Flash-Headline :INDIAN COMPANIES EYE $100 MN CONTRACTS AT GITEX EXPO

INDUSTRY
NASSCOM FORMS EXPERT PANEL TO HELP ENTREPRENEURS
New Delhi
The Economic Times Business Standard Deccan Herald Nasscom on Wednesday announced forming a panel of experts to help budding entrepreneurs build strong software companies.

"In keeping with Nasscom’s overall agenda of continuously identifying new opportunity areas and creating an enabling environment for the growth of the industry, we announce the setting up of the Product Business Guidance Panel today," Nasscom President Kiran Karnik, said in a statement here.

The PGBP will function under Product Forum Special Interest Group. The panel would comprise a core group of industry representatives, with the objective of functioning as a sounding board for entrepreneurs, organisations who wish to be guided on the various aspects of setting up and running a software product company, the Nasscom release said.

The indigenous software product sector was still at an early stage of development and needs guidance from experts, irrespective of the fact that India has won global recognition as a software powerhouse, Karnik added.

"The objective is to aid the companies and entrepreneurs to build strong software product companies by helping them to overcome a multitude of challenges," Subhash Menon, who will chair the product forum, said.

The PGBP panel members includes, MD and CEO SubexAzureamong, Head of Accenture Technology Labs Lin Chase, mChek CEO Sanjay Swamy, Jumpstartup Fund Advisors MD Sanjay Anandaram, Verismo Networks VP and GM (Operations) Abhay Dubey, Compulink MD and CEO Vishwas Mahajan and Airtight Networks Vice President (Engineering) Samir Palnitkar.




GOVT STUDY TO SET UP IT INVESTMENT REGIONS
New Delhi
The Economic Times The government is conducting a study to set up IT investment regions, which would help attract global investments.

The IT investment regions would help the global companies identify suitable locations for their investments, IT and Communications Secretary Jainder Singh told PTI on the sidelines of Elcomp India 2007.

However, he refused to give any further details on this.

Earlier, while speaking at the event he said an eight-member Chinese delegation is visiting India today. The government would discuss with the visiting team ways to boost the manufacturing sector.

Singh said India still lags behind in the electronic hardware-manufacturing sector.

Globally, the electronic hardware design market would increase significantly to 155 billions dollar in the next 20-30 years from 43 billion dollar at present.




AP EXPECTS BIG INVESTMENTS FROM WEST ASIA
Hyderabad
The Hindu Business LineThe State Information Technology and Communication Minister, R. Damodar Reddy, today hinted at the possibility of investment of about Rs 6,000 crore from Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah.

Addressing a press conference here on Wednesday after a trade delegation visit to Dubai, Reddy, without going into specific projects, said that these investments would be in the areas of IT, telecom and hardware.

Ras Al Kahiamah is host to over 3,500 companies, of which 41 percent are companies with Indian origin. He said Ras al Khaimah Free Trade Zone was interested in offering total business solutions, and offered incubator facilities to Indian companies and expressed interest in collaborating with the Andhra Pradesh Government.

Reddy said the Gitex Hyderabad held every year in January will not be held in January 2008 and instead an IT summit will be held in March. He said that during interaction with the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), the latter requested the State Government to continue collaboration.




DUE DATE FOR ADVANCE FRINGE BENEFIT TAX EXTENDED
New Delhi
The Hindu Business LineThe Finance Ministry on Wednesday said that the first and second installment of advance fringe benefit tax (FBT) on employee stock option plans (ESOPs) could be paid on or before December 15, which is the date of the third installment.

The move to give more time to pay these installments came in the wake of the absence of appropriate guidelines from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) for determining the fair market value of such options or sweat equity shares.

An official release said that CBDT was currently in the “final stage” of finalising the method for determining the fair market value. The first installment of advance FBT was to be paid on June 15 and the second installment was due on September 15.




OPINION

‘TECHNOLOGY MAKES LIFE EASY’
Vishakha Talreja
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)When travelling by air he loves playing chess on his mobile phone, while his laptop is his companion on the road. Moninder Jain, director, India & South East Asia, Logitech (a computer peripherals company), is a tech savvy music buff too.

