7990 truly matters to you.
5 Syntel SYNT 39 50 20 14 78 1600
6 Keynote Systems KEYN 11 12 7 7 29 167
7 Qlogic Corporation QLGC 20 21 11 12 67 2300 It also presents bold, forthright and objective views of
8 Tibco Software TIBX 11 11 5 14 79 1770
9 Sycamore Networks SCMR 20 37 2 3 565
the trends in the Indian industry.
569
10 Cavium Networks CAVM 24 26 11 2 101 1060
11 Aruba Networks ARUN 13 14 3 9 325 1140
12 Infinera Corporation INFN 8 11 6 8 4 798
13 Netezza NZ 13 14 6 46 71 803 We bring you information, ideas and insights to help you
14 Ixia XXIA 10 10 5 19 71 606 pe.
navigate through today's changing business landscape.
15 NetScout NTCT 15 16 6 3 107 612
16 iGate IGTE 10 11 3 8 187 546
17 EXL Service holdings EXLS 18 19 6 0 116 511
18 OSI Systems OSIS 30 33 14 2 93 533 With its presence in the tech industry for over a
19 Isilon Systems ISLN 8 9 2 14 233 541
20 Magma Design LAVA 3 3 1 11 194 133
decade, siliconindia is the most powerful medium to
reach out to the CIOs, CXOs, CEOs, VCs etc. This is why
readers rely on siliconindia. And make sure your

INDIA INDEX
brand catches their eyes, there is no better way to
Stock Price 52 Week 52 Week % CHANGE IN PRICE CAPITALIZATION
secure your future than siliconindia.
Index of the top tech public companies in India INR Closing HIGH LOW 4 Weeks 52 Weeks In Rs. Crore
26.03.2010
RANK COMPANY

1 Infosys Technologies 2770 2825 1040 6 102 159073

2 Tata Consultancy Services 826 846 358 8 50 161490
By subscribing 3 Wipro Ltd
now, you'll join the 719 756 236 6 184 105357
4 Tech
lite group of readers who Mahindra
receive unbeatable,907 911 205 2 268 11094 The only magazine that
op-quality venture5 capital
HCL Technologies
news every day. 372 388 98 1 271 25185 covers business, technology, career, and entre-
6 Mahindra Satyam 96 129 38 0 126 11248
7 Mphasis 652 797 187 -2 224 13647
preneurship for Indian professionals in the U.S.
8 Financial Technologies 1616 1735 382 9 210 7424
9 Patni Comp 565 587 119 19 365 7299 $24 for 12 issues
10 GTL Ltd 406 423 236 -7 68 3895
11 Rolta India 178 210 54 1 219 2859 $45 for 24 issues
12 HCL Infosystems 135 189 74 -1 82 2957
13 Mindtree 621 747 196 16 201 2460
Please send us your cheque to
14 Moser Baer 74 115 41 -2 62 1250 siliconindia Inc, 44790,S Grimmer Blvd, # 202 Fremont, CA - 94538
15 CMC Ltd 1342 1440 285 19 347 2032
16 Polaris Software 174 204 44 18 275 1720 You may call us at 510-440-8249
17 NIIT Ltd 60 79 20 -8 196 981
18 Sasken Communications Technology 175 177 35 5 246 472
19 Sonata Software 61 64 16 16 278 635 Write to us at: subscription@siliconindia.com
m
20 Subex Systems 62 102 22 -1 172 350

siliconindia
|46| April 2010
Log on to: http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine/subscribe.php
cribe