Hyderabad Technology Blog

Blog.. from successful Indian software (Java Infra) products' entrepreneurs!

2006-12-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

Finally.. a blog from successful software products' entrepreneurs! Jay and Vijay Pullur, founders (now CEO and CTO) of Pramati technologies, have started their blog- "Software (Ad)Venturing- Reflections on software, innovation and entrepreneurship".

Looking at the first few posts, lookslike the theme is going to be the new web and the applications infrastructure trends therefrom. Not surprising given that Pramati is a pioneer in Java based applications infrastructure products. (Not many know that Pramati started off with a Product for "Java enabling HTML". Back in 1997-98. This was very similar to what is now JSPs!)

The Indian software industry is highly regarded world-wide (recently came across first hand situations where the large Indian software companies now help companies evolve their IT strategies and enterprise architectures! Compare thsi with even a few years back, when these same companies couldnt even directly influence an App Server decision!). But, the industry is still predominantly services focussed. Very few companies have ventured into software products. And even fewer have ventured into Infrastructure products space. And even even fewer have ventured from India! There are many comapanies that are started by Indians, but from bay area. Driven from the valley, with just the development happening in India. Not too different from any other company with offshore operations.

There are just a handful that have a product built, marketed, sold and supported from India! Pramati stands out, as the most widely known among such companies! (Need I say that I am very very proud of this, given my long association with Pramati! :-) ).

This blog must be interesting. Hearing from two "(ad)venturous" techies. Hopefully, sharing a glimpse of where some of these technologies (and possibly Pramati products) are heading. Do check it out- http://pullur.wordpress.com/

BarCamp #3 at Hyderabad- theme 'Web2.0 Communities'

2006-11-28T19:49:00.000-08:00

(Reposted from other blog)
We are having the third BarCamp at Hyderabad. On Dec 16th. At Infosys. The theme for this camp is- "Web 2.0 Communities".

Partly inspired by some of the pioneering work put up by the likes of Orkut in the social domain, and the likes of Fon networks in the commercial domain (though this latter is not in an applications context). There seems to be quite some steam and opportunities in the Web2.0 communities. We ourselves (at Pramati) built the Support portal with many Web2.0 concepts in it- mostly relating to Rich UI and RIA, but one key function built on communities concept...

The portal is meant for all our clients. IN each client organization there are many users that would interact with us for Support. IN normal support delivery models a list of authorized users is maintained. This needs painful housekeeping. IN our support model, as we work with ISVs a lot, we do not have a limit on number of users that can call in from our client organizations. So the best mode for us was to let the client organization configure their users. And to minimize housekeeping fiurther, we wanted to allow any user to "invite" others to join th esupport portal. This would send a mail thru our system, an dth einvited user can by just a few clicks register and become a user. No contacting their sysadmin/relationship manager, no filling up long forms, no approavals from us, no administrative tasks from our support admin.

Further, as multiple clients access the portal, we wanted each user to have a complete view of his/her organization's interactions with our Support. The user can see all deployments and projects from just his/her organization. Can see all users from the organization. And see all cases reported by anyone from the organization. All built off the user communities we have. Eachusert essentially belongs to their parent organization (that we identify by the email domains- works for us as corporates are our clients). Further, users can invite other registered users also to get access to specific projects- which is often the case when dealing with vendors. Some company provides a solution to a client, who runs it on our server. Here the solution provider is not our client- but is essential in resolving any issue that may come up at the client.

IN short a nice case of using user communities effectively to adress a biz problem. We hope to see more such cases and scenarios at the BarCamp. And some demos. And prob some general sessions relating to Web2.0 as well. A parallel Entrepreneural track is also planned- this will be driven by the Bootstrappers' Hyderabad chapter.

Happy Camping! (Now, anyone there with a good idea for a session? Do add it. Even better, do register yourself as a speaker, to deliver the session!)

Java Conference in Pune, Dec 1 & 2 (a la JavaOne?)

2006-11-18T03:22:00.000-08:00

IndicThreads- Java Conference in Pune (Dec 1,2)

With so much of Java work happening in India, it is about time we had a good conference on Java. The first such conference is being organized by IndiacThreads (the serverSide of India). On Dec 1 &2, there is a Java Conference at Pune. On the lines of JavaOne (though starting on a much smaller scale, the plan is to have this grow to be a leading event in India. Hopefully, we will have the next year?s event here in Hyderabad.