His preferred handphone is a Sony Ericsson W900i. “It’s one of those few phones which has a chess game and it’s many levels. I switch it to the flight mode when I am on-board and enjoy my chess game,” he says. He also uses a Motorola Razr V3i and a Dell laptop.

Jain is very fond of gadgets especially the ones which he uses in his living room. He has a streaming music system, which helps in transferring music from the PC to the home theatre system, wirelessly. “I listen to all sorts of music from ghazals to western classical to Bollywood songs. This gadget comes handy as I’m a big time music buff,” he said.

He also has an 80 GB video iPod and is looking forward to the recently launched iPod. “I have all iPod accessories such as speaker phones and wireless handsets. I am just waiting for the new upgraded iPod,” he says excitedly.




IT PARKS/SEZ

HDIL UNVEILS RS 2,000-CRORE IT PARK IN KOCHI
Bangalore
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL) is the latest to join the race for setting up IT parks in Kerala. The company is unveiling Rs 2,000-crore IT Park at Kalamassery near Kochi, on 70 acres, which was acquired from HMT for around Rs 150 crore, sources said. HDIL’s project is estimated to be 7.9 million sq ft of which around 5.4 million will be set side for IT ventures in hardware, software, BPO and KPO sectors. HDIL, part of Wadhawan Group, has informed the Kerala government that the project could generate about 50,000 jobs, sources added.




VCF/PVT. EQUITY

NORWEST VENTURE PARTNERS OPENS OFFICE IN INDIA
Mumbai
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, has opened office in India. The firm, led by Promod Haque, is best known for its technology investments. Its portfolio has 60 companies including 20 that are based in the US but have an Indian presence. Five of its investee companies are based in India. Norwest’s India operations will be based in Mumbai and managing director Niren Shah will be the India head. Unlike a few VC firms that have floated India specific funds, NVP makes all its investments from a global fund. The investments are across US, India and Israel.




AGILE LABS TO GET $2 M VC FUNDING
Thanuja BM, Bangalore
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)Former honcho of HP Digital, Mike Shaw is leading an investment of about $2 million into Bangalore-based IT product company Agile Labs. The deal is the latest in what is clearly a growing investor appetite for product driven IT start-ups. Agile Labs has developed a process engine — Profit5RM — in the enterprise applications domain.

According to sources, the investment is by Mike Shaw and a Mumbai-based group of private equity players. Mr Shaw will take a place on the board of the company. ET had earlier written that Agile was seeing lot of interest from VC firms and investors such as IDG Ventures, Vinod Khosla’s Norwest Venture Partners, Cognizant and Jerry Rao.

When contacted, Agile Labs CEO Raghunathan Perumal confirmed that his company has closed funding of about $1.5 million. “The funds will be used for new infrastructure, setting up of marketing offices in the US, Europe, Australia and Africa and recruitment of consultants,” he said.

The company, which already has over 300 Indian SME customers for the product, is targeting revenues of Rs 3 crore in FY08.

Profit5RM is a technology platform on which real time enterprise applications like SCM, CRM, and ERP can be built without writing software programmes. Because it does not contain code for any particular business process, the run time is just a 5MB application that will be able to render enterprise applications of any size.

This is a major differentiator from the existing framework based enterprise applications such as SAP and Siebel. The development of any application is also faster since mundane software programmes like GUI, transaction management, messaging are automated.




M&A

ALCATEL ARM EYES TECHNICAL TIE-UPS WITH TCS, RCOM
Rajesh Unnikrishnan, Melbourne
The Economic Times (Mumbai edition)Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, a subsidiary of French conglomerate Alcatel, is planning technological tie-ups with two of India’s leading technology firms, TCS and Reliance Communications. Speaking on the sidelines of G-Force 2007, Genesys Telecommunication Labs India managing director Sunny Rao said that they were in the process of finalising alliances with TCS and Reliance Communications. “We will announce both these alliances formally very shortly,” he said.

While TCS is planning to develop software applications for core banking and enterprise resource planning by using software applications developed by Genesys, the US firm will manage Reliance Communications’ call centres as well as the small-sized call centres managed by the latter.

Genesys, the leader in call centre technology, recently unveiled some key technologies that will impact the contact centre industry in the Asia Pacific region in the next 3-5 years.

