Hyderabad IT grows by 50%! And, Buzzing tech community
Per teh recent Nasscom & STPI notifications, the IT industry in AP (read, Hyderabad) has grown to 12500 crores ($3billion+). A steep 50% growth over last year. Even steeper, when compared to the nationwide industry average of abt 35%. And the projections are that there will be another near 50% growth this year as well. (Ofcourse, the industry is still led by Karnataka (mostly Bangalore, supported partly by Mysore & Mangalore), with 37000 crores ($8billion).) If the steep growth rate is maintained though, Hyderabad should catch up with Bangalore in some years. The present target is 2010. And towards this end, guess Bangalore's rapidly deteriorating infrastructure may only accelerating the shift.
Even more interesting is that domestic IT consumption is also at 12500 crores. This is about 1/6th of the exports. The good news though is that this is growing. Has to, I guess- with an expanding economy and fairly low IT adoption at this point.
All in all we are looking at a very positive outlook for the IT industry in Hyderabad. With a bubbling techie community, initiatives such as
BarCamp (look out for the
next one, in July)and
Bootstrappers will only increase in numbers and intensities. There are many like me that are actively working towards this. There is an initiative to start a Software Usability group (an ACM chapter), and Product Sofwtare group and also SIGs on Mobile computing under TiE. Thru Bootstrappers, we are also planning on rapidly taking the word out on Entrepreneural possibilities for students. Highlight how low the risks are to pursue a good product idea they may have in college. We should be seeing quite some buzz on many of these fronts in the coming months.
Indian IT consumption- >$10billion
Nice piece of news today. Per Nasscom, Indian domestic IT (software) consumption is $10.5billion. ANd steaidly growing. Not really surprising.
The key sectors were Retain, Banking, Telecom & Government.
I have always believed that we have a huge domestic consumption market. Brosslyt undertapped, and slated to grow big time. After all we are a three quarters of a trillion$ economy. And IT adoption is low at this point. Must and will catch up. Strong.
No wonder we have all software majors in the world expanding their India sales operations. Not to mention the opportunity that our local-global infrastructure software companies such as Pramati have. Watch this space..
Hyderabad.. next BarCamp?
Mumblings have started on organizing the next BarCamp. Any ideas fo what a contemporary & topical theme could be?
Also, plans are afoot to accelerate the Entrepreneural engagements in these. As some suggested, best when the technology events are tied in with entrepreneural networking and mentor discussions. In line with this, and recent initiatives to start a Hyderabad Bootstrappers chapter, we may have teh first Bootstrappers get together tied to the next BarCamp. With TiE's spport.
Thoughts welcome.
Boot Camp
Yippee!
Apple now provides a free software called
Boot Camp that allows its users to run Windows on Mac. After years and years of persuading its users to think differently, it has at last given into the market demand.
Wonder why they didn’t make this move much earlier? After all, offering supplementary preferences to your customer only allows you to reach a wider spectrum of people. And I know a lot of people, who adore these lovely sleek machines, but would rather buy an ordinary comp that runs Windows. Me for one.
Of course there are downsides to this too. Your Mac may now be "no more free" from those Microsoft viruses, plus the fact that Apple says this Boot Camp version is only a Beta one. So no support calls to Apple, yet.
And one look at the tagline on the Apple Boot Camp website, and you know what you are dealing with. After all, it didnt take them 22 years for nothing.
“Macs do Windows, too”.
Not giving in soo easily...are we Mr.Apple? :)
Hyderabad BarCamp.. great success today!
Three cheers to the Hyderabad Tech commmunity (and few that came over from Bangalore, Pune & Mumbai). The event was a tremendous success. Was more or less on time. Great attendance. And tremendous participation from everyone. Few adhoc sessions. In all a great event! In true adhoc UnCOnference style! Everyone is hoping to see mreo of this. We will pretty soon annoucne the next BarCamp. Due probably in about 4 months!
We were all very very surprised at the response to the event today. Until afew days ago we were expecting 50-75 people. Said pushing it.. maybe 100. But the day started witha steady stream of participants. From 2pm itself. By 3pm we had over 150 people in the room. And still coming in.
The goodies at the registration tables were HOT :-). BarCamp T-Shirts from Cordys, nice note books+caps+pens from Progress and candies from Mindscape. By 3pm we had a feel for the number of attendees and placed the order for snacks and dinner (Cordys, Kern-comm & Advetta sponsored teh snacks & drinks. Pramati sponsored the dinner). With most logistics under control, we were ready to roll.