Per the conference organizers- "2 days of discussions, events and fun. Learn from the experts, discuss with your peers, talk to enthusiasts, feel the buzz and take IT in exciting new directions.With a focus on vendor-neutral content and learning, the IndicThreads conference is the event to be at for all Java software developers." The speakers include well known technologiests in the Java space from around the world including Gavin King, Floyd Marinescu, Debu Panda and others that are reknown authors/speakers. Indeed a privilege for me also to share the forum with such folks. More on my blog- http://jroller.com/page/rameshl).

Do check it out- http://conference.indicthreads.com (And those interested, go ahead and register).

Free To Blog...Again

2006-07-20T22:44:00.000-07:00

Rediff reports "In a press release on Thursday, the Department of Telecom (DoT) said it has asked Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to explain why action should not be taken against them for unintentionally blocking some Web sites."

This of course refers to the fact that all blogs hosted on sites such as blogger, typepad and geosites had been blocked by many of the Indian ISPs from July 15 onwards. The ban will now be lifted in the next 48 hours.

The unblocking of these sites is largely thanks to the fact that many of the mainstream journalist bloggers got together and saw to it that the government got a lot of negative publicity because of what was done.

Freedom to express is definitely the most important thing that magnetizes each one of us (from such different backgrounds) to this medium, but it is also one of the most accessible ways today to get together and work towards a single cause. Be it for a technical, personal or a social one. Take for example, Mumbai Help which was set up after the 7/11 Mumbai blasts as a means through which people could reach their loved ones in Mumbai, and find out that whether they were fine. Or for that matter, the Hyderabad Technology Blog. :)

Thankfully, all this uncertainty about going the Pakistan way and not being able to blog is all behind us now. We are free to blog. Once more. On whichever site we choose. So just get going, and fire up those blogging spirits once more.

BarCamp Pune

2006-06-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

I attended Barcamp Pune this weekend.
Lots of interesting sessions were there. But I couldnt attend all of them as there were parallel sessions and schedule was getting changed on the fly.

I have blogged about the sessions which I have attended here -

1. Mobile Computing - Think Beyond the PC.
2. Recoja - Tagging inside the document
3. Betterlabs - Indian Web 2.0 company
4. Webaroo
5. FOSS, GoogleMaps, Poker

Barcamp Hyderabad 2

2006-06-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Barcamp Hyderabad held in April got an amazing response with close to around 200 people turning up for. So much so that almost everyone was eager to know when the next barcamp is going to be. Energized , encouraged & enthused by this we announce Barcamp Hyderabad 2 and this time around we plan to have it even more bigger. Last barcamp was about the web and this time it is about Mobiles .

Just recently we crossed 100 million mark for the number of mobile in India, thus it is undoubted that mobiles are goint to bring in a lot of changes in terms of creating new business and influence & shape a lot of our culture/lifestyle. We hope to cover these aspects in the barcamp.

If you want to camp here then get yourself added to the wiki & the yahoo group(if you hav'nt done so far ).

BarCampHyderabad2

Theme: Mobile Applications in the next Gen Internet

Where: Microsoft Campus, Hyderabad

When: July 15, Saturday. 11am to 5pm (tentative)

We got together last friday to discuss things needed to kickoff barcamp hyderabad2, if you'd like to check out then mohit has more details on it.

We are looking for sponsorships, & help in spreading the word around. !

Indian Software companie. Local customers. Global references!

2006-06-08T04:03:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting article in Economic Times today- that Indian software companies are citing large Indian installations as reference when the take their products to world markets. And examples cited were Infosys with its Finacle, Nucleus and few other banking products. Banks like ICICI and SBI have become very credible references in the global sphere- given their scale of operations. IN fact, believe Infy even has ICICI's CEO meet up their analsyst and prospects, to provide reference and make a case.

(This struck very close home for me, as ICICI is still the single largest customer for Pramati. Has been a site licensee for nearly four years now. Any new solution ICICI aquires/builds, if it is J2EE based then it by and large would be running on Pramati Server. )

Three things:
1) The trend is really interesting. That Indian deployments are credible references in the world market. And am sure this will only increase going forward. And soon, we will have global sofwtare product brand(s) from India. :-)
2)And then I saw this other article today that Indian auto and some hitech companies have two way relationship wth some global majors. Locally assemble/manufacter and resell the latter's products, and in return provide a sourcing channel for Indian auto parts. Global R&D & products come into Indian markets, and Indian manufacturers get a solid channel into the global players' spaces.
3) Consider that IBM is investing $6billion in the India operations. I was impressed by the careful choice of worlds. This sees local sales, servics and global offshoring from here, all clubbed into one entity. Apart from perception considerations, guess there is some reality as well here. Even few years back we saw the $750 million deal that IBM stuck with Bharti (Airtel). Since then the local IT market has only grown bigger. Recent Nasscom numbers suggest 10+ billion$ sofwtare market alone, for Indian domestic use. And this also has a steep growth. So guess little wonder that IBM is upbeat about Indian market, as there is a lot of good business possible here. Announcing that it is investing 6 big B is only going to help its case, when being considered for any opportunities!