At G-Force Melbourne, an event hosted by Genesys Telecom Labs USA recently in Melbourne, Australia, the entire global contact centre industry converged to discuss trends on technologies related to enhancing customer service and experience standards. Speaking at G-Force Melbourne, Genesys Telecom Laboratories CEO Wes Hayden said they are expanding operations in India. “We have already set up a research and development centre in Chennai,” he said, adding that the growth in internet and mobile platforms will usher in new challenges to customer-oriented organisations. IP technology across platforms will dominate customer service methodologies in the medium- to long-term, he said. “Our recently launched dynamic contact centre concept will be at the centre of this revolution and we foresee tremendous potential for traction and acceptance of these technologies in India and the APAC region,” he said.




TRIPLE POINT BUYS CORAL GRID
Pune
The Hindu Business LineTriple Point Technology, supplier of cross-industry software platforms for the supply, trading, marketing and movement of commodities, has announced that it has acquired Coral Grid Software (P) Ltd, a Chennai-based precious metal software provider. Anand Veerkar, President, Asia Operations, Triple Point Technology, and Krishnan Padmanabhan, Director - Marketing, Coral Grid, told presspersons that the acquisition was finalised in August-end while declining to comment on the financial details of the deal. The acquisition has been carried out through internal accruals. The company, however, is not looking for second round of funding in the immediate future. Anand said the acquisition would also offer cross-selling opportunities, as Coral Grid customers were primarily the financial institutions in Asia.




SFO TECH SCOUTING FOR ACQUISITIONS
Preeti Mehra
The Hindu Business LineRecently in Stockholm SFO Technologies, the $200-million US conglomerate of technology companies forming part of the NeST Group, is looking for acquisitions in India, to further augment its electronics and software optics business.

“We are looking to use Indian resources in electronics and software optics, with plans to go beyond contract manufacturing. For this we could go in for an acquisition in India,” said Dr David Darby, General Manager, Northlight Division of SFO Technologies, which is based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The company was acquired by NeST Group in April last year.

Northlight designs, manufactures, markets and sells optical transmitters, receivers and fibre amplifiers for optical networks operating up to 10 Gbit/s.




SOFTWARE

NEW VERSION OF IBM SOFTWARE
Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line The Times of India The Economic TimesIBM has released the latest versions of its enterprise collaboration software, Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8. Lotus Notes 8 brings together e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, office productivity tools and custom applications. It includes productivity tools enabling users to create open standards-based versions of spreadsheets, word processing documents and presentations, in addition to supporting many file formats from traditional stand-alone applications. It also supports multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows for clients and Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, AIX and IBM System i for servers.




DHANUS TECH TO EXPAND INFRASTRUCTURE FACILITIES
Mumbai/ Ahmedabad
Business StandardChennai-based Dhanus Technologies, which had pilot tested its vehicle tracking service called FleeTrac in June, is planning to expand its infrastructure support systems by purchasing network operating centre equipment for its ITES and FleeTrac business.

The company had received registration for setting up a vehicle tracking system using a vehicle mounted unit (VMU).

Company officials said the vehicle tracking service has found favour with major transportation and logistics players and close to 12,00,000 clients have been acquired during the pilot test itself. According to data from international surveys, vehicle tracking systems sales in India are expected to reach around $35 million between 2008-09.

To expand its infrastructural facilities, the company will be entering the capital markets on September 10 with a public issue of 38,35,000 equity shares of Rs 10 each through a 100 per cent book building process.

Dhanus operates in three verticals, including telecards (V-Tel global calling cards), teleservicesTESPO and software services (BPO services and software services and development) and telematics (FleeTrac vehicle tracking services). Close to 70 per cent of the company’s revenues come from the global calling card segment but the telematics vertical is now being looked upon as a major revenue earner in the coming years.

As part of its plans to grow in the other ITeS vertical the company started BPO operations in 2006. Currently its BPO operations consist of 85 seats and would be expanded to 500 seats by the end of 2007.

The division offers debt solutions and telemarketing services for the UK, US and Australia markets. All its servers are based in Santa Clara and Florida, US.