At 3:10 we got going. A brief anecdotal introduction to the event and how it came about- right outside that hall at IIIT some weeks back. And then onto teh first session..
I gave an introduction to the Web 2.0 space. Good discussions. Questions. Was very heartening to see lively interaction (that actually got only better as teh afternoon rolled!)
Then we had teh joint session between us & Chennai. But unfortunately, the video betrayed us. For some reason (possibly low bandwidth.. or high load at skype) it just didnt work. So the sesison started off just local to hyderabad. Jay (CEO-Pramati) shared some thoughts and stimuli on product/entrepreneural opportunities in the Web 2.0 space. It was not a "sermon" as teh title suggests. It was more to stimulate. Random observations on how the internet developed and how we could look for opportunities in any emerging space. With a few just born entrepreneurs (and hopefully many that are nurturing the thought to become one) in the room, it was a nice session. Lot of questions poured in. One example that Jay used in his talk came to eb referred to many amny time sthru teh remaining 4 hours. He said in terms of usabiilty in the web apps, demands could be varied and many. He said when his dad started using mails, he said he would have liked it if the maisl were organized by pictures (for folders) with the photo of each of his three kids. And all mails coming in shoul dget auto sorted & filed. And any photos sent in mails shd be shown first. A simple, but real, usecase. He suedthi s to highlight the creativity needed to identify various usability demands. Which would be critical in teh sccess of any rich UI in Web 2.0 solutions.
Rajan followed this with a crisp MTV style slide set on Economics of Web 2.0. The defining idea was that with communities on the net now, the commerce possibilities are 2 to the power n, rather than n-square that is possible with just n discrete users that function in a point-to-point fashion. The latter was Web 2.0, and 2-power-n is Web 2.0. Interesting view.
Sharad (who came down from Pune) spoke abut the emerging space of Tangible UI and its paralels with Web 2.0. TH eexamples and videos of some research project sin tangible UI was just cool. I erally liked the Sony project on UI-Tablets. Teh tablets are each a 5x5 cm panel. That is to be placed on any on eof the cells on a display area. And each of these tablets could be a well defined information set or user interface. The tablets could have touch screens, or actuall tangible-UI-sensors. And tehse tablets can interact withe ach other. SO I place one tablet that can show photos, and another tablet that has a job-dial interface- and the latter could be used to shufffle thru thephotos in teh former. And they discover each other on the fly. Take one tablet out and get some other tablet in, then the behaviour of the whole environment changes. Thsi was neat. And so were the other research videos he had. (Not surprising that it was good.. Sharad is accomplished in software UI (did great stuff at Pramati, and is now in SAS) an dnow teaches regularly at NID.
We then ahd an announcement from TiE (http://tiehyderabad.org)- on some initiatives TiE is undertaking to promote entrepreneurs. TiE is one of the sponsors for the BarCamp. And willl be associated with future events as well.
We then broke for tea and snacks.
Post tea, we started with a debate on an idea that Dr.Vishal Garg (IIIT) had on open-journals. To counter the huge prices charged by teh etchnical journals. Have an alternate models where the tech research papers are available for free/low cost, and the reserachers also have a simple mechanism to publish reserach work. A nice idea. BUt big issue will be to build a crediblity around such an initiative. BEst done by the leading academic institutiosn like IITs, IIIT-Hyderabad & IISc. I have a feelingthis idea will move further.
The Prof.Kamal shared some thoughts on a low cost distributed personal computing solution- that sues idle resources and makes available a virtual "personal computer". An offshoot from the normal grid computing concepts. Just that now, there is a virtual front to this backend computing grid. An dthe idea is not about creating a huge computing resource from a large number of low powered units (as is in grids), but rather make availabel alrge nuber of lower power "personal comnputers" from a few large computers in the backend. Kind of like the VM concept in IBM mainframes. He said he already has some student work happening to build some parts of this solution. INteresting.
Then.. (am feeling tired. Will post this tomm morning)
BarCamp Hyderabad- All Set for tomorrow! 200 registrations!
BarCamp Hyderabad is on a roll! We have nearly 200 registrations today. All set for the event tomorrow. The sessions are finalized. Good interest in funding the event. IN the spirit of the format, we have accepted very limited funding. The logistics have been kept simple.