All these are just some signals of the serious opportunities available in the softeare space. And as we are still not big into software products and packaged solutions, the opportunity is probably even bigger in this space. And I always consider Hyderabad poised just about right for thsi revolution. At a tim ewhen this is getting increased attention, Bangalore infra is splitting and a general tresnd to move out. And next to Bangalore, probably Hyderabad is the best and most vibrant software center today. Lot of companies. Good talent pool (much more than one would realise!). Slow but steadyily building startup movement (Pramati is surely one big daddy of tech startups.. that even today has the agility of a startup!). Cost of living is relatively lower (atleast as of now.. not sure how long it will remain so). Lot of edu institutions. Other than the 2-month summer, a very pleasant weather rest of the year. And a very pro-active pro-industry govt and city administration.

Need to see ho wmuch such environment can foster new enterprise!

Volunteers Needed: Indonesia Earthquake

2006-06-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

Volunteers are needed to maintain Java quake Wiki

The wiki has the basic design and structure in place but we URGENTLY NEED online volunteers to help us out with the wiki in terms of the following tasks:

1. Move relevant content from tsunamihelp (tsunamihelp.info and quakehelp.asiaquake.org)
2. Scrape info from the blogs covering the quake on technorati
3 Post translations from helpjogja.net blog to the wiki (via Andy Carvin’s link: toggletext.com)
4. Remove irrelevant info
5. Add static info on the main page
6. Spread the word out about the wiki.

More details and links can also be found here.

Hyderabad metroblog- LIVE now

2006-05-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

Finally.. we have our own Metblog. Metroblogging-Hyderabad. Check it out at- http://hyderabad.metblogs.com/
. The blog is a multi-author blog, as part of the worldwide Metroblogs grouping. Hyderabad now joins other cities with its own metroblog. Where we will share views and news from/of/for Hyderabad.

Interested in contributing? Can apply using: http://metroblogging.com/apply.phtml

Hyderabad Bloggers meet, on June 4

2006-05-29T19:12:00.000-07:00

YOU (Hyderabadi bloggers) ARE INVITED..

What: An informal meet of Bloggers from Hyderbad.

Why: To help create a community of the bloggers.

Explore possibilities of collectively (interest-groups++)

doing something constructive

How: Initiate a Hyd blogroll or blog directory. Probably a

hyd-bloggers yahoo group- for blogosphere events/activities

coordination (must be non-spam & minimal traffic).

When: 4:00pm, 4th June.

Where:Cafe coffee day (@Banjara hills/Music World) -

C/o Music World 5&6, (near Banjara Hills Pizza Hut)

Fatima Pasha Layout8-2-672,Road No.1,

Banjara Hills, Hyderabad-34

Agenda: Open. Community building is the focus. Get names & blogs

onto a blogroll & DIR (can use a GPRS pda/phone). Disucss anything

else that gets proposed. Informal.

India 2.0? .. then, Hyderabad 2.0?

2006-05-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Web 2.0 hype has created a "wave" of 2.0's now. So far, have been seeing this only with respectto technologies and frameworks. This week came across a mention of this in a biz and economics context. About India. India 2.0!

This is Red Herring's name for teh emerging opportunities in India. Citing the possible saturation in OutSourcing growth, RH says that the Indian IT biggies will now look towards innovation. Have always believed that Products and IP creation is the serious lasting growth opportunity for the Indian IT industry. Driving development/engineering in a Product startup for a long time, I only know the challenges too well. Even so, this is where we should head as an Industry.

Now if India2.0.. then Hyderabad 2.0 (or even 2.1?) wouldnt be far behind. :-)

Quote from RH's mail brief on the atricle:
IN PRINT: India 2.0
Hindus believe good actions will lead to a better life each time you are reincarnated, and that’s exactly what has happened in the two decades since India’s software industry sprang to life. Businesses built around Y2K fixes for the rest of the world transformed the country into a hub of a multibillion-dollar industry staffed with low-end coders, call center staffers, and back-office processors. Now India’s tech sector is transforming itself again, and the next iteration will engineer high-end products, foster tech innovation, and create intellectual property. University professors and tech industry CEOs say it’s only a matter of time before the country emerges as a global tech behemoth. Thanks to coffers filled with money from Western companies eager to hire low-wage workers for routine tasks, giants like Infosys and Wipro have cash to burn on research and development. They’re hiring top-flight researchers and product managers, and buying up companies at home and abroad. With the Indian outsourcing market unlikely to grow at the same clip over the next decade, innovation will let the country’s tech firms move beyond their humble roots. Firms like TCS, a company building artificial intelligence software that could one day make call centers redundant, is just one example. There are still opportunities for large software services companies to provide something radically new, says Infosys CEO Nandan Nilekani—just look at Google. Find out more about the transformation of India’s tech sector in this week’s Red Herring, “India 2.0,” on newsstands Monday. Here is a peek into the rest of our lineup:

• Entrepreneurs and investors think there is a good chance the next Hotmail or Skype could come from India. Learn what they’re doing to encourage promising young companies in All Aboard.

• Kozo Hiramatsu is the new president of Japan’s scandal-rocked livedoor, and Humpty Dumpty Had a Great Fall discusses whether or not he can help the company recover from the downward spiral created by former CEO Takafumi Horie.

• Campus Rave explains how Rodger Desai used the death of the dorm phone to get Rave Wireless onto college airwaves. His next goal is finding out how to beat Facebook.

Google in Virtual World

2006-05-26T21:54:00.000-07:00

CNN reports " Google moves into virtual worlds" by "combining satellite maps and 3-D software, Google Earth is turning into a virtual online playground."

This is going to be one of the most fascinating space to watch for a lot of fireworks especially in the area of propertry rights and issues.

Google is proposing TiVo

2006-05-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

CNET has reported that Google is courting TiVo. This merger is going to go AOL-Warner way or worse than that. Some thoughts why this deal is a big NO! NO!! for TiVo are here.

Bloggers Anonymous

2006-05-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

1. Your real world friends have started neglecting you.
2. The number of times you have hit the dance floor in recent months have gone down considerably.
3. You are giving more importance to your technorati rankings than your ranking in office.
4. Your gf/bf is getting herself/himself heard by commenting on your blog.
5. Your internet bill is rising.

If your answer to most of these questions is yes. Then you need help.

There is no reason to get alarmed. You have already taken the first step by accepting that you have a problem.

Please click on this link. Help is on your way.

LAPD follows Kannada police

2006-05-24T01:02:00.000-07:00

Dakshina Kannada Police has a blog at SPDK with the purpose of disseminating police news of the district to those interested. And now LAPD has started their own blog at LAPDblog. At least our police department is leading the pack, if we techies are mere techno-coolies. :D

TiVo is aggregating !!

2006-05-23T22:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, you heard it right. TiVo that has already revolutionized TV viewing by Time shifting the TV content scored another ace by aggregating the content. More details are here.

IBM announces SOA Applicance

2006-05-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

Check this out.. IBM announces an SOA Applicance(hardwae based), Under the Websphere brand!
" Last October, IBM acquired a little-known maker of XML accelerator appliances called DataPower, and today, its Software Group, not its Systems and Technology Group, is launching the first IBM-branded kickers to the DataPower machines."

This is interesting that they shd take a harwdare product under its software brand. But then these days anything and everything IBM does around applications and integration seems to be under Websphere brand.

Barcamp in Virtual World

2006-05-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

Just came across this unique barcamp that was organized last week. It was organized in virtual world and people all across participated in it by sitting in the comforts of their homes.
More details are here.

IBM's India revenue (non off-shoring related) 600million

2006-05-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

IBM's CEO is visiting India. In that context IBM has released some sales numbers. India has registered the highest growwth among all countries IBM does biz in. At 61%. This is excluding the software offshoring that IBM does thru its Global Services and Product labs. The general expectations among industry observers is that the local sales & services is at about $600 million. This is just selling hardware and software to Indian companies. In India.

Not surprisng, Just a couple of weeks ago, NASSCOM (the software industry organization in India) annoucned that total Software market alone in India (local consumption) was over $10billion last year. IBM being th eindustry biggies, little surprise then that it has done $600million biz in India. Actually given that this includes hardware sales, this even seems a littl elower than it should be.

As always, I believe that local IT consumption and sofwtare products are the two major thrust areas for Indian software industry. The former is really taking off (eGiv, Banking and Retail industries leading the pack). Need to see more buzz and action happening in the products space. The homegrown or wholesome kind- not the offshore MNC centers (that by and large undertake secondary work in their Indian centers).

eGovernance inIndia & SOA- at NISG Hyderabad

2006-05-08T05:03:00.000-07:00

e-Governance in India is really coming of age. We are no longer taking an adhoc approach to it. Recently AP Government took up this massive initiative to model theinformation/data from all major departments in XML. A complete schema definition is created and an exchange server is running that can be used as a startingpoint to build new applications required by any of the departments. This is very forward thinking- rather than define as needed, a comprehensive definition and infrastructure is created upfront, and apps using these will follow. This is driven by Center for Good Governance (AP Govt.). In line with the pioneering spirit of AP Govt. w.r.t e-gov, there are two other institutions nowin Hyderabad- IEG (Institute for Electronic governance) and NISG (National institute for Smart Governance)- that are also active in this space. Helping define teh standards, architecture and technology framework for e-governance applciations.

NISG is actively working on the National Gateway project- that is attempting to create a very elaborate framework for electronic interaction between Biz & Government (B2G) and also between governments (G2G).

I happened to get an introduction to Mr. Ashok Krishnan, VP at NISG handling a new initiative on a framework to be built around SOA. I immediately took the opportunity to meet up and understand better. Pretty impressive. While the National Gateway project attempts to build a services and processes infrastructure at the central level, this project attempts to go bottom-up- by helping individual sections or departments embark upon good e-gov practices. The attempt is to have a wholesome view of departmental citizen services, by getting social scientists, beuracrats, business/process analysts, technologists and developers together to provide a more comprehensive solution. That starts from udnerstanding the processes and helping optimize and reengineer. Then help model the data and biz flows involved. And take it to actually helping implement the prototype solutions.

Very impressive. In my capacity as Adjunct Faculty at IIIT and a technologist, I may have an opportuinity to stay engaged with this initiative. Ashok was mentioning that he is looking for Very Techie Architects in the space of SOA, Services/EAI and Biz Process infrastructure. If you know of anyone, do forward teh prpofiles. Apart from the technical challenge this role will provide it is also a chance to particpate in building the e-gove infrastructure in India. A very strong need of the hour. This particlar project is sociallyu very relevant as, this is runningh in tandem with plans to have 100K village/rural integrated service centers, that will provide a host of government services.

For more info, do contact me (ramesh) or Ashok (ashok.krishnan@nisg.org).

StirrMixers at Hyderabad? (technology centric discussion/networking)

2006-05-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting movement in the bay area- http://www.stirr.net

They have two main monthly events- Stirr Mixers and Stirr Founders Table. The Stirr Mixers event is interesting (apart from the fact that I just love the name Stirr Mixers- given my deep interest in spirirts :-) ). This is where technologists, entrepreneurs, tech bloggers/journalists and investors can all meet up. The common ground being technology.

This is not too different from what we have set out to do at BootStrappers Hyderabad. While BootStrappers is more about just-start ing-startups, we do stronglybelieve that having it as a technology group will probably help promote more entrepreneural buzz in Hyderabad.

How about a BooStrappers' StirrMixer here? We can have one of the pubs host it. Say on a Saturday 11am? Can be pure dutch event- everyone pays for what they order. Can have a brief tech talk followed bty discussions.

What say?

-----

At STIRR our goal is to catalyze entrepreneurial activity in the SF Bay Area and beyond.

STIRR currently hosts two monthly events that help make things happen:

Our Mixers are open to everyone in the tech community (stealth-mode folk, startup-savvy engineers, journalists/bloggers, connectors and investors). Stirr Mixers are not sit-down-and-listen events, we want people to stand up, interact, socialize and swap thoughts/ideas. At Stirr mixers we provide an opportunity for early stage entrepreneurs to present ideas to their peer group

At our Founder's Table dinners we host up to 8 startup founders (and former founders) to discuss business challenges and forge relationships. This is a limited space event held once a month in both South Bay and San Francisco locations.

We Media 2006 London

2006-05-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

The We Media Global Forum brings together the trailblazers of the connected society - the thinkers, innovators, investors, executives and activists seeking to tap the potential of digital networks connecting people everywhere.

Conducted at and hosted by The BBC and Reuters in London, the 2006 Forum includes a series of keynote, general and small group conversations and workgroups, as well as networking receptions and a World Café - a global "town hall" meeting with Web, satellite, television and other avenues of participation from around the world.

BBC WE Media blog
Reuters We Media blog

Much of the talk was internet centric but it got shifted to mobile phones. And India has been marked as a country that is going to leap frog the PC and go straight to mobiles. :)

IJCAI-07 @ Hyderabad

2006-05-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence will be held in Hyderabad in 2007. The workshops and tutuorials will be held at IIIT from Jan 6th- 8th and the main conference will be held at HITEX Convention Center from Jan 9th-12th.

Three research awards are given at each IJCAI conference. The Computers & Thought Award is given to a relatively young (less than 35 years) researcher having already made a significant contribution to the field. The Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award is given to someone who has been doing a lot of the grunt work the last years. The IJCAI Award for Research Excellence is given to someone relatively old who had made a significant impact on the field. Previous recipients of the latter award include John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, Ray Reiter, and Judea Pearl.

Hyderabad IT grows by 50%! And, Buzzing tech community

2006-04-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

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..

Atttention Trust

2006-04-20T01:54:00.000-07:00

At barcamp , Rajan talked about managing attention. It got debated quite a lot in the barcamp and by fellow bloggers afterwards. Some seem to agree to the concept but some dont. Seth Goldstein was the guy who came up with this concept and has come up with Attenttion Trust and Root Markets.

MIT Technology review has put together there thoughts on Attention Management.

Tim O'Reily says, " 'Attention' is one of the important vectors for thinking about "collective intelligence," which, as I've just noted, is really the lynchpin of web 2.0".

My thoughts on Attention Management -
1) If users trade their attention information it will enable efficient allocation of information resource and that will in turn make the users efficient.

2) Attention information if nt shared / traded then its like money locked in the swiss accounts which is of no economic value.

But sharing information suddenly brings the horror of "Identity Thefts". So Attention Trust has four main principles:

1) attention data should be considered the personal property of the user at all times,
2) users should be able to rent or grant access to attention data at will,
3) users should be able to pay for services with attention data alone, and
4) users should be able to see how marketers use that data

After debating an hour and on trusting the guys at Attention Trust, I have downloaded the Attention Recorder. Have you :) ?

Facebook gets 25 million funding

2006-04-19T07:40:00.000-07:00

The intention of this post is to get the feedback from all you readers on what you think of about the Facebook idea in Indian context ? We all know orkut is a major hit in India. But Orkut is still nt a Myspace or Facebook. So there is a space for a new player :).

What are your views on this.

Google calendar finds favour with doctors and patients

2006-04-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

Doctors and patients both are finding google calendar extremely useful. Does this depicts the power of web 2.0 ? I leave that decision to you :).

TiE Interactive session with Mr. Ajit Deora

2006-04-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

TiE Interactive session with Mr. Ajit Deora who is partner with LightSpeed Ventures, turned out to be a quite a learning experience. In other TiE event at Bangalore I have heard Mr. Ajit's views on "Seeding Successful Startups". It was a panel discussion and other panelists were Mr. Sridhar Iyengar, President TiE Global and Mr. K Ganesh , CEO and founder TutorVista.
That session was very good as one get to know the views from either side i.e from VC side and Enterpreneur side on how to seed a startup. In today's session Mr. Ajit gave an overview of LightSpeed ventures. More importantly he said LightSpeed do fund a guy with an idea only. They seed funded a company in Delhi by giving 400,000 USD. After 2 years the same Delhi company raised 12 millions USD - 6 millions from LighSpeed and 6 millions from some other VC. He shared lots of stories mostly from his personal experiences in Silicon Valley. Somehow I was able to connect to Ajit's stories and more to Ajit himself. I have heard lots of VCs talking in Boston , Bangalore , Hyderabad. They all speak in a fashion which just makes you more fearful of a breed called VC but Ajit was more humane. Paul Graham has written a famous article on "Unified Theory of VC Suckage" and it will put in you the fear of VC eeks GOD :).

The discussion was highly interactive and people were freely expressing their views. Some people in the crowd were not bullish on the internet plays but Ajit was. So all you guys with internet-ecom ideas you know which door to knock :). In the end there was this business idea lottery. Kopos our fellow blogger won the raffle and he got a Shuffle for himself. His idea was to provide affordable HealthCare solutions to the people. Then the stage was made open to the general public. Diwakar from IIIT shared his idea that he wanted to make a community site targetted at families. Main aim is to improve family communication and improve relationship discovery, a problem that arises by marrying within the family. Next was Srikanth who wanted to provide real-time decision making solutions to the enterprises. Guy knew what he was talking and he has been working in this line for last 10 years. I myself was bullish on data mining solutions for enterprises when I was in college. I tried lots of time to sell my ideas to Rajan :). But the problem was that we guys dint even knew A B C of Enterprise computing. Last person to share his idea was Atul Gupta he wanted to leverage TV for building community gaming solutions. Rajan had some solid points that why it will nt work. Kids play video games at gaming parlors ( I used to do it myself :) ) because there parents dont know that they are playing games. Parents subscribing for a gaming service so that there kids can play games at home, I think that will require lots of convincing to do. Dasrath Guhe (GD) MD ATI, said that they are working on something similar. All the best guys.

All in all a great session. Looking forward for more of similar activity in Hyderabad.

Corporation 2.0 - Saving seconds to make Millions

2006-04-15T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last week , I , Rajat , Ramesh and Suman had a marathon dicussion on how new technologies which provide cheap coordination can disrupt existing business practices. These discussions are so refreshing :).

Here is one example, and who else the most innovative restaurant chain , McDonalds is experimenting on some of these technologies to save millions for themselves and also providing better service to the customer. This is Corporation 2.0. :)

Announcing AppExhange Mobile

2006-04-13T03:58:00.000-07:00

"AppExchange Mobile solves key issues for both our customers and our partners. Our customers are eager for ways to extend their on-demand applications to the mobile workforce, and developers need a painless way to address this major opportunity," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "With AppExchange Mobile, there is no extra coding needed to develop an application on AppExchange and mobile-enable it. AppExchange Mobile is democratizing mobile applications, further extending the power, creativity and freedom of the on-demand model and The Business Web to our customers and partners on the move."

Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

2006-04-13T02:54:00.000-07:00

Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business School Professor thinks that Web 2.0 for Enterprises will be huge. Excerpt of his article are following -

There is a new wave of business communication tools including blogs, wikis and group messaging software — which the author has dubbed, collectively, Enterprise 2.0 — that allow for more spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools, the author contends, may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices and relevant experiences from throughout a company and make them readily available to more users. This article offers a paradigm that highlights the salient characteristics of these new technologies, which the author refers to as SLATES (search, links, authoring, tags, extensions, signals). The resulting organizational communication patterns can lead to highly productive and highly collaborative environments by making both the practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Drawing on case studies and survey data, the article offers managers a set of ground rules for implementing the new technologies. First, it is necessary to create a receptive culture in order to prepare the way for new practices. Second, a common platform must be created to allow for a collaboration infrastructure. Third, an informal rollout of the technologies may be preferred to a more formal procedural change. And fourth, managerial support and leadership is crucial. Even when implanted and implemented well, these new technologies will certainly bring with them new challenges. These tools may well reduce management’s ability to exert unilateral control and to express some level of negativity. Whether a company’s leaders really want this to happen and will be able to resist the temptation to silence dissent is an open question. Leaders will have to play a delicate role if they want Enterprise 2.0 technologies to succeed.

Full article is here -
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/issue/2006/spring/06/

(If you buy it, do send it to me also :) )

Views of Nicholas Carr , who shot to fame by his famous article in Harvard Business Review "Does IT Matter" are here.

Hyderabad.. next BarCamp?

2006-04-12T11:53:00.000-07:00

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.

Webaroo - Out in Open

2006-04-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

Webaroo is finally out of the stealth mode. :) They have launched their service and have also done a strategic partnership with Acer. I have been trying to get dope on this company from quite long. But couldnt managed much. I remember discussing the name of the company with my friend Rajan. I couldnt make much sense of it. Rajan reflected for sometime and draw a parallel between Kangaroo and Webaroo. Kudos to the guys imagination.

Webaroo has pretty strong team backing it up. Rakesh Mathur the guy behind Junglee, Venky Harinarayan the guy behing Kosmix are some of the promoters of the company.

Webaroo's idea is appealing but I am nt sure how much inroads they can make. And their business model is age old one - "Advertising based". All luck to guys at Webaroo.

TiE Interactive session with Light Speed Ventures

2006-04-11T07:52:00.000-07:00

There is an interactive session with Mr. Ajit Deora. He is Venture Partner with Light Speed Ventures. So you can shoot all your queries from how to get the venture money to how VC funds are constituted. Most importantly , there are cash prizes for asking question. Now how cool is that !!

Register for the event by sending a mail to tiehyd@hotmail.com or rajat.gupta@hotmail.com.

There are no registration charges.

The details of the program are following -

Date : Saturday , April 15th, 2006.
Venue : Crystal Palace-A, Hotel Manohar, Airport Road, Begumpet
Time : 12:00 pm

Agenda

12:00 - 12:30 Registrations & Gathering
12:30 - 12:45 Welcome Address
12:45 - 1:15 Presentation By Ajit
1: 15 - 1:30 Q & A
1:30 - 2:30 Networking lunch
2:30 - 3:00 Q& A on the business Plans
3:00 - 3:30 Feed back and prize distribution
3:30 - 3:45 Closing Note

About Mr. Ajit J Deora

Ajit J. Deora is a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and brings more than 24 years of business and technology leadership. Previously as CEO of enKoo, Deora was responsible for leading the long-term strategy and vision for the company. While at enKoo, Mr. Deora won the prestigious Person of the Year Award by Service Provider Weekly. enKoo was recently acquired by SonicWall. Before starting EnKoo, Deora founded Beachhead Capital, a leading angel investor in networking, storage and enterprise software startups. Some of Beachhead investments are Cavium, AcmePacket, UNM, Cendrua, Niksun, Nishan, Lara, Engim, etc. Prior to that, he was co-founder of several companies including Chip Engines (acquired by Alliance Semiconductor), Sand Microelectronics (acquired by Phoenix Technologies) and Silicon Platforms (acquired by S3). Previously, Deora held senior engineering and management positions at Western Digital and Intel. Deora is an angel investor in the US and India. Deora is a Charter member of TiE where he is actively involved in mentoring entrepreneurs. He holds a BSEE degree from IIT, Madras and a MSCS degree from Lawrence, KU.

Boot Camp

2006-04-10T03:36:00.000-07:00

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? :)

Open Source Millionaires

2006-04-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

A very good article on Marc Fleury, CEO JBoss. It always a mystery to many as in how to build a company which is giving out its product for free. :) Marc has build a giant and at one point of time Oracle was paying as much as $500 million for JBoss. Though that deal dint see the light of the day but Marc is taking his company public now.

Open source has always been an enigma for me also. It took sometime for me also to understand how one can build a business around a free product. I had a great opportunity to hear Ray Lane who is still very bullish on Open Source.

So watch this space and it will see more of activity in future.

A-yax or A-Jax

2006-04-10T01:50:00.000-07:00

I feel bad now because i could not make it to BarCamp Hyderabad 'unconference' on Web 2.0 yesterday.

But i have a question:

Ajax ofcourse is a crucial component that makes the up Web 2.0 hype.

I was wondering how would one pronounce Ajax ? Is it a-yax ? Apparently i am not the first one to ponder on this all important question.

Because its an acronym (a very ugly coming together of terms), so i figured its 'A-J-A-X'.

Beatzo was saying something about how Ajax is actually the name of guy that come up with the term. But i could not find anything to support this claim.

What do you guys think ?

Bootstrappers Network

2006-04-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

Business week's article on Bijoy Goswami, man behind Bootstrap Network. Bootstrap Network has become a movement now and is spreading everywhere. I think there is a bootstrappers club in Hyderabad. We should make it more active. So guys pitch in with your 2 cents for making Bootstrappers hyderabad more active.

Hyderabad BarCamp.. great success today!

2006-04-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

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!

2006-04-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

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
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
3:50	Video discussion along with Chennai BarCamp
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
5:20	Break
5:30	Open Conferences.. to open Journals	Dr.Vishal Garg	IIIT-H
5:40	WebOS (MeraSystem.com)	Dr.Kamal Karlapalem	IIIT-H
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
6:40	Eclipse in the Web 2.0 space and Usability impact	Kiran Rajaratna	Principal, Progress Software
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
7.40	Open
8.00	Dinner

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 :-)

2006-04-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

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?

2006-04-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

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..

2006-04-03T00:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-04-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

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"

2006-04-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

(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

2006-04-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

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.

BarCamp hyderabad.. crosses 110 registrations!

2006-03-31T04:11:00.000-08:00

The interest is rapidly building up on the BarCamp Hyderabad. To be held on 8th April, at IIIT-Hyderabad. Apart from the setady stream of registrations (now 110+), there is good interest from speakers as well. And more importantly, interest from companies in sponsoring the event even. So far we have Progress, Pramati, Cordys, Kern-comm and Advetta helping with different parts of the event. Apart from IIIT hosting the event. (One of my first liberties, after being made Adjunct Faculty at IIIT :-) ).

The BarCamps is also getting mainstream attention. After the recent atricle in a Bombay magazine, today Economic Times also featured an article on BarCamps. Nice. Very Nice. :-)

If you (Hyderabad Techies) havent already registered, do so right away! (ckick here).See you all Hyderabad techies at the BarCamp!

Hyderebad Tech - a shared blog

2006-03-31T03:33:00.000-08:00

This is an initiative to create a common Hyderabad centric tech blog. With info, news & events relating to tech in Hyderabad. Will be based onposts from many members (a shared blog).

Request you to add this to your blogs set. And anytime you see a generic tech news/event/development, especially when relevant to hyd tech community, do post it here. or atleast, cross reference it here.

Thanx,
Ramesh