RUPEE-HIT IT EXPORTERS MAY GET SOME GOVT HELP
Niranjan Bharati, New Delhi
The Economic TimesThe government is planning fresh sops for software exporters who have been hit by the sharp appreciation in the value of rupee in the past few months. The main component of the package would be a reduction in bandwidth charges for companies doing business from Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), sources in the Department of Information Technology (DIT) said.

“To start with, we plan to reduce the bandwidth charges required for data export to a uniform level of Rs 7 lakh per two megabyte per second (mbps) from the present range of Rs 11-14 lakh per two mbps,” an official in the DIT said. The government, he added, was also considering giving incentives to the exporters in some other areas as well.

The move would come as a big relief for the comparatively small exporters who have been hit hard by the sharp appreciation in the value of the rupee versus the dollar during the past few months. The rupee has appreciated by about 12 percent against the dollar in the past eight months, eroding the profit margins of IT exporters, who have the majority of clients in the US. Presently, STPI has different bandwidth charges for software parks depending upon the city where they are located. The charges are on the up-side for a metro like Delhi or Bangalore, while they are on the lower side for tier-II or tier-III cities.

The move would, however, not put any burden on the government’s finances as bandwidth charges have come down sharply in the past couple of years, he said. The industry has been continuously demanding that the charges be reduced. STPI normally hires bandwidth from telecom biggies like Bharti and then lends it to smaller companies at comparatively economical rates.




QUSCIENT GETS RECOGNITION
Chennai
The HinduQuscient Technologies has been rated fourth worldwide in providing outsourced finance/accounting services to mid-market customers in the league tables published by the Black Book on Outsourcing. Quscient has three delivery centres in Chennai, says a release from the company.




HARDWARE

SUN LEADS SERVER MARKET IN INDIA
Bangalore
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)Sun Microsystems India announced that it has earned a leadership position in the non-x86/UNIX server market in the second quarter of 2007 in India, with 60.1% market share in unit terms and 46.6% market share in revenue terms. This is as per IDC’s Asia-Pacific Quarterly Enterprise Server Tracker, 2Q 2007, August 2007. Sun was also the ranked number one vendor across segments in the non-x86/Unix, high-end, mid-range and volume server segments in India, both in unit shipment terms as well as in revenue terms. Additionally, Sun continued to maintain its number three position in India in the overall server market in 2Q 2007 in terms of revenue.




SAMSUNG TUNES FOR BIGGER DIGITAL PLAY
Pritha Mitra Dasgupta, Mumbai
DNASamsung, known more for its TVs, refrigerators and air-conditioners, will now focus largely on digital media products like MP3 players and camcorders to tap the huge potential in the segment.

In the country’s MP3 market, which is infested mostly with by Chinese products, Samsung currently has a 12 percent share.

R Zutshi, deputy managing director, Samsung, said: “We see a huge potential in the MP3 business and, therefore, want to strengthen it further through variety and by concentrating on the retail channel. We already have an advantage thanks to design and features. After the reduction of duties last year, it became easier for us to make the pricing more competitive. We revised the prices last year following the budget and they are pretty much stable now.”

By October-November, Samsung will launch three new models of MP3 players. The flagship of the new range will be called YP-P2 Palm Theatre. The range of products boasts an array of functions, including music, video, FM radio and voice recording, portable file storage, etc.

The YP-P2 features up to 35 hours of music playback, 5 hours of movie playback and will be available with 2 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB NAND flash memory. While the existing range of products is priced in the range of Rs 3,980-Rs 9,000, the new range of products will be priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000.




INT/E-COMM

DOT SHARES AN IDEA TO BRING MORE RURAL AREAS UNDER NET
Rishi Raj, Vrishti Beniwal, New Delhi
The Financial Express DNAAfter witnessing a huge success in infrastructure sharing for mobile services in rural areas, the department of telecommunications (DoT) has now embarked upon a similar scheme to improve broadband connectivity in rural areas of the country.

Operators willing to share optic fibre network for broadband will get assistance from the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) like they get in the case of mobile services.

At present, all operators contribute 5% of their adjusted gross revenue to the USOF. In a letter to all service providers DoT secretary DS Mathur wrote, “To proceed in this direction, there is a need to strengthen the OFC network in rural and remote areas and USOF is planning to introduce a new scheme for this”. Currently, several service providers have an optical fibre cable (OFC) network up to the district headquarters. However, backhaul capacity between district headquarters and block headquarters is deficient.

Considering this, public sector telecommunication consultancy and engineering company TCIL has been entrusted with the task of conducting a study and collecting information from service providers and organisations having OFC network in the rural areas, both in terms of fibre capacity and terminal equipment capacity.




HUDA RECORDS TO BE AVAILABLE ONLINE
Ravindra Nath Jha
Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)All the records of Haryana Urban Development Authority's (HUDA) plot owners will now be available online. The authority has decided to computerise all its offices in the state. HUDA has hired a private bank to execute this plan in the next six months.

"The step has been taken to ensure transparency in the working of the staff and curb corruption at the HUDA office," said T. C. Gupta, Chief Administrator, HUDA. The move will also help in keeping a check on property dealers who move in and around the HUDA office, misleading plot owners, added Gupta.

HUDA has taken various initiatives to check corruption in the department. Installation of close circuit television (CCTV), issuing of identity cards to all HUDA employees are some of them.




TIGER CAPITAL TO INVEST $12M IN MAKEMYTRIP
Boby Kurian & Urvashi Jha, Bangalore
The Economic Times (Delhi edition)US hedge fund Tiger Capital is expected to invest $10-12 million in India’s largest online travel company Makemytrip, sources said. The deal is the closing stages and comes even as the company has pushed back plans for an IPO in the near term.




NETWORKING

FLAG TELE BAGS CERN CONTRACT
Mumbai
The Hindu Business Line Deccan Chronicle Reliance Communications’ owned FLAG Telecom Group Limited (FLAG) has won a contract from CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, to provide Gigabit connectivity between the organisation’s research centre in Geneva and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.

This announcement gels well with FLAG’s recent intentions of deploying a Next Generation Network (NGN), known as the Global Service Delivery Platform which can offer global, carrier-grade bandwidth, said a statement from Reliance Communications, which did not disclose the financial details of the deal.




E-GOVERNANCE

CENTRE PUTS E-AUCTION IN SPICES ON FAST TRACK
Bangalore
The Economic Times (Mumbai edition)The Union commerce ministry is betting big on electronic auctions (e-auctions) to provide a pricing-based information platform for growers, notably in the spices sector. Having launched e-auctions for tea, the ministry now hopes to take e-auction for cardamom national and make it available at all the 15 centres where the product is traded.




9,232 E-KIOSKS TO BE SET UP IN STATE: IT MINISTER
Bhopal
The PioneerIT Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya while addressing a meeting of the advisory committee of the department on Tuesday said that action to set up common service centres in the State would be initiated soon under the e-governance plan. These centres would help rendering fast services to the common man in the field of education, health, entertainment besides providing various data and high level videos.

He informed that as many as 9,232 common service centers (e-kiosks) would be set up in the State. Also, employment would be made available to 16 thousand individuals indirectly through this project.

Vijayvargiya said that a grant of Rs 1.30 crore has been sanctioned by the Union Government for Madhya Pradesh under the national e-governance plan. Moreover, e-governance road map and blueprint been approved by the State Government has been sent to the Union Government for its approval.




IT TRAINING

HCL INFOSYSTEMS TO OPEN 100 CAREER DEVELOPMENT CENTRES
Chandigarh
The Hindu Business Line The Economic Times Business Standard DNAIn an effort to bridge the gap in demand and supply of skilled professionals in IT sector, the $2.7-billion HCL Infosystems plans to open 100 more career development centres across the country within a year.

"We will be opening 100 more such centres in the country which will involve the enrolment of 60,000-70,000 students within next 12 months,'' HCL Infosystems Executive Vice President Rajendra Kumar told reporters here after launching its 31st centre. The company has enrolled 5,000-6,000 students in these centres.

"The students do not have the required capabilities on leading edge technologies which is quite critical to build IT, communication and telecom (ICT) infrastructure in the country. It is estimated that there is an annual demand of around 2 lakh networking professionals in the country while the supply is limited to about 60 percent of the demand,'' he added. By 2010, he said, there would be a demand for 2.3 million professionals in the country.




IT ENABLED SERVICES

SPANCO PLANS TO DEMERGE BPO VENTURES
N Shivapriya, Mumbai
The Economic TimesSpanco Telesystems and Solutions, which won the bid for setting up and running a nationwide contact centre network for the railways, is consolidating all its business process outsourcing (BPO) ventures under a 100 percent subsidiary, Spanco BPO Ventures. The new entity will also act as a holding company for all its joint ventures in the BPO business, including railways project Bharat BPO Services, in which it holds a 50 percent stake.

Spanco’s Middle East joint venture, in which it holds 51 percent, its call centre business in the UK and the international BPO business from Respondez will now come under Spanco BPO Ventures. With its non-compete agreement with Intelenet Global Services (now majority-owned by private equity firm Blackstone) having come to an end in May 2007, the firm will also pursue domestic BPO opportunities on its own. Spanco had demerged its domestic BPO business, Sparsh, and sold it to Intelenet in 2006.

Spanco’s BPO revenue was Rs 35 crore, or less than 10 percent of its total revenue of Rs 430 crore, in 2006-07. The BPO has a capacity of 730 seats but this may more than double. An analyst with a local stock broking firm said Spanco planned to ramp up its workforce to 2,000 by 2008-09. Following this capacity expansion, revenue from the BPO is likely to grow to Rs 82.9 crore in 2008-09, at 52 percent compounded annual rate. Core earnings margins, however, would fall in that year on account of a lower billing rate and higher employee costs, the analyst said.

Spanco’s Middle East joint venture, which became operational in December last, has no offshore component. But demand for call centre services in this region is high and per seat realisations could be higher, according to industry experts.

Spanco’s systems integration business, which includes network engineering, currently accounts for close to 90 percent of its revenues. The network engineering business includes setting up telecom towers and other network related infrastructure services for telecom operators. The company’s share price, which has risen considerably in the last one year, has lost about 30 percent from its 52-week high of Rs 300 over the past month. On Monday, the stock ended 0.85 percent up at Rs 212.60 on the Bombay Stock Exchange. It currently trades at nearly 48 times its 12-month trailing earnings.




AVIVA DEFERS TAKING BACK BOT CONTRACTS
N Shivapriya, Mumbai
The Economic TimesTwo leading India-based business process outsourcing firms, WNS Global Services and EXLService Holdings, got a breather as their client Aviva has deferred by three months a possible move to take back its build-operate-transfer (BOT) outsourcing contracts with them. Such a transfer typically leads to a sharp fall in revenues for the service providers. But with Aviva extending the date for exercising its transfer option, the earliest the shift can take place is only in April 2008, a source said.

An Aviva Global Services spokesperson confirmed the development but did not cite any reasons for the extension. “The process of transfer has been deferred by three months. There are no other changes,” the spokesperson said. Between them, EXL and WNS have about 2,900 employees in Pune working on general insurance and life insurance transactions for Aviva.

Under BOT contracts, outsourcing firms build teams and competencies to handle the business functions of their clients, which eventually take over those operations. Had Aviva exercised the transfer under the earlier deadline of January 2008, it would have dealt a severe blow to both WNS and EXL.




TCS PLANS NEW TECH PLATFORMS
Vishwanath Kulkarni, Bangalore
The Hindu Business LineTata Consultancy Services (TCS) expects to launch two new technology platforms shortly, which should help the company expand its business process outsourcing (BPO) offerings.

The Chief Operating Officer, N. Chandrasekaran, said the company expected to launch the human resource outsourcing (HRO) and finance and accounting (F&A) platforms in the next couple of months, which have been developed internally.

A technology platform is an underlying application on which transactions such as claims and mortgage among others could be processed to deliver the desired benefit for the customer’s clientele.

Chandrasekaran said the company’s insurance platform was doing well and that the new platforms would be targeted at both existing and new customers.

TCS is betting heavily on its Platform BPO business and expects to add few more platforms.

“We will have about five to six new platforms over the next three years with each platform delivering a business of $100 million plus,” he said. The company is looking at areas such as retail and banking among other sectors and will be developing these new platforms on its own.

“We may also look at partnerships in some cases to develop these platforms,” he said.

TCS derives close to six percent of its revenues from the BPO business, which mainly comes from the transaction processing and platform-based offerings. The company does not have any voice-component in its BPO business.