We have some interesting announcements to be made by TiE (announce a new initiative) & IIIT (on- open journals) . The sessions include a few demos. Lot of interest from teh professionals in Hyedrabad- we are hoping most of them are enthusiastic and will particpate in teh discussions and deliverations. We have decided to limit the presentation tim to utmost 15minutes. But not limit the interactiosn (Q&A) time. This is again in the spirit of the format.. to foster more interactions & discussions.
Looking forward to a good event tomorrow.. and havethis become teh base for many more such events.
http://barcamp.org/BarCampHyderabad
Sessions Schedule (including Confirmed Speakers so far):
| Time | Topic | Speaker | Company | Contacts | Blog** |
| 3:00 | Introduction |
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| 3:10 | What is Web 2.0? | Ramesh Loganathan |
| 98490 42997 | http://jroller.com/page/rameshl |
| 3:30 | Opportunities for new Products in Web 2.0 & RIA space | Jay Pullur | CEO, Pramati |
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| 3:50 | Video discussion along with Chennai BarCamp |
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| 4:10 | Ruby on Rails & Web 2.0 based implementation- first-hand perspective | Chandrashekar Sivaraman | Head, Communciations/Design group, Pramati |
| http://yaarpaar.blogspot.com/ |
| 4:30 | Economics of Web 2.0 | Rajan |
| 99481 08648 | http://rajan.wordpress.com/ |
| 4:50 | User experience- parallels in tangible interfaces & Web 2.0 | Sharad Solanki | SAS, Pune |
| http://ixdesign.blogspot.com |
| 5:10 | Tie announcement |
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| 5:20 | Break |
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| 5:30 | Open Conferences.. to open Journals | Dr.Vishal Garg | IIIT-H |
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| 5:40 | WebOS (MeraSystem.com) | Dr.Kamal Karlapalem | IIIT-H |
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| 6:00 | Xforms, compared to Flash based AJAX like RIA framework- a case study | Pavitar Singh & Rajiv Shivane(Director, Server Engineering) | Pramati |
| cafefeed |
| 6:20 | AJAX, XForms and beyond | D Anandhakrishnan & Vignesh Swaminathan | Product Architect & Product Manager Cordys India |
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| 6:40 | Eclipse in the Web 2.0 space and Usability impact | Kiran Rajaratna | Principal, Progress Software |
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| 7:00 | Write Web Whatever-Dot-Oh Apps with Yahoo! UI Libraries | Sumeet Mulani | Yahoo! | +91 98862 97373 | http://sumeet.info/ |
| 7:20 | Confluence of Web 2.0 and open source and how to benefit from it (a AHA moment for startups) | Sundar Subramanian |
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| 7.40 | Open |
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| 8.00 | Dinner |
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Other non-sessions at the event
Joint video session with BarCamp Chennai
Hyderabad Technology Blog to be launched
Hyderavad Tech Blogroll to be launched
Likely announcement of an initiative by TiE
BarCamp Hyderabad- 136 registrations. And counting :-)
The first cut of the Session Schedule for the BarCamp hyderabad is in place.
Check it out.
BTW, we now have nearly 140 registrations. Even assuming only a part of the registered will attend, we may now need to seriously look at overflow rooms (with video hookup). (
a good problem to have :-))
IIIT- is it different?
Vardhman, a PG student at IIIT (and was my TA soem years back) has shared some
views on why IIIT is different. I have a perspective on IIIT- both as a Faculty (adjunct) member teahcing a few courses, and as an industry insider observing IIIT from outside. Surely IIIT attempts to be different. And so far has seen good success. I remember in the first convocation, it being said that IIIT aims to focus on applied research. research that can benifit the industry and society. This is a very noble objective. Theoretical reserahc is surely good and needed. But what is severely lacking in our country is tehapplied research.
IIIT so far has done well. A good testimony to this is the R&D showcase that seems to be getting better and better. Its research credential cannot be better sttested to than the fact that many of the PG students in IIIT are students that did their UG from IIIT. This is not too common. IN any goo dinstitute, by and lareg teh PG students come from outside. In IIIT though, many students seem to be wanting to continue to PG (and hopefull some even PhD) right there. This is surely very different.
And personally. I would like to see one more different. The "applied" part fo research cannot be mroe pronounced than in cases when some new research/approach/technology is taken and commercialized into a product. A successful product. While this i sanother area IIIT led teh path in actively promoting enterprises froms tudents, it did take some time to show results. Now there are a few initiatives being incubated. I would support any such initiative- can be a good sounding boardto present a Product Company's view and inputs. I would really like to see some good product company successes from IIIT. And this should hopefully motivate more such initiatives.
Like I have blogged (and spoken) many times, the next big opportunity for the indian IT industry is in IP creation. In Sofwtare Products. And more so in high value infrastructure products!
U think IT Jobs are hot? Think again..
Living in Hyderabad, with all the etchnology buzz created by the IT & ITES sectors, one would think that IT is the hottest sectors. Was surproised to see this Manpower analysis on the Indian (and World) job markets. per this, the Transportation & Utilities sector has the highest number of jobs. Intersting.. and more importantly, it is really good for the economy. There ahs to be an allround development.. and not just one sector. More so a sector that is largely dependant on the vagaries of the world economy, by virue of being export focussed!
BITS Pilani.. now in hyderabad
Very common knowledge that BITS Pilani has probably the largest contingent of its students from a single state- AP. So littel surprise that BITS has decided to setup a huge campus in Hyderabad. Acceelerated. To be complete in a year's time.
Per this news item- http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/06/stories/2006030618360100.htm
"BITS Vice-Chancellor S. Venkateswaran told
The Hindu that they would be able to come out with a clear picture by November. He said 600 students would be admitted in the first year and the strength increased to 2,500 in four years. The Government allotted 200 acres of land for the campus at Jawaharnagar, near Hakimpet Air Force station, on Shamirpet road."
On top of existing JNTU & OU, IIIT elevated the status of Engineering education in Hyderabad. Now with BITS coming into Hyderabad, guess this leading edge tech edu credentials of Hyderabad gets even more solidified. One question though.. will this be called BITS-Hyderabad, or, BITS-Pilani-Hyderabad? Hmmmm...
The next step in the Indian IT ladder.. global "consulting"
(Reproduced from my recent posting..)
Recently have been hearing and seeing more of the Indian IT services biggies getting into the league of big-6 consulting. While the low end services and resource augmentation is probably still the largest source of revenue, the high-value pie is also steadily increasing. These companies are now going beyond simple srevices to more wholesome high value offerings. From technology evaluations to solution and archietcture consulting and business analysis. TCS has been engaged in true business consulting for a very long time. Especially in the Indian markets. And now guess all ofthe bug three (infosys, TCS & Wipro) are actively expanding this across the world. With this they aer able to offer a complete range- from high end consulting, to implementation, and, maintanance & operations (IT or BPO/KPO).
Interestingly, the increasing leverage they hold is slowly coming up to the fore. I ahve seen product companeis now actievly courting the Indian SIs as a global channel. With these SIs now beginning to influence technology decisions, Product selections and solution architectures, guess this association is inevitable. While they still may not be a huge channel yet, the trends are quite clear. In a few years they would be a force to reckon with!
Talking about force, with 50000 employees each, guess that is a very sizeable IT jaugernaut. Such a jaguernaut led by high value consulting is surely a force to reckon with.
Even MNCs are changing the game in the Indian operations. Today in the news here.. that IBM is holding its annual Analysts conference in Bangalore. For a long time this has always been beld in US (May) and in Europe (September). Not surprising as IBM is expanding its India operations in a very big way. Both from a global delivery (IBM Global Services) standpoint and also from an Indian sales operations standpoint. The local IT consumption is very rapidly rising. Inevitable, given the intense economic activity and growth. A 700 million deal signed with one of the Indian mobiile operators a few years back is an indication of this trend. In line with this, many Software MNC players with presence in India are now even beginning to have their board meetings held in India. Just to increase the visibility and appreciation for the nature of operations and the markets here.
While this is not surprising in software, given the lareg presence of teh industry, the globalization trend is showing up in other sectors as well- such as Pharma, Biotech, Auto parts, Steel and few other sectors. Next year or two will be very interesting tow atch and see how tehse forces shape up!
IMImobile powers The Hindu
IMIMobile a Hyderabad based value added services enabler will power
The Hindu newspapers foray into SMS service. The short code in service would be 6397.
The Hindu newspaper seems to be thinking that it is "better late than never" as it is one of the very late entrants into rolling out mobile services in India.