LAUNCHES

SEAGATE LAUNCHES NEW HARD DRIVE PRODUCTS IN INDIA
New Delhi
Mint The Economic Times Deccan HeraldIT products maker Seagate Technology on 12 September launched security and storage capacity devices for Indian consumers.

The company unveiled nine products mainly hard drives, with a focus on data security and increased capacity to meet the demand for all types of digital content.

“Security, data protection and simplicity are integral to the powerful products and solutions Seagate is delivering. From enterprise computing to consumer electronics, home entertainment, security and mobile applications, our products make it easy for users to keep their valuable data safe, secure and accessible,” Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said.

The devices, meant for notebook, PC, mobile, video surveillance and small and medium business houses, have capacities up to one terabyte.

However, the company has not fixed any price for the products.

Seagate also announced its first one terabyte hard drive with full disc encryption for strong data security.




WIPRO LAUNCHES SUPERCOMPUTERS
Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line The Times of India The Economic Times Mint Business Standard DNA The Tribune Deccan Herald The Hindu Wipro Infotech on Wednesday launched a range of supercomputers under the brand Supernova.

Partnering with the US-based Z RESEARCH Inc, which specialises in commoditising supercomputers and superstorage, the company has developed a complete range of supercomputers.

The entry-level supercomputer has a configuration of 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second.

The fastest of them can deliver up to hundred thousand trillions of calculations per second. The storage products called Superstorage can hold hundreds of Petabytes of data.

Supernova marks Wipro Infotech’s foray into new markets. Targeting engineering colleges, technical training institutes, design start-ups, corporate research labs and media houses, the firm will begin selling in India and might take it abroad at a later stage, said Ashutosh Vaidya, Vice-President, Wipro Personal Computing.

The global supercomputer market stands at $35 billion. Thunder currently ranks 19 in the list of top 500 supercomputers in the world. The companies plan to market a modular package of the supercomputing nodes with storage. The cost of such an entry level package will be Rs 25 lakh, for a combination of a 1 teraflop supercomputer with 4 Terabytes of storage, he said.

“Thunder, to be renamed under the Supernova brand, is Z RESEARCH’s open source supercomputer comprising a cluster of 4096 Intel Itanium2 processors with an output of 20 teraflops (a teraflop is a trillion calculations per sec).”




HCL SERVER
The TelegraphHCL Infosystems Ltd has launched Quad-socket high-end enterprise server IGL 4700 FC, which is based on Intel’s 7300 series of Quad core Xeon MP processors. The server has got 16 computing cores in a 7-inch (4U) form factor. The server will be priced at Rs. 2.7 lakh onwards.




SAHARA LAUNCHES NEW PRODUCTS
New Delhi
The HinduSahara Computers and Electronics on Wednesday launched a new range of personal computers. The range includes Core Duo and Core 2 Duo laptops and desktops besides Intel’s new business platform Santa Rosa-based laptop.

Priced between Rs. 25,999 and Rs. 45,000, the new range of computers has been re-engineered with a completely different look, promising customers value for money. “The new range of personal computers has been launched keeping in mind the expectations of our customers. Loaded with best features and latest technologies, the new products would help us in further strengthening our product portfolio,” Sahara Computers’ COO George Van Der Merwe said.




STOCKS

IGATE GLOBAL
The Hindu Business LineTARGET: RS 383

Spark Capital has reiterated its buy recommendation on iGate Global. “We expect IGS to report fully diluted EPS of Rs 22.1 for FY-08 and Rs 32 for FY-09. At the current price of Rs 246, IGS trades at a P/E multiple of 11.1x FY08E EPS and 7.7x FY09E EPS. We believe that the current valuations are compelling for IGS, We assign a P/E of 12x based on the last year average forward P/E. Attaching this multiple to our FY09E fully diluted EPS, we arrive at a price target of Rs 383,” says a Spark study.




RESULTS

CITRIX GROWS 41% IN H1 AS APPLICATION DELIVERY CATCHES ON IN INDIA
Joe A Scaria, Thiruvananthapuram
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)US-based Citrix Systems, which entered the Indian market with the acquisition of a local company PowerTel Boca, has grown 41% in the country in the first half of 2007 as against the same period in 2006.

Citrix India area vice-president Souma Das said the company was projecting a strong growth in the subcontinent going by the trend among Indian companies to opt for application delivery solutions.

Citrix Systems, which is a global applications delivery major, acquired 140 customers in India last year, and added 87 customers in the first half of 2007. Company officials said there was a higher adoption of Citrix products by Indian telcos, which was a big growth driver.

Application delivery and acceleration solutions help to slash application latency while using existing bandwidth to the optimum, with the focus being on application acceleration and WAN acceleration. Mr Das said many Indian companies faced the problem of delivering applications to remote users, with companies having branch offices located at remote sites. This in turn makes it difficult to deliver business-critical applications to users in these locations owing to poor and unreliable connectivity.




APPOINTMENTS

BHARATH KALYANRAM IS PRESIDENT OF NESS TECH
Bangalore
The Economic Times (Mumbai edition)Ness Technologies, a global provider of IT services and solutions, on Wednesday announced the appointment of Bharath Kalyanram as its new president and managing director. He joins Ness Technologies from Perot Systems, where he served as vice-president for Apac and India. Kalyanram has several years of diverse business experience spanning information technology, consumer and industrial electronics and retail industries, a company statement said.




EVENTS

TAIPEI ELECTRONICS SHOW IN CHENNAI
Chennai
The Economic TimesA three-day Taipei international electronics show, `TAITRONICS India 2007', showcasing the latest trends in various industries and to increase bilateral trade co-operation, will be inaugurated here on September 14.

Walter Yeh, executive vice president of Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) told reporters here that Taipei World Trade Centre and Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers' Association had partnered with the Tamil Nadu government and the Confederation of Indian Industry to organise the show.

TAITRA also opened its 2,400 sq ft Taiwan Trade Centre in the city, which would take up disseminating global trade information to Taiwan's enterprises, publishing periodicals and reference books in English and Chinese, researching and disseminating important market trends and developments and analysing regional competitiveness and bilateral trade issues.




INDIAN COMPANIES EYE $100 MN CONTRACTS AT GITEX EXPO
Dubai
The Economic TimesIndian companies are expected to ink deals worth between $80-100 million during the ongoing IT expo - Gitex here.

Nearly 67 Indian companies are in the fray at the event, which is the Middle East's largest IT show.

As many as 31 firms affiliated to the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC) are participating in the show this year, compared to 25 last year.

"ESC has encouraged Indian IT companies - particularly small and medium enterprises (SMEs) - to fully exploit the potential of co-operation between the Middle East and India," ESC executive director, D K Sareen said.

Last year, ESC had bagged orders worth $60 million at the Gitex show.

The total value of IT exports - consumer electronics and software products - into the Middle East stood at $837.06 million, compared to $809.45 in 2005-06. Of that, $500 million came from hardware and $337 million from software.

ESC is focussing more on the emerging markets. In the next three years, the focus will be more on Middle East, Africa, Latin America and CIS counties.

"We are planning to bring in a business-to-business delegation within the next six months and hold one-on-one talks with UAE companies," Sareen said.




INTERNATIONAL

HP NAMES DISNEY EXECUTIVE AS MARKETING CHIEF
Los Angeles
The Economic TimesHewlett-Packard Co on Tuesday tapped Walt Disney Co theme park executive Michael Mendenhall as its chief marketing officer.

Mendenhall, 45, had directed marketing and publicity for Disney's parks and resorts business around the world. He will begin at HP on October 1.

Both companies have major consumer businesses.

HP has overtaken Dell Inc as the leading personal computer maker and has long been the largest personal printer maker, as well.

The company is launching a $300 million marketing campaign to promote Web-based printing services.




SONY ERICSSON EYES PLAYSTATION BRAND
London
Business StandardSony Ericsson is considering tapping into Sony’s PlayStation and Bravia television brands to create new ranges of high-end handsets.

“Its an area of possible future activity,” said Miles Flint, president of the SwedishJapanese handset market.

The company, which is 50 percent owned by Sony, is already producing a Braviabranded handset with mobile television capability in Japan, with operator NTT DoCoMo.

A PlayStation phone was also a possibility, said Flint, although he stressed the technology behind such a device was still some way from being perfected